The after-school rush flowed into Tanukikoji Shopping Street like a warm current, filling the covered arcade with the hum of teenage voices and the slap of sneakered footsteps. Near the entrance close to Taito Station, a small ice cream shop—barely wide enough for three customers at a time—had drawn its usual queue.
The sign above the window flickered in soft blue, written in cheerful, rounded letters. The sweet smell of fresh waffle cones drifted out into the walkway, irresistible, tugging students into line as though by invisible string.
Aya and Kento stood fourth and fifth in the queue, still wearing their backpacks, their uniforms slightly wrinkled from the day. Aya craned her neck upward.
“Look,” she said, tapping Kento’s arm and pointing.
Above the shop, a towering billboard stretched across the wall—an image of a model with glossy hair, porcelain skin, and an impossibly serene smile. Her eyes gazed down at the crowd with a kind of polished indifference, as though she lived in a world made only of perfect lighting and ocean-colored air.
“She looks like she’s judging us,” Kento said with mock seriousness. “Like, ‘Oh, you mortals and your soft serve.’”
Aya laughed, covering her mouth. “No, she’s cheering us on. ‘Yes, children, reward yourselves. You survived math class.’”
Behind them, two girls in navy skirts debated flavors—lavender milk versus melon soft serve—while a boy ahead tapped his foot impatiently, already imagining the first cold bite. A delivery bicycle rattled past, chiming its small bell. The arcade lights glowed with early evening warmth, even as the Sapporo chill pressed in from the open ends of the street.
When the queue inched forward, the students shuffled with it, excitement growing as they neared the little window where the owner, an elderly man with a white apron and a smile shaped like a crescent moon, crafted each cone by hand.
Aya leaned slightly, watching him twist a ribbon of creamy ice into a perfect spiral. “It always looks better when he does it,” she said.
“Everything looks better when you have to wait for it,” Kento replied. He didn’t mean it as wisdom, but the words landed softly anyway.
The model above them continued her eternal smile. Her beauty was the kind engineered to sell moisturizer, yet in the gentle arcade light she seemed to watch over the scene like some oversized guardian spirit—one who replaced solemnity with glamour.
Finally, Aya reached the front.
“What flavor today?” the owner asked.
“Milk vanilla, please. Extra swirl.”
He nodded with pride. “Good choice.”
Kento ordered chocolate. When the owner handed him the cone, he bowed in thanks, overly formal, earning a snort from Aya.
They stepped aside to make room for the next customers. Aya lifted her ice cream toward the billboard.
“To you,” she whispered playfully, “the goddess of shopping streets.”
Kento raised his own cone. “May your beauty never melt.”
But as they bit into the soft serve—cold, sweet, dissolving instantly—the billboard lights flickered in the corner of their eyes. The model’s smile, poised and luminous, seemed to stretch a little wider for just a moment, as if she were pleased with their small ritual.
Students continued to queue. The arcade echoed with chatter and the clatter of footsteps. Outside, the sky deepened into evening.
And above them all, the model kept her silent vigil—glamorous, unchanging, watching over a world that moved, melted, and renewed itself one ice cream cone at a time.