"It sounds crazy, but it works! You tasted it yourself, right?"

"...well, yeah."

"Next time I think I might try rice croquettes.

"Anyway, I'm headed back to the clinic. Seeya!"

"Bye."

Towa's subconscious was probably influenced by Rei's words. Without particularly meaning to, his feet lead him all the way to Tajima's in District D. He stops at the door and peers inside through the glass.

Its interior is cramped, packed to the gills with sweets and snacks of every kind, and amongst them is the white-haired, stony-faced octogenarian shop owner.

The store is as much a relic as Tajima herself is. It's been around since before Shinkōmi started to decline, and despite the expanding casino industry's attempts to force evictions on older homes and stores to construct taller and more modern Tajima's managed to stand her ground and hold onto it. Now it's the last shop of its kind in the area, and it's acquired some popularity amongst older folk who want a taste of nostalgia as well as some younger people curious about traditional snacks.

"Come on in," she says, sounding irritated.

He walks in, only somewhat reluctantly. Part of him always felt at home here, though he didn't understand why. The other part, though, was really uncomfortable with one small detail in the shop: a painting hanging on a wall above the clutter. It barely counts as a painting, really; at some point in the past the framed canvas might've had something on it, but a layer of black was added onto it obscuring every detail and making it look very out-of-place in the familiar and homey style of the store. Yet despite the discomfort, Towa always found his eye wandering towards it, like something in him wanted to unravel its mysteries. It felt almost like something out of a horror story, the one incongruous detail in an otherwise ordinary scene hinting at some dark secret.

"Are you buying or not?" Tajima snaps after watching Towa spend far too long standing there without even browsing. Her Smoke is a deep dark brown, and it's never wavered for as long as Towa's known her; she's just always snappish and grumpy.

He grabs some stuff at random and brings it to the counter, broken from his reverie and suddenly feeling like he doesn't want to stay there anymore.

She starts scanning the items, but after a couple of quiet seconds decides to speak. "This city keeps changing. I'm terrified someday it'll all go to shit," she mutters, mostly to herself. It's a common occurrence, regardless of whether anyone's listening, but some people found value in her stories of the old days. "It was never this filthy before, I tell you. Used to be you could let your daughters play outside, but now the streets are full of sluts and whores! Men and women! And you're one of them, you understand me?"

He nods. "Yeah." No use denying it, not that he'd even want to. He actually kind of likes Tajima. She's blunt, but honest and straightforward, and sometimes it feels like she's the only solid thing in the world while everything else changes around her. That makes her seem like an outsider, but really that's everyone else.

"Day in and day out, I hear about all this death and murder. Now when I see a dead body, I don't even care! It's not right, I tell you. But I'd sooner die protecting my store than lick the boots of that yakuza scum."

By which she means, of course, the Takasato Group.

"...that'll be 240 yen."

He pulls a thousand-yen bill out of his trousers pocket and hands it to her. "Keep the change."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Thanks for your business," she says, taking the money and handing Towa his items without a bag.

Towa stuffs out of them into his coat pockets and heads for the door. He doesn't notice that the old lady is following him until he's stepped outside.

"Come by again sometime," she mutters with a scowl.

That makes him smile a bit. He waves then sets off again.

Late that night, after the clinic closes, Taku and Rei decide to go to the local diner so that Taku can make good on his promise of getting Rei a parfait. Not that they need the excuse—it's one of the few places still open at this time, so they come here often. Since Towa was downtown at the time, they invited him, too.

Taku orders the Salisbury steak special, Rei gets steak fried rice and his parfait, and Towa gets a coffee. That's pretty usual for him, since he doesn't like eating, and yet every time it happened, like clockwork, Rei would tell him how "it's not healthy" and "it's going to kill him one of these days". Towa figures that actually what's probably going to kill him is some hookup gone wrong and playing a bit too carelessly with a knife, but if that by some miracle never happens he supposes his unhealthy lifestyle is a good bet for what'll end him. Anticlimactic, but he's not about to change anything about his life to prevent that from happening.

Rei does in fact start to grumble something along those lines, but his face lights right up when his parfait arrives. "Oh my god these strawberry cream parfaits are so good," he squeals.

"I bet the guy who makes 'em appreciates how much you like 'em."