kscans

Chapter 4 - The Old North Exit of Sapporo Station Was Dark and Small

Hinako arrived in the afternoon.

As soon as she entered the house, she threw herself at her father's body and began to sob uncontrollably, which in turn brought her aunts and uncles to tears. It might be an inappropriate way to put it, but Hinako's arrival seemed to liven up the somber atmosphere.

Hinako was always the center of attention. Whether she was aware of it or not, some people in this world are simply like that.

Tsukie left dealing with the relatives to Hinako and attending to the condolence callers to her mother, while she busied herself with various odds and ends. Since tomorrow was tomobiki, an unlucky day for funerals, the wake would be held the day after. She caught herself thinking it was going to be a long haul and felt a pang of self-loathing, wondering if bracing herself like that made her a bad daughter.

She'd felt the same thing at her grandmother's funeral a few years ago: couldn't a family just send off their loved one quietly, by themselves? Funerals in Hokkaido, for whatever reason, had an incredible number of people attending the wake. Holding a funeral in a tiny, rabbit-hutch of a home was out of the question, so a funeral hall or temple had to be rented. Perhaps it was a regional thing, but the bereaved family had no time to grieve; they had to attend to guests and manage an unfamiliar event.

Even though a funeral is an event where a huge amount of money changes hands, the accounting for it all is often fuzzy. It wasn't an event one could host many times in a lifetime, and families, shaken by the loss of a loved one, were often unable to make calm judgments.

They could easily fall for the funeral director's stock phrase, "We must do at least this much for them, to be fitting," as they constantly brought up the deceased's former status to try and upgrade the funeral arrangements. Since the only experts present were the funeral home staff, the family would go along with their recommendations, choosing the altar, the parting gifts, and worrying about the appearance of the food. It wasn't at all uncommon to later see a bill so large it made their eyes pop out of their heads.

Would it be an exaggeration to say this was the most classic form of spiritual sales tactics?

People know that no matter how much money you spend on someone after they're gone, it's nothing more than self-satisfaction for the living, and the only one who profits is the funeral home. Perhaps that's why they try to content themselves with words like, "It was a wonderful service. I'm sure Grandpa is happy, too."

Who, exactly, is a funeral for?

Based on such experiences, if you dare to choose a modest ceremony, you'll eventually hear misguided rumors like, "It's so sad for the deceased that they could only afford a funeral like that."

The bereaved family is hurt by the death of a loved one, and then hurt a second time by the heartless rumors of the world. Surely, many people have had such an experience.

Living is hard, but dying is hard, too.

Tsukie took Mayu with her to Senshuan to buy some sweets for the offerings. Her friends from the main island seemed to think Rokkatei's sweets were the most famous in Hokkaido, but for Tsukie, who was born and raised in Sapporo, Sapporo Senshuan was far more familiar. She bought Yamaoyaji, a Western-style butter cookie her father had loved, and Northman.

Many of the sweets here had names that gave no hint as to their flavor. For the record, Northman was a Japanese-Western hybrid sweet with red bean paste wrapped in a moist pie crust, and it had a strangely addictive taste. She chose those as the main items and picked out some manju buns and other things to serve the condolence callers.

When she called her husband, Tetsuro, he said he would pick her up at the north exit of Sapporo Station. While she waited for him, Tsukie looked up at the north exit, which had been completely transformed by the station's redevelopment project. A magnificent station building now towered over the area, flanked on the east and west by massive department stores from the main island. It's changed so much in the short time I've been away from Sapporo after getting married, she thought wistfully.

When Tsukie thought of Sapporo Station, it wasn't the south exit, which faced the main street and had large facilities, but the north exit, which, despite being separated by ten train tracks, was a much smaller affair. The little station building felt more like a back entrance, its floor paved with cold, gray concrete tiles. To the left was a dim, chilly restroom, and to the right, a ticket window. The ticket gate was just a few steps inside the entrance. The number of station staff was extremely low, and the whole place was so quiet you couldn't imagine the bustle of the south exit.

That small station building from her childhood, where she'd had her ticket punched and passed through the gate, remained an unforgettable presence at the bottom of Tsukie's memory.

"It's cold, isn't it?" Tsukie said, smiling at Mayu beside her.

"So cold, so cold!" Mayu sang, blowing on her gloved hands. Fat snowflakes had begun to drift down.