Pathway to Japanese Literature

1

When his mind grew sluggish, nothing served better than fixing his eyes upon classical philosophy books crammed with nothing but impenetrable characters—Oki would brace himself until his left chest strained, never once emerging from his room. Cloaked over the slender type of Reclam volumes as though fused to them, he remained chained to his desk all day. Yet after listlessly dispatching the delivered supper alone like some boardinghouse tenant, when he reached that hour of vacant lamp-gazing, the chill would abruptly intensify around him, and he'd find himself longing for the warm room.

"But……"

He violently shook his head and hesitated considerably, but he couldn’t help but stagger down the corridor and head toward the bright room.
But this time, he had bundled up two or three thick Western books with type as large as possible, along with Webster’s and an English-Japanese dictionary.—And before he could lay a hand on the sliding door,

“Shall I open it?”

he couldn’t help but growl.
Once, the moment he carelessly and silently opened the sliding door—

“Kyaah…”

With that scream, Yayoi leapt up from the kotatsu—and chaos ensued.
She wrapped herself frantically in the blanket—“Eeeek!”—laughing and shrieking as she dove into the closet.
More than her being naked, Oki was startled by the commotion itself.
Oki had long been vaguely aware that his wife—who was studying painting and had gradually progressed to figure sketches—used Yayoi as a model. The nude figure itself didn’t particularly startle him. But the model’s exaggerated shock and flustered reaction ended up stirring him with outrageous lewd thoughts instead.

“Oh, it’s pitch black—I can’t see a thing. Open it just a crack, Sister…”

In the closet, Yayoi laughed—a sharp burst dissolving into stifled giggles.
Two pure white blankets, unable to be fully pulled in, left a long hem trailing from the edge of the closet all the way under the sofa.
Oki’s wife, grim-faced at having her work interrupted, stood up—and Yayoi, from within,

“Don’t open it that much, you idiot……”

Yayoi’s impatient words made her adjust the gap to about three sun (≈9 cm).

“Oh, there’s nothing there at all—I came from the bathhouse just now wearing only my nightclothes, you see……”

“Ah, it’s here—”

When the Wife picked up the striped towel pajamas, Yayoi exposed her white arm up to the shoulder through the gap and pressed, “Hurry up!”

“But something feels odd about this.”
“To think you’d go out wearing just that single layer when you know full well…”

“What’s this, Yayoi? Suddenly talking such nonsense? You’re always lounging under the kotatsu like that without a care anyway.”

That room alone had a hundred-candlepower electric light blazing, the stove left roaring, and a hearth like those found in snow country built into it. Over this, a frame had been erected so one could burrow in completely.
At that time, the Wife was sitting on the frame, using the supine figure lying directly opposite on the sofa as her model.

“At least bring me something to put on.”

“You’re annoying.”
“It’s none of your business, isn’t it?”

Without engaging, the Wife sullenly smoked her cigarette.— Oki lay down silently in the kotatsu, but the stark white figure of Yayoi from when she had rushed in to hide remained stubbornly etched in his mind.

“Is it okay if I open it? Aren’t you drawing?”

“Oh—you’ve come again.”
“How pitiful you look.”

“Hey—don’t mess around.
I just came over because it got cold on that side.
Don’t talk nonsense.”

Oki knit his brows in earnest and snapped back.

“Then why don’t you just come in without asking? It’s not like this is some Western-style house...”

From the very start, this had put Oki in a foul mood—hmph!
With a bored snort, Oki entered—and the women too responded with a “Hmph!”
Without raising their faces or lifting their bowed heads, the two of them pinched both ends of what appeared to be curtain material and earnestly embroidered some floral pattern.
Yayoi leaned her short-cropped head against the back wall as if soaking in a bedtime bath, stretched her legs out on the frame, shaped the draped blanket into a pyramid, and worked the needle across her chest.
The Wife wore only a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to her upper arms in what seemed a half-kneeling position.
And the two of them, feigning complete ignorance of Oki’s presence, hummed a popular English song—something about a lone lamp burning in some valley and an aged mother awaiting her son’s return.

Oki remained acutely sensitive to precisely this air of feigned ignorance in their demeanor—it was easy to imagine they had been voicing complaints about their living circumstances right until that moment.
The hostile tone from their side had been nothing but this from the very beginning.—Having long grown accustomed to it, Oki simply turned away indignantly and opened his book without uttering a word from his side.

“If you’re going to monopolize all the space yourself, don’t stretch your legs out so much—it’s insufferable.”

“Honestly now! Professor! With that guileless face of yours—one can never lower their guard! Feigning sleep only to go so far as resting your legs on my lap.”

Yayoi kept needling with these remarks.
Oki had been stewing in irritation since earlier—

“You fool, wallowing in your delusions…”

He nearly bellowed it out but just managed to clutch at his chest instead.

“It’s none of your concern—just throw it hard enough to go numb.”

“……What’s she trying to achieve by saying such a thing……” he glared at his wife out of the corner of his eye.
The Wife, specifically when in a foul mood, would speak from the corner of her mouth while never looking at the other person’s face.
Whenever he carelessly let slip an indignant retort during such times, lately it had become the case that the Wife’s cousin would be the first to voice a snide remark before even the Wife could.

“I never imagined I’d end up like this…”

Yayoi would frequently lay out her dissatisfactions in a way that stirred her cousin’s rebellious inclinations. At times even Oki would lose his patience and adopt a stern demeanor, but Yayoi remained utterly unperturbed—her expression seeming to say “What now?”—as she fixed her narrow-eyed gaze upon him, scrutinizing his condition. She would always sneer coldly, as though supremely confident in this particular expression of hers. Objectively speaking, Oki had indeed acknowledged her beauty. Facing someone nearly seventeen or eighteen years his junior—he suppressed a heart verging on despondency.

“Even if we say Brother-in-law isn’t pulling his weight, this *is* his hometown—I thought things would’ve improved at least a little by now. Ah, appalled—absolutely appalled.”
“In that case, only Sister here looks truly pathetic.”

When Yayoi said such things to her, the Wife would immediately fly into a hysterical fit—
“I’ve endured this for ten years now—I’ve nothing left to wear!”

—and worked herself into a rage over her own words.

Originally, Oki had fallen into a mental state requiring recuperation, making it utterly impossible for him to write novels undisturbed in the city—and though the cousins had taken the lead in deciding their move to the countryside under the premise that they could endure most hardships, his smoldering resentment at having his shallow dream of rural idyll go unfulfilled gradually swelled until, more often than not, the husband who should have been the invalid found himself obliged to humor the moods of these nurses.

Sakawa Village next door was Oki’s hometown, and since they had initially planned to stay just a month or two, he had borrowed a farmhouse from an acquaintance in his own village—but then came their complaints: that eating areas were visible from the front entrance, or that taking a bath by the potato field’s edge in the rain required holding an umbrella just to get in—and so on. Despite having lived in Tokyo knowing nothing beyond tenement-style houses, they put on airs with every little thing, tormenting Oki.

It was the beginning of autumn.—When Tsukakoshi, the head of a fishing household in Kōzu who had been acquainted with Oki’s family since long ago, came to visit him,

“After all, it’ll be vacant from now on—why don’t you use it if you like?”

and Tsukakoshi suggested a certain rental villa.

—A brand-new semi-Western-style villa eighteen meters long faced the coast at the town’s edge, where each room had been furnished with a set of rather substantial furniture.
The front featured a gable-style gate structure, with the house surrounded on all sides by ample gardens and expansive lawns.
A famous city council member had built it for his mistress, but when the man ended up being imprisoned, Tsukakoshi apparently purchased it from those who had been handling it.

Oki, needless to say, flinched, but the women grew excited,

“Mr. Gen, how much is the rent for this house, huh?”
“Huh? Huh?”
“Huh? Huh?”

She pressed him relentlessly.—Tsukakoshi, who now dealt less in fishing and more in selling land to summer visitors, carried himself with the discerning eye of an innkeeper—a man who seemed to have swiftly sized up the true nature of these Western-clad women.
As a child, whenever Oki went to Tokyo accompanied by his grandfather and grandmother and got off the train, he always remembered first stopping by Genpachirou’s house and playing there for a good half a day.
The current Genpachirou was the eldest son of his namesake predecessor and was indeed two or three years older than Oki.
In the previous generation’s time, they had been half-fishermen, half-farmers with two or three small boats and a modest citrus orchard, but the current Genpachi reportedly made a fortune in his twenties using yellowtail fishing nets and multiplied their declining family assets several times over.
He owned several rental villas, and more recently had been operating a shared bus service to Shimosōga and a café called “Odawara Kaikan” near Odawara Station.
Yet despite this, he showed not a trace of intellectual pretensions; when speaking, he would often laugh with a bashful air for no apparent reason and blush—a man of unhurried temperament.

“Well now—what shall we say the price is?”

He turned toward Oki with a smirk.
When Oki remained silent, he turned to the women with exaggerated politeness.

“No, having you stay here is already more than enough.”

He showed tact.
However, it seemed Genpachi’s goodwill did not reach them.
In such situations, Oki—who was especially prone to putting on a brave front internally—found himself too weighed down to respond, but they readily accepted the offer and even delighted in features like the presence of a darkroom for developing photographs.

Even when they remained silent, gardeners would come to tend the yard and record dealers would visit to take orders.—Yayoi had dropped out of the English department at her specialized school, claiming it had become too left-leaning, but by now she had shrugged it all off...

“Look, if we’re to live in a house of this caliber, we simply must have at least one full set of clothes sorted out first—I’d be ashamed to even step outside otherwise.”
“No matter where we go, looking like we’ve just come back from a seaside stroll—these days, even in the countryside, I’d feel terribly self-conscious.”

She gradually began voicing such things.
Then the Wife became worked up and—
“I have plenty of kimonos, you know?—I’m not saying you should buy me anything. …What an irresponsible man!”
she seethed.

“After all, kimonos suit life here best, don’t they? Tying your obi properly in a drum shape… Wait no—Sister, you had that Edo gold brocade around springtime, didn’t you? I’ve grown quite fond of that one—it’d fit me perfectly. Let me see it.”

“……”

“There’s Ōshima fabric too, isn’t there? Let’s wear it. If Sister puts that on while I adjust the kimono sleeves… That sort of painting would work better—more reassuring to start with—”

“Cut it out,……”

“Oh, why—won’t you let me wear it?”

“That’s not it—Shut up!”

“That too?”

Yayoi fixed her eyes with a suggestive look.

“That too—there’s nothing of the sort!”
“Just open the trunk and see for yourself!”
“—Nothing but bastards’ loincloths.”

The Wife blurted out such things with unwomanly brazenness.

Then Yayoi, in a piercing voice that reached all the way to Oki’s study where he leaned against his desk,

“I can’t take it anymore—I should just strip naked and go wild!” she shouted.

No sooner had they moved to such a house than the seeds of their dissatisfaction seemed ready to reach the heavens like Jack’s beanstalk.
Truly, with each passing day, their frustrations had piled up—it was only natural they found themselves caught in such an indecent contradiction.
Backstage, this same female student who had been so tongue-tied now, ever since moving into this house, would transform her expression into one of perfect composure—as if she resided in nothing less than a splendid mansion—the moment she stepped outside the gate, squinting her eyes strangely as she took her leisurely strolls.
And they would rest at the waiting teahouse in front of the station and call Oki on the phone for no reason at all.

“No.”
“I didn’t sleep a wink last night—I need to get some rest now.”

“Do come along, Brother-in-law. When it’s just the two of us going, Sister says it’s so dreadfully dull…”

“Where are you going?”

“Oh my, what are you spacing out for? We’re going to see Boléro at the Odeon-za—didn’t I tell you earlier?”

Oki had even suspected they might be putting on affected voices to amuse him, yet they appeared utterly serious.—For many years he had believed himself to have instilled a stoic spiritual life in his wife, but could she have regressed so hollowly over something so trivial? He couldn’t help tilting his head rather quizzically. In the end, he thought it was his own fault.—Truly, Oki had not been observing their behavior with any sarcasm or twisted gaze—not now of all times. If he carelessly uttered even a vaguely critical-sounding remark (though Oki’s such comments had grown somewhat venomous—), these days neither Yayoi nor the Wife would stay silent, instead lashing out at him like madwomen in an instant.

“Don’t you go putting on airs with your grand pronouncements.”
“I know everything.”
“You kissed Yayoi once before, didn’t you?”
“And what an utterly irresponsible thing to say!”

The Wife had once lost her temper and suddenly bitten his arm.—This had happened quite some time ago, back when they were in Tokyo, but Oki had committed nothing more than a kiss with Yayoi through a purely accidental mistake.

“I’m sorry.”

At that moment, he apologized.
Yayoi collapsed onto his knees and wept.
Then she nodded fervently.

After that, they never touched each other again.
According to the Wife’s account, Yayoi’s personality had changed since then.

“Responsibility is…”

Even Oki had turned pale, his lips trembling.
The Wife had maintained a pretense of ignorance for so long—but when and why had Yayoi revealed it?
And so he surrendered.

“It’s about school.”
“Wasn’t it your doing that Yayoi dropped out—?”

Oki had intended to at least continue covering her school expenses, but as the conversation spiraled into such an outrageous problem, he found himself at a loss for words.

If he were to carelessly say something stiffly formal, there was now the fear that even Yayoi might shout it out.

II

“Where do you suppose we’ll hang this curtain?”

Yayoi moved her needle within the cut circular frame and glanced at Oki with a strangely spiteful look.
Oki stretched out his legs—stiff from sitting all day—into the kotatsu, his toes occasionally brushing against Yayoi’s knees. If he grew careless, she would calmly say something rude, so he never moved intentionally himself. Yet as she fidgeted uncomfortably, grumbling about some nuisance intruding upon them, his feet would touch hers of their own accord each time.
Yayoi too remained oblivious to such trivial contact, making no move to flinch away in panic, and Oki for his part maintained an air of indifference—but each time, his entire body would jolt as if electrified. He lay on his back, appearing engrossed in the book propped against his chest, yet he comprehended none of its meaning.

“Well now—where shall we hang this? Your study’s window perhaps?”

“Hmph… That’s not it.”
“We’ll hang it like a curtain beside this bed.”
“So that no matter when or who comes in, we’ll be secure—”

And she looked up at the lintel above the sofa.
That chair was a mechanism convertible into a bed.
They would often sleep right there at the kotatsu, just the two of them.

“This girl truly sleeps so restlessly.”

The Wife stared fixedly at Yayoi’s face—the face she always helped shape. She took excessive pride in Yayoi, and lately with affected solemnity had begun meddling even with her makeup, devising methods to keep her perpetually presentable; for without proper preparation, Yayoi would look garish when going out. When Yayoi emerged from the bath, she would ponder which style suited her best—as though sculpting a doll’s face［＃「慥へる」is misprinted as 「［てへん＋慥のつくり］える」in the original text］—experimenting with whitening creams and greasepaint.

Once applied, it had to seem as though no makeup had been applied at all—she would remind herself while painstakingly brushing Yayoi’s eyelashes or attempting to reshape her eyebrows.

“Oh… which one?”

Yayoi glared at the Wife, but the Wife—examining the play of her expression and the makeup’s application—fixed her gaze as though appraising one of her own paintings.

“Hey, could you sit up and take a look? Isn’t this just a bit too garish?”

She urged Oki.
He abruptly put the book down over his face.
“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“...I want to dress her in my fur coat.”

The Wife murmured obsessively.
She owned a rather fine beaver overcoat—a gift from Oki’s American friend—but had scarcely worn it and long since lost possession of it.
Though she’d resigned herself with bashful logic—nothing matched it anyway—the moment she saw this gated house, she’d pictured herself swathed in its luxury while strolling outdoors.

“It’s only forty yen to bring it here—it’s nothing at all.”

She had made it a habit to torment Oki with this refrain, yet she had made no such arrangements at all.

“I don’t want it at all myself, but I do want to have Yayoi wear it.”

“I want it…”

Yayoi drew a deep breath, her eyes gleaming with yearning.

Whenever that topic arose, it always ended in a fight—leaving him no choice but to flee in disarray while enduring unbearable insults—so Oki shuddered whenever he heard “fur coat.”

“It’s no use having just a coat.”
“In the first place, walking through such a pleasantly warm country town while wearing something like that would be far too ostentatious.”

“That’s what I detest about you!”
“Stop making excuses.”
“You’re really—”

And the Wife gradually grew more agitated.
"You're such a self-centered person—so unmanly."
"That sort of grand gesture where you make others happy and end up happy yourself—anyone would normally have that."
"You're nothing but a lowly, self-centered, pitiful creature!"

“Right, right!”

Yayoi too became earnest.
“You’re deceiving yourself—how cunning, and utterly spineless you are.”

“That’s why, no matter what it is—if you’re going to act—you should at least have the grit to see it through with resolve.—I hate it.”
“If you’ll indulge in vices, then indulge—throw everything away and show some consistency in forcing through your desires.”
“As for me—when it comes to matters of living—I don’t falter at all. Even if everything crumbled tomorrow, I’m certain I could manage.”
“Truthfully—I’d feel more cleansed if this person would just recklessly destroy everything.”
“Indecisive half-measures—that’s what I detest most.”

“Why don’t you just take a lover or something?”

“Precisely—unless you’re driven kicking and screaming to the cliff’s edge, things will never get settled, I tell you.”
“Go find yourself some woman and get properly torn to shreds—that’d serve you right.”

“In other words，my being too devoted to you is what’s wrong，isn’t it?”

“It would be better if she acted like others—using ‘you’ for everything while leaning solely on her husband—don’t you think?”
“This half-hearted strength of mine is precisely what makes me wretched.”
“Yet lately I’ve grown steadily envious of outsiders.”
“How much simpler life would be if one could depend completely on one’s husband.”
“Shouldn’t keeping your own wife contented be the most basic expectation?”
“Someone like me—dragging through years like this—constantly anxious yet unable to act on any desire—it’s intolerable.”
“More than ever—I can only think separation would be preferable.”

“A man who causes his wife such anxieties would be better off dead.”

“―Life! A man who can’t even handle matters of livelihood properly is useless, no matter what he does!”
“Nothing is as ugly as a person without vitality.”

When the two of them launched into that kind of talk, they became so engrossed there was no stopping them.
Oki too found himself utterly powerless.
His chest trembled, yet not a single word of retort surfaced.
Moreover, having those two hold such weaknesses of his proved an insurmountable disadvantage.

“Don’t you understand how worked up we’ve been? Can’t you hear?”

“You’re shameless.”

“I won’t have you making a fool of me any longer—I’m always serious about this—”

The more he kept silent, the more impatient the Wife became.

"I’m not turning into some fool."

He could do nothing but mutter fearfully.

"Ah, how infuriating! Now I even have to worry about what a man is thinking!"

She hurled her handicraft tools with all her might. Her skills were never going to amount to anything, but Oki thought that if she tried painting instead, it might broaden her perspective a little—though this proved utterly futile. Her fickle and resentful nature meant anything she undertook ended up half-hearted, yet she regarded even her own talent as entirely sacrificed for her husband.

“Instead of pretending to read such books, you’d do better to look at these—wouldn’t you?”

The Wife slowly stood up, took two or three sealed letters from the desk drawer, and dropped them onto him.
They were all documents titled “Official Notice of Payment.” — ¥1.50, men’s hakama.
¥3, men’s lined kimono.
¥7, women’s obi.
“¥4, mahjong…” and so on—lines of text written in such an illegible yet flourished hand that they became impossible to read through, lined up endlessly.

III

One evening, the Wife calmly said such things.

“I seem to be completely in love with Yayoi. I end up forgetting that I’m even a woman.”

“Are you calling it homosexuality?”

At this, Oki too became interested.

“……It’s a dreadful word, though.”

The Wife turned red.
Yayoi was in the bathroom across the corridor.
The Wife deliberately went to turn off the corridor light—since no one was there, it was fine.
She whispered to Yayoi, “Show me your shadow——” and gazed at the figure reflected in the glass door.

“Wasn’t that a term we heard quite often before? Though these days it might have become a different one.”
“Did you have such experiences during your student days?”

Oki considered that it was likely because he had given her nothing but dissatisfaction in every aspect that she had naturally developed deviant tendencies—and he found himself reflecting on his own behavior since moving to the countryside.

“In truth, I never wanted to paint pictures or anything like that. I was deceiving you all along.”

“……How delightful.”

“No matter how long I look, I never grow tired of it.”
“Rather than that, lately I’ve been feeling jealous and tormented.”
“When I think about her getting married, I find myself unable to stay composed.”
“……But really, when it comes to the sheer beauty of that girl’s body—it’s beyond words—so overwhelming you can’t help but tremble……”

“Have you ever trembled?”

“Oh, don’t look so shocked… But after thinking it through, I’ve come to see that what you did back then wasn’t so unreasonable after all.”

“……I was an idiot!”

“I’ve had feelings even more intense than that.”

(The following several lines of conversation are omitted.)

"Her face isn't what you'd call that of a great beauty, but with a mouth shaped like Hepburn's—it has this audacious charm, don't you think?"

"But more than that—her physical beauty is utterly extraordinary. Even I, a woman, find myself utterly captivated by it. Her skin so fine-textured, so taut..."

"She's the exact opposite of you."

Oki thought of the Wife—her frame disgustingly large, her angular almost-androgynous build—and broke into goosebumps; then he imagined a body brimming with voluptuous allure, its rich hues and luster standing in stark opposition.

“That’s already exactly like—”

The Wife acted indifferently for no reason, having left her self-respect behind.

“As for the face, I—”

Oki hurriedly restrained his words that were about to burst forth.
“Her eyes have a peculiar composure about them, don’t they?”
“And a delinquent air that seems rather well-educated.”

“I don’t sense any delinquent quality.”
“It’s not that kind of feeling—rather, it seems cold, like she’s pushing everything away…”

“It doesn’t matter either way.”

Oki disliked such intrusive talk in his wife’s presence, but she kept dissecting every minute aesthetic detail—insisting how the skin seemed tainted as though freshly robbed of virginity—all while growing increasingly oblivious to her own femininity.

Unseasonably warm evenings continued.

On top of that, staying in the room where they kept the stove blazing made it sweltering as if soaked in a hot spring—sweat threatened to break out at any moment.—When Oki unexpectedly looked at the back wall, though he hadn’t thought to ask how it had been brought there, that fur overcoat hung reverently like a trophy.
Their preferences seemed to depend entirely on that trophy.

“That Yayoi—what a fool! She’s so delighted with herself that she’s not wearing a single thing and just suddenly wrapped herself up in this.”
“Today, for instance, she’s been lazing around all day just like that.”
“Scattering talcum all over her body and then softly wrapping herself in this—she can’t help but be entranced by it!”

“After going through all this trouble bringing it here—wearing it so roughly will only ruin it.”
“For going out…”

When Oki began to speak, the Wife’s tone immediately turned harsh.

“I want you to get other things ready too so we can use it properly for going out——”

The Wife interrupted.
“Since it’s hopeless anyway, I’ll just make a complete mess of it.”

“I see—that might be for the best.”

Oki found himself in a precarious situation, so—

“There’s meaning to it.”

he laughed.
Truly, though he was no Count Maso, imagining the skin and movements of a nude woman wrapped in a fur-lined overcoat held considerable significance—he muttered to himself and fixedly closed his eyes.

“Oh! How awful—it wasn’t just Sister alone... that’s cruel—”

Behind the sliding door，Yayoi let out a sudden cry．
“Get me the coat! Hurry up already…”

Impatiently，she stamped her feet loudly．

“There’s powder all over it…”

The Wife grabbed the shoulders of the overcoat, flapping it wildly as she shook it out, then threw it across to Yayoi.
The cloyingly sweet scent of talcum spread thickly through the room until it filled every corner, leaving Oki feeling as though he couldn’t move a muscle.

IV

In the distant mountains, patches of snow could still be seen, yet the air grew warmer each day, as if spring had arrived.
Against the vividly clear purple slopes of the mountains, traces of lingering snow scattered like cranes spreading their wings to take flight.—On the sandy beach visible from Oki’s window, a person lay sprawled beneath a summer parasol, while four or five youths engrossed in a soccer game darted about in jerseys.

Oki had half-heartedly given up on reading books and was beginning to grow irritated as he tried to start his creative work, but having taken too much Propalin and slept, his head remained persistently foggy, and his imagination refused to function at all.
And his entire body had dried up like a withered tree while his cold persisted.
Whenever his head flared up with heat, a sudden chill would surge from the tips of his legs as if water were flooding in—sneezes kept coming without pause, snot dripped endlessly, and to make matters worse, whether from a touch of rheumatism or not, his hips and kneecaps went numb in coiled spirals, leaving him in a truly unmanageable state.
With a portable heater pressed against his abdomen, he sat like a wooden statue—but whenever he attempted to walk, he longed for a cane so badly he could almost use one.

As he gazed seaward with an intensely sullen face, Yayoi came circling around the corridor whistling and lay down on the cloth-covered chair by the window’s edge.

“I want to go sunbathing, but there are people around, so it’s a problem,”
she muttered.
She had crossed her long legs—clad in pajama pants—right over Oki’s eyes, and was moving the toes of one foot sheathed in a pink slipper as if kicking the ceiling.

“What about Sister?”

“She says she has a headache and can’t get up.—Probably her period.”

“—Isn’t sunbathing something for sick people?”

“If I carelessly say something offhand, that old woman takes it seriously and comes to rouse me without fail whenever the weather’s nice.—‘Deign to rise, deign to rise, Young Mistress,’ she says. Tough luck.”

Yayoi burst out laughing.
The caretaker was hard of hearing.—“If I’m told to ‘deign to rise’—well, even I’d feel embarrassed!”

“She said ‘The Young Mistress deigns to wear such a splendid overcoat—I hardly recognized her!’ and claimed you’d ordered another this time,” he continued.
“Did that old woman really spew such drivel?”

“Ha ha ha… How should I know?”
“The Wife must’ve blabbed… Anyway, today’s a perfect day for sunbathing, isn’t it?”

“That’s certainly the case—”

Oki squinted his eyes and gazed across the bright sandy plain where heat haze seemed to shimmer.
Not a whisper of wind stirred, yet sunlight spilling from the sea held a softness like being swathed in dense fur or bird down.

“Hey, why don’t we go all the way to that pine grove over there? There probably isn’t anyone around—”

“Are you really going to sunbathe?”

“I do it anytime—it’s not just today.”
“If you go all the way to the river’s edge, there’s a place that looks just like a desert.”
“There’s absolutely no way anyone will spot us.”
“Let’s buy some sandwiches from the station and stay out playing until past noon.”

Though Oki wasn’t particularly enthusiastic, he found himself reluctantly talked into going out.

“Even though it’s hopeless, there’s no point clinging to your desk with that face.”
“Just because you keep feeling unwell—that’s from lack of exercise.”
“If you walk here, you’ll definitely feel refreshed.”

After going around town to collect developed photo prints and returning home again, Yayoi took off her socks and slipped heavy garden clogs onto her bare feet.
She still stubbornly wore that overcoat, clutching her arms tightly across her chest as if scratching herself, treading the sand with terribly awkward strides.
Oki walked alongside her, swinging a faux-leather Boston bag.

“When we ran into Gen-san earlier—‘Where to?’”
“What was it he said?”
“‘To Tokyo?’”
“He was like, ‘To Tokyo?’”

“Must’ve looked a bit to the left.”
“After all, you’re even carrying a bag and putting on airs…”
She giggled to herself for some reason.
“The photo shop guy is asking that sort of thing too.”
“What if we just got on the train like that?”
“Huh?”
“Meeting people, stopping by a café, then maybe catching a movie…”
She kept muttering to herself for ages, a strange smile playing on her lips.

“That overcoat’s absurdly large on you.”
“You look like an Eskimo.”

Oki scolded Yayoi as she giggled while muttering to herself.

“Exactly.”
“Which means I’d never pass for someone going out properly—though instead of feeling cramped, it’s like swimming inside.”

“Still, that must be sweltering.”

“Just a bit…”

With a faint smile still on her lips, Yayoi gave a light, resolute nod and came to a stop. And she looked all around. The figures of the young men playing ball appeared only as small as birds far behind them. There was also a young man who would occasionally come to visit and exchange literary discussions with Yayoi. Thinking, "If we’re spotted, it’ll be trouble—let’s take a detour," the two of them had avoided them from the start, circling around the town to descend to a beach far to the west.

Yayoi, as if suppressing her laughter for a short while, buried her chin in her collar and stared fixedly at Oki’s face; then,

“But it’s not a big deal—because it’s like this—”

No sooner had she spoken than she made a show of removing it with startling speed—a fleeting pantomime of disrobing. Oki instinctively cried “Ah!” She wore nothing beneath.

“You’ve been like this since earlier? I’m shocked.”

“Y-yes… Just the socks.”

Yayoi abruptly regained her composure. “That’s why when people ask if we’re going to Tokyo or whatever, it feels so strange. But I’ve really gotten used to all these awkward situations.”

Her expression had somehow taken on a melancholic cast.

“While half my heart flutters anxiously, I feel like going on like this endlessly.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Oki groaned, but then was struck by something like lightning that assailed his chest in rapid succession, causing tremors to well up within him.

“Oh!”
“People are coming from over there!”
“Be careful!”

Though there was no need for caution, Yayoi blushed to the roots of her ears and took his arm. They very rarely encountered people out walking.

“This isn’t working.—Maybe we should turn back?”

Yayoi had completely lost her initial vigor and voiced her weakness.

“Anyway, let’s go near Kawajiri and see.—Or maybe we should just make up our minds and take the bus from there to Kohachiman or Sakawo—all the way to below Shotoen…”

“...Since I carefully packed dresses, underwear—even shoes—inside there, we could give up on sunbathing and turn this into a walk instead—but I can’t get dressed like this.”
“At this rate—”

“If it were summer, there’d be a changing room, you know.”

“What are you saying, you idiot—.”
“Use your head properly.”

With those words, Yayoi struck Oki’s back as if shoving him.

“There are no boats around here!”

“What a godforsaken desert this turned out to be.”
“Look—children flying kites over there at this ungodly hour.”
“No wind at all, yet up they go—how perfectly absurd.”

“Hey—three or four of them up there flying.”
“Yatsuko and crow kites can fly even if there’s no wind.”

Oki muttered something utterly foolish in a ponderous tone, as if imparting some grand, pretentious knowledge, then gazed up at the kites floating in the watery sky and let out a thick sigh for no particular reason.

"But it's good exercise, isn't it?
Once we find a decent spot to get dressed, let's try walking more energetically, don't you think?"

“Lack of exercise won’t do.”
“Let’s walk.”

He grasped Yayoi’s arm on one side and—swinging the bag in his left hand that held everything crammed together down to underwear—began striding briskly across the vast sandy plain where nothing obstructed them, matching his steps to hers.

“Just throw away these geta and take out the shoes—they’re awful to walk in.”

“I’ll let you wear them—hold onto my shoulder.”

“Shall we eat a sandwich?”

“I’m full.”

Oki responded.