DISCLAIMER: All characters, sans the tourist who's writing this and his wife, belong to the fantastically talented Aoyama Gosho-sensei.

Street Side Performances

Big cities tend to be full of interesting people, no matter the culture or conditions. Any large city will be scattered with urban sprawl; the homeless, beggars, prostitutes and drug dealers. And then every city has it's nicer parts, their inner hearts are filled with tall buildings for large businesses, people travel in suits from place to place with their lattes.

And further out, closer to the suburbs, it's filled with more houses and a little less hustle, but always you will find a handful of interesting people no matter where you go. 'Everybody has a story' so they say, sometimes people have something to show, and are very happy to do just that.

I was watching a teenager, who stood outside a small grocery, attempting to fight off boredom with three small balls which he sent tumbling over each other like one might tap their fingers against a table top while waiting for someone. He was surrounded by a group of five or so young children, as well as myself, who were observing him with a good deal of awe at his talent. The boy took notice of this, taking in the gazes like water in a sponge, and quickened the speed of his juggling, occasionally changing the patterns and directs of the balls.

Without my notice, another ball was entered into rotation. At this point, even my wife became interested at the show this young man was putting on. She, as well as myself, became even more enveloped as one of the young children watching along with us threw in a small rubber bouncy-ball which our entertainer caught with ease and entered it along in the rotation.

The children, who had apparently just come from playing soccer in a local park, were now more interested in seeing what the performer could catch and juggle along. One child, a cute girl with a pink hair band, threw in a ball of paper. Which was caught and juggled with great ease.

A larger, darker skin boy threw the soccer ball he was holding at the teen. The soccer ball hit the young man in the stomach, and without pause or delay was sent in its own juggling rotation from knee to knee, making it look like he was jogging in place. At this point the show was so comical, the small children and my wife and I were laughing. (Although she was trying to hide it and elbowing me in the ribs, saying that it wasn't nice to laugh at people.)

My attention was then drawn to a young bespectacled boy who had stopped laughing, and developed a thoughtful look on his face. (The reddish haired girl next to him, I had noted, had bearly cracked a crooked smirk.) He slowly reached down to his belt buckle...

...and suddenly in a blink of an eye, our street performer was gone, the only traces left being the previous airborne articles, which were scattered amongst the pavement; all but the wad of paper still bouncing.

I heard the reddish-haired girl make a remarkably adult sounding snicker, and say to the bespectacled boy next to her: "I think he knows you..."

-finis-

A confused looking teenager stepped out of the grocery store with an older woman, the head of a mackerel sticking from her shopping bag. "Where did he go?"
"I told you not to buy that fish, Aoko-chan. He probably saw you."

I had originally started this just as an undisclosed third person narrator, but I'm very satisfied with the results yielded from the tourist. He was very compliant and wrote anything I told him to in his journal.