Kazama Tatsuya shouldered his messenger bag, and as he entered the train station, passersby made way for him. When he boarded the train, high school students in uniforms stood up to offer their seats for the disabled. For the first time, he found Japan's manners to be annoying.
Ignoring others, he held the handrail with one hand and took the train back to Sugamo.
After staying in Hokkaido for over a month, returning to Tokyo felt like a different world. Kazama Tatsuya pushed open his front door to find a thin layer of dust covering the furniture inside. He stood in the entryway without entering the living room and bent down to pick up the mail piled below the mail slot.
Using his ring finger and middle finger to hold the stack, he quickly flipped through it with his index finger and thumb, discarding advertisements onto the floor and picking out overdue bills. As he skimmed to the last one, his fingers suddenly stopped.
