Chapter 18: Measurements

On the morning of our day off, Danika was holding the cane by the door.

Her hands had been empty while she was wrapping bread, so I wondered what was going on. Danika had turned the cane upside down and was examining its tip. The metal tip, worn down by the stones of the back street, had been ground at a slant on one side and gleamed like a mirror.

"The tip is worn down."

"Is it?"

"You slipped last week."

It was something I had never told her. Last week, the cane had slipped sideways into a depression in the stones one evening, and I had caught myself against the wall. I had not actually fallen, so I had not mentioned it even after I got home.

Danika must have seen the dirt clinging to the tip that day. Every day, when she took the cane from me and stood it up, her hand passed over that tip. There was no way she could not have known, yet only today had that hand spoken of it.

"May I take it to the market? I heard there is a place that fits metal tips."

"I’ll go."

The words came out first. If Danika went, a cane with a new tip would be standing beside the door that evening, and that would have been that. But my mouth had already said something else.

There was only one reason. The person who had heard, in the theater corridor a month ago, that the handle was too high and the tip worn down did not want to leave that tip in someone else’s hands.

I did not tell Danika that reason. To explain it, I would have had to start with the corridor blocked by metal and the person who had been crying. I had never spoken of that in this house.

Danika paused briefly.

As always, there was nothing on her face as she looked at me while holding the cane. Only her eyes lowered once to its tip and rose again, and then another question came.

"May I draw you a map?"

"A map?"

"It is beyond the market. It is an alley where they sell tools, so if you go by the back streets, you will need to turn several corners."

This person knew that I did not know my way around the city well. Since my injury, I had only gone between the back street, the theater, and one teahouse. I did not actually know which way was beyond the market, and before I could say that I did not know, Danika had gone to get paper.

The paper she brought from the small room was only two palms wide. Danika spread it on the table, took up my charcoal, and began drawing on the back.

The charcoal scratched across the paper. It was the first time I had heard, from across the table, the sound I heard every night through the wall.

She drew the lines first. A line went up from the blue door to the back street, bent at the theater wall, and descended toward the market. Past the market, she added a small square at every corner.

Words appeared beside the squares. The words for bakery and well, along with two words I did not know, were all straight as if drawn with a ruler.

It was the handwriting I had seen on the final line of the inventory and on the labels of the kitchen jars. This time, those letters became a road across the page, and Danika turned the finished paper toward me.

Danika’s finger came to rest over the two unfamiliar words. Her hand was about to read them to me, but when I said, "I’ll go and try reading them myself," it withdrew. Danika said, "All right," and folded her hands before her.

They were letters I had learned from someone who laughed without looking back whenever I got something wrong on the forest road. This time, I wanted to try reading them alone on a road where no one would point them out for me. If I got them wrong, I could simply come back.

"Turn left here. It is the alley where you can hear metal being hammered."

"You know it well."

"I saw it while going to the market."

I took that to mean she had learned it while going to the market. It was not strange for someone who left once a week carrying a purse of coins to have gone as far as beyond the market.

I folded the paper and put it in my inner pocket. Today, a sheet of paper went in first, where bread and cloth would usually go.

Then Danika took the coin purse down from the shelf and set it on the table. From among the coins she always laid out when reporting expenses, she set a few aside and pushed them toward me.

"This much will be enough for the metal tip. If they ask for more, go somewhere else."

"You know the price too?"

"I heard it at the market."

I took the coins and put them in my inner pocket. They were coins from my wages, but it was still a little unfamiliar to have someone count them out and push them toward me.

Danika wrapped a piece of bread in cloth and placed it beside the paper.

"Will one be enough?"

"Have dinner at home."

Danika had washed my coat the day after the audition. Perhaps the smell of metal grease that had drifted over every night when I hung it on the peg before sleeping had all washed out that day, because I had not smelled it since.

I took the cane and gripped it. When its worn tip touched the threshold stone, it slipped a little.

"I’ll be back."

"Take care."

Danika stood outside the threshold. Even when I looked back at the corner, she had not moved from where she stood with her hands folded before her.

The back street was covered in powder again today.

A month had passed since the audition. During that month, no late snow had come again, and the dirt beneath the walls had dried until it was the same color as the powder. Yet the wind still made me turn up my coat collar.

The theater had returned to preparing for its first performance. Since there were now two leads, Vodianitsa’s name no longer moved any lower on the schedule beside the rehearsal-room door, and that newcomer stood at the end of the back row.

Every day at lunch, Vodianitsa went by shaking her tin. The sound of it was the same even on the first day she came to the theater as a lead. The only change was that people passing her in the corridor stepped aside for her a little.

The jar of honey that had gone into my inner pocket on the day of the audition had emptied in the meantime. The honey that had been half full went into Vodianitsa’s hot water in two portions after performance rehearsals began, and the empty jar now sat at the end of a prop-room shelf.

Odette did not slow her steps in the corridor. No one outside could see how her feet were, but she turned onstage every day, and the old man never once mentioned that more than half the prop room’s cloth had been used up.

The first performance was a few days away. As the old man had said, assigning the roles had taken a month. Today was the last day off before it, so he said he would rest at home as well.

The theater manager had posted the performance date on the wall. It was the second time, after the audition notice, that he had put up a paper without going through the old man. This time, no one stood three or four paces away from it.

No one had knocked on the back door during that month. The evenings when a hand touched the doorframe first had been absent even longer—nearly two months—so the old man brought down the boxes every morning. I lived on without speaking to anyone about those two people.

If anything had changed, it was something small. Walking alone down the front-entrance corridor to submit the prop-count paperwork to the theater manager had become part of my daily routine, and it had been around half a month since my palms had stopped sweating in that corridor.

I had said, "Please," to the old man once. When I said it about a box on the top shelf, he replied, "So you can say that after all," and brought the box down.

One thing had changed in the mornings at the staff residence too. There were mornings when, before Danika could say, "Take care," I said, "I’ll be back," first. Only after stepping over the threshold did I realize this morning had been one of them too.

Past the gaps between corner stones and the shadows along the wall, I slightly lifted the cane tip over the depression below the back-door stairs. My feet remembered the place where it had caught last week, and only after I passed it did I let out a breath.

I passed by the three back-door steps I climbed every day. It was a day off, and no sound came from inside.

I followed the theater wall around.

I passed the street by the main entrance and went down toward the market. The market was open even on a day off. The smell of fish and bread came from the mouth of the alley, and people jostled shoulders as they moved between the stalls.

When I passed that man’s stall, I was an ordinary man wearing a hat. He did not recognize me this time either, and I did not slow down in front of him.

At the end of the market, I took out the paper.

From here, it was a road I had never traveled. The line Danika had drawn turned left and went downward from the edge of the market. The first square said bakery, and when I looked up, there really was a bakery.

I turned at the bakery corner. As I read the word well at the second square, a stone-ringed well appeared in the middle of the road, with two children dragging water buckets beside it.

One of the children pulling a bucket looked at my cane, then at their own bucket. For some reason, the child laughed and dragged the bucket away.

I walked with the paper in hand. My pace was slow as I read the words, but every place the paper indicated truly stood where it should, making my steps toward the next corner lighter.

I did not ask for directions. There was no reason to while I had the paper, and the road I traveled without relying on anyone felt strangely reassuring.

An older man sitting on a barrel outside a house lifted his head at the sound of my cane, then lowered it again. It was the same look I received in the theater corridor, so I felt nothing about it.

The road grew narrower than the market. As I passed between stone houses, there were fewer people. Carts and barrels stood outside every door, and it seemed as though the people living here might not even know which direction the theater was.

Laundry was strung between the houses. The cloths, which would take a day to dry even in the thawing season, swayed in the wind, and several drops of water fell onto my coat shoulders as I passed beneath them.

The third square held a word I did not know. I stood at the corner and looked at it several times, but when I raised my head, dried fish were tied beneath the eaves of the corner house. Only after seeing them did I understand the word.

More than five months had passed since I came to this city, but it was the first time I had ventured this deeply in alone. On the forest road, there had always been footprints ahead of me; on the back street, there had always been powder. Today, one sheet of paper in my hand replaced both.

I heard something at the fourth square.

It was the sound of metal being hammered. One long strike, then two short ones came from beyond the stone houses. Following the sound, I turned left and found an alley.

The air was different from the mouth of the alley onward. It was an alley where the smell of iron filings mixed with burning charcoal made the tip of my tongue bitter. Black powder filled the cracks in the stone pavement, the opposite color from the white powder on the back street.

Both sides of the alley were metal. Metal objects hung from every door, scraps of metal were lined along the stones outside them, and from the end of the alley came the sound of someone striking an anvil, ricocheting against the stone walls.

The line on the paper ended there. I saw the small circle Danika had drawn at the end of it and folded the paper.

Something enormous stood in the middle of the alley.

It looked as though it had pulled a large tarp used to cover cargo over its head. Beneath the cloth, the outline of a metal torso showed through. Below that, two thick legs stood on the stone. It was as tall as two people standing one atop the other, its shoulders level with the alley eaves.

People in the alley detoured around it. A person pulling a cart looked up at it as they passed, while someone sorting metal scraps before a door did not look at it at all.

It smelled of iron.

The entire alley smelled of iron, so there should have been nothing to distinguish it. Yet standing before that cloth, there was another scent. I had smelled that mixture of iron and oil on my coat sleeve a month ago.

One leg beneath the cloth moved very slightly. It scraped against stone, and that was a sound I had heard in the corridor too.

The people in the alley might not know what stood there beneath its cover, but I did. The metal that had filled the corridor, then pressed itself against the wall to make a gap. The metal I had thanked as I passed through that gap.

My steps stopped before it. Once I stopped, my head lowered on its own.

"Hello. Thank you for last time."

The cloth shifted slightly. One leg lightly scraped the stone, and beyond the cloth, something turned with a quiet sound.

"What are you doing?"

A voice came from beside me.

It came from in front of a shop on the left side of the alley. Someone in a long white garment with red pleats and something black cinched around their waist had been inspecting an iron rod before a stone slab lined with metal scraps, and had just turned their head my way.

They had beige hair braided up, with two long locks hanging beside their face. Blue-gray eyes looked at me, at my cane, then back at me.

It was the person who had wiped at their eyes in the corridor a month ago. Their eyes were dry today, but the hand holding the iron rod had lowered halfway.

"I greeted them. They were the one who made room for me last time."

"Them?"

"Yes."

The person set the iron rod down on the stone slab with a slightly loud clack. At the sound, someone poked their head out from inside the shop, then went back in.

"You bowed to Pulonia again."

"Pulonia?"

"Do not add formalities to the name."

The words were stiff. Perhaps because today they did not come at the end of crying as they had in the corridor, the tone was faster.

"What brings you here? At the theater, I thought you were part of the court’s entourage."

"I am in the capital on court business. I did not come here because I had free time."

They answered something I had not even asked. In the corridor too, they had said they had not been crying before I asked anything. It was the same habit, and I accepted the words as they were again.

"Then did you come to buy parts?"

"Parts for court work. This is the only alley with anything worth using."

They gestured with one hand toward the iron rods on the stone slab. Each rod was a different thickness, but all of them were about as long as a cane. Why such things were needed for court business was none of my concern.

"And you?"

"The tip of my cane."

I raised the cane and showed its end. The metal, worn and ground at a slant, gleamed in the alley light.

"You said its tip was worn down that time. I said I would remember, and last week I really slipped, so I came to have a new metal tip fitted."

Their eyes traveled from the cane tip to its handle, then to my face.

"You remembered?"

"Yes. You said it was not wrong."

For a moment, there was no reply. The hand that had lifted and set down the iron rod moved to the black thing at their waist, where it clenched and unclenched.

"What is the point of only changing the tip? The design itself is wrong."

"Still, the tip comes first. If I slip, there is no question of fixing anything else."

"That is true."

After saying that, they closed their mouth. Their face looked a little displeased despite having admitted I was right.

"The shop is in here. They fit tips inside."

"Thank you."

"There is nothing to thank me for. I only showed you."

They pushed open the shop door and went in ahead of me. As I passed in front of Pulonia, still standing in the alley, I looked up at it again.

The two legs beneath the cloth did not move at all on the stone. No matter how people detoured around it, it stood there as though waiting for someone outside a door.

The shop was dark and hot.

A man with his sleeves rolled up was hammering metal before a furnace in the back. That was where the sound from the alley had come from, and lamplight struck the metal objects hanging from nails on the walls and scattered.

The person stood by the stone slab beside the door. Iron rods like those outside were lined there as well, and they lifted them one at a time, as if judging their weight in their palm, before setting them down.

"What are you looking for?"

The owner set down his hammer and came over. The eyes of the man, whose sweaty face gleamed and whose eyebrows were singed, looked first at my cane.

"A tip for my cane. Can you fit a new metal one?"

"Let me see it."

The owner took the cane, examined its tip, and clicked his tongue. Then he took down a small metal ring from the wall, held it against the tip, and went toward the furnace.

"It will take half an hour. The price is written there."

There were letters and numbers on a board on the wall. I had to sound out the letters, but I could read the numbers right away.

It cost about as much as two fish. The coins Danika had set aside that morning were exactly that amount, and as I took them from my inner pocket, I briefly thought of her hand.

The hand that gave over the coins did not tremble. Buying something for myself was only the second time after the teahouse, but this time I paid with my own hand.

The owner took the coins, put them in a box, and returned to the furnace. The metal ring gripped in tongs went into the furnace and came out glowing red. He fitted it over the cane tip and turned it as he struck it with a small hammer.

Without my cane, I stood braced against the wall and listened to the hammering. The time I spent standing there, listening to my cane being hammered in someone else’s hands, felt strangely long.

It was difficult to stand long without the cane. When I put more strength into the hand against the wall, the person beside me noticed it.

"Sit down. There is a box over there."

"All right."

I sat on the box by the door. Once I sat down, I could see Pulonia standing covered in the middle of the alley through the open doorway.

The person did not sit, but stood before the stone slab choosing rods. Their hand was slow, and every time they lifted and put one down, their gaze went once to Pulonia outside the door.

The metal protruding from behind their back caught the lamplight whenever they turned. I had seen it in the corridor too. This time, I did not pretend not to see it and simply looked, though I still did not know what it was.

"That theater."

They spoke while looking over a rod.

"What happened to the person who sang at the end?"

"Vodianitsa? She became the lead singer. Odette is the dance lead."

"...I see."

"I saw it all from the stool that day. When the person who used to stand at the end of the back row came up, even the ceiling glass shook."

My words grew longer. The same words I had spoken to Lyuba in the darkness beside the stage came out this time atop a blacksmith’s box, and while they did, the person remained motionless with a rod in hand.

"Did you hear that song? If you were with the court guests, you must have been in the audience."

"I heard it."

They said only that and put the rod down. The hand that had wiped their eyes in the corridor brushed the edge of the stone slab this time, and I did not keep looking at it.

"What was in the cup you were carrying in the corridor?"

"Hot water. Vodianitsa’s throat was dry, so I was bringing it to mix honey into it."

"So you walked back and forth through that corridor on that leg carrying a steaming cup?"

"Pulonia made room for me, so I did not spill it."

Their eyes went to Pulonia beyond the door. There was more in their expression than before, but the words that came out were different.

"Pulonia cannot enter that door. That is why I leave it standing outside."

"The theater corridor was narrow too."

"Everywhere is narrow. Nothing is built to fit Pulonia."

The owner raised his head from the furnace.

His gaze lingered for a long time on the covering cloth in the alley beyond the open door. Holding his hammer, he turned toward the person and took in both the one holding the iron rod and the covering cloth at a glance.

"Is that thing outside yours?"

Their hand stopped above the rod.

"The metal thing under the cloth. The one with legs."

"Why?"

"If you sell that as scrap, I can give you a fair price. There is plenty of metal in something that size, lots it could be melted down and used for. Instead of dragging it around, leave it here and make some money."

The owner said it in the tone of a bargain. It was only the sound of naming a price for an object; there was not a single malicious intention in it.

The person turned toward me.

From where I sat on the box, I looked up at their face. Their eyes were not red, but their face was paler than when they had cried in the corridor. As the hand gripping the iron rod slowly lowered, they drew in a deep breath.

It was before that breath could become words.

"It seems like they travel together, not something for sale."

It was my voice.

What I said to the owner from the box was so quiet it could have been swallowed by the furnace, but the shop fell silent in that instant, and the words reached him clearly.

"They travel together?"

"Yes. They made room for me in the theater corridor, but objects do not make room for people."

The owner looked at me. Perhaps it was strange for the man who had come to have his cane tip fitted to say such a thing. His hand holding the hammer stopped in midair, and only after I had finished did I realize what I had said.

My hands trembled after I spoke.

The hand gripping the edge of the box trembled more than when I had braced myself against the wall. At the market alley, I had not been able to say a word, and when I went back later to buy fish, only my hands had been steady. Today, my words had gone out before my hands, and my hands paid the price afterward.

The owner shrugged.

"If that is so, then it cannot be helped. I said something pointless."

He returned to the furnace, and the hammering began again.

The person stood with their back turned.

They looked as though the breath had stopped inside them, unable to become words. Color touched their pale face, whether from anger or some other reason I did not know. The hand holding the iron rod had gone to the black thing at their waist and remained there.

They were looking at me.

It was not the incredulous look they had worn when asking whether I had bowed to Pulonia in the corridor. Their eyes would not leave me, though they seemed not to know what they were seeing.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"...It is nothing."

They set the rod down on the stone slab. The hand that lowered it without making a sound brushed the slab’s edge.

"What did you say earlier?"

"That you seem to travel together. Was I wrong?"

"...You were not wrong."

After saying that, they turned toward the door. Their back remained still for a long while as they looked at Pulonia beyond the open doorway.

Outside, the covering cloth moved. There was no wind in the alley, so something beneath it must have moved. Their shoulders lowered very slightly in time with the shift.

There was only the sound of the furnace between the person standing with their back to me and me sitting on the box. Until the trembling in my hands had fully settled within that sound, they did not look back.

The owner brought over my cane.

The new metal ring fitted to its tip was still warm. When I took it and tested it against the floor, the tip bit into the stone and did not slip.

"There you are. It will stand well on stone."

The worn tip that had been removed was in a bin by the furnace. Mixed among the other scraps of metal inside, I could not tell which one had once been attached to my cane.

"Thank you."

The owner waved a hand and returned to the furnace. Only then did the person turn from the door, their face stiffer than before.

"Come out."

"Pardon?"

"I told you there was no point in only changing the tip. There is something I want to show you."

They picked up one of the rods from the stone slab and went out first. I did not know what had happened with its price, since I heard neither payment nor a word from the owner.

The owner’s gaze followed the white clothes leaving through the door, then stopped on me. His eyes looked as though they meant to say something, but they returned to the hammer instead.

I stood with the help of my cane. From the first step, the sound of its new tip biting stone was different.

In the alley, covered Pulonia walked ahead. The sound of its two legs stepping on stone echoed all the way to the end, and people standing outside their doors withdrew indoors at the sound.

Pulonia walked slowly to match my pace. As the sounds of its steps on stone alternated with my cane, the person walked at the same speed as Pulonia without looking back.

At the end of the alley was an empty lot.

The stone houses ended, and dry dirt covered the place where a single collapsed wall remained. The sounds of iron hammering reached that far, then caught on the wall and softened. There was no one else there.

Midday sunlight fell directly on the dirt. There was nothing to hide behind but the wall’s shadow, so the two of us and Pulonia entered a place brighter than the theater’s back street.

Covered Pulonia stopped in the center of the lot. The person followed it in and lifted the edge of the cloth, bringing the metal body I had seen in the corridor, its tall hat, and the black tails of its shoulder coat all into the sunlight at once.

It looked far larger than it had on the street. In the corridor, I had not realized its height because it was wedged against the walls, but in the empty lot it stood taller than the wall, and the round thing in the center of its torso glinted in the sun.

"Sit down."

"Where?"

"Pulonia’s hand is better than a chair."

When the person looked up at Pulonia and gestured with their chin, one arm slowly lowered. The hand-shaped end of the arm was broad enough for two of my hips to fit across its palm, and the palm stopped at a height where it almost touched the ground.

They were telling me to sit on that palm.

Before sitting, I looked up at Pulonia. There was nothing that could be called a face beneath its tall hat, but it seemed right to speak while facing it.

"I’ll sit down. Thank you."

"There you go again."

The person spoke beside me. Even as they said it, they placed a hand against Pulonia’s torso and stroked it downward.

I sat on the palm. It did not waver at all under my weight, and as soon as I sat, it rose just slightly, lifting my feet from the ground. It put me at the same height as when I sat in the prop-room chair.

The seat was not as cold as I had expected. Sounds of metal hammering drifted over intermittently from beyond the wall, and whenever they came, the space beneath me vibrated very faintly.

"Your cane."

I held it out to them. They took the cane, stood it upright, laid it down, gripped and released the handle. They did not unwrap the cloth around the handle.

"What is this cloth?"

"Someone wrapped it because the handle was loose."

"The wrapping is not bad. The handle itself is wrong."

They left the cloth as it was and set the cane beside me. Then, from inside the black thing at their waist, they took out a cord knotted at regular intervals.

"Hold out your hand."

"My hand?"

"I need to measure it. Making something without measuring is not design."

This was the first time they had said they were making something. Before I could ask what it was, they took my right hand.

A white glove covered the back of my hand. The gloved hand straightened my fingers one by one, held the cord across my palm, and counted the knots, their lips moving faintly as they counted.

The hand beyond the glove was neither cold nor warm, and the force with which it opened my fingers was steadier and firmer than my own.

The hand they held went rigid. My body stiffened first, just as it had when my left arm was embraced in the prop room. But this time I was not being embraced; I was being measured, and I did not know what to do with a hand being measured.

"Relax."

"All right."

"Your fingers bend like this, and you have been gripping that handle? Its thickness is wrong from the start."

"..."

"Your left hand too."

"I do not lean on my left hand."

"The design decides which hand you lean on. Not you."

My left hand was measured in the same way. The cord passed over the palm where faint marks from the accident remained, and though they saw them, they said nothing.

After measuring both hands, they took my elbow and made me extend my arm. As the cord descended from my shoulder to my wrist, their face was right beside my shoulder.

I smelled iron and oil. The scent that had clung to my coat sleeve now came from beside me, and within it, the quiet sound of knots being counted continued.

"Breathe. If you hold your breath while I measure, your shoulders rise."

I only realized I had been holding my breath when they said it. When I exhaled, my shoulders lowered, and the cord began again from those lowered shoulders.

"You fit the cane to the length of the arm. Not the other way around."

"Have you made a cane before?"

"No. If I have not made something before, I design it."

It was the first time I had met someone who said they had never made something with such certainty. At the company, everyone looked for excuses before work they had never done, including me.

"The one I have now was given to me by the hospital."

"What does a hospital know about design? Your shoulder rises when you stand and lean on it. That is why I said one side would be damaged."

They pressed down on my shoulder, then released it. Then they crouched.

My legs.

The cord came below my left knee. The gloved hand gripping my shin through my trousers paused briefly at the two places where the bone had fused, then moved on.

"Is this where it fused?"

"Yes. In two places."

"How did that happen?"

"A stage fixture fell. There was someone beneath it, so I pushed them away."

"Then the rope design was wrong."

"All the ropes were replaced. A little over a month ago."

"Replacing them after it falls is not design."

That was all. There had been people who asked why I did it, but no one had questioned the rope rather than the person. Somehow, that was more comfortable.

"I need to know the length of the leg that pulls, not the one you brace with. The tip must be positioned to suit the pulling leg."

They measured from my knee to my ankle with the cord. After measuring my right leg, which was finished sooner than the left, they repeated the two numbers under their breath.

While my legs were measured in someone else’s hands, I could not move atop the palm. There had been hands that washed my feet and hands that wrapped cloth around me, but this was the first hand to measure me. I had not known being measured could feel so unfamiliar.

At school and at work, I had always been the one being judged. My palms would sweat because I never knew what the eyes judging me would score. Today, the hand measuring me did not assign a score. It measured only length.

Even after finishing, the hand did not leave immediately. The glove that had gripped my shin lingered a little longer over the fused bone before withdrawing. As they rose, they wore a face as though it were nothing.

They put the cord away inside their waist and looked up at Pulonia.

"Pulonia, tea."

The center of Pulonia’s torso opened.

The place I had thought was merely round swung open like a door, and steam came from inside. They reached in and took out a small teapot and two cups small enough to fit in a palm, each rimmed in gold.

"You carry tea inside there?"

"I do not skip teatime."

"Is Pulonia a name?"

"It is a shortened name. You do not need to remember the long one."

I left it there instead of asking what the longer name was. The fact that it had a name alone made me feel that calling it someone earlier had not been wrong, so I kept that thought to myself.

They tilted the teapot and poured tea into both cups. They pressed one cup into my hand, then sat on the wall holding the other.

Steam rose from the reddish-brown tea. It was the same color as what I had drunk at the teahouse, but its scent was stronger.

A low sound came from Pulonia’s torso. Something turned within it, and the person nodded once.

"This is not teatime."

They spoke while holding their cup.

"It is a test of Pulonia’s warming device. I am seeing how long the tea inside stays warm."

"A test?"

"Yes. So drink it, and if it has gone cold, say it has gone cold."

I drank. It was hot, but perhaps because it had no honey, sweetness did not follow the bitterness.

"It has not gone cold. It is hot."

"Then that is fine. Let us do one more cup."

"I am all right."

"A test needs to be done twice. How would you know from just once whether it had gone cold?"

Tea filled my empty cup again. Only after I said the second cup was hot too did they bring their own cup to their lips.

The face that drank after calling it a test was not the face of someone conducting a test. The back sitting on the wall was a little lower than the back that had stood facing the door in the shop.

The corners of my mouth rose.

It was because of the word test. Sitting on Pulonia’s palm and drinking tea taken from its torso while being told this was not teatime but a test, it happened once—and this time, it did not fall.

"You smiled again?"

"I like that it is a test. If it is a test, then I have a job to do: tell you whether it has gone cold or not."

"...That is right. That is your job."

After saying that, they looked at their cup. As they looked, the gloved finger tracing the gold rim moved more slowly than it had while choosing iron rods.

Wind entered the empty lot. It was still cold, the wind of the thawing season, so I wrapped both hands around my cup. They faced the wind in their white clothes without even a coat.

"Are you not cold?"

"I am not cold."

"Still, you are only wearing white clothes."

"My clothes are not a design you need to worry about."

They emptied their cup into Pulonia’s torso. Then they took out something like a small notebook from inside their waist, opened it, and began writing the numbers they had repeated earlier under their breath—not with charcoal, but with a thin metal stylus.

"Your name."

"Pardon?"

"There needs to be a name on the order sheet. If I only write the measurements, I will not know whose it is."

Only at the word order sheet did I think I understood what they were making. Still, they had never said the word cane, so I remained quiet too.

"Kim Sang-hyeon."

"Kim Sang-hyeon."

They wrote the name in the notebook. Their hand moved a little slower than it had while writing the numbers, and after finishing, they closed the notebook.

"And yours?"

"Sandrone. You do not need to remember it."

It was the first time I had heard the name Sandrone. The name Rhinedottir had at least felt as though I had heard it somewhere, but this name did not even have that feeling. That made it easier to accept.

When I rolled it around in my mouth, its first sound came out firmer than I expected. That firmness resembled this person’s stiff way of speaking.

"Sandrone."

"I told you not to add formalities."

"You said that about Pulonia."

Sandrone looked at me. They seemed about to say something, then decided against it and stepped down from the wall.

"I will hand it over once it is finished."

"What?"

"Measuring and then not making it is not design. Come to this alley on your next day off. Not because I will be waiting, but because you will be coming to buy parts anyway."

I received the words next day off while sitting on the palm.

The first performance was only a few days away, so the next day off would come after it. It meant this person would have a cane made when I came to this alley that day.

An old habit raised its head. It was the habit of trying to find a reason why someone I had only met twice would measure me, make something for me, and set a date. But before I could search for one, Sandrone was already speaking again.

"It would be a waste of the measurements if I stop after starting. That is all."

An explanation I had not asked for came first. They had been that kind of person in the corridor and in the alley too. When I accepted the explanation as it was, there was no room for the habit to settle.

They were a difficult person. Someone who could not stand an incorrect design, and who had to make something after measuring it. My cane had merely been caught at the end of that. There was nothing strange about coming on my next day off to receive it.

"I’ll come. On my day off after the performance."

"A performance?"

"The theater’s first performance. It is the first one since the two leads changed."

"All right. Then come afterward."

Sandrone looked up at Pulonia. The palm lowered slowly, and when my feet touched the ground, I stepped down from it with my cane.

The new tip bit into the dry dirt.

"Thank you. Pulonia too."

"Again."

After saying that, Sandrone picked up the covering cloth. The hand lifting it over Pulonia was slow. They lowered it again to align the corners, then lifted it once more.

Even after Pulonia was fully covered, Sandrone did not leave.

Their eyes, watching me while holding the edge of the cloth, lowered to my cane and stopped at its new tip.

"Do not drive the tip down too hard on stone roads. It will not slip because it is new metal. It will dig in."

"I’ll remember that."

"You said that again."

Sandrone stopped while turning away. They seemed to have noticed the paper in my hand.

It was the paper I had taken from my inner pocket to check the road home. As I unfolded its creases, Sandrone approached and examined it with the same eyes used to choose iron rods.

"The person who drew this road has skill. There are markers at every corner, and the distances are right."

"The person who works at my house drew it for me."

Sandrone took the paper. Then they took out the metal stylus from inside their waist and marked something beside the circle at the end of the alley.

It was one dot. A small dot right beside the circle, pressed hard enough that the paper dented beneath their hand.

"Here. On your next day off, come all the way to the end of that road and stand here."

"All right."

The paper came back into my hand. Sandrone walked toward the alley with covered Pulonia, without looking back. The sound of Pulonia’s legs stepping on stone faded beyond the wall.

Left alone in the empty lot, I looked at the paper.

The way back was simply the road I had taken in reverse. I would pass the alley of hammering metal, the corner with the dried fish, and the well, turn at the bakery, cross the market, go around the theater wall, and reach the back street.

As I passed the shop from before after leaving the empty lot, the owner raised his head from the furnace, then brought his hammer down again without a word. I lowered my head as I passed his door.

As I walked, I unfolded the paper several times. The edges fluttered in the wind, so each time I opened it, I had to pin down the corner with my thumb.

There was a square at every corner, and neat letters beside every square. The line ran straight as if drawn with a ruler from the back street to the circle at the alley’s end, and the person who had drawn it would be inside the blue door now.

Beside the circle was a dot.

The dot made by the metal stylus was paler than charcoal, and the spot where it had been made was slightly indented. It was the smallest mark on the paper, yet every time I unfolded it, my eyes went there first.

Two people’s hands remained on one sheet of paper. The road drawn in neat handwriting and one roughly pressed dot at its end were on the same page.

As I passed through the market, I slowed slightly before the candy stall. The amber sweets in the glass jars were unchanged. I did not buy any; all I thought there was that I would come this way again on my next day off.

When I rounded the theater wall, the three back-door steps remained closed. The person who had stood below them on a day off was not there today.

Sunlight lay slantwise across the round roof beyond the wall. In a few days, two people would take the stage beneath that roof as leads for the first time, and where the stool would be placed that day was for the old man to decide.

The theater’s days off had always been days when I had nowhere to go once work in the prop room was done. On my next day off, I had somewhere to go.

It was different from someone deciding on their own to come find me. Lyuba had chosen a day alone and come to the back door, and theater people crossed paths with me in the corridor every day. This time, however, the day had been spoken aloud, and I had answered that I would come.

The new tip sounded different from the worn morning tip, even in the way it pushed aside the powder on the back street. But the cloth around the handle remained darkened by use and fitted my palm as it always had.

I did not drive the new tip down too hard as I passed the depression in the stone, the wall shadows, and the gaps between corner stones. My steps were light, though it was not because my legs had improved.

When the blue door came into view, I unfolded the paper once more.

The sun was setting, and lights already shone in the windows. For some reason, unfolding the paper beneath those windows felt embarrassing, so I did not look at it for long.

At the end of Danika’s road was Sandrone’s dot. I folded the paper, put it in my inner pocket, and stood before the door.

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