Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

The rear of Cabaret Jubankan faced Nishikiya-cho, with the Takase River flowing past. The Takase River was as narrow as a ditch. Yet there was indeed a river wind, carrying the sudden stealth of approaching autumn to the tips of drooping willow branches, as night deepened around the halos of street lamps.

However, in Jubankan Hall, it was still a summer evening.

The decadent night flared open like a skirt hem, swaying in hues as violently vivid as cockscomb flowers. Where evening dresses exposed white skin through scooped backs that writhed like serpents, sweat glistened in hollows, and the dance of this summer night—where men's musk wrung out women's musk—made even stiff-limbed young dancers' steps grow viscous in time... Into such a hall wandered a single cricket—drawn by who knows what longing—only to leap up and be instantly kicked by the pointed tip of a quick-turning dance shoe. It died with a faint chirp of distress, its cry drowned by the band's clamor as no one noticed.

Kizaki Saburō hadn’t noticed either. Kizaki was a photographer whose visual nerves had grown pathologically acute—so much so that one might think his naked eye had transformed into a camera lens. Given that he’d visited Jubankan for three consecutive nights to photograph dancehall scenes commissioned by a photojournalism magazine, his senses should have been keenly attuned to compositions as striking as a cricket on the ballroom floor. Yet he still missed it—perhaps because he happened to be in the second-floor tearoom at that precise moment, or maybe…

From the tearoom he could survey every corner of the hall at a glance—yet his vision couldn't reach as far as the cricket. Even so—even had it been possible—it still wouldn't have entered Kizaki's vision at that moment.

Because Kizaki’s gaze had been single-mindedly tracking the postures and facial movements of a dancer named Tsuji Yōko. Possessed eyes could see nothing else. Moreover, this had persisted obstinately for three nights now. The moment he first glimpsed Tsuji Yōko that initial night and inexplicably startled, Kizaki’s eyes had already— “Alright. This dancer. I’ll photograph this woman.” —transformed instantly into a camera lens. Yet for all its merciless clarity, something burned feverishly within that lens, glowing like noctiluca.

Kizaki looked into the lens as if peering into the depths of his own heart. Beyond the lens lay various poses of Yōko. Yet until this third day, he had not once pressed the shutter. Though his usual approach—a master's fastidiousness tinged with madness, refusing to waste film until discovering the perfect composition—remained unchanged, what could explain this violent repulsion toward poses that normally would have made him press the shutter eagerly?

Kizaki's face was clouded by a heavy shadow of melancholy, dark and irritable. But then—what came over him?—he suddenly stood up and planted himself midway down the stairs. And the moment he pressed the Leica’s shutter aimed at Yōko, a dancer collapsed onto the floor without a sound, as though crumbling.

II It was a coincidence so perfect it seemed orchestrated. The click of Kizaki’s Leica shutter and the dancer’s body collapsing onto the floor occurred almost simultaneously—or rather, one might say the shutter’s sound, like the faint report of a silenced pistol, had struck her down. Kizaki was startled, as were the customers, dancers, and even the musicians. The band’s rhythm abruptly collapsed.

On the main stage of the first-floor hall resided the swing band; in the balcony-like performance space jutting out from the second-floor corridor, the tango band—these two bands alternated performances, but at that precise moment, it was the tango band’s turn.

The song was La Cumparsita. Because it was a song everyone knew, the collapse of its rhythm became all the more apparent. But the musicians frantically recovered their rhythm. It was the newly hired band tonight, replacing the one that had been there until yesterday but was poached by another hall. It was, so to speak, their debut performance. So tonight, at least, they were oddly—almost unnervingly—zealous. However, by the time they had raised their recovered rhythm to full volume, there was no one left dancing.

Drawing their steps in smoothly before thrusting their partner's body away with the recoil—even among tangos with such passionately accented beats, La Cumparsita compelled everyone to dance. So much so that dancers who had withdrawn to chairs and curled up like shrimp would seize fellow "shrimp" to dance woman-to-woman. Yet Matsuri's fallen face was far too pale.

This was no ordinary incident. “What a disgraceful scene.” “It’s too early to be falling down.” “Isn’t it still early evening?” “The Blind-and-Clumsy Dancer?” “Who is it?” Had she stumbled and fallen—even the sharp-tongued patron who’d begun to sneer, “Ah, Matsuri...” When she realized Matsuri had collapsed, she hurriedly released her partner dancer, “—Who was Matsuri dancing with? Some judo brute?” “A judo brute?”

Matsuri was not the kind of dancer who would ever collapse from a misstep—she simply wasn’t that unskilled. “For dance, Matsuri; for beauty, Yōko.” This had become the established reputation at Jubankan. “Huh?! Matsuri...?” Yōko’s complexion too—no, Yōko’s complexion had already changed inexplicably the moment Kizaki pressed the shutter. “Ah, I’m being photographed!”

As if startled, the face suddenly turned away and visibly paled. "Excuse me." Yōko had separated from the guest and was about to head toward Kizaki—the very moment Matsuri collapsed.

The photo concerned her too, but more than that—Matsuri’s condition... She hesitated briefly, but then Yōko slipped through the crowd and rushed toward Matsuri. Matsuri’s face held even less blood-color than Yōko’s pallid complexion. The rouge on her cheeks had turned blue.

And there she was, foaming at the mouth, writhing faintly on the floor like a leech—beside her stood a young man, frozen in bewilderment.

III

“Ah, Kyō-kun!” When Yōko saw the young man standing frozen in bewilderment beside Matsuri’s collapsed form, she called out to him rather than to Matsuri. He was a twenty-three-year-old youth named Kyōkichi, known as “Kyō-kun” at Jubankan. Kyōkichi could dance at any hall without tickets. He was a genius dancer. Even dance teachers would feel utterly inadequate watching Kyōkichi’s steps. The dancers who partnered with Kyōkichi would forget all desires, gains, business motives, and even their sorrows—no, they’d lose themselves completely, swooning sweetly and thrillingly.

“When you’re dancing to a favorite song with a great band and a guy who leads wonderfully well, unless he’s someone you find physically repulsive, there are moments—sudden ones—when you think, ‘I’d like to be courted by this man.’” As the flirtatious dancer had said, even upright dancers, when skillfully led into the trance-like state of dance, would sometimes find themselves shaken by an illusion of surrendering their bodies to their partners.

Was this one of dance’s intense—nay, burning with a nearly visceral rhythm—charms? Kyōkichi was one of the few who possessed such charm. What’s more, he was beautiful.

Though twenty-three, he looked barely out of his teens—his deceptively innocent features and the sickly pallor of his slender profile, reminiscent of a consumptive girl’s pitiable fragility, stirred an unbearable ache in the women who glimpsed him. Yet the nihilistic shadow over beautiful brows, the decadent dark circles framing long-lashed eyes, and sarcastic creases flickering at the corners of tightly pressed lips sent a bitingly bitter accent coursing coldly through Kyōkichi’s features, making him suddenly resemble a man of thirty.

The word "handsome" didn’t quite fit. It was, so to speak, a beauty that enraptured women while simultaneously making them feel a chilling cold. That’s why everyone wanted to dance with Kyōkichi. “I’ll double the tickets and pay you back—dance with me. Hey, Kyō-kun, come tomorrow and dance with me.” There were women who made such requests. With Kyōkichi, they must have felt it improper to receive tickets. Matsuri had been dancing with that very Kyōkichi tonight.

—Yōko recalled, “What’s going on…?” she pressed urgently. “Huh…?” Kyōkichi glanced briefly at Yōko’s face. “You, with Matsuri...” You were dancing with her, weren’t you?—her eyes demanded, but Kyōkichi didn’t answer, pressing his lips into a sullen line as he stared down at Matsuri with blank bewilderment. Strings of paper lanterns—pink, blue, lemon yellow—dyed the hall’s interior with their light.

However, while Matsuri’s face was being dyed by those colors—no, precisely because of them—it became apparent that she was visibly transforming into an eerie waxen pallor. She looked to be in agony…

IV From between the bubbles foaming at her mouth, the tip of her limp tongue hung visible—Matsuri lay faintly moaning. The band kept blaring La Cumparsita into the empty hall with clumsy ineptitude, their playing so crude that Matsuri’s groans kept vanishing beneath the noise—yet through it all, Yōko’s ears caught those pained sounds like wisps of wind. “Oh no!” Yōko’s heart lurched at the vile premonition—those moans might be squeezing out life’s final agonies—

“—A doctor—!” The thought flashed through her mind—Call a boy quickly—and as she whirled around in panic, Kizaki’s figure entered her field of vision. He remained planted at the exact center of the staircase. Jubankan had originally been built as a cabaret exclusively for Occupation forces—hence the Gion-style paper lanterns hung in place of chandeliers, and the staircase lacquered vermilion like a palace’s. Particularly the front staircase: absurdly wide, thrusting its crimson hue deep into the hall like a kabuki stage.

Standing at the exact center of such a staircase like an actor ought to have made one self-conscious, yet Kizaki showed no embarrassment as he peered through his camera.

“Ah, not again…” Thinking she was about to be photographed, Yōko involuntarily turned her face away—but the lens was focused on Matsuri’s collapsed body. Even a dancer collapsing in the hall’s center held no particular distinction compared to the raw incidents spawned by yesterday’s and today’s social climate. But burning with professional pride—that this was no ordinary composition one might chance upon when aiming to capture a “Hall Scene” for the magazine—Kizaki frantically clung to his camera.

For one thing, in photographing such scenes, he felt—unconsciously—a self-destructive, almost rebellious pleasure. But Kizaki himself didn’t fully understand why.

The manager of Jubankan, who usually remained in the office, had come to the hall that night intending to observe the newly hired band's performance; the instant he saw Kizaki on the staircase, he immediately grasped what Kizaki meant to photograph.

“Ah, this won’t do… In such a place…” He tried to stop him—if you take that photo…—but Kizaki, in a frenzy, clicked the shutter, descended the stairs restlessly, then strode across the hall as if possessed and vanished.

There wasn’t even time to blink. Both Yōko and the manager had no time to call out to stop Kizaki. No—to call it a blink would be an understatement; everything happened in an instant.

As proof of this, when Matsuri’s body was eventually carried by the boys to the sofa in the office, La Cumparsita had not yet finished playing.

V

When La Cumparsita ended, people finally remembered to dance, and the hall’s commotion coldly subsided.

The manager promptly replaced the tango band with a swing band. Though he had been fully satisfied with the passionately performing tango band, it was to change the hall's atmosphere. Then, the dancers who, concerned about Matsuri's condition, had followed her to the office— "To the hall! The hall!" "The customers are waiting! What are you dawdling for?" "Dance! Dance!"

With that, he drove them back to the hall.

“But at least a doctor…” Until they came，Yōko wanted to stay by Matsuri’s side. She had been closest to Matsuri. But， “She’ll be fine.” “No need to worry.” “The office staff are watching Matsuri.” When told that，Yōko could no longer oppose the manager’s words. “Why don’t you go dance too，Kyō-chan?” “Me?” “You’re kiddin’.” Kyōkichi said to the manager while looking at Matsuri’s wax-pale face.

“—Dance with someone who’s sick? As if.” “But then again, dancing with other dancers wouldn’t be right to Matsuri.” “’Cause tonight I’ve been booked exclusive by Matsuri.” Hearing those words at her back, Yōko “……? “Matsuri has you…?” With that, she turned around and tried to move closer to Kyōkichi, but in the office, detailed conversations couldn’t be heard. Moreover, the manager’s gaze was pressing them.

Yōko invited him with a meaningful glance and led Kyōkichi out of the office, “What exactly does it mean that Matsuri has booked you exclusively…?” and peered at Kyōkichi’s profile with its long lashes. “Yesterday afternoon, I ran into Matsuri in Kyōgoku. "Matsuri started bawling her eyes out, so I told her, ‘You’re a mess—even a rubber ball would cry at this rate.’" “When I said that, she suddenly grabbed my hand—I got all flustered." “In the middle of Kyōgoku, right…?”

“Hmm. And…?” “So…?” “Kyō-chan—tomorrow, dance with me. Just tomorrow, don’t dance with anyone else. Spend the whole night dancing only with me—that’s what she said.” “Then I’ll dance for her.” “In exchange—‘You gonna let me crash at your place tomorrow?’ ‘Yeah,’ she said—so I’m booked exclusive.” “Do you… like Matsuri?” “I neither like nor dislike her.” “There’s only one woman I like, but I can’t say it even if my mouth rots.”

Kyōkichi suddenly flushed. Yōko’s ears also flushed,

“Well then, why do you stay at Matsuri’s place…?” “Because today—that is, yesterday’s tomorrow’s today—is Saturday. I don’t have a place to stay on Saturday nights.”

“Oh! Why…?” “Saturday night…”

In the midst of trying to ask about Matsuri, Yōko found her own curiosity—now turned toward questioning Kyōkichi—to be unseemly even to herself.

VI “On Saturday nights, Mama’s patron comes. So…” Kyōkichi answered in a tone as if it were someone else’s affair. “Mama… you mean… your… mother…?”

Yōko asked. Kyōkichi suddenly burst out laughing.

The entrance boy turned around.

Feeling that gaze, Yōko became aware for the first time of how long they had been standing there talking,

“Let’s get going.”

With that, she whispered an urging and gathered the hem of her dress. “I don’t have a mother or anything.”

With that，Kyōkichi also crossed the lobby， “—The woman in the house where I’m staying.” “Because everyone calls her ‘Mama’...” The words “I call her that too”—however，only half could be heard. The band’s noise suddenly descended upon the ears of the two as they approached the hall entrance. “So she’s Mama No. 2…?” “Yeah.” “The patron only comes on Saturdays.” “I must look like a freeloader.” “So，it’s better if I don’t get spotted by the patron.”

Kyōkichi had drawn his body close enough to hear, but upon entering the hall, Yōko—wondering what—abruptly separated from him. "So you're Mama's swallow...? "How vile."

"How filthy—" she thought, turning her face away, when the vermilion-painted staircase at the back of the hall struck her eyes in a more lurid hue than usual.

Suddenly, the thought of Kizaki holding his camera flashed through her mind. Yōko's eyebrows suddenly darkened.

“What…?”

As they were slipping past the performance platform just then, Kyōkichi seemed not to have heard. "Just as well you didn't hear."

Without looking at his face, Yōko said irritably. “So you’re saying you’re her ‘swallow’…? Don’t be ridiculous.” “Mama’s a Hinoeuma,” Kyōkichi answered. “She’s practically an old woman.” With that, he spoke with a world-weariness unbecoming of a twenty-three-year-old. “What’s wrong with that? If she’s older anyway, you might as well…” “Even twenty years apart…?” He laughed hollowly. “It’s just like a horror movie. Not my taste.”

“Who knows…” “Why do you fixate on this so much?” Kyōkichi peered into Yōko’s face.

Her face—a mask-like chill of refined dignity unbefitting a dancer—was tinged pink by the lanterns’ glow, suddenly revealing a mature sensuality. “Because it’s filthy.” “A swallow.” “If you were a swallow, I’d cut ties without hesitation.” “Then if I’m not a swallow…you’ll let me stay?” Kyōkichi blurted out. “Huh…?” Though accustomed to propositions through her work—they might anger her but shouldn’t surprise her anymore—Yōko froze despite herself.

As for this—what in the world was this?

At that moment, a man seated on a chair nodded to Yōko from afar.

7 The one who had nodded was Notake Harutaka—the second son of Marquis Notake—a man in his early thirties. “Hey, you’ll let me stay…?” As Kyōkichi—his twenty-three-year-old face assuming a teenager’s innocent expression—repeated his plea, Yōko returned Harutaka’s nod while listening to his words. Notake Harutaka had been given the nickname “Marquis ‘Head-Over-Heels’”—a play on his surname—and was a regular patron at Cabaret Jubankan. At Cabaret Jubankan, besides the third son of Duke Toe—who had committed suicide with potassium cyanide on the eve of his detention as a war crime suspect, whether to vent his frustrations or simply because he was inherently hedonistic—who occasionally came to dance, several so-called young masters from aristocratic families showed their faces, only to have their exploits sensationalized in a certain tabloid magazine.

Harutaka too had been one of those targeted, but whether due to innate obtuseness or simple indifference, he remained unfazed—naturally making no effort to hoard copies of the magazine—and instead diligently purchased tickets to Cabaret Jubankan with what funds he had. "For one thing, such trifling matters were beneath the dignity of this ‘Head-Over-Heels’ Marquis to warrant seclusion." The Marquis was far too head over heels for Yōko. He never went to any dancehall other than Cabaret Jubankan, and even there, he would only dance with Yōko. When she danced with other men, he would meekly sit in a chair, maintaining the same posture indefinitely as he waited for her body to become available again.

Tonight as well, having arrived after the commotion of Matsuri’s collapse, he found Yōko nowhere in sight and seemed to be restlessly darting his eyes about. And when he finally spotted her and eagerly nodded in greeting—seeing Yōko conversing with Kyōkichi—he resigned himself with that etiquette characteristic of him to smoking another cigar before rising from his chair. But Kyōkichi didn’t possess even a grain of such etiquette.

“Hey.” “Let me stay.”

“……”

“Tonight… Can’t I…?”

“Unbelievable!”

And it wasn’t just words—Yōko truly recoiled in disgust, “—Why should I have to put you up……?” “Because Saturday nights—most women have engagements, you know. Like Mama…. It’s pretty much just Matsuri and you. The only ones still clean even on Saturdays…” “But you’re completely booked by Matsuri, aren’t you?” “That’s why I’m talking about if something happens to Matsuri. If she dies or something, I’ll have nowhere to stay tonight…. I feel like Matsuri might die…”

“Do…? “You feel that way too…?” Yōko suddenly grew worried, “—Oh, right. "Enough of this talk—you go check the office." “Is he here?” “Hurry up and go check!” And then, after seeing off Kyōkichi’s retreating figure as he left the hall, when she turned around, Harutaka stood before her eyes.

8

Yōko transferred the handkerchief from her right hand to her left, …… She grasped the hand that Harutaka had extended.

That was Yōko’s usual greeting toward Harutaka—or rather, toward all customers who frequented her. Like a coquettish dancer’s affectation might suggest, “Oh my. You’re here?”—but her pride would never permit actually throwing herself at someone or engaging in idle chatter. Especially when she first entered the hall with those same feet that had carried her from Tokyo to Kyoto, she’d been stiff as lead. Aloof as a noblewoman. Her beauty and refinement paradoxically attracted some patrons while others sneered “Who does this mere dancer think she is?”—a reflection of how far the hall’s standards had fallen compared to prewar days. The dancers themselves had first lost their pride. Managers and senior dancers even warned them about antagonizing customers.

“Then I’ll stop.” When cautioned, her aristocratic temperament threatened to surge forth, but she finally restrained herself—to abandon this act would mean surrendering to life’s unbearable weight. Moreover, as she reconsidered—that for a woman alone engaged in this level of new yen-earning business, there likely existed no path except further self-degradation or defilement—she had gradually acclimated to the hall’s atmosphere and become able to manage at least handshakes.

Even if its caliber had declined, when it came to the hall, customers still tried to act more pretentiously here than in other places. Therefore, even the pretentiousness of handshakes felt surprisingly natural in the hall.

"However, only this dancer's handshake carries genuine allure." As Harutaka slipped past a dancer sipping her tea and led Yōko to the center of the hall, he thought. It wasn't merely her appearance that created that impression. To have one's hand shaken by someone who'd stayed over last night carried a whiff of decadence, but Yōko's grip remained as unyielding as her dancing. The song was Along the Navajo Trail.

This song—evoking the nostalgia of Latin immigrants and Navajo people fading from the American West, like wandering through endless prairie nights beneath veils of darkness—was marked by bassline repetitions reminiscent of clopping hooves, stirring a fleeting Japanese sentimentalism. But Yōko wasn’t pliant enough to lose herself in persistent dance.

During turns, she didn't employ techniques like clamping her partner's knee between her thighs to pivot—and that made Yōko appear virginal. No—just as Kyōkichi had intuitively sensed her purity even on Saturdays, Harutaka—this second son of Marquis Notake—reaffirmed his intuition through the sensation of his hand on her back: this woman had yet to be with a man. "Tonight—I'll finally take this woman somewhere..." His heart leapt at this thought.

If she came along, I was confident about what followed—but would she actually come? No—if I played my trump card and delivered that line, she wouldn’t be able to refuse my invitation! Harutaka abruptly uttered those words. “You attended Gakushūin’s Women’s College.” “Am I wrong…?”

“Wh—…?” “Huh? N-no…”

Flustered, the moment she turned, Kyōkichi’s figure—standing at the hall’s entrance—entered Yōko’s field of vision. Yōko jolted. 9 At that exact moment, the ample back of Hamada—a black market broker dancing with Rumi, a dancer recently returned from Shanghai—collided into Yōko. “Idiot! You’re just shaking your ass doing the shimmy dance, so of course we collide! Pro!”

Rumi sharply rebuked Hamada—who styled himself as "Pro"—in her jaded tone, but those words did not reach Yōko’s ears.

She was in no state to care. Harutaka’s unexpected remark! And Kyōkichi’s complexion! Yōko’s attention was momentarily drawn to Kyōkichi standing at the hall’s entrance, but Harutaka abruptly turned again, causing him to vanish from view. When Harutaka saw Yōko’s flustered state,

"This woman is practically mine already." While thrusting the metaphorical trousers of his desire—those intrusive thoughts—into Yōko’s skirt hem with a sharp motion, he executed a flawless turn, "You’re Nakaseko’s daughter… aren’t you?"

“I’m not.”

“No, hiding it won’t work.” “In my sister’s graduation album, I saw your photo.” “……” “I hear you were in the same class as my sister at Gakushūin.” “Probably someone else’s…” “A mere resemblance? That’s such an uncharacteristically spiritless line from you.” “Why do you…”

And with that, he whirled around again,

"Do you have to hide it so much? Of course, if I were a journalist, you might need to hide it. Your father is, after all, the foremost figure in the political world. That Nakaseko Kōzō’s daughter being a dancer at Jubankan—" "Please don’t tell anyone! I’m begging you." "So... after all..." So it was true—Harutaka’s dull, clouded eyes suddenly shone. And then, as if struck by a thought,

“—I’m going to Tokyo tomorrow.”

Abruptly uttering an unrelated phrase, he looked at Yōko’s ear. What a beautifully shaped ear! Harutaka was a man who felt no attraction toward women with poorly shaped ears.

“To Tokyo…?”

With a gaze that seemed to ask whether he was going to do something—to tell someone about this matter—Yōko looked at him, but Harutaka deliberately did not answer, “We won’t be able to meet for a while, you know.” “I had intended to discuss this matter at length once and make myself available as your confidant, but...” “It seems tonight will be our only opportunity, then.”

At that moment, the song Along the Navajo Trail ended.

Harutaka pressed on rapidly,

“However, tonight I’ll be at Tamura—Kiyamachi Shijō Kudaru. It’s the restaurant with a red lantern marked ‘Tamura.’ Come once the hall closes.”

He said "I'll definitely be waiting," and without awaiting a reply, disappeared from the hall in an instant.

Yōko made her way through the crowd to Kyōkichi’s side. “Matsuri…?” “Has the doctor come…?”

“He came. He came, but…” Kyōkichi suddenly put on an exaggerated Kyoto dialect, “He came, but... too late.” “So… Matsuri after all…?” “Potassium cyanide! “Matsuri, you fool!”

Ten Yōko rushed to the office, shedding tears profusely. Through tear-blurred eyes, the white cloth appeared hazy yet starkly vivid. Beneath that cloth lay Matsuri’s waxen face. When she drew closer, at the center of her thin upper lip, remnants of lipstick had dried into a dark red. Around the lips, the peach fuzz was thick. This seemed to suddenly lay bare Matsuri’s recent troubles—her inability to even muster the will to shave her face—and fresh tears welled up as Yōko stood transfixed in numb shock. But when she abruptly regained her senses, she heard what sounded like Kyōkichi being interrogated by police in the adjacent room.

“...We were dancing La Cumparsita. Then Matsuri said, ‘If I could die dancing La Cumparsita led by Kyō-kun, I’d have no regrets,’ so I asked why, but she stayed silent. Then before I knew it, Matsuri’s complexion changed suddenly—she turned deathly pale and collapsed right there.” “Did you see her put anything in her mouth?” “I didn’t see her put anything in her mouth, but she did seem to be munching on something. Matsuri was the type of dancer who couldn’t stand having her mouth idle without sucking on chewing gum or popping Jintan pills, so I didn’t think anything of it at the time...but now that I look back...”

Had she placed a capsule containing potassium cyanide in her mouth before dancing and bitten through it? Eventually, the police officer questioned Kyōkichi about his relationship with Matsuri. When it became clear they were merely acquaintances, he proceeded to interrogate two or three people connected to the office before turning his inquiries to Yōko. "Matsuri confided everything in me, but I never heard anything about circumstances that would drive her to death." "Could Matsuri have had troubles grave enough to drive her to death?"

Yōko asked a question in return. Her earnings were substantial, so she wasn’t struggling financially. There also didn’t seem to be any rumors about her having intimate relationships with men.

As the police officers withdrew without gaining any useful information, the Last Goodnight melody soon began to play.

Kyōkichi took Yōko to the corner of the office. “I’ve finally got nowhere to stay. Let me stay at your place tonight.” “No. You’re booked by Matsuri tonight, aren’t you? I have to hold a wake for her…. If you hold the wake, you can stay at Matsuri’s apartment.”

“I guess that makes sense. “Alright, let’s do that. “In return, you’ll let me stay this Saturday. “C’mon... I got nowhere to stay. C’mon...” It was as if a child were throwing a tantrum. Yōko smiled and nodded ambiguously.

“I’d feel uneasy holding the wake alone. Yōko, you’re coming to the wake too… right?” “Yes. But I might end up being a little late.” “You going somewhere?”

“Tamura.”

“Tamura…?” “Surely not… at the Tamura in Kiyamachi…?” “Kiyamachi.” “Don’t go. Stay away from Tamura. Don’t go!” “Don’t go!”

Kyōkichi suddenly shouted.

Eleven

When told not to go, Yōko became the very picture of contrariness. Without asking why, she felt Kyōkichi's commanding tone strike at her pride like a physical blow. "You don't have a right to order me around—not even enough to fill an ear pick."

Her hesitation was decided by these words, and both her voice and manner of speech were no longer those of a dancer. “Then do whatever you want!”

Kyōkichi also bit his lip but deliberately made it sound like a soliloquy,

“But... has Yōko started frequenting Tamura too?”

“Is there something wrong with going to the restaurant…?”

When she retorted sarcastically, "Don't use that school principal lecturing a teacher tone with me...", Kyōkichi proved equally quick with his tongue: "Naive schoolmarms are cute thinking Tamura's just some restaurant.—Though they do serve meals there." "They serve anything." "Get swindled till you're broke." "End up with two pillows." "They'll even lay out two nightgowns." "A caged bird that can't escape even if it tries." "It's no ordinary teahouse." "Heeen...?" "You sure know your way around it."

At the moment of being startled, she deliberately said it with a spiteful edge.

“Sure I know that. “But I…” He lived at Tamura. He tried to say “Because I’m the madam’s freeloader”—but couldn’t quite voice it, “More importantly—don’t come to the wake after leaving Tamura. You’ll defile the deceased.” “Defile the deceased.” “What do you mean…?”

Even if she tried to consider what he meant, it didn’t immediately make sense—to that extent Yōko remained a girl who knew nothing of such things—but— “Ah—you... You think I’ll be seduced there, don’t you?” “How rude.” “Don’t be ridiculous...”

With this—half-muttering to herself—she went up to the second-floor changing room. And as she lowered her evening dress to her waist and swiftly slipped into her chemise—perhaps the final song had ended—the dancers came clamoring in. On Saturdays, even the dancers’ feet burn like fire. They were that exhausted, but this was the only room where they could speak loudly. Especially tonight, there was also the Matsuri incident. Some dancers kept talking with chemises still pulled over their heads.

However, Yōko remained silent as usual. After being told "You’re putting on airs," she had stopped joining in even more.

Silently wearing a plain cobalt-blue dress and tying a round cord into a bow (butterfly knot) in place of the collar buttons, she was approached by Rumi—who had returned from Shanghai—

“How heartless, I swear…” Rumi muttered as she arrived late, chattering away to herself. “Tonight’s a patron night—I was planning to sleep till two tomorrow—and now this manager’s errand.” “There was a man who took photos of Matsuri collapsing, I tell ya.” “Go get those photos first thing in the morning—we’ll be in trouble if they get published. Use Rumi’s nerve and handle it, I tell ya.” “They don’t give a damn about working us dancers.” “The manager’s got way more nerve!” What Yōko had been thinking, she approached Rumi’s side and,

“I could go instead tomorrow if you’d like.” Rumi peered at Kizaki’s business card, which she had retrieved from the manager’s desk.

Luminous Clock

I

The former Kyoto Takarazuka Theater in Sanjō Kawaramachi screened movies exclusively for the occupation forces, and on Saturday nights, jeeps and trucks lined up outside.

When Kizaki left Jūbankan and came to Kawaramachi Street, just as the theater’s neon marquee was flashing in the night sky—

"KYOTO THEATRE" Surrounding the pink electric characters, the tempo of swirling orange blinking lights suddenly quickened, and while the American soldiers spilling from the theater moved with hurried steps, Kizaki's feet grew restless with equal speed. He was agitated. Why...?

Kizaki's photographs—where the lens had become flesh—were so intensely personal that nihilism’s bodily stench seemed to waft from the printing paper; though their compositions always evoked nightfall and fleetingly hinted at decadence, even tonight’s photos of Yōko and Matsuri suited his favored theme of "nocturnal poses." However, was it merely preference that drove him to deliberately capture beautiful Yōko in the most hideous poses and find grotesque poses in Matsuri’s collapsed form? In other places, he likely wouldn’t have gone that far.

In other words, it was due to his aversion to dance halls. The reason for that was because his deceased wife had been a dancer.

The name of his deceased wife was Yaeko. When Kizaki met Yaeko during his student days, she was no longer a dancer but worked at the front desk of a hotel in the Hanshin area. After four years of courtship, Kizaki Saburō married her though he couldn't dance; she collected dance records yet never wished to dance. Two years later, Yaeko contracted mild pneumonia and went to recuperate at Nanki's Shirahama Hot Springs. One day when he visited her, Yaeko was dancing with a stranger in the hotel hall. It was La Cumparsita. Coughing yet enraptured, she danced.

The moment he first saw his wife dancing—and dancing in another man’s arms—Kizaki found himself numbly calculating how many men she must have been held by each night during her dancer days. The confession that even before their marriage, she had already had relations with two or three dancehall patrons suddenly resurfaced, and a raw jealousy—as if it were only now—sensationally revived within him. Kizaki was no longer a husband magnanimous toward his wife’s past; scorched by jealousy, he had plunged into decadence.

And this fire of jealousy had not extinguished even when Yaeko died two years prior; the moment he came to Jubankan and first saw Yōko, it flared up once more. Yōko resembled the dead Yaeko. Thus, having resolved to photograph Yōko and pursue her beauty, Kizaki—whose jealous eyes, having seen only ugliness in Yaeko’s form within that hotel hall—now recoiled from Yōko’s loveliness; every pose appeared to him as the pitiful grotesquerie of female instinct dragged along by men, and after three futile days of this pursuit,

"Got it! Since it’s come to this—I’ll shoot that woman’s most obscene pose!"

Burning with such masochistic pleasure, the instant he pressed the shutter—Matsuri… What he threw at her collapsed form was a satire aimed at the dance hall. Paling from twisted agitation, Kizaki Saburō eventually walked along Shijō Street toward Maruyama Park.

And as he climbed the stone steps of Gion, a young girl suddenly leaped out from the darkness.

二

“Hey old man. Can I borrow a light for my cigarette?” In front of Kizaki—who’d been walking with heavy, thudding steps—the girl spread her legs like a bus conductress and stood defiantly blocking his path.

Her voice was young, but when Kizaki lit his lighter, the girl’s face—still not fully grown into adulthood—flashed white in the flame; she must have been seventeen or eighteen. However, the girl, like a seasoned geisha, skillfully lit her cigarette, “Old man… Where you headin’ all the way to…?”

Without waiting for a reply—he had been about to say he was returning to his apartment—she followed, blowing out smoke. “Still got business with me…?” “Since the night’s dangerous ‘n all, escortin’ me that far ain’t gonna kill ya, yeah?” “That far… Where exactly is ‘that far’…?” “Old man…?” “Toward Seikansō.”

“I’m headed that way too.”

“Don’t lie!”

He was about to say something, but Kizaki walked silently alongside the girl through Maruyama Park, then turned toward Kōdaiji. The women lingering around Sanjō Bridge, Shijō Bridge, and Maruyama Park were almost all women of ill repute—he had heard the rumors and witnessed them himself, so he immediately intuited as much—but perhaps because there was something about this girl that made him unable to conclusively dismiss her as such. It wasn’t because she was too young… Seventeen or eighteen was common. And while women of that age and ilk showed an uncleanliness from youth’s unpleasantness thickly smeared in face powder and lipstick, this girl’s clean skin—free of cosmetics—evoked a distant nostalgia.

In a white yukata patterned with purple courtly ox-drawn carriages and a purple heko obi—even as she smoked with delinquent air—there lingered something that recalled a middle school harmonica's sound. That being said, he felt no interest. He simply refrained from telling her to leave—or rather, without uttering a word, let her follow as they turned from the Kōdaiji road onto the Kiyomizu pilgrimage path. Winding up the twisting ascent, Otowa Mountain loomed near, and there in the woods stood the solitary apartment complex called Seikansō.

Around the dull glow of the gate lamp, a profound stillness swirled like a halo, suddenly giving the air the depth of late night.

Kizaki pointed from afar,

"There it is. My apartment's…" he said, speaking for the first time. “Where’s your home?” "Surely it’s not in those mountains." “Get lost!” “That’s so cruel! “From a place like this…” “Too scared to go back?” “It’s your fault for following me.” “There are no ghosts, so run home!” “Old man… Are you… alone in your apartment?”

With an emphatic, displeased nod, the girl suddenly—

“Well then, let me stay too.” “Or rather—?” She peered into Kizaki’s face. The sweaty hair—its odor clinging—brushed against Kizaki’s nose.

III “No!” “Don’t say that—let me stay!” “…………” “I ain’t got nowhere to go back to.” “Why…?” “I ran away.” “Hmm… What made you pull such a stupid stunt?” “…………”

“Even if you have nowhere to return to, there must be places to stay.” “Just go to an inn.” “I don’t have money for a place to stay.” The place was in a thicket, swarming with mosquitoes; as they stood talking there, Kizaki’s nerves grew increasingly frayed, so he abruptly pulled out three ten-yen bills and—

“Here, take this and stay at an inn!”

Handing it to the girl—*So she was just another night flower after all*—he felt both disappointed and refreshingly unburdened, then walked into Seikansō’s entrance without looking back.

The six-tatami room at the top of the second-floor stairs was Kizaki’s room. Within the six-tatami space—having partitioned off roughly two tatami with black curtains to create a darkroom—he placed his camera and was lighting mosquito-repellent incense when a knock came at the door. When he opened it, the girl from earlier stood there dejectedly, yet with a faint grin on her face. “Aren’t you going home?” “Yeah.” Seeing her impishly stick out her tongue—Kizaki nearly burst out laughing and found himself unable to send her away anymore. The girl eagerly stepped inside,

“Mr. Kizaki, that’s some fancy camera you got there, huh?” She must’ve already spotted the nameplate bearing Kizaki’s name outside the room. He didn’t answer that, “You’re from Osaka, right?” Being an Osaka native himself, Kizaki found something oddly familiar in the girl’s accent.

"Yeah. It burned down." The girl cast a quick glance toward the darkroom curtain.

“What about your father…?” “Prison… “In pretrial…”

She said with a nonchalant face that he was detained, but suddenly her voice quivered, “—When someone’s in pretrial detention, you need money, y’know. You gotta send care packages, can’t get caught by the guards,… and if you don’t bring money to the lawyer, they won’t say a word for you.”

Surprised that this girl was burdened by such worries, he asked if she had a mother—when suddenly, “I hate Mama.”

The vehemence of her words was all the more unexpected; as he watched her thin eyebrows twitch restlessly, "—I hate that concubine-minded woman. Nothing but men..." "Nothin' but men..." She seemed to be composing herself. But Kizaki had no further interest in asking, "Go to sleep!"

He pulled the futon out from the closet.

The girl suddenly stiffened her expression and stared at Kizaki’s movements.

4 In that stiffened expression, Kizaki momentarily sensed a woman’s presence as he began laying out the bedding—and the girl, as if startled, sprang up and stood facing the corner of the room. Of the six-tatami room, two tatami mats were used for the darkroom, making it cramped. So it would be natural to think she stood up and moved to the corner to avoid obstructing the bedding arrangement—but was Kizaki overimagining things in feeling she had sprung up? “How long has it been since you ran away from home?”

Kizaki abruptly asked. “Ten days!”

To the curve of her hips—the girl who had answered with her back turned—Kizaki abruptly directed his gaze, then hurriedly averted it. Though her yukata and heko obi had stirred a faint nostalgia in him, perhaps because she cinched her waist tightly, the girl’s hips appeared even rounder—and gazing at them, Kizaki imagined how she had lived these past ten days. A cigarette’s light borrowed in the dark. However, that was not Kizaki’s lustful gaze. Rather, he felt a painful discomfort and revulsion.

He conjured the figure of a woman on a surgical operating table. Bedding, surgical operations, a young woman’s naked body. What a painful sensation! There must be no woman who would willingly undergo surgical operations. But to undergo it was the tragic fate of the sick—no, the tragic fate of women. The resignation of a woman lying on the operating table! Forced self-abandonment! Unconscious state! The instinct to cling to the surgeon, the anxiety! And hatred and resentment…. The pleasure of self-torture! The wedding night ritual, celebrated as auspicious, was a scalpel’s festival. Not merely a festival. The scalpel of surgery! The fated pathos of female physiology had always been painfully acute to Kizaki. Perhaps this was because jealousy toward his late wife Yaeko had transformed Kizaki’s perception of female physiology—or was it not that very jealousy which had done so?

Yaeko had been involved with several men before marrying Kizaki. Yet he refused to believe Yaeko had sought it willingly—that timid Yaeko had become irreversibly ensnared in the traps surrounding the dancer profession, or so Kizaki desperately needed to believe. Yaeko had been eighteen or nineteen at the time. The men were street thugs and delinquents. A naive girl of eighteen or nineteen and those delinquent boys—what cruelty!

That Kizaki associated this with surgical operations was due in part to his inscrutable hatred toward those men. Moreover, when he considered how Yaeko had tried to escape yet ultimately been dragged along by those men’s physical allure, Kizaki’s pity toward the fragility of female physiology intensified until it neared outrage. Pity and revulsion—there was no middle ground between their oscillations. In other words, Kizaki could only conceive of women’s bodies in exaggerated terms. However, jealousy is always a passion distorted by exaggeration.

What Kizaki sensed in that young girl was indeed that very thing. Here was the female body! As Kizaki alternated his gaze between the girl’s pitifully thin shoulders and plump hips, his irritation mounted until he abruptly called out. “Hey!”

5 “What…?” As she turned around, Kizaki found himself momentarily speechless. He didn’t understand why he had called out—even to himself—and finally, “What’s your name…?” Kizaki’s voice came out parched as he asked.

“I’m Chimako. “Hehe…” “Weird name, right…?”

She had been giggling innocently, but when she suddenly noticed the bedding laid out, “...Is there only one futon...?”

“There’s only one pillow too.” “I was hit in the Osaka air raids—this is all that’s left.” “I’m getting sleepy.” “You don’t mind if I lie down here…?” Still in her heko obi, she lay face down, pinched the handbag tossed near the bedding’s edge with her bare toes, flicked it over her shoulder to the pillowside with a toss, and took out a cigarette from within. “Gimme a light….” “Oh, I’ll light it with this.” Using the mosquito-repellent incense’s flame, she began smoking hungrily, but suddenly lay flat on her back and stared fixedly at the ceiling.

Her eyes glinted brightly. She remained motionless as if fossilized for some time. Yet her entire body seemed acutely aware of Kizaki. Even when blindfolded and made to inhale anesthetic, she stayed like a patient faintly hearing the scalpel clink against its tray. "What are you thinking? —The ash..." As he edged closer with the thought It'll fall, Kizaki became aware for the first time of violent blood—a man's blood—pulsing through his own veins.

Was this some inscrutable impulse to cruelly torment the very thing he pitied? Or perhaps a self-destructive mechanism drawing him toward what he rejected and loathed? Even people who love with noble sentiments may sometimes confront their beloved with an insect-like instinct. Moreover, Chimako displayed the pathos and ugliness of those dubious women squirming through the city's recent nights. Pathos is the fated passivity of lying upon an operating table!

Ugliness was the fragility of sensuality unaware of its own ugliness—and curiosity! Yet this very pathos and ugliness formed the core theme of Kizaki's nocturnal compositions. Beneath such decadence seethed his jealousy toward the deceased wife. It hadn't been lust. So when asked what occupied her thoughts, Chimako— "...About my father in prison..."

As she murmured this and exhaled smoke rings from the deep drag she'd taken—her vacant gaze following their dissipation—Kizaki jerked his hand back, no longer able to hold Chimako. At that moment, footsteps sounded in the corridor,

“Mr. Kizaki, I’m back!” came his voice.

6 By the voice alone, he immediately recognized it as Sakano, the musician from the neighboring room.

He must have come back after the hall let out. A voice, more hoarse and unhealthy than usual, rasped listlessly through the late hour and the weight of the accordion slung over his shoulder.

“Oh, you’re back…” Kizaki’s voice came out shrill—a sound that trembled shamefully through its own unhealthiness.

Realizing he had been hideously excited and was growing despondent, eventually— “Mr. Kizaki! Mr. Kizaki!” Sakano’s voice called again for him to come over, that shrill voice trembling wretchedly. For what should have been a mahjong invitation, his tone sounded oddly flustered and panicked.

Kizaki stood up from Chimako’s bedside, sensing a sharp, glinting gaze piercing his back, “What’s wrong?”

And he entered Sakano’s room. “My wife has run away.” There was a note in fairly skilled yet right-slanting handwriting. “...I can’t live with a Philopon addict...” ...and so on.

Philopon, unlike sedative-hypnotics, was an injectable drug that temporarily stimulated the central nervous system to induce wakefulness and excitement. Sakano had apparently acquired a taste for this substance back when he performed on stage peddling “comedy and accordion,” injecting this potent drug as frequently as smoking cigarettes—the sheer quantity and frequency leaving even Kizaki appalled. If even Kizaki was appalled, Sakano’s wife— “A ten-ampule pack costs twenty-three yen, right? There are days when he injects two whole boxes of it, so it’s unbearable. The Philopon costs alone eat up [his] salary...”

She’d complain that it all vanished into thin air, but in the end she seemed to have fled—he bought injection drugs before rice, leaving no money for food. “Damn! What a fucking bitch,” “What a fucking bitch.” “‘Why don’t you put up a Sakano Clinic sign and inject yourself happy every day?’ Huh?” “Making a fool of me.” “No—screw the letter. Mr. Kizaki, look at this.” Sakano showed the shattered ampules of hoarded injection drugs his wife had smashed on her way out, his clay-colored face growing grayer as he stood stupefied—then let out a hollow chuckle,

“It’s like my heirloom seal, see?” With that, he pulled out a box of Philopon from his pocket.

“—I never let this leave my side.” “Heh…” “Without this, I can’t play the accordion.” “Anyway…” First one... With 2 cc, he injected it into his needle-marked arm and patted the spot.

“Please inject me too.”

Believing this was the best way to console Sakano, Kizaki offered his arm—though partly because he intended to inject Philopon and develop the photos of Yōko and Matsuri through the night.

"To keep from touching Chimako…"

"Developing the film—he muttered to himself. But when Kizaki returned to his room, Chimako had vanished without a trace."

And when he entered the darkroom, the Leica that should have been there was nowhere to be found; in the darkness, only the luminous clock’s blue hands quietly pointed to 11:20.

Aristocracy

I

“It’s eleven twenty.” “It’s already…” When asked the time, Takako deliberately extended her plump white arm—fleshy with indulgent softness—before Harutaka.

―It was a room on the second floor of Tamura.

Takako changed her outfit five times a day, but on Saturday nights, she often adopted a casual combination of white short pants and a white dress shirt. Her boyish, charmless outfits—the proprietress of Tamura calculated—instead accentuated the allure of a woman in her forties. The limits of allure one could earn through the scarlet hue of an underrobe were all too clear—this was the firm belief of the woman who, from her days as the top hostess at a certain Ginza salon fifteen years ago to the present, had been weathered through years in the nightlife trade catering to men.

“It’s always exoticism over eroticism.”

When she ran a bar in Osaka, this was the maxim Takako had imparted to her hostesses. However, the hostesses hadn't grasped its meaning. Those who thought Ginza-style modernity would appeal in Osaka were the better cases; most simply imitated foreign film makeup, believing exoticism meant applying thick eyeshadow and heavy false eyelashes—leaving only grotesque effects and ending in failure. What Takako had meant was the allure of white short pants paired with a white dress shirt. However, for such attire to succeed, it presupposed beauty. Fortunately, Takako was beautiful. However, beauty alone did not lead to success. For beauty to succeed, her so-called exoticism was necessary. Men could bind alluring geishas with a certain amount of money. To attract them to oneself and extract unlimited funds, there remained nothing but exoticism—and within the confines of what women in the nightlife trade could conceive, Takako had mustered every last shred of her cunning.

And she had succeeded. Of course, her so-called success was that of a mistress—in other words, a shadow-dweller—which went without saying. However, in that outfit, she had failed in one thing. She hadn’t noticed that her outfit occasionally appeared comical. This was a critical oversight. At the very least, Harutaka had wanted to burst out laughing upon seeing Takako’s outfit. However, if there were such a thing as an acquired trait for a man like Harutaka, polite etiquette would barely qualify as that.

Harutaka decided to praise her watch instead of bursting into laughter. To praise the diamond ring would have required Harutaka to be less of a marquis; moreover, the diamond clashed disastrously with her carefully chosen shorts and shirt, abruptly revealing the pathetic vanity of a woman kept by patrons. The watch’s design was unconventional. “Let me see!” When he tried to peer at the watch that displayed not just hours and minutes but also dates and days of the week,

“It’s rather hard to read.”

Takako slid closer and drew her body in sharply. “Indeed, it’s rather difficult to read.”

While nodding in agreement, Harutaka had imbued the words "hard to read" with the meaning of "ugly."

II

Even Harutaka found himself exasperated when Takako suddenly thrust her coquettishness upon him. In such circumstances, Harutaka was too young to descend into vulgar flirtation. When it came to women, he was formidable, but as the lewdness and cruelty of a forty-year-old man had yet to seep into his skin—still appearing somewhat innocent—he made every effort to preserve that innocence himself. In other words, beneath the innocent sweetness that earned him nicknames like "Marquis Head-over-Heels," he concealed a womanizer's relentless persistence. He wasn’t particularly clever, but this proved he wasn’t a fool.

However, to dismiss that outward appearance of innocence as merely a mask would be too harsh. There had been calculation, but it wasn't entirely calculated through and through. Still, he blushed with an innocent, natural shyness. He blushed like a teenager. However, what differed from his teenage years was the cunning of one's twenties—fully understanding both the losses and gains inherent in the act of blushing. And Harutaka had reached the final age of his twenties. Twenty-nine—that troublesome age.

Just as Harutaka was too young, Takako was too old.

If Takako had been younger, Harutaka wouldn't have blushed so deeply. The appeal of calling someone an "old cherry blossom" lasted only until thirty-three at best. Beyond that age, even for twenty-something pride, the term became physiologically intolerable. Harutaka accepted Takako's self-reported age as thirty-two but privately estimated thirty-five or six. Yet in truth, being born in a Hinoeuma year made her forty-one this year.

It wasn't unreasonable for Harutaka to feel exasperated, but to claim he was completely exasperated would be going too far. While wearing an expression of irritation, Harutaka never once loosened his grip on Takako's plump arm as he examined the watch. And so—while calmly listening to Takako's pounding heartbeat—it must have been that lingering self-mockery within Harutaka which imbued his comment about the watch being "hard to read" with its true meaning of "ugly."

To speak of implications—while he hadn't gone so far as to let Takako's body lean against his chest, he had certainly allowed implications to linger. In shogi terms—he didn't deliver check, but preserved his attacking potential—that was his move! The opponent who would deliver check would arrive before long.

Yōko. While gauging the difference in allure between Yōko and Takako, “That’s quite a watch.” Harutaka deliberately feigned restlessness as he withdrew. Takako’s face showed no expression. The fiery gaze abruptly cooled. “This woman has her sights set on me.” The chill was so coldly mocking that it nearly made Harutaka’s self-conceit feel like a fleeting delusion.

In other words, both parties maintained impeccable attitudes. For Harutaki waiting for Yōko, and for Takako with a patron waiting downstairs...

“Then, please take your time…”

And before long, Takako left. But then, for reasons unknown, she suddenly turned back.

III

Harutaka was momentarily flustered.

Takako's shorts, pressed down by the weight of her hips, had formed creases; when she stood up, the rounded curve of her waist split into two contours identical to bare flesh, and a sudden comical yet raw sensuality swayed in her retreating figure. Her exposed legs below the knees, plump and springy, stretched taut with the smooth whiteness of a woman who had moistened her body from youth, polished by men's touch, stripped of all coarseness.

For Harutaka—who had been anxiously awaiting Yōko—the retreating figure held no particularly alluring charm, yet his gaze was nonetheless drawn to it, lingering until Takako suddenly turned back. Even he couldn't help being flustered then. Suddenly... yet however, Takako lumbered in, her voice quiet, "Next time you visit, please come alone." Though born in Hokkaido, she said this in surprisingly accentless words and quietly left again.

Takako could casually maintain relationships with multiple men simultaneously, yet as if compensating for this, she found herself unable to tolerate men who kept multiple women. Was it the belief that men who kept many women were unclean that barely sustained this woman’s own sense of purity in keeping many men? Yet whether by fortune or misfortune for her, not a single man who could satisfy this fastidiousness had ever appeared.

At the very least, men who came to Tamura rarely arrived alone. Ostensibly a restaurant, but in reality it was a rental inn specializing in trysts, so there were naturally no men who came without women. After her bar in Osaka burned down, Takako had temporarily run a secret black-market dining operation from a rented house in Ashiya’s Yamate area, but with the war’s end, she set her sights on Kyoto—a city that had escaped the fires—and purchased a defunct restaurant in Kiyamachi for the bargain price of 150,000 yen.

She invested two million yen in renovation costs and furnishings, establishing Tamura’s reputation through a layout where every room had a locked annex, tastefully elaborate decorations, black-market cuisine prepared by a top chef, morning baths, and a service where shirts removed at night were washed and pressed by morning. This shrewd management style—having discerned Kyoto’s postwar climate as a veritable city of women and pleasure—immediately hit its mark. Witnessing how Kiyamachi’s rental parlors and restaurants were thoroughly overwhelmed by this Osaka-backed capital only heightened Takako’s confidence in her water trade business, even recalling the formidable fortune of her Hinoeuma zodiac. Yet unlike her bar days, customers coming to this Tamura establishment all arrived with female companions save for banquet occasions. A man who had taken notice of this place would occasionally come alone—only to be waiting for a dancer.

With that thought—even as her establishment thrived, its lingering loneliness pressing in on her—she descended the stairs to her private quarters, deliberately slowing her steps to contain the frustration of a woman past forty who had taken many lovers, amassed wealth, yet had never once surrendered to true love. There, a yukata-clad man lay sprawled out,

“Hey, that girl’s off today. What’s wrong with her?”

IV

The one who had suddenly spoken was the only man who came to Tamura without female accompaniment—in other words, Kimiji Shōzō, from whom Takako had borrowed the two million yen for Tamura’s renovations.

Kimiji Shōzō had an unusual surname, but he was an even more eccentric man. He was perpetually, “I’m the son of a toothpick carver,” he would declare proudly. Born into lowly circumstances, he made no attempt to conceal it, yet displayed not a trace of servility. Though handsome, he never attempted to woo women himself. He had been a regular at Takako’s bar since his days as a clerk at a Kitahama stockbrokerage.

One day, a waitress, “I need to go see my mother back home because she’s ill…” and she asked him for travel expenses. He gave her twice the amount she had requested. However, it turned out that the waitress had actually returned home for an arranged marriage meeting, but Shōzō— “Visiting the sick and marriage meetings are just one character apart, but when you think about it, they’re worlds apart.” With that, he laughed. And then, when that waitress’s marriage arrangement was settled and she returned to the bar to give her notice,

“This here’s for the funeral.”

and gave her a wedding congratulatory gift. However, within less than half a year, the waitress separated from her husband and returned to her original bar. And she tried to make Shōzō her patron. He gave her money but did not lay hands on her. The woman invited him to a hotel. He reserved a separate room. The woman became the bar's laughingstock. That was his thirtieth year. Five years had passed, and Shōzō, now thirty-five, had established the Kimiji Trading Company office in post-surrender Kitahama. Wondering if he had made four or five hundred thousand yen in stocks, when Takako went to consult him about Tamura’s renovation costs, he simply said,

“When you go to Kyoto, let me stay.” With that, he provided two million yen. Takako inferred this likely meant becoming his mistress, and though she naturally assumed an air of complete understanding, Shōzō nevertheless made no attempt to court her despite visiting every Saturday night thereafter. Unable to endure it any longer, Takako finally compelled herself to seduce this handsome patron, but at that moment Shōzō declared: “I’m the son of a toothpick carver.” “I’ll give women money, but I won’t use cash to woo ’em.” “If a woman comes fallin’ for me first, then I’ll court her proper.”

Takako bristled at his fierce pride, yet something about this thirty-five-year-old man remained just beyond her comprehension. "What nonsense! The son of a toothpick carver..." "The son of a toothpick carver..." She thought this, but the razor-edged glare pressing against her was chillingly acute. His beautifully mask-like impassivity troubled her too. So when he suddenly said, "That girl's off." "What's gotten into her?"

When suddenly told this, she jolted,

“That girl…?” Had he suspected something about Kyōkichi? she wondered, secretly muttering about how she only let him stay elsewhere on Saturdays instead of at Tamura, “Yeah. “Chimako’s the thing.” “Chimako is…?”

V

“Chimako…?”

Deliberately repeating the question, Takako began taking off her white shirt. Shōzō nodded silently, read the unanswerable expression in Takako’s furrowed brows, then looked at her now-bare upper body. Under the white shirt lay no chemise, her breasts—that had once borne a child—bouncing with such youthful fullness they verged on vulgar. The child she had given birth to was Chimako. Sixteen years ago, when Takako was working at a certain salon in Ginza. At that time, Takako had many hangers-on among writers and artists,

“Come as Stendhal tomorrow.”

When told to do so, she would appear in a two-tone evening dress of "The Red and the Black,"

“Come as The Tale of Genji today.” She had been so steeped in literary affectations that she would appear in an unpatterned purple kimono when instructed this way, but the patron she chose—Himegami Ginzō—ran an Osaka ironworks and naturally had no connection to literature whatsoever. Instead, he possessed money. Takako bore Ginzō’s child. That child was Chimako. Born into poverty and entering the water trade young, Takako believed exploiting a woman’s twin assets—beauty and body—to their extremes constituted the sole path to surviving harsh realities. Through nearly identical self-preservation instincts that drove feudalistic parents to weigh family pedigree, wealth, and education in selecting daughters’ spouses, Takako became a woman who assessed men’s worth through their qualifications as patrons. And while using men, she had always regarded them as adversaries.

So even though she had given birth to Chimako, she believed she had been tricked. However, because Ginzō doted on Chimako, when his legal wife died, he was able to take her in—but by then he had already gone bankrupt. He had poured everything into a sunken ship salvage venture and failed. Abandoned by Takako, Ginzō fled to Manchuria; after his trail went cold, he unexpectedly returned to mainland Japan when the war ended as things were being settled. When Chimako saw her father—emaciated beyond recognition—come seeking refuge at Tamura, she rejoiced doubly for herself and in place of the displeased Takako, letting him stay in an empty room. But one night Ginzō confronted Takako. When Takako coldly rejected him and tried to drive him out from Tamura, Ginzō stormed off himself; a month later, having committed some unknown crime, he was transferred from Osaka’s Minami Police Station to the prosecutor’s detention center. Chimako went to deliver provisions. Takako harshly scolded her, and the eyes with which she looked at Ginzō were colder and more distant than those of a stranger. Chimako ran away from home.

In her yukata and heko obi, she fled wearing only what she had on, taking nothing with her. Perhaps due to her environment, she was a girl with somewhat delinquent tendencies and a touch of wanderlust, so Takako didn’t raise the alarm like one would for a sheltered daughter’s disappearance—though she did quietly investigate possible leads. And ten days had passed fruitlessly... Whether she had actually laid out those circumstances so frankly to Shōzō—she couldn’t say. Takako swiftly threw on her yukata and, “Chimako’s in Tokyo with a friend. There’s some arts festival or something happening. That girl’s always so whimsical...”

“This is so troublesome,” she rattled off in Tokyo dialect, whereupon Shōzō—

“Hmm.” “If it’s Tokyo, I should’ve gone there myself.” “Nah—ain’t got no business there.” “Just… goin’ with that girl’d be fun.” “How ’bout it? Won’t ya hand that girl over to me?”

VI

Takako jolted.

“You’re saying ‘Give me Chimako’—to that child…” “Are you in love—” she began, then hastily turned it into a joke. “Don’t spout nonsense, you fool. “But that girl’s interesting.” “When she sees my face, she always glares at me with those pale insulting eyes.” “When I see eyes like that—no matter how much—even if I gotta empty my whole damn fortune—I get this urge to make her mine.” “Ha ha…” Shōzō laughed a booming laugh that ill-suited his thirty-five years, but there was suddenly something hollow in its echo—and worse yet, his eyes stayed dead serious. It carried an air you couldn’t let your guard down around.

“If you just pay enough money, any woman can be yours...”

“You think that, huh?” Takako tied her yukata cord. “As long as there’s a woman like you around, ain’t all men bound to think that way?” “You’re the kinda woman who weighs men and money on the same damn scale, ain’t ya?” “You’re being awfully persistent.”

“No—I’m praisin’ ya. All women are shrewd, but there ain’t none as thorough as you. Makin’ men fork over their cash then resentin’ ’em for it—now that’s somethin’ else, ’cause of how ya are.” “Women are just like that. When men make free with their bodies—even if they’re husbands or lovers you adore—you suddenly find yourself hating them.” “In other words, you just can’t stand how much you hate someone like me, right?”

"Oh. You're different." "What kinda different?" "Let's close the curtains. It's early autumn—the river wind's getting chilly." Outside the window lay the Kamo riverbed, beyond which the lights of Miyagawachō's pleasure district still hadn't gone to sleep.

“This room’s completely visible from Miyagawachō.” “Oh, come now—” she uttered while deliberately pitching her voice younger, leaving only the blue desk lamp burning as she turned off the lights—but Shōzō pressed on with uncharacteristic tenacity, “But I’m happier being hated.” “If I wanted to be liked, why the hell would I lend you two million yen?” “Women are cheaper than pickled sardines.” “I hear there’s women in Tokyo who’ll go for a cuppa tea—status went up but market value crashed.” “You making me cough up two mill without collateral, contract, interest or deadline? Now that’s class.” “But truth is—I gave you that dough to wring out a cruelty contract from you.”

And then, with a sneer, he looked at Takako. Takako met those eyes—eyes that were pure pride—with her entire being.

Shōzō continued. “You seem to think men are vain creatures who’ll reluctantly cough up money if you poke their pride enough to avoid looking stingy—but I wasn’t reluctant.” “I gave it gladly.” “For a woman like you, doing that is the best way to… you—”

He was about to say "the best way to insult you" when a young woman's voice sounded from the entrance.

“Is Lord Notake present?”

It was Yōko.

七

When Shōzō heard Yōko's voice at the entrance—Yōko who had come to visit Harutaka—he found himself inexplicably startled.

However, why he had been startled—the reason would become clear later—but at that moment he didn't understand it. Or rather, whether he had even noticed that he himself had been startled.

"That voice sounds familiar." That electrifying nostalgia, too, hadn't fully risen to the surface of his consciousness.

“When you say Notake… you mean that Notake?” “Isn’t this Notake the Marquis Notake?” Shōzō asked. “That’s right,” Takako promptly said— “The Marquis.” “The Marquis’s young lord.” “He’s a nasty one.” And then, his pressing tone suddenly turned awkward. “Is he here?”

“He’s a nasty one.”

“Nah—what kinda nasty we talkin’? Like, what exactly makes this guy so damn unpleasant…?” “He’s been bringing in strange women…” "The one who just arrived is that very person." “Men aren’t any good unless they’re past thirty, I tell you.” Driven by an instinct she herself didn’t recognize, Takako had been tearing into Harutaka before Shōzō—though she wasn’t entirely speaking falsehoods. Within the lies lay a faint pang of genuine jealousy. Not that Takako particularly liked Harutaka to begin with. To fall wholeheartedly for a man, she was far too quick to fancy others. It was mere flirtatious impulse—yet she felt no real attraction to Harutaka either. Perhaps it simply came down to his being an aristocrat. Aristocrats’ stock had fallen. But precisely because their value had plummeted, women like Takako drew near. Women with patrons often crave affairs with men weaker than themselves. Whether Harutaka’s standing had sunk so low in Takako’s eyes—be it due to postwar sentiment or his actual poor payment habits—remained unclear. Still, Takako didn’t despise aristocrats. She’d always recalled with peculiar pride how her own name contained the character for “nobility.”

Shōzō wasn't insensitive, so he noticed Takako was speaking too harshly of Harutaka. Takako wasn't the type of woman who often spoke ill of customers. That all patrons coming to her establishment were so-called high-class guests had been Takako's proud boast, something she had particularly exaggerated to her patron Shōzō. "What's this—she got a thing for the Marquis?"

Shōzō bit his displeased lips and fell silent like lead.

And after about thirty minutes had passed, suddenly came the clattering sound of footsteps descending the stairs, and a woman’s agitated voice cried out, “Bring me my shoes!” “Ah, no need to get so angry—you can stay here, y’know.” “Where are my shoes…?” “The trains aren’t running anymore, y’know. Stay here, y’know.”

“I’m leaving． Won’t you give me my shoes？” Shōzō startled and went out into the corridor． The woman at the entrance turned around． Their eyes met．

“Ah.”

The woman suddenly fled out the entrance, still barefoot. ――It was Yōko.

Night Flower

I

Crossing Shijō Street, the rows of trees in Kiyamachi became abruptly lush—the willows along the Takase River’s banks and the plane trees lining the pavement now conspicuously verdant.

Yōko, who had fled barefoot from Tamura’s entrance and was now heading down the pavement toward Sanjō, felt relieved that there was no sign of anyone following her—yet the shock of having seen Shōzō lingered.

"I'm always running from that man!" Conscious of how the pebbles made her bare feet ache even more—painfully aware of her wretched state—Yōko muttered to herself.

The reason Yōko had fled her Tokyo home for Kyoto was, in fact, due to the man named Shōzō.

Yōko’s father, Nakaseko Kōzō, had entered the political world through his skill in caustic oratory, his profligate use of political funds, and his forceful demeanor; however, being by nature an obstinate man of unshakable confidence with a habit of belittling others, he treated upstarts like Tojo Hideki as mere juniors in politics—dismissing them with a snort and opposing them at every turn—which led to his being targeted by the Tojo faction and forced into seclusion at his Karuizawa villa, resulting in his complete downfall from the political arena. However, one day just before the war’s end, a certain Yamaya—one of Kōzō’s devotees—visited the villa from Osaka and introduced a young industrialist named Kimiji Shōzō who had accompanied him.

When Yōko brought tea, Shōzō paid no attention to her and kept chattering away by himself. “I made a profit. “I’ll make more. “Recently bought patent rights dirt cheap—this chemical brewing method makes vinegar, soy sauce, sauce... hell, even booze. “Japan’s finally gonna act on the Potsdam Declaration, see? “When that happens, I’ll clean up with this business I’m telling you about. “Back in your day too—if Japan’d raised its hands to Potsdam then, I’d have come runnin’. “Political funds? Let me handle that one.”

Kōzō had been taken aback, but when the war ended and he saw the opportunity for his political comeback had ripened, he sent a telegram to Osaka. Shōzō flew to Kōzō’s lodgings in Tokyo and abruptly declared while handing over a three-million-yen check: “Professor—any useful information?” “What I want is inside tips...and your daughter.” Though startled by Shōzō’s demand for Yōko’s hand—unclear when he’d become interested—Kōzō found himself not entirely displeased. The younger man’s sharp features backed by financial might and forceful demeanor reminded him of his own youthful ambition. Even the inconvenient matter of family lineage became manageable—the invoked “democracy” proved conveniently serviceable.

First he persuaded his wife, then tried to convince Yōko, but she too invoked democracy. And so the parent and child argued. “Papa, you claim to fight for democracy… yet you’re telling me to marry someone I despise?”

Though she thought she had gone too far，Yōko had already resolved to leave home． Her father couldn’t back down，but Yōko too was already at her wit’s end． Yōko had contemplated the difficulty of self-reliance without depending on anyone，but seeing that difficulty as the thrill of testing her own abilities，she had secretly left home for Kyoto…

The lanterns of the shiruko shop by Beniyabashi, which had been lit until late, had already gone out, leaving everything dark.

When she reached Sanjō Kobashi, Yōko was suddenly grabbed by the shoulder from behind.

II Yōko jolted. Any woman would startle if suddenly grabbed on a dark midnight street, but for Yōko, it wasn’t the act of being grabbed so much as the jolt of premonition that the man gripping her might be Shōzō. She found it strange how intensely she feared Shōzō. She had fled Tamura barefoot for the same reason. If she had been fleeing to escape Harutaka’s temptation, she would have made them properly hand over her shoes and left. She had possessed that much dignity. However, when she saw Shōzō, she had ended up making such a spectacle of herself—being barefoot, a disgrace she wouldn’t want anyone to witness even from the standpoint of her own dignity—what had she done?

The panic of having been discovered by Shōzō—the very person she least wanted knowing she'd fled to Kyoto—was undeniable, yet this too stemmed from feeling fundamentally no match for the man. It was as though some searing, tenacious force were swallowing her whole. So when hands gripped her shoulders from behind, she thought—Shōzō— But turning, she found a policeman. “What’re you doing…?”

“Hah…?” In that instant, she couldn’t grasp his meaning.

“What are you doing out at this hour?” “I’m walking.”

When she answered irritably, the policeman too grew irritated, “I know you’re walking.” “I never said you were asleep.” “What’s your reason for walking… huh?” “I’m going home.” “Where’s home…?” “The apartment behind the Kyoto Hotel.”

From an unconscious desire not to let Shōzō know her whereabouts, she gave Matsuri’s apartment as her address. “What’ve you been up to until now…?” “I was attending my friend’s wake.” “What’s your line of work…?”

“My friend is a dancer.” “I’m asking about your line of work.” “I’m a dancer.”

“Why aren’t you wearing shoes…?” Half out of irritation, Yōko’s tone took on a teasing quality, but she gradually grew uneasy. She’d heard there were women who’d been mistaken for streetwalkers and detained just for walking late at night. “When I dance, my feet get unbearably hot. If there’s a train, I put on my shoes to go home, but walking barefoot feels better.”

“What happened to your shoes…? Aren’t you carrying them?” “I left them at my friend’s apartment.” “Where’s this apartment?” “The Kyoto Hotel’s… No, Marutamachi.”

“If you came from Marutamachi, you should be walking in the opposite direction. Come!”

The policeman suddenly grabbed Yōko's arm and took her toward Sanjō Ōhashi.

At the foot of the bridge waited a truck loaded with women—every last one of them looked like black-market women.

III That this was the truck transporting arrested black-market women to the police station became clear to her with a single glance. “That’s not true. I’m…” “I’m...” Yōko started to say she wasn’t a prostitute, but the policeman didn’t respond, “Hup! One more!” “That’s the one!” Voices from the truck responded, and Yōko was piled up as easily as luggage. The streetlamp at the base of the bridge shone with a cold bluish-white glow like gaslight, and within the light pouring down through willow leaves, tiny insects swarmed and danced. From atop the truck, Yōko suddenly gazed at them, and in that instant felt a loneliness so vast it made her dizzy.

The monotonous rush of the Kamo River’s murmuring cast something like the reverberation of anxious regret into Yōko’s chest, but soon it was drowned out by the engine’s clamor as the truck began to move.

When the truck crossed the bridge, it suddenly took a sharp curve. The instant it did, Yōko remembered Matsuri. Yōko had become a dancer because she met Matsuri. However, her direct motive held nothing romantic. In truth, one might say that while living in Kyoto lodgings after running away from home, it was February’s bleak Financial Emergency Ordinance announcement that forced Yōko into dancing. Having hidden her destination from her family and needing to conceal her background in Kyoto, she had intentionally brought neither transfer certificate nor ration book. Therefore, she could neither exchange old yen for new yen nor withdraw living funds from her ration book. When the deadline for old yen circulation arrived, Yōko panicked at realizing she couldn’t even ride the train—let alone pay her lodging fees.

The newspaper had published Kōzō’s opposition to the blockade. Yōko felt this agreement keenly, yet when she recalled how just a month earlier her father had been telling everyone he met that blockade measures were the only way to prevent inflation—it perplexed her to think this principled man might now swallow not just moral ambiguities but even outright contradictions of black and white to improve his electoral prospects. She couldn’t tell whether this was clever or not, but sensing that even her father—alongside Hatoyama Ichirō—had let some fundamental restraint slip away, he seemed disinclined to slink back home with his tail between his legs.

"If Papa discovers my runaway plans were ruined by the currency blockade, he might revert to supporting those restrictions." The sarcasm slipped out bitter on her tongue. Yet when she'd first stumbled into that studio salon and confided in Matsuri—this woman who'd materialized like salvation amidst curling irons and hairspray—Yōko had been truly desperate. Dance had been her secret language since fifteen summers. What finally let her self-respect stomach trading steps for new yen was Matsuri's granite certainty—how she'd loved dance enough to drown in it yet kept herself pristine as shrine water amidst cabaret smoke.

Therefore, Yōko had relied on Matsuri, and that was precisely why Matsuri’s death had plunged her into utter loneliness. Matsuri too had relied on Yōko.

"And yet, I can't even go to her wake."

As she wavered between two irretrievable emotions, the truck soon arrived at the police station.

IV

When she got off the truck, Yōko was placed directly into the detention center alongside the black-market women. She had resigned herself to being suspected—if only for walking barefoot through the midnight streets—yet still clung to optimism that reaching the police station would bring immediate release. That very resignation made her feel beyond tears when passing through the detention center's narrow opening. The cramped immobility, the filth, the unbearable stench—all proved intolerable, but most wretched of all was being unable to attend Matsuri's wake.

All of this was because she'd gone to Tamura, she realized with belated regret—and along with it, Kyōkichi's face surfaced in her mind.

“Stay away from Tamura! Don’t go!” Kyōkichi had tried to stop her, she had been concerned about the wake, and Notake Harutaka’s trap—using his discovery of her background as bait—had been so trite and vulgar that it was transparently obvious. Yet she had deliberately walked into that snare precisely to make Harutaka keep silent. If the secret of her dancing in Kyoto were to escape Harutaka’s mouth and reach her father’s ears, there was a danger he might drag her back by force. Moreover, amidst enduring the hardships of runaway life lay a clandestine thrill in nobody knowing her true origins. Should it become material for the newspapers, that would be tedious, and she also feared it might damage her father’s political standing.

One reason was that Yōko’s contrariness—her impulse to rebel against Kyōkichi’s commanding attempt to stop her—had directed her feet toward Tamura. Yet that same contrariness suddenly stirred in her the desire to prolong her arrival at Tamura as much as possible—to make Harutaka wait.

“I beg you. Please don’t tell anyone...” “Please don’t tell anyone...” She didn’t want to bring along the wretchedly panicked version of herself that had instinctively pleaded in the dancehall. She had wanted—at least initially—to rebel against Harutaka’s confidence that she would surely come. The instinct unique to women—that keeping someone waiting was advantageous—had unconsciously taken hold. Therefore, upon leaving Jūbankan, Yōko first made a deliberate detour to a nearby restaurant called Sushitsune. The owner of Sushitsune was an eccentric man who went to the dancehall every night to dance until closing, then leisurely opened his shop to make sushi. Since preparations took time, even when dancers returning from the hall intentionally arrived late, they still ended up waiting considerably. Yet dancers frequented this establishment because they received free sushi coupons from the owner instead of tickets.

Finally leaving Sushitsune, Yōko went to Tamura, but when she was shown into Harutaka’s room, it was thick with cigarette smoke that spoke of how long he had been kept waiting.

And that Yōko now recalled even such things was perhaps because the young girl sitting curled up beside her in the detention cell had abruptly started smoking a cigarette—when had she even brought it in? “Sis, want a puff?” The young girl in a sloppily worn yukata spoke to Yōko. It was Chimako.

V “Me…?” “I don’t want any.” When Yōko refused, Chimako thrust out her half-smoked cigarette, “No need t’hold back. If ya don’t puff quick, Japa’ese cigs’ll vanish on ya…” She didn’t act like someone in detention. “It’s all right. I can’t smoke, you know.” “Huh…?” “So proper, ain’tcha?”

At Chimako’s words, Yōko smiled. In truth, when she had gone to Tamura, Harutaka had said similar words—she now remembered this… “Would you care for a cigarette? Please do.” “I can’t smoke…” “Really…? How proper of you.”

Harutaka had said that while holding a beer bottle, "Though... if it were you..." "Oh my, I couldn't possibly."

“I see.” “Well, I shouldn’t press you then… But you truly can’t drink?” “If it’s just a little… you would drink, right…?” “Just half… I’ll only pour that much.” “Is it wrong if I make you drink?” “I’m not particularly fond of it either.” While exercising meticulous consideration, he nevertheless demonstrated persistence, his thin lips moving in ceaseless prattle. “Are you going to Tokyo?” “Yes, tomorrow.”

“Even if you go… won’t you please not tell anyone about me…?” “About tonight’s matter…?” Harutaka had already grown conceited. “No, what you mentioned in the hall…”

“Ah, that matter…”

“If someone were to find out, I’d have to vanish again.” “Then I wouldn’t be able to dance at Jubankan anymore, would I?”

Yōko was clever enough to wield such killer lines. “No, it’s quite all right.” “Ha ha….” “Let’s keep this strictly between ourselves.” “Then, a toast!” “I can’t. Really…” “Really…” “I see.” “Then, how about dinner…?”

“I’ve already eaten.” Harutaka felt his interest wane—was that why she was late? Who had she eaten with?—but he considered Yōko’s delayed arrival an unexpected boon. He called the maid and, “Can we get a car…?” “If there’s no car, this lady can’t go home.” “At this hour, you think we can just summon a car?”

The maid had seen through Harutaka's intentions—which would have been troublesome—and this showed her competence, but her excessive diligence left her ignorant of how Harutaka was gradually planning methods to detain Yōko, and in the blink of an eye, she threw open the fusuma door to the adjoining room with a brisk "Right this way."

An andon-style lamp stood with two pillows arranged side by side. Now was not the time to reveal this! The instant Harutaka furrowed his brow, Yōko abruptly bolted from the room. For Yōko—who had nearly missed her chance to depart—the maid's intervention proved fortuitous, but what came after... Shōzō in the corridor, bare feet, policemen, the detention cell...

"Oh, this horrible Saturday!"

As she instinctively pressed her forehead, “Hey sis, want some candy?” Chimako addressed her again.

Six

Yōko stared at Chimako in exasperation. The heko-obi sash must have been confiscated during her detention. Though the sagging hem of her yukata kept slipping from where she'd wrapped it around her raised knee, it somehow avoided looking slovenly—likely owing to the un-powdered cleanliness of her skin and the keen glint in her eyes that held a bluish clarity. The dimpled smile she finally managed to smirk still betrayed traces of an innocent girl. Such a cute kid…

Yōko was astonished by the audacity of secretly bringing cigarettes and candies into the detention center. “While I was ridin’ in the truck, I’d just sneak ’em into the seams of my yukata.” Chimako stuck out her tongue playfully and swiftly passed Yōko a piece of candy. Yōko remembered Matsuri. “Sis, you’re pretty for a ‘black girl’.”

“Black Girl……?”

She didn’t immediately grasp the meaning,

"Oh..." "That’s not it." "It was a mistake." "I knew it." Chimako looked around inside the detention center,

“You’re way different from the riffraff around here, I thought.” “That woman over there—she’s a repeat offender who was supposed to be in the hospital, but every night she sneaks out to do her business.” “If she’s in the hospital, her parents can’t be supported, they say.” “First, unless they find work for her parents, that woman’s illness will never heal.” “If I were the cops, I’d hand out fifty yen every day while that woman’s in the hospital.” “Then she’d actually feel like gettin’ better, right?” “But d’you think even cops make fifty yen a day?”

“That’s right—you’re quite clever, aren’t you? Smarter than any politician.” “If I were smart, everyone in Japan would be geniuses. I know what’d make things better—if certain folks didn’t show up. Not like those idiot politicians. But if they actually had to think ’bout every single person here? They’d be too busy to go speechifyin’. So they don’t think ’bout nobody ’cept themselves. Me—I’m a dummy. If I wasn’t, I’d be no better’n a thief. Can’t even manage to screw up right.”

“Did you steal…?” “Yeah, messed it up good.” adopting a hoodlum’s tone, “A daughter turns thief tryin’ to save her old man rotting in prison—that’s dumber than shovin’ miso into a sake bottle.” “But with no proper jar around, had to cram it into whatever flask I could find.”

“What on earth did you steal…?” “Camera!”

“Hmm.” Yōko suddenly remembered Kizaki and realized she had momentarily forgotten she was in a detention center. “Since he had such a fancy camera, I figured he wouldn’t care if I swiped something like this—so I followed him all the way to his apartment and came back laughing about it.” “So I got caught.” “You… laughed…?” “If you’re gonna laugh, you might as well steal!”

And Chimako cackled.

Seven

“Shut up.” “Enough already.” The lanky woman—her elongated frame tossing restlessly in cramped discomfort—furrowed her brows at Chimako’s laughter. The detention center’s dull light cast a bluish hue on the swelling that had formed beside her left eyebrow. If that rubbery protrusion meant what it seemed, then perhaps the cursed poison had reached its terminal phase. In a voice rasping like mercury-scorched vocal cords: “Who laughs like they’re havin’ a ball in the pigpen? Can’t catch a damn wink with this ruckus.”

“Just bear with it, will ya?”

Chimako said in an exaggerated Kyoto dialect but immediately switched back to Osaka dialect,

“If it’s too noisy, why don’t you go into a solitary cell? This isn’t your own personal detention center. A free hotel—how luxurious!” “What’s this? Say that again, I dare you!”

With that, the woman lurched upright,

“Who the hell do you think I am?!” She was a woman nicknamed Buddhist Altar Oharu who had spent twenty years as an unlicensed prostitute. Now she looked too aged to pass for under forty no matter how she lied about her years—but in her youth, she’d made such waves that men had sold off their ancestral Buddhist altars in infatuation. She was cut from different cloth than you bridge-stall girls lining Shijo like market wares—these words from Oharu left Yōko wide-eyed, but Chimako fired back undaunted.

“If you’re Butsudan Oharu, then I’m O-Chima of the Heko Obi.” “O-Chima of the Heko Obi might sell fights, but she don’t sell her body.” “When they ask my age, I laugh and say seventeen—that cute girl’s Heko Obi O-Chima! She’ll sell a fight but never her body—don’t you know the Fry are singing that all over the Center?” From Sanjō-Kawaramachi to Shijō and Kyōgoku—in Kyoto’s Center—Chimako hummed the song the delinquent students known as the Fry were singing, but suddenly, with an “Ahh,” her voice took on a self-mocking edge,

“Honestly, parents who’ve got a daughter like me are in for one hell of a time.”

Everyone laughed at the way she said it. Oharu laughed too as she turned her rumpled back to them and lay down, but the moment she felt her bony body against the detention center’s unyielding floor, she suddenly thought of her mother. Her mother was already seventy—she likely wouldn’t last another three years—but the time when she herself could no longer earn a living would probably come even sooner than that. As long as a woman remained a woman—no matter how ugly, filthy, or even past fifty—she could always earn her keep through men. Yet even Oharu’s confidence in this belief wavered abruptly when she considered her disease-ridden body.

“You’ll all end up like me. In the end, you’ll have nothing left to sell but your bones.” Butsudan Oharu let out an odd sigh— “Ahh—” —but by then no one laughed anymore. They all fell utterly silent, heads hanging low.

However, Chimako’s eyes glinted sharply, and she suddenly brought her mouth close to Yōko’s ear.

“Sis, will you listen to my request…?”

Eight

“I might as well hear you out.”

Yōko smiled, feeling nostalgic warmth at Chimako’s whisper in her ear. That she felt a masculine sort of nostalgia toward this self-proclaimed “Heko Obi O-Chima” delinquent girl—was it detention-center loneliness making her crave human connection? No—rather, it was precisely Chimako’s lack of delinquent qualities that had drawn Yōko’s interest. One reason lay in her secret curiosity about how this girl had stolen a camera. “Really… you’ll do it for me?”

“Yes, what is it…?” “I want ya to go see the person I stole the camera from, will ya?” “Huh…?” “Hey… will ya go for me…?”

She pressed her body closer in a coaxing manner. "But I can’t just run away from here." "However, sis, since you’re not a real black girl, they’ll let you out first thing tomorrow." "Since I’m a thief, it’s no good for me, but sis, you’re a dove." At the brightness in Chimako’s voice as she declared that flying free made one a dove, Yōko too felt a light kindle in her heart with relief, "So, once we’re out of here, you want me to do this errand for you—is that it?"

“*Mochi-course*…” *Mochi-course* came from “mochiron” (meaning “of course”), and “course” was from “of course” (mochiron). Putting them together, it apparently meant *Mochi’s Logic*. “Even if the detectives ask me, I ain’t gonna confess to stealing that camera. I’ll stick to my story that it was just something I was holding onto.” “That lie will wear off quickly, surely.” When Yōko looked exasperated，Chimako fidgeted impatiently. “That’s why I’m askin’ you to go，ain’t I? Sis，if you go to that person’s place and convince ’em that camera was just somethin’ I was holdin’ onto，then that’ll do，ain’t it?”

“Hmm.” “But will he agree to it?” “He’s a good guy—he’ll help me out.” “Got a bit of a scary side, but he’s kind at heart.” “I still regret stealing his camera, y’know.” “Where is he…?” “Will you go…?” “First tell me where he is—” When she pressed urgently with “Just tell me,” Chimako finally named the place—

"A person named Mr. Kizaki…" "Kizaki…?" The Ming-style typeface of "Kizaki Saburō" on the business card from Rumi suddenly flashed through Yōko's mind. "Hey… will you go…?"

“I’ll go. “And that camera…?” “It spent the night with the cops (police)! “If you sold it, it’d fetch 15,000 yen in new yen from the cops (police), but…”

Chimako spat out the words.

Big Brother

I

The night of decadence gave way, and Sunday morning arrived. The town was already steeped in decadence.

Particularly on Saturdays in Kyoto, when nights like the pale glow of noctiluca shimmering eerily at the swamp's depths unfolded into boulevards of Flowers of Evil, and countless unsavory events became stained with the lurid hue of poisonous pollen released from decadence's pistils—was this description an exaggeration?

For example, as far as we know, last night—that is, Saturday night…. The moment Kizaki’s Leica—positioned on the stairs of Cabaret Jubankan’s hall—snapped its shutter at a nocturnal pose titled *Hall Scene*, dancer Matsuri collapsed! Potassium cyanide! Kyōkichi! At the Higashiyama apartment Seikan-sō, Sakamoto the Philopon-addicted accordionist’s wife fled, and Chimako—disguised as a black-market woman with a heko obi—stole Kizaki’s Leica and escaped.

At Tamura—run by Chimako’s mother—dancer Yōko, who had come to visit the lecherous Marquis Notake Harutaka, fled barefoot the moment she spotted Takako’s patron Kimiji Shōzō in the hallway, only to be mistaken for a black-market woman and detained—where Chimako happened to be in the same detention cell alongside Buddhist Altar Oharu and disease… And then, various women—in a manner befitting Kyoto, the city of women—spent the weekend night as either one-night wives or Saturday Ladies, and come Sunday morning on Kawaramachi Street, the men from the previous night were pestered by their children into hastily buying toy jeeps. Those happy faces!

So rather than seeing couples on Saturday nights, one felt a sudden pang of envy upon seeing parent-child pairs on Sunday mornings. Especially for a man like Kyōkichi...

Though it was morning, it was already close to noon. Having left Matsuri’s apartment, Kyōkichi walked through the bustle of Kawaramachi Street with a desolate expression. Kyōkichi had no memory of his parents. With neither siblings nor relatives, he had been raised by his grandmother—but when he was in his third year of junior high school, that grandmother too passed away, his last remaining blood relative, leaving him completely alone in the world. His rootless existence readily adapted to a wandering life; he couldn’t settle into any job he took, and even now he remained without steady employment. Yet from age sixteen—when a widow ten years his senior initiated him into womanhood—until this day, drifting between women drawn to his beauty, solitary circumstances, and selfless demeanor, he had gained unshakable confidence that no matter what befell him, this face alone would ensure women kept him fed.

In appearance, he was a happy man—but what was this loneliness? Was it because seeing the parent-child pairs on Sunday morning had suddenly made him aware of his solitude, or…? He had drifted from woman to woman—or rather, been passed between them—but he had never known love. He was liked by everyone, but he liked no one. Was that the source of this emptiness? Yet one could not definitively claim that beneath that hollowness didn’t lie Yōko’s failure to appear at last night’s wake.

With a sullen face, when he reached the front of the Asahi Building in Sanjō-Kawaramachi, Kyōkichi suddenly—

“Big Bro”

he was called out to.

II

Being called "Bro," Kyōkichi was startled. The only one who should be calling him “Bro” was Chimako, the daughter of Tamura’s mama, but Chimako had run away ten days prior and remained missing. Kyōkichi considered that perhaps Chimako had gone to Osaka to visit or deliver items to her father, who was in Osaka Detention Center. However, there was also a man who claimed to have seen Chimako on Shijō Avenue yesterday. So then, wondering if she had indeed returned to Kyoto after all, Kyōkichi swiftly glanced toward the source of the voice—but it wasn’t Chimako.

In front of the Asahi Building, a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl had set out her shoeshine tools and crouched there, looking up at Kyōkichi with a nostalgic gaze. Ah, right—there had been another girl here who called him Bro—Kyōkichi remembered and approached. "What, it's you?" Kyōkichi—always stylish—had always had that girl polish his shoes; but as she hadn't shown up at that spot for about half a month now, he'd found it strange.

“Yeah.” “It’s me.” “Big Bro, I came back again.” “You actually remembered little ol’ me, huh?”

The girl looked happy. Her accent was Tokyo dialect, but with Osaka and Kyoto inflections tangled together—as if voicing this rootless girl’s wanderings. “Where’ve you been…?” As he took out his shoes and briskly worked the brush,

“They took me in.” “Did you do something wrong?” “Nuh-uh. Got caught in a vagrant roundup, you know. I was put in a temple in Neyagawa.” “Did you run away?” “Yeah.”

Stopping the hand that had been applying cream, she looked up and grinned. “Still, shoeshining’s better.”

When she laughed, her beautifully aligned teeth stood out strikingly white. Her slightly red-rimmed eyes were wide and clear, and though smudged with grime, her irresistibly captivating cuteness remained unchanged from before. But in the half-month since he’d last seen her, she had become completely emaciated. When he mentioned that, “They let me take baths though, but I was so starving I nearly passed out in there.” “Couldn’t stand being in a place like that.” The temple-run institution had no charm whatsoever to retain this girl with her nomadic disposition, but as if compensating for that lack, there seemed to be an abundance of unbearably unpleasant things.

“I kinda missed the Center, y’know.” “Even sleeping rough’s better if you can eat your fill.” “Yeah. Plus, if I stayed at the institution, I wouldn’t get to see you…”

“Huh…?” “I… I wanted t’see you, Bro.”

III

“To me…? Why…?” When he inadvertently asked if she had wanted to see him— “’Cause I like ya. Bro, I like ya.” The shoeshine girl stopped polishing and stared at Kyōkichi with feverish eyes, her voice dripping with coquetry. Kyōkichi’s face went blank with bewilderment. That face—which sometimes made him look like a bitter thirty-year-old man—would transform when startled into something delicate and innocent, like a twelve-year-old boy’s. No—rather, a girl’s. It was his reflexive reaction to surprise.

No—rather than surprise, it was an unbearable sense of puzzlement. It resembled a baby’s astonishment at seeing a moving toy. Like a dog led before a mirror, there was something hollow yet fresh about this surprise.

"What on earth does this mean?" "Why does it end up like this?" In this state of humble nakedness, he tilted his head, posing the question to himself—or rather, to nature itself—while maintaining an unadorned simplicity. Within his thick-skinned nerves, Kyōkichi harbored a naive childlike sensitivity—unclothed by the conceptual garb that transforms everything into known facts through the aid of worn-out, clichéd words like a tattered fifty-sen note.

For example, when his grandmother had died, it had been like that. When Matsuri had collapsed last night, he too had been left bewildered. And even now... the unbecomingly feverish eyes of the twelve-year-old girl were utterly perplexing. Moreover, for some reason, they held an inexplicably mysterious charm. “Bro, switch to your right foot!”

Bewildered, Kyōkichi hurriedly extended his right foot when told by the girl. The reason he always had her start polishing his left foot first was likely due to his dance habit of leading with his left foot. “Ah, that’s enough already.”

When he saw the sweat on the nose of the girl polishing his shoes more meticulously than usual, he felt sorry for her and tried to pay, “I don’t need money.” “Bro, I’ll do yours for free.”

Panting heavily, the girl said.

“It’s not a hall, or rather—even if it were a hall, I’m done dancing for free.”

He said he’d pay and rummaged through his pockets, but there was no trace of his wallet.

“What the—I’ve been pickpocketed!” He gave a wry smile but showed no sign of sorrow, “I’ll pay you back all at once tomorrow, so lend it to me for now.” “Sorry, sorry.” “Well, see ya…” He started walking and tried to cross Sanjō Street, but when a jeep came, he stopped and waited.

“Bro!” The girl caught up and clung to his arm.

“I’m coming with you!” “…………” As he watched the jeep that had rounded Sanjō Street’s corner shrink into the distance toward Rokkaku Street in Kawaramachi, “We can cross now. Bro, c’mon, let’s cross!” The girl pulled Kyōkichi’s hand as they crossed, “Bro… don’tcha wanna walk with me…?”

4 Repeating "Bro" every other word to the point of annoyance seemed to be a pleasant habit for the girl. Yet did it suddenly take on that pitiable tone because of her loneliness? It was like the refrain of a melancholy love song she had learned during over a year's time spent drifting and wandering.

At the very least, to Kyōkichi’s ears, it rang with a sorrowful tone. It was Kyōkichi who understood better than anyone the rhythm—like a stagnant waterwheel—of solitude and wandering. So, “Bro… don’t you wanna walk with me…?” As she spoke these words, peering in to gauge his expression, the twelve-year-old girl’s emotions felt more immediate and legible than the soft warmth of a thirty-year-old woman’s shoulder casually pressing against him—and in her speech’s faint accent, rootless and unanchored to any hometown, he sensed a nostalgia so sharp it stung.

But even so, what on earth were this girl’s feverish eyes about?

“If you walk with me, you’ll get kidnapped!”

Kyōkichi said while walking side by side. “Yeah, Bro, kidnap me!” “Let’s take a train and go somewhere. We’d stay at farmhouses with cow sheds and watermills, camp under star-filled skies watching meteors streak by while listening to radios blaring from house eaves, get off at some random small station only to find a tiny town where dirty movie theater posters list familiar accordion players who got kicked out of dancehalls—seeing those names would make tears well up from nostalgia—then wind up at rundown hot spring inns where we can’t pay the bill, so Bro gets hired as a tout and you get hired as a switchboard operator…”

“Kidnap me, Bro! Kidnap me!” Kyōkichi’s eyes involuntarily moistened, but the girl’s eyes were also wet. Amid the bustle of Kawaramachi Street, Kyōkichi grew sentimental enough to abruptly speak of his nostalgia for travel. But had this sudden urge to wander off with the girl really arisen from spite toward Yōko, who hadn’t come to Matsuri’s wake last night?

Yōko must have been seduced. She stayed at Tamura. That's why she couldn't come. Though he had known many women, Kyōkichi had never once fallen in love. While having relationships with women, he had clung to the dream that love would be reserved for a more splendid woman. And he felt he could fall in love with Yōko. No—it might already have become love. At the very least, he felt a nostalgia tinged with something like romantic affection. That was why, though he danced with other dancers, he never tried to dance with Yōko. To embrace her in dance would make her too much a virgin in his eyes. Into his dance techniques—those physically irresistible to any woman—he alone didn't want to drag Yōko.

“Even if I wanted to kidnap you, I don’t got the cash.”

Of course she didn’t have any either… he thought with a wry smile. But then she said, “I’ve got money. Inflation’s hit today.”

Five Kyōkichi burst out laughing.

He didn’t know how much she had, but the money she’d earned shining shoes couldn’t amount to much anyway. The girl’s way of saying “I’ve got inflation today” instantly blew away Kyōkichi’s gloom from the night before, and as he burst out laughing, the idea of wandering off took on a new kind of thrill. His spite toward Yōko made him impulsively think of taking to the road—this reckless abandon born of impulse: could it stem from being twenty-three yet prematurely jaded, from his lack of education, or from some ingrained wildness driving these shallow impulses? In any case, Kyōkichi’s emotions—whirling and shifting with each circumstance—made the Kyoto towns and streets that had seemed so captivating until yesterday suddenly feel repulsive.

"Just because you didn't burn, you're acting all high and mighty. What the hell is this Kyoto?! Kyoto's nothing but hidden wartime stockpiles. Thanks to hoarding it without using any up, it's like the value shot up. Originally, it was only worth three pennies."

Though Kyōkichi grabbed the girl’s hand to flee, his feet naturally headed east along Kawaramachi Street toward Café Saint-Louis in a cluttered back alley—what on earth had come over him?

"Saint-Louis" was Kyōkichi's nest, and there were days he would hole up there from morning till night. That he thought to stop by before bidding farewell to Kyoto—was this lingering attachment to the city after all? Yet while Saint-Louis stood within Kyoto, it was not of Kyoto. The café's managers were Ashiya madams—these same Ashiya madams who had once epitomized the bourgeois leisured housewives of the Hanshin region now found themselves driven into a harsh new yen existence, stripped of all shame and decorum, reduced to hanging dressmaking school signs and scheming over coffee shop partnerships.

Kyoto was said to be the mistress of Osaka and Ashiya. However, when her patrons Osaka and Ashiya burned to ashes, this mistress suddenly rejuvenated, replaced her listless old shoji screens, and transformed into Japan’s greatest beauty. And the legal wives of Osaka and Ashiya found themselves having to do business with their husbands’ former mistresses. It was a pitiful situation of choosing survival over dignity, yet Saint-Louis—for a women-run establishment—was riddled with haphazard gaps and devoid of shrewd efficiency. Still, it carried the legal wives’ inherent grace, even sneering at other Kyoto-run cafés,

“I’m sick of Kyoto.” Saint-Louis was indeed the perfect place for Kyōkichi to make such a declaration. When he pushed open the gold-lettered door, the ten-tube all-wave receiver picked up a San Francisco broadcast—the music’s string ensemble flowed into a delicate curve, and Kyōkichi’s feet instantly started moving to the rhythm. But,

“Kyō-kun, the call just went through!”

“Who from…?” “Yōko-san!”

When he heard this, he stopped short.

Six “Oh. It’s her.”

He had deliberately feigned indifference at the thought that the call might be from Yōko, but even so, there was a sweet turmoil in his chest. “Kyō-kun’s *Liebe*…? “*Madam*, or *Mädchen*…?” “My darling, ne?”

Natsuko, inside the bartender’s counter, spoke foreign words that seemed ready to trip her tongue in a gravelly voice, and clumsily thumped Kyōkichi’s shoulder. Without noticing the girl Kyōkichi had brought glaring at her with a fierce glare, she suddenly let out a shrill laugh. Her voice was loud, her gestures exaggerated—it was a laugh that didn’t quite fit her. She wore an indigo kimono with subdued elegance but had wrapped a vivid crimson turban around her head—a mismatch akin to her laughter.

However, ever since Natsuko began boldly wrapping this turban, she suddenly became buoyant in spirit. She couldn't help finding herself strange.

Natsuko's husband was a dentist who rented a small room in a building near Ebisubashi in Osaka for his clinic and commuted daily from Ashiya. Natsuko had married the dentist while mocking his profession, but his very shabbiness had ironically ushered her into the circle of Ashiya's petit bourgeois leisured madams. However, Natsuko had always been reserved by nature, and even after her drafted husband died in the war, she remained a woman suited to a life of modest widowhood—living with her six-year-old son, her old-fashioned mother-in-law, and her returned-home sister-in-law. Her hoarse, gravelly voice and her disproportionately large, protruding nose surprisingly did not contradict her lonely chastity.

After the clinic where she had hired a locum to manage burned down in an air raid—along with stockpiled expensive medicines, machines, and materials—and her deposits were frozen, even when she eventually opened a café jointly with friends, she still spent many days gloomily shut away in her Ashiya home, thinking about her husband. However, Chiyowaka—the geisha from Pontochō who occasionally came to Saint-Louis to meet her patron—had apparently lived in Osaka’s Minami area until being displaced by the bombings. As they chatted about various things around Ebisubashi in Osaka, Natsuko realized: “Wait—not only do I know that dentist—why, he was my own husband!”

When she asked in shock, she learned that her husband had relationships not only with Chiyowaka but also with numerous geishas and waitresses. Chiyowaka had apparently been cast aside with ease. “He was famous for his broomwork.” “To think he had such a proper wife all along…” When Natsuko realized she had been her former husband’s legal wife all along, she turned deathly pale while listening to Chiyowaka vent grievances on her behalf too—yet it was not long after this that she began wearing a turban.

She had grown strangely close to Chiyowaka—the days she returned to Ashiya grew fewer, and she’d suddenly become prone to fits of laughter... Kyōkichi hated women with shrill laughs. Grimacing, “When’d she call?”

“Does it bother you? Ohoho... “Approximately five minutes ago!” Natsuko mimicked an information broadcast, “But she said in a desperate voice that she’d call again shortly, so when Kyō-kun arrives, please have him wait.”

Seven “Hmph.” Kyōkichi spoke in a mockingly dismissive tone, but still—wondering what Yōko could want—his chest stirred uneasily. Kyōkichi knew nothing of Yōko’s background. He didn’t even know where she lived. Yōko hadn’t known either that Kyōkichi was staying at Tamura. Their interactions had been limited to brief exchanges at Jubankan. That Yōko even knew calling Saint-Louis would reach him already struck Kyōkichi as strange. Of course, she had never called before.

Precisely because of that, it was an unexpected joy, and his chest had begun to warm—but chiding himself for growing sentimental over it would be weak-willed, so Kyōkichi sharply doused the notion with cold water.

“It’s only been a day.” “That’s gross.” The dream was shattered. Whenever she danced with someone, he recalled through the sensibilities of a thirty-year-old man—Yōko’s habit of firmly pulling in her chin, slightly thrusting out her lower lip as she closed her mouth; the faint cherry-blossom translucence of her thin ears; the fragile, frustrated curve from her hairline downward, untouched by men—and raw jealousy resurfaced anew.

“I’m leaving.”

“Aren’t you going to take the call…?”

“I ain’t no pimp.” “What in the world’s a ‘pimp’? So it’s like an out-of-focus photo…?” Natsuko wasn’t “playing innocent.” Her giggling frolics with Chiyowaka had taken on a frivolous air that made her suddenly resemble a delinquent madam, yet she remained fundamentally untouched. Though she felt thrills, she feared sullying herself and knew nothing of such matters—a delinquent madam in appearance alone. She watched through astonished eyes as her two co-managers neatly compartmentalized their lives: participating in demonstrations for detainee repatriation while bedding customers on trips to Ōtsu.

“Out of focus…?” “Ha ha….” “Waiting for some dawn-returning dame’s call makes you either an out-of-focus shot or a two-bit pimp.” “That ain’t my style.” “Oh, dear.” “Are you really leaving…?”

“When she calls, tell her I’m already gone from Kyoto.” “Really? That’s it? I was thinking of having you join the Liberal Club. You know about it, right? The Liberal Club. You can’t join without a companion. A couple—isn’t that lovely? Ohoho...”

It was an ill-timed, raucous laugh.

“A couple? Hmph,” he snorted derisively. “Couples are meant for journeys. A journey needs company; a night needs compassion.” Kyōkichi delivered this flippantly as he grabbed the girl’s hand to leave— “Behold! The dawn return from the Eastern Sea!”—humming the line as they departed.

Humming to himself, he left.

To Tokyo.

I

He woke to voices from the next room. When he looked at the bedside clock, it was already ten. However, for Shōzō, it was still ten o'clock. Shōzō normally slept only about four hours, but on Sundays he made it a habit to sleep soundly until nearly evening. It was about stockpiling sleep. Tamura happened to be perfectly suited for this purpose. First of all, Takako's body had a peculiar temperature and odor with an ether-like effect that lulled Shōzō to sleep. He would fall soundly asleep. For busy Shōzō, she was a woman he mustn't meet except on Saturdays - and one invaluable for stockpiling Sunday sleep.

So waking at ten o'clock was unusual for him. However, it wasn't the voices from the next room that had disturbed his sleep. If not that, then what could it have been? What awakened him was his self-esteem and passion. Or rather, for him, self-esteem and passion meant one and the same. His self-esteem alone generated his passion. And now, this passion focused entirely on Yōko. The reason he'd asked Yōko's father Nakaseko Kōzō to give him Yōko was because of the haughty expression she'd shown Shōzō during his first visit to Kōzō. Yōko's brows had furrowed. Yōko—who maintained clear-cut likes and dislikes—could feel no goodwill toward a man of Shōzō's type. The self-esteem saturating every fiber of Shōzō's being had likely repelled Yōko, herself inherently strong in self-esteem. The toothpick craftsman's son exaggeratedly believed he'd been insulted. And it was in this thought's immediate transformation into a sudden marriage proposal to Yōko that Shōzō's pride manifested. In other words, for Shōzō, proposing marriage became the most effective means of insulting Yōko—with an added dash of contempt toward Kōzō. From the beginning, Shōzō hadn't respected a politician like Kōzō in the slightest. It was precisely because he didn't respect him that he'd offered the money.

However, Yōko disliked marrying Shōzō and ran away from home. Shōzō’s self-esteem had been completely wounded. The toothpick carver's son stirred passion in Yōko for the first time—she who hadn’t felt even a speck of it for him.

"Alright, someday I'll make that woman kneel at my feet!" For his self-esteem's sake, there was nothing Shōzō wouldn't do. To make Yōko yield, he'd pay any price required. Yet there remained one sacrifice he must never make. To put it plainly - that self-esteem itself could never be sacrificed.

So even though he saw Yōko at Tamura’s entrance last night, Shōzō did not attempt to pursue her. His self-esteem would not allow it. "But now that I know that woman’s in Kyoto, it’s my move." "Can’t laze around sleeping anymore," Shōzō lay in bed contemplating what he needed to accomplish today while half-listening to the voices in the next room.

II

“This Western-style room is quite nice isn’t it?” “This could work as a bar as it is don’t you think?”

“We used it.” “A regular restaurant or inn wouldn’t be interesting, would it?” “So while it’s not quite a bar, we specially made this room Western-style so you could drink Western liquor and have girls serve.” “It’s off-limits now, but when we first opened, quite a few foreigners came.” “We had a decent lineup of good girls too.” “I’d heard there are inns in Kyoto where you get a girl for the night at a set rate... Haha...”

“What’s so funny…?” “But… really…?” “That rumor had spread all the way to Tokyo…?”

“It’s not just a rumor, is it? You’re making a killing here, aren’t you…?” “Not like during the old yen days. With the police breathing down our necks, all the girls vanished—this room’s nothing but a reception area now…” “Still impressive though. Mama… How about investing?” “Ah… That cabaret idea from before? It’s intriguing…” “A million yen would do it. Put up half, Mama—perfect split. We’ll make a splash opening in Ginza. They’ll flood in, I tell ya. I came all the way from Tokyo banking on you… C’mon, get in on this. Start now and we’ll recoup a million by Christmas.”

“Well, how about Tokyo?” “I hear in Osaka they can move five thousand yen with just one watermelon through Akadama.” “...But in Tokyo, if they re-block the new yen or something, wouldn’t everything come crashing down...?”

"You're underestimating me." "Why don't you see Tokyo for yourself once?" "You won't grasp it through words." "When I leave tonight, won't Mama come along...?" "Oh? Leaving already tonight...?" "Sightseeing in Kyoto...?" "Tamura's enough." "What's there to see in some unburned backwater with zero growth potential?" "What charming praise."

“Heh...” “Plus I’ve already bought three return tickets.” “If you dawdle and get caught in the National Railway strike, you won’t want to see what happens.”

“You’re going to put a rope around my neck and haul me along, is that it?” “I give up.” “But what about the remaining ticket...?” “Knowing Mama, you’ll probably end up wanting to stop for a bath along the way… won’t you?” “You’ll bring someone along.”

“You fool.” “Every Night!”

“What’s that?” “That.” “Ev...” “Bare your teeth!” “Hmmph...” “It’s about Mama.” “You’re still like that...?” “You idiot!”

The ones talking in the reception room were likely Takako and her friend from Tokyo. Eventually, the voices could no longer be heard. Takako seemed to have gone upstairs.

"The marquis’s place, huh." Shōzō’s eyes suddenly sparkled. Yōko had come to Harutaka’s place last night!

After about ten minutes, Takako entered the room where Shōzō was sleeping.

Three

“Oh.” “You’re already awake…?” “Yeah.”

Shōzō, still lying prone, stretched out his hand and took a cigarette. "A lighter...?" While Takako was trying to light the Dunhill lighter, Shōzō had already struck a match. The Dunhill lighter lacked the sudden flare that comes from striking a match. The reason Shōzō disliked that was rooted in his comparison of Takako and Yōko. In terms of charm, Yōko was a woman lacking in charm. Even if she stood on her head, she couldn't exude half the charm Takako did. No matter how radiant Yōko might be with virginal beauty, no matter how she exuded noble refinement, no matter her education or intellect - spend a day with her and you'd grow bored. That was how Shōzō observed.

In other words, she had as much charm as a matchstick. However, the reason Shōzō thought there was something in Yōko that burned with a sizzling sound was likely because he anticipated the thrill tinged with cruelty—and the egoistic pleasure—that came from holding the matchstick and striking it with a swift motion. The toothpick ends up burning away the matchstick’s shaft. And since that ambition had suddenly transformed into a passion resembling romantic feelings, the so-called male heart defied any formulaic understanding.

Abruptly looking away from the burning shaft, Shōzō looked at Takako. Takako was not wearing the shorts from last night. She was wearing a floral-patterned dress like something a twenty-year-old girl would wear. From exoticism to eroticism, then Sunday mornings—a youthful affectation like fresh fruit after a meal of pork! If Yōko hadn’t surfaced in Shōzō’s mind, Takako’s calculated maneuver might have had its effect.

“There’s talk of opening a cabaret in Tokyo...” She was planning to make Shōzō foot the bill. “……” “Well, there’s apparently a good spot in Ginza—think I’ll go check it out tonight...” “Who with...?” “Ah, got a friend here.” “I’ll introduce you later.” “She’s sorta pretty.” “More importantly—that dame who came to Notake’s place last night. Where’s she from?”

“Weeell...” “To here…?” “First time here, right? Probably just some pro from some joint.”

“Ain’t nobody comin’ to get the shoes?”

“Not yet...?” “Notake…? Is he still here?” “Marquis…? He just left… now…” “Hmm.” “What are you going to do now…?” “I’m going back to Osaka.” “To go to Tokyo...? You’ve got time for that...?” “Well, I don’t.” As he said this, Shōzō looked at Takako with eyes that glinted sharply, thinking she must be planning to take Notake along. And then, spreading out the newspaper,

"Estate for sale, a certain marquis’s residence, Tokyo suburbs…"

Such an advertisement caught his eye.

Four

Shōzō wore a bone-chilling smile, “This is getting interesting!” As he said this, he was looking at the newspaper advertisement.

“It says ‘a certain marquis’s residence,’ but this has to be Marquis Notake’s place without a doubt.”

Shōzō believed in coincidence. He certainly believed in his own entrepreneurial talent, the speed of his mental agility, and his fighting spirit—but he believed in coincidence even more. The fact that he was born into a toothpick whittler’s household was pure coincidence. And he believed that this coincidence had gone on to call forth countless other coincidences, ultimately creating the grand coincidence whereby a thirty-five-year-old unknown young entrepreneur came to occupy a position above the heads of old zaibatsu in the personal income rankings for fiscal year 21.

"A person not blessed with coincidence is no good." This was his personal belief. Admittedly, depending on how you look at it, anyone's life might be nothing but a series of coincidences. However, there exists both insensitivity and sensitivity toward coincidence. Shōzō had constantly sensed coincidences and captured them. Moreover, he was so adept at harnessing coincidence that he could transform it into personal necessity. No—rather than harnessing coincidence, he gambled on it. And he had always won those bets. He may be considered a man blessed with good fortune, but to transform even a coincidence like being born into a toothpick whittler's household into a fortunate twist of fate required the relentless thrill of seizing coincidence by the scruff and staking himself upon it time and again. He had confidence, but a bet that was certain to win held no thrill.

Therefore, for Shōzō, believing in coincidence meant that he was a man constantly being tested by chance, and moreover, that in those moments, the one he could ultimately rely on was himself rather than heaven.

For example—everyone reads newspapers. A day without newspapers was almost as dreary as a day without humor or coincidence. At a certain teahouse in Gion, they forbade their apprentice maiko from reading newspapers. She hid the newspaper in her underwear and read it in the toilet, they said. In the past, one rarely saw young girls walking through town carrying newspapers, but recently even young, flighty, stocky girls loitering at night street corners clutched newspapers along with their handbags. Everyone read them. However, even if people opened the same newspaper at the same time, the first article to catch their eye wasn’t necessarily the same for everyone—for a certain marquis’s estate sale advertisement to leap out at them before anything else would require an extraordinary coincidence.

Moreover, when he layered this coincidence with those involving Yōko, Harutaka, Takako, Takako’s friend, the trip to Tokyo… and so on, Shōzō could no longer imagine the estate for sale being anything other than Marquis Notake’s residence, and his actions for the day had already been determined with inevitability. And as he outlined how those actions would unfold, he casually asked Takako.

“What time’s the train?” “Since it’s an express, it should be around nine o’clock at night.”

“Call a car.” “I don’t need any food.” “Oh, you’re leaving already!” “Gotta hurry. Give my regards to your friend. We’ll meet again anyway.” Shōzō smirked.

Advice Column

One Everyone and their dog read the newspaper. They were reading the same article. The interests of everyone and their dog were far more alike than we imagined. However, it was also true that everyone and their dog weren’t necessarily interested in the same issues as much as we imagined. People were likely looking at the same newspaper column first far more than we imagined; yet conversely, the columns they looked at first differed far more than we imagined.

For instance, there was a man named Sakano who always read the personal advice column first. After that, he might read other sections—or he might not—but not once had he ever failed to read the personal advice column first thing. Of course, saying he never missed a single day was an exaggeration. Because there were days when it wasn’t published. It had been in that morning’s newspaper. Even though his wife had run away, the personal advice column remained faithfully by his side. The habit of reading that column had actually been influenced by his wife, but even after she was gone, this particular habit—like his Philopon injections—didn’t abandon him.

So, Sakano first injected 2 cc of Philopon. Then he read today’s personal advice column. And once again recalling that his wife had left him, he felt resentful.

“Question—During my military service, my wife was deceived by a police officer who told her, ‘Your husband won’t return from the front,’ leading her into an affair that resulted in a child.” “Moreover, that man used up my workplace allowances and even our child’s savings, and when the war ended—fearing my demobilization—he vanished with an unregistered infant.” “My wife now apologizes and suffers as if she were the abandoned one, but I believe allowing such a person to remain in public office is unforgivable even for the nation’s sake.” “Is there no way to investigate the baby he took with him?” “The baby still hasn’t been registered, following the other man’s wishes.”

“Answer—War is tragic in itself, but the lives of citizens caught in its tragedy are the most miserable and deeply anguished of all. I can well imagine your innermost feelings. At the same time, I think it would be regrettable to dismiss your wife outright as an unfaithful spouse. We know all too intimately about the lives of bereaved families from deployed soldiers. If your wife truly regrets her past mistakes, forgive her and rebuild a peaceful home together.”

"Especially when considering your children’s future, I earnestly hope for reconciliation. Still, that police officer remains utterly contemptible. While duty-bound to protect bereaved families all the more, he pursued twin paths of lust and greed—this defies all description. I urge you to contact the police station where he was employed, have them locate him, and ensure strict disciplinary action." When he finished reading, Sakano suddenly bellowed: “Bastard!”

he bellowed.

Two At that moment, "What's this 'bastard' about...?"

With a smirk, Kizaki opened the door and entered. His eyes were bloodshot—likely because the Philopon Sakano had injected him with last night was too potent, leaving him unable to sleep. “Did you hear that? —No, wait, I wasn’t talking to you. Take a look at this. It’s absolutely awful!” Sakano showed the newspaper’s personal advice column. Kizaki quickly skimmed through it, “I see, this is awful!”

“Right?” “I was furious, wasn’t I?” “This is truly infuriating, I tell ya.” “There’s at least four solid reasons to get worked up about this, I tell ya.” “This is messed up, I tell ya…” Due to his past as a comic storyteller, even when speaking earnestly, Sakano’s manner of speech retained a certain flippancy. “First of all—of all times—for such a personal advice column to appear the very next day after yesterday.” “It’s a sin.” “That sinful bastard, I tell ya…” “I tell ya, Mr. Kizaki—the moment I read this, it hit me right away: that wife of mine must’ve run off after knockin’ boots with some guy.” “Nah, ain’t no mistakin’ that.” “You don’t run off just for Philopon!” “Well, my relationships with women—heh, heh—they all started back when I was still performing with the troupe…” “My wife was at that shack too, flappin’ her legs up and down... dancin’ away, you see.” “In other words, a dancer.” “I’m a musician myself, you know.” “‘Maestro!’ she’d say.” “Hey, Maestro!” “She had the nerve to say.” “On the night of an all-night rehearsal, she had the nerve to say, ‘I’m sleepy.’”

At this, Sakano shuddered his shoulders—now fully adopting the gestures of a comic actor. “Ah—you’ve been waiting for this part, right?” "But I never said anything like, 'Oh, you’re sleepy? Well then, let’s hit the sack together—'" “Even thieves get sleepy once it’s late.” “Endure! Endure!” "We gotta finish this tonight, or tomorrow's opening won't happen—now that’s the true spirit of a performer, I tell ya." “Then that woman goes, ‘I’m so sleepy I can’t stand it—give me some Philopon, would ya?’" “Alright, here she comes—plunging that plump, soft white arm… See, this whole thing started with Philopon bringin’ us together, I tell ya.”

“Then you knew about the Philopon all along, didn’t you?” “That’s exactly it. Now you’re bringin’ up Philopon this and that… What the hell’re you talkin’ about? She must’ve found herself a man and run off—ain’t no doubt about it. I ain’t got a clue where this scumbag crawled out from, but he’s one hell of a bastard. Just like this policeman here, I tell ya.”

and, pointing at the newspaper, “She was dumped, got knocked up, comes waddling back with that swollen belly—‘Have mercy on me!’—but I ain’t havin’ any of it!” “But isn’t that reading too much into it?” “No—” “It’s definitely that, I tell ya.” “I’d bet on it!”

“A hundred percent that’s what happened, I tell ya,” Sakano was saying when footsteps climbing the apartment stairs,

“Behold, the morning return from Tokai…” could be heard drifting up along with a hummed tune.

3

“Mr. Sakano.”

When Kyōkichi reached the front of the room, he called out in a presumptuously familiar voice. "—Is it okay to come in…?"

“Oh, Kyō-kun.”

And so, it was also him who had said to come in.

"I'm coming in. Careful—this door doesn't open easily." Kyōkichi opened the door a crack and quietly slipped just his head through,

“Oh, a guest…?” he said as he entered. Then he gave a quick bow toward Kizaki. Kizaki returned the greeting while thinking that face looked vaguely familiar. “Don’t go spreadin’ nasty rumors.—Even if nobody’s snoopin’ around, it’s already too late, I tell ya.” “She ran away,” Sakano cackled, though even his laughter rang hollow. “Oh reeeally?”

“Kyō-kun, what do you think? I think that wife of mine found herself a man—what do you say? Your observation…” “That’s definitely it.” Kyōkichi said simply, as if sweeping a pawn aside with his lance. “Women, I tell ya—ain’t got no self-control. When’d she run off? Last night…? Hmm, figured as much. ’Cause it’s Saturday.”

Beneath Kyōkichi’s abrupt assertion that Saturday nights were when women’s morals unraveled lay a desolate frustration, like the frayed irritation of tearing apart old cotton wadding. "I see." "You think so too?"

Sakano abruptly shook hands with Kyōkichi. Kizaki turned his face away, exhaling cigarette smoke along with the contradiction of being the only one who now felt compelled to defend women. However, Sakano— “Hey, Mr. Kizaki—I absolutely won’t forgive her! Don’t you think that advice column answer telling me to ‘forgive her’ is downright unforgivable itself?”

No sooner had he spoken than Kizaki reverted to his usual self. "No—the very fact that one can casually produce these kinds of answers becomes the essential qualification for those handling personal consultations." "If one were to delve into each and every questioner’s psychological depths, ultimately the advisor would be disqualified." “Report it to the police to have the adulterer punished and forgive your wife”—if someone could be satisfied with such a pat solution, no one would ever write to the advice column in the first place. "Even if you lost your wallet, nobody these days would spout such trite nonsense as telling you to report it to the police." “Even if you have the adulterer punished, your troubles will remain.” “Because she’s repenting her past wrongs, forgive her—is that it?” “Hmph.” “Even if they’re educated and hold social status, they don’t understand a damn thing about human beings.” “Hey, you, that’s right, isn’t it?”

Kizaki turned toward Kyōkichi. "I don't care about that stuff." Kyōkichi spat out the tobacco residue clinging to his tongue with a sharp flick. "More importantly, Sakano-san—give me a shot of Philopon." "That's what I came here for." He extended his arm.

Four

“Philopon…? Alright, here we go.” “Business at Sakano Clinic’s been booming lately, huh?” Sakano grinned slyly at Kizaki while taking a Philopon ampoule from the case. He pressed an ampoule cutter against it, rotated it, and split it cleanly in two—as if slicing through something. The crisp pop rang out with sharp clarity, like a hollow challenge hurled at the wife who had fled. The stimulant Philopon was a dangerous drug that damaged hearts and nerves—each injection might as well have been shortening one’s lifespan. Yet this was the self-destructive nature of maniacs: knowing full well its harm, they found themselves drawn deeper into ruin. Though the snap of splitting ampoules should have resonated with decadent murkiness, its sudden clarity in that hollow vacuum instead resembled something like an ethic of decay.

So, Sakano, entranced, was savoring the lingering sensation as he— “So Kyō-kun’s finally joined my faction, eh?” “I’ll give you a shot every day if you want.” “Nah, just today’s enough.” "The injection... will it hurt?" “I ain’t into that stuff.” “Do the one that doesn’t hurt.” “Hey, c’mon, do me a solid.” “Hey, it hurts, doesn’t it?” “But even if it hurts, I don’t mind.” “Because today’s special.” “If I can win at mahjong, I’ll endure it.” “But if it’s too painful, I don’t want it.”

“It’s fine. Everything stings at first, y’know.” “You plannin’ to play mahjong?” “Yeah. Didn’t catch a wink last night.” “Slip up and I’ll lose for sure.” “Losing’s whatever—but if I lose, I can’t make Tokyo.” “Sakano-san… really doesn’t hurt…?” “Ah—tch tch…” The needle pierced skin. Kyōkichi’s face twisted. Sakano depressed the syringe’s plunger, “Tokyo…?”

“Yeah. “I’ve gotten sick of Kyoto now.” “Sakano-san, you don’t have any money, do you? “You won’t lend me any, will you……?” “That’s why I’m getting my travel money through mahjong.” He could have returned to Tamura and begged Mama for money—it wasn’t impossible—but the thought that Yōko might have stayed there last night made him disinclined to go back. What’s more, his longstanding dislike for Mama now churned into active disgust toward both her and Tamura itself, to the point he couldn’t bear seeing her face. Such feelings must have slightly strengthened Kyōkichi's resolve to wander. He had more confidence in mahjong than in dance, and when he stepped out of Saint Louis with the idea of using the money he’d earned from it for travel expenses, it felt refreshingly crisp.

So he had left the shoeshine girl waiting at the apartment entrance and come to visit Sakano, his acquaintance at the hall. The mahjong parlor Kyōkichi frequented was located on Hanamikoji Street in Gion, close to the apartment.

“How’s that? Didn’t hurt a bit, right?”

Sakano pulled out the needle and patted Kyōkichi’s arm with light taps.

“It hurts!” “Look at that!” “It’s fucking bleeding!”

“If a little blood and pain get to you, how would you handle a nosebleed? —What do you say, Mr. Kizaki?” “You too…”

“Maybe I should get one too... To shake off this sleepiness...” When the needle pierced Kizaki’s arm, “Mr. Kizaki... phone call...”

The maid’s voice was heard in the hallway.

Five

The name was Seikan-sō, but this apartment was a rickety, cheap construction, slightly grimy like a damp rag. Moreover, it was filled with incessant noise all day long, and the air was thick with sordid atmosphere. The person who best embodied the essence of Seikan-sō was its maid Oshin—a squat, short woman so ugly she’d earned nicknames like “Clattering Sewing Machine” and “Monster.” Her voice was ugly and crushed rough, not only from singing popular songs all day long but from the roughness of her life itself. She was good-natured but ill-mannered, mispronounced Kizaki’s name as “Kijaki,” and stared at him with eyes that always burned hotly—which left Kizaki thoroughly exasperated.

Oshin liked all the tenants of the apartment, but she seemed particularly fond of Kizaki. However, it was understood that no one would reciprocate her affections—yet Oshin always slept with the maid's room door wide open, exposing herself as she slept. Even when some drunkard returned home, approached her, and tried to mess with her, she would merely stop snoring without opening her eyes, and by morning would be acting as though nothing had happened. She was said to be nineteen.

"Oh, he's not here.—Mr. Kizaakii!"

Oshin seemed to have opened the door to Kizaki’s room. “Here he is!”

When Sakano shouted, Oshin came clattering in,

“Oh, another injection.” “Mr. Kizaki... phone call...” “Can’t get free right now.” While pressing the syringe pump, Sakano answered instead. “But it’s from the police!” “The police…?” What could they want? Kizaki wondered in that instant, but nothing came to mind. Last night, Chimako had stolen the Leica and fled—he hadn’t realized it was related to that matter. “Tell ’em I can’t get away.” Sakano kept pressing the pump slowly on purpose.

“But it’s the police!” “Then tell them he’s out!”

“Is it really okay to say that?” “The police ain’t worth shit!” Sakano had been reading about corrupt cops in the personal advice column—maybe because he’d gotten it into his head that his own wife had run off with one—and seemed to have suddenly developed this inexplicable resentment toward them. “If they’ve got business, they’ll come here themselves. Right, Mr. Kizaki? Long as you don’t do nothin’ wrong, the pigs ain’t got no business with you ’cept bicycle permits.” “Just tell ’em to fuck off!” “He’s out! Mr. Kizaki Saburō is not in residence, I tell you!”

“I wasn’t talking to you. Mr. Kizaki, hurry up and go! I’ll get scolded!”

However, since Sakano wasn’t pulling out the needle, Oshin—

“I don’t care. Even if I do get scolded—”

With that, she clattered out of the room, swaying her hips.

Six “Oh, wait—Oshin!”

Even Kizaki, who had been amused by Sakano’s joking tone, finally grew somewhat concerned and tried to call Oshin back—but by then, she was already clattering down the stairs.

Kyōkichi smirked as he watched the scene unfold but suddenly— "I'm outta here. This Philopon's hitting hard now. Can't fucking take it anymore!" He stood up, already propelled by the vision of blue Chin'ichi mahjong tiles surfacing in his mind— "To hell with this! My apologies!" He delivered the farewell with maiko-like affectation and walked out.

And as he passed by the management office,

“......Mr. Kizaki’s out, I tell you!”

Oshin’s brazen voice could be heard. Smiling wryly, Kyōkichi walked out through the entrance but suddenly stopped dead, his ears pricking up sharply. “—A theft…?” “Ah, the camera?” “Ah, if that’s the case, last night I believe…” Just as Oshin started to say this, Kyōkichi abruptly barged into the management room and snatched the receiver from her hand,

“Oh, hello? What was it again?” “And you are…?” The voice on the phone practically bristled with authority. “Me? Well…” He smirked slyly,

“I’m from the office. The maid who just came out has a screw loose in her headspring, so I took over.” While Oshin pounded his back in protest, Kyōkichi cackled soundlessly in his gut.

“Mr. Kizaki is…” “It appears he’s not in.” “Last night, there was a theft at your place…?” “Hmm.” “I believe Mr. Kizaki’s camera was stolen.” “Well, well.” “That can’t be right.” “I haven’t heard anything about that.” He hadn’t meant to mock. It was likely simply the instinctual urge common to delinquent youths—a subconscious desire to shield criminal acts—that had compelled Kyōkichi to take the phone.

“Do you know a girl named Chimako?” “What’s her relationship with Mr. Kizaki?”

“Chimako…?”

he asked back in surprise but nonchalantly, "Not at all... By the way, did something happen? A girl named... Chimako..." "No, nothing in particular..." "My apologies for the trouble."

“Oh, hello? Hello...?”

However, the call had been disconnected. Kyōkichi hung up the receiver and asked Oshin.

“Did something happen last night…?” “Mr. Kizaki’s Leica seems to be gone.” “Who…?”

“Did someone steal it? Mr. Kizaki isn’t saying a thing. Don’t report it to the police.” “Well, well. Did Chimako steal it?” “Chimako, Chimako… who on earth is that…? You know her…?” “No, not really… How the hell would I know?”

Kyōkichi was flustered.

Seven

Just at that moment, the shoeshine girl who had grown tired of waiting outside,

“Big bro, you’re still…?” “Hurry up, let’s go!”

For Kyōkichi, the shoeshine girl’s entrance into the management room was a godsend.

“Alright. Let’s go.” As he started to leave but suddenly turned back, Kyōkichi’s right palm—

“Oshin, you’re the one who did this…?”

and drew a semicircle on her stomach. “Kyō-kun… you can tell…?” Oshin’s eyes—wide with surprise—darted about. Though no one else had noticed, Kyōkichi’s gaze—unnervingly perceptive of a woman’s body despite his youth—felt both eerie and reassuring. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you…?” “Hakari-sama… As for the father… properly…” She wanted to say “There is one”—but not knowing who it was, Oshin had secretly confided only in Sakamoto’s wife. Sakamoto’s wife had apparently been in the same predicament. There was supposedly a doctor in Gion who performed simple procedures—Sakamoto’s wife had promised to make the introduction. The wife herself had resolved to end her pregnancy. But after she fled last night, Oshin had given up hope.

“If it’s early enough, one injection could take care of it.” “Have Sakamoto give you the shot.” “Hey, Oshin.” “Just do it.” Kyōkichi said that Sakamoto had every kind of injection drug imaginable— “Kyō-kun, drop by sometime.” With Oshin’s cackling laughter at his back, he left Seikan-sō. Though Chimako still weighed on his mind, he found himself unable to return to Sakamoto’s room again to hear Kizaki’s explanation—

"It's none of my damn business. I don't give a damn." This capricious indifference persisted. Though his nerves remained finely attuned, a crude negligence clung to Kyōkichi.

And yet, when the shoeshine girl, “Big bro, I thought you weren’t ever comin’ out! I was so worried!” As she said this, he remained acutely aware of the touch of her small hand eagerly clinging to him. Despite being twelve years old, her hands were rougher and more calloused than any woman’s Kyōkichi had ever touched. That warmed what little remained of the young man’s innocent heart.

“You were born in Tokyo, right…?”

“Yeah. “I was born in Kobiki-chō.” “My family had a tobacco shop.” “My school was the same as Rokudaime’s.” “I could walk to Ginza.” “Better Tokyo than the sticks. “After all—let’s go to Tokyo.” “Yeah. “I hate walkin’ around Ginza lookin’ this grubby… but if I’m with you, Big bro, guess it’s okay.”

When Kyōkichi, having passed through the path of Kōdaiji and come near the police box beside Maruyama Music Hall, saw the figure of a young woman ascending from below the stone steps, he stopped in his tracks with an "Oh!"

VIII

They were likely members of the occupation forces' families. Two women, their heads wrapped in bright red neckerchiefs to shield themselves from the sun, had stopped a jeep before her and were talking to her. They seemed to be asking permission to take her photograph. The woman looked distressed, her face half in tears as she shook her head and waved her hands in refusal.

Her refined appearance—a plain cobalt blue dress that suited her neat style—was beautiful enough to make the occupation forces' families want to photograph her, yet on her feet were tattered sandals.

Those were the makeshift sandals that libraries and hospitals lent out. Was she refusing to be photographed because of those sandals? Yet Kyōkichi had no time to wonder why the woman wore such sandals. No—they didn't even register in his sight.

“Ah, Yōko!” He had been tripped up by an unexpected coincidence—though to speak of coincidences, had Yōko not been distracted by the photograph being taken at that moment, she might have noticed Kyōkichi too. Yet coincidence steered Yōko’s gaze away from him. And as for further coincidences—for once they begin accumulating, there’s no end—the instant Kyōkichi moved to approach Yōko,

“Hey, you!” Kyōkichi was called to a halt by the police officer at the police box.

“What is it…?” “Hey, come here! You too, come here!” The police officer led Kyōkichi and the shoeshine girl into the police box. Not understanding why he had been stopped, Kyōkichi grew sullen and— “Is there something you need?” “Name...?”

“Yagisawa Kyōkichi!” “Age...?” “Twenty-three.” “Your occupation…?” “Vagrant.” “What do you do to get by…?” “Freeloader.”

“What is that girl to you…?” “…………” “Why won’t you answer?”

“If you call me ‘you,’ I can’t answer!” “Hmm.” “What’s that girl to you…?”

“She’s my sister.” “Her occupation…?” “Can’t you tell by looking…? She’s a shoeshine girl.” Kyōkichi looked toward Yōko as he said that. In the end, Yōko was apparently photographed. And after exchanging a few words with the families of the occupation forces, she got into their jeep.

“Oh, damn it!”

He had to catch her now—he instinctively tried to dash out, but— “Where do you think you’re going…?” The police officer’s hand abruptly grabbed Kyōkichi’s arm.

Before long, the jeep carrying Yōko drove past the police box with a light rattle.

Pigeon

I

In detention centers, those who are released and leave are called "Pigeons." Yōko was detained for just one night, exactly as Chimako had predicted, and became a Pigeon. Since she had been arrested under suspicion of being a "Black Girl," she underwent an interrogation too shameful to speak of to anyone; but once they confirmed she was a virgin, there remained no room for doubt. Because of the humiliating experience she had endured, Yōko was in a state where she couldn't even cry. Moreover, to make matters worse, she didn't have any shoes. Since she had been spotted by Kimiji Shōzō, of course she couldn't go to Tamura to retrieve them. She had briefly considered calling her apartment to have someone bring her shoes to the police station, but she didn't want to explain the circumstances. If she explained her circumstances frankly, it would only invite unwarranted suspicion, so she couldn't ask her colleagues at Jubankan either.

At a time like this, Matsuri—the one she could rely on—was dead. In the end, the only one she could turn to was Kyōkichi. If it was Kyōkichi, he would know about her visit to Tamura, would likely agree without hesitation, and moreover, by asking him to retrieve her shoes, it would conversely serve as proof of her innocence the previous night—so she borrowed the police station’s phone and tried calling Saint Louis. He wasn’t there. Since she would call again, she asked them to have Kyōkichi wait if he came, waited about ten minutes, and then tried calling again,

“Kyō-kun just this moment returned.” “A message…?” “I did.” “But when the phone rang, he had me tell them he’d already left Kyoto, and then he went off with some girl.” “Ohoho…”

The shrill laughter was a habitual quirk of Madam Natsuko at Saint Louis, but Yōko, unaware of this, felt as though she were being mocked. Even though she knew the call would come, to deliberately say he'd left with "some girl"—it made Yōko feel like she was being ridiculed.

“Fine.” She resolved never to speak to Kyō-kun again—who cared about shoes? She'd walk barefoot—her face deathly pale as she nearly bolted from the police station, though of course she couldn't actually walk barefoot. When the police custodian lent her sandals, she slipped them on and stepped outside, then immediately headed to visit Kizaki.

The reason she didn’t stop by Matsuri’s apartment either was that she thought she had to fulfill the task Chimako had asked of her as soon as possible. Of course, Yōko herself also had a matter she needed to meet with Kizaki about. However, when she reached Maruyama Park, a family from the occupation forces asked her to let them take her photograph. “I’ve been getting photographed nonstop since last night.” Muttering about the sad coincidence, she blushed anew at the wretchedness of being in her sandals,

“No, no!” “I’m solly.” “Excuuse me.”

She tried to refuse using broken English but ended up being photographed. In return, they offered her a ride in their jeep as a gesture of thanks. Yōko climbed into the jeep, relieved at last from the humiliation of trudging in sandals. Distracted by this minor commotion, she never noticed Kyōkichi inside the police box. But even had she seen him—whether she would have called out remained uncertain. The jeep soon reached Seikan-sō.

II

As Yōko tried to get out of the car, “Can you dance…?”

When they asked, she nodded and “Well then, won’t you come to the party this Sunday…?” The madams in the automobile seemed to have taken a liking to Yōko. The fact that she could speak broken English must have also been unusual for them. “Thank you. If I can come…” “If I can make it…” Yōko had spoken intending to decline, but they seemed to take it as consent and presented a notebook, telling her to write her address here.

“No, thank you!” To refuse outright, Yōko was too Japanese. In any case, when she wrote down the apartment address and handed it over, “This Sunday at five in the evening, we’ll send a car to this address to pick you up.” “Is that acceptable…?” “Thank you.” As Yōko stepped out of the car, her words—“Thank you for taking the trouble to bring me here”—could equally be heard as gratitude for the party invitation, effectively cementing the arrangement.

The car sped down the pine forest path where a breeze blew, swift as the wind. The head wrapped in a red neckerchief turned around, and until the ruddy hand waving in the autumn sunlight disappeared from view, Yōko kept waving too, though she could only manage a timid gesture. The spot where Yōko stood lay shaded by the Seikan-sō building blocking the sun’s rays, and her heart too had suddenly clouded over.

When Yōko had entered Jubankan, she had concealed her surname but used her real given name as it was—so fond was she of "Yōko" that of all things she possessed, she loved this name most. She had believed it symbolized humanity's innate longing to live brightly and cheerfully beneath the sun's light. But now, seeing the carefree radiance of the American women in the car, she felt terms like "bright" or "cheerful" or "beneath the sun" could no longer be used so casually—and it suddenly struck her that she too might belong to this gloomy Seikan-sō building, a realization that sank her spirits.

To put it hyperbolically, even if the next block were sunny, that spot alone remained cloudy—and the autumn wind blowing over it would suddenly take on a darkened hue—such was Seikan-sō. The building itself was gloomy enough, but when Yōko was finally led by Oshin into Kizaki's room, she found herself startled by the profound gloom etched across his face.

Kizaki had just opened the door and was about to leave. From a Tokyo magazine,

"Urgent photo materials…"

A pressing telegram had arrived stating that if he didn't send them immediately, they wouldn't make it in time, so he was about to head to the post office to wire a refusal. "Oh. Are you going out…?" "If they hadn't given me a ride by car, I would have missed you," Yōko said with relief, but

“…………” Kizaki silently returned to his room while glancing at Yōko’s feet. That expression was chillingly gloomy.

III

As for Kizaki's gloomy expression, (Raw jealousy had resurfaced.) A single explanatory line might have made it sufficiently clear—but a facial expression is a wrinkle of life formed on the trousers of the psyche. A single line of explanation might serve as an iron to smooth those trouser wrinkles, yet even relying on this verbal iron, imperceptibly fine creases would surely remain. But even a thousand lines of explanation would prove inadequate to account for these minute wrinkles. Moreover, the psychological wrinkles that swelled and vanished, vanished and swelled—no, the flow of consciousness—lacked the permanence of creases in trousers.

Thus, one cannot call a single line insufficient nor deem a thousand lines excessive, but where does the method lie to describe a human’s momentary expression with perfect adequacy? Is it because we overestimate the correctness of the order imposed upon our own powers of human observation—this conviction that even through commonplace words and style we’ve described things without excess or deficiency—or is it due to blind faith in the conventions of novelistic technique?

—Now then, such a preface violates literary conventions; thus, having received a clogs tag from the guardian of novelistic conventions, removed the footwear of skepticism, humbly entered the tea room of tradition, and seated oneself formally upon the zabuton cushion of description—if one were to proceed properly—. The moment Kizaki saw Yōko’s face as she entered, he was struck by a nostalgia so intense it was almost paralyzing—and at the same time, something—

“Damn it!”

He was thrown into a panic by this regret. It was an unfathomable regret. He had no idea why Yōko had come to see him, but now that Yōko—whom he had only observed through his camera lens—stood before him in the flesh, she could no longer be considered a stranger.

When he first saw Yōko in Jubankan Hall, “She looks like her!” It was true he had been startled by her resemblance to his late wife Yaeko, but upon closer inspection, it wasn’t even a coincidental likeness—merely a faint similarity in aura. But Kizaki had no leisure for close observation; as he pursued Yōko’s retreating figure dancing through the hall’s atmosphere with his camera’s eye, her form transformed into an image of his deceased wife captured within the frame of a lens called jealousy.

Therefore, Yōko’s appearance before his eyes was, for Kizaki, tantamount to Yaeko’s image escaping from the lens—it was no longer a simple matter of resemblance. He naturally felt a paralyzing nostalgia, but was this what they called romantic love? If this were romantic love, it would equally promise the bitterness of anguish, and one must be prepared to have their heart’s freedom stripped away. Therefore, he felt regret—damn it.

Had she finally come? Had she really come after all? What had brought this woman before him?

Such was the regret. That was what had cast a shadow over Kizaki’s expression. In his premonition that something was bound to happen with this woman, there was no eager joy—only a certain bitterness.

But why had she come? Kizaki waited for Yōko to open her mouth.

IV

“I’ve come up because I have a request.” At Jubankan she used “atashi,” but “watakushi” suited Yōko better when speaking formally. At least it didn’t sound affected—that refined upbringing so ill-suited to a dancer… this was what registered with Kizaki. This suddenly pained Kizaki. Yet it wasn’t grief over society’s decay—over refined women of good breeding throwing themselves into ruin. No, it stemmed from the prejudice Kizaki harbored about dance itself. A prejudice against associating respectable women with dance. The matter was personal.

To Kizaki, dance was always a nocturnal pose moving to lewd rhythms, and it was a public indulgence where women’s physiological ugliness manifested itself cloaked in a veil of sociality.

So he didn't want to make the association, yet here was Yōko, undeniably linked—just as Yaeko had been... Why would she dance? That irrational sadness gripped him. He was forcing himself to grieve over it, sinking ever deeper into heaviness. "There are two requests I must make." "Both are unreasonable." "Would you hear me out?"

“In any case, I will hear them.”

Kizaki stared fixedly at Yōko's eyes. Yōko also looked at Kizaki's eyes. Their eyes met, but Yōko's eyes said nothing. Compared to the feverish intensity of Kizaki's eyes, Yōko's were cold to the point of giving no foothold for connection. Their eyes met, but their hearts did not connect. Yōko radiated a chilly indifference that defied the vulgar notion that young women—when alone with a young man—invariably feel an unconscious thrill toward romance.

Therefore, her words were businesslike.

“Actually, I would like to have the film you took last night at Jubankan.”

“Why…?” “I do not wish to state my reason.” “I cannot say.” “Does that mean I cannot have the film unless I tell you why?” “No—whether you ask or not, it makes no difference.” “I cannot hand it over—no matter what reason there may be.”

“Why…?” “I can’t tell you.” That he had given the same answer as Yōko was not meant as irony. Yōko remained silent for a while, but eventually, “Why did you take photographs of me…?” “I can’t tell you that reason now either.”

“………”

“More importantly—why on earth are you dancing?”

Kizaki’s voice grew irritable. “To make a living.” Yōko was also annoyed. “Can’t you make a living without being a dancer?” As if to cut her off, Kizaki said and glared at Yōko.

5 Glared at by Kizaki, Yōko’s eyebrow twitched sharply. Her pride coursed through her veins like an electric current. "Then let me ask you—is becoming a dancer so wrong?" “It’s wrong!” Kizaki involuntarily shouted. “Why is it wrong?”

"—"

In that instant, Kizaki could not answer. It was his conviction, but it never formed into words. Why it was wrong—the reason was this—the photograph he had taken last night of the hall scene: Yōko’s retreating figure, the curve that had abruptly captured the ugliness of the female form. He had no choice but to show it. "You look down on the profession of dancing, don’t you…?" “Contempt…?” As if startled, Kizaki asked back.

“Being a dancer is a legitimate profession too.” Yōko’s tone suddenly adopted a formal edge, as though she were a dance instructor addressing a newspaper reporter. “Dancers are no different from laborers.” “We are laborers who walk backward for three minutes to earn eighty sen in wages.” “We walk miles upon miles each night.” “We are physical laborers, just like rickshaw pullers.” “Even in midwinter, we sweat until drenched.”

Ah, that sweat... Kizaki remembered. The sweat trickling down the hollow of her back—he saw it as a woman's biological sigh of frailty. This same sweat had streamed from his late wife Yaeko on the day before her death. Kizaki had married Yaeko in summer. In his rented one-room apartment, he and Yaeko hung the mosquito net for their first night. They turned off the lights and let fireflies loose inside. The fireflies' faint blue flames alighted upon the exposed white swell of Yaeko's sweat-beaded chest and flickered there.

However, once Yaeko became afflicted in the chest, no matter how sweltering the night, she would properly wear her nightclothes and sleep alone inside the mosquito net. She had grown so weak she no longer even had the strength to sweat.

And on the night before her death, Yaeko called Kizaki into the mosquito net in a faint voice,

“Our time together was short, wasn’t it?” A single tear fell as she stroked Kizaki’s hair, then suddenly flared up. “You idiot, you’ll die!” “I don’t care if I die! “I don’t care if I die!” Even through her nightclothes, Yaeko’s shouting body burned like fire to the touch; sweat seeped into his palms with a mournful sensation, as if squeezing out her last vestiges of life—never had Kizaki felt the wretchedness of the woman within his wife so acutely.

"But that sweat - isn't it sweat wrenched from you by men!" "Isn't it sweat spilled while clasping hands with men?" Kizaki said in a grating voice. Without uttering a word, Yōko snatched up her handbag and rose abruptly.

6

“Huh?!” Wondering if she was angry—Yōko hurled her words at Kizaki’s upturned face: “Lowlife!” No sooner had she directed a white-eyed glare at him than she turned her back.

No sooner had she directed a piercing white-eyed glare than she had already turned her back.

She tried to briskly leave the room, but when she put them on, the sandals were pitiful. Yōko had become half-tearful, but the sound of the door alone was, as might be expected, as lofty as her self-esteem. Kizaki sat blankly. "What’s this 'lowlife' nonsense?!" That he didn’t even try to chase after her was because he felt an odd joy at being called "lowlife." Of course, Kizaki did not consider himself a lowlife. Yet though Kizaki was so decadent—so far gone that he could no longer muster the will to assert his own decadence, which permitted him to view women solely through a sensual lens—his acquiescence to being called lowlife did not stem from masochistic pleasure.

He wanted to make Yōko's act of calling him "lowlife" and storming out—this one straw he could grasp—into a lifeline for himself drowning in a swamp of decadence. It was a contradiction, but that must be what they call romantic feelings. Why Yōko had come wearing such shabby sandals was beyond Kizaki’s understanding, but the sight of her retreating figure in those sandals lingered on his eyelids, leaving an aftertaste akin to the faint sweetness of unrequited love.

"This was fine." It was a relieved resignation. The moment he saw Yōko—Oh no!— The regret—that I would never settle things simply with this woman—was fading into relief.

Kizaki lit a cigarette. And back when he had suffered jealousy toward Yaeko, he had found in the Lotus Sutra— “Do not meet those you love.” As he suddenly recalled that phrase—“Do not meet those you love”—the cigarette smelled of loneliness. However, the rationed “Hikari” quickly went out. Kizaki flopped down onto his back and gazed at the ceiling.

On the ceiling, a spider had spun its web. "Should I become a womanizer?" It was unclear what association had led to this thought. But at this sudden idea that had flashed through his mind, Kizaki jolted.

At that moment, the door suddenly opened. Kizaki sat up with a start. The one who had opened the door was Yōko. Yōko stood rigidly, her face deathly pale. Shoulders were trembling. And just as the trembling seemed to spread throughout her entire body, Yōko abruptly dropped to sit right in front of Kizaki.

7

“Mr. Kizaki!”

Yōko uttered Kizaki’s name for the first time, “...Why do you insult me…" The rest of her voice—"...must you—" trembled and failed to emerge.

The fact that she was in such an agitated state made Yōko feel utterly pathetic even to herself. "Lowlife!" Having stormed out like that, her self-respect wouldn't allow her to return so shamefacedly—and yet, had she really come back solely because of Chimako's message? Was it not that something unknowable had drawn Yōko back? However, what that was, Yōko did not understand. "I don't recall insulting you or anything."

Kizaki said abruptly. "You're misunderstanding." "Then why would you say something like that?"

“…………” “Why do you look down on dancers as a profession…?” “I don’t look down on them. But if it came across that way… that’s because—” Just as he was about to say “Because I care for you,” a spider slid smoothly down from the ceiling toward Yōko’s head. Kizaki suddenly reached out to swat it away. Yōko jerked back. “It’s a spider.” Kizaki laughed stiffly and gave up on the idea of loving Yōko.

The thought—should I become a womanizer?—was insincere, just the easiest way to scorn women. Yet even within such notions, he found himself unwilling to drag Yōko into it. Whether Yōko had immediately sensed Kizaki’s feelings or not, her voice now settled into calm reassurance. "Mr. Kizaki... might I ask you to hear my request...?"

“I’ll listen.”

Kizaki's voice was now sincere. Whatever that wish might be, granting it for Yōko had become Kizaki's meager expression of affection. It was a love he did not wish to touch upon. "The truth is..." And Yōko also conveyed Chimako's message,

“Could you tell the police that and help her...?” Kizaki remained silent and nodded. Soon after, Yōko stood up. “Oh, already...” As if asking “Are you leaving?” a fleeting shadow of loneliness crossed Kizaki’s face. “Perhaps another time…”

As Yōko descended the stairs, she was suddenly shaken by a feeling that she might somehow end up coming back to this apartment again. Kyakkya Gang

I

“There were some idiotic cops (patrolmen). They took me for Higuchi. Maruyama Park gives me the creeps. Carelessly walk around with some girl, and you’ll get into nasty trouble.”

At the mahjong club "Gion Manor" on Hanamikoji Street in Gion, even Kyōkichi—who had been talking while arranging tiles—eventually fell as silent as lead. Their opponents were Good Morning Gin-chan, Blowing-a-Kiss Taisuke, and Atomic Bomb Goroku-chan—this trio comprised a delinquent group specializing in mahjong clubs, calling themselves the Kyakkya Gang. Always operating in trios, they would coil through urban mahjong clubs, and whenever a good mark appeared, the three would collude to swindle away the gambling money.

Kyōkichi knew the Kyakkya Gang’s tricks. Moreover, his decision to take on the Kyakkya Gang in a match—was this overconfidence in his mahjong skills? Or was it the thrill of a desperate gamble, taking on the cheaters? Kyōkichi’s situation rapidly deteriorated, and by the time the first round ended, he had already lost four thousand yen. “Kyō-kun, you’re being awfully quiet. Why don’t you make some noise—groan or something?”

Good Morning Gin-chan said with a smirk. “Gambling and love affairs don’t mean a thing unless you keep quiet about ’em.”

Kyōkichi had been retorting like that, but his complexion had turned pale. “The more you lose at gambling, the more thrilling it gets.” Half muttering to himself, Kyōkichi had been hoarding tiles, but the moment he reached tenpai, they would always block his winning tile. When the north wind came around, Kyōkichi had two north tiles. Two Red Dragons. If things went well, he could win with a hand close to Mangan using the Four Winds.

"Jackpot!" With a shout, Kyōkichi called "Pon" on the north tile discarded by Blowing-a-Kiss Taisuke and turned toward him, "Smack!"

With that, he blew a kiss. At that moment, a leather wallet belonging to a young man settling payments at the club's counter caught Kyōkichi's eye. He recognized that wallet! "Ah!" The moment Kyōkichi—That's my wallet!—tried to stand up, Good Morning Gin-chan discarded a Red Dragon (Honchu). "Pon!" Kyōkichi barked energetically, There's no way I'm leaving this behind! While gathering tiles—now too preoccupied with the game to care about the wallet—he abruptly called over to the shoeshine girl lounging on the corner sofa and whispered instructions.

II “Okay.” The girl nodded in a lively voice and briskly left Gion Manor from behind the man. “Oh my, Miss Kuniko’s disappeared.”

Good Morning Gin-chan said. "No, it's nothing. I just... went to buy some cigarettes... Heh, heh..."

“You’re in high spirits.” “Absolutely!” After calling pon on North (Peepee) and Red Dragon (Honchu), Kyōkichi—now in tenpai with Four Winds—had no mind left for pickpockets. He could have simply shouted “Thief!” without ordering the girl to tail him, but he didn’t want to disrupt his momentum just before Mangan. It was that state of mahjong absorption where one might miss their parents’ final moments.

It was a winning hand with either a Five Man or Eight Man tile. However, the three members of the Kyakkya Gang were indeed wary of Man tiles, even going so far as to disrupt their own hands to block them. Therefore, Kyōkichi had no choice but to win by tsumo. “I’ll tsumo this!” Kyōkichi’s eyes blazed intensely. Whether they made him dance, play billiards, or engage in mahjong—whatever they had him do—Kyōkichi demonstrated genius-level skill, but particularly in mahjong, his expertise lay in the fighting spirit to draw even improbable tiles when it mattered most, combined with formidable gambling luck.

And it was only in those moments that he felt a reason to live. For Kyōkichi—who at twenty-three could commit to nothing, passing his days in listless tedium—every action was mere caprice: wandering with a shoeshine girl, impulsive plans to flee to Tokyo, schemes to fund travel through mahjong, even selecting the Kyakkya Gang as opponents—all were trifling whims. Yet once immersed in the thrill of tiles, this alone became his youth’s essence—a realm where he could shed all else and burn with singular focus.

Whether he could earn the travel money for Tokyo was no longer a question. How many points he might lose, whether he could recover them in the next round of iichan, how he would pay the gambling debt if he lost while penniless—such thoughts never crossed his mind.

“I’ll tsumo that Five Man or Eight Man!” He thought of nothing else. “Just toss ’em and laugh it off! Cackle away!”

“You’re in high spirits,” said Blowing-a-Kiss Taisuke. “Absolutely!” Kyōkichi shot back. “Nah—I’ll tsumo.” He kept his tone playful even as his fingers tightened on the tile. “Draw your purple! Bite on red! This cackling crew’s been honed by color!” Kyōkichi maintained the banter, but his expression stayed unyielding. He grabbed the tile and ground his thumb against its surface with a muttered “Goddamn.”

III Kyōkichi rarely psyched himself up when drawing tiles. But for that one crucial tile alone, he growled, "Damn!" And in those moments, possessed by a magician-like inspiration that could transform any tile into exactly what he desired, his aim rarely missed. If he lacked confidence, he simply wouldn’t psych himself up. It was the kind of fighting spirit—like a champion jockey’s whip used just before the finish line—reserved for moments when he felt certain he could push through and prevail.

“Damn! Five Man!” However, it was neither a Five Man nor an Eight Man. “What the—Red Dragon?!” Since it was a Red Dragon tile, he could form a kong, giving him a chance for Rinshan Kaihou—a winning method where you draw an additional tile after completing four-of-a-kind. The group gasped and held their breath. Good Morning Gin-chan put the lit end of his cigarette into his mouth to extinguish it. Good Morning Gin-chan, the former benshi, had lips twice as thick as an ordinary person’s.

Kyōkichi fell silent, wiped the sweat from his hands, reached out smoothly, grabbed the Rinshan tile, and rubbed its surface as if scraping it. He didn’t need to look—the texture alone told him. It was a Five Man. Kyōkichi knocked over the tile with a disappointed look.

“I don’t know anything about that. “It’s a Mangan.” “A Wu Pao Toitoi.” “Wu Fan.” “That’s a Mangan.” “Doesn’t matter.” “That’s the Cackle Crew for you.” “Don’t get mad.” "I'm suffering." "That leaves a bad taste, doesn't it?" "It's not my fault." “Don’t get mad.”

As he rambled on about nothing to himself, he was suddenly struck by loneliness. "What a goddamn Cackle Crew." "I’ve seen my share of cacklers, but your lot’s cackling takes the cake." "If it’s come to this, screw it—I’m all in." "Gorokuchan—let’s join this cackling circus too!" When Good Morning Gin-chan clattered the tiles while speaking, the woman from Gion-so,

“What on earth does ‘Cackle Crew’ mean...?” “Here’s your mangan prize!” She approached the table, set down the prize cigarettes, and casually placed her hand on Kyōkichi’s shoulder. “Rub my shoulders. I’ve gotten old.” Kyōkichi suddenly peered into the woman’s face. Hmm—not bad at all— Suddenly,

“How about we sleep together tonight? ‘Cackle Crew’ means bedding down.” “I wouldn’t know.”

The woman turned red and ran away. “Don’t want to?” “Good riddance.” “Obligations’ll shave three years off your life—I tell ya.” While arranging tiles he kept spouting frivolous remarks—what was this aimlessness? Once you’d tasted mangan’s thrill did tension vanish like some post-coital insect? Leaving only Philopon-crash weariness—dingy powder clinging to yellowed exhaustion? “But see—it’s always those types gettin’ knocked up.” “Had it rough myself.” “No no—I did all th’wooin’!”

“No, no—don’t you think…?” “Yes. No, no—I did the wooing. She got pregnant. It’s the Cackle Crew, I tell ya. She’s a married woman, I tell ya. Since she’s the type of woman who’d shack up with an accordion player husband, her belly goes and swells like a goddamn accordion right quick.”

The moment Gin-chan said that, Kyōkichi let go of the tile with a start. Four "But Gin-chan—is that really your kid…? "Sakano…" Kyōkichi nearly blurted out Sakano’s name—"Isn’t it Sakano’s kid...?"—but quickly corrected himself: "Nah, might be the husband’s brat." "None of your damn business. "The woman says it’s my kid. "I can’t just abandon her if it’s the husband’s kid. "I’m Good Morning Gin-chan too."

Though the nickname "Good Morning Gin-chan" had surfaced in unlikely places, Gin-chan was originally known in Kyōgoku’s entertainment district by his real name Motohashi as a notorious hoodlum. However, Gin-chan had now abandoned the name Motohashi and was going by his nickname. He despised wielding his identity as a hoodlum amidst the chaotic post-war climate, instead deliberately adopting the tacky nickname "Good Morning Gin-chan" as an act of self-mockery.

According to Gin-chan, hoodlums were ultimately just gamblers, philanderers, a down-and-out lot who never kept a penny past midnight. However, many of Gin-chan’s associates had become bosses in the black market, established special relationships with cabarets, and amassed fortunes in the blink of an eye—now, if they wanted to spend their money without letting it last past midnight, they had no choice but to buy villas costing four hundred thousand or a million yen. There were indeed people who had bought them.

At the time of defeat, they wore shabby national uniforms with geta. However, after about half a month, they were wearing shoes. After five days, they were wearing jumpers. After three days, they were wearing smart suits and carrying leather briefcases. Before long, they grew beards and were dancing in halls with stunning beauties. And finally, they bought villas. However, Gin-chan, "For hoodlums to become entrepreneurs and buy villas—what a Cackle Crew world we live in. No sooner do they emerge from one villa than they go and buy another."

As he said this, he grew more disreputable with each passing day, until his only remaining subordinates were Yasuke—who blew mocking kisses—and Gorokichi "The Atom Bomb," forming an inexplicable Cackle Crew of just the three of them,

“—Hoodlums should make their living through gambling.” They frequented mahjong clubs but found no decent marks to fleece, and their money to last the night was precarious. But they were satisfied with that. It was a modest protest against their comrades who had become bosses. Therefore, even when drinking alcohol, they only drank cheap Alp Whisky. However, that Alp Whisky was what did them in.

“Thanks to Alp, I ended up making a blunder like messing with someone’s wife.”

As he said this, Gin-chan briefly recalled the woman who had come to his apartment since last night. She had fled from her husband’s place.

“Women…… they’re……”

After arranging his tiles, Gin-chan first discarded the white dragon tile. “She puts on this composed face reading newspapers and magazines, but once she latches on like germs, she won’t let go.” “Just toss her out like a white dragon tile.”

“Then I’ll take it. White dragons are my style.” “While you’re at it, take the woman too.”

At that moment, the telephone bell rang.

Five

"Gion-sō residence," announced the woman from earlier as she picked up the phone. "Good mornin' to ya. Who's callin', might I ask?" "Huh... Saint...?" "Oh—Saint Zuisu? Saint Zuisu you're sayin'?" "Bite yer tongue an' drop dead why don'tcha!"

Good Morning Gin-chan laughed—a forced, hollow sound. Then: “—Saint Louis? That’s me.” He flipped his mahjong tiles facedown and began to rise, but suddenly grew restless,

“No—tell them I’m out.”

And this uncharacteristic restlessness in Gin-chan—what could it mean? However, “Kyō-kun, you…”

The call had come through for him. Gin-chan relaxed visibly, settling back into his seat. "For me...?" Kyōkichi raised his long eyelashes with an audible snap, "—So today's when even I get caught up in phone calls, huh?"

He flipped over the tiles and, deliberately slipping one hand into his trouser pocket, stood up.

“Kyō-kun…?” “Do you recognize me…?” “Ohoho…” The laughter told him it was Natsuko from Saint Louis. “Whyee...?” “You keep calling nonstop—I can’t stand being stuck listening to the phone all day like some stockbroker’s clerk.” “Well.” “You’re barking up the wrong tree.” “I’m the première.” “You’ve got me confused with someone else.” “Ohohoho….” “That’s a lack of understanding on your part.” Each mismatched word she spoke felt jarringly out of place, but more than that—when filtered through the receiver, her raspy voice grew increasingly raw and parched, carrying a pitiful sensuality that became unbearable.

“Who’s this ‘someone’? Who is it?” “With so many callers, how could I possibly know? Well, isn’t it that person? Well, Yōko-san! She called again after that. When I said you’d already left Kyoto, she sounded absolutely desperate. Ohohoho…” “……”

“You’re still in Kyoto, then.” “Yes—embarrassing as it is—I’m flat broke and struggling.” “Flat broke…?” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “If you’re still in Kyoto, come to the Liberal Club with me.” “The opening’s tonight at five.”

“Be my guest.” “Well.” “I can’t go alone.” “Members must come accompanied—limited to couples only.” “Isn’t that splendid?”

“Then scrap that restrictive Liberal Club!”

As he was about to hang up, “Ah, wait, wait! I haven’t told you why I called yet!” “What is it…?” “Ohoho…” “Come on, come on!” “Don’t rush me. Just a moment, I’ll put them on. I’m just transferring the call.”

"Ohoho…" As the laughter faded, it seemed someone else had taken their place at the other end of the line—their breathing audible.

Six

Who could it be?—he waited for the voice, “Big bro…?”

The voice that came through the receiver—nostalgic yet hesitant—was, unexpectedly, that of the shoeshine girl. “—Do you recognize me…?”

"Yeah." “Big bro… do you get why I’m callin’ from a place like this…?” Her voice was eager and buoyant. "Huh...?"

He thought about it, but in the moment, he couldn’t figure it out.

“How the hell should I know? Why’d you go to Saint Louis?” “Don’tcha get it…? Big bro.” “Seriously don’tcha get it, Big bro?” She sounded exasperated. “How should I know? Why? Go on, say it!” “……” However, there was no reply. “Did she lose him?”

Kyōkichi casually lowered his voice. To the girl, he had told her only this: to follow that man—the pickpocket. Follow him, and then what to do—he hadn’t had time to give any instructions. So he hadn’t expected the wallet to be returned. Just that it would be irritating to go to the trouble of finding the pickpocket only to leave him be—he’d simply told her to tail the man on a whim. Even if the girl had lost him, he didn't particularly feel pessimistic. However,

“Nuh-uh.” A voice came through the receiver—declaring she hadn’t lost him—with the triumphant swagger of someone who’d captured a demon’s head. “Hoh…? That’s quite the chirping you’ve got there.”

Kyōkichi involuntarily smiled, “How far did you follow him…?”

“I can’t say it here, Big bro.” It was pure Tokyo dialect. With a knowing “Hah,” Kyōkichi pressed his tongue against the back of his upper lip, “So that guy’s at Saint Louis?”

“Hmm...? —Yeah!”

She must have glanced around inside Saint Louis before nodding—and imagining that gesture, Kyōkichi had never felt more tender toward the girl than in this moment. “So hurry up and get here, Big bro.”

“Got it!” “Hah! Hah!”

“O-K! I told ya!” “Ha ha…!” And, in high spirits from laughing, “—What’s your name again…?” “Me…?” The way she asked back in surprise—perhaps her child’s heart had been struck by the unexpected joy of being asked her name— “Big bro, I’m Karako!” And the voice that answered, mellifluous, was now a woman’s voice. Her breathing carried that same quality. When Kyōkichi returned to his original seat, Gin-chan of Good Morning for some reason seemed heavily subdued.

“Thanks for waiting!” That round too was won by Kyōkichi, bringing the East round to a close. “But that’s two thousand you owe me.” “I’ll pay at Saint Louis.” “Come with me, Gin-chan.”

As he started to stand up, Gin-chan hurriedly— “Hey, let’s play another East round.” he stopped him. “But I’m in a hurry.” “What’s the big deal?! “Skip Saint Louis!” Gin-chan’s voice suddenly turned sharp and menacing, but his eyes lacked strength.

Seven However, the boldness with which Gin-chan had stopped Kyōkichi was actually born from a vulnerability—he had a woman waiting at Saint Louis. The woman was Sakamoto’s wife. Gin-chan and Sakamoto had become acquainted when Sakamoto was frequenting the Kyōgoku shack. When Sakamoto married his wife—even if just for formality’s sake—the wedding ceremony they held was at Gin-chan’s apartment, with Gin-chan serving as cupbearer. He was, so to speak, their matchmaker; hence Sakamoto relied on Gin-chan, and whenever marital quarrels arose, his wife would go weeping to Gin-chan’s apartment.

One night, a fight over Philopon escalated violently, and the wife ran out to come weeping to Gin-chan’s apartment. “It’s late—stay here tonight. Tomorrow I’ll go make Sakamoto apologize. Quit moping and drink this,” he said, pouring whiskey into a glass.

It was Alps Whiskey. If you went to a certain bar on Shijō, they'd sell you a bottle for eighty yen if they recognized your face. The official price was three yen and fifty sen, but even at eighty yen a bottle, the whiskey was cheap. Since there were no rumors of deaths from it, they figured that even if some eye gunk formed, it couldn't be methyl alcohol—so they stuck to this brand exclusively, and that night too ended up draining two bottles between them. Because it was cheap and went down smooth, guzzling it straight turned out to be their mistake. With other whiskeys that wouldn't have happened—but this was Alps after all. Gin-chan got blackout drunk, his consciousness muddled as he fell into this strange relationship with Sakamoto's wife. The wife had been tough for a woman, but even she reached her limit.

Sakamoto, of course, had not suspected a thing. "Last night my wife caused trouble again—" he began, oddly earnest in his apologies. Gin-chan had nothing to say in return. The wife had been troubled, but this woman was a strange one. One moment she’d be agonizing, then briskly declare it better to leave that Philopon addict; she’d weep about carrying an illegitimate child, then coo sweetly about how happy she was to bear his child—ah, she wanted to get rid of it.

Her thoughts lacked coherence, but last night she suddenly ran away from home, begging to be taken in.

“That’s a problem. For one thing, if Sakamoto finds out…” Gin-chan wanted to avoid being with the woman as much as possible. If it became clear his wife had run away, Sakamoto would surely come to report it. When dawn broke, Gin-chan pleaded as if in prayer, “Go somewhere else and stay there.” “Where am I supposed to go? I have nowhere to go.” “Why don’t you go see a movie or something? Let’s meet at Saint Louis at three. We’ll discuss things after that.”

In any case, thinking it was dangerous for her to stay there, he forcibly drove the woman out. But what could we possibly have to talk about even if we met at three? It was perfectly clear that no good ideas would come to mind, so meeting her was agonizing. When the East round ended and he looked up at the pillar clock to see its hand pointing at five, Gin-chan felt both slight regret and a resigned sense of relief—though in truth, the clock had stopped due to malfunction. It was still three-thirty. He could still make it. He had to go. However, playing another East round to drag out time was his deception at this point.

As he was forcibly detaining Kyōkichi, a man drifted in like the wind. Ah!

It was Sakamoto.

Eight Kyōkichi, looking every inch a man who had drawn a good hand from the North (Pē) wind, was thoroughly eager to start another East round. But there was also Karako waiting at Saint Louis.

So, persuaded by Gin-chan, he found himself hesitating momentarily. It was at that very moment that Sakamoto made his entrance. "Oh, Mr. Sakamoto! Perfect timing." With that, Kyōkichi exclaimed as if blessed by fortune, and with that, his mind was made up. "—I'm getting out of here. Take my place, Mr. Sakamoto." Well, that’s probably better—he thought, glancing at Gin-chan’s face,

“……” Gin-chan was groaning. He hadn’t known that Kyōkichi and Sakamoto were acquainted. So, “Since her husband’s an accordion player, he blows his top at the drop of a hat.” He’d carelessly let slip about the woman and rambled on—when he thought about it now, it had been reckless. The words had tumbled out with the rhythm of discarding a pai tile, but then again, he’d always had a loose tongue since his benshi days. Gin-chan sat dejected, his face twisted like he’d bitten into a caterpillar.

The moment he caught a glimpse of that face, Kyōkichi too remembered the hot news that Sakamoto’s wife had been stolen by Gin-chan without his knowledge— “Ugh! This bastard’s turned into some shrill-cackling mess.” Kyōkichi secretly chewed on the irony of leaving Sakamoto behind like gravel in his mouth, but he wasn’t such a glutton for awkwardness that he’d stick around smirking at the atmosphere. “Better to run!”

As he tried to stand up, Sakamoto— “Come on, Kyō-kun! You went through the trouble of shooting up Philopon.” “I’ll be watching from the sidelines.”

—he stopped him. No—it was precisely because he didn’t want to become one of those spectators watching from the sidelines that he was fleeing—Kyōkichi fidgeted restlessly. “I’ve got something to pick up at Saint Louis.” “Well then, I’ll go do it for you. “Anyway, I’m just going to look for my wife…”

The moment Sakamoto began self-deprecatingly humming the lyrics of "Shanghai Lil"—"Searching every town and every hill, here and there..."—Gin-chan cried out, "Ah!" But no one noticed. They had no way of knowing Sakamoto's wife was waiting at Saint Louis. "Eh-heh-heh... What kinda smooth talk is this? I ain't lettin' just anyone handle this errand," he said.

Gin-chan formed a circle with his thumb and index finger—"I'm going to get this"—and in the blink of an eye dashed out of Gion-sō. "Hey, Kyō-kun! Kyō-kun!"

Good Morning Gin-chan suddenly stood up for some reason and called out to stop Kyōkichi.

Nine

“What’s… Gin-chan…”

Flustered... Kyōkichi returned to the entrance. "Come closer..." With a frantic look, Gin-chan pulled him nearer and placed a hand on Kyōkichi's shoulder,

“About what we talked about earlier…”

He started to whisper, “Keep this from Sakamoto…,” but abruptly changed his mind. Kyōkichi seemed like a good-natured man, but precisely because of that, he appeared loose-lipped. So, fearing that Kyōkichi might let slip about Sakamoto’s wife—Gin-chan had stopped him intending to silence him, but when he saw Kyōkichi’s face, he somehow felt ashamed toward him and couldn’t bring himself to say it. No—he felt more ashamed of himself than of Kyōkichi. He thought his panicked attempt at silencing was unmanly. Moreover, that would be too pitiful for Sakamoto. Of course, he thought laying bare the whole truth to Sakamoto would also be too cruel for the man. But secretly trying to silence someone in front of Sakamoto—the very picture of “what the husband doesn’t know won’t hurt him”—would be tantamount to insulting him. Since Kyōkichi had found out about it—it felt like divine punishment—

“If you’re going to talk, then talk.”

Gin-chan wanted to become utterly self-sacrificial, at least in this regard—letting things take their natural course would ease his own mind too. "About earlier...?"

Kyōkichi pressed. "Well—when are you paying back that two thousand points?"

Gin-chan forcibly changed the subject there. "So that's why you stopped me," Kyōkichi thought scornfully. “You’re quite the opportunist. I’ll pay. If I go to Saint Louis, I’ll get it. I’ll pay by the end of today. Gin-chan, so that’s how it is, huh? I’ve changed my opinion of you. You’re disgusting. I just have to pay, right?” With a huff, he stormed out. Gin-chan returned to Takako’s table with a gloomy face.

“Gin-chan, what’s wrong? Did a woman dump you? You’re not exactly full of energy, are you?” Sakamoto stroked the pie with a sullen face. “You aren’t exactly bursting with vitality yourself.” “Me?” Sakamoto forced a bitter smile. “—My wife ran off, y’know.” “Huh.”

“So it’s not like I’m slumpin’ around dejected, see? Get too pissed and you’ll start seein’ stars. All spinny-like.” “Take care of yourself.” “My wife, ya mean?” “Nah—your body. Ain’t you shootin’ too much Philopon?” “I’m solid. Wakana the comic’s still kickin’ after sixty shots daily. More important, Gin-chan—lay off them Alps. They call that stuff aviation fuel—keep hittin’ it and you’ll be gasp’n like a fish, dead for sure.”

“Yeah.” “A goner for sure.”

Gin-chan quietly observed Sakamoto’s complexion but suddenly— “Hey, let’s settle this!” “We’re not gonna live long anyway!” His voice turned confrontational.

Twilight

I

Tokyo and Osaka’s makeshift cafés, for starters, had chairs so jaggedly uncomfortable that one couldn’t settle in to leisurely soak up the atmosphere, but Kyoto’s cafés—true to the local character—were blessedly unhurried.

For example, Saint Louis had regulars who would sit for half a day. The owner of D-dō, a used bookstore in Sanjō Kawaramachi, spent more time sitting in a corner of Saint Louis than he did in his own shop. This owner's life purpose lay in hedonism. Yet pleasures requiring substantial money were utterly distasteful to him. True hedonism meant enjoying himself as effectively as possible with as little money as possible. He adhered to this principle by spending his days at Saint Louis. The café's location near Pontochō meant many geisha regulars frequented it - watching them became his visual feast, and teasing familiar geisha with snide remarks let him imagine himself splurging at a teahouse. Of course, the geisha made displeased faces. But knowing he'd never gain popularity even through extravagant spending, it didn't trouble him. Making these snide remarks - without affectations of charm or pretense, steadfast in his miserly ways like a typical fifty-year-old - provided refreshingly straightforward enjoyment instead. What greater pleasure existed than this hedonism that made even a ten-yen cup of coffee feel cheap? He was Kyotoite through and through.

Saint Louis rarely filled to capacity. That didn’t mean it was deserted. In Kyoto, cafés rarely ever filled to capacity. Yet even on those rare occasions when Saint Louis did crowd up, he never budged from his seat. He sat composed and unflappable. Like some boarding house deadbeat from a Chekhov play who never paid his rent, he maintained an air of composure.

"For business meetings and appointments, please use this establishment." Under a feminine-style sign reading "For business meetings and appointments, please use this establishment," he maintained the appearance of waiting for someone—though of course, he wasn’t waiting for anyone at all. However, except for the owner of D-dō, all the people at Saint Louis at that time were waiting for someone, as if by prior agreement.

Even Madam Natsuko was waiting. She was waiting for Kyōkichi. Chiyowaka of Pontochō was also waiting for a patron. The patron she was meeting at the café wasn’t high-class by any means—but a so-called patron-lover who combined financial support with romantic entanglement was certainly better than a mere customer or casual paramour. So she kept waiting indefinitely under the owner of D-dō’s teasing. The pickpocket Karako had tailed from Gion-so grew restless too—perhaps awaiting someone himself.

Of course, Karako was longing for Kyōkichi. If he didn't come soon, the pickpocket would get away. Karako went outside repeatedly, casting distant glances toward where Kyōkichi might approach. But he didn't come.

“He’s late.” “What’s goin’ on with him?”

When Karako’s anxious voice reached her ears as she returned once more to Saint Louis, a young woman suddenly looked up. It was Sakamoto's wife, Yoshiko.

He was late. He was really late. What had happened to Gin-chan?

Yoshiko, as if swept along, suddenly grew uneasy.

II

Gin-chan had said he’d come at three, but it was already past four. Nestled in a narrow alley, Saint Louis's interior found itself invaded by autumn's premature dusk—a twilight that crept in with an eerie stillness, yet carried a restless urgency all its own. The worry that Gin-chan might not come pressed in like the twilight, and Yoshiko once again recalled the look of annoyance on Gin-chan’s face when she had barged into his apartment the previous night.

“Is my coming a bother to you…?” “It’s not that you’re a bother, but this is problematic.” “You hate me, don’t you…?” “I don’t hate you, but you shouldn’t stay here.”

“Look at that. You do hate me, don’t you?” “You do hate me, don’t you?” “…………” Yoshiko couldn’t grasp Gin-chan’s sentiment—that having Sakamoto involved made things complicated. Women in such situations think only of two things—whether the other person likes them or hates them—and refuse to consider anything beyond that. At the very least, they wear such expressions. The fact that she had been driven out of the apartment under the pretext of meeting at three at Saint Louis was because the other person disliked her—she became utterly convinced in this manner.

As proof—he hadn’t come even though it was past four for their three o’clock appointment—Yoshiko’s face already bore the look of a discarded woman.

Admittedly, she hadn’t liked Gin-chan at all in the beginning. It was not a relationship formed out of affection. They had been under the spell of Alps Whisky. Or rather, it was a bond that came out like a drunken belch—a connection that seemed almost mixed with a joke. Even the term "momentary impulse" would be an exaggeration. Yet from such a joke emerged this situation where she could no longer forget Gin-chan—proof that the mysterious bond forged through physical connection defies our understanding.

When it came to setting the wheels of infidelity in motion, it was always the woman who took charge. Thus Yoshiko had deliberately used Philopon as an excuse—even going so far as to stage breaking an ampule—to come tumbling into Gin-chan's arms, though part of it concerned the child growing in her belly. Sakamoto had nearly caught wind of it too. Because of that child in her womb, she had to see Gin-chan one more time even if he despised her. But where could Gin-chan be? She'd tried calling his apartment, but naturally he wasn't there. With tear-streaked face, she suddenly glanced toward the entrance—and froze. Kyōkichi had walked in. As if caught red-handed, Yoshiko hurriedly turned her face away.

But of course, Kyōkichi had noticed Yoshiko. “Heh.” The memory surfaced of Gin-chan’s panicked reaction when that call had been placed from Saint Louis to Gion-sō. Kyōkichi deliberately turned his face toward Yoshiko, kept both hands thrust in his trouser pockets, and with the tip of his tongue spat out the cigarette he’d been holding in his mouth— “What pathetic squealing!”

When Yoshiko heard those squealing words, for some reason she suddenly stood up and came to Kyōkichi’s side.

III

“Kyō-kun, you...” Yoshiko seemed to hesitate for a moment,

“...You don’t know where Motohashi-san is...?” “Motohashi-san…?” “Such a man...” "The hell should I know? Never even heard of him—" thought Kyōkichi, unaware this was Gin-chan’s real name, as he deliberately turned his back on Yoshiko and darted his eyes—which had just exchanged a nod with Karako—toward the pickpocket. Kyōkichi usually bantered more with Yoshiko than with her husband Sakamoto. Though crude, his manner held a disarming charm that made Yoshiko’s troubles fade whenever he visited their apartment. But what could explain this uncharacteristic iciness today?

Yoshiko, in the depths of her anchorless thoughts, peered with a chill into something resembling a guilty conscience,

“It’s about Gin-chan. At Good Morning’s...” “At Good Morning’s...”

Without realizing it, she had turned red. "The hell should I know." "You met with Gin-chan, didn't you...?" "The hell should I know." Through his sulking, bluffing manner of speech, Yoshiko realized Kyōkichi must have been meeting with Gin-chan until now. Admittedly, earlier, Kyōkichi had— "What pathetic squealing!"

The moment he said it, Yoshiko had made the connection—"Kya-kya" was Gin-chan's catchphrase, and those words coming from Kyōkichi now were proof they'd met until just moments before.

Where had they been meeting? Yoshiko remembered she had called Gion-sō half an hour earlier to summon Kyōkichi. He must have been playing mahjong at Gion-sō. And that partner might have been Gin-chan. No—it must be so. Was Gin-chan still at Gion-sō? “Could you let me use the telephone for a moment…?”

Yoshiko abruptly told Natsuko and called Gion-sō.

Because it was an automatic system, she initially had no idea where it was connecting, but—

“Hello? Gion-sō…? “There...”

The way Yoshiko spoke made it immediately clear—and in that instant, Kyōkichi exclaimed, "Oh shit, this isn't good!"

Startled, he moved to cut off Yoshiko’s words—

“No, no! “Don’t call now! “There’s no one at Gion-sō! “There’s nobody there!” As he resorted to a transparent lie to cover up—unable to bring himself to say Sakamoto was there too—

“Kyō-kun, don’t interfere!” Yoshiko’s voice had already turned shrill with paranoid suspicion—was even Kyōkichi trying to keep her from meeting Gin-chan?

At that moment, the pickpocket suddenly stood up, paid his bill, and tried to leave Saint Louis.

“Big bro!”

Karako tugged impatiently at Kyōkichi’s sleeve.

Four Urged by Karako, Kyōkichi thought to immediately follow the pickpocket out, but found his attention drawn to Sakamoto's wife Yoshiko.

If left alone, Yoshiko would call Gin-chan. However, Sakamoto should be with Gin-chan right now. If Sakamoto were to find out right then and there that Yoshiko had called Gin-chan, one could only imagine what kind of uproar would ensue. Even if Sakamoto didn’t notice, Gin-chan would be in trouble, and above all, from Kyōkichi’s perspective, he couldn’t bear to silently watch the spectacle of a woman calling the place where both her husband and lover had been until yesterday. It was such an icky feeling.

“I said no means no, damn it!”

“Cut it out!” Kyōkichi suddenly snatched the receiver from Yoshiko’s hand and slammed it down with a clatter. Yoshiko turned deathly pale. “You lunatic!” “If I’m a lunatic, then you’re just a squealing mess!” “...” Yoshiko’s shoulders shook as she glared at Kyōkichi. Her face was on the verge of tears.

“……”

Kyōkichi’s face was also on the verge of tears. All women are fools. Matsuri dies, Yōko gets seduced, and this woman here runs off from her husband after having an affair... On top of that, she has the nerve to call without knowing anything. Oh! Gets knocked up. That Oshin had a big pregnant belly too!

“Big bro, hurry...” “If we don’t go now, we’ll lose him!” Karako’s voice rose in urgency as she addressed Kyōkichi. Realizing this, Kyōkichi bolted out of Saint Louis. Karako rushed out after him, “That way!” As she pointed toward the pickpocket walking along Kawaramachi Street, Yoshiko came clattering out. Then, her face contorted in panic, she began hurrying toward Kiyamachi Street—Kyōkichi,

"Where ya goin'...?" He stopped her. "That's none o' your damn business! Where I go—" Her snapped retort, as if declaring "It's my affair," betrayed the desperate intensity of a woman hellbent on meeting Gin-chan at Gion-sō.

“Hey, wait a second!” “Let go of me!” “Nah, ain’t lettin’ go.” “It’ll rip!”

“Hey, wait up. You’re headin’ to Gion-sō, ain’t ya…? C’mon, I’m beggin’ ya. Just stop goin’, will ya? Hey, Yosh-chan!” “Don’t go tossin’ around ‘Yosh-chan’ like it’s cheap candy.”

Even as she said this, Kyōkichi's voice gradually took on a wheedling, pleading tone—"Hey, I'm begging you."

And while restraining Yoshiko, when he turned around, the pickpocket had already vanished into Kawaramachi Street. At the same time, Karako had also vanished from sight.

V

The last rays of the setting sun that had illuminated only the mouthpiece of the Three B's sailor pipe displayed in the shamisen shop's showcase at Shijō Kawaramachi eventually vanished as they waited for the city tram, and twilight slid down upon them. Rather than the desolate loneliness of the old capital, this neighborhood where a Ginza-style colonial flood of disordered colors had become its recent defining feature still took on—when a gray autumn wind swept through with a chill—a faded twilight befitting ancient Kyoto. The town and its people, worn-out as if by the wind, let urban melancholy quiver like disheveled hair.

Standing before the shamisen shop's display window, the pickpocket waiting for the streetcar looked somehow worn-out. Do pickpockets get worn-out like ordinary people too? No—that man wasn't a professional pickpocket. A real pickpocket would be blending into the crowd waiting for the streetcar. A professional wouldn't stand apart from the line all alone, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette missing over a third of its tobacco.

That man—Kitayama Masao—had been a junior clerk at a certain bank in Osaka. After graduating from night school at a commercial school, he was hired as a cashier, but was soon conscripted; five years later, when he returned from military service, those years had not altered this honest young man’s honesty in the slightest. His hushed, mumbling voice remained unchanged from before his conscription, and his hands flicking the abacus beads showed no stain from five years of extraordinary experiences. His hands were unblemished.

However, there was just one thing he had learned after returning: paying for black-market women.

One night, Kitayama felt a passion resembling romantic affection toward a girl he'd picked up in Osaka's Nakanoshima Park. Yet after forcing himself to meet her two or three times, the girl with the bruise beneath her right eye abruptly ceased appearing in the park. She couldn't be found among the black-market women clustered before Osaka Station either. When his searches through Namba's nightspots and Shinsaibashi's darkened corners proved equally futile, he wondered if she'd been arrested. Just as anxiety about her falling ill gripped him, a letter arrived from the girl,

"Osaka had become too harsh, so I came to Kyoto to work. This Sunday at three-thirty—I'll be waiting at Saint Louis in the side street of Shijō Kawaramachi—so come," she wrote. "This must be what it feels like to take flight," Kitayama thought—and when Sunday came, he had already reached Kyoto by morning. At the station entrance, he had his shoes polished for the first time in his life. But when he went to pay after the polishing, he discovered the wallet he'd kept in his back trouser pocket had been stolen. Without money, he could no longer meet the girl. Walking along Kawaramachi Street like an empty husk, he noticed a wallet protruding from the back pocket of a young man getting his shoes polished in front of the Asahi Building. A devilish impulse suddenly struck him.

The instant it struck him, Kitayama's hand was already reaching out... "Ah! Ah!" As Kitayama vividly recalled that moment—groaning with an unidentifiable sound neither sigh nor scream while violently shaking his head—the streetcar arrived. He boarded restlessly yet with lingering hesitation. Then from behind, a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl hurriedly climbed aboard. Needless to say, it was Karako.

VI

Before the streetcar started moving, there was a brief interval. During that interval, both Kitayama and Karako peered restlessly through the windows at the pavement of Kawaramachi Street. Karako had been waiting for Kyōkichi to come. Though she had gone through the trouble of tailing him from Gion-sō to Saint Louis and calling Kyō-kun via telephone, since he remained entirely distracted by another woman, Karako ultimately relied on her quick thinking and came tailing alone—yet even so found herself biting her lip at these jealousy-tinged feelings.

Yet her lack of resentment toward Kyōkichi wasn’t born from childish naivety in love. Being treated kindly was a sad custom this girl had somehow resigned herself to. Perhaps because of this, before Karako could wish to be treated kindly by others, she first tried to devote herself and ingratiate her way forward. Naturally, she liked being asked to do things by others. No—she’d even volunteer for tasks she wasn’t asked to do. However, she did not expect reward; it was, so to speak, a selfless devotion born from the loneliness of an orphan’s emotions. Even for a twelve-year-old girl, the task of tailing a pickpocket—a burden far too heavy—was precisely what set Karako bustling with eagerness. And to carry it out splendidly was, at the very least, an expression of her budding affection for Kyōkichi.

The streetcar began to move. Karako felt shaken by a sudden premonition that she might part with Kyō-kun forever this way, yet her eyes glittered sharply as she glared at Kitayama. Kitayama lingered reluctantly, his gaze still drifting toward Kawaramachi Street. He had been searching for that girl. It was because of her that he had stolen Kyōkichi’s wallet. This was both retaliation for being pickpocketed earlier and what one might call a devilish impulse—but without the goal of obtaining money for that black-market girl, someone as honest and timid as Kitayama could never have committed such an audacious act. After stealing it, he immediately disappeared into the crowd. There was still time before the promised three-thirty. As he wandered aimlessly, remorse and fear pursued him, searing his back like burning coals. Growing afraid even of walking, Kitayama fled into Gion-sō. He had learned mahjong on the battlefield. He killed time playing mahjong before going to Saint Louis. But the girl never came, no matter how long he waited. Of course, Kitayama didn’t know she had been arrested the previous night alongside Butsudan Oharu and others.

As he waited impatiently, suddenly,

"Should I really be lingering around in a place like this?"

The anxiety reared its head like a snake and coiled around Kitayama’s right wrist. Pickpocketing, crime, handcuffs! He was a timid man. Kitayama restlessly flew out of Saint Louis and boarded the Kyoto Station-bound train. And as he felt his lingering attachment to the woman and his desperate urge to flee Kyoto as soon as possible like two parallel train tracks, the streetcar arrived at the station front.

Kitayama's steps were quick as he crossed the station square. Karako followed, panting heavily as she scurried after him.

VII

After passing through the ticket gate and climbing the stairs, within a narrow passage partitioned by ropes, a crowd of travelers sat listlessly crouched, their gloomy expressions hanging lifelessly. No one was standing.

Could they be repatriates? Or perhaps just ordinary travelers being made to wait for hours in that dingy passageway, bathing in the dim electric light until their train arrived? Each was a human being with an independent personality, but once formed into a crowd, what emanated from them seemed like a single animalistic sensation devoid of will. People passing by them would briefly cast scornful glances—their sense of superiority seeming to precede any sympathy—but Kitayama's eyes held an envious gaze toward those travelers.

He wanted to abandon everything, burrow into the travelers' midst, and vanish to some unknown land. His gaze suddenly met that of one of the crouching travelers. Somehow, it was a face he recognized. "……"

With a tearful face, Kitayama managed a feeble smile and started to say something, but at that moment, a station employee approached from ahead. Kitayama startled and turned his face away, then passed through the passageway with a stiff gait and descended the stairs toward the railway platform. The station employee’s uniform looked like that of a police officer.

The flames of remorse—"I committed pickpocketing"—that Kitayama had extinguished beneath his expectation of meeting the woman now relentlessly pursued his retreating back. Before his frantic escape route, terror loomed like a monstrous entity, flicking out the law's crimson tongue. The Osaka-bound National Railway train arrived promptly.

When a seat opened up in Takatsuki, he slumped into it exhaustedly—and the moment he spotted Karako sitting primly across the aisle,

"Oh!" Kitayama realized for the first time that Karako had apparently been following him all the way from Gion-sō. After passing through Suita and Higashi-Yodogawa Station, the neon sign of Kitano Theater soon came into view through the south-side train window, and Osaka was already night. It was the hour when the daughters of the night emerged quietly in Osaka Station Square like nocturnal blossoms unfurling on moonflower vines. Kitayama, with a futile searching gaze for any girl among them who might have a bruise under her eye, momentarily forgot about Karako, who seemed to be tailing him from behind.

"She wasn't there." However, the straw-like wisp of hope that she might be in Nakanoshima Park led Kitayama's feet to that park. He walked round and round inside the grounds. The bruise that no amount of thickly applied powder could conceal was nowhere to be seen beneath any girl's eyes. Circling endlessly, Kitayama listened to the lonely echo of his own footsteps. A loneliness so vast it made his mind reel tripped his feet, and he came to an abrupt stop. He turned around. Karako stood there.

“Why are you following me…?” With a roughness that surprised even himself, Kitayama suddenly grabbed Karako’s shoulders. At that moment—bang, bang—gunfire rang out.

VIII

"Must be fireworks." Kitayama listened to the gunfire as if from a great distance. Nakanoshima Park had the Yodo River flowing through its center, evoking thoughts of fireworks. Indeed, about two months prior, the Water Capital Festival had been held there, where festival enthusiasts set off fireworks in boisterous celebration. Thus he hadn’t recognized them as gunshots. "Y-you...from Kyoto...h-have you been following me?" "Why—" Kitayama stammered hoarsely, his grip tightening violently on Karako’s shoulders.

“…………” Karako couldn’t respond immediately. Since the air raids, she had endured countless frightening ordeals and encountered terrifying people, but never before in her life had she seen anything as frightening as Kitayama’s expression. Unable to make a sound, Karako trembled violently. “Spit it out!”

Kitayama glared at her with bloodshot eyes while shaking Karako’s shoulders. Shaken, Karako suddenly looked up at the sky. Under a starry sky so dense it seemed to rain stars, a star streaked across, trailing a faint tail before vanishing in an instant—and in that moment, Karako remembered Kyōkichi.

"You... I'm facing such terrifying eyes right now." Even if she hadn't followed him all the way to Nakanoshima Park—when she passed by the police box along the way—if she had just rushed in and said "That guy's a pickpocket," Kyōkichi's wallet would have been returned. But police boxes still drew from her the aversion typical of a vagrant orphan. That very afternoon, she'd endured an unpleasant experience at the Maruyama Park police box too. And partly there had been a childlike vanity—wanting to deliver the pickpocket to Kyōkichi without police help. The imagined joy of confirming where he holed up and reporting it to Kyōkichi must have kept Karako tailing him all that time.

“Say it! “You won’t talk?!” “You! “Why did you follow me…?” For Kitayama—ordinarily so meek he could barely raise his voice—this ferocious expression, unlike anything he had ever shown before, might have appeared as rage-induced frenzy. Yet it sprang not from anger but rather from Kitayama’s own terror. *She knows I’m the pickpocket!* This premonition must have been what drove Kitayama into a frenzy. It’s often cowards who resort to violent acts when push comes to shove.

“You know everything, don’t you? Damn you!”

As Kitayama's hands moved from Karako's shoulders to her neck and began to tighten with force—bang, bang... gunfire rang out again, and the crowd surged forward like an avalanche.

“It’s a breakout! It’s a breakout!” “Hey, run this way!” It was a group that had broken out of the nearby Osaka Detention Center. The gunfire was likely warning shots fired by the guards. Someone jumped into the river. Kitayama snapped back to his senses and dashed off to join the group. His savage frenzy subsided all at once, his coarse features twisting into nothing but panic.

IX The cries of “Run! Run!” were shouts born of mob mentality—hurled by a group of escaped pretrial detainees at uneasy ears inclined toward conscience’s whispers—but to Kitayama’s ears, “You run too!” was what he heard. So as he blended into the group and broke into a run, Kitayama grew pale under the illusion that he too had become a prisoner. That night, the number of escaped prisoners—with the list later reported to police undergoing four revisions—remained unknown to anyone present, though rough estimates placed it around a hundred. They appeared to have split into three groups; those who fled to Nakanoshima Park numbered roughly thirty, their blue official uniforms—lacking donated kimonos or Western clothes that might have served as civilian disguise—making them instantly recognizable as detention center escapees.

The blue of the official uniforms, illuminated by the moonlight, took on an even more vividly grotesque eeriness, piercing Kitayama’s heart like a blade of remorse.

"I thought of becoming a murderer—me, a pickpocket!" He had nearly killed that girl—to Kitayama now, Nakanoshima Park was no longer the nostalgic place where he'd found that shadow-dwelling girl.

“Run! Run!”

"We’ve got to escape from Nakanoshima—" Kitayama found himself shouting along with the prisoners as he ran when suddenly—oh right—he shouldn’t be carrying this thing. Kitayama threw away the wallet he had stolen from Kyōkichi.

Gunfire rang out again. The guards must have fired another warning shot. It was a dull, distant sound, but a man in his mid-fifties, who had been running slightly apart from the group, suddenly crouched down.

It was Ginzō. This was Ginzō—Chimako’s father, the same Ginzō whom Chimako had told Kizaki, "My dad’s in prison…"—once the patron of Madam Takako of Tamura. The reason Ginzō was running behind alone was that he had no real intention of escaping. Resentment over cells crammed far beyond capacity—so narrow one couldn’t even lie down—along with hostility toward guards who prohibited care packages without bribes, and complaints about meals… all these had been accumulating when, on that day, dinner remained unforthcoming no matter how long they waited, and just as the prisoners were raising a noisy uproar, a chance quarrel between inmates sparked toward the guards attempting to suppress it. As the hostile atmosphere between prisoners and guards intensified, the swelling tension finally shattered the detention center’s bars and came cascading out in an avalanche—yet Ginzō, swept into this mob of escapees, had already resigned himself: even if they fled, they’d inevitably be caught, only to face harsher penalties.

So his steps had been reluctant to flee, but when he ducked at the gunfire, Kitayama's discarded wallet came into view. Ginzō quickly picked it up and,

"That's it—with this, I can escape!" While running like a man possessed toward Yodoyabashi, his daughter Chimako's face flashed through his mind; he drew heavy breaths—haa... haa...—each one filled with the thought: I'll go to Kyoto. Go to Kyoto and see Chimako.

Characters

I After passing through Nakanoshima Park and reaching the north end of Yodoyabashi Bridge, Ginzō had lost sight of the group he had escaped with. Ginzō ran toward Umeda Shindō along the broad streetcar avenue, but to his fleeing back, that straight path stretched endlessly. When he reached Ōebashi Bridge, Ginzō abruptly veered left. Then, concealing himself among the rows of willows along the riverbank, he raced toward Watanabe Bridge. Finding himself alone, even he—a man on the run—couldn't help feeling anxious.

He hadn't felt anxious until picking up the wallet. Rather than the anxiety of being pursued, he found the idea of being caught outright more comforting; his will to escape was scarcely more than could be scooped with an ear pick, and resignation had taken root before any wish to flee if possible could form. However, the chance discovery of the wallet had cut through Ginzō's indecision with mathematical clarity—the journey to Kyoto where Chimako waited was now merely ten blocks to Osaka Station, where the Kyoto-bound government railway would depart.

"With this money, I can make it to Kyoto!" Clutching tightly to thoughts of Chimako, the anxiety of pursuit now shook his body, making him collide with willow trees again and again—and just as he staggered, he passed a policeman. But the policeman merely gave him a sharp look and moved on. The detention center escape had occurred just ten minutes prior; that officer likely hadn't yet heard. It was one hour after the mass breakout that Osaka Detention Center reported the incident to police.

Admittedly, had he been wearing the blue prison uniform, he likely wouldn’t have passed through that spot unscathed—but at that moment, Ginzō was dressed in the Western-style clothes Chimako had provided. When visiting and finding it painful to see her father Ginzō wearing blue prison garments, Chimako had managed to procure Western-style clothes from the black market and asked the guards to deliver them. "Thanks to Chimako, I made it!" Relieved, as he turned toward Watanabe Bridge, the road suddenly brightened—the lights of the barrack-built shopping district illuminated Ginzō’s feet. He wore straw sandals.

Chimako had tried to send shoes as well, but since the detention center did not permit wearing shoes, the ones she brought ended up becoming a bribe for the guards. "These straw sandals are awful!"

When Ginzō realized no one was chasing him anymore, he walked while soothing his tight chest and muttered. Wearing straw sandals with Western clothes was common post-defeat attire these days—nothing strange about it, or so one might say. Yet to a sharp eye, they might discern the sandals were prison-issue.

When Ginzō reached Sakura Bridge, he turned toward Sonezaki, slipped into the black market, and bought a pair of canvas shoes. The wallet still had nearly a hundred yen left.

Arriving at Osaka Station, he bought a ticket to Kyoto and took his place in line on the platform with an innocent face—only then did he finally feel relief. But anxiety still lingered, and as he kept glancing restlessly behind him, the sharp-featured face of a man in his thirties trying to board the Osaka-originating Tokyo-bound express train’s second-class car on Platform 10 caught his eye. Ginzō suddenly jolted.

II It looked familiar—and the moment he thought so, Ah, that man!

And he remembered almost simultaneously. He didn't know the man's name was Kimiji Shōzō—but he had seen that face at Tamura before. It was definitely Saturday night! After returning from Manchuria—Ginzō, once a wartime profiteer now reduced to a fifty-year-old man lowering himself—had thrown himself at Tamura's mercy, where his former mistress Takako and Chimako, the daughter she'd borne him, lived. He'd begged for any work—scullery duty in the kitchen or bathhouse attendant—and on exactly the fourth day, a Saturday night, he saw Shōzō visiting Takako's quarters. It was a face he'd glimpsed just once—no encounter before or after—yet in that instant he knew this man was Takako's current patron. From that moment on, it became a face Ginzō could never forget for the rest of his life. Or rather, one he wished he could forget. He'd already sensed Takako likely had a patron, but seeing this man's face—this man—still stirred jealousy in him despite his age. As proof: even during detention center dawns, that face had sometimes surfaced in his dreams.

That face was trying to board the train from the platform across. Ginzō jolted, and the moment he averted his painfully pale face— "...The train on Platform 10 departs at 21:00 for Tokyo..." —he heard the loudspeaker announce. Ginzō looked up at the platform's electric clock. "8:10 PM. Still fifty minutes till departure." He muttered this mechanically while his gut churned with different calculations— That man was Tokyo-bound tonight. Which meant Kyoto would be free of him.

Kyoto—Tamura—Takako!

"Tonight Takako will be alone!" The allure of Takako's voluptuous body—her warmth, her scent—came flooding back. For Ginzō now, the joy of going to Kyoto lay not in seeing his daughter Chimako, but in beholding Takako's face. Ginzō turned around once more. Shōzō's face appeared in the second-class carriage window. That arrogant visage lingered beneath Ginzō's eyelids as he boarded the soon-departing government railway train to Kyoto. He found himself recalling how he'd once taken a sleeper train from Osaka to meet Takako—the woman he'd kept in Tokyo—thinking I too used to have a face like that. Everything had become a dream of the past. Even the dreams woven in sleeper cars had turned to mere dreams. Japan had changed since then, and Ginzō had changed completely. Since returning from Manchuria, he'd become a man utterly devoid of backbone.

Crashing into Tamura to beg for a room when he had nowhere else to go was one thing—but sneaking into Takako’s bedroom late at night the day after seeing Shōzō, only to be brutally rejected and driven out of Tamura, was sheer recklessness beyond all excuse.

However, when the train arrived in Kyoto, Ginzō hailed a rickshaw at the station and had it head toward Kiyamachi where Tamura was. Overwhelmed by longing for Takako, he had become so devoid of self-restraint that he forgot the shamefulness of that time.

III

The rickshaw puller carrying Ginzō had a refined-looking face, but whether because fares alone weren't enough to live on or he dabbled in shady brokering, he kept insistently suggesting—"Is sir going to Kiyamachi to buy yatona? Yatona seem cheaper than geisha but end up costing more in the long run—how about I introduce somewhere more affordable and interesting instead?" “With a flask and some time thrown in, you’ll get change from a hundred yen—cheap, ain’t it?” “And besides, all the women are just amateurs repatriated from Manchuria…”

Ginzō listened painfully to the rickshaw puller’s words—that the location being behind M Police Station made it safer through the very proximity of authority, where danger hides in plain sight. Words like "repatriation" and "police" were all too familiar to Ginzō. After being rejected by Takako when he made advances and fleeing Tamura, Ginzō’s life had sunk to the depths of destitution. Yet perhaps he still retained some Osaka merchant-like spirit—"I was once a proper iron merchant myself." Just you wait—I’ll show that woman—selling tobacco in a corner of Osaka’s black market, selling rice balls, selling sugar, selling alcohol, and that alcohol was methyl.

He had sold the methyl without knowing what it was, but even so, if people died it would still be manslaughter—he had ended up facing imprisonment, and now that crime was doubly compounded by the offense of escape, not to mention unauthorized use of money from a wallet he'd found.

When they passed Gojō, rain began falling abruptly. As if Ginzō's body had suddenly grown heavy, the rickshaw's pace slackened. A gust swept sideways rain through gaps in the hood. Raindrops streaked down the celluloid window fixed to the hood, Shijō Avenue's lights flickering through them—then, as the rickshaw veered from Shijō Kobashi into Kiyamachi, violent desire gripped Ginzō. Forgetting a repatriate's desolation, a fugitive's panic, his resentment toward Takako, his shame and reputation—swaying only in anguish for her white flesh—the rickshaw at last reached Tamura's entrance.

The threshold felt daunting. He couldn't face the maid. But steeling himself, he entered through the kitchen entrance; when he asked the maid, "The Madam is away." "She left for Tokyo just now."

“Chimako…?”

“She hasn’t been here since the other day, y’know.”

As he listened to the chatty maid prattle on about Chimako having apparently run away, Ginzō slumped down in the kitchen as if his soul had been drained—but rather than disappointment over Takako's absence, it was his worry for the runaway Chimako that left him dazed, suddenly aged ten years.

However, at that moment, the telephone rang,

"M Police Station...?" The moment Ginzō heard the maid's voice echoing back through the telephone receiver, his eyes flashed sharply, and tension raced across his pallid face.

At that very moment, at Kyoto Station, the Tokyo-bound express train that had departed Osaka at 21:00 entered the platform, and Takako—having met up with Marquis Notake, with whom she had arranged to meet during the day—was about to board the second-class car together with a female friend from Tokyo.

IV

Shōzō, who had boarded the train from Osaka, smirked and bared a vicious smile as he watched Takako and her companion enter the second-class car.

“Just as I’d thought.” Takako had said during the day that she would leave around nine o’clock that night, but reasoning that the only Tokyo-bound express departing at that time was this 21:00 Osaka-originating one, Shōzō—immediately upon returning to Osaka from Tamura—arranged tickets and boarded that train. Of course, had Takako boarded alone with just a female friend, Shōzō’s plan would have been rendered meaningless—but as expected, Takako sat down beside a refined-looking young man in an empty seat. The moment he saw the young man’s face, Shōzō—

"That's him... Marquis Notake—" It clicked into place without a doubt, and he felt satisfied that his intuition had hit the mark. However, that satisfaction was something very pleasant—though to call it that would be an overstatement. For the scene now before Shōzō's eyes—his own mistress attempting to travel with another man—for a prideful man like him was a fact that struck at the very core of his masculinity. Moreover, that man—Notake Harutaka—had brought Yōko to Tamura just last night.

He smirked, but even Shōzō's face—stiffened with a ghastly pallor—had naturally turned pale. "Just you wait!"

Shōzō recalled the newspaper real estate advertisement he had seen at Tamura this morning. Upon seeing the advertisement that read "Estate for Sale: A Certain Marquis’s Residence in Tokyo Suburbs," Shōzō, upon returning to Osaka, immediately called Tokyo and confirmed that it was Marquis Notake’s estate. And he felt a thrill at that coincidence.

Yōko—Harutaka—Tamura—Takako—estate sale—Tokyo-bound....

Coincidence bred coincidence, enveloping Shōzō. What further coincidences would rain down upon him?—Shōzō’s eyes burned with the crimson intensity of a man watching the dice of fate. In a sense, Shōzō had wound the thread of coincidence around the spinning top of his life. And if you set it loose, the top would keep spinning. For Shōzō, this was his raison d'être; his life needed to keep spinning like a top without cease.

Just you wait—so this declaration had now escalated far beyond his initial purpose of cornering Harutaka merely to ascertain Yōko’s whereabouts,

The fact that I'd boarded this train wouldn't end without consequences. I wouldn't let Harutaka off scot-free—but then, I myself wouldn't get off scot-free either. I'd already thrown the dice—a challenge to chance.

Speaking of coincidences, neither Takako nor Harutaka noticed Shōzō sitting in the compartment's corner. From Shōzō's vantage point they were clearly visible, but their seating positions made him difficult to discern from theirs—each positioned such that sightlines worked asymmetrically.

And as Takako and Harutaka, completely oblivious to such coincidence, pressed tightly together and aware only of their physicality, the train plunged into Yamashina Tunnel.

V “Shall I open the window a bit?” As the train cleared the tunnel, Harutaka lifted his hips from the seat and grasped the window latch. The hem of his jacket grazed Takako’s face by the window.

“But it’s raining…isn’t it?” Takako said slowly in an overly prudent tone while removing the handkerchief she had been pressing to her mouth. Her face, body, and voice all remained youthful, yet in that particular manner of speaking, her forty-one years would fleetingly reveal themselves.

“Ah… Yes indeed.”

Harutaka sat down with his characteristic politeness, but something about Takako’s manner of speaking left him unamused. He had recently grown oddly prone to taking offense—so much so that he convinced himself she was mocking his foolish oversight in forgetting the rain might pour in—a sensitivity born from his acute awareness of his aristocracy’s decline in recent times. Part of it stemmed from the discomfort of soot having gotten into his eye. Even if soot entering one’s eye was an act of God, Harutaka was precisely the sort of man who would find such an occurrence as shameful as an untimely sneeze. He likely believed that soot was something that only afflicted the eyes of lowly people.

Instead of irritably rubbing his eyes, Harutaka hit upon the idea of using that hand to grasp Takako’s. While enduring the gritty, rolling pain in his eye, he found himself simultaneously savoring the tactile sensation of the woman’s hand—a contradiction so absurd he felt like bursting into laughter at himself. But since this was an unwanted trip to begin with, Harutaka thought, allowing himself this much indulgence seemed permissible. Three days had already passed since Harutaka—who had left Tokyo over a month earlier after being invited by a dissolute friend in Kyoto—received a letter from his mother demanding his immediate return. Harutaka’s father had died five years earlier in unexplained circumstances while asleep at his mistress’s residence in Tsukiji; his brother had gone to Manchuria chasing after a film actress and was said to be surviving by selling soap in Changchun or some such place—a single rumor being the last trace of him—leaving their current household as a family of three: his mother, younger sister Nobuko, and himself. According to his mother’s letter, she worried about Nobuko’s conduct and entreated him as her elder brother to counsel her—a request Harutaka could not simply ignore. Yet he still had lingering attachments to Kyoto.

Returning to Tokyo without having succeeded in seducing Yōko would leave an unbearably bitter aftertaste. If I must return to Tokyo anyway, then Takako's invitation provided an unexpected travel companion—and boarding that train would save me the trouble of arranging tickets,

“Even if we get off at Atami along the way, the lodging costs will be your expense.” He acted unexpectedly vulgar—though this was simply his inherent shrewdness in handling matters—but even so,

“Since that one didn’t work out, this one...” There was a slight regret in this opportunistic shift from Yōko to Takako. Yet precisely because of that base calculation, grasping her hand proved easier than stifling a sneeze. When he abruptly seized the hand resting on her knee, Takako returned the grip without changing expression.

Two pairs of eyes watched this.

VI Takako’s friend Tsuyuko and Shōzō—the two of them—were watching this. “Heh. At it, are they?” From her diagonal seat across the aisle, Tsuyuko gazed at Takako and Harutaka’s clasped hands as though examining cheap sculpture. Their hands seemed bloodless. Lovers don’t hold hands like that. They don’t grasp each other with such complete absence of passion. Therefore Tsuyuko felt nothing as she watched. No beauty, no ugliness—just clinical assessment. She was calculating—through their handclasp’s quality—the capital sum Takako might invest in her planned Ginza cabaret.

Apparently, Takako wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the cabaret proposal. But having gone to the trouble of coming all the way to Kyoto and successfully pulling off the feat of getting them onto a Tokyo-bound train that very day, Tsuyuko was determined not to let the cabaret proposal go unaddressed. For that purpose, it was preferable that Takako thoroughly enjoyed herself on this trip. “Haven’t you flaunted it enough already? Instead of treating me, invest some capital. Look—it doesn’t balance out if you keep playing the considerate one.”

Having prepared this line, Tsuyuko had deliberately seated Takako and Harutaka side by side while modestly taking a separate seat herself. Even when she had been introduced to Harutaka at Kyoto Station,

“Turning a marquis into a toy boy—how tasteless for this day and age.” She wanted to retort sarcastically but steeled herself and held back—

“—A bit handsome, isn’t he?” With those words, she had tickled Takako’s ears—a maneuver born from that same psychology where businessmen deploy geishas to meetings with investors. However, as she observed Takako’s expression—devoid of any passion—Tsuyuko found herself feeling somewhat disappointed, thinking it might be impossible to get her to cough up even five hundred thousand yen. But it was Takako who had truly been disappointed. If one were to convert one’s youth into currency and assess men based on their qualifications as patrons—habits now deeply ingrained in Takako—then any dream she might harbor would have been an aspiration toward nobility. No matter how shrewd a woman might be, there’s always one gap in her armor. In Takako’s case, it was that shallow pride in her own name—"Takako"—which she had never abandoned, even through a life born into poverty that had drenched her body in hardship from youth.

"A romance with this man seemed possible."

Such a premonition had suddenly floated into her head like a single strand of straw; however, when Harutaka took her hand so easily, the dream shattered anticlimactically, and Takako became a woman of realism. When they passed Maibara, Takako,

“Why don’t you turn this way for a second…?”

Peeling back Harutaka's eyelid like an eye doctor would, she abruptly brought her face close and licked it once with her tongue tip. The soot speck came off. "How's that...?" Takako's face—sneering in laughter—seemed drenched in the love techniques of a woman who knew nothing of love.

Shōzō, who had been watching from afar, suddenly stood up.

VII

"I can't take this anymore—" Shōzō started toward Takako’s seat. He tried to strike Takako across the cheek. Not only was his woman holding hands with another man, she was even using the tip of her tongue to lick away soot that had gotten into the man’s eye. When viewed from afar, that pose created an illusion of something else entirely.

Even if it hadn't been Shōzō, anyone would have naturally wanted to strike them. However, had that man not been Harutaka, Shōzō likely wouldn't have flown into such a rage. Harutaka was precisely the sort of person Shōzō detested most. Takako's yearning for nobility ultimately stemmed from her lowly birth, and by that same logic—having been born into a toothpick carver's household—Shōzō harbored hostility toward the aristocracy. Moreover, being a toothpick carver's son had rendered Shōzō's self-esteem exceptionally fragile, making him fly into disproportionate rages that nearly obliterated his sense of restraint.

“If enduring wounded pride was the alternative, he’d rather die.” This was Shōzō’s creed; he could endure any hardship for ambition, but he could not endure having his self-esteem wounded—he was even willing to abandon that ambition and throw himself away entirely if necessary. In other words, Shōzō’s passion was driven less by ambition than by the fluctuations of his self-esteem. Therefore, without any regard for consequences, he had tried to suddenly strike Takako inside the train car; however, Shōzō’s self-esteem was not so petty as to permit such recklessness, so after taking two or three steps, he abruptly halted.

“If I hit that woman here now, my pride will be doubly wounded.” Shōzō turned on his heel still nursing his wounded pride—that festering pus throbbing without outlet—and burdened by its excess, opened the door connecting to third class and stepped onto the deck. Then opening the outer door to let driving rain strike him while trying to cool his head— “You idiot!” The man crouching on deck shouted. “......?......”

“You lettin’ the rain in! You damn moron!”

“……” Shōzō’s face contorted with rage.

“Shut it!”

“……”

“Shut it when I tell you to shut it! Are you deaf?!”

The man stood up and tried to close the door. But Shōzō did not release his grip on the door handle.

“You bastard!” The man shoved Shōzō in the chest. The accumulated pus of self-esteem, seeking an outlet, overflowed. Shōzō, without a word, mustered all his strength and thrust into the man’s chest with a thud. In the blink of an eye, the man tumbled off the deck. “Ah!”

Shōzō instinctively closed the door. The instant he did, a young woman’s face appeared reflected in the rain-wet door window. Shōzō turned around, startled.

VIII Shōzō hadn't pushed the man off the deck intending to kill him. It was that man who first thrust at Shōzō's chest. Shōzō merely pushed back. Had their positions been reversed, it might have been Shōzō who fell from the deck.

There had been no murderous intent. However, he had known the door was open. He had subconsciously sensed that if he pushed, the man would fall. The image of that man falling like a clay doll into the pouring rain had also flashed through Shōzō’s mind an instant before he thrust against the man’s chest. Therefore, even if he had known for certain that the man would die, Shōzō would still have thrust him off the deck—this much was certain. He was a man who would not hesitate to kill for the sake of his self-esteem.

Even if he hadn't intended to kill, hadn't that thrust been delivered as though he wouldn't mind such an outcome? However, the moment he saw the man fall with that brief cry of "Ah!", even Shōzō was struck by a sudden realization—"I've actually gone and killed someone!" As if to smother that thought, he closed the deck door almost instinctively. "The fact that I boarded this train won't end without consequence."

Had his premonition—the one he’d been harboring—actually been this? Confronting the overlapping of countless coincidences surrounding him, Shōzō challenged them and cast the dice. Was this the answer he’d received? In other words, to make the great coincidence of murder into his own fated inevitability, one could say that Shōzō seized the scruff of that first small coincidence and pulled it toward himself. However, the further coincidence that struck Shōzō was that there had been one person who witnessed the murder at that time.

If there were no witnesses, the man who fell from the deck would be deemed to have fallen through his own fault, and Shōzō's crime would be buried in eternal darkness. Nothing had startled Shōzō more than seeing the young woman's face reflected in the windowpane of the door he'd frantically closed. When he turned around, she stood slenderly in the deck's corner, quietly observing Shōzō's face. It was a faint smile. Her hazel-flecked pupils, clear and sharp within eyes that glowed blue from their depths, exuded a moist intensity that suddenly gave her the look of a mixed-race child. And those eyes—

“You’re the one who just committed murder, aren’t you…?”

Her gaze peered into the depths of Shōzō's soul. If beauty were innate, one would marvel at what fate could have bestowed such looks upon this woman—she was that beautiful. And if beauty were talent, one would wonder what gift could make her seem so radiant. "For the first time in my life," he thought, "I'm facing off against a woman!" Staring fixedly at her face, Shōzō clenched his jaw.

IX

The reader had likely already discerned why the first subheading of this story was titled "Characters."

The woman who had witnessed the scene where Shōzō pushed an unknown man off the train deck—this was the new character. For Shōzō’s life, and for this story…

Now, taking advantage of the appearance of a new character, I shall introduce myself as the author and interpose a few annotations here.

Is the protagonist of this story dancer Yōko? Photographer Kizaki? Or perhaps Madam Takako of Tamura? Could it be her patron Shōzō? Or former patron Ginzō? His daughter Chimako? One could argue that Kyōkichi—the lodger at Tamura—is the protagonist, nor can we definitively deny that Karako, who calls Kyōkichi "big brother," lacks qualification as a main character. Notake Harutaka was of course no exception.

Come to think of it, accordionist Sakamoto; his wife Yoshiko; her lover Good Morning Gin-chan; Madam Natsuko of Saint Louis; Takako’s friend Tsuyuko; amateur pickpocket Kitayama; Oshin the maid of Seikan-sō; Rumi returned from Shanghai; geisha Chiyowaka; and Butsudan Oharu—as eccentric products of societal currents—all held equal right to demand protagonist status. This story had by now reached its eighty-fifth installment yet temporally narrated only events spanning a single day and night. Even as the train carrying new incidents and new characters advanced toward Tokyo, what events unfolded in Kyoto—and by whom—remained beyond prediction.

Ultimately, this stemmed from the author's attempt to bring societal currents to light through pursuing the possibilities of coincidence. Yet simultaneously, it could also be said that the various figures caught in coincidence's web—each demanding to become protagonists as individuals spawned by these societal currents, no, as Japanese citizens, even asserting that we ourselves might qualify as the story's main characters—inevitably tethered the author's feet to their surroundings, obstructing efforts to make temporal leaps at a sprinting pace.

So to speak, they were all protagonists. Even Matsuri, who had committed suicide in Jubankan Hall, was a protagonist. Yet at the same time, it could not be said that she alone held particular claim to being the protagonist. If pressed, one might argue that the new character now standing on the deck between second- and third-class cars facing Shōzō possessed the strongest qualifications to serve as this story's protagonist. For she stood among those Japanese most vividly transformed by the times—a woman who had undergone the most striking metamorphosis, a figure scarcely seen in Japan's past.

She and Shōzō locked eyes in an instant. Their gazes met—sparks flew—and no sooner had this happened than her hazel-tinged, dewy eyes smiled bewitchingly. And, “If you want to see me, come to Arsène in Ginza.” Leaving these words behind, she slipped gracefully into the third-class compartment and vanished. Shōzō entered the washroom and looked at his reflection in the mirror. A faint smile floated across his pale face.

Revolving Lantern

I

The rain pounded through the depths of Shijō Avenue's late night.

The same rain that poured down upon the nameless man's corpse—hardened like a clay doll after being pushed from the train deck near Maibara Station to die in obscurity—now fell upon the loneliness-drenched hearts of pitiful souls wandering through Kyoto's midnight streets. Until just four or five days ago, it had felt like summer, but the rain now falling—its osmanthus scent glowing in the darkness before temples across town—had already become the cold autumn rains edging closer to winter, each downpour drawing nearer to the season's chill.

With a violent shudder, Karako turned from the Shijō Avenue intersection onto Kiyamachi Street.

Soaked through to the hollow of her back and underarms by the rain, she still wandered, driven solely by her desperate need to find Kyōkichi. This evening, after following Kitayama—who had stolen Kyōkichi’s wallet—all the way to Osaka’s Nakanoshima Park, she had nearly had her neck wrung but narrowly escaped in the chaos of a detention center breakout. Though relieved, having lost sight of Kitayama left Karako disappointed by the thought that she now had no face to show Kyōkichi.

Burning with anticipation of the joy she'd feel when catching the pickpocket single-handedly and handing him over to Kyōkichi, she had hurried all the way to Osaka. But now that joy had turned hollow, and her feet—trudging back to Kyoto where Kyōkichi was—felt as heavy as her rain-soaked heart.

However, when she came to Saint Louis right after arriving in Kyoto, of course Kyōkichi wasn't there. Madam Natsuko too was absent from the shop—perhaps having gone to the Liberal Club's presentation event with someone.

“Did Kyō-kun leave any message…?” “Nothing from him.” The shop girl—who couldn’t go out despite having a man waiting in Kitano on Sunday night because Madam Natsuko still hadn’t returned—seemed irritated, her crimson-painted lips cold. When she left Saint Louis dejectedly, Karako felt an intense desire to meet Kyōkichi. “Big bro, forgive me!”

"If I just apologized while looking him in the face—something like 'I let the pickpocket get away'—" "Idiot!" Even if he slapped me across the face and declared he was cutting ties with someone like you, then promptly left with Sakamoto's wife Yoshiko, it didn't matter anymore. Anyway, I wanted to see him.

She also went to search for a mahjong parlor called Gion Mansion. But he wasn’t there. At a corner table, a couple who appeared to be the owners sat facing each other with late-night expressions, as if wondering whether having too many mahjong parlors popping up everywhere might cause them all to go under together; they simply read the newspaper, and there were no other customers.

In the rain she went back and forth, and each time she turned from Shijō Avenue—where lights were going out one by one—onto Kiyamachi Street, Karako’s feet naturally headed toward Saint Louis.

The door of Saint Louis was shut, and the interior was dark. Standing under the eaves, Karako softly knocked on that door.

II “Auntie!”

She called out, but there was no reply. After a while, she knocked on the door again. Then, leaving Saint Louis behind, Karako started walking toward the rain-shrouded lights of Kiyamachi—only to suddenly turn on her heel and trudge back through the alley to huddle beneath Saint Louis’s eaves.

“Auntie!” This time she called louder while hiking up her slipping skirt string, not knocking but rattling and straining to force the door open—when liquor-tinged breath suddenly wafted down from above. “Who…?” Since the voice was a woman’s, Karako didn’t startle too badly. When she silently looked up, the figure staggered closer and leaned in.

“So it’s you… Kyōkichi-kun’s little girlfriend…?” “Ohoho…”

The shrill laughter was Natsuko's usual self, but tonight Saint Louis' Madam found herself thoroughly plastered in a way she'd never been before. Perhaps returning from the Liberal Club, her frivolous gestures were nevertheless drenched in hues of remorse, and she carried no umbrella. "What are you doing here at this hour...? Forget something? Did you forget Kyōkichi-kun...?"

Natsuko clung to Karako’s shoulder, her hand swimming through the handbag as she tried to fish out the spare key. “Auntie, you don’t know where Kyō-kun went…?” “Hey, tell me!” Karako’s voice had risen to a shrill pitch. “Kyō-kun...? Kyō-kun’s gone to Tokyo... Ohoho.” It was a careless remark, but perhaps Natsuko’s true feelings—wishing Kyō-kun would just disappear to Tokyo—had compelled her to say it.

“If he’d gone to the Liberal Club with me, this wouldn’t have happened.” “No—I mean… Ohoho… If it’d been Kyō-kun, I wouldn’t feel this wretched.” “Ohoho…” “Cheap brandy or cheap hotels or creaky beds… Ohoho…” “Had to grow a damn mustache.” “I hate mustached men!” “I hate excitable men!” “That bastard reeked of armpits.” “Look! It’s still seeped into my hand!”

"Puh-puh," she spat on her right hand and let out a belch. "Auntie, did you drink...?" "I drank." "Auntie's done for!" "Auntie's been tainted." "Ohoho…" "But it's fine." "I'm free—the Liberal Club!" "Ohoho…" "Kyō-kun's gone off to Tokyo."

“Really…?” “I’m going to Tokyo too—” With those parting words, Karako left the alley and walked along Kawaramachi Street toward Kyoto Station...

The rain still showed no sign of letting up. In that rain, Kyōkichi and Yoshiko were walking under a single umbrella from Sanjō to Nijō at that very moment—something Karako, of course, had no way of knowing.

III

Silently, Kyōkichi and Yoshiko—Sakamoto's wife—walked on. Why they were walking side by side like lovers defied Kyōkichi's understanding. That evening before Saint Louis, he'd stopped Yoshiko with prayer-like urgency when she tried to visit Gionso to meet "Good Morning Gin-chan." His twenty-three-year-old self had shown uncharacteristic mother-hen concern—knowing Sakamoto, her husband, lurked at Gionso—but when he finally talked her down, Yoshiko already stood...

“Then what am I supposed to do…?” With that, she refused to budge like a petulant child. If it were just her immobility, that would’ve been manageable—but there she stood planted in the middle of the road— “—Fine. I’ll cry then…” As if making good on her threat, she teetered on the brink of actual tears. “Women’re built from the ground up to trouble men. That’s why I hate ’em.”

Kyōkichi was worried about Karako, who had gone after the pickpocket, and wanted to abandon Yoshiko and flee, but by nature Kyōkichi was kind and naively trusting toward women who weren’t his own—a trait that only deepened his lonely wretchedness. “Yoshiko, quit talking like that.” “If you cry, I’m screwed.” “Then what am I supposed to do…?” “How the hell should I know?” He couldn’t tell her to return to Sakamoto’s apartment, nor could he tell her to go to Good Morning Gin-chan’s place. But Yoshiko had grown so hysterical that she flared up at Kyōkichi’s “How should I know?” retort.

“Ah, Yoshiko! Where are you going?” Kyōkichi started walking shoulder-to-shoulder with her, saying “Wait,” but as they walked, Yoshiko— “Where are we going...?” she asked. “How the hell should I know where?” They had nowhere to go. Night fell, rain came down, and they ended up spending four hours huddled under a single umbrella they’d borrowed from an acquaintance’s shop in Kyōgoku—having promised to return it after half an hour. “What am I really supposed to do…?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Is there somewhere we can stay…?”

"How the hell should I know?" Before long, they abandoned such talk for idle chatter about dance and movies as they trudged aimlessly along, until finally even their topics ran dry and they walked in silence, staring at the white streaks of rain as they moved by sheer inertia. Yoshiko had jumped to the conclusion that Kyōkichi had stopped her from going to Gionso because Good Morning Gin-chan had asked him to, and so she clung to him like a tick, determined that throwing tantrums to inconvenience him would at least serve as some form of retaliation—but as the night deepened, she found herself growing reluctant to part from him. The rain was cold.

Kyōkichi found himself at a loss with Yoshiko—but at his core remained a man of lonely disposition. That said, staying at an inn with Yoshiko was unthinkable. Should he walk all night through the rain? Where could he stay tonight?—As he walked pondering these questions, Yōko abruptly surfaced in his thoughts.

IV

That’s it—I’ll have Yōko let me stay at her apartment. Kyōkichi’s face suddenly lit up. Yoshiko refused to return to Sakamoto’s place, and if he couldn’t take her to Good Morning Gin-chan’s apartment either, the only options left were taking her to Tamura or finding an inn somewhere—but as a lodger dependent on Takako, he couldn’t very well bring her there, even if she were a woman with no connection to him.

To declare with certainty that staying at an inn wouldn't lead them to repeat Good Morning Gin-chan's mistake was impossible tonight—Kyōkichi felt too desperately lonely for human company. Yoshiko, too, having fallen once, could no longer maintain her tough facade, and with as little resistance as a pinky’s touch, seemed ready to yield to Kyōkichi—her body, that of a naturally flirtatious former revue girl, making it all too easy. There was probably some retaliation toward Gin-chan involved. In any case, the two of them tonight seemed headed for trouble. The night had deepened, and the rain was still falling. But then he wouldn’t be able to face either Sakamoto or Gin-chan, and even if no such mistake occurred, there would be no way to explain staying at an inn with her.

Yet the thought of sending Yoshiko to an inn and walking back alone through the rain to Tamura was a loneliness so vast it made his head spin. So this sudden idea—that they could both stay at Yōko’s apartment—was like a lamp being lit in Kyōkichi’s heart. And this idea, too, had been dredged up from the hollow recesses of a lonely twenty-three-year-old’s empty mind. If it was Yōko’s place, no mistake with Yoshiko would occur, and even if Sakamoto or Gin-chan found out, it would be justifiable—and besides, spending the night at Yōko’s held a kind of self-destructive pleasure.

Yōko had been seduced last night—this was what Kyōkichi had convinced himself of. Going to Yōko’s place with a woman in tow—this was Kyōkichi’s way of hurling contempt at Yōko, something akin to bitter regret. "I wanna see the look on her face." Kyōkichi suddenly frowned and muttered to himself; if he went with a woman, Yōko would surely let them stay, and he could lodge there openly—this idea of using Yoshiko as a pretext quickened his pace.

“Where are we going…?” “A woman I know’s place.” “A woman...?”

Yoshiko felt a cold chill strike her neck from the sideways-driving rain.

“There’s nowhere else to stay.” “C’mon, Yoshiko—it’s fine. Let’s get her to put us up as a couple.” At the words “as a couple—” Yoshiko smiled, “Stay... and then... what about tomorrow...?”

Abruptly adopting a coquettish tone, Kyōkichi— "How the hell should I know? Tomorrow’s got its own wind." With that abrupt dismissal, he set off searching for Yōko’s apartment. Finally finding it, he knocked on Yōko’s door.

“Yōko, it’s me.” “I don’t got anywhere to stay.” “Let me crash here.”

Inside the room, there was a sense that Yōko had abruptly sat up on the bedding.

V

Yōko had fallen asleep, utterly exhausted. After dancing all night at Jubankan Hall, she had dragged her spent legs to Tamura in Kiyamachi to meet Lord Notake—only to be propositioned, flee barefoot, get mistaken for a streetwalker, detained, and spend the entire night without sleeping. To make matters worse, upon being released she immediately borrowed police sandals to visit Seikan-sō, then stopped by Matsuri’s apartment on her way back to comfort Matsuri’s relatives from rural Chiba and discuss funeral arrangements. When she finally returned home, her body was so drained she couldn’t muster the energy to cook. She flung herself onto the bedding like torn scraps of old cotton batting—and in that instant had already slipped into the world of dreams.

In my dream, I was dancing with Kyōkichi. I had been dancing, soaked with sweat—or so I thought—but when I suddenly opened my eyes, it was only night sweats. Had nearly six months of dance hall life ruined my body so completely that I was sweating this much in my sleep—before that thought could fully form, I found myself startled by the lingering aftertaste of an unexpectedly sweet yet suffocating sensation—a rhythm of touch I’d never imagined myself capable of—as I wondered why I had dreamed of dancing with Kyō-kun.

Do I want to dance with Kyō-kun? I never had anyone I wanted to dance with before. I had never even considered such indecent things before. No, I had never even dreamed of such a thing. Even when I danced with men, I just turned to stone. Stones have no tactile sensation. That my own sense of touch would betray me. I have such vulgarity in me. Oh, what was that smell? The osmanthus flowers in the apartment courtyard were emitting their fragrance through the rain. The moment she caught a fleeting whiff of that sweetness, Yōko had already fallen back asleep.

In the midst of that shallow sleep, Yōko was dancing again. She was dancing with Kyōkichi, but the one calling her name beside her ear was Kizaki. She was dancing with Kizaki.

When she jolted awake, voices were sounding outside her room. The instant she thought it was Kyōkichi's voice, a faint nostalgic warmth suddenly rose in her chest—but

“Hey, let me stay. Hey.” At that familiar voice’s entreaty, she instinctively pressed her hands to her chest.

“No. That’s not what we agreed.” “Don’t say that.” “Don’t say that,” said the voice outside the room. “But you said it was Saturday.” “I’ll let you stay on Saturdays”—though she hadn’t clearly promised it, she had said those words. “But I don’t have anywhere to stay. I ain’t alone. There’s two of us. I’m with a woman. Let me stay.” “I’m leaving.” For some reason, Yoshiko abruptly started down the stairs.

“Ah! Yoshiko! Wait!” “Hey, Yoshiko!” Around that time, through the rain of Shijō Kawaramachi, two men—dead drunk with arms around each other’s shoulders—staggered along unsteadily. They were Sakamoto and Good Morning Gin-chan.

VI "Gin-chan, I can't take another drop." Sakamoto leaned his drenched face against Good Morning Gin-chan's shoulder, rainwater streaming down to his eyebrows as he shuffled along thinking they should stop bar-hopping. "Quit your whinin'. We're drinkin' all night," Gin-chan barked, his own steps dragging listlessly yet still bellowing in dodoitsu rhythm: "Greet the dawn with 'Good mornin'', clink cups for 'Goodbye'..."

“...We’ll drink till dawn breaks—exchange Good Mornings, clink cups for Goodbyes—right up to that point.” Singing out in a dodoitsu rhythm, he kept a firm grip on Sakamoto. When they played two-player mahjong at Gion-sō, Sakamoto lost about three thousand points. At two hundred yen per thousand points, this meant six hundred yen. When Sakamoto tried to pay, Gin-chan refused to accept it, so they decided to use that money for drinking instead. They hopped from bar to bar until late into the night, but their persistence in continuing this haphazard bar-hopping—despite having barely any money left—stemmed not from wanting more drinks, but rather from their aversion to returning to the apartment. If they returned to the apartment, Yoshiko might be there. Though she had stood him up at Saint Louis earlier that day, now that Yoshiko had fled her husband’s place, she had nowhere to go but her own. If you got left hanging like that, you’d just end up going back home anyway, patiently waiting around.

Thinking this, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for the woman he’d gotten involved with—the impending reality of Yoshiko’s uncertain future, the handling of her unborn child, her complaints, tears, stifled sobs… If he pulled her close to comfort her—telling her not to cry—women could be fooled by their own bodies… Yet even so, in such moments, Yoshiko’s body would emanate an unpleasant odor that no perfume could mask…

“It’s pitiful, but I can’t stand thinking about that.” And how could he possibly return to the apartment where Yoshiko was—using the same legs that had just parted ways with Sakamoto, the husband he’d been bar-hopping with? He couldn’t declare “I took your wife,” nor could he confess that things had ended up this way with her—yet he couldn’t feign ignorance either. Left with nothing proper to say, he kept dragging Sakamoto along aimlessly. “I’m going home now. “I’m unbearably sleepy.”

“Shut your trap. There’s no point going back to the apartment your wife fled.” Gin-chan spoke in a self-deprecating tone, “If you’re sleepy, shoot up some Philopon.” “That’s true enough.—Then let’s do a hit right away!” Sakamoto took shelter under the eaves, pulled the injection case from his pocket, and skillfully administered Philopon while standing. Then, rubbing his arm, he said, “C’mon, let’s go—but I’m done with the Alps, sorry ’bout that!” and threw his arms around Gin-chan’s back. Gin-chan stopped a passing rickshaw.

“Take us to a place that serves drinks. But if you take us to some godawful overpriced joint, you’ll pay!” Forcing two guys into one rickshaw—normally you’d pay through the nose for a shared ride like this—Gin-chan held Sakamoto’s body on his lap, quipping, “You’ve got a nice ass there,” when suddenly, peering through the canopy window, he spotted a woman trudging alone through the rain and thought, Huh? It was Yoshiko.

VII

Could it be that tonight's rain in Kyoto fell solely to drive our protagonists to sudden madness? It was a rain that churned up the depths of Sunday nights—which disturbed their hearts far more than any decadent Saturday—into a muddied frenzy. Natsuko of Saint Louis was mired in mud, and Karako’s longing for Kyōkichi burned with uncommon intensity. Sakamoto and Gin-chan ran wild with drink, Kyōkichi’s nighttime wanderings defied all norms—but tonight’s Yōko was not her usual self, restless with an eerie unease.

And Yoshiko, Sakamoto's wife too seemed gripped by madness—as evidenced by how she suddenly dashed out from Yōko's apartment where she had reluctantly followed Kyōkichi, leaving his voice calling out to stop her in the rain-soaked darkness behind her as she ran around the street corner, until finally her footsteps grew listless and heavy with desolation. Though Yoshiko had clung to Kyōkichi out of feminine pride, it was also likely because—for a woman—being left utterly alone was the most unbearable thing. All the more reason why nothing had made Yoshiko as miserable as detecting Kyōkichi and Yōko’s closeness through feminine intuition—but could this sudden dash outside have been due to a jealousy she herself hadn’t anticipated? But into the loneliness of wandering the night streets alone, a woman’s heart that deliberately tormented itself was no longer ordinary—it verged on madness.

And then—forgetting the risk to her unborn child, without an umbrella, her drenched body still subjected to the rain’s lash as she wandered in desolation—the moment Good Morning Gin-chan glimpsed Yoshiko from the rickshaw, his chest constricted sharply. Had Sakamoto not been sharing that very rickshaw, he might have been paralyzed by such aching longing to call out that even every last trace of her womanly repulsiveness had now been erased from Gin-chan’s heart, overwhelmed by pity for her wretchedness.

But Sakamoto seemed not to have noticed Yoshiko, and Gin-chan could hardly call out to stop her; as her figure rapidly receded into the distance, Gin-chan suddenly—

“Could it be that I’ll never see that woman again?” The premonition struck him. As he wavered under this foreboding—a wanderer’s lonely ache pricking his chest like a needle discovered in bedding—the rickshaw driver lowered the shafts before a dubious house behind the police station. Its gate lantern glowed as red as those at hospitals.

“Oh, a red lantern.” In hot spring towns and such, houses with suspicious women had red gate lamps as markers, and the term “red lantern” had become synonymous with the trade of selling spring. “Well, come on up and have a look.” “For just a flask and a single bill...” It wasn’t quite to the extent of the rickshaw driver’s claim that “it’s all repatriated women, so there’s a lineup of surprisingly good ones”—but there were no women who seemed like mistresses. However, Gin-chan,

“Sake! Sake! If there’s no sake, then speed’ll do!” Without so much as glancing at the women, he took a sip of the cold sake they brought and grimaced. “This rotgut’s godawful.” “Gin-chan, could this be methyl alcohol?” “Might not fuckin’ know. Hell, this’s some goddamn shocking booze, ain’t it? I’d might as well just die.” Cracking jokes, Gin-chan kept drinking without a care.

VIII

Around that very time—that is to say, around the time Sakamoto and Gin-chan began drinking suspicious liquor at a suspicious house behind the police station—Kyōkichi was once again climbing the stairs to Yōko’s apartment.

“Yosh-chan, you idiot!”

"Ignoring my attempts to stop her, she just up and left all alone... Does she even have somewhere to stay tonight...?" he muttered. However, he hadn't truly intended to bring her back in earnest. He'd made a show of stopping her and even chased after her to look, but once he lost sight of her almost immediately, that became his excuse to return alone to Yōko's apartment. Though Kyōkichi's inherent wanderlust would routinely alter his feelings like a revolving lantern depending on time and circumstance, this sudden shift—from having cherished and cared for Yoshiko with such human warmth and kindness moments earlier, to abandoning her—ultimately stemmed from that mercenary impulse of having heard Yōko's voice through the door. However, Kyōkichi had so thoroughly internalized the emotions of an orphan that he remained oblivious to this egoism.

That he had initially gone so far as to use Yoshiko as a pretext in his meticulous efforts to get Yōko to let him stay in her room, then suddenly adopted an overly familiar, thick-skinned audacity and shamelessly returned alone—this too stemmed from those same orphan’s emotions. Once convinced she would take him in, it became the pitifulness of a wanderer who, like a migratory bird driven by instinct, returned to that den. “Yōko, it’s me.” “Open up.” “Don’t be so cold.” “Hey, let me stay.”

Hearing Kyōkichi's words, Yōko—Ah, he really did come back—felt a faint flush rise to her shapely ears where the thin flesh showed through, *What's wrong with me?* I've been sitting upright on the bedding without even lying down this whole time. "What on earth was I thinking?" The loneliness that had suddenly assailed her upon waking from shallow sleep carried a hollowness—as if some passing assailant had left her alone after Matsuri's death—but deeper still was the melancholy thought that now pierced her solitude: when she opened her eyes, the room's light still burned, rain fell beyond the window, osmanthus perfumed the air... Had the dancing only been a dream? It resembled that fragile nostalgia every human carries within them. And so Yōko had pursued Kyōkichi's footsteps—appearing unexpectedly only to vanish again—like a child chasing a dining car's light along railway tracks, moving in rhythm with a woman's instinctive urge to cling to something.

"He’s vile—bringing some woman here to stay. I’m done with him. But...who was she anyway?" "I’m done with him." "But who was that woman?" While despising Kyōkichi, she found herself vaguely thinking about him. "On a night like this, I want to dance with Kyō-kun." "But I was the one who spoke those driving-out words." Just as this remorse consumed her, hearing Kyōkichi’s voice return made Yōko rise without thinking—her usually spirited, contrary hands now shedding their outer layer to reveal those of an old, vulnerable woman—

“What’s wrong, Kyō-kun? You’re being strange.” She opened the door—the door she had never before opened to any man.

IX

“Oh, Kyō-kun… alone?” Weren’t you with a woman?—Yōko mused, deliberately leaving the door unclosed after Kyōkichi had entered. “She went home.” Though this was of course his first time at Yōko’s place—perhaps accustomed to staying at other women’s apartments—Kyōkichi didn’t glance around the room or search for a place to sit, but immediately settled before the vanity, murmuring as he peeled off his rain-soaked socks.

“Come to think of it, that woman…” “Kyō-kun’s lover, I suppose…?” Yōko closed the door and came to Kyōkichi’s side. Realizing he was alone, her unresolved feelings vanished as her self-excuse—that she was only letting him stay because he’d been with the woman—disappeared. She had deliberately left the door open, but this sudden sense of keeping it unlatched out of wariness toward him now wounded her self-esteem.

“Lover…? Don’t say such weird things,” he scoffed. “She’s someone’s wife—some guy’s mistress. Truth be told, that woman’s a real tramp too. No, scratch that—didn’t need to think twice about it. She’s tramp through and through.” “What’s this ‘tramp’ you keep saying…?” She moved to sit but froze—Kyōkichi’s bare feet, socks peeled off, radiated an unsettling male rawness. Flustered, she turned her face away and remained standing. “Tramp’s Arabic—or so Good Morning Gin-chan claims,” he drawled. “You don’t know Gin-chan? He’s a deadbeat but middle-school educated. Says ‘tramp’ means sleeping alone and lonely—guy’s got book smarts on that stuff.”

“What a trivial thing to say.” “Yōko utterly despises you.”

In Kyōkichi’s presence, Yōko deliberately adopted a coarse dancer’s tone. That aspect of him that made her behave this way was Kyōkichi’s particular virtue. The way he could seem utterly mature one moment, then lapse into childish, particle-dropping speech was likely what made women let their guard down around him. In front of self-conscious, respectable men, she would feel shame—but with a man like Kyōkichi, she could cast it aside without restraint. He possessed a beauty so dazzling it hurt the eyes, yet at the same time was a man shrouded in darkness.

That was why Yōko had allowed her disheveled appearance—nightwear with a thin obi—to remain exposed to Kyōkichi’s gaze, but suddenly from this darkness two eyes flashed bright and stared fixedly at her body.

“What are you looking at…?”

“Yōko… did you go to Jubankan tonight…?” “I took the night off. I’m thinking of quitting the hall.” “Oh reeeally?”

“I think I’ll move out of this apartment too.” “Kyō-kun, if you hear of any apartments available, let me know.” “Oh reeeally?” “Moving…?” “I suppose so.” Last night, it must have been with Harutaka, the Marquis Head-over-Heels—Kyōkichi’s eyes needled with the unspoken accusation that this had altered Yōko’s state of mind. “What’s with that look…?” “…………”

“Kyō-kun, if you’re going to look at me like that, go home.”

Yōko suddenly felt uneasy. She felt the man’s eyes relentlessly pressing in.

As Kyōkichi’s gaze roved over Yōko’s body—these lips… these ears… this nape… these shoulders… these hands… this torso… these hips… these legs… had that Marquis Head-over-Heels moistened them with his bluish tactile sensation like a shaved beard’s afterimage and rhythm resembling a snake’s undulation?—his eyes gradually became eerily fixed, transforming into those of a man relentlessly closing in.

Even Yōko herself found such eyes unexpected, but Kyōkichi hadn’t anticipated them either. For Kyōkichi—who had known women’s bodies since sixteen yet never experienced love—the tenderness he secretly harbored for Yōko alone could already be called love. That was precisely why he had wanted to leave Yōko’s body untouched—not a single finger laid upon it—to let her be. He knew his dance techniques could disrupt his partners’ physiology—so much so he’d avoided dancing with Yōko despite his feelings—yet now he sought her touch. What in the world was this commonplace passion?

“Hey, go home.” “…………” “Just go home! Kyō-kun!” Pretending not to hear her voice saying “That look in your eyes scares me—”, Kyōkichi listened to the sound of rain outside the window. It was a sound like restless impatience. Yōko was listening to that sound too. And if Kyō-kun were to press her hard, she likely wouldn’t have the strength to resist—the rain poured into Yōko’s ears a sound of such dizzying loneliness that she nearly despaired.

However, when Kyōkichi suddenly tried to pull Yōko close,

“Ah, Kyō-kun, wait.” “I’m not that kind of woman.” If self-esteem was what mattered most to Yōko, then what granted her this self-esteem was the pride of having kept one thing intact until today—her twenty-fourth year. It was something she would eventually have to discard, but to cast it aside in such a casual manner... That humiliation—along with shame and fear—desperately held Kyōkichi at bay while,

“Ah! Kyō-kun—are you telling me to die? Do you think I’m that kind of woman…?” “But Yōko, you were fooling around last night, wasn’tcha?” “You’re saying ‘fooling around’ includes sleeping alone? But didn’t you give yourself to Marquis Head-over-Heels last night—?” he pressed on relentlessly. “No! It was just… just fooling around!” “Last night was just fooling around.” “Believe me.” “It was nothing at all.” Yōko desperately repeated “fooling around.”

“Is that true?”

Kyōkichi peered into Yōko’s eyes and saw his own ugly expression reflected in her pupils like the glow of noctiluca.

“It’s true. I ran away.” “I ran away barefoot.” “I…”

The moment he heard her say "I’m not that kind of woman" for the third time, Kyōkichi abruptly released Yōko and fled the apartment without a word.

Eleven The rain that suddenly poured down onto the stone steps of the apartment entrance completely cooled Kyōkichi’s agitation, but— _I’ll never be able to see Yōko again!_

The feeling that "I'll never see Yōko again!" ran cold down his spine. Kyōkichi's confrontation with Yōko had been both the sole path left to carve through his relentless jealousy—a jealousy born from his conviction that she was already lost—and a paradoxical manifestation of nostalgia for what had slipped away; yet it also stemmed from a mercenary calculation: if Yōko had permitted Harutaka, then she might as well allow him too. It was precisely this mercenary mindset that made Kyōkichi—when he realized Yōko's purity—feel ashamed of the ugliness inherent in the act he'd been about to commit.

That’s why he had fled as if running away, but when he thought he could never face her again, Kyōkichi meekly turned back into the apartment building and climbed back up to Yōko’s room. The door to the room remained open. Without even attempting to close it, Yōko lay crying inside. Yet there was no sound of weeping.

Kyōkichi didn’t understand why she was crying—and neither did Yōko herself. Was it sorrow over nearly facing humiliation, anger at Kyōkichi’s attempt to insult her, choked sobs after her resistance had cooled, unexpected loneliness following his startled departure, pity for herself and perhaps even for him, the nostalgic melancholy common to all people, or mere hysteria—whatever the case, a woman’s tears remained inscrutable—not just to men, but to women themselves.

Yōko, noticing Kyōkichi’s presence, raised her head and wiped her tears. Yōko’s face appeared calm and composed. But her voice was shrill and—

“Can I help you…?” “Huh? Uh… yeah.” He stammered—then abruptly reached out— “—Lend me money.” “I don’t have money to stay at an inn.” “I got pickpocketed.”

When it got this late, he was afraid to return to Tamura. Yōko tossed the handbag and, “Take whatever’s there.” “Much obliged…”

Kyōkichi had already adopted a frivolous tone and was about to pull out a single 100-yen note from the handbag when he paused to reconsider, “Then I’ll borrow just this much.” After grabbing the three hundred yen, he left, his face retaining an innocent expression that drew a faint smile from Yōko.

And when he emerged onto Kawaramachi Street, an empty rickshaw passed by. He told [the driver] to take him to an inn, but the rickshaw driver said it was too late for inns and that there was a cheaper place where he could drink and stay, then started running off in a direction he alone had decided. Along the way, he passed a woman walking drenched through the downpour. He thought it might be Yoshiko, but it was someone else. When Kyōkichi neared the police station, he saw a fifty-year-old man standing by the roadside and thought, "Huh?" It was Ginzō, whom he had seen at Tamura. When Ginzō saw the rickshaw driver’s face, his expression suddenly relaxed, and he smiled at him.