Tokyo: Who would still fall in love after being spoiled?

Chapter 107 Zou, Cat, Watermelon, and Qi
Inoue didn't see Amano in the yard, so he didn't visit him at this time.

The person who lived in the wild cat cattery with the surname "Amano" was Zou - this idea was just his guess after all, because Zou had contacted him before and said that he wanted to meet to talk about something, and he had taken a walk nearby to kill time and had used a flashlight to look at the house from outside.

Zou didn't ask anything until the end, so he could only assume that she had found the answer while they were walking and chatting.

Moving to this old residential area is the most likely answer.

Now that he hadn't received any substantial news, and seeing Zou appear before him, he still held the possibility that "the one who moved here wasn't Zou, but someone else with the same surname 'Amano'."

But he still couldn't help but wonder, assuming it could be confirmed to be Zou, then why did she move to this residential area, and was there any influence from him in the reason...

From the time he left the small blue truck in front of the wild cat cattery to the time he went to the fruit store to buy two watermelons, and then brought the watermelons to the blue truck, he had been thinking about this matter.

"Someone's moving in? Are they staying here permanently?"

A moving company employee who was the driver leaned against the side of the truck to rest and lit a cigarette.

He stopped nearby and struck up a conversation.

"How would I know?"

“When moving furniture and luggage, you can always make a rough judgment.”

"The biggest thing is a piano," the driver said, puffing out cigarettes. "I was shocked when I first saw it. They really trust us to move such a valuable item."

"what about others?"

"The rest? They're all stuffed in various opaque boxes. Some are cardboard, and some are secured with wooden boards to prevent them from deforming. I don't know what's inside them."

"Is the piano intact?"

"Of course!" the driver grinned, revealing slightly yellowed teeth. "It's intact!"

The last box of luggage was also moved into the house. The driver's colleague came out of the yard, waved to him, and closed the cargo door.

The driver waved back.

"I should be leaving too - we should have waited until our employer checked our things before we could leave, but she said she had something to worry about and she's not worried about us."

"she?"

"Hey! She's a very beautiful girl. This is the first time I've seen her in all these years. None of the idols on TV can compare to her." The driver opened the cockpit door.

"Is she really as beautiful as you say?" He thought more and more about Kanade, who played the piano, was beautiful, and her last name was Amano. Perhaps she was the only one like her in the whole of Tokyo.

"Do you live nearby, kid?" The driver climbed into the driver's seat, rolled down the window, and held a half-smoked cigarette out of the window with one hand.

"A house on the corner, a hundred meters away."

"We'll meet each other someday." After his companions boarded the car, the driver waved the hand holding the cigarette. "There's an old saying that goes, 'Those who are near water get the moon first.' Kid, you must seize this opportunity—when I was in school, I used to charge for this kind of information."

"Dede..." He watched the blue truck go away, approached the wall of the wild cat cattery, and looked through the fence to see the cats hiding in various corners inside gathering again as the mechanical monster left.

Communicating in a language he couldn't understand at all.

He looked at the cats and then at the watermelon in his hand.

The entrance door was closed, but the courtyard door was not locked.

He walked into the yard, took out a watermelon and placed it in front of the entrance door.

"Meow~~"

“Meow—”

The cats also stared at him with slightly wary eyes, observing his every move.

One of the cats, an elderly calico cat, strained its neck while meowing, and leaned its head forward to shout.

"Meow-"

"Don't steal this food. It's not for you." He assumed the old calico cat was their leader and tried to have a conversation with her. "Wait until your new owner comes and let her decide whether to share it with you."

"Meow-!"

I don’t know if you understood.

Besides, he had never raised a cat and didn't even know whether cats could eat watermelon.

He walked out of the yard, hung the door again, and walked back to the rental house a hundred meters away carrying the bag, which had been lightened a lot.

When he got home, Takeda was already asleep, half lying on the sofa with his eyes closed, holding a sofa pillow in his arms and the remote control in the hand holding the sofa pillow.

The TV was not turned off, and the channel that was turned off was broadcasting a program called "A chef from Kanto and one from Kansai compete in a cooking showdown using Hokkaido specialties."

The cooking competition for Hokkaido specialties did not invite chefs from the Hokkaido region, and it is unclear whether the program is positioned as regional promotion or a comedy variety show.

He turned down the volume using the button on the side of the TV screen, placed the watermelon intact on the coffee table, and went into his room.

As long as you want to find something to do, there is always something to do. You can draw illustrations, read books, practice watercolors, and preview the knowledge for the next semester...

But no matter what he does, he always has a strong sense of purpose in his current subjective feeling.

This sense of purpose was almost the only motivation for him to do things a few months ago, or even a few days ago.

Not long ago, he was living this way: making a well-organized action plan for himself and then moving forward step by step according to the plan.

But now I feel a sense of boredom towards this kind of life, I don’t know when it started.

He wanted to do something as he pleased, but he was at a loss. Without a purpose to support him, he always felt that it was very difficult to find a suitable thing to do.

Even if he did find it, he'd always use the excuse of "killing time" as a pretext. He opened a book: Hesse's "Under the Wheel," a novel set in a boarding school and a watch factory. He'd already read it once, but when it came to reading, he could always keep reading no matter how many times he'd read it.

But not now. He only flipped through less than ten pages before closing the book and putting it back on the bookshelf.

I pulled out the light novel I hadn't finished reading.

In less than a few minutes, it closed again.

He stared at the ceiling in a daze, thought of watermelon, took out his cell phone and sent a message to Amano.

I got a response quickly - she had indeed moved into the house.

[Inoue: Is it just because I said the environment here is not bad?]
[Amano: I need a house like this: not too far away, relatively quiet, and easy to commute to. This one has all the qualities.]
[Inoue: Was that the reason you came to me?]
[Amano: That's another story. I was searching for a single-family rental a while ago, so this was a pleasant surprise.]
He asked again what it was, but Amano said nothing.

[Amano: In two days, we can go there and eat salty cheese cookies.]
[Inoue: I’m looking forward to it.]
[Inoue: Permanent residence?]
[Amano: If everything goes well.]
Amano's words were thought-provoking. He pondered over the other meanings in them and continued asking questions.

[Inoue: So, besides living in a house like this, is there any other use for it?]
[Amano: I guess so.]
I didn't ask any more in-depth questions.

He told Amano that he had left a watermelon in front of the entrance door.

Amano talked to him about the stray cats in the cattery. All the cats had no names, and they were called by the old woman who took care of them according to the color of their fur.

He said he could do it for me and asked if it would be convenient for him to develop relationships with the cats in the future.

[Amano: It's always possible. I can even get a new key for the gate.]
Time passed quietly as we chatted back and forth.

The meeting ended with Amano saying that he wanted to continue practicing with the wind band.

He put down his phone and looked at the clock on the corner of the desk. Seeing that half an hour had passed unknowingly, he remembered that he had picked up the phone just to say hello.

From the second sentence of his casual chat with Amano, the conversation lost its clear purpose and was just a continuation of the topic for the sake of chatting.

Even though these were all questions he wanted to ask, none of them had answers that he had to know.

He closed his eyes and recalled the details of the small talk in his mind, simulating the feeling of being aimless...

Around five in the afternoon, Takeda woke up, knocked on his door, and asked him to go cut the watermelon.

"Cut it in half, I want to eat it with a spoon!" Takeda sat on the sofa, holding a spoon he had taken from the kitchen cabinet, and instructed him to cut it in the middle.

"I've never eaten a whole watermelon," she said.

"You didn't buy it when you were with your parents?"

"A quarter at most." Takeda watched him cut the watermelon in half with one knife, revealing the pink and plump flesh inside.

"A quarter?"

"Then cut it like orange slices and eat it after dinner." Takeda took away half the watermelon. "This whole one will cost a lot of money, right?"

"The fruit shops in Tokyo are really unscrupulous," he said.

Watermelons sold from places like Tottori are shipped to Tokyo, and their prices increase several times in a blink of an eye.

"But we live in Tokyo now, so it doesn't matter." Takeda used the first spoonful to dig out the most delicious flesh in the middle.

"This is also my first time buying watermelon in Tokyo."

"Then don't buy it next time." Takeda handed him the spoonful of the most delicious melon.

"Feed me?" he asked.

"This bite is worth half the price of a melon." Takeda smiled slyly and said softly, "Consider it my payment as well."

"Even more unscrupulous than the fruit shops in Tokyo." He raised his hand to take the spoon.

"After all, I grew up in Tokyo too." Takeda refused to give him the answer and gestured for him to open his mouth. "I learned from my surroundings!"

He leaned forward across the coffee table toward Takeda, moving closer so that Takeda could feed the watermelon into his mouth.

Fills the entire mouth.

One bite and the sweet watermelon juice bursts out.

"Is it delicious?" Takeda asked him.

"Not as sweet as the ones I grow at home." He swallowed the flesh and juice together and answered.

“It’s probably because it’s too expensive.”

"Maybe." He watched Takeda pick up another piece of watermelon with the spoon he had just fed him and put it in his mouth.

"...Hey, Inoue." She chewed the fruit flesh and swallowed the juice, her tone suddenly becoming serious. "You have to go home for Obon, right?"

“It doesn’t have to be the Obon Festival…”

"This summer anyway."

"Yes, I will go back..."

"I want to go too." Takeda said firmly.

"...For watermelon?"

"For the watermelon!"

(End of this chapter)