Pathway to Japanese Literature

Autumn

I

Nobuko had borne the reputation of an accomplished talent since her days at the women's college.
That she would soon emerge as a writer in the literary world was something scarcely anyone doubted.
There were even those who went about claiming she had already completed an autobiographical novel of three hundred-odd pages while still enrolled.
Yet upon graduating, complex circumstances arose—not least her mother, who had sustained them as a widow while supporting both Nobuko and her younger sister Teruko (still attending girls' school)—making it impossible for her to indulge such whims.
Thus before she could begin her literary work, she found herself compelled by social convention to first resolve the matter of a marriage proposal.

She had a cousin named Toshikichi.
At that time, he was still enrolled in the university’s Literature Department, yet seemed intent on joining the community of writers in the future.
Nobuko had long been close with this cousin who was a university student.
Once they discovered literature as their shared passion, their intimacy appeared to deepen further.
Yet unlike Nobuko, he showed not the slightest regard for the then-fashionable Tolstoyism.
Instead, he ceaselessly deployed French-derived sarcasms and aphorisms.
This sneering demeanor of Toshikichi’s occasionally provoked Nobuko—who approached all matters earnestly—to fury.
But even in her anger, she could not help sensing something within his barbs and maxims that resisted outright scorn.

Therefore, even while enrolled, it was not uncommon for her to attend exhibitions and concerts together with him.
Of course, on most such occasions, her younger sister Teruko accompanied them as well.
The three of them laughed and chatted without reserve both going and returning.
But her younger sister Teruko alone was sometimes left outside their conversations.
Even so, Teruko, childlike, would stroll along peering at parasols and silk shawls in shop windows, never seeming particularly resentful of having been neglected.
Yet whenever Nobuko noticed this, she would invariably steer the conversation elsewhere, trying at once to let her sister speak as before.
Yet always it was Nobuko herself who first forgot Teruko.
Was Toshikichi indifferent to everything? All the while hurling clever quips unchanged, he walked with long strides through the bustling crowd on that dizzying thoroughfare...

The relationship between Nobuko and her cousin was of course sufficient in anyone's eyes to anticipate their impending marriage.
Her classmates each in their own way envied and resented her future.
Those who did not know Toshikichi—though it was nothing short of comical—found this all the more intense.
Nobuko, for her part, while refuting their conjectures on one hand, on the other deliberately yet subtly allowed the reality to show through.
Therefore, by the time they graduated, her classmates' minds had come to hold an image of her and Toshikichi as vividly imprinted together as newlyweds in a wedding portrait.

However, upon graduating from school, Nobuko—contrary to their expectations—suddenly married a young man from a commercial high school who had recently begun working at a certain trading company in Osaka.
And then, two or three days after the ceremony, she departed for Osaka with her new husband, bound for his place of work.
According to those who went to see her off at Central Station, Nobuko—unchanged from usual—had worn a radiant smile as she comforted her younger sister Teruko, who kept being prone to tears.

All her classmates found it strange.
Within their wondering hearts, a strangely joyous emotion and a jealousy of entirely different meaning than before were intermingled.
Some trusted her and attributed everything to her mother’s will.
Others doubted her and went around claiming they felt pangs of jealousy.
However, that these interpretations were ultimately nothing more than conjecture was not something even they themselves were unaware of.
Why didn't she marry Toshikichi?
For some time after that, whenever they met, they would invariably bring up this question with grave seriousness.
And then, after about two months had passed—they completely forgot about Nobuko.
Of course, they also forgot even the rumors about the novel she was supposed to write.

Nobuko had during that time established a new home destined for happiness in Osaka’s outskirts. Their house stood in the most tranquil pine woods of that neighborhood. The scent of pine resin and sunlight—whenever her husband was away—reigned within their new two-story rented house with a vivid silence. On such lonely afternoons, whenever Nobuko felt her spirits sink without reason, she would invariably open the sewing box drawer and unfold the pink stationery folded away at its bottom. On the stationery were these words written in fine pen strokes.

"When I think this will be the last day I can be with you, even as I write these words, my tears overflow without end.
Sister,
Please, I beg you to forgive me.
Before your precious sacrifice, Teruko cannot find any words worthy of expression.

'You decided upon this marriage proposal for my sake.'
Even if you deny it, I understood perfectly.
That evening when we went together to see a play at the Imperial Theater—you asked me if I cared for Toshikichi.
Then you said that if I did care for him, you would surely make every effort so I might go to him.
You must have already read the letter I meant to give Toshikichi at that time.
When that letter disappeared, I truly resented you.
(Please forgive me—
I cannot express how deeply sorry I am for this alone.) So even your kind words that evening felt like sarcasm to me.
You surely haven't forgotten how I grew angry and failed to give anything resembling a proper reply.
Yet when two or three days later your marriage was suddenly settled, I thought I should die rather than leave this apology unmade.
For you too cared for Toshikichi.
(Don't try to hide it—
I know full well.) Had you not concerned yourself with me, you would surely have gone to him yourself.
Still you told me repeatedly—'I have no feelings whatsoever for Toshikichi.'
And so you ultimately went through with this marriage that held no place in your heart."

My dearest Sister.
Do you still remember how today I brought the chickens and told them to bid farewell to you, Sister, who would soon depart for Osaka?
I wanted even the chickens I kept to apologize to you, Sister, together with me.
When I did that, even Mother, who knew nothing of it, began to cry.

“Sister.
By tomorrow, you will have departed for Osaka, will you not?
But please, I beg you never to abandon your Teruko. Every morning as I feed the chickens, I think of you and weep in secret, unknown to anyone…”

Every time Nobuko read this girlish letter, tears would inevitably well up in her eyes.
Especially when she recalled Teruko’s figure quietly handing her this letter just before boarding the train at Central Station, she felt an indescribable pity that was poignantly endearing.
But could her marriage truly be that entirely sacrificial one her sister had imagined?
Harboring such doubts tended to spread a heavy feeling through her heart after tears.
To escape this oppressive weight, Nobuko would usually sit quietly immersed in pleasant sentimentality.
As she gazed out at the sunlight bathing the outer pine grove gradually transforming into the yellowish hues of dusk.

II

For about three months after their marriage, as with all newlywed couples, they too spent happy days.

Her husband was a somewhat feminine, taciturn man.
Every day when he returned from the company, he made it a rule to spend some hours after dinner with Nobuko.
Nobuko moved her knitting needles while speaking of the novels and plays that were recently causing a stir in society.
In those conversations there were times when a worldview tinged with women's college sensibilities redolent of Christianity became interwoven.
Her husband, his cheeks still flushed from his evening drink, had placed the half-read evening newspaper on his lap and listened with apparent interest.
But he never added a single opinion of his own.

They also went nearly every Sunday to spend leisurely days at sightseeing spots in Osaka and its suburbs.
Whenever Nobuko rode trains, all the Kansai people who freely ate and drank anywhere appeared vulgar to her.
This only made her feel more pleased by her quiet husband’s exceptionally refined demeanor.
Indeed, when her immaculately groomed husband moved among such people, he seemed to exude a kind of fresh atmosphere reminiscent of scented soap—from his hat, his suit, even his red leather ankle boots.
Especially during summer vacation when they extended their outing to Maiko, she couldn’t help feeling an even greater sense of pride when comparing him to his colleagues who had gathered at the same teahouse.
Yet her husband seemed to harbor an unexpected fondness for those vulgar colleagues.

In time, Nobuko recalled the creative work she had long abandoned.
So she resolved to sit at her desk for only one or two hours at a time while her husband was away.
When her husband heard this, he said, “So you’re finally becoming a woman writer, eh?” and showed a faint smile on his gentle lips.
However, even when she sat down at her desk, the pen unexpectedly made little progress.
She would often find herself absentmindedly resting her cheek in her hand, unconsciously listening to the cicadas in the pine grove under the blazing sun.

As the lingering summer heat was shifting into early autumn, her husband attempted to change his sweat-stained collar one day as he was leaving for work.
But unfortunately, every last collar had been sent to the laundry.
Her husband, ordinarily so particular about his appearance, clouded his face with displeasure.
While fastening his suspenders, he said with uncharacteristic sarcasm, “It’s a problem if you do nothing but write novels.”
Nobuko silently lowered her eyes and brushed the dust from her coat.

A few days later, one night, her husband brought up whether they couldn’t reduce their monthly expenses a bit more, prompted by the food supply issues reported in the evening paper.
“You can’t remain a schoolgirl forever.” — He even said such things.
Nobuko gave an absentminded reply while embroidering her husband’s collar.
Then her husband, with unexpected persistence, said in the same carping tone, “Even with these collars—wouldn’t buying them actually be cheaper?”
She found herself even more at a loss for words.
Her husband too finally made a disgusted face and did nothing but read business-oriented magazines or something with an air of boredom.
But after turning off the bedroom light, Nobuko kept her back turned to her husband and said in a whisper, “I won’t write novels anymore.”
Her husband remained silent even then.
After a while, she repeated the same words even more faintly than before.
Then, before long, the sound of crying escaped.
Her husband scolded her with a few words.
Even after that, her intermittent sobbing could still be heard.
But before she knew it, Nobuko was clinging firmly to her husband.…

The next day, they returned to being the same harmonious couple as before.

Then there came evenings when her husband still hadn't returned from the company even past twelve. Moreover, when he finally returned, he reeked so strongly of alcohol that he couldn't even remove his raincoat by himself. Nobuko frowned while earnestly helping her husband change his clothes. Despite this, her husband even managed sarcasm with his slurred tongue. "Tonight since I didn't come home, your novel must have progressed splendidly."—Such words spilled repeatedly from his effeminate mouth. When she got into bed that night, tears began to fall unbidden. If Teruko were to see me like this, how she would weep with me.

Teruko.

Teruko.
You're the only one I can turn to.

――Nobuko kept calling out in her heart like this to her sister while tormented by her husband's alcohol-laden breath, tossing and turning until well past midnight without sleeping a wink.

But when the next day came, they naturally reconciled.

As such things repeated several times, autumn gradually deepened.
Nobuko had reached a point where she rarely sat at her desk and took up her pen.
By that time, her husband too no longer showed interest in her literary discussions as he once had.
They began passing their evenings separated by the long charcoal brazier, talking of trivial household finances.
Moreover, such topics seemed to hold the greatest interest for her husband after his evening drink.
Even so, Nobuko would sometimes surreptitiously observe her husband’s expression with a pitiful look.
But he, knowing nothing, while biting his recently grown beard, said with unusual cheerfulness, “If we were to have a child now——”
“and so on,” he continued, musing aloud as he spoke.

Then around that time, her cousin Toshikichi’s name began appearing in monthly magazines.
Nobuko had severed correspondence with Toshikichi as though having forgotten him after her marriage.
As for his activities—that he had graduated from the university’s literature department or started a coterie magazine—she knew of them only through letters from her younger sister.
Nor did she feel any desire to know more about him beyond that.
But when she saw his novel published in a magazine, the nostalgia was just as it had been in the past.
As she turned the pages, she repeatedly let slip a faint smile to herself.
In his novels, Toshikichi still wielded his two weapons—sneer and wit—as Miyamoto Musashi would.
To her, however—or perhaps it was her imagination—after that lighthearted sarcasm, she sensed lurking beneath it a lonely, resigned tone unlike anything her cousin had ever shown before.
At the same time, she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt over having such thoughts.

Since then, Nobuko began behaving even more kindly toward her husband.
Her husband would find her face, always smiling radiantly across the long charcoal brazier amidst the evening chill.
Her face looked more youthful than before, and she now regularly wore makeup.
While laying out her needlework, she even talked about memories from when they had held their ceremony in Tokyo.
For her husband, the detailed nature of those memories was both unexpected and pleasing.
“You remember even such things well.” When her husband teased her like this, Nobuko invariably remained silent, responding only with a coquettish look in her eyes.
But why she hadn’t forgotten so much—even she herself often wondered.

Not long after that, a letter from her mother arrived informing Nobuko that her younger sister's betrothal ceremony had been completed. The letter also added that Toshikichi had prepared a new home in a Yamanote suburb to welcome Teruko. She promptly wrote a lengthy congratulatory letter to her mother and sister. "As we regrettably have no one to tend the household here, we must reluctantly decline attendance at the ceremony..." While composing these phrases—though she herself couldn't fathom why—her brush stalled repeatedly. Then she raised her eyes and gazed fixedly at the pine grove outside. The pines stood densely beneath the early winter sky, their indigo-black foliage massed thickly.

That evening, Nobuko and her husband discussed Teruko's marriage.
Her husband wore his usual faint smile while listening with apparent amusement as she mimicked her sister’s speech.
But somehow, she felt as though she were talking about Teruko to herself.
“Well, time to turn in, I guess.” Two or three hours later, her husband stroked his soft beard and wearily left his place before the long charcoal brazier.
Nobuko, still unable to decide on a congratulatory gift for her sister, had been writing characters in the ashes with fire tongs when she suddenly looked up and said, “It’s strange, isn’t it? When I think that I’m gaining a brother-in-law.”
“It’s only natural, since you have a sister.” ――Even after being told this by her husband, she maintained a contemplative gaze and offered no response.

Teruko and Toshikichi held their wedding ceremony in mid-December.
On the day itself, just before noon, white flakes began falling.
After finishing her midday meal alone, Nobuko found the fish smell from that meal lingering persistently in her mouth.
"I wonder if it's snowing in Tokyo too"—with this thought, Nobuko leaned motionless against the dim tea room's long charcoal brazier.
The snow grew increasingly fierce.
But the fishy taste in her mouth still clung stubbornly.……

III

The following autumn, Nobuko set foot on Tokyo soil for the first time in years, accompanied by her husband who was under company orders. However, her husband, burdened with many obligations to fulfill within a limited period, found scarcely any opportunity to take her out beyond that brief visit to her mother's place. When she went to visit her sister and brother-in-law's new suburban home, she rode alone in a rickshaw from the streetcar terminus in what looked like a newly developed area.

Their house stood near where the townscape transitioned into onion fields.
Yet all the neighboring houses—newly built rentals each—crowded together with their eaves tightly aligned.
Eaves-capped gates, latticed fences, laundry hung on poles—every house showed identical features.
This ordinary dwelling's appearance left Nobuko faintly disappointed.

But when she asked to be shown in, the one who came out in response to her voice was, unexpectedly, her cousin.
Just as he always had before, when Toshikichi saw this rare visitor’s face, he exclaimed cheerfully, “Oh!”
She noticed he had somehow lost his chestnut-burr hairstyle.
“It’s been a while.”
“Come in, come in.
Though unfortunately, I’m alone here.”
“Where’s Teruko?”
“Out?”
“She went on an errand. The maid too.”
‘The maid too.’—Feeling an inexplicable sense of shame, Nobuko quietly removed her coat with its showy lining in a corner of the entryway.

Toshikichi had her sit in the eight-mat study that doubled as a guest room.
Everywhere one looked within the tatami-floored space, books lay piled haphazardly.
Particularly around the small rosewood desk by the sunlit shoji screens, newspapers, magazines, and manuscript pages lay scattered with such abandon that one scarcely knew where to begin.
Amid this disarray, only the new koto propped against the alcove wall testified to the young wife's presence.
Nobuko kept her curiously searching eyes fixed on these surroundings for a long while.

"I knew from your letter that you were coming, but I didn’t think you’d come today."
Toshikichi lit a cigarette and indeed had a nostalgic look in his eyes.
"How’s life treating you in Osaka?"
"And what about you, Toshikichi? Are you happy?"
As Nobuko exchanged these few words, she became aware that the same old nostalgia had come flooding back.
Even their correspondence had been sparse, yet those awkward memories spanning about two years troubled her less than she had anticipated.

While warming their hands over the same hibachi, they discussed various matters.
The topics—whether Toshikichi's novels, gossip about mutual acquaintances, or comparisons between Tokyo and Osaka—were so plentiful they never seemed to run out no matter how much they talked.
Yet as if by prior arrangement, both completely avoided touching upon matters of livelihood.
This made Nobuko feel all the more strongly that she was truly conversing with her cousin.

However, at times silence would settle between them.
Each time this happened, she maintained her smile while lowering her gaze to the brazier's ashes.
There lingered in her heart a faint anticipation—not quite waiting, yet not entirely free from expectation.
Then, whether by design or chance, Toshikichi would immediately find some new topic to shatter that fragile mood.
She gradually found herself unable to stop studying her cousin's face.
Yet he continued breathing cigarette smoke with perfect composure, showing no trace of any particularly unnatural expression.

Before long, Teruko returned.
When she saw her sister's face, she was so overjoyed she could barely keep from clasping hands.
Nobuko’s lips were smiling, yet her eyes already held tears.
For a while, the two of them forgot even Toshikichi as they asked each other about their lives since the previous year.
Teruko, especially, was animated, her cheeks flushed with color as she even recounted details about the chickens they still kept.
Toshikichi, a cigarette still between his lips, gazed contentedly at the two of them and continued to smirk as always.

Just then, the maid also returned. Toshikichi took several postcards from her hand and immediately turned to the desk at his side, diligently beginning to move his pen.

Teruko showed a look of surprise at the fact that even the maid had been out.
“So when Sister arrived, there was no one home?”
“Yes, only Toshikichi.” Nobuko felt compelled to feign composure as she answered.
Toshikichi turned away and said: “Give thanks to your husband.
I prepared that tea too.”
Teruko met her sister’s eyes and chuckled mischievously.
But to her husband, she pointedly gave no response.

Before long, Nobuko found herself sitting at the dinner table with her sister and brother-in-law.
According to Teruko's explanation, all the eggs served on the trays had been laid by their household's chickens.
Toshikichi recommended wine to Nobuko while saying, “Human life is sustained by plunder.
“Starting with these eggs—” he went on listing such quasi-socialist logic.
Yet paradoxically, of the three people present, it was undoubtedly Toshikichi himself who held the deepest attachment to the eggs.
Teruko said it was funny and let out a childlike laugh.

Even amidst this dining atmosphere, Nobuko could not help recalling the lonely evenings in the tea room nestled deep within that distant pine grove.

The conversation showed no signs of ending even after they had devoured the post-dinner fruits.
Slightly intoxicated, Toshikichi sat cross-legged under the electric lamp through the long evening, deploying his signature brand of sophistry.
This spirited debate once again reinvigorated Nobuko.
She said with eyes burning with intensity, “I wonder if I should try writing a novel too.”
Instead of replying, her cousin tossed out one of Gourmont’s aphorisms.
It was a phrase that went: “Since the Muses are women, only men can freely captivate them.”
Nobuko and Teruko banded together in refusing to acknowledge Gourmont’s authority.
“Then does that mean you can’t be a musician unless you’re a woman? But Apollo is a man, isn’t he?” Teruko added this last part with complete seriousness.

In the meantime, the night deepened.

Nobuko ended up staying the night.

Before going to bed, Toshikichi opened one of the storm shutters on the veranda and stepped down in his nightclothes into the narrow garden. Then, without calling out to anyone in particular, he said, “Why don’t you come out for a bit? It’s a lovely moon.” Nobuko alone followed behind him, stepping into the garden clogs left at the shoe-removing step. On her feet where she had taken off her tabi socks lingered the chill of cold dew.

The moon hung in the garden’s corner, resting atop a gaunt cypress’s withered crown. Her cousin stood beneath that cypress, gazing up at the faintly luminous night sky. “The grass has grown so wild,” Nobuko ventured timidly as she approached him through the overgrown garden. But he merely murmured “The thirteenth night,” still staring skyward.

After a prolonged silence had passed, Toshikichi quietly turned his gaze and said, "Shall we go see the chicken coop?"
Nobuko silently nodded.
The chicken coop was located in the corner of the garden opposite the cypress tree.
The two of them walked slowly toward it, shoulder to shoulder.
However, inside the straw-mat enclosure, there was nothing but dim light and shadows that smelled of chickens.
Toshikichi peered into the coop and whispered to her as if speaking to himself, "They're asleep."
Chickens robbed of their eggs—Nobuko stood amidst the grass, unable to stop herself from thinking this.

When the two returned from the garden, Teruko sat absently gazing at the lamp on her husband’s desk.
A single blue streak—the lamp was crawling on its shade.

IV

The next morning, Toshikichi put on his best suit and, after breakfast, hurried to the entrance. It was said to be for visiting the grave on the first anniversary of a deceased friend’s death. “Listen. You’ll wait for me. I’ll definitely be back by noon—” He reiterated this to Nobuko while throwing on his overcoat. But she merely smiled silently, his hat still held in her slender hands.

After seeing her husband off, Teruko invited her sister to sit across the long brazier and zealously offered her tea. Stories about the neighbor’s wife, tales of visiting reporters, accounts of that foreign opera troupe Toshikichi had gone to see—along with other topics that should have been pleasant—she still seemed to have various matters to discuss.

But Nobuko's heart sank.
When she suddenly became aware, there she was—always giving half-hearted replies.
Eventually this had even drawn Teruko's notice.
Her sister peered anxiously into her face and asked, "Why?"
Yet even Nobuko couldn't clearly grasp what was wrong.

When the pillar clock struck ten, Nobuko lifted her languid eyes and said, “Toshikichi doesn’t seem likely to return anytime soon, does he?”
Teruko glanced up at the clock in response to her sister’s words, but answered with unanticipated coldness: “Not yet—” To Nobuko, those words seemed imbued with the heart of a newlywed already glutted on her husband’s affection.
The more she dwelled on this thought, the more her spirits sank inexorably into gloom.

"You're happy... aren't you... Teru?" Nobuko buried her chin in her half-collar and said jokingly.
But try as she might to suppress it, the tone of genuine envy that had crept into her voice remained unconcealed.
Teruko maintained an innocent air nonetheless, smiling brightly while feigning a glare. "Do remember that."
Then coaxingly added: "But Sister dear, you're happy too."
Those words pierced Nobuko sharply.

Her eyes growing slightly moist, she asked in return, “Did you think that?”
She immediately regretted having asked this.
Teruko made a strange expression for an instant and met her sister’s gaze.
On her face too moved a regret that could hardly be concealed.
Nobuko forced a smile.—“To be thought so is still happiness, isn’t it?”

A silence fell between them. They sat beneath the pillar clock's rhythmic ticks, listening without truly hearing to the iron kettle boiling on the long brazier.

“But isn’t Brother kind?”—Teruko eventually asked timidly in a small voice.
Her voice clearly carried a pitiable resonance, but in this moment Nobuko’s heart rejected compassion above all else.
She placed the newspaper on her lap, kept her eyes fixed on it, and deliberately gave no answer.
The newspaper carried the rice price issue, just as those in Osaka did.

Before long, in the quiet tearoom, the faint sound of someone crying began to be heard.
Nobuko looked away from the newspaper and saw her younger sister across the long brazier with her sleeve pressed to her face.
“There’s no need to cry.” — But even with her sister’s attempts to console her, Teruko showed no signs of stopping her tears.
Nobuko felt a cruel joy as she silently fixed her gaze on her sister’s trembling shoulders for some time.
Then, as if wary of the maid’s ears, she turned her face toward Teruko and said, “If I was wrong, I’ll apologize.
“As long as you’re happy, Teruko—that’s all I could wish for.”
“It’s true.”
“If Toshikichi loves you—” she continued in a low voice.
As she continued speaking, her voice too, moved by her own words, gradually began growing sentimental.
Then suddenly Teruko dropped her sleeve and raised her tear-drenched face.
In her eyes, surprisingly, there was neither sadness nor anger.
But only an uncontrollable jealousy burned her eyes like fire.
“Then Sister—Sister, why did you last night also—”
Before Teruko could finish speaking, she buried her face in her sleeve again and began crying violently and spasmodically.……

Two or three hours later, Nobuko was jostled along in a covered rickshaw bound for the streetcar terminus.
To her eyes, the outside world existed solely through a square celluloid window cut into the front of the rickshaw's canopy.
There, shabby houses from the outskirts and autumn-tinted treetops of mixed woods flowed slowly yet ceaselessly backward.
Had anything remained motionless among them, it would have been only the cold autumn sky veiled with wispy clouds.

Her heart was still.
But what filled that stillness was nothing but desolate resignation.
After Teruko's fit subsided, reconciliation—accompanied by fresh tears—had readily returned them to being the close sisters they once were.
However, the fact remained a fact, and even now it had not left Nobuko's heart.
When she had entrusted herself to this rickshaw without waiting for her cousin's return, a feeling as though she had already become strangers forever with her sister had spitefully spread ice through her chest.—

Nobuko suddenly lifted her eyes.
At that moment, through the celluloid window appeared the figure of her cousin walking through the cluttered town, a cane clutched in his hand.
Her heart wavered.
Should I stop the rickshaw?
Or let us pass by like this?
While quelling her pounding heart, she lingered beneath the rickshaw's hood, cycling through futile deliberations.
Yet the distance between Toshikichi and herself closed with each moment.
He moved slowly along the puddle-strewn street, his form bathed in thin sunlight.

“Toshikichi.”—For an instant, those words nearly escaped Nobuko’s lips.
In truth, Toshikichi had already appeared right beside her rickshaw in his familiar form.
But she hesitated again.
In that interval of hesitation, he—utterly unaware—finally passed by this covered rickshaw.
A hazy sky, sparse rows of houses, the yellowed treetops of tall trees—behind them lay nothing but the same outskirts town with its scant foot traffic as ever.

"Autumn—"

Beneath the faintly cold rickshaw hood, feeling the loneliness with her entire being, Nobuko couldn’t help but think this with profound intensity.

(March of Taishō Nine)