Kutsu to Ai - くつ と あい - A pair of shoes

Matias is a salesman traveling from modern times, he travels from Boston to Tokyo to show the new catalogs, falls in love with the cold Maiko decides to open a shoe store in Akibahara to conquer her

In Akibahara the air always sighs sideways like a belly of spirits that stirs during sleep, it is no coincidence. Nothing in this country is. The high buildings force the winds to travel a perfect straight, tearing them between the lower streets and the narrower alleys, eventually managing to survive and get out unscathed. If buildings, shops are arranged in a certain way it is at the behest of the architect and the efficient cabinet of Tokyo urban planning that with a minimum of "visual concept" has been able to give the right position to each pawn. The Japanese know this well, this is a game of a thousand and more years. You play by losing money by earning lasting respect over time. There are things that can be explained in the form of numbers and other equations that do not have the slightest sense or that by injustice do not belong to any divine grace. This population moves in delineated masses mounting tides and swells, colliding and including each other. The dockers of Kubura, the fishermen of Tsushima, or the industrialists Yokohama. These are only small partial denominations, even too general to define with certainty and scrupulousness the imprinting of a culture.

In all this, Matias is the colorful and shapeless dot that whizzes through the billions of disparate other white dots that continue to cluster and shrink into established areas with great organization.
"Do you want to open a shoe store? Here? Akibahara?" asked Maiko, munching on his thin eyes as much as possible.
"Why not? I bank from Boston to Tokyo at least twice a month and for four years, just to update the shoe catalogs that will be sold in stores. I've had enough, I want to sell something, talk to customers, make friends. In short, be a trader."
Maiko smiled with great tenderness while maintaining a kind and affable detachment, she always hordes when she is in her company, a reaction that from a Westerner can be confused with so much else, but that in a Japanese is only one of the many formalities camouflaged in the mild characters and gestures hidden by the many smiles.

"You seem convinced of what you do," she said, staring politely at him without letting his concerns shine through, which she met almost accidentally inside the office where she works as a secretary. Behind him, Matias brings the memories of a spring day in which he rudely and rudely entered through the front door dragging a dark black leather suitcase with inside the shoe catalog and another personal suitcase to travel. That day, Maiko could never forget it, he came in extoils a smell of sweat and blathered a few slappized words in Japanese that seemed to be those of a stressed man. That day was raining, an uncontrollable amount of water fell from Matias' coat on the blue carpet of the Matachi Company's office. His sales manager, Mr. Azuki, had to welcome him with a hint of contempt, and it was only thanks to Maiko's gentle efforts in imparting and teaching Matoas the Japanese ways that allowed him to have more and more business contacts in city, but above all to manage to survive a harsh and ugly name of "smelly and rude gaijin", which then turned into a more catchy one. "Kami kind" had apostrophized him given the amount of water that that fateful day had brought into the office. The kami are demons of particular appearance that boast their own strength only in the vicinity of waterways, often for lack of these courses carry with them a small amount held over the concave head in the shape of a bowl.
"Of course I'm serious, I wouldn't be here to talk to you about it," Matias said. They often met near her office to grab a coffee and continue with the lessons that the person directly concerned used as a cultural map to navigate the vast empire of Japanese hypocrisy and kindness.
"and what will you tell customers when they come in?"
"I don't know. Hi? Good morning?"
"ah ah!" She smiled, hiding his mouth with his hand
Matias frowned and closed in on a grimace.
"don't do so, only Japanese women can afford to be touchy, you don't. And traders must always smile"
"ok is fine"
"With a nice smile, always say it with a big smile," she added
He smiled, and she responded, noticing the immense effort that Matias was enduring.
"But yesterday the ramen lord had a grimace of anger while I was serving food," He said.

"And you should have asked him to turn around so you wouldn't ruin your lunch, "
Matias was struck by the severity with which Maiko had expressed herself. His features had become hard outlined by a musculature in sync to define the lack of understanding for a man who had a single moment of decompensation in his shop, perhaps because of a personal problem without remedy or perhaps for a symptom of fatigue. Since then, he had a personal displeasure, his part of the west forcibly rooted as an ancient root had forced him to take charge along with the ramen seller of his problems. In that very small and very skinny shop, he had sat on a bench and sucked the ramen broth, his thoughts on what problem the one who had cooked them had well mixed with the fumes of the kitchen and the taste of boiled eggs that went expanding in the mouth like a strong flavor. She stood for a couple of minutes in silence with the sweet Maiko sitting on the concrete pillar that outlined a pretty garden where a group of elders were practicing exercises with slowness and precision.
"I think I fell in love," Said Matoas. Maiko did not like this statement, the gossip was from innocent girls in schoolboy uniforms, she demanded in every male being a determination equal to a bamboo rush, flexible but not soft.
"Is he Japanese?" she asked
"Yes and so much"
"There is no quantity of Japanese in a Japanese," she said, puffing.
He felt that he was losing it inside a bucket of vanity and stupid convictions that he could not explain, he felt like a broken tube that loses definitions and expressions that one after the other go to flood a small compartment already flooded. She then changed her mind by focusing on something she knew she liked. "What shoes would you like to find in my shop?" He asked, moving his shoulders forward and backward to give him an indefinite form even more. The tactic was working, she saw in her a sudden change of expression as if before it had been the mirage of a cosmic interest materialized in the form of modern footwear with flamboyant tones with a faint muzzle of background growing up to support the diva of colored lights.
She liked shoes, that was all she knew about that young girl, what she didn't know was that their meetings weren't meant to bring a real and future exchange of affection, but only Director Azuki's request to Maiko to keep the contacts with the young Yankee as the best supplier on the square, albeit too western in manners.
"I love Nikes, and the Adidas and those stiff leather boots that are worn now, and then...... " She had slender in a list of brands and models with feverish laces and dangling from a fervent memory, capable of remembering fabrics and colors, textures and under textures of any model up to climb to the rest of the body attached to the feet to be dressed and embellish only according to the shoes.
Theirs were business meetings, nothing more and that unhealthy idea of opening a shoe store in the middle of a neighborhood dedicated exclusively to the sale of technology was the challenge that Matos had imposed himself knowing that a few steps from that street the palace of the Matachi Company where Maiko worked towered next to another dark-glass building. He knew that his brazenness in proposing himself in this way would be worth it, but it would be worth trying with all his might. Maiko liked him in everything, in these four years she had listened to every single word and was captivated by the unmistakable way of doing, her firmness in words, the oriental accent in saying "shoes", but also by the courtesy of when Not to be left alone during the flowering party, she had invited him to stay with his friends at a karaoke bar drinking and singing verses of a Guns and Roses song. For him that night there had been alchemy. For her a duty to the client of her boss.
It did not matter the disparity of opinion on certain topics or the excessive severity with which she dealt with everyday common life. He would have conquered it, and if to do so he needed to buy a shop, set it up of all kinds of shoes and then see it empty day after day, he wouldn't care. He knew his tastes and would win her over patiently. One pair of shoes at a time.