Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Miyamoto Yuriko

I

Osegawa came to Aiko’s place, borrowed an advance on the tuition fee, and left.
Osegawa was Aiko’s German teacher.
He worked as a private tutor, but apart from Aiko, he had no other students—and even if he had gained any, it was only natural they would leave, so lackadaisical was the man.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays—the days for lessons—there were often times when Aiko would go up to his second floor only to find him absent.
“He hasn’t come back since yesterday, I tell you.”
Ms. Kami downstairs would sometimes inform Aiko of such matters.
In most cases, women were involved behind such matters.
Whether it was that some small part of Osegawa’s slovenliness appealed to women, or that being excessively pampered by them made him grow even lazier—in any case, his affairs with women never ceased.
Aiko had heard from Osegawa himself that he had also lost his previous job due to failures in that very area.

On the other hand, when he felt inclined, his teaching was extremely enjoyable.
Irresponsible as he was,

“Let’s stop here for today.”

He began to wrap up,

“However, this is fascinating! Do take a look at the next part here.”

He started reading on his own, and before long had resumed the lesson. This would continue for two or even three hours. Finally, Aiko—

“Shall we take a little break?” she said.
The good-natured Osegawa suddenly flustered,

“Oh, my apologies! You must be exhausted. I just got so carried away!”

He pressed his broad, receding forehead and suddenly began looking around the desk where he sat. He was instinctively searching for something to wet his mouth, but in Osegawa’s room, even in winter, there were times when the hibachi had fire and times when it did not. Such was his impoverished life.

There were times when Aiko would treat him to soba and stay until night.

She would also, during their lessons,

“I’ve gotten strangely cold all of a sudden. Would you like to go take a bath?”

Given her tendency to make such invitations, it was perhaps because her disposition meshed somehow with Osegawa’s way of life—his complete indifference to poverty, enduring the cold in winter serge and a padded kimono while maintaining around his forehead not the grime of destitution but a faint luster.

With books like The Sorrows of Young Werther and anthologies of literary masters, it would be more accurate to say Aiko had spent two years making Osegawa teach her rather than being taught by him.

On the first Tuesday afternoon in March, Aiko headed out to Kohinata-cho.
After Osegawa had moved here from Ushigome, Aiko too had found a room on the heights across Koishikawa.
She climbed Nezuzaka Slope and turned right.
Osegawa lived on the second floor of a tobacco shop.

“Good day.”

"Oh, good afternoon!"

Ms. Kami, her hair in a traditional chignon, raised her head from the depths of the narrow shopfront.
From the corner of her smiling mouth glimmered a gold tooth, and the sunlight illuminating the pipes and cigar boxes in the glass case gave Aiko an unmistakably springlike impression.

“Are you here to see him?”

“Yes—he’s here today! Do come right up.”

As she tried to climb the steep staircase leading up from the two-tatami space beside the shop, Ms. Kami—
“Wait a moment, Ms. Mishima.”
She called out to Aiko in a strangely hushed voice.
“What is it?”
Silently beckoning with her eyes and hands, she also stood up.
“There’s a guest.”
Aiko relaxed her expression that had been wondering what was wrong and, like a spoiled child,
“Oh, is that all?”
she said and placed the book parcel and shawl there.
“You had me worried there for a second.”
Ms. Kami brought out a zabuton cushion with a faint smile at Aiko’s boyish demeanor.

“Who is it? That guest?”

“Well, you see, he’s from Senzoku—asking if a woman hasn’t come by... Seems he’s the proprietor of a fancy sake shop or something like that.”

“Huh.”

Seeing Aiko’s surprised expression, Ms. Kami said:

“Is it that you didn’t know anything about this?”

she said.

“I don’t know.—Since when has he been here?”
“Well...”
Ms. Kami tilted her head and looked up at the old-fashioned bonbon clock hanging above the shop entrance.
“It’s been nearly an hour now, more or less.”

The two of them fell silent for a while, half-listening to the voices from upstairs.
There was only the occasional low voice of a man saying something, and it was calm.

“It seems things will settle without any trouble, which is good, but I can’t help feeling uneasy. Out of nowhere, he starts asking if there’s supposed to be a woman named Ōtsuka Oine here and stares me up and down—”

“—Did she run away?”

“Well…”

Ms. Kami, still trailing off her words, turned her attention back upward once more.

Then, the sliding door on the second floor opened,

“Well, given the circumstances, I’ll leave it to your discretion.”

came the loud voice of a weather-beaten middle-aged man.
The man took the lead and clattered down the stairs.
Aiko pulled the zabuton cushion—which had been protruding over the threshold of the two-tatami space—toward herself with her whole body and turned her face toward the shop.

“Right then.”

“I see. My apologies for the trouble.”

Once he had sent him off, Osegawa,

“Oh.”

With that, he returned to Aiko’s side wearing an embarrassed yet earnest expression.

“I must apologize for the rudeness.
Please do.”

“Is that okay?”

“Yes, please go ahead.”

Upstairs, the zabuton cushion left behind by the recent guest remained as it was beside the hibachi and tea set.
Aiko removed it and went to the window.

“——”
“Is he the one from Senzoku?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Osegawa, still appearing somewhat embarrassed, said earnestly.

“I’ve really gotten myself into a bind here.”
“It’s because they’re pinning these absurd suspicions on me.”

“What’s wrong? Do you really not know?”

“It’s true, I tell you!
“—Well, I do know a little about this woman who’s like a sister to that man’s wife, but apparently she disappeared about two days ago.”
“They came because there was a letter from me in the mirror stand or something… But I don’t know a thing about that, I tell you!”

“You seem terribly dissatisfied, don’t you?”

Aiko laughed, her lovely eyes taking on a mischievous glint.
Osegawa also inadvertently found himself smiling in response, but—

“No—it’s absolutely not like that at all.”

With that, he thrust out his mouth—a mouth prone to pooling saliva—and offered his explanation.

“It’s such a nuisance, you see.”

Aiko twisted her mouth—which was somewhat large—into a sarcastic smirk devoid of malice and let out an elegant laugh.
Was this truly Osegawa, the man who supposedly detested all things bothersome?!
Had the constellation presiding over his birth ordained it? For these very nuisances he claimed to despise, he strained himself until he couldn’t lift his head before his disciple Aiko—and what’s more, shouldered the weight of his existence with something akin to delight.

It seemed even Osegawa’s own heart had been touched by this vague sentiment, for he fell silent and stared at the vapor curling from his nostrils in the morning light—but—

“—Shall we begin?”

He twisted the cigarette butt into the corner of the hibachi where the ash had hardened.
At Osegawa’s place existed only one small desk with peeling lacquerwork.
He stood and carried it to the room’s center.

“Ah—wait.
You need an article there.”

“—DER?”

“Correct.—Now how would you phrase this sentence entirely in reverse?—Had he not gone to the botanical garden, it would have been thus, so to speak…”

As the lesson was nearing its end and Aiko was writing her applied composition in her notebook,

“Excuse me.”

Ms. Kami came upstairs.
And with half her body still on the wooden floor at the staircase entrance, she supported herself with one hand on the tatami, extended a postcard toward Osegawa, and descended.

“Something isn’t working here—does this get through?”

While occasionally adjusting characters, Aiko turned the notebook toward Osegawa.

“Huh? Huh?
“Ah—you’ve finished?”

Hurrying to put down the postcard, yet still distracted by it, he finally set it aside and looked over Aiko’s composition.

“Good.—You’ve gotten quite proficient at this.”

While lighting a cigarette, Osegawa picked up the postcard again.

“I wonder if there’s really such a place in Yushima Tenjin.”

“What is it?”

While tying a furoshiki, Aiko casually inquired.

“Well—she’s finally come.”

“Oh?”

The faces of Aiko and Osegawa, having inadvertently lifted to meet each other’s gaze, now confronted one another head-on—but far from laughing, Aiko looked on with concern,

“Where is she?”
“Yushima?”

she asked in return.

“It’s listed as being within Misebashi-tei—though I wonder if such a place even exists.”

The message on the postcard was nothing more than a plea to come without fail, offering no details about the circumstances whatsoever.
Aiko returned the postcard that had been handed to her by Osegawa to the desk.

“It’s just as well it happened now, isn’t it?
If she’d come in the morning, you wouldn’t have been able to speak naturally to that man earlier.”

“Yes, yes… But why she did such a thing, I just can’t…”

“If you think about it, you can’t just leave it be—”

Aiko said in her characteristically decisive tone,
“What will you do?”
she asked.

“Well…”

“Is there something you must take responsibility for out of your own sense of obligation?”

“No, there’s nothing like that.”

“But still…”

“No, that’s absolutely true.”
“I haven’t even met her ten times up to now.”
“That’s precisely why I can’t begin to guess what she might be feeling down the line.”

Aiko was silently thinking when, suddenly—

“Then shall I go and see?” she said. “It would be strange for you to suddenly take on this burden now anyway—” “Is that so? Oh—that’s truly—” Osegawa’s entire face lit up with the literally salvational joy of someone rescued.

“If that’s what you wish, then nothing could be better.”
“Are you sure? It’s not exactly a place suitable for a young lady like yourself to visit, is it?”
“I’ll be perfectly fine since I’m going to see her.”

Aiko copied down the postcard’s address and the woman’s name into a small notebook.

II

The next morning, when Aiko awoke in bed, the surroundings were more silent than ever.

It was somehow different from ordinary silence.
Aiko got up and slid open the storm shutters of the window.

Outside was snow.
On top of what had accumulated considerably throughout the night, bright snowflakes occasionally fluttered down.

It was March—spring could be felt in the earth beneath the nearby ground and in the treetops of distant Gokoku-ji’s forest—and there, with soft snow falling and accumulating, the invigorating freshness of early spring seemed to rise like a chill across the landscape.

Aiko finished her morning meal and immediately left home, clad in a raincoat and clogs.
The unexpected snow instead piqued her interest.
Aiko, who had always loved snow, was struck by a fresh impression even at the sight of a clump of snow at the train’s boarding entrance—fallen from someone’s clogs—where only a faint trace of white remained before dissolving into mud.

After getting off the tram in front of the Hongo Ward Office and turning right, Aiko entered the precincts of Yushima Tenjin Shrine. From the great torii to the worship hall, there was a path made by a single line of snow-clearing across the stone pavement. Beneath the covered corridor spanning from the main hall to what appeared to be the shrine office, only there was no snow, exposing black soil; through the standing trees, one could sense a broad vista stretching into the distance.

Aiko stood in the snow where not a single soul was present, looking around here and there for a while, but then began walking in the direction opposite to the covered corridor.
Before long, there was a votive lantern inscribed with "Misebashi-tei" and "Maruhiya" in vermilion, and a lattice door bearing a horizontal signboard with the same characters came into view ahead.
Aiko recalled the scene from *Onna Keizu*—also set in the Yushima Tenjin Shrine precincts—compared it to her own boyish attire, and a wry smile formed on her lips.

When she opened the lattice door, a woman of eighteen or nineteen with her hair styled in a Western updo appeared.
“Is there a Ms. Ōtsuka Oine here?”
The woman looked up at Aiko’s student-like raincoat-clad figure with a puzzled expression and replied vaguely,
“Well…”

“Well...”

she answered.

“There’s someone who’s recently arrived here, isn’t there? Could you please tell that person I’ve come about Mr. Osegawa and ask her to step out?”

A flat-faced woman of about twenty-five or twenty-six, her hair arranged in a ginkgo-gaeshi style, emerged with a peculiar expression. Skeptically eyeing Aiko from head to toe, she—

“What business brings you here?”

she said.

“I came regarding Mr. Osegawa’s matter, and if you aren’t too occupied, I thought I might speak with you briefly…”

“Oh, I see… Then please come this way.”

The woman led the way, started to open the small room at the end of the corridor but left it as it was, and showed Aiko into the next room.

“Please excuse me for a moment—I’ll go fetch the brazier now.”

In the eight-tatami room, through the glass-paned shoji, there was a view of a small garden with nandina and, beyond that, Shitaya's roofs upon roofs blanketed in snow.

Aiko had come thinking the woman might want to quit her profession, but now realized her assumption had been mistaken.

"If you go back after properly hearing out my feelings, Mr. Osegawa will be much better off too."

Even when she mentioned someone coming from Senzoku, the woman didn't seem to be truly listening.
She opened up but said nothing, as if Aiko were something belonging to Osegawa from the very start,

“Hey, you.”
“I beg you—please let me see Mr. Osegawa just once.”
“I promise I won’t do anything that would trouble you, okay?”
“Please let me see him just once.”

The woman crawled closer, placed her hands on Aiko’s knees, and while shaking them lightly, wiped her tears with one sleeve.

“What do you mean by *me* letting him meet or not… There’s no such connection between us.”
“But... you must have your reasons too.”

“Yes.
“The reason is—no matter what—I won’t understand unless I meet him.
“Even though I’ve come all this way and haven’t said anything, you must think I’m such a bothersome woman, but please don’t take it the wrong way—please use your influence to get Mr. Osegawa to come.”

“Since I’m the messenger, I’ll say that much, but…”

“If he just comes, you’ll truly understand…”

The woman took out a piece of sakura paper from her obi, pressed it to her lips to wipe her nose, then swept back both sides of her ginkgo-gaeshi hairstyle—revealing a nape where only traces of white powder clung to her lowered profile—before lighting a hand-rolled cigarette.

Her manner showed scant sincerity toward Aiko, radiating only a fierce obsession with repeating demands that Osegawa be summoned.
Nor did it seem born purely of longing for him; Aiko waited until the woman had finished smoking one cigarette before rising.

The woman, while seeing her out and helping Aiko into her coat,

“And also, I have his important fountain pen here with me—please make sure to mention that too, okay?”

she said earnestly.

Aiko felt that the woman’s ulterior motive was somehow not hateable—that the simplicity of it all seemed to invite a smile.
That fountain pen was one Aiko had bought for herself at Maruzen, but as the nib was too stiff, she had given it to Osegawa—that was how it came to be.

The snow that had been fluttering sparsely at departure was now falling thick and fast on the return journey. When looking up at the ash-like particles steadily descending from the sky, once they reached a certain distance above the ground, they suddenly transformed into pure white peony-like snowflakes. Aiko found this amusing and, walking as if racing against the snow’s swift descent, made her way to Osegawa’s house.

“Well!”
“You’re quite energetic!”

“—I went there.”

“Huh?”

Osegawa was startled and looked over Aiko’s hair and coat, which were dusted with snow.

“Did you go? To Yushima?”

“I went under the pretense of snow-viewing, but apparently it’s no good unless it’s you.”

Aiko conveyed the woman’s demeanor and message.

“In the end, it seems my feelings in going there didn’t get through—women aren’t inclined to rely on other women, are they?”

She gave a wry smile.

“And also, I found out where that fountain pen is. That person is holding onto it, isn’t that right?”

“Oh, is that so? No wonder I couldn’t find it no matter how much I searched. Oh, I really must apologize for putting you through all this trouble repeatedly.”

When the payment for a certain Reclam edition translation came through, they then went to the bird shop by the Edogawa. There was an adorable girl of about fourteen. No matter how much Osegawa asked, she just laughed and wouldn’t tell her real name. Osegawa arbitrarily began calling the girl “Birdie, Birdie.”

III

That woman soon returned to Senzoku.
It appeared Osegawa had also gone to visit afterward, but before anyone could inquire into the details, his circumstances had become quite hectic.

A woman from Karafuto had temporarily stayed on his second floor.

She was the wife of an engineer traveling alone to her husband’s post in Kyushu.
She had stopped by on her way.

Osegawa had, so to speak, lost his job because of that person.
The woman had imagined various things and come to him, but in the end it came to nothing, leaving her no choice but to obediently go to her husband’s place.
Such seemed to be the circumstances.

When Aiko went for her lesson, Fujiko—that woman—would amiably say,

“Please, do take your time.”

With that, she went downstairs.
One hour passed, then an hour and a half, then two hours.
Then the woman came upstairs wearing a displeased expression,

“Excuse me, but I seem to be getting a headache…”

Thud, thud—paying no mind to Aiko’s presence, she dragged a futon from the cupboard, spread it out, and lay down behind Osegawa.
This occurred two or three times.

It was already May.

One day, when Aiko went to Osegawa’s lodging, he had just left.

He had gone out of his way to move nearby to avoid wasted trips, but at that moment, Aiko couldn’t bring herself to simply turn around and go home.
The weather was fine, and as Aiko strolled toward Kuzeyama, she wondered where to go.
A friend staying at the Women’s Youth Association apartment and Satsuhara-machi came to mind.

Sōma Hisako, Aiko’s senior, worked as a private French tutor and translator and lived there.

Aiko hesitated for a moment but then briskly descended Ōhi-zaka as if running and boarded the train from Ishikiribashi.

At Hisako’s place, Kiyota Hatsuko and Mori Suzuko—a group that had unexpectedly gathered—were present.
They were people vaguely referred to as women’s movement activists from the late Meiji period.

Dressed in a black crested silk overcoat with a matching hood, Hatsuko made her small eyes sparkle as she recounted her love affairs.

“Could I say that my love affair with that young man was the bursting forth of unfulfilled aesthetic feelings—ones Kiyota had failed to satisfy—toward him? From the very beginning, I was aware of it myself—so when that man found another woman he liked, I finally felt my role had been fulfilled.”

Hisako laughed.
“Quite the flirt, aren’t you?”

Hisako laughed.
Hatsuko also laughed, her blushing face revealing three conspicuously large front teeth—

“Even you’ll change once you reach thirty-five or thirty-six.”
“While you’re still trying to suppress your flirtatiousness, it remains trivial.”
“As for someone like me, I believe humans are fundamentally made for flirtatiousness.”

Then Suzuko—thin and petite, wearing a navy serge dress with her hair rolled up at the back and secured by a large white celluloid hairpin—began in a tone calculated for effect,

“So that sort of thing differs from person to person. I’ve turned thirty-six myself, but not once has such a feeling ever arisen.”

Suzuko rebutted.

“As long as anyone is bound by petty morals, they cannot enter such a state of true freedom.”

Hatsuko, as if growing heated by her own words,

“I think there’s nothing in the world as fascinating as myself.”
“If it’s talking about myself, I could go on forever without getting bored.”

she said.

“That person has contracted confession disease.”

After Hatsuko had left, Mori said:

"That person is ruining magazines with that confession disease of hers. Just recently, while she was back in her hometown, Ms. Kiyota sent letters to another woman which led to a huge fight—she wrote about it in a magazine and got soundly rejected, you know. This time too, you got involved with some strange young man over something and confessed it all in a magazine again, completely ruining it!"

Due to an illness from her childhood that left her unable to remove her hood, the men who gathered around Hatsuko often forgot she was a woman. Her husband, reassured by how she differed from ordinary women, did not interfere. Though this was the reality, Hatsuko—who had spent her prime years in terrible loneliness—misinterpreted everything and believed the men were in love with her. Convinced her body was special, she could not help confessing these experiences as if they were uniquely hers—Suzuko,

“So when men come to me, they often say it’s a nuisance being perceived that way. That person is our group’s designated charmer, you know.” Suzuko laughed derisively. “Ms. Kiyota never properly understood—that’s what she always believed, mind you.”

Aiko, who had been silently listening to everyone’s conversation since arriving, suddenly flushed her wheat-colored face and asked Suzuko.

“Do you tell Ms. Kiyota all those things as well?”

“Yes, yes, I often tell her that! What you’re thinking about—everyone thinks about it too. They’re just staying silent. So they say you should just stay silent too, you know.”

Mori eventually left as well, and Aiko half-stretched her body out on the rattan chaise longue where the two had been sitting and lay down.

Hisako and Aiko then cheerfully talked about various things regarding each other’s work and studies.

“Now that you mention it, you’re admirably keeping up with your romantic affairs without fail—how do you manage it? Lately, that teacher—”

Osegawa was a distant relative of Hisako, and it was through her introduction that Aiko had come to know him.

“That person’s name is cursed, you know.”
“Oh? Who told you that?”
“But when you give a name like Kichi, it naturally gets flipped around, doesn’t it?”
“What utter nonsense!”

The two laughed in unison.

“Ah, there’s something I want to show you.”

Hisako took a single picture postcard from her desk and silently thrust it before Aiko’s eyes.

“Where is this?”
“Oh, it’s Shiohara.”

“Hurry and look at the back.”

Aiko swiftly turned around and sat up from the chaise longue while looking at the back of the picture postcard, but—
"Oh, please."

She flung it aside and lay back down again.

“What a spoiled child you are. Even though I went to the trouble of saving it for you, you could at least read it.”

"I don't have to read it."

"Changed your mind?"

Hisako said in a somber tone,

"But Ms.Mieko seems truly happy this time—that's wonderful."

"People like them are rare enough—engaged for two years only to have such fights! Yet somehow they still settle things amicably without splitting up."

"Maybe quarreling actually improved matters."

"That's exactly it! Aiko—who never quarrels—loses Mieko to Kurokawa—who does."

Aiko remained silent for a moment but then said,“That’s clever． I’ve gotten the urge to go somewhere too．”

Hisako deliberately teased her in a mocking tone,“If you go now，you’ll make it in time． Hurry up and go to Shiohara，”she said and laughed．

IV

At that moment, she was drawn in and laughed.
But when Aiko returned to her second-floor room in Koishikawa that evening and imagined the bright mountain path enveloped in the glow of fresh young leaves, along with the figure of someone walking there, she found herself growing strangely restless, unable to sit still through the night.

Aiko took out a travel guide and checked the timetable for the Hojō Line.
A friend was staying in Kisarazu.
She had decided to go there.
There was a train departing Ryogoku at 6:50.

Carrying one basket, Aiko went out to Iidabashi and took a taxi.

“Will I make it?”
“Well…”

The taxi stopped.
Aiko stepped down onto the earthen entrance.
The ticket gate snapped shut.
It all happened at once.
Aiko had missed the train by a mere two minutes.
Even so, she—

“Has the Hojō Line train already left?”

—and she pressed the station attendant who was about to leave the ticket gate.

“It’s already left.
The next one’s for Choshi at seven twenty.”

That was something Aiko had also seen in the travel guide, but the transfer connection was too inconveniently arranged to work.
Might as well take the next train all the way to Choshi?
She started to buy a ticket, but upon reconsidering, even that didn’t seem like such a good idea… Out of habit, tapping the side of her nose with her left index finger as she lingered, Aiko remembered that Tachibana was performing with Kosan.
Upon remembering that at any rate, she decided to return home for the night, left her basket temporarily stored, and crossed Ryōgoku Bridge.

The next afternoon, Aiko casually visited Osegawa.
Osegawa profusely apologized for having skipped yesterday’s lesson,

“How about it? If you’d like, shall I make up for it a bit now?”

he said.

“Well… I have to go to Ryōgoku.”
“Do you have some business there?”

“The basket is stored at the station.”

Aiko briefly recounted the events of the previous evening and,

“It seems I can’t settle unless I get even one step beyond Tokyo.”

she said with a wry smile.

“Ah, it’s such fine weather—anyone would want to go out.”
“—especially someone as travel-prone as you.”

As they spoke of Aiko’s five-day trip to Akagi last May—also in May—even Osegawa gradually began wearing an eager expression.

“I’m getting all fidgety down to my backside.”
“Anyway, why don’t we at least go as far as Ryōgoku?”
“A day trip to see the sea wouldn’t be half bad.”

He promptly stood up and began changing into his kimono.
Aiko sat on the window frame and watched as he hurriedly tied the soft sash at the front, swung it around to his back.

“If you say that, does the Ministry of Finance approve?”

“It’s fine. I have irregular income, you see—... Well, mine’s always been irregular anyway...”

Osegawa deliberately took out the cane kept in the cupboard, hooked it over his arm, and went outside.

In the station square, the sprinkler man was roughly dragging his clattering cart around, spraying water.
Dodging it, when they entered the station interior, everything suddenly felt dim.
That afternoon was so beautifully clear.

The sight of passengers, the red caps of the redcaps, and the shabby station itself instead stirred Aiko’s wanderlust.

“What should we do?”

Osegawa retrieved the basket and returned.

“—It seems a waste to just go back like this.”

The two stood before the train timetable.

“—How about Narita?”

“That’s where actors go to pay their respects.”
“……Inage is close enough, but……”

“That’s perfectly fine!”

Osegawa immediately stopped looking at the timetable and said.

“Let’s go to Inage.—Or would you rather not?”

When it came to places suitable for a day trip, there were only banal options, so they settled on Inage and bought second-class tickets there.

“Well then… Still twenty minutes to go, huh?”

Osegawa went to the kiosk and, instead of his usual Asahi, bought an Alma with a gold filter today.
He sat diagonally on the armrest of the bench where Aiko was seated in the waiting room, rested his cane against his arm, pulled out a gold-filtered cigarette from the gaudy box, and lit it while surveying his surroundings with an expression befitting the eve of a journey.

Osegawa had only just managed, a few days prior, to send Fujiko off to her husband in Kyushu. Not only with Fujiko, but while living with women, he had been so driven by daily life that he hadn’t had the leisure to even go on an excursion as far as Ōmori. If he didn’t have to worry about living expenses—even if only to meet and dote on her like Oine, whom Aiko had met at Misebashi-tei—he would still have had to spend money. Moreover, Fujiko had relatives right there in Tokyo. Given that she had lived with him for an entire month under such circumstances, Osegawa couldn’t even take a leisurely evening stroll. Even he had lived a life craving a breath of fresh, open air.

Now, at last, Osegawa seemed to be fully breathing in that air through the train window.

He gazed without taking his eyes off the rural scenery rushing past outside,

“How splendid!”
“With this fine weather, it’s truly splendid!”

He repeated this again and again.

“Oh, did you see? There was a waterwheel! So they really do still have waterwheels turning in the countryside these days.”

In the ordinary rural scenery, the Alma box thrown onto the empty seat beside them, and Osegawa’s own voice, there sparkled some modest festivity, and Aiko too felt a lighthearted mood.

Reeds grew lush and green.
Over the river, an iron bridge came into view.
The train roared through the iron bridge.

"The steam train crossed the iron bridge, and—"

White steam train smoke, a roaring sound, and the melody of a childish school song floated in May’s blue sky, vanished, and once more the rails rang beneath the wheels.

From Inage Station to the coast, they walked along a country road.
There weren’t many people passing by.
Two shadows fell.
The road was white and dry, with a wheat field on the right.
Osegawa took a wheat leaf and tried to make it whistle.
He couldn’t get it to whistle properly.

“Isn’t it the stem you blow on, not the leaf?”

“Well, I’m quite sure the leaf did make a sound, you know.”

There was a shallow-spreading pine grove, and among the trees could be seen a tea stall.
Beyond that, the sea glistened.

Aiko, waving the rolled-up magazine she’d been holding up to shade her forehead from the sun, resolutely took the lead and made her way out to the sandy beach.

In the gently shallow offshore waters, several sailing ships were out.
They lay nearly motionless, lined up along the horizon.

"What a quiet sea."

"...A coast with higher waves would feel more dashing and splendid, wouldn’t it?"

"But this does look like an ideal spot for clamming."
"—If you dig around here, you might find some clams."

“Well now—let me borrow that for a moment.”

Aiko used Osegawa’s cane—on which he had stuck her removed hat—to dig through the sand at the water’s edge.

“A place like this… Someone must’ve already taken them all.”

Slipping off her geta and tabi socks, Aiko waded into the water up to her ankles.

“How infuriating not to get even a single one… Come on!”

In her spirited attempt, she pushed down the cane and dug deep into the sand, but in her excess of force struck the seawater hard with its tip.
The spray mercilessly splashed Aiko’s bent face and bangs.

“Ha ha ha! This is delightful!”

“Even a sea like this can be so brashly salty!”

Wiping her cheek with the back of her hand and letting the wind tousle the hair at her nape, Aiko returned laughing as she went.

“You can’t do it without tools.”
“Oh! There are tools! Look, I didn’t notice that tea stall had a sign up!”

However, they did not borrow those tools; they sat down on the sand and gazed at the gradually darkening sea.

In the middle of the sky, two large masses of clouds appeared.
The setting sun was blocked by those clouds, and bent, intense rays fell upon the sea surface.
Filled with the wind that had begun blowing earlier, the sailboats that had been offshore returned while maintaining a certain distance.
Just as they approached what seemed to be directly beneath that mass of clouds, the foremost ship suddenly appeared to hoist a dark crimson sail and come racing toward them.
That was the leading one; the next ship’s sail turned olive.
The last one appeared to have hoisted a sail of mouse-gray fabric that glistened wetly.

There were no other ships.

Only those three ships proceeded across the sea—now darkening under clouds—in a line with dark crimson sails, olive sails, and sails of wet mouse-gray cloth.

It was only after traveling a considerable distance that these sails returned to their ordinary colors in the same sequence they had first changed.

Osegawa and Aiko kept their eyes fixed until the last mouse-gray ship first brightened from its bow’s tip, then gradually from its sail’s hem through its midpoint, until finally even its taut sail’s edge turned pure white.

“That’s strange…”

Aiko said, blinking her eyes repeatedly as a youthful look of surprise appeared on her face.

“Doesn’t it feel like your eyes can’t quite focus? If you look at them sailing like that, they must just be ordinary fishing boats…”

“Hmm.”
“This is my first time too—I can’t say ghost ship stories are entirely lies.”
“That one also has a red sail.”

Aiko chuckled quietly at his peculiar phrasing.

Passing through the pine grove, they began walking toward Seiyūkan.