He had found the timepiece in a curbside bin many months ago, a gold-plated pocket watch which had once borne an inscription on the back. But someone had scratched out the owner's name before throwing it away with the trash. Impulsively, he had decided to pawn the watch, for it was easily worth a few thousand yen. But just as he reached the pawnbroker's door, he realized that it would be impossible to sell. after all, it was a gift. The city had given him a present and it had to be treated honorably.So he began carrying the watch with him everywhere, winding it frequently and studying its face to see the seconds disappear. At such times, he would fall into a trance and the world was forgotten for a while. Since he paid little attention to the other two hands of the watch, he had no idea how long the hypnotic states lasted, but they had grown longer and longer until one morning he woke up on the steps of a subway passage, hungry and thirsty and unable to think of his past. It had been six o'clock. He found some food in the waste bins behind a restaurant, drank some water from a public fountain in front of the station, and a few minutes later, he timed his first stoplight. He also timed people walking across the street. He even timed taxis picking up passengers. Anything that moved was subject to his study, though waiting by the traffic signals soon became his favorite pastime. Like the watch, the colored lights could be depended on.
When he looked up, the signal winked green and again a crowd of people began crossing the street while the traffic and their unnoticed judge waited in silence. Three chubby office girls in blue and yellow uniforms made the distance in seventeen seconds, the best time of the day for females, and the second-place finishers were not far behind, hinting that the noon hour rush was officially underway and hunger was setting the pace. The scavenger's own stomach as a bit empty, too, but he would have his meal after the kitchens put out the luncheon garbage at two. For the time being, he was content just observing the pedestrians and checking his watch.
However, while passing the time before the next race, he happened to glance down his own side of the street where he saw someone standing near a small restaurant. The man was tall and heavy and he wore no tie; obviously not a businessman, he was probably a tourist. From his should hung what appeared to be a camera bag.
For nearly thirty seconds, the stranger scanned the wax models of food which were displayed in the restaurant's front window. Then, shaking his head, he entered the little shop. The tramp all but forgot him as the new race got underway, but when the lights turned red once more, he peered back down the street and felt that some part of the scene had been stolen, leaving an eerie vacancy hanging in the air before the restaurant.
Instead of waiting for the signal to change again, he picked up his bag and shuffled over to the display window where the stranger had been standing. Bowl after bowl of wax noodles and vegetables, wax beef and rice were all he could see. Next to the window on the left was a vending machine and a bright red pay phone, but nothing important to time or to watch. He would have returned to the signals immediately, when another man came out of the shop and hurriedly picked up the telephone receiver. The tramp checked his watch. Telephone calls often lasted several minutes.
As the man hastened to put coins in the slot at the top of the phone, he fumbled one ´10-piece, which bounced at his feet and rolled under the vending machine. The scavenger noticed with interest that the man made no effort to retrieve the coin, and forty-two seconds later, when the call ended, the man hurried back into the restaurant, completely ignoring his lost coin.
It was a simple matter to reach under the vendor and scoop the coin out of the dust. Much to the tramp's surprise, he found not ´10, but ´120 in change and two small steel pachinko balls worth ´2 apiece had been abandoned under the machine.
Smiling, the scavenger walked back to the traffic signals near the corner, where he squatted with his collection and considered his new-found wealth. The smooth, shiny balls were of little real value, for he did not play pachinko and there were too few to exchange for cash. But he liked their uniformity and mirror-like finish, so he put them in his pocket for safe-keeping. The three coins, on the other hand, could be spent as he liked. If only he could decide what to buy.
