Twenty Years of This Newspaper · Serial, Part One: This City's Seventh Moulting Season

the Feuilleton Desk (tur)

Converted to this newspaper's calendar, its History Desk has lived in this city for twenty years. Over those twenty years, the city has been through seven moulting seasons. This piece is the first record of them.

In the first week of a moulting season, humans generally notice nothing. They leave the house as usual, go to work as usual, and find the first strand of hair that is not their own on their black coat as usual. The noticing happens in the second week: they begin buying a consumable known as a 「lint roller」.

The lint roller: a barometer of a civilisation

This newspaper's History Desk has observed seven moulting seasons and found that the sales peak for lint rollers always falls around the Wednesday of the second week. That moment is precisely when 「acceptance」 occurs — when humans concede that the moulting season has begun and that they cannot stop it.

In the third moulting season, a shopping centre in this city tried placing a 「no pets beyond this point」 sign at its entrance. The sign survived eleven days. This newspaper holds that it was not taken down but diluted: first someone carried a cat in through the side door, then someone carried a cat in through the main door, and in the end a second sign appeared beside it reading 「please do not place pets in shopping trolleys」 — that sign survived longer, because the request it made was specific.

A note on 「the seventh」

The difference between the seventh moulting season and the first lies not in the volume of hair but in the human attitude. At the first, humans treated moulting as a problem to be solved; at the seventh, they treat it as a season to be managed. What changed in between, this newspaper holds, is more worth recording than any single moulting season itself.

This newspaper will keep recording. The pace is slow, but complete. Next instalment: this city's eleventh rain, and why humans buy three umbrellas on the same street.