Daylight Robber (Fiction)

***

Life is cheap. But to live, it costs money.

You repeat this mantra to yourself in your head as you sit before the man with the clipboard. Your sneakers are covered in scuff marks, and your school slacks and collared shirt are too big for your sixteen-year-old body. You buttoned your shirt all the way to the top though, hoping that you look slightly more put together that way. You shift in your chair when your eyes meet with the man with the clipboard.

His name is Mr. Nozaki, and you’re applying to work at his thrift shop. It’s basically a garage, filled to the brim with various pieces of junk. Old radios, broken shelves, and lots of metal scraps. You pass the store every time you walk home from the station, and you’ve always wondered how it managed to stay in business for so long. You see the “HELP WANTED” sign on the front door one day and walk in without a second thought.

“What makes you the best candidate for this position?” he finally asks. The question has a slight edge to it, with an emphasis on the “you” part.

“I’ll work very hard. And I’m a fast learner,” you reply. The truth is that you’re too young to work anywhere else, and Mr. Nozaki is partially blind. He asks when you’re graduating college, even though you haven’t even graduated high school yet. You don’t correct him.

His legs are crossed, and his glasses make his eyes look bigger. On his wrist there’s a very nice gold watch that doesn’t suit the rest of his appearance.

It crosses your mind that you don’t have to work for Mr. Nozaki if you don’t want to. In fact, you could probably make enough for the month without ever having to deceive him about your age. Still, you’d have to steal from him. Your eyes flutter around his wrist.

“Do you know how to use a cash register?” Mr. Nozaki asks.

You don’t, but you nod. He rises from his chair, a plastic red one that looks like it’s been picked up from the side of the road. The cash register isn’t really a cash register. Just a thin, metal tin that’s rusted over.

“Are you good at math?” Mr. Nozaki asks. You nod.

This is true. It isn’t that you like making calculations, but you have no choice. In order to make sure your father is able to pay the bills every month, you have to be precise. You make sure that the money you have in a tin similar to Mr. Nozaki’s is all in there at the end of the month and hide it beneath your bed. Sometimes you stay up late, counting it over and over again, afraid that you’ve missed a digit. Sometimes you don’t sleep at all.

“If the total is 1,545 yen, and the customer gives you a 2,000 bill, what’s their change?”

“455 yen.”

“What about if the total is 1,792 yen?”

“208 yen.”

It isn’t that you’re smart. You’ve just memorized something by heart. Still, it isn’t the first time an adult has widened their eyes, then smiled a little, as though you’ve just done something that’s worthy of praise. It’s the same look your teacher gives you whenever they call on you in class and you answer a question. You’ve never, however, seen your father look at you that way.

Mr. Nozaki walks away, and you’re left to stand there, waiting. He appears again from the back of the shop, shoving a paper and pen in front of you.

“Give me your number,” he says. “I’ll text you your work schedule.”

You write it down, unsure of when to say thank you. You pass the paper back to him and then bow your head. You start to leave, but Mr. Nozaki reaches his hand out, stopping you.

“Why does a young person like you want to work here anyways?” he asks.

You can’t answer him. You bow again, then get going.

Outside, it’s typical spring weather in Tokyo. Fickle, full of contradictions. While it rains lightly, in the distance, you can see that there are blue skies just a few feet away, and the sun is hiding behind a building. Then the clouds themselves. You walk slowly, leaving the quiet suburbs behind, and find yourself surrounded by office buildings and high-end department stores. You wipe the water from your cracked phone screen and then begin to jog while others around you calmly pull out folded umbrellas from their bags.

You hate the rain and you hate getting wet. But even more than all that, you hate going home. You run towards those clearer skies and pray the clouds go far away from here. At least them, if not you…

--

You first learned that you could steal with your eyes when you were six.

You were disliked by your classmates. Mechanical pencils and erasers went missing. And although no one could prove how you did it, they all knew it was you. You were the odd one out. The only one who didn’t have the same bag as everyone else. The only one who wore shoddy, smelly clothing, and didn’t always bring your own perfectly packed lunch.

You were different. But they were right to treat you that way. It was true. You stole things.

It works like this. Light attacks your eyeballs, and tries picking fights. It tries to invade everywhere. Even in places it doesn’t belong.

You can steal anything as long as it can fit into the palm of your hand. But you’ve found that the one thing you can’t steal is daylight itself. You once thought about it when you were really little. Stealing the sun. You wanted to hold it, just once.

It was stupid. Besides the fact that it would be physically impossible to steal something like the sun, as in, you would go blind if you tried, you just can’t do it. It’s not possible, because the sun is too bright. You can’t look at it directly. Its own light obstructs the eye from properly perceiving it. Still, you find yourself staring at it often.

Mr. Nozaki’s store is the perfect day job, but it’s still not enough. You need more.

Otherwise, you're going to get another eviction notice, the second one this month. And just like baseball, the rule of the game is that if you get three strikes, you’re out. Your landlord is a woman who loves the Yokohama Baystars, and often uses sports analogies to explain grown up terms to you. You kind of hate her.

As Mr. Nozaki wanders through the store and writes out tags, you sit at the register and blame him. If only he paid you just a little bit more. You stare at the money box in front of you,

and think of how easy it would be. The work is slow, and it isn’t like Mr. Nozaki would notice. You’re also pretty sure that his eyesight is going. His irises are a pale cloudy color.

Mr. Nozaki rounds the corner and begins walking slowly towards you, staring at his clipboard. His outfit is shabby. Lame. A button up the color of mold. Khakis and socks with slides. And the socks have holes in them. He’s also wearing that watch like he always does. It’s bulky and bright and looks real. You’re almost sure it’s a Rolex. Or maybe it just looks like one. Either way, it’s passable, and could be sold for at least triple what it’s worth. At least if you’re the one selling it.

Stealing with your eyes feels like blinking. Or breathing. It’s like when a stream of light blinds you for a moment. Just one second is all you need. You flinch, then feel the object appear back into the center of your hand. Sometimes you swear that you can feel warmth there, in the center of your palm when it happens. When you steal with your eyes, it’s as though light has passed over your skin. So gentle, you can barely notice it. A fleeting warmth.

“Have you seen my watch?” Mr. Nozaki asks right as you’re about to leave.

You tell him you haven’t. And you’ve got to go. Your father’s waiting for you at a pachinko parlor down the street, and if you don’t get there soon, you’ll have stolen from your boss for nothing.

“My wife would be so mad at me,” he says, chuckling a bit. “After fifty years, and it’s gone, just like that. The clasp must’ve broken. I knew I should have gotten it fixed sooner.”

You stop at the entrance to the shop, flipping the sign around to read, “CLOSED.” “Did you check your house?” you ask.

“I never take it off,” he says. “My wife gave me that watch. She died last year. It was her pancreas. That’s the most difficult spot to find because it’s hidden, which is why it’s often too late once it grows to that size.”

You stand there and listen, and your heart goes silent.

“She was greater than reality,” Mr. Nozaki says. “She was more than what I could see.”

Your hand is shaking slightly, and the watch feels heavier than it did before. You don’t know how to tell him. You can’t. The watch sinks into your jacket pocket, and you reach for it. What if there’s a hole you forgot to close? You’ve always wanted things to move through you, to never stick. But you don’t want this now, because what if the watch falls out and exposes you?

“If I find it, I’ll let you know,” you murmur.

The truth is, you’re scared of wanting things. You’re not sure why. Maybe it’s because you saw your mother grow to hate your father so much that she left, and despite everything, your father still called what they had, “love.” You’re afraid that if you start wanting a relationship with Mr. Nozaki, that he’ll also grow to hate you one day. No, you’re absolutely sure of it.

“Thank you,” Mr. Nozaki says, then smiles. “You’re a good kid.”

You’ve been called all sorts of things. “Burglar,” “thief,” “con artist.” All these words bubble up inside of you, and even though they’re close to the truth, they aren’t truly what you are, because you’re crafty. You make sure no one can easily pin you down. Because if you’re not known, you don’t exist. And if you don’t exist, nothing can happen to you.

And you don’t know why Mr. Nozaki would even say that. You can’t even hold light. You think this all the while looking down at your hands.

Nanami Fetter is a Japanese American writer from Portland, Oregon. Her novella, Documentary, is part of The Shortish Project, celebrating short novels at theshortishproject.com. Fetter is a current MFA student at the Rainier Writing Workshop in Tacoma, Washington.