About two weeks after I quit, I turned on the television one afternoon and found a program about an old hot-spring town.
Ryokan lined the river. Halfway up a hill, a souvenir shop had a faded sign above the entrance. Men and women in yukata walked along eating steamed buns.
The shot changed to an outdoor bath overlooking the mountains.
I watched for a while.
Then I decided to go.
When I was still working, the first thing I would have done was check my next long weekend. Even if I found a room, I might have needed someone to cover a shift.
Now I could leave tomorrow.
I searched for a place on my phone. One night seemed too short, so I made it three.
I'd quit my job for a reason. I could stay longer.
In the end, I booked six nights.
The room was larger than one person needed, with breakfast and dinner included.
A few years earlier, I probably would have compared prices until the last minute.
This time I picked the room that looked best in the photos.
The next morning, I took a train a little after ten.
Rush hour was over, and the car was mostly empty.
I sat by the window.
A few people got on at one station, then got off somewhere else.
I was heading somewhere far away with just one bag, at an hour when hardly anyone was commuting.
It wasn't bad.
I arrived a little after noon.
A cold wind blew up from the river outside the station.
I walked the hill I'd seen on television. Steam rose from a roadside drain. Between old inns stood a new café, and half the lettering had disappeared from the sign next door.
For lunch, I ordered something I'd seen pictured outside a restaurant.
It was a little expensive.
I noticed the price and ordered it anyway.
No one was there to say,
"Isn't that kind of expensive?"
When I finished eating, I didn't have to decide what came next.
If an alley looked interesting, I went down it. If I saw stairs, I climbed them.
When I got tired, I stopped at a café.
No one cared if I skipped something I'd planned to see.
I checked into the inn in the late afternoon.
There were two chairs by the window.
I put my bag on one.
After changing into a yukata, I went to the bath.
Only three other people were in the outdoor pool.
I sat in the water and watched the mountains darken.
There was no work tomorrow.
At dinner, I ordered sake.
The first day was a lot of fun.
The next day I went sightseeing again. I rode the ropeway, visited a temple, and took plenty of pictures.
On the third day, I stood alone in line for a place that was supposed to be popular.
"Just one?" the server asked.
I was shown to a table for two against the wall.
The chair across from me stayed empty while I ate. Behind me, a group of young women kept laughing.
As the days passed, I left the inn later and later.
It rained on the fifth day. I visited one place, came back, took a bath, and watched television.
It wasn't much different from being at home.
Before dinner, I went through the photos on my phone.
Most were scenery. The rest were things I'd eaten or places I'd passed after dark.
Nearly a hundred pictures, and I wasn't in any of them.
I opened the old group chat with my high school friends and scrolled back years.
The photos from the trip I'd skipped at twenty-three were still there.
Five of them stood in front of the sea.
One had his eyes closed.
In another picture, they were on an amusement-park ride, the two in front turned around and laughing at the others.
There were photos from dinner too. Plates and glasses covered the table.
Someone must have said something just before the picture was taken.
Four of them were laughing in different directions.
I hadn't gone on that trip.
I'd heard it would cost thirty thousand yen and said no.
I swiped through a few more.
Then I went back to the pictures from this trip.
The river and mountains looked good. So did the old buildings. There were shots of food and the view after my bath.
Mine were better pictures.
The first day had been fun. I'd soaked in the hot spring and eaten whatever I wanted.
I tried to remember if I'd laughed at anything.
There must have been something.
Nothing came to mind right away.
Voices passed in the hallway outside.
A few people seemed to be heading back to their rooms.
Someone laughed.
I put the phone facedown.
On the sixth day, I stayed at the inn until almost noon.
Housekeeping was about to start, so I finally went out.
There were two places left that I'd meant to see.
After the first one, I decided I'd had enough.
I walked back toward the station and wondered if I could change tomorrow's ticket to that afternoon.
Then I remembered the dinner I'd already booked.
I went back to the inn.
I took another bath that evening, ate dinner, and had a drink.
The next morning, I caught a train one departure earlier than planned.
When I got home, the room had the stale air of a place that had been shut for six days.
I opened the window and unpacked my dirty clothes.
Then I added up what I'd spent.
The inn and the train fare came first. By the time I added meals, sightseeing, sake, and souvenirs, the total was close to two hundred thousand yen.
At twenty-three, I'd turned down a trip because it cost thirty thousand.
Now I'd spent nearly two hundred thousand in six days.
It didn't feel expensive.
I could afford it.
There were more than a hundred photos on my phone. I looked through a few, then closed the app without sending any.
That night, I opened the old group chat again.
Once before, I had typed:
We should all go out for drinks sometime.
Then deleted it.
This time I wrote:
We should go somewhere overnight sometime. It's been forever.
I looked at the message for a while before sending it.
About ten minutes later, someone replied.
That's new lol
Then:
Overnight's tough. The youngest is still little.
Another friend wrote:
When?
I sent a couple of possible dates.
Got family plans around then.
A moment later:
Could probably do a day trip sometime though.
One of the others didn't answer that night.
The next morning, his message was waiting.
Asked my wife. No chance.
Then:
Drinks I can do. Been a while.
No one had sounded cold.
It was the same group.
They just couldn't pick up and go the way we used to.
Yeah, let's get drinks sometime.
I sent that and left it there.
We didn't pick a date.
Before long, the empty days came back.
By the time I'd been out of work for four months, I was waking later than before the trip.
At first, even without an alarm, I'd gotten up around eight.
After a couple of weeks, it became nine.
Then ten wasn't unusual.
Staying up until two or three in the morning stopped feeling late.
It wasn't that I wasn't tired.
I'd turn off the lights, lie down, and think I didn't have to sleep yet.
There was nothing the next morning.
No one cared what time I got up.
I'd put on a stream of someone playing a game, then switch to something else halfway through. Sometimes a woman was drinking and talking into a camera. Another night, a man wandered through the city after midnight.
Most of the time I wasn't really listening.
When the room went quiet, I chose another video.
Eventually I fell asleep.
One morning, I woke up and reached around beside the pillow for my phone.
11:23.
Nine percent battery.
One earbud was under the pillow. The other had ended up somewhere in the bedding.
There was one notification from my brokerage account, three from the video app, and one from an online store.
No messages.
I put the phone back down.
It was almost noon before I got out of bed.
The refrigerator held sparkling water, beer, and a few half-used condiments.
There was one egg left.
In the vegetable drawer, a green onion I'd forgotten about had gone soft.
I picked it up.
The end bent under its own weight.
When I'd bought it, I was pretty sure I'd reached past the ones in front for the fresher one.
I'd chosen the one that would last two days longer and let it rot anyway.
I threw it away.
There was no rice cooked, so I went to the bathroom instead.
I hadn't shaved in two days.
I wasn't going to see anyone.
I shaved anyway.
After washing my face and changing clothes, I went outside.
The sun was stronger than I'd expected.
Near the station, four or five workers in uniforms were sitting in the shade beneath a pedestrian overpass. A truck was parked nearby.
One of them was drinking canned coffee. Another looked at his phone with a cigarette in his hand.
"Brutal today."
"You've still got the whole afternoon."
"I wanna go home already."
"We just started."
They laughed.
I walked past them.
If he wanted to go home at noon, I wondered why he did work like that.
Then I remembered I'd slept until almost noon myself.
I went into a convenience store and bought a bento and sparkling water.
Through the window, I could still see the workers sitting in the same place.
When their break ended, they'd get up.
I went home.
The video app was still open to whatever I'd been watching the night before.
As I reached for the play button, I noticed another app beside it.
A day-work app.
I'd registered just after leaving my job and completed the identity check, but I'd never applied for anything.
I opened it for the first time in months.
Jobs near me filled the screen.
Most were warehouse or setup work. There were cleaning jobs too, and even dishwashing at a restaurant.
I looked at the pay.
Less than I'd made in a day at my old job.
I opened one of the warehouse listings.
Nine-hour shift with a one-hour break. Transportation reimbursement had a limit.
I worked out the hourly rate in my head.
Then I subtracted lunch.
They wouldn't even cover all the train fare.
I calculated what twenty days a month would come to.
What about health insurance?
No bonus either.
People actually lived like this?
I was about to close the listing.
Then I remembered that I didn't have a bonus anymore.
I didn't have a salary either.
Halfway through my bento, I opened the app again.
There was an event setup job at an exhibition hall two stations away.
Seven in the morning until five.
No experience required.
Meeting time: 6:40 a.m.
Two openings left.
I closed the app and turned on the television.
The weather segment had ended on the afternoon information show, and now they were introducing a restaurant somewhere outside Tokyo.
The owner started preparing food at five every morning.
I picked up my phone.
Two openings left.
I tapped Apply.
Apply for this job?
"Don't make me think about it again."
I confirmed.
Application accepted.
The job appeared on my calendar.
The next morning, my alarm went off at six.
My hand moved before I was fully awake.
I shut it off and got out of bed.
After washing my face, I put on black pants and an old hoodie.
I packed some bread from the convenience store and headed for the station.
The platform was crowded with office workers and students.
When the train arrived, the line compressed toward the doors.
I grabbed a strap.
My reflection in the window was wearing a hoodie.
Everyone around me seemed to be in a suit.
Four months ago, so was I.
I got off at the station nearest the exhibition hall and followed a few workers heading in the same direction to the loading entrance.
At reception, I gave my name and was handed a pair of work gloves.
"Done event setup before?"
"First time."
"Don't push it with anything too heavy. See the people in yellow vests? Just do what they tell you."
No one asked where I'd worked for fifteen years.
No one asked why I'd quit.
Inside the hall, I carried whatever I was told to carry and asked for the next job when I was done.
At the store, after fifteen years, I had usually been the one giving instructions.
Here I only had to think about what was in front of me.
During the break, I bought a can of coffee from a vending machine.
A hundred forty yen.
Ten yen more than the machine in the staff room at my old job.
The fact that I noticed annoyed me.
I'd spent nearly two hundred thousand yen in six days without caring, and there I was noticing ten yen.
I sat in an open spot.
A man who looked to be in his thirties was beside me, a white patch stuck to his right arm.
He opened a rice ball.
"Long day, huh?"
I wasn't sure he meant me, so I answered a beat late.
"We're here till five, right?"
"Supposedly. If teardown runs late, could go longer."
"Really?"
"That's the worst part."
He took a bite.
"First time?"
"Doing setup like this, yeah."
"I come pretty often."
"How many days a week?"
"Three or four, maybe. I do warehouse stuff too."
"You make a living doing this?"
The question sounded strange as soon as I heard myself say it.
He looked over.
"Yeah. I live."
"Sorry. I didn't mean it like that."
"It's fine."
He laughed.
"I worked overnight yesterday, though. Taking this one was a mistake."
"Warehouse?"
"Yeah. Got off at five this morning."
"Did you sleep?"
"Three hours or so."
"And you still came?"
"Need the money."
He opened another rice ball.
"How long have you been doing this?"
"These day jobs?"
"Yeah."
"Couple years."
"That long?"
"It's easy. Place sucks, you don't book it again."
"Ever think about getting a regular job?"
I had asked another question.
"Eventually, I guess."
"Eventually."
"I'm not in trouble right now."
He said it like there wasn't much else to say.
"Right."
I left it there.
He never asked about my old job, and he had no idea how much money I had.
I never asked his name.
Someone called the end of the break.
We went back to work.
The job finished a little earlier than scheduled, and the completion notice came through on my phone.
My thighs tightened on the walk to the station.
There was one empty seat on the train, so I took it.
I checked the amount I'd earned.
It wasn't ten thousand yen.
After fifteen years at one company, I'd worked a full day for less than that.
My brokerage account could move ten thousand yen before breakfast without anything unusual happening. On some days, it moved more than that while I was riding the train.
Still, today's money looked bigger.
I'd spent the day carrying tables and holding panels while younger employees told me what to do.
At home, I took a shower and put the bento I'd bought on the way back into the microwave.
I sat down while it heated.
Normally I'd have opened a video by then.
The microwave beeped.
By the time I finished eating, it was after nine.
My finger went toward the video app, then stopped.
I slept until a little after eight the next morning.
When I woke up, there were no earbuds under the pillow.
My legs still felt heavy when I went to the supermarket.
At the milk section, I picked up a carton and checked the date.
The ones farther back lasted two days longer.
I started to reach for one.
Then I remembered the green onion.
I put the front carton in my basket.
After that, I started taking warehouse and loading jobs too.
On days when I had work the next morning, I stopped drinking earlier and checked the alarm before bed.
One night, teardown at an event ran past ten.
On the way to the station, I stopped on a bridge.
Cars moved along the road beside the river. Reflections from the streetlights broke apart on the water and came back together.
My phone vibrated.
2 jobs available tomorrow
One was at a warehouse.
The other was event setup.
Start time: 7:00 a.m.
My legs still carried the day's work.
I scrolled through the listing.
Scheduled finish: 4:00 p.m. Transportation fully covered.
One opening left.
A bicycle was coming toward me from the other side of the bridge.
I stepped aside.
After it passed, I looked at the screen again.
Seven in the morning.
I'd have to leave home a little after six.
I tapped Apply.