Relay Column: Objects Travel, Narratives Transform (Eunbyul Ahn)

There is a Lost and Found center at Iidabashi Station on the Tokyo Metro. I have made use of their services twice; once for house keys I'd left on a train, and the next time for a coat. Retrieving my coat was easy, but there's a little story behind getting back the keys.  
 
I first noticed that my house keys were missing around 9 p.m. on my way home from school, just as I stood in front of my house. It was the first day of a long holiday, and since I had planned to cook braised pork the next day, I was carrying a lot of groceries. Despite turning my bag inside out, I couldn't find my keys, which made me realise that things were slipping out from the pockets of the pants I was wearing. Firstly, I contacted the nearest station and confirmed that the item I was looking for had not been handed in.  

The next day, I phoned the Tokyo Metro Lost Property Handling Office. They confirmed that an item resembling what I was looking for had been handed in the night before. However, relief was short-lived as they informed me something was needed to prove that I was the owner of the item. What they required was 'a key like that (the lost item)'. To be precise, another key with the same serial number, which is usually a spare key or an emergency key kept by the landlord. The landlord was not living nearby, so they had left an emergency key with a real estate office near the station. Unfortunately, the supposed spare key at the estate office was actually in a drawer in my room. That is to say, I had kept at home the key which I had previously received from the estate office when I'd lost the key before. Of course, the Lost and Found center was not a place that would listen to such circumstances. The center repeatedly said, 'we cannot hand over that key without that key which can unlock the house.'