Hirata answered on behalf of the driver and hurriedly climbed out of the
taxi.
Having walked on a little way, he turned back, and then turned back
again. The young woman was watching him walk off, looking as though
she had something to say.
She was wearing a tight coal-black sweater over deep brown pants, and
her tanned face was not made up. Her eyes were narrow, and her eyelids
were entirely unwrinkled. Her slender, rather masculine figure looked as
though it was disintegrating from negligence, and he found this peculiarly
charming.
Hirata guessed that she was a Street girl. This too was new and fresh.
Dictatorial in his dealings with Takako but at the same time powerfully
restrained himself, Hirata felt for the first time an urge to rebel. He walked
to the corner of the Street and then walked back.
The young woman was standing in the same place.
“You seem like a nice girl. What are you doing hanging around here?”
“I do the cigarettes at the pachinko parlor.”
“Ah.”
The woman’s answer was extremely concise. Hirata nodded, as though
he were responding to its echo, then smiled as if to say, “I see.”
They were standing before a large pachinko parlor.
Hirata had never been inside a pachinko parlor, so he wasn’t really sure
what to make of the woman’s reply. He wondered vaguely whether she
might exchange cigarettes that customers won for money.
“Pleased to meet you”
The woman bowed her head lightly, perhaps because Hirata would not
leave.
