Chapter 169: The Stairs Are Not the Studio

Chapter 169: Chapter 169: The Stairs Are Not the Studio

Tachibana listened to the whole story without interrupting. Then he set down his teacup and said something nobody in the room expected.

"Tell your brother to take the money."

It was nine in the morning on the thirtieth of March, a Saturday. The studio above the bicycle shop was full, because Minase had called everyone in. All eight people who owned Studio Hikari were there, sitting at their desks or on the edges of them. Haruki stood by the window. The bicycle-shop owner stood in the doorway at the top of the twenty-four stairs, holding his cap in both hands. It was the first time in thirty-one years, he said, that he had come up them for anything but a repair.

He had told them everything. There was the offer from a property company in Osaka, three times the building’s value in cash, with a decision wanted by June. There was his brother in Kagoshima, seventy-four, with bad knees and a wife who needed a new hip. There was the warning on a postcard from Singapore in red ink. The building. Before summer. They’ve stopped waiting.

Then Tachibana, in his worn armchair by the window with his stiff wrist resting on the arm, had said to take the money.

Nobody moved.

"Tachibana-san," Minase said slowly. "If he sells—"

"If he sells, the fund owns the building," Tachibana said. "I know." He picked up his tea again. "And his brother gets his wife a new hip, and doesn’t have to climb his own stairs in Kagoshima on bad knees for the rest of his life." He looked at the bicycle-shop owner in the doorway. "Your family has rented this floor to me for thirty-one years. Your father first, then your brother. Neither of them ever raised the rent more than once a decade. When I couldn’t pay for three months in 1994, your father said, pay when the show sells. It never sold." He paused. "I’m not going to ask your brother to stay poor so that I can keep my stairs."

The bicycle-shop owner looked down at his cap.

"The studio isn’t the stairs," Tachibana said quietly. "The studio is eight people who climb them. If we have to climb different stairs, we’ll climb different stairs."

Haruki had been silent through all of it. He had learned, over two years, that the first answer anyone gave in a room was rarely the last one.

He took out his phone and called Kichijōji.

Hirose answered on the second ring. He listened to the whole thing, as he always did, without interrupting. When Haruki finished, the old lawyer was quiet for a long moment.

"Put me on the speaker," he said. "I’d like everyone to hear this, not only you."

Haruki put the phone on the long table in the middle of the room. Eight people and a bicycle-shop owner leaned toward it.

"Tachibana-san," Hirose said. His voice was calm and dry and very precise, the voice he used for contracts. "How long have you rented the premises?"

"Thirty-one years."

"Under a written lease?"

"Renewed every two years. My father-in-law’s lawyer drew up the first one in 1971. We’ve used the same form ever since."

"Good." Hirose paused. "Then you’re a tenant under the Act on Land and Building Leases, with thirty-one years of continuous occupation and an unbroken record of payment. Is that right?"

"Except for three months in 1994."

"Which the landlord waived, in writing or otherwise, and never pursued." Haruki could hear the old lawyer almost smiling. "A new owner can’t simply evict a tenant like you. Under the Act, the landlord needs a justifiable reason to refuse renewal. He must usually offer substantial compensation as well. Wanting the building for a fund’s convenience is not a justifiable reason. No court in Japan would find it one."

The room had gone very still.

"So they can’t throw us out," Minase said slowly.

"Not easily," Hirose said. "Not legally. Not for years, perhaps not ever." He paused. "But I’ve read many contracts written by people like the ones who made this offer. They don’t need to throw you out. They only need to make you want to leave."

"How?" Ichinose asked, very quietly, from the end of the table.

"Repairs that take a very long time to arrange. Rent reviews every two years, each one argued in court. Noise from renovation on the floor below. Letters, a great many letters, all perfectly polite." Hirose’s voice was gentle now. "And eventually, one day, a very generous offer of compensation to each tenant who agrees to go. A generous sum to each of eight people who have never owned anything but their pens."

Nobody said anything.

"They can’t buy the studio," Hirose said. "But they can buy the building, and then they can be patient. I think that is what your correspondent in Singapore means by they’ve stopped waiting."

The bicycle-shop owner had been standing in the doorway the whole time, with his cap in his hands. Now, very slowly, he came into the room. He stepped over the new pale plank at the top of the stairs as though it were still broken, out of thirty-one years of habit. He stood beside the long table and looked down at the phone.

"Hirose-sensei," he said. "My shop is on the ground floor. I rent it from my brother too. Our father left him the building and me the business." He paused. "If the fund buys the building, can they do all that to me as well?"

The line was quiet for a moment.

"Yes," Hirose said. "The same, to both of you."

The bicycle-shop owner stood there for a long time, looking at the phone on the table and then around the long room: eight light boxes, a whiteboard with a red countdown, an old man in an armchair by the window, and a young woman who had once drawn the Gate for her portfolio.

Then he took out his own phone, an old flip model with a cracked screen, and dialled a number from memory.

The call connected after four rings. Everyone in the room could hear the faint voice of an old man at the other end, speaking with a thick Kagoshima accent.

"Nii-san," the bicycle-shop owner said. "It’s me. I’m upstairs. I’m at the old man’s studio." A pause. "I need to tell you something before you sign anything. It isn’t only his stairs. It’s mine too."

He listened for a long time.

Nobody in the room moved. Tachibana had set down his teacup.

"Yes," the bicycle-shop owner said finally. "Yes. I know about her hip." Another pause. "No, I’m not asking you to say no. I’m asking you to come up to Tokyo and see it first. Before you decide." His voice cracked slightly. "You haven’t been up these stairs since Dad died. Come and climb them once. Then decide."

He listened again. Then, slowly, he closed the flip phone and put it back in his pocket.

"He’s coming," he said, to nobody in particular. "Next Saturday. On the Shinkansen." He looked at Tachibana. "He says his knees are terrible and he’s not climbing twenty-four stairs for anyone. I told him the top one’s new."

For the first time since the meeting began, Tachibana laughed. It was short and dry, and it made him hold his stiff wrist.

The meeting broke up slowly. The eight owners of Studio Hikari went back to their desks one by one, although nobody drew very much for the rest of the morning. The bicycle-shop owner went back down the twenty-four stairs to his bicycles, stepping carefully over the new top one.

Tachibana beckoned Haruki over to the armchair by the window.

"You’re worried," the old man said. It wasn’t a question.

"The signing’s on the twenty-sixth," Haruki said. "Four weeks. If the building sells in June—"

"Then the anime gets made in a building owned by people who’d like us to leave," Tachibana said. "It will be very inconvenient. It won’t stop anything." He looked out of the window at the street, where the bicycle-shop owner was wheeling a child’s bicycle out onto the pavement. "Amamiya-kun, I made three series in this room that nobody watched. I made them through two recessions, a flood in the storeroom, and the year the bank wouldn’t lend us a yen. I made them in the months when I couldn’t pay the rent." He turned back to Haruki. "A fund writing polite letters is not the worst thing that has ever happened on these stairs."

Haruki didn’t answer.

"But I’ll tell you something," the old man said, more quietly. "His father said pay when the show sells. It never sold. If his son climbs those stairs next Saturday, on bad knees, to see what his father let me keep, then I want him to see a studio worth keeping." He picked up his tea. "Minase-chan. Show him the twelve seconds. And the storyboards. All of them."

"Yes," said Minase, from her desk.

"And Amamiya-kun," Tachibana said. "Bring your sketchbook next Saturday. Old men from Kagoshima like to see the thing they’re being asked to protect."

[Studio Hikari — Legal status: Protected tenant (31 yrs, Act on Land and Building Leases). Eviction: Unlikely. Pressure campaign: Likely.]

[Bicycle shop (ground floor): Same exposure.]

[Building owner (brother, 74): Visiting Tokyo, April 6th.]