Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami

We only sold the food - everything was made fresh off-site at a central facility each morning, so we didn't even have a galley kitchen, and the deli space itself was so small it couldn't fit more than four people at a time. In the three years I'd worked there, the menu had never once changed, and I began to wonder if the people who stopped by day in and day out - we had a lot of regulars - ever got tired of our food, but in fact, the monotony seemed to give them a sense of comfort.

Our sales were good, and our shop was so popular we always had a line out the door at lunch- and dinnertime. By late last month, though, you could tell something was off: most of our customers disappeared, and when they did show up, they got into arguments about whether to wear masks - we even got phone calls complaining that we weren't taking enough measures to protect customers in the store.

Tucked into my futon, I thought about how maybe I shouldn't have messaged my coworkers that I had a cough. Why had I lied? What was I thinking, saying I had a cough at a time like this? I had no idea.


Translated by Laurel Taylor & Hitomi Yoshio