She finished the remaining drink in her glass, and when she looked up again, the owner was already asking Shuichi if he wanted to try a different flavor for his next drink.
At that moment, the door was pushed open.
A man and a woman walked in.
The man was around twenty-seven or twenty-eight, his tie loosened to the second button, with his suit jacket draped over his arm; the woman had ear-length short hair, wore a dark blue pantsuit, and carried a commuter bag in her hand.
"Good evening—are you still open?"
"Open. The usual?"
"The usual! I worked overtime until eleven today, and there's no way I can go home without a drink."
The man tossed his jacket onto a nearby stool and sat down next to Shuichi with one empty seat between them.
The woman sat on his other side, felt around in her bag for a pack of cigarettes, glanced at Satsuki sitting there, and put the cigarettes back.
The owner poured the man a glass of whiskey with soda, mixed a light amber drink for the woman, casually cleared away the empty glass in front of Satsuki, and replaced it with a second drink.
This time it used persimmon, and the color was much darker than the previous glass.
Shuichi shifted his sitting posture and pressed his hand against his lower back again.
Satsuki rested her chin in her hand and cast a sideways glance at him.
"Father, is it still hurting?"
"It doesn't hurt, exactly, it's just stiff. Going over a manhole cover can rattle your brain all the way to the back of your head."
"Then earlier in Hibiya, when you dipped the front of the car just as you started off, was that also because the seats were too hard?"
Shuichi's hand holding the glass paused for a moment.
"...That was testing the clutch."
"You've been driving a 911 for close to twenty years and never stalled it once, but when you switch to my car, you suddenly need to test it first?"
"The way you put that, it sounds as if someone stalled twice at Daikoku."
"That's because the 911's clutch travel is too long! Who knew you had to lift it up so high—"
Across the empty seat, the man's hand holding his glass stopped mid-air.
He looked at Shuichi, then at Satsuki, hesitated for a few seconds, and finally turned his body sideways.
"Um, excuse me, sorry to interrupt... Just now I heard the two of you talking about the F40 and the 911—are you talking about Ferrari's F40? And Porsche's 911?"
"That's right."
"Really?!"
The man's eyes suddenly lit up, and he leaned his body further toward their side.
"I've only ever seen the F40 in magazines! I heard there aren't even many brought into all of Japan... Did the two of you drive it here? Is it parked downstairs?"
The woman beside him tugged at his sleeve.
"They're in the middle of a conversation, don't crowd them."
"It's fine, it's fine."
Shuichi smiled, waved his hand at her, and turned back to look at the man.
"It's parked in the parking lot over in Shimbashi. But don't just envy that car from looking at magazines; after driving it for a single night, these old bones of mine feel like they're about to fall apart."
"Th-Then what about the 911?"
The man turned back to Satsuki.
"Miss, you're driving the 911, right? What does it feel like to drive?"
"Tonight's my first time driving it."
Satsuki thought for a moment and began counting on her fingers.
"The steering wheel is very thin, the seats are very thin, and there's nothing extra inside the car. When you step on the gas, the sound comes up from behind, and compared to the F40, it's as quiet as driving a sewing machine."
Shuichi set his glass down.
"A sewing machine?"
"I'm talking about the sound."
The man chuckled from the side, waving his hands repeatedly as he laughed.
"That's too extravagant, too extravagant... Ah, pardon me, I got so caught up asking about the cars. My name is Kawamura, and I work at Nissan. This is my colleague, Inoue from the Public Relations Department."
"Good evening, sorry to disturb you two."
Inoue nodded at the two of them and kicked Kawamura under the table.
Shuichi's eyebrow arched.
"Nissan? Then your company isn't far from here."
"It's right over on Showa-dori, a ten-minute walk. That's why this place is our little secret spot; we usually don't dare tell our colleagues for fear of getting our seats stolen."
Kawamura took a sip of his drink and sighed.
"Working at Nissan, seeing a Ferrari only leaves you drooling. We want to build cars like that too; taking the GT-R out, it wouldn't lose to anyone on the racetrack. But now..."
"What about now?"
Satsuki turned her head over.
"Nobody's buying cars anymore."
Kawamura ticked them off on his fingers.
"At this time the year before last, buying a Cima required a three-month wait, and the dealership staff walked with a spring in their step. Now it's completely reversed; every day they make phone calls begging customers to come to the showroom to look at cars, and even after looking, they still might not buy."
"Our Sales Planning Department has held no less than ten meetings this month, and by the end of every meeting, nobody says a word, just staring blankly at that sales chart."
Inoue twirled the glass in her hand.
"It's not like everyone's having a hard time. Among the press clippings in our department this month, the one we clipped the most from was Saionji."
"Ah, right, right, right!"
Kawamura slapped the bar counter.
"Did you guys see the news? Saionji made another big move over in the United States—California, buying up a massive tract of land to build some kind of industrial park."
"The TV even broadcast footage of them shaking hands with people from the California state government—and the one stepping out to shake hands was actually that Eldest Miss."
Satsuki picked up the slice of persimmon on the rim of her glass and took a small bite.
Shuichi picked up his cup, though his eyes drifted toward her for a second.
"Oh? The Eldest Miss?"
"You know, the only daughter of the Saionji House. She looked quite cute on TV, rather short, standing in a pantsuit among a bunch of Americans."
"Still, in that kind of setting, it's probably..."
Kawamura turned his head to look at Inoue.
"What's that term your department is always talking about? What was it called?"
"CI."
"Right, CI! Corporate Identity. Sending out a teenage Eldest Miss to show her face looks much better than dispatching a company president in his fifties; Americans definitely fall for that sort of thing."
"But the ones actually negotiating business must still be the group of people behind the scenes."
The group of people behind the scenes.
Satsuki thought about it. That group of people behind the scenes was probably working overtime in Location in Tokyo right about now, and they could certainly be considered the ones truly negotiating business.
"Still, this move is truly brilliant."
Inoue took a sip of her drink, her tone tinged with a peer's admiration.
"If our company president went out to shake hands, the newspapers would at most give it a tiny blurb."
Shuichi nodded slowly, leisurely swirling the ice in his glass.
"Though personally, I think that at that age, being able to stand among a crowd of Americans without feeling intimidated is quite impressive just on its own."
Under the table, the tip of Satsuki's shoe gently tapped against his shin.
Shuichi kept a straight face and took another sip of his drink.
"That's true!"
Kawamura didn't notice at all and slapped his thigh.
"What was I doing at eighteen? Retaking exams, sleeping in the very back row of cram school every day. That Eldest Miss, she looks to be about eighteen or nineteen, right?"
As he spoke, his gaze naturally fell upon the persimmon-colored drink in front of Satsuki.
"About the same age as this Eldest Miss here."
Satsuki picked up her cup and blinked.
"Is that so?"
Shuichi turned his face toward the liquor shelf, suppressing a cough in his throat.
Kawamura was still pondering.
"Does she just not go to school at all? Whenever you see her in the newspapers, she's either in New York or California; how would she have time for classes?"
"She does. Gakushuin, Faculty of Economics. It was written in the clippings."
Inoue didn't even raise her head.
"Then what about classes?"
"Someone probably answers roll call for her."
"Roll call proxy!"
Kawamura burst out laughing.
"Come to think of it, back when I was in college—"
"You coasted through half your classes over four years of college using roll call proxies, didn't you?"
"What do you mean half! A third! Besides, I answered for other people too, it goes both ways..."
The topic drifted from roll call proxies to Kawamura's college tennis club, and from the tennis club to their department manager who sang the exact same enka song at every year-end party.
Shuichi listened with great interest and even asked which song the manager sang, prompting Kawamura to hum a couple of bars right on the spot until Inoue pressed down on his arm and told him to keep it down.
The middle-aged man drinking alone in the very corner turned his head to glance over, his mouth twitching slightly before he turned back.
Halfway through Kawamura's second glass, his face was already a bit flushed.
"Our Section Chief is even more ridiculous. The year before last, he spent thirty million yen on a golf membership, claiming it was an investment that would definitely double in value later."
"Now you can list it for ten million and nobody will take it. Every time he takes us out to play golf, after a round is over, he gripes about it the entire ride back in the car."
Satsuki rested her chin in her hand, her fingertips tapping lightly against the side of her glass.
"Then every time he swings a club now, he's probably calculating in his head how much that single stroke is worth, right?"
Kawamura froze for a second, then slapped the bar counter and burst into laughter.
"Exactly! Exactly! Last week he hit his ball into the water at the seventh hole, his face turned green, and he stood by the pond with his club fishing around for it forever..."
Inoue laughed so hard she turned her face away, her shoulders shaking. Even the owner's hand wiping a glass paused for a moment.
After laughing enough, Kawamura wiped the corner of his eye and turned to size up Shuichi.
"Come to think of it, what line of work are you in? This is the first time I've ever met someone in person who can drive an F40."
"My family runs a small business."
"What kind of business?"
"A little bit of everything, I suppose. Trading, real estate, odds and ends."
"Oh—"
Kawamura dragged out the sound and nodded.
"Then these past two years haven't been easy to do, huh."
"Yeah, it's not easy."
Shuichi sighed, looking very serious.
"The person managing the money at home changed, and they're managing it especially strictly. I wanted to buy another car last month, and the paperwork still hasn't been approved."
Kawamura followed his line of sight and looked over.
Satsuki was cradling her cup, innocently sipping her persimmon juice.
"Ah hahaha, so it's your daughter who holds the purse strings!"
"Ain't that the truth."
"That's because someone has been driving that vintage car in their garage for nearly twenty years and just can't bear to replace it."
Satsuki set down her cup and leisurely added.
"I thought you didn't want a new car at all."
Kawamura and Inoue burst out laughing together. As she laughed, Inoue gave Satsuki a thumbs-up.
After sitting for a while longer, Kawamura glanced at his watch and bolted upright.
"Oh crap, it's almost one!"
"What's the rush, the last train has been gone for ages."
Inoue was already starting to pack up her bag.
"Let's take a taxi. There's a meeting tomorrow morning at nine; if you're late again, the Section Chief is going to take out his golf frustrations on you."
The two of them paid their bill. Kawamura draped his jacket over his arm, walked toward the door, and then turned back.
"Um, the Porsche! Next time there's a chance, definitely let me take a look at it!"
Shuichi smiled and raised his glass toward him slightly.
"If we run into each other here next time, definitely."
The door closed. Kawamura's voice could still be heard in the hallway, sounding like he was arguing with something Inoue said, followed by the ding of the elevator doors, and then nothing could be heard at all.
The shop instantly quieted down.
The middle-aged man in the very back had left at some point, a few banknotes pinned under his glass.
Satsuki glanced at her watch.
"Father, is it about time?"
"Yeah, just about."
Shuichi finished the last sip of his drink and nodded at the owner.
While Shuichi was paying the bill, Satsuki had already slid down from her barstool, walked to the door, and looked back.
"Owner."
"Go ahead."
"Next time I come back, could you mix me a real drink, please?"
The cloth in the owner's hand made a circle around the rim of a glass.
"Once you turn twenty, you're welcome anytime."
"That's still two years away."
"Then I'll just have to work hard to keep the shop open until then."
Satsuki smiled.
"Then you'd better hang in there properly."
The elevator descended floor by floor. Hearing the movement, the guard on the first floor stubbed out his cigarette and retreated into the shadows outside the door.
There were hardly any people left on Kimpachidori Street; most of the directional signs on both sides were turned off, and occasionally a taxi drove by with the red "Vacant" light glowing inside its window.
With both hands tucked into his jacket pockets, Shuichi walked on her outer side, and as they walked, he suddenly chuckled again.
"What are you laughing at again?"
"Laughing at you. Because you're eighteen, you got turned down all night long by someone."
"That pear juice was delicious, so I won't hold it against him."
Satsuki tucked her hands into her jacket pockets, took a couple of steps forward, and then slowed down.
"That owner used to work in Kitashinchi for eight years, you know."
"Mhm."
"Father, over in Osaka, things after the bubble must have been pretty much the same as Tokyo, right?"
"It would only be harder. A place like Kitashinchi relied entirely on people from securities and real estate; once those two collapsed, there was no way it could hold up."
Finishing his sentence, Shuichi turned his head sideways to look at her.
"What is it, what are you thinking about?"
"Nothing much."
Satsuki kicked away a small pebble at her feet.
"Just figured that over in Kansai there must be plenty of good things waiting around for someone to pick up."
Shuichi looked at her for a moment, shook his head, and chuckled again.
"Didn't we agree tonight was just for going out and having fun?"
"I was just thinking about it."
In the parking lot, the 911 squatted low beneath the streetlights, right beside the F40 with its soaring rear wing, recognizable from half a parking lot away.
Satsuki walked over to the 911, fished the keys out of her pocket, and turned around.
"Want to switch back? Because of your lower back."
Shuichi lowered his head to look at the key hanging with the Prancing Horse in his hand, spinning it between his fingers.
"Not switching. It's rare that I get to drive your baby, let's wait until we get home."
"Aren't you worried I'll break your vintage car?"
"If you break it, you can buy me a new one as compensation."
"A new one wouldn't be a vintage car anymore, would it."
Their voices echoed briefly through the empty parking lot before being quickly shut outside by the closing car doors.