“From people who are lost at sea.” Hana took the bottle from Keishin and returned it to the vendor. “This sand is the time they never got to use.”
“Oh,” Keishin said quietly, walking away from the stall.
“Is something wrong?”
“Time is a subject that physicists love to debate. I have colleagues who can go on for hours arguing about whether or not it exists, or if it increases or decreases. And yet here it is, salvaged from the dead and sold in bottles to travelers who are worried about being late.” Keishin sighed. “We spend all our lives studying the universe and what do we have to show for it? Do we really know anything at all?”
“You do,” Hana said. “That is why we are here. Do you remember what you told me about time when we were on the bridge?”
“That it theoretically could be bent?”
“What if it was not just a theory? What if there was a person who could bend time for us and show us what really happened to my mother?”
Keishin’s eyes widened. “You know someone who can bend time?”
“I might. He works at the Kyoiku Hakubutsukan.”
“The Museum of Education?”
Hana nodded and stopped by a stall selling rice cakes. “Would you like some for the trip? We have not eaten anything all day.”
Keishin pulled out his wallet. “I…er…only have dollars and yen. Is that okay?”
“This is a market. You do not need money here.” Hana smiled and made her selection.
The vendor wrapped the rice cakes and handed them to her.
“What would you like for them in return?” Hana asked.
“A book,” the vendor said. “Something I have not yet read. A thick one stitched with gold thread.”
Hana dug into the woven bag slung across her chest. Shepulled out a book on the history of kite making that Keishin had seen on one of the shelves of the pawnshop. “Will this do?”
The vendor nodded and smiled, admiring the book. “Thank you. Have a safe journey.”
Hana stowed the rice cakes in her bag and moved down the street.
Keishin caught up to her. “How did you just happen to have the exact book the vendor wanted in your bag? What else do you have in there?”
“Nothing.” Hana slipped off the bag and gave it to Keishin.
Keishin looked inside it. “It’s empty…”
“I thought the rice cakes might get crushed, and so I left them on the table in my kitchen. And I got the book from my father’s shelves,” Hana said. “It would be a pretty useless bag and would get very heavy if I had to carry around things insideit.”
Keishin laughed.
“Is something amusing?”
“Yes. My world.” Keishin’s cheek creased into a lopsided smirk. “We’ve sent people into space and built massive underground detectors to study the universe, but somehow, we haven’t discovered how a bag is really supposed to be used.”
“Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“What you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking?”
