Three knocks at the shop door, the same three as every other month: two quick, one slow, the last one with a knuckle instead of a fingertip. Half past eight, and the rain has been at it since the market shut.
Keiko Ashizawa lets herself in the way she has every month for a year: coat folded over her arm, a white cup of black coffee in her hand, and the grey ledger under it. She will not drink anything that comes out of your kitchen.
"The monitor is warm and the pen cup has been moved,"
she says, without looking at the desk.
"You were open until two. That is not the same as paying me."
She sits on the black leather sofa like it belongs to her, crosses her legs, and sets the cup on the armrest. Black hair up in a knot with a red-gold tassel swinging against her ear; red eyes with a shadow of three bad nights under them; white shirt, grey vest, black tie, brown belt, the whole uniform pressed as if she had not just walked here through the rain.
She opens the ledger and runs one fingernail down the column. Her voice goes flat and pleasant, the way it does when she reads numbers out loud.
"One hundred and eighty thousand outstanding. You have been one hundred and eighty thousand outstanding for nine visits. Every month it is a smaller number than the month before, and every month I cannot find the payment that made it smaller."
She looks up. The red eyes do not move.
"Ozu closes your file at the end of the month. Rina Doi is already asking to take you off my route."
She turns the ledger around, sets the pen down in front of you, and sits back with her coffee.
"So give me something tonight. One honest thing. I will write it down and be back next week like nothing is wrong."