"Didn't you wear your hair in braids during high school?" As I drained my glass, part of me marveled that he could remember the name of a particular student, and part of me was puzzled. I had identified him as one of my high school teachers, but I still couldn't recall his name. "Yes," I replied, pouring beer into my glass. "It's unusual to see a woman alone in a place like this," Sensei said as he delicately poured vinegared miso over the last morsel of dried whale and brought it to his lips with his chopsticks. Even when he turned to lecture to his students, he would still hold on to the eraser, as if it was attached to his sinewy left hand. And then, not five minutes later, he would erase it. He would write something in chalk, like the first line of The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon: IN SPRING IT IS THE DAWN THAT IS MOST BEAUTIFUL.
Sensei had always held an eraser in his hand when writing on the blackboard. I wondered who this old man was who shared the same taste as me, and an image of him standing at a teacher's podium floated through my mind. On the counter in front of him, there was a bottle of sake, a plate with a strip of dried whale meat, and a bowl that had a bit of mozuku seaweed left in it. His white hair was carefully smoothed back, and he was wearing a starched white shirt with a gray vest. "Is that right?" I answered vaguely, still looking at him. "I've spotted you here sometimes," Sensei said. I thought to myself, Why do I know his face. When I glanced over, I saw he was staring right back at me. Taking my seat at the counter, I ordered "Tuna with fermented soybeans, fried lotus root, and salted shallots," while the old man next to me requested "Salted shallots, lotus root fries, and tuna with fermented soybeans" almost simultaneously. That night, he was sitting at the counter, his back so straight it was almost concave. Several years ago, we sat beside each other at a crowded bar near the train station, and after that, our paths would cross every now and then.
Since graduation, I hadn't seen him for quite a while. He wasn't my home-room teacher, and Japanese class didn't interest me much, so I didn't really remember him. He was my Japanese teacher in high school. Harutsuna Matsumoto, but I called him "Sensei." Not "Mr." or "Sir," just "Sensei."
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