Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Kyusuke had come down with mumps and was absent from school for five days.

On the morning of the sixth day, thinking how embarrassing it would be for everyone to see his face, he went to school only to find that class had already begun. In the classroom, just as anticipated, everyone turned all at once to look at Kyusuke. Flustered, he handed his absence note to the teacher and, while returning to his seat, accidentally knocked down about three hats belonging to classmates that hung by the desks. Now seated, he opened his textbook.

The boy next to him, Kashi-kun, pointed with his finger to show that they were now on Lesson Ten. Had they already reached Lesson Ten? When Kyusuke had been studying Lesson Eight, "Rain at Yoro," he had vaguely noticed a heaviness in his left cheek and taken leave from that day onward. When he realized that while he had been resting at home, everyone else had finished Lesson Eight and moved on to Lesson Nine, Kyusuke—even now sitting here with his textbook open among them, listening to the teacher’s lecture—felt something within him that couldn’t quite blend with the others’ mood.

At that moment, someone up front was pointed at by the teacher and began reading aloud from the textbook.

“Lesson Ten: The Fire of the Rice Sheaves. “This is no ordinary matter,” he muttered to himself as Gohei came from his house…”

Hmm, that’s strange, Kyusuke thought. It was an unfamiliar voice. Who on earth was reading in that voice? So Kyusuke lifted his face from the book and looked up. At a seat by the south window, there sat a fair-skinned boy in a fine serge suit, his profile turned toward Kyusuke as he read aloud. It was a boy Kyusuke didn’t know. As Kyusuke gazed at the boy’s profile, he began to be gripped by an uncanny illusion. He thought that perhaps he had mistakenly come to the wrong school. No—indeed, this was not the fifth-grade classroom at Inabe School that Kyusuke attended. Kyusuke did not know the boy who was now reading. Come to think of it, the teacher did resemble Teacher Yamaguchi, who had been Kyusuke’s homeroom teacher, but seemed to be a different person. Each of his friends resembled in some way the Inabe friends Kyusuke knew well, yet they were all unfamiliar students from an unfamiliar school. After being absent for five days, he had forgotten his own school and must have ended up entering another one. He had pulled off an unthinkable thing. That was how Kyusuke had thought. And then, in the very next moment, when he realized that this was indeed Kyusuke’s original school after all, Kyusuke felt relieved.

When recess arrived, Kyusuke asked Tokuichi-kun from Mori Hospital. “Who’s that?”

The fair-skinned boy by the south window, perhaps still unable to make friends, sat alone sharpening a pencil.

“Oh, that one?” Tokuichi-kun replied. “That’s Tarozaemon.” “He’s just from Yokohama.”

“Tarozaemon?”

Kyusuke started to laugh. “It sounds like an old man’s name.” According to Tokuichi-kun’s account, while the transfer student’s true name was Tarozaemon, it sounded far too old-fashioned—so much so that they felt sorry for him. At home, his family called him Taro while he was still a child, and so his mother, who had brought him to school for the first time the day before yesterday, had asked the teacher to let his classmates call him by that name as well. Hearing this, Kyusuke thought that adults really did come up with clever ideas.

In this manner, Tarozaemon entered Kyusuke’s world.

II

Inabe School was a rural school, so naturally any boy with urban airs would catch everyone’s eye. From the start, Kyusuke had felt somehow drawn to Tarozaemon, but lacking a good opportunity to approach him, couldn’t get close. Whether it was Tokuichi-kun, Kashi-kun, or Otojiro-kun—all the top students shared feelings similar to Kyusuke’s. Yet precisely because they all understood this mutual awareness too well, none dared make a move. And so during lessons, Kyusuke would sometimes catch himself—before he knew it—staring intently at Tarozaemon.

Tarozaemon was seated ahead of Kyusuke by the south window, so from Kyusuke’s position he could see precisely the right large eye and the well-shaped crown of his head encircled by beautifully gleaming hair. Tarozaemon would gaze at the textbook’s characters for prolonged periods with those large eyes before gradually shifting his focus toward the teacher and listening intently to the lecture. At times, as if burdened by the lesson’s weight, he would release a faint sigh and let his posture slacken slightly, only to resume staring fervently at the teacher moments later. Through these observations alone, Kyusuke came to understand that Tarozaemon had not been raised like them—amidst roadside dust and wild grasses—and this realization left him both drawn to Tarozaemon and filled with an unnameable melancholy.

One time, Kyusuke was gazing at that beautiful boy from his seat as usual. It was a beautiful boy. Kyusuke wondered what on earth this beautiful boy’s name was. And then immediately—Oh, it’s Tarozaemon—he muttered under his breath. Suddenly, Kyusuke remembered having once read a biography of a great man named Egawa Tarōzaemon in some magazine. He didn’t remember the details well, but Egawa Tarōzaemon was an artillery expert from the Edo period who built something called a reverberatory furnace in Nirayama, Izu, where he cast cannons that were rare for that time. And then, an illustration of a reverberatory furnace seemingly built from stacked bricks and a portrait of Egawa Tarōzaemon—with his large, startled eyes and topknot hairstyle—floated into Kyusuke’s mind.

This boy Tarozaemon shared the same name as that Edo-period artillery expert Tarozaemon. If they shared the same name, couldn't they be the same person? But that couldn't be. First of all, there was no way Tarozaemon—who had been an adult in the Edo period—could now be a child. That would reverse the natural order of things.

Kyusuke dismissed his own absurd idea. Nevertheless, to him, the artillery expert Tarozaemon and this boy Tarozaemon seemed like one and the same person. A person who had been an adult in the Edo period gradually growing younger until becoming a boy—among all sorts of people, there might have been one or two who lived such extraordinary lives. In their wide, goggle-like eyes, weren’t this Tarozaemon and that Tarozaemon exactly alike? Kyusuke knew that voicing such thoughts would only make people laugh at him, so he simply lost himself in his fantasies alone.

That day, when returning from school, Kyusuke walked about three meters behind Tarozaemon. Of course, Kyusuke had no intention of following Tarozaemon, but because their return direction and walking speed happened to be the same by chance—leading to this situation—he followed along, muttering excuses to himself.

As they were passing by the vacant lot，Tarozaemon suddenly turned toward Kyusuke-kun.

“Do you know what that flower is?”

he asked fluently in a slightly hoarse voice. When Kyusuke looked that way, in a corner where a house had once stood—now seemingly turned into a flower bed—there were two or three small, dark red flowers with a lonely air.

Since Kyusuke didn’t know, he remained silent, “It’s Salvia.”

With that, the beautiful boy Tarozaemon began to walk. Since Tarozaemon had spoken first, Kyusuke thought it permissible to respond. With a slightly racing heart— “You’re from Yokohama?” he asked. He already knew from Tokuichi-kun that Tarozaemon was from Yokohama—there was no need to ask now—but he simply had nothing else to say. But after asking, Kyusuke felt so embarrassed that cold sweat broke out. This was because phrases like “You’re from Yokohama?” weren’t part of the Inabe dialect. If phrased in Inabe dialect, it would be something like “Did’ya come from?” or “Come from there, didja?” However, to Kyusuke, their everyday language seemed too crude to direct toward this refined boy. That said, he knew no speech beyond Inabe’s. And so emerged that awkward phrase—“You’re from Yokohama?”—a half-baked expression belonging to no discernible dialect. Had Tokuichi-kun, Kashi-kun, Hyotaro-kun or any of his usual friends heard it, Kyusuke might later have endured relentless teasing—back-pats and all—but thankfully only Tarozaemon had. Since Tarozaemon still didn’t know Inabe well, he likely assumed such phrasing existed there and paid it no mind.

“Ah.”

he answered.

Then, once again looking toward the red flowers, "My brother liked those," he said. "He was a painter." While Kyusuke could roughly grasp that a painter meant someone who drew pictures, having never actually seen one before left him at a loss for how to respond. "Two autumns ago now—he killed himself with Veronal."

Kyusuke understood that suicide meant taking one’s own life, but since none of his friends until now had ever used such a term, he could do nothing but feel utterly bewildered.

Tarozaemon, who had started to turn toward his house’s gate, seemed to think of something and returned to Kyusuke.

“You, I’ll give you something good—hold out your hand.”

he said. When Kyusuke hesitantly extended his hand, Tarozaemon shook a small fountain-pen-like object over it. Then a single small pellet tumbled out onto Kyusuke’s palm. Tarozaemon shook some onto his own palm, tossed it into his mouth, and headed toward the gate. At first Kyusuke thought they might be tiny pellets used in air guns, but since they lacked the satisfying heft such pellets should have against his palm, he concluded they must be something else. And so he imitated Tarozaemon and tried putting one in his mouth.

When he rolled it around on the tip of his tongue for a while, a bitter unpleasant juice dissolved and emerged until he thought *What—this thing’s just like those Tonpuku pills they make me take when I catch cold*, nearly spitting it out. The instant he did so though,the bitterness transformed into cool sweetness,filling his mouth with such freshness that Kyūske-kun found himself chuckling quietly alone. Oh—just this? Must be some minty base stuff then. But almost immediately,the tongue-tip bitterness returned,making him grimace despite himself. Still thinking *It'll turn sweet again soon*, he endured. Sure enough before long,sweetness came. Now he understood—this pellet cycled bitter then sweet endlessly. But when bitterness came third time,Kyūske-kun spat it out disgusted. Melted into brown spit now. After spitting when he gulped air—ah! What freshness! Like swallowing whole some crisp autumn dawn into his small mouth. To savor this,Kyūske-kun walked home gasping *haah-haah* mouth agape till reaching his house.

“What’s this, Kyū? You’re reeking of Jintan!”

“What’s this，Kyū? You’re reeking of Jintan!” said his mother.

It was only then that Kyusuke-kun solved the riddle—and felt utterly foolish. As for Jintan, Kyusuke knew a hundred times over. Though this was the first time he had actually eaten one.

Why had Kyusuke-kun been made to believe something as commonplace as Jintan pills were some grand, mysterious thing? The more Kyusuke-kun thought about it, the more Tarozaemon struck him as a peculiar boy.

III

About ten meters from the road stood the gate to Tarozaemon’s estate. It was an old-fashioned gate with rusty metal fittings, resembling a slightly smaller version of Kōrenji Temple’s mountain gate. Beside it was a small side entrance; Tarozaemon would come and go through this, while the main gate remained perpetually closed.

When Kyusuke arrived there together with Tarozaemon, and Tarozaemon said things like “Pardon me” or “Goodbye, see you tomorrow,” slipped inside through that side entrance, and the door closed snugly behind him, Kyusuke wondered—just a little—what exactly Tarozaemon was doing inside this gate, or to put it in adult terms, what kind of life he was living. However, he didn’t particularly feel like going inside.

After all, it was deathly solemn and still. It was old-fashioned and silent—Kyusuke-kun disliked such places.

One time, Kyusuke followed Tarozaemon and entered inside that gate.

The garden was surprisingly small. But there was something there that caught Kyusuke-kun’s eye. It was a perfectly square, deep pool where murky green water stagnated at the bottom. Moss covered all four stone walls so thoroughly that not a trace of the stones’ original color remained. In other words, this pond—shaped like a square wooden measuring box—was green through and through. And in the water, there seemed to be koi. Here and there within the water’s greenness, vague patches of red and white could be discerned—proof positive they were indeed there. As Kyusuke-kun peered in for a while, a fishy, unpleasant odor began clinging to his nose. Not only that, but he realized the entire pond held an air of unfriendliness toward children, so he quickly stepped away from its edge.

Kyusuke-kun had been invited and headed toward the veranda where wisteria flowers bloomed. The veranda and zashiki were separated by paper-paned sliding doors, but when Tarozaemon emerged from inside—the area having been left wide open—Kyusuke-kun managed to peer through. There Kyusuke saw a girl wearing a yellow sash. She must be Tarozaemon’s sister. Her face was porcelain-teacup pale and gaunt. She emerged from a darker room beyond the zashiki, carrying a lamp with a goldfish-bowl-sized chimney in one hand while stroking the sliding door with her other, groped her way to the desk in the corner, and set down the lamp. Though her eyes stared wide open, watching her feel about like that made him think she must be blind. It was an uncanny sight. Kyusuke-kun held his breath and stared.

Next, the girl struck a match and lit the lamp. And when she sat down in front of the desk, even though there was no one there, as if there were someone on the other side,

“When Father first sailed to Marseille, France on his maiden voyage, he found this lamp at a small tool shop in the back alleys of the port town, or so he said.” “He claimed it was from the time of Louis XVI.”

she went on. Kyusuke-kun grew uneasy and couldn’t budge an inch. Not only was this girl blind—she must’ve been unhinged too. Tarozaemon laughed and began with “Sis, you dummy,” explaining things until Kyusuke-kun thought Oh—so that’s what it was. Tarozaemon’s sister had been rehearsing for the cultural festival at her girls’ school. Apparently, it was some play about two sisters studying on a stormy night when the lights go out, so they light an old lamp they’d brought out. Then their dead little brother, a temari ball they’d lost ages back, their pet dog that disappeared one rainy evening—all sorts of things—would come waltzing back to them in this bafflingly absurd story.

Kyusuke-kun had realized the pale girl there was neither blind nor insane, yet somehow found her unsettling—his eyes and ears were naturally drawn to her. She kept talking to the person on the desk’s other side—a figure she couldn’t see who never replied.

“Little Aki died, you know. “It was five or six years ago, on a snowy evening.” It seemed the other person was responding with something. Kyusuke couldn’t hear it, but she seemed to, her ears pricked in attention. And then she spoke again. “This child doesn’t know what dying means.” “Dying is like playing hide-and-seek—you hide somewhere and never come out, no matter how long they wait.” The unseen figure seemed to say something. Then, as if she had heard some absurd reply, she suddenly began to giggle—*kukkukkukk*. And apparently dissatisfied with how this laughter turned out, she repeated it multiple times. She made sounds like “Kukku-kukku” and “Ufu-ffu-ffu.”

Kyusuke-kun could no longer endure it. He immediately went home. From then on, whenever Kyusuke-kun passed by the gate of Tarozaemon’s mansion—even in the bright daylight when wisteria flowers were in bloom—he would inevitably recall the pale, eerie girl practicing her school play with a lit lamp.

IV

Gradually, Tarozaemon grew closer to everyone. At first, everyone respected Tarozaemon and found it somewhat awkward to address him directly, but they called him "Taro-kun." Before long, Tarozaemon grew even closer to everyone, and there were times when he’d be surrounded by them, chattering away in a vulgar manner like a drunkard. Then everyone realized it was no longer fitting to revere Tarozaemon and began calling him “Tarozaemon” without reservation.

Before long, everyone had stopped calling him either “Taro-kun” or “Tarozaemon.” This was because everyone had come to realize that Tarozaemon was a thoroughly uninteresting, boring fellow to spend time with.

From the very beginning to this day, there had been only one person who persistently used the proper, polite form of address: "Taro-kun." That person was their homeroom teacher, Teacher Yamaguchi. It was around that time rumors began spreading about Tarozaemon telling lies. "You can't trust a single word that guy says."

There were even such remarks. Kyusuke-kun thought such things probably weren't happening. However, he also thought that perhaps they might indeed be true.

One day, Hyotaro-kun was vehemently denouncing something to a group of five or six companions. When Kyusuke-kun wondered what was going on and went to listen in, this is what he found.

Hyotaro-kun claimed Tarozaemon had made him swallow some story about an echo experiment. In the mountains south of Gogame Pond lay a valley carved deep into the earth. Its cliffs stood like two folding screens facing each other. Tarozaemon had told Hyotaro-kun such a place could produce something marvelous—if you shouted “Hey!” from one cliff toward the other, the echo would bounce back and forth endlessly without fading. He’d sworn it was true because some science magazine said so. Trusting this, Hyotaro-kun tested it yesterday while fishing at Gogame Pond. That’s how everyone learned Tarozaemon’s words were just another “lie.”

Now it was certain—Tarozaemon was a liar, Kyusuke thought. Then, for some reason, he recalled Tarozaemon’s sister rehearsing for the school play. Even though there had been no one there, she had spoken so skillfully as if someone were present—that pale girl.

Another time, it was said that such a thing occurred. After a fierce clap of thunder accompanied by rain had passed overhead, Tarozaemon said to Shinichiro-kun,

“Just now, a lark was struck by lightning and fell out of the clouds over there—let’s go see. It must’ve fallen around the cattle market.”

he said with a buoyant voice. Shinichiro-kun, never suspecting it might be a lie, followed along and trampled through the still-damp grass of the cattle market, searching every last corner—but all he found, it was said, was cow dung. This too turned out to be another of Tarozaemon’s lies.

V

Tarozaemon brought a strange round thing, about the size of a teapot lid, to school.

“This, you know, is really interesting.” he said.

Everyone knew Tarozaemon was a liar, but they couldn't stay vigilant against him at all times. Especially when he brought something unusual like this, they'd inevitably let their guard down out of curiosity. According to Tarozaemon's explanation, the round object was made of ivory and had been sold by Chinese people in Yokohama, he said. If you placed it against your ear just right, it was designed to let you hear music, he claimed.

Starting with Tokuichi-kun from Mori Clinic, everyone took turns pressing it to their ears and listening. As they listened with the solemn expressions of doctors holding stethoscopes to their ears, Tarozaemon said: “See? You can hear it, right? A sound like a mandolin. They say it’s a Chinese harp.” Some gave half-hearted replies like “Uh… yeah.” Others smiled and said, “Yeah—such a delicate tone.” A few shook it two or three times before trying again, muttering, “Can’t hear a damn thing.”

“Another of Tarozaemon’s lies!” There were those who said such things even with Tarozaemon present. It was Hyotaro-kun. Yet in this case, rather than believing Hyotaro-kun, the others distrusted him instead. The reason was that Hyotaro-kun had been suffering from an ear infection for about ten days, with foul-smelling green pus dripping from one ear, making everyone reluctant to lend him the musical device—leaving him bitterly resentful.

Kyusuke-kun’s turn came. When he received it, it was a beautiful ivory object—yellow and smooth and glossy. Like a teapot lid, one side was hollowed out. And in the center of the hollowed part protruded a small navel-like bump. They said you were supposed to fit that navel-like part snugly into your earhole to listen. “Oo-oo”—a low groaning like a motor’s hum—was what he heard at first. As he strained to catch any mandolin tones within that “Oo-oo,” listening with desperate focus, he began to feel certain he could faintly detect something like pings and chimes.

“Yeah, I can hear it!” said Kyusuke and passed it to the next person.

Not long after that, on the day before the spring excursion, Kyusuke pulled out all the drawers of the tea cabinet in search of a magnet and began rummaging through all sorts of junk. Then, from inside emerged a round ivory tool identical to the one Tarozaemon had.

“We had one of these here at home too.” When he asked his father about it, he was told it was called a fire tray, something tobacco smokers used to have in the old days. On its tray, you’d place still-glowing embers to light your next tobacco, he explained. “But then what’s this navel-like thing here for?” At the sheer absurdity of it all, Kyusuke felt a flicker of anger rise within him. His father showed him how there was just a small hole in that protrusion where a string had once been threaded—leaving Kyusuke with nothing more to say. They’d been completely taken in by Tarozaemon.

Even so, why did Tarozaemon tell such lies? What an utterly inexplicable fellow he was. One clear day, Kyusuke leaned against the classroom window and stared intently at Tarozaemon—the liar—who stood idly gazing into space, careful to remain hidden behind others. And then he discovered something even stranger. It turned out Tarozaemon's eyes differed in size—the right one larger than the left. The right eye was large. The left was small. Stranger still, while the large eye revealed a beautiful, serene, and innocent heart, the small one blinked with a sly, twisted cunning.

As Kyusuke-kun stared intently at this strange creature, he realized something more: even the ears differed in size and shape between left and right, and even the nose—with mismatched left and right nostrils—appeared slightly crooked.

Kyusuke-kun thought. Could it be that Tarozaemon wasn’t a single person, but rather formed by two people each contributing half? Once, Kyusuke-kun had seen clay dolls being made. First, using two molds, dolls were made in halves, and then the two halves were skillfully joined together to become a single doll. God must create us humans using the same method as that. And perhaps Tarozaemon had been formed by some error, pieced together from mismatched halves that didn’t fit together properly—each of a different size. Therefore, two people dwelled within Tarozaemon.

Therefore, it was only natural that Tarozaemon could tell lies so calmly and that his thoughts remained impossible to fathom, Kyusuke thought.

Six

Finally, the time had come when everyone would be subjected to a terrible ordeal because of Tarozaemon’s lies. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon at the end of May. To begin with, the circumstances were unfavorable. It was a time when everyone—that is, Tokuichi-kun, Kashi-kun, Hyotaro-kun, and Kyusuke-kun, the four of them—were bored and at a loss.

The wheat fields were turning yellow, and the croaking of frogs carried from afar into the village. The road reflected the light white as paper, and people seldom passed by.

Everyone was fed up with how utterly ordinary the world was. Why don’t things happen here like they do in novels? Kyusuke and the others wanted to do something like an adventure. Or perhaps they wanted to perform heroic deeds and give people a powerful emotional impact.

Just as they were thinking this, Tarozaemon suddenly appeared from around the corner of that road. He walked straight up to them, his eyes lit up. “Do you all know? There’s a huge whale in a sideshow at Shinmaiko right now. They say it’s about ten meters long!” Because they were just wishing for something exciting to happen—even though it came from Tarozaemon—they immediately believed him. Moreover, this didn’t seem like a complete lie. After all, even if that whale wasn’t at Shinmaiko Coast, anyone who had been there for a summer swim knew that sideshows often set up along those shores.

The decision to go see it was settled in an instant. When it came to Shinmaiko—being on the opposite shore of the Chita Peninsula—the path there, which involved crossing a mountain pass, was quite a long way. It must have been twelve or thirteen kilometers. Yet their bodies buzzed with restless energy. The road—the farther it stretched, the better it seemed.

With Tarozaemon now among them, the group set out immediately from that spot. Not a single one of them thought to go home and inform anyone about their plan. After all, their bodies were as light as swallows. They thought they could fly there as swallows and return as swallows. They leaped, ran, and at times even wisely cautioned each other with remarks like “We’ll tire ourselves out for the way back,” proceeding for a while by walking at a normal pace.

In the fields, atop vivid green grass, white wild roses bloomed. When passing through there, they heard bees buzzing. They saw whitish pine buds growing uniformly, their fragrance almost palpable. After passing Handa Pond and climbing the long mountain pass road, everyone began falling silent. And if anyone spoke, it became noisy and irritating. Unnoticed by them all, fatigue had crept into their bodies.

Gradually, everyone’s minds grew dull from fatigue. And they felt as though the light around them had dimmed. Indeed, the sun had already sunk quite far west, but even so, none of them were about to turn back. They continued advancing forward as if they had received an order.

And after passing through Ōno Town, they reached their destination—the coast of Shinmaiko—just as the sun was about to sink into the western sea at dusk. The five of them, exhausted and disheveled, collapsed onto the beach with their legs splayed out. And they were vacantly gazing out at the sea. There was no whale. It was another of Tarozaemon’s lies!

However, whether it was a lie or not no longer mattered to any of them. Even if the whale had been there, they likely wouldn’t have bothered to look. In their heads—dulled by exhaustion—there existed only a single thought.

What a mess we’d gotten ourselves into. How were we going to get back now?

To become utterly exhausted, unable to take another step, and only then realize this—it was a mark of their immaturity. They all profoundly felt that they themselves were still immature children lacking in judgment. Suddenly, “Waa!” someone burst into tears. It was Tokuichi-kun from Mori Clinic. Tokuichi-kun—the mischievous troublemaker who was strong in fights—was the first to burst into tears. Then, as if imitating him, Hyotaro-kun let out a “Waa!” and began crying in the same manner. Kyusuke-kun too, upon hearing those cries, began letting out strange, muffled sobs—*ufufun*—as he started crying in his own peculiar way. Next, Kashi-kun sucked in a sharp breath and let out a skillful “Waaah!” as he began crying.

They all cried in unison. Then, startled by the loudness of their own cries, they felt all the more keenly that they had done something irreparable. And so, the four of them cried for a while, but Tarozaemon merely drew lines in the sand at his feet with a seashell he had picked up, never breaking into tears. It felt awkward to cry beside someone who was not crying. As he cried, Kyusuke kept glancing Tarozaemon’s way and wished he would join them in weeping. What a strange, unfathomable fellow this was, he thought once more, his usual impression deepening.

The sun had completely set, and the world turned blue. Kyusuke-kun was the first to stop crying when his tears ran out. Then—Kashi-kun, Hyotaro-kun, Tokuichi-kun—they fell silent in reverse order of how they’d begun wailing, like cicadas ceasing their song one by one.

At that moment, Tarozaemon said.

“Since I have relatives in Ōno, let’s go there.” “And we’ll have them send us back by train.”

It was a moment when they would cling to even the faintest glimmer of hope, so everyone immediately stood up. However, when they realized that the one who had said this was none other than Tarozaemon, they all felt their strength drain away once more. If this had been said by someone else, how much courage everyone would have mustered.

When they finally entered Ōno Town and everyone became unbearably anxious—"Is it true?"—they asked repeatedly.

they asked again and again. Each time, Tarozaemon would answer, “It’s true,” but no matter how many such answers they received, none of them could believe it.

Kyusuke no longer believed Tarozaemon either.—This guy’s an incomprehensible enigma, he thought as he sharply watched Tarozaemon’s profile blending with the others—someone whose way of thinking differed completely from everyone else’s, an entirely separate kind of human being altogether. Then Tarozaemon’s face appeared exactly like a fox’s.

When they reached around the center of town, Tarozaemon—

“Hmm—was it here?”

While muttering such things to himself, he peered down one narrow alley and ventured into another side street. When they saw that, the other four began to feel even more helpless. It was another of Tarozaemon’s lies. It was truly despair now. However, before long, Tarozaemon came running out from one of the alleys and—

“I found it! Come on, come on!” and beckoned everyone over. Even in the dimness where their faces were barely visible, they could tell a surge of vitality had swept through them. Forgetting that their legs were as exhausted as sticks, everyone ran in that direction.

Following at the very end, Kyusuke told himself inwardly: Wait a minute. Because he felt that if he got too carried away, happiness might slip right through his fingers. After all, this was Tarozaemon they were dealing with—there was no way to take his words at face value. When he thought that way, this time too, it seemed like a lie to Kyusuke.

And Kyusuke continued to doubt Tarozaemon until they arrived at the small, bright shop lined with clocks. However, that place was truly Tarozaemon’s relative’s house. The aunt, who had been startled after hearing the explanation from Tarozaemon, “Oh my... You all... Oh my goodness!” When she surveyed everyone in dismay, Kyusuke thought he was saved. Then, suddenly, the strength drained from his legs, and he slumped down onto the threshold.

Then, the five of them were led back to Iwabe by the clock shop uncle via train, but inside the train car, they merely pressed their bodies against one another without exchanging a single word. Serenity and exhaustion had taken hold of both their bodies and minds, and they wanted neither to think nor to say anything.

Even the liar Tarozaemon hadn't told a lie this time, Kyusuke thought for the first time when he got into bed. In a life-or-death crisis, that guy hadn't told a lie. When viewed that way, Tarozaemon was by no means an incomprehensible person after all. Human beings—no matter how incomprehensibly different their usual ways of thinking might be—all share the same thoughts in those final, critical moments. In other words, Kyusuke had realized that human beings, at their very core, truly understand one another. Then Kyusuke, feeling profoundly at peace, listened to the lingering sound of waves in the depths of his ears and drifted smoothly off to sleep.