The clouds of the overcast sky were beginning to darken somewhat. Penny tried to focus more on the thinner layers of cloud, where it seemed like shafts of light could break through at any moment. Keeping her head turned to the clouds, Penny accidentally bumped into Eve’s back as they ascended the stairs to the next landing.

“Sorry,” Penny apologised in embarrassment.

“Sorry, it’s my fault for moving slowly,” Eve apologised back needlessly. “Everything looks so cool and I keep getting distracted.”

They entered the building’s third floor, where a blast of popular shounen manga awaited them, as well as some vintage manga and anime magazines. Penny and Eve weren’t the biggest watchers or readers of shounen anime and manga, though Edith and Jill had gotten Penny to watch JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Ranking of Kings with them. But even though they weren’t necessarily fans of a lot of the series on display, they still appreciated the bright, bold aesthetics, as well as the pure boyishness of it all.

The girls flipped through random books as they winded their way through the floor. Eve fell in love with some of the silly-looking monsters on the covers of the retro live-action special effects magazines. They then oohed and aahed at the magazines with unique Ghibli art on the covers, released in the same years the movies came out.

Eve noticed a blur of movement out of the corner of her eye, and turned her head just as a maid in black stood at the end of the aisle they were in, as if the maid had popped into existence at that very instant. The maid was smiling at Eve, though her eyes appeared cold and doll-like. The maid then began walking backwards while continuing to look at Eve, eventually bumping into the shelf behind her and causing random volumes of shounen manga to tumble to the floor.

“What do you think’s on the fourth floor?” Eve asked Penny, turning to her friend with a frozen smile.

“Hmm, I dunno,” Penny said, not noticing the maid herself. “Probably more of the coolest stuff ever. You ready to check it out?

“Yeah,” Eve said, still with her frozen smile.

The girls left the third floor, Eve vowing to remain brave so that her best friend could maintain her role as the one who was scared of everything. They then entered the fourth floor and immediately turned around and walked back out, the wall-to-wall doujinshi of a rather adult variety being even less of their thing than mainstream shounen manga.

The fifth floor was devoted entirely to BL, and there they took the time to explore again. Penny flipped through a mildly spicy volume with attractive artwork, and then stared at the cover, wondering how she’d be able to slip it past customs on the way back home.

“Are you thinking of getting a souvenir for Edith and Jill?” Eve asked.

“Yeah, but . . . maybe not this,” Penny said, reluctantly putting the book back. “I’ll get something that doesn’t have a chance of being confiscated.”

“That leaves out this floor,” Eve said.

The sixth floor was where all the movies, music and videogames could be found. Since Penny and Eve had already seen what felt like every notable game in existence at the Super Potato, Penny skipped over them to instead focus on the CDs, in particular the game soundtracks. Many of them had beautiful and unique cover art, and Penny kind of wanted some of them just for that, despite not owning a CD player. She was especially drawn to the Yoshitaka Amano artwork on the front and back of All Sounds of Final Fantasy I & 2, a compilation album from the ancient past of 1988.

“You’re never going to listen to it,” Eve told her.

“Yeah, but . . .”

“You’re never going to listen to it,” Eve said again.

Penny sighed and put it back on the shelf. The Pixel Remaster rearrangement of the Castle Cornelia theme from the first Final Fantasy was playing over the PA, and it was one of the sweetest pieces of music Penny had ever heard.

They exited back onto the stairs and looked out over the street together, realising just how high up they were getting.

“Let’s take a picture together when we get to the top,” Eve said.

“We’re almost there,” Penny said, wishing the building was even taller.

There were only two floors left. The seventh floor had vintage toys, collectable cards and stickers, and seeing figures taken directly from ’60s special effects shows gave the floor a museum vibe similar to what the girls had experienced at Super Potato.

Eve was once again enamoured with all the silly monsters from various classic tokusatsu series, especially their big, expressive eyes and open-mouthed expressions. She could imagine being a princess in a world where such monsters were her knights.

Eve told this to Penny.

“See, if I can develop an RPG like the old Final Fantasies, then I can make that happen,” Penny said. “I’d just need some of the music for inspiration.”

They then checked out a glass case of shiny Evangelion phone cards from the ’90s. The cards were used for payphones, and the anime and videogame characters in their designs made them sought-after collectibles.

A card featuring Rei in a pink kimono jumped out at Penny as something Jill would like to have, especially since it was only a little over 100 yen. She decided to buy it, so that Jill’s souvenir would be covered, leaving only Edith and Cale. Cale was Penny’s most fashionable friend, taking outfit inspiration from Harajuku fashion TikToks, so Penny wanted to wait and see if she ended up in Harajuku herself before picking something up for her.

The final floor had contemporary figures and models based on current trends in anime and videogames. The large amount of Spy × Family figures, gachapon and ads, including massive posters throughout all of Tokyo, made it out to be one of the most popular series at the moment, and which successfully got Penny interested in wanting to check out the anime when she returned to Canada.

Eve received a text message, which she read intently.

“Maaya says she’ll be ready soon,” Eve said. “We’ll meet her at a place called Mister Donut.”

“I’m ready for a donut.”

“Think Mister Donut and the Super Potato are friends?”

Penny and Eve returned to the final landing, taking multiple pictures together with their backs against the railing, angling the camera to incorporate as much of Akihabara as possible. Penny was sure to hold up her bag and the phone card in some shots.

They then took one last look over the railing, where they saw an empty maid outfit lying flat in the middle of the road.