撤去された自転車

On Wednesday morning my bicycle was not in its usual spot — a narrow street behind the station, which is not a bicycle parking area. A white notice was stuck to a pillar: "Bicycles left here will be removed." I had been leaving it in the same place for three years and had never once been told anything.

When I called the phone number on the notice, I was told the bicycle was being held at the city impound lot. Getting it back costs three thousand yen. On the map, the lot was near the river, far from the station. It is only open on weekday afternoons, so I took a half-day off and decided to go and collect it.

I asked the bus driver where to get off and rode for about thirty minutes. At the impound lot several hundred bicycles stood in rows. At the reception desk I was told, "Could you please show me your ID?", and then asked for my registration number, which I did not remember. "So it means you don't know the number," the staff member said, and handed me a numbered tag.

As I walked between the rows looking for my own bicycle, a blue one caught my eye. On the basket in front, an old sticker I had put there was still stuck. It was the bicycle that had been stolen from the station two years ago.

When I told the staff member, he explained that stolen bicycles sometimes end up here too. Ones whose owners are never found are kept for a while and then disposed of. "When it was stolen, you should have gone straight to the police box and filed a report," he said. Back then I had thought it was too much trouble, and I never went.

The shop where I bought it still had the registration on record, so I was allowed to take the blue one back as well. I paid three thousand yen and pushed two bicycles home. One was the bicycle that had been removed; the other was the one I had spent two years forgetting. It was less relief than something else — on the road by the river I found myself laughing a little.