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Bee
1
Bee
Shuta Kagawa stood at the end of a shadowy alley, gazing up at a multipurpose building. After getting thoroughly lost, he had finally arrived. The structure looked like it had been built to fill the narrow gap between two apartment blocks.
“Is this it?” he mumbled.
He’d doubted there could be anywhere that his phone’s navigation app couldn’t find, but this place proved otherwise. From the alley, the sky looked distant and hazy, and there was no sunlight. The air felt humid; the building looked old and grimy.
“What’s up with the address anyway?”
East of Takoyakushi Street, south of Tominokoji Street, west of Rokkaku Street, north of Fuyacho Street, NakagyōWard, Kyoto.
This kind of address was unique to Kyoto. Instead of official street numbers, it gave the names of the streets that intersected in four directions. The instructions were so vague that most nonlocals found them confusing. Shuta had been meandering around the neighborhood for some time. Just when he was about to give up, he spotted the narrow opening to the alleyway.
Why do Kyoto residents bother with such cryptic directions?
To Shuta, who hailed from another prefecture, Kyoto’s street names were like a code. Even something as simple as an address had an obliqueness that seemed designed to keep outsiders away.
He lingered for a moment in the dark alley, let out a deep sigh, then gathered himself, determined not to be disappointed just yet. Just because the building was in a sketchy location didn’t necessarily mean the tenants were sketchy, too. Maybe the apartment buildings had been constructed around this building after it had been built, and you couldn’t say there wasn’t a kind of hideaway feel to the place.
The entrance to the building was open, no elevator, just a staircase at the back. It was dimly lit, or maybe it just felt that way because there were so few people around. He walked down the hallway, eyeing the signs on the doors. It seemed like some sort of commercial building full of shady businesses.
Soon, I might be making scam phone calls to elderly people from an office in a building like this, he thought, glimpsing his own future. He shook his head. He’d come here to make sure that didn’t happen.
He climbed the stairs to his destination, Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul, situated on the fifth floor. An old, solid-looking door swung open with unnerving ease. He took a quick peek inside—the clinic was surprisingly well lit. There was a small reception window by the entrance, which appeared unattended.
“Hello?” Shuta called.
Silence. He wondered if he’d arrived during a break. He stood with his arms crossed. Not having the clinic’s contact details, he hadn’t been able to make an appointment.
“Hello?” he called out again, a little louder this time.
He heard the muted tapping of slippers against the floor, and a nurse appeared, a pale woman in her late twenties.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
“I don’t have an appointment, but I was hoping I could see the doctor,” Shuta said.
“You’re a patient, I see. Please come in.” The nurse spoke the Kansai dialect with a leisurely intonation unique to Kyoto. Her accent was quite pronounced for someone so young.
There was a sofa at the back of the waiting room, but the nurse led Shuta right past it and directly into the examination room. It was smaller even than his company’s smoking room and modestly furnished with a desk, a computer, and two chairs.
Is this really the famous clinic? Shuta grew more anxious. Every psychiatrist’s office he’d ever known had been spacious and well appointed. Not only were those clinics not located in old, uninviting buildings, but they saw patients by appointment only. Patients were also required to complete lengthy medical intake forms that took nearly an hour to fill out. He appreciated being able to see the doctor so easily here, but, come to think of it, he hadn’t even given them his health insurance details.
The curtains in the back flew open, and a youngish, slight man in a white lab coat appeared.
“Hello, there. This must be your first time at our clinic.” He spoke with quite a high, nasally voice in a comforting Kyoto cadence that didn’t come across as overly familiar.
“How did you hear about us?”
“Um…” For a moment, Shuta was at a loss for an explanation. He considered lying but decided to be honest. “I heard about you indirectly. A former colleague told me about his younger brother’s wife’s cousin’s company’s client’s client who sees you and recommended this clinic.”
He had found himself here on the basis of some information that was less reliable than dregs from a rumor mill. All he’d been told was the clinic’s name and that it was located on the fifth floor of a building with a cryptic address.
This wasn’t his first time at a psychiatric clinic. He’d had several previous sessions six months ago. Even then, he didn’t have high hopes of any improvement, but he felt he needed to make an effort to get better. He researched online for highly rated psychiatrists, seeing one after another until he’d been to every single psychiatrist near his home and office. That was how he’d ended up here. It was a last resort. He just hadn’t expected the clinic to be in such a desolate spot.
“Well, we’ve got a little situation here. Truth is, I’m not accepting any new patients right now. I run a small practice—it’s just the nurse and me.”
Shuta frowned. I guess this place is also a no-go. They call their practices “Clinic for the Soul” or whatever, but when it comes down to it, few doctors care enough to help you with your problems. Well, fine, then.
He was about to say this out loud when the doctor broke into a broad grin, and his eyes took on the gleam of a mischievous child’s.
“I’ll make an exception this time, since you’re a referral.”
The space, already so narrow that their knees almost touched, grew even more intimate. The doctor turned to his desk. Shuta watched as the doctor’s fingers flew across the keyboard as he typed into his computer.
“Name and age?”
All of a sudden, the session had started.
