Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

At the front desk of the main entrance, there was no one.

Asako placed her geta in the geta box and began walking straight down the corridor.
The corridor formed nothing but a single straight path, with outside scenery visible at its far end.
Between two thick cherry trees on this side's grassy embankment, across water, an old stone wall and the pine tree growing atop it grew increasingly distinct before Asako as she walked forward.
On grass and stone wall, late September sunlight shone with a distinctly autumnal quality.
The wind blowing through from there was so brisk that she felt autumn all the more keenly in sunlight—such was her mood.
Asako entered the room on the right where bamboo blinds still hung over window.

There, on the faded floor like the corridor’s own, stood a large long table.
In the spot where stacks of unfinished obi strips lay deserted—within that hollow expanse—Yazaki alone attended to his duties.
Yazaki, round-faced and compactly built, did not so much as nod when he saw Asako enter.

“Good day—you’re early.”

he said.

“Yes—”

Placing the fukusa-wrapped bundle on the desk where a red ink bottle, rubber glue, and inkstone box lay scattered, Asako remained standing.

“Haven’t you sent over the proofs yet?”

Asako asked Yazaki.

“Well… I’m not sure. Mr. Ida might have received them.”

Asako was there editing the organization’s magazine.

Tucking the edge of her striped sleeve—which lent a flashy impression amidst subdued surroundings—into her obi clasp, Asako began preparing clippings to use as filler.

With footsteps echoing from the far end of the corridor, Ida returned.
Seeing that Asako had come, he—his youthful face flushing faintly—
“Good day.”
Ida said.
“Haven’t the proofs come in yet?”
“They haven’t arrived.”

“The messenger hasn’t come either?”

“Yes.”

Asako stood before the telephone in the corner and pressed the printing office for updates.

Returning to the desk, Asako continued cutting out clippings while Ida began writing addresses on the thick stack of obi strips.

This was work that lasted until 4 p.m., after which Ida became a student in the social sciences department at N University.

Ida—who had inserted a black silk crepe bag into his sleeve and was moving his fountain pen with his neck bent as if taking notes—soon let out an

“Ah.”

He raised his face and asked Yazaki.

“Regarding the portion we declined the other day—has that been subtracted from this amount?”

With his thick hand pressing the edge of a small abacus and his chin seemingly pinning down the bulging chest of his work uniform, Yazaki—engaged in some calculation—gave no reply, perhaps not hearing.
Ida waited for a while, then shrugged his shoulders and resumed writing.

Asako inserted Western scissors into the newspaper and gave a silent wry smile.
When she laughed at him, Ida scratched behind his ear.

Two days prior, an inter-school baseball game had been held at the Outer Garden Grounds.
Ida had abandoned writing the obi strips that afternoon and gone out.
Yazaki—who himself possessed neither such interests nor vitality, having no means of livelihood beyond sitting there daily from nine to four—nevertheless grew deeply displeased when others engaged in such behavior.
He nursed this resentment and refused to speak for days on end.

“How many have you declined?”

Asako asked Ida.

“This time there aren’t that many.”
“There are about fifty or so, I’d say.”

“But since last year, we’ve lost about a thousand, haven’t we?”
“...Even people in the countryside are subscribing to women’s magazines in droves these days, so it’s only natural to decline.”
“When you compare them, anyone would think other magazines are cheaper and more interesting anyway.”

The conversation turned to one-yen books, and Yazaki joined in.

“My daughter kept pestering me, so I subscribed to the Elementary School Complete Collection, but really… how much profit do they even make on something like that...”

“If only the company would take on at least one [project]—that’d really save us.”

“Mr. Yazaki, how about it? Can’t we manage at least that much?”
“Can’t we manage even that much?”

“Well...”

Ida,

“Broke, huh?”

he muttered.

Suddenly, Asako,

“Oh, Mr. Yazaki – how is your move coming along?”

she asked.

“So it’s finally Shibuya, then?”

“Yes. I thought I’d leave by the end of this month since it’s gotten so bothersome… I’ll move within next month.”

“How has Mr. Suda been since then?”

Yazaki made a displeased face and,

“Because he hasn’t been going out lately,”

he answered quietly.

“Has it been decided that he’ll be leaving there?”

“It’s been decided, hasn’t it?”

She remained silent, but in Asako’s heart burned righteous indignation.

Suda Makichi was a man who had handled advertisement acquisitions for the editorial department - an eccentric character through and through. Whether part of his mind was lacking or overdeveloped, he exhibited extremes - at times obsessing over photography, other times phonographs, and most recently radios. For radios he knew no restraint with money. He collected various tools, draping loudspeakers with gaudy silk covers one day and swapping them for bead-embroidered ones the next, and whenever he met Asako,

“You simply must come listen sometime—it’s completely different from all that garbled static you get around here. In just a couple more days, I’ll have Seoul coming in too. There’s something rather nice about Korean, don’t you think?”

Suda Makichi said happily.
In reality, however, Suda was never someone who could successfully assemble radios.
When he didn’t succeed, he blamed the materials; if they were Japanese-made, he replaced them with imported ones.
If they were imported, he bought domestic ones; in the midst of such repeated substitutions, he embezzled the town association’s funds he had been entrusted to manage as representative.
It was nearly a thousand yen.
He had also expended the magazine’s advertising funds.
With the resolve to die, Suda ran away from home.
However, he was safely brought back by his pursuers.
Yazaki, who was related by marriage to Suda and had become the magazine department’s accountant through Suda’s introduction, fearing future complications, reported the matter to Moroto, the general affairs department head, before it became public.
Rather than exerting effort to defend Suda, he worked to have Suda dismissed—someone who could have potentially been settled through negotiation—in order to protect himself.
Colleagues who knew Suda’s good-natured character condemned Yazaki’s attitude.
The criticism seemed to come even from relatives, and lately Yazaki had started saying, “Relatives are nothing but a nuisance.”
Before long, Asako also heard that he had suddenly found a house near his wife’s family home.

The Hochi Shimbun restricted its use of Chinese characters, resulting in awkwardly spelled words throughout its clippings—kan-fu-masatsu (friction massage), kino koshin (functional improvement), sho-kō (promotion)—that were difficult to read.
Asako corrected them with red ink while—
“What time is it?” she asked.
“It’s half past one.”
“What could Isoda be doing?”

Asako went to the telephone.

“Please connect me to Mr. Kazuo.”

She called for the young master of the printing office.
Her rich, spiritedly firm voice echoed through the bleak room where autumn wind passed through bamboo blinds.

“Hello? We had an eleven-thirty appointment, but not a single one has arrived yet. What’s going on? Huh? Oh, I see.”
“But it’s already the 23rd, you know.”
“I’ll be there in about thirty minutes, so please have them sent out right away. Please.”

II

Getting off the train at Tsurumakicho and turning the corner by the fishmonger’s, it was only about fifty meters to Isoda Printing Office.
On the fish shop’s sign was painted a large sea bream with peeling colors, accompanied by similarly faded bamboo grass.
Amid such shabby, cluttered rows of houses, flanked by a conspicuously large glass door, stood Isoda Printing Office.
It had relocated from Kanda there due to the Great Kanto Earthquake.

“I must apologize for our current state of affairs,” said Kazuo formally yet briskly.
“Two proofs have just come up… Please proceed.”

From before his desk backed by a safe vault door at room’s center came Kazuo’s greeting as Asako entered.
Though their ages matched exactly—both twenty-seven—his business acumen carried an authority surpassing his years when engaged professionally.

“Hey, get over to the factory.”

“The second floor… would that be acceptable?”

Kazuo had a distinctive head with thick hair growing straight across his forehead.

“Proceed.”

Instead of replying, he silently lowered his head.

Whenever she saw Kazuo—confident in his abilities, deploying servants without emotional restraint, clicking his abacus beads, appearing more formidable than the father who’d started this business out of sheer necessity—Asako always felt a simultaneous stir of fascination and revulsion.
Asako changed into the sandals laid out by the round-eyed twelve- or thirteen-year-old attendant and, keeping her right hand against the wall, climbed the stairs.

The stairs, typical of a crude Western-style building, had steep and shallow steps. Asako's long knees kept snagging on the upper steps, making the climb exceedingly difficult. Holding a bundle wrapped in a furoshiki cloth in one hand and pressing her left hand against the wall, she carefully climbed step by step. When she had ascended about two-thirds of the way, the reed door to the president’s office came into view. The outside light filtering through the reed door illuminated the stairs as well, making her footing much brighter.

Without a second thought, Asako clattered her sandals and climbed two or three steps briskly, in a manner befitting a young woman.

At that very moment, the reed door swung open abruptly, and from inside the room, a seventeen-year-old attendant girl emerged onto the landing with a movement so sudden it could only be described as bursting forth. The girl nimbly sidestepped Asako and clattered down the stairs with hurried footsteps to the floor below.

As Asako involuntarily gazed after [the girl] down into the dark stairs where no one was visible anymore, the red-faced president—parallel to the reed door—from a recess in the wall (about six shaku by two shaku, as if meant to embed a bookshelf), began walking leisurely and unobtrusively toward the center of the room.

Asako felt an inexplicably unpleasant sensation.

Does Kazuo know that on the second floor, the old man was making the young attendant girl run out of his room like that?
Asako felt doubly unpleasant and stepped onto the linoleum in the president's office.

Due to the building’s layout, the proofreading room could not be reached without passing through the president’s office.
Asako silently lowered her head slightly and passed by.
Isoda was standing on this side of the desk, lighting a cigarette.
He narrowed his eyes—their lower lids marred by large stains and sagging bags—and, holding a match, struck it vigorously to light the flame,

“Ah.”

he called out ambiguously.

In the proofreading room, the provided brushes were completely worn down.

Asako rang the bell to receive a new one and began checking the proofs that had just been brought from the factory, still damp with ink.

While they were reading through the amateurish submitted haiku, Isoda sauntered in.

“The heat’s become much more tolerable lately, hasn’t it? It’s been ages since you last visited—might you have been vacationing at the seaside?”

“I never left Tokyo… And you?”
“How have you been keeping?”

“Ah, well...”

Thrusting out his belly in a white waistcoat, Isoda pressed the hand holding his cigarette against the back of his head where a few strands of hair remained.

“With age… it’s all ups and downs."
“But compared to the rainy season, it’s like being reborn—though this humidity does plague me terribly.”

Isoda had suffered from severe neuralgia in recent years and was constantly receiving electrical therapy from a brain and nerve specialist in Surugadai. To Asako and others, he said it was chronic neuralgia. The actual illness was likely far from being so simple—a fact that could be inferred merely by considering the notorious wretchedness of this man’s domestic life.

Sarcastically remembering the young girl from earlier, Asako asked, “Have you already stopped seeing Mr. Asano?” Asano was the doctor in Surugadai. Momentarily adopting an elderly gaze as he looked out the window, Isoda—

“Ah—no, not yet.”

he said in a lively voice while shifting his gaze to Asako.

“Actually, I must be going out again today... Do you know Asano?... It seems Count Endo and such have quite some trust in him.”

And, as if half to himself,

“Because of that connection, there’s talk that they made the late Tsumura Jiro pay up, but…”

Beside the glass inkstand where Asako was working lay an inexpensive imitation Majolica ashtray.
As he spoke, Isoda flicked cigarette ash into it.

“That Asano Shin who came back from Shanghai not long ago... he’s my younger brother... Quite a handful, I tell you...”

The conversation broke off, and Isoda spent a moment looking down at Asako’s hands,
“Well then, I must take my leave.”

he straightened up.

“Oh?... Well then.”

Isoda started to walk,

“The sunlight is really strong here.”

He took a step or two back and lowered the curtain on the window where the western sun had been glaring onto Asako’s hair.

While they were printing at the factory, she would have thirty to forty minutes of free time each time.
Asako, during that time, wandered aimlessly from window to window on the second floor where she was alone.

At a position facing far across from one window, a small factory window stood open.
An ordinary two-story house in the outskirts had been repurposed directly into a factory.
In the grimy high paneling was a three-shaku-by-one-ken window—no latticework or glass to obscure the view, leaving the interior abruptly exposed.
Rather than a window, it resembled a gloomy wound.
Long type shelves propped up from both sides; within them, the figures of apprentices and young female workers returning type could also be seen.

The exterior was already rickety, and inside the building—distorted and swollen from the weight of type and the strain of human labor—it looked dark.
Only when a female worker passed by the narrow window facing this way on some errand did the collars of their pale yellow undergarments catch Asako’s eye.
Asako had, quite some time ago,

“Please show me the factory sometime.”

“Please show me the factory sometime,” she said to Kazuo.

“I’ve been turning everyone away—well… It’s just too filthy to show you, really, even if you were to see it.”

Having said that, he placed both hands on the newspaper spread across the desk, raised one hand, and scratched all around the back of his head.

In the adjacent room partitioned by wooden sliding doors from where Asako was, the voices of two workers saying such things could be heard.

“It’s gloomy here, but willows—they’re yang things, you know.”

“Hmm, not sure about that.”

“A long time ago, some famous painter was asked to paint a ghost. He tried making it bright or blinding dark—experimented with all sorts of techniques—but it just wasn’t scary enough. So he figured everything needs a balance of yin and yang. Since ghosts are yin creatures, they say he paired one yang element with it—painted a willow tree—and that did the trick perfectly.”

“Hmm.”

“When you die, things change though. Take men and women—alive, men’re yang and women yin. But with bloated corpses… see, men end up face down while women float face up. The yin-yang flips—that’s why they turn out like that.”

“……Then why does bowing take on a yin form?……”

Intrigued by this factory-appropriate topic, Asako waited for an answer.
But as for why bowing took on a yin form, the workers apparently couldn’t come up with a good explanation, and after a slight pause, quietly,

“Well, I don’t get that one either.”

a voice said.

III

After five o'clock, Asako set out on her way home.

She keenly felt how much shorter the days had grown.
When she left the printing office, it was still light out, but by the time she waited for the train at Dentsū-in, dusk had fallen completely.
In front of the corner picture postcard shop, a crowd waiting for the streetcar appeared black against the backlight; those people too looked chilly.

Asako, infected by the evening's atmosphere, climbed the Kōdōkan slope with unnecessarily hurried steps.
From the opposite direction came two cars.
Avoiding them, someone standing by the utility pole lightly tapped Asako's shoulder with their fingertips.

Asako turned around.
With the face she had swiftly turned, upon recognizing the man standing there, she flashed a lively smile—as if biting her lower lip with her white front teeth.

“You walk rather fast—when I got off the train and saw your retreating figure looking exactly like someone who does, I thought I’d overtake you somehow... but ultimately couldn’t manage it.”

“If we’d taken different trains, it would’ve been impossible.”

Asako walked alongside Ohira and finished climbing the slope at a slightly more unhurried pace than before.

“Where were you? Today—Kawada-cho?”

In Kawada-cho, where her brother had succeeded to the headship of the family, lay Asako’s ancestral home.

“No… the printing office.”

“I see—the twenty-third already.
“Finished?”

“There’s still some left—they’re so sluggish it’s maddening.
“But well, it’s as good as done.”

“Living off rolled-over months, aren’t you...”

They stopped at the corner where a narrow path branched right from the main street, neither having intended to.

“What will you do?”

Ohira lived down that street past the cemetery with an elderly maid.

"How is Ms. Sachiko at home?"

"She's home, definitely."

“I think I’ll go pay my respects.”

Across the way was a peach orchard, where the streetlight’s illumination cast upon the bamboo of the pruning frames and the soil below as if they formed a forest. Asako opened the right one of the two modest gates with hedges of similar appearance that stood side by side. A bell chimed loudly. Within the frosted glass latticework, the light flashed on at that exact moment.

“She seems to have come back.”

Sachiko’s voice could be heard speaking to the maid.

Sachiko, who had come to the entrance, saw Ohira and,

“Oh, together?”

she said.
Ohira lightly touched his hat brim.

“Still full of energy, I see.”

“Why would I be moping?”

“Ha ha ha!”

Ohira laughed heartily, his nervous-looking face belying the sound.

“You’re being awfully logical.”

Asako, finding her red ink-stained hands unpleasant, went inside first.

“Aren’t you coming up?”

“I only meant to pay my respects to your esteemed presence for a moment, but...”

“Come on up—you’re going to have dinner soon anyway.”

The exchange reached Asako as she washed her hands at the small veranda, and finally Ohira removed his shoes and entered.
Wiping her hands with a towel, Asako stood on the veranda,
“You’re awfully meddlesome,” she laughed.
“It’s true.
It seems like an old habit you’ll never break in this lifetime.”
Ohira sat down opposite Sachiko at the long brazier while,
“Well, I suppose we’ll just have to resign ourselves to having impossible cousins,” he said.
“But honestly, when I think of you trudging all the way back just to sit across from that old woman for dinner, even my feet grow heavy.”

Sachiko said in a deliberately brusque yet warm scolding manner.

“That’s exactly why I keep telling you to find a wife already.”

Ohira did not respond to that and instead began talking about rumors concerning the women’s university where Sachiko taught psychology.
About two years prior, his wife had left him.
The first lover now appeared to be living with her.
Ohira was thirty-six.

After dinner, the three played hop-hop.
At first, Ohira did not know the game and, looking at the characters on the two-fold board,

“What? ‘Piyon’? ‘Piyon’?”
“Piyon? Piyon?”

he read aloud.

“It’s ‘pyon pyon,’ I tell you.”

Asako corrected him.

When Sachiko briefly explained the rules,

“Then this must be diamond!” he declared.

“If that’s how it is, then I’ve done it before.
“You can go all the way up to the opponent’s boundary line.”

“This is different—you can only go one space before.”

“They mean you mustn’t enter the base until the farthest one is fully out, right?”
“So you can definitely go there.”

“You’re so stubborn.”

Sachiko declared impatiently, putting emphasis into her words.

“This isn’t how it works!”

During the match—though Asako remained unfazed by whatever they did—whenever Ohira overstepped Sachiko’s pieces or Sachiko thwarted his plans,

“You rascal!”

“Don’t get cocky. Come on, try me!”

“Hey, Asappe! Nice one! Nice one!”

Such remarks could be taken as either serious or joking.

"What sore losers you both are."
"Both of you?"

"Ah, the tenacity of women."

Ohira said frustratedly, tapping the board with a piece.

“The opponent may lack nothing, but… I’m thoroughly checkmated.
“Asako… don’t you suppose there’s some way out?”

“This is what comes of neglecting mutual aid—go on writhing like that for a good while yet.”

It was Ohira who had found this house in the peach orchard.
Sachiko had been living in Komagome until then.
Asako had lost her husband about a year and a half prior and had been living at her family home in Kawada-cho.

When they decided to share a house with Sachiko, Ohira,

“Alright… I’ll take care of finding us a house.”
“It’s going to be around the school anyway, right?”
“In that case, it’s right up my alley.”

he said.

“Even if they say there’s a vacancy next door, I won’t go—it’d be too noisy and unbearable.”

Then, glancing back at Asako—whom he had met only four or five times—Ohira smiled with those striking eyes of his: richly lustrous yet slightly uneven between right and left, framed by sensitive facial muscles.

"The way you keep double-checking everything is still somewhat endearing, I must say.
‘Not quite cunning enough’? Well, I’ll happily decline that honor."

One February afternoon, Sachiko called, Asako went out as well, and they saw this house.

After the snowfall had ended, the sunlit thoroughfare was muddy, but snow still lay swept aside in gutters beneath brick walls. As they walked these streets in clogs, Ohira stood waiting atop a gravel pile at the corner pipe shop, clad in a thick black overcoat and dark brown velvet cap.

“This alley looks like it’ll be quite a hardship with all the frost melt, but isn’t bad really? Having the orchard on this side shows thoughtful consideration.”

Remnants of snow lingered across Ususuri Orchard, glittering minutely in the sunlight. From the blue sky swept a wind—the sort peculiar to clear snow-thawing days—blowing through the cedar hedge and fluttering the edge of Asako’s shawl.

This was something that had happened a little over a year ago.

IV

For two days following, autumn rain fell.

At night, insects chirped in the rain.
The chill of the water soaking into the grass roots was felt even in Asako’s heart as she slept.

When the skies cleared, autumn grew all the crisper.
On such a day, Asako visited Mr. Todo, who lived in Ogikubo.
She went to request an essay manuscript for the magazine.

The garden was spacious with a lawn, and along the fence grew thick clusters of aster, cockscomb, zinnia, bush clover, pampas grass, and others.
Zinnias and cockscombs were particularly excessive, making Asako feel as though an overbearing carpet had been pressed against her eyes.

Todo—a sallow-complexioned man of forty-four or forty-five—had his wife brew stronger tea while remarking,

“Autumn’s arrived, yet everything feels so ill-timed—it’s utterly suffocating.”

“I’ve suffered insomnia these past years,” the wife said. “Even when I shut myself away from the family like this to sleep, I can’t drift off.
When it becomes too vexing, I take about two Jiaaru pills toward daybreak.
But when I must go out mornings and there’s medicine left—why, just recently on the Sobu Line, though I kept telling myself ‘Next is Mejiro,’ I became so distracted I missed my stop.
I’d startle awake and go back, only to overcorrect this time—shuttling between the same station two or three times.”

The wife said, “I really do make such a mess of things, you know,” then fixed her eyes on Todo’s face and added, “I’ll surely go completely mad before long, so just you wait and see.” Todo remained silent for a while before sullenly remarking, “She’s hysterical too.”

As she was about to leave, the wife,

“Ah, Ms. Shirakawa, do you keep a dog at your house?” she asked.

“No, though we’ve been saying we ought to get one.”

“You—then this would be perfectly timed.”

Without waiting for Todo’s response: “We’ve two puppies at home causing such trouble. Let’s have you take one—it’s ideal—please bring it back with you today.”

Todo stopped her as she began to rise. “Pushing this so abruptly—it’s imposition.”

“Would that be no good…?”

The wife twisted her upper body on the high chair and looked at Asako with displeasure.

When spring came, hyacinths and fragrant daffodils would bloom profusely in the garden, it was said.
When she imagined the couple’s life growing ever more morbid as they were surrounded by those flowers, Asako felt as though she were gazing upon a decadent painting.
In their household too, the inertia of married life held strong sway.
What kind of marsh that was, Asako knew from her brief married life with her late husband.

Asako passed through the company gate, lost in vague thought.

Ida was in the janitor's room.
Behind Ida, who sat on a low stool, Motoko from reception stood pressing forcefully on the nape of his neck.
Ida noticed Asako and, while shrinking his neck, greeted her with upturned eyes.

"He's being bullied quite harshly, isn't he?"

"Yeah, yeah"

Motoko drew back and answered Asako, her plump upper eyelids with faint wrinkles suddenly widening.

"Really, this kid's turned completely mannish... even though he used to be such a baby."

She tried to press down further.
Ida, now serious,
“Idiot!
Cut it out!”
He shook off her hands and stood up.

About two hours later, as Asako stood gazing at the moat while washing her hands—this spot alone offering a landscape somewhat reminiscent of a Cézanne painting—Ida approached.
He appeared rather uncomfortable about having been seen earlier, but without mentioning that,

“Are you busy today?”

Ida asked Asako.

“No... Did you need something?”

“It’s not urgent business… but may I come up tonight?”

“Please come.”

“Kawashima might come too.”

“Please do.”

“Kawashima… got chewed out.”

Ida smiled—a good-natured expression that seemed both amused and not entirely without fear.

“Well…”

Without giving Asako time to ask, he said.

5

During the Russo-Japanese War, a certain philanthropic woman united like-minded individuals across the nation and organized a women's organization.
During the war, the organization was quite active and achieved results.
Even after the death of the woman who had been its leader, the organization did not disband; by appointing as president a female figure renowned for her backroom politics during the Meiji era, it gradually began undertaking social projects.

But the spirit died along with the original leader.
Since the directors and other officers were all upper-class women, real authority lay with the superintendent or general affairs manager Moroto Yoshihiko.
The women in their own way, and the men in theirs, turned this organization's inner workings into a nest of ambition.

Due to the nature of the magazine department’s work and her own disposition, Asako could not involve herself in such diplomacy or politics, but there were many things that caught her eye.

As one of their social projects, they had women do sewing as side work, but the wages were lower than market prices.
If there were even slightly imperfect stitches, they made them redo the work repeatedly.

"So in other words, they're creating a bargain tailoring service for people who could pay any amount."
"It's not a sewing school—since this is piecework, they really ought to handle it more properly."

Asako had said such things in the beginning, but Sonoko, who had worked there for years, laughed with the demeanor of a girls’ school principal and—
“If you say things like that, we won’t be able to do anything at all.”
“At least this is better than nothing.”

and paid no attention.
It seemed all social projects were being conducted under the standard of being better than nothing.

The fact that Kawashima had been reprimanded was also related to this working group.

While attending W University and working in general affairs, Kawashima had been talking with a woman named Otani from the working group in the janitor’s room during his night duty.
Just then, Moroto returned from outside, and the next day summoned Kawashima and harshly interrogated him.

Kawashima, appearing timid, furrowed small wrinkles above his eyebrows,

“I was shocked—he said something so infuriating I thought he’d make me quit.”

He smiled bitterly.

“About what time was it exactly?”

“About eight o'clock.”

Ida said to Asako,

“Do you know a person called Ms. Otani?”

Ida asked.

“Well… I know Ms. Kawai, but...”

“Heh heh heh”

Both Ida and Kawashima laughed.

“—A fair-skinned woman… How old would you say she is? She must be pretty ancient by now, don’t you think?”

“Probably around thirty.”

Kawashima answered with uncharacteristic timidity.

“It’s nothing really—I know how it works… But even back then. He must’ve thought I’d start blabbing about it and gotten jumpy.”

“Lately they’ve gotten ridiculously strict—apparently Mr. Yazaki was also reprimanded the other day.”

Asako said,
"But Mr. Moroto is quite a character."

Moroto had left his wife and children in his hometown and kept a house in Tokyo where he lived alone.
Though truly living by himself, his home's meticulous tidiness was renowned.
They currently served as management supervisors, with a semi-open secret about Moroto's special relationship with a certain girls' school principal who would likely become his in the future—yet recently he had also become entangled with a woman named Kawai from the working group, where another such person existed.
Such was the state of affairs.

Moroto would nonchalantly walk home with Kawai, yet occasionally displayed the same clumsy, spasmodic timidity seen in Kawashima’s case.

"He does have his good points, so instead of just taking the scolding, you should clearly establish your position."

Asako said to Kawashima, “If you stand your ground properly, he’ll give in soon enough.”

“But when he gets angry, it’s really terrifying,” Kawashima replied.

He widened his eyes in that characteristically student-like way. “When he booms ‘You!’ in that huge voice, I just crumble. Forget everything I meant to say.”

“So you should just shout back ‘What is it!?’ even louder than that.”

It was said that due to Aihara’s intercession, the plan to dismiss Kawashima had apparently been abandoned.

Aihara was a man from the same hometown as Moroto who, having drifted into the organization during his wandering years, had been entrusted with settlement work in the prefecture and had now become one of its leading figures.

Ida and Kawashima said in unison,

“Well, Mr. Aihara’s still preferable compared to that.”

“At least he has some masculine qualities—isn’t that preferable?”

“Even this time, if Mr. Moroto were in the straight corridor, he’d call out ‘Hey!’ from ahead like that.”
“He’s so fickle, isn’t he?”
“You can’t make heads or tails of him.”

“Mr.Aihara said Mr.Moroto has a mental defect.”

Asako was gradually growing uncomfortable,

“Stop! Stop! This kind of talk—”
“Stop!”
"This conversation."

Asako said.

“In the first place, Mr. Aihara has no right to speak about Mr. Moroto that way to all of you. He had that mess with the Yoshicho geisha—I hear Mr. Moroto settled his debts… And wasn’t it Mr. Moroto who secured his current position in the first place?”

“Is that so?”

“The other day, he spoke as if he’d be managing everything himself going forward, but…”

“If Mr. Aihara is plotting an anti-Moroto campaign, I think he’s contemptible.”

Asako said with an expression of agitation.

"Mr. Moroto may have his cowardly and petty aspects, but there's this quality about him—once he picks someone up, he can't bring himself to abandon them completely."
"But if you do that, it's like keeping a pet dog that bites your own hand."

Moroto was timid yet possessed a certain generous disposition, while Aihara appeared bold on the surface but inwardly was a small yet tenacious egoist, like mouse's teeth.
From when Moroto had taken Aihara in as his dependent nearly ten years prior, these differences in temperament and shared interests seemed to hold a subtle psychological allure for him; at least outwardly, Aihara had come to exert a strange influence over Moroto.

They played cards, looked through the French art book Asako had recently purchased, and left around eleven.

While seeing them out to the entrance, Asako said, disguising her words as a joke.

"Well, let's try not to poke our beaks into their family quarrels, hmm?"
"That's not work for our generation."

Six

Asako was standing in the entryway, about to go shopping.
It was Sunday.

Then Ohira arrived.

“Are you going out?”

He leaned on his Western-style cane and looked up at Asako standing there in her yellowish serge dress tinged with pale green.

“Alone? — Where’s your matching bottle?”

Asako had nicknamed herself and Sachiko the ritual sake decanters.

“She’s deep in a book and conversation right now.”
“But I’ll return shortly, so do go in... Sachiko’s the indulgent type—she’ll keep perfectly well.”

Asako slipped into her sandals and stepped down to the earthen entranceway,

“Well,”

She exchanged places with Ohira.

“Where are you headed?”
“Just nearby—to the stationery shop.”
“It’s such nice weather—maybe I’ll come along with you.”
“Oh?—”

There was a maid there.
Over her head, Asako called out in a loud voice,

“Hey!”

She called Sachiko.

“Mr. Ohira has come.”
“Come here.”

“What’s all this commotion about?”

Sachiko came out.
“I thought that voice sounded familiar.”
“Mr. Ohira is going out for a walk too.”
“Won’t you come along?”
“Let’s go a bit farther.”
“Come now, come! Books can be read at night.”
“It truly is fine weather.”
Sachiko narrowed her eyes and gazed at the mottled sunlight on the fading bush clover flowers.

“Well, you two go on ahead,”
she said.

“The outside might be nice, but the feeling of reading a book inside the shōji screens isn’t half bad today.”

With Ohira, Asako passed through the cluttered town streets for a while and eventually emerged beside Zoshigaya Cemetery. Autumn showed itself most vividly beyond the cemetery grounds, where oak treetops tinged with color stretched high into the sky. The faint scent of incense and chrysanthemums drifted all the way to the road where they walked. A stonemason’s chisel rang out.

They shopped at the stationery store along the tram line, stopped by the sweets shop, then ambled toward home.

“October’s when autumn truly arrives… I wish Sachiko had come too.”

“When you think about it without living here, it seems a bit cluttered, but this side of Koishikawa has quite some nice spots for strolling, don’t you think?”

“It’s nice having old trees too.”

Ohira, before long,

“It feels like such a waste to just turn back now.”

He came to a stop in the middle of the street.

“How about we go all the way to Kishimojin?”

“That’s true—and then, shall we have that soba again?”

Last autumn, they had walked around Kishimojin with Sachiko as a trio and eaten soba on a nearby street that was so spicy it made their tongues curl.

“Ha ha ha! You must’ve been really bothered—you remember it well! Shall we really go? Otherwise, we could just go straight to my place, have you whip up something nice, and then call Sachiko.”

That idea tempted Asako.

"That might be better... But we mustn't make Sachiko worry."

"Don't fret! Let her keep reading her book.
—Though making her worry could be rather entertaining."

"If we'd just stayed here, there'd be no trouble at all..."

"If she's there, I'll deceive her."

Ohira declared this with uncharacteristic seriousness.

Asako started walking toward home again.
Ohira too walked in silence for a while, as if struck by his own unintended forceful tone.

When they turned the corner of the peach orchard, they saw Sachiko pacing before the gate.
Asako rejoiced from her heart's depths upon seeing that distant figure - they had returned straight home.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting."

"What! You should've just come along if that's all!"
"If it was just that, you should've come along!"

Ohira laughed bitterly.

“You were so concerned that you resolutely rejected my temptation.”

“Hmm.”

Leading the way through the gate, Sachiko shrugged her shoulders cheerfully yet with a hint of awkwardness,

“I was just wondering where you might be walking when I started wanting to go out myself.”

As she drank tea, Asako recounted what Ohira had proposed on the street.

“Cousin, you’re hopeless—after all, you’re the one who said my presence would make you lose.”

“Exactly—Sosuke is that sort of man through and through. Appelbach documents it thoroughly.”

With a gaze balanced by her forthright nature and the scholarly precision that complemented it, Sachiko looked between Asako and Sosuke as she spoke.

“Given our cousin’s unfortunate disposition, it seems both you and I fall into the sadist category.”
“According to Appelbach’s new personality classification system.”
“So we achieve proper balance by having virtuous Asakko here serve as our masochist—that’s how it works.”
“In my case, being a sadist is tolerable thanks to my moral virtue—but this Sosuke...”

“There’s no way you could understand.
“First of all—that Appel... whatever his name is—he’s a German man, right?
“Whether Germans are actually smart is questionable.
“The Germans turn a single French aphorism into a three-hundred-page book.
“If they don’t write that much, even they themselves probably can’t grasp it, don’t you think?”

“It’s not about being smart or not—it’s a difference in orientation.”

Appelbach’s theory was an academic doctrine that established classifications beyond the two poles of masochist and sadist—such as masculine, feminine, morality, intelligence, and other emotional orientations—and served as the foundation for aptitude assessments.
Asako said,

“To become a politician or anything like that, you might really need to have the makings of a sadist.”

Asako said.

Seven

Toward evening, a girl named Suematsu whom Sachiko had taught came visiting with another friend.
They wanted her to find them some kind of work.

"Is having jobs economically necessary for you?"

"No, it's not exactly that..."

"So you mean there's no point just staying home—and?
What sort of work would you like?... What are you confident in doing?"

Suematsu, seated beside her friend on chairs, exchanged glances with her in an awkward manner,

“Well… It’s not like I have anything I’m particularly confident in… but if possible, I’d like to try working at a magazine or newspaper.”

“If that’s the case, you might find something if you take it to Ms. Shirakawa here... But do you intend to become journalists? In the future?”

It seemed they hadn’t thought that far ahead, and the girls fidgeted before falling silent.
Sachiko herself wore an awkward smile and waited for a response for a while before finally speaking in a student-like tone—

“If that’s all the motivation you have, why not just keep studying instead?”

Sachiko said.

“With this terrible recession, there’s certainly no such thing as a good position available.”
“Even if there were such positions, men who actually need to survive today would be jumping at them more than you all.”

The two of them left without having achieved anything concrete.
Carrying a chair to the window and flipping through a magazine while listening to their conversation, Ohira turned his entire chair toward them,

“How airy they are.”

He muttered with a mix of goodwill and surprise.

“Are the people working at companies also one of them—those young women?”

“They might just be more skilled at bookkeeping and abacus work.”

“But how things have changed,”

Ohira said, his thin tobacco-colored face showing a serious, reminiscent expression.

“Anyway, it’s because this educated lot no longer finds dignity in clinging to others’ shins.”
“In our youthful fervor, we had no economic sense whatsoever.”
“These modern young ladies have tightly bound independence to economic self-sufficiency—one must stay vigilant.”

And then, with his characteristic, slightly lopsided yet striking eyes,
“We do have one right here...”
he said, looking at Asako’s face and laughing.
“Even in ledgers where they keep stamping the same seals, having a little mark like Asako inside wouldn’t be so bad.”

Somewhat embarrassed, Asako said,
“Well then, I’ll arrange for you to become a girls’ school teacher.”

Asako said.

“Then everywhere you look would be nothing but ‘bonne femmes’ (beauties).”

Ohira immediately twisted it into a pun, sarcastically,

“Bone Farm (骨ごわ)?”

he retorted.

Asako looked at Ohira’s face without laughing, then began:
“Hey, Sachiko, what do you think?
“Lately I’ve become skeptical.
“About working women.
“I can’t keep thinking carefree like those women’s rights activists anymore.”

“Hmm.”

“If our own professions aren’t more investigative about how they connect to which parts of life and in what way—isn’t that all just a lie? As long as they can get their salary, they just quit their job when they dislike it. So in other words, women end up becoming as jaded as men, and moreover, the conclusion is that they’re less skilled and only half as capable—isn’t that how it goes?”

“When it comes to women’s culture—that’s precisely where it must begin.”

Ohira interjected.

"But,"
Sachiko addressed Ohira directly instead.

"Women's culture doesn't necessarily mean keeping women confined to domesticity. You know—Hino, that Tohoku University man's wife—she's nearly a full-fledged woman lawyer now."

“It’s an odd way to put it,”

Smiling slightly, Asako

“Mine is ultra-feminist culturalism.”

Asako said.

“That wife—surely she began studying out of righteous indignation at how male lawyers grow indifferent toward cases with little profit, or casually bend legal loopholes just to make their clients win.”
“Moreover, the psychology behind women committing crimes is best understood by women themselves—isn’t that precisely where women’s culture begins? So to speak.”
“Then what kind of law is it that one takes as a shield or wields as a weapon?”
“What kind of society created it?”
“What is society?”
“It might sound all logical and reasoned, but lately, even with my own profession—when I really push into it—I somehow end up right there.”

“In other words—it’s about how we ought to live, isn’t it?”

Asako nodded at Ohira with an anxious, earnest expression.

“So you see, even for me—merely receiving ninety yen in salary and editing whatever magazine they assign me—that’s neither truly living nor having a real profession. Only when there’s a clear will determining what magazine to edit and why to edit it can you finally call it a human’s profession—though…”

Ohira muttered while emitting from his characteristic eyes a sharp and intense light—unclear whether it mocked Asako or himself.

“According to your theory, Ms. Asako—so then, the work of us company employees is essentially like turning a millstone to grind out our monthly salaries, isn’t it?”

Taking his faint sarcasm at face value, Asako very simply,

“That might be the case, you know,”

she answered.

Before long, Asako regained her innate vivacious expression and said,

“I used to take some pride in being able to say ‘I work to put food on the table,’ but lately, that’s started to feel rather dubious. When I really create my own magazine someday, Mr. Ohira, you must become a reader.”

This was, as a practical matter, something beginning to take root in Asako’s heart.

Sachiko sat at her desk preparing for tomorrow’s lecture.
Here, Ohira was talking with Asako in a low voice.
Asako held knitting in her hands.

“Whose?”

“My nephew’s—it’s not bad, is it? This color—”

“Is that the little boy we met on the street the other day?”

“Oh, so you’ve met him before.”

Sachiko, catching a snippet of this while still at her desk,

“Who did you meet?”

she called out loudly.

“Ken-chan.”

For a while, only the sound of Sachiko’s pen and the clicking of bamboo knitting needles filled the nighttime room. As if this moisture-laden tranquility had seeped into his heart, Ohira muttered while gazing at the area around Asako’s bowed head,

“There must have been moments like this too.”

"There must have been times just like this too."

Asako sensed that within the life she had shared with her deceased husband, there must have been domestic scenes like this evening’s too.
She felt a faint sadness and fell silent.

At the same time, how could anyone claim there was nothing in Ohira’s heart—no memories of his wife connected to such moments? That’s right, Asako thought. Until now, she had never voluntarily brought up Ohira’s departed wife, whether out of personal discretion or simple reluctance. Even now, Asako remained silent as she finished knitting a section of the small sweater. With one hand, she pulled more slack from the yarn skein that had fallen onto the tatami mat up onto her lap. Adjusting her position to continue knitting, she straightened slightly in her chair. Seizing that moment,

“You’re different.”

Ohira said.

“You truly have no intention of becoming a wife again?”

“How about you?”

“Hmm.”

Ohira groaned but said clearly.

"I don't."

After a considerable interval,

“But that’s only natural, I suppose—from one perspective.”

Ohira had been resting one elbow on the chair’s armrest, his cheek propped on that hand—then shifted his position and crossed his arms. He remained silent in thought for some time like that, then suddenly turned his face toward Asako.

“You haven’t suddenly taken some vow of enlightenment, have you?”

“That’s not true at all. But…”

“What?”

“……In my heart, I feel like married life has already completely ended. I just don’t want to view the same thing through another separation again.”

They had been speaking softly from the beginning to avoid disturbing Sachiko, but now Asako sensed an uncanny flash within their hushed, fragmented exchange. With a strange pain piercing her heart, she found herself unable to move. Ohira spoke in an even lower voice, his gaze fixed straight ahead, barely audible.

“I think a pair of eccentrics like us could make it work… interestingly… freely…”

——Asako’s knitting needles kept moving in the same rhythm.
She stayed silent.
Ohira too fell silent.
Suddenly, Sachiko called from her desk,

“It’s terribly quiet.”

she said.

“What are you doing?”

“Hmm…”

“Well, just one more push and it’ll be done.”

As Sachiko renewed her concentration and hunched over her desk, Asako was struck with alarm at the sight of her posture.
Only when Sachiko had called out to her did the duration and profundity of that moment—when she had been aware of Sachiko’s presence yet forgotten it—first surface in Asako’s awareness.
Her mind seemed to have drifted off somewhere entirely disconnected from Sachiko, leaving her struggling to even recognize Sachiko when trying to mentally place her in her customary position.
Such was her state of being.

This awakening struck Asako with astonishment at herself, and she found herself in a state where she could not bear it if Sachiko were to turn around now. With a vacantly flushed face, she left the room.

"Oh! She’s gone!"

Sachiko’s surprised voice reached Asako, who stood before the mirror in this room.

VIII

The next day, Asako went out to the editorial office.

Even while attending to her duties, fragments of last night's uncanny sensation—the one that had seized her heart—kept resurfacing.
Each time, Asako was momentarily overcome with distress.
It was not the poignant thrill of joy that made her heart race, but rather the anguish of some force—heavy, dark, and unrelenting—pulling at Asako where she stood upright, tugging from some unseen place.

Around three o'clock, the man from general affairs,

“—Mr. Moroto, is it Kameido?”

He entered.

“Hmm, I don’t know.”

“Ms. Shirakawa, did you meet him this morning?”

“He mentioned something about going to the Ministry of Education.”

“To the Ministry of Education?
“Is there something going on…?”

Yazaki inquired in a tone that was cold yet probing.

“What’s going on here?”

“He’s from the newspaper company.”

“Isn’t it ××?”

There was a reporter who regularly visited the organization—one who acted as Moroto’s underling—but the name the man had given was not that company’s.
“Huh…”

Yazaki pursed his mouth with its short, unkempt beard and was thinking, but—

“Did you call?” he said.

“It’s a sales pitch—apparently he came saying there’s some fact about funds here being secretly diverted to the school or something.”

“Who met with him?”

“Mr. Suzuki—he was earnestly working on it, insisting that such a thing absolutely doesn’t exist.”

Yazaki fell silent and continued working after that, but seeing his demeanor, Asako felt that he was not entirely unaware of the matter.
Even Asako, who was unrelated to such matters, found herself unable to dismiss the possibility of such a fact existing and harbored a vague suspicion.
To that extent, the organization’s internal atmosphere was impure.

After some time had passed, as Asako walked down the corridor, Moroto came hurrying over from the opposite direction.
Asako gave a slight nod.
Under normal circumstances, he would have exchanged a few words, but this time he acted as though he hadn't noticed Asako at all and made to turn the corner.

The janitor clattered his sandals and chased after it.

“Excuse me—have you arranged for the car to come immediately? Would that be acceptable?”

With the abrupt motion of turning the corner causing the tail of his morning coat to flutter，Moroto waved his left hand backward and—

“Immediately! Right away!”

he shouted his command.

Outside that corridor grew a pomegranate tree.
Like trees typical of vacant lots in such public buildings, it had always scattered nothing but barren flowers.
Unusually, this year, it bore a single fruit on a low branch.
The fruit neither fell nor dropped; instead, it even began to take on a faint hue.
The deserted long corridor, Moroto’s flustered figure as he was about to meet Aihara and likely devise some bribery scheme, even the grasses swaying in the wind—all lay within the slender desolation of autumn. Amidst this, the single pomegranate fruit hung round and heavy, imparting something pleasing to Asako.

Asako stopped and gazed at the pomegranate gleaming in the autumn afternoon breeze.

Due to the deadline, she had business at the editorial office every day.

Asako changed her approach from her previous one and decided to add economic articles and current affairs commentary to infuse some vitality into the same stagnant magazine.
This also increased her workload.
Asako worked with a temperament that tolerated no neglect once she began a task.

The sensation from the previous night with Ohira, which she had considered merely a temporary spark born of frayed nerves, unexpectedly lingered in Asako’s heart. At the editorial office with her hands idle, she gazed from the window at the moat’s scenery. On the shallowly swaying water’s surface lay reflections of the stone wall and the grass above it. The water’s deepening tender green brought restful ease to Asako’s eyes, weary from staring at nothing but type. As she settled into this faint relaxation, that familiar tug once again made itself felt in her heart. The tug remained heavy, tight, and dark. Yet this darkness was not the kind that seeped from spiritual anguish to taint the very scenery before her eyes. The green stayed endlessly vivid; in all daily matters, she could feel everything purely as it had been yesterday, today, and the day before. Starkly opposed to this stood the dark tug and her heart’s tilt toward it. Her heart resembled a single landscape painting with night and day distinctly rendered on either side. It’s agonizing, but not half bad—with such thoughts, Asako contemplated her own aching heart’s two-toned division.

Asako had lost her husband when she was twenty-four. Lately, she had come to understand many things about relationships between men and women that she had not known before. Within her, the half-opened flower of womanhood had bloomed.

If my married life had continued until now, would I have been able to savor the growth of my heart and senses in such minute detail—as if watching over a sapling's development? Asako often thought this way; by societal standards of the time, she refused to consider the misfortune that had been her great tragedy as mere bad luck. A woman's solitary growth—Nature does not concern itself with whether she keeps a husband or not. When the time comes, it will bloom. —How pure is Nature—

However, Asako was not in love with Ohira.
His reasons were entirely different in meaning from Asako’s own lack of desire to remarry.
She understood that he was maintaining a passive freedom merely from a feeling of it being troublesome.
From his perspective, Asako—with whom he had been acquainted for over a year without ill feeling, alone and free in a manner that seemed not uninteresting—had suddenly caught his attention, leading him to feel something akin to romantic interest.

For Asako as well, the point was the same where Ohira—whom she had vaguely perceived as Sachiko’s cousin—now stood clearly defined as a man.
However, if she traced her feelings in detail, what held attraction for Asako was not Ohira himself.
It was the sensation Ohira had stirred within Asako since that night that now pulled at her.

That awareness pressed upon Asako’s heart with particular clarity during moments like those in the small house before the peach orchard, where she conversed quietly with Sachiko, or on nights when each brought their own work to share under a single lamp.

Asako loved Sachiko.
She knew every trivial habit of Sachiko’s, her flaws, and her beautiful kindness.
Sachiko would fly into a rage—something that occurred from time to time—and confront Asako with a terrifying expression.
Even when recalling Sachiko’s utterly unbecoming expression from those moments, Asako felt both amusement and happiness, and could laugh from the depths of her belly.

What on earth am I harboring within myself regarding Ohira?!

Asako found herself thinking, startled by her own emotions.
In living with Sachiko and supporting each other through life, she held no true complaints or grounds for objection anywhere in her heart.

Yet that intense force exerted an irresistible pull.
Like a vacuum sucking inward, it drew her.
Her entire body yearned to plunge single-mindedly toward it.
In that convulsive instant, she felt within her flesh great petals spiraling open—a soundless cry pressing upon her heart with exquisite anguish.

One afternoon, Sachiko brought out a rattan chair to the veranda where she was reading a magazine on a long chair, and Asako gazed at the garden.
Next to the neighbor’s hedge stood a single osmanthus tree.
Slightly past its peak, it scattered tiny golden-orange flowers even onto the garden soil toward Asako, spreading their cool fragrance.
The fragrance carried the chill of autumn soil.

Asako had just returned from the printing office in the early afternoon.
There was an elderly female worker in the adjacent room.

“Hey, Mr.Gen, I hear there’s a union. They say if you join, you gotta pay twenty sen a month in fees or somethin’.”

“Ah.”

“So what’s that s’posed to mean? If there’s a strike at some factory, they say everyone chips in money to help ’em out.”

“Huh.”

“If we gotta keep payin’ forever like that, wouldn’t that be trouble?”

The man called Mr.Gen answered listlessly,

“Yeah.”

Mr.Gen replied.

Asako had energetically recounted these matters to Sachiko.

When Asako fell silent, Sachiko seemed to think she was merely tired.
Sachiko had stretched her legs across the entire length of the long chair, her relaxed posture as she read—Asako stared intently at this, but suddenly jerked up her face and head as if against her will,

“Look, I—I’m splitting in two.”
In a small, feeble voice, she pleaded.

“What are you talking about?”

Sachiko flipped the magazine onto her lap with a soft thud and began to smile—but upon seeing Asako’s pallid face, she

“—What’s wrong?”

She lowered both legs from the chair at once.

“Oh—I’m splitting in two! Tearing apart!”

Asako hunched her back, grabbed Sachiko’s hand with a strong force, tucked them together with her own, and pressed them against her chest.

“What’s wrong, huh? This!”

Startled, Sachiko pressed a hand against her back.

“Say something! Say something!”

Asako, shedding tears, spoke in broken fragments,

“A dark instant! —A dark instant!”

she whispered.

IX

The instinct yearning for retreat, the frenzied desire to shut her eyes and plummet—only these remained in Asako’s heart. When those desires ran rampant, Ohira’s presence never left Asako’s thoughts as a constant mediator. Asako spent each day at the pinnacle of emotions she couldn’t trust in herself. Life felt dangerous, as if standing on molten lava where only a thin crust had barely formed over the surface.

There was a sister of Sachiko’s who had married into Yamaguchi Prefecture.

Since undergoing surgery for a grape-like hydatidiform mole in spring, she had not improved at all.
Around the time when there had recently been unsettling news about her condition, one day during Sachiko’s absence, a telegram arrived.
Sachiko returned and saw it around four o'clock.

“Well, I’ll have to go.”

“Of course you must.”

“I wonder if there was a travel guide where I am.”

Asako had now grown afraid of being left alone.

By the time Sachiko returned, she would no longer be herself.
—She had such a premonition.

Asako,
“Maybe I should go too,”
she said.
“Together?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you could come along, but…”

Sachiko looked up from the travel guide,

“You’re such a child.
“The magazine hasn’t even come out yet.”

Sachiko gave a wry smile.

“No good—you can’t go abandoning your work.”

The proofreading still hadn’t been finished.
But that was something that could be managed.
After thinking for a while, Asako,

“I’m going.”

Asako stood up from the chair.

“If I’m left alone now, I’ll definitely end up doing nothing worthwhile. I can’t stand it!”
“I hate it!”

Sachiko had a certain vagueness about her in the best sense; even while knowing of Asako's inner turmoil, she seemed unable to truly comprehend it on an emotional level. She said,

"Don't go, don't go!"

asserting with all the authority of an elder.

"What'll you do about that?"

The next train they could catch was at 9:15.
Sachiko hurriedly packed a handbag with personal items and spoke again.

"For one thing, my travel expenses are stretched thin enough as it is."

As she went about buying get-well gifts in Ginza, Asako gradually felt her mind freeing itself from that strange anxiety.

It was just as well that Sachiko was gone.
While gazing at the vast crowd passing before and behind her, to her left and right, Asako thought.
If I'm suffering, then let me suffer—I should just live as one among this crowd.
No matter how much I suffered or erred, it was precisely because I existed within humanity.

In the night mirrors of display windows here and there, she glimpsed her own walking figure reflected.
To that self—the anguish stabbing inwardly, the various faces and tie colors momentarily illuminated by the same light and mirrored back—Asako felt a warm affection.

Appearing to be a dignitary departing abroad, before the first-class sleeper car, there came the blinding flare of a magnesium flash.
On the platform in front of the car where Sachiko had boarded, there were only Asako and four or five other men and women.
Leaning halfway out the window, Sachiko asked.

“Will you be alright?”

Asako smiled and nodded in understanding.

“Really?”

“Really.—Even if I’m not alright, I’ve decided to think I am.”

“What are you talking about, huh? What do you mean?”

“It’s fine, don’t worry.”

“I’ll send a telegram when I arrive, but if anything happens—”

Having started to say something unthinkingly and stopped in surprise, Sachiko turned red and stuck out her tongue behind the hand pressed to her mouth.
Asako,

“Silly.”

She gave a wry smile, but as it grew increasingly amusing, she herself finally burst out laughing.
Sachiko had reflexively begun to say, “Ask Ohira,” out of habit.

The train began to move; cries of “Banzai!” arose from two or so spots on the platform.

As the train wound along the curve and Sachiko's waving hand vanished from sight, Asako began to walk.
Then, from within the crowd,

“It’s been a while.”

Someone who had straightened the thongs of thick felt sandals greeted her.

"Oh—"

It was Fukiko, who belonged to the close circle among Asako's classmates.

"Were you here to see someone off?"
"This train?"

Fukiko drew her neck in between her own towering shoulders.

"I've been appointed as Mother's proxy, you see."

When they stepped out to the carriage porch,

“Are you heading straight back?”

While checking the time from behind her cream-colored gloves that held a stylish paper holder, Fukiko asked.

“I hate to part ways like this… Shall we cut through Ginza?”

“I don’t mind—but are you sure?
The little one at your place?”

“It’s fine.”

Fukiko pulled Asako’s hand and started walking.

“Since I’ve acted as her proxy, it’s only fair she gets to be a proper grandmother for a while.
If it weren’t for times like these, someone like me would be pitiable.
I can’t just step out freely like that, you see.”

With her husband abroad on official business, Fukiko was living with her two children at her parents’ home.

Earlier, she had come from the direction of Shinbashi with Sachiko; now she walked with Fukiko along the same street from the opposite direction.
Fukiko said,
“Oh, wait a moment please.”

With that, she bought small gifts for the children along the way.
Then they wound through the kimono shop’s display stands as if tracing an unbroken path.
Asako, feeling exactly as she had in her girls’ school days, found herself appreciating Fukiko’s maternal demeanor.
In the yarn shop’s display window stood several wire dolls clad in knitted dresses.
Asako paused before them.

“Wait—don’t you want it?”
“Oh—don’t be silly!”

The two women went to drink coffee.
Just as friends had rumored,
“In the end, you’re the one who’s best off, Asako.”
Fukiko declared as if delivering a definitive judgment.

“Being temporarily entrusted like me—it’s utterly exasperating. Since they’re the ones looking after me, I suppose—though it’s such an oddly roundabout way of keeping watch, don’t you think?”

“You’ll only have to endure that until October!”

Asako pulled her chin in and nodded with upturned eyes in understanding, but Fukiko suddenly brightened her face.

“By the way, how about you—what’s become of you since then?” she said.

“What?”

“You’re impossible! Still the same?”

“Still the same.”

“Liar!”

“Why? Unlike you, I was born honest!”

“But… Oh, so that’s how it is. You really are impressive, aren’t you?”

The general meaning became clear, and Asako faintly formed a wry smile.
Then the speaker herself misunderstood this reaction and—seeming surprised—leaned forward over the table until her chest nearly touched it, countering,

“So?—The Great Way has no gate?”

she pressed again in a hushed voice.

Asako, when that happened, merely continued laughing and eating pie, but—

“There are many ways to be modern—though that’s a bit of a different conversation,” she said.

There truly existed a certain type of people who found satisfaction in flamboyantly or bitterly pursuing nothing but personal self-consumption, and others who—unable to endure modern-day exhaustion seeping deeper and deeper into their bones as it spread between individuals until becoming commonplace—had to discover something solid, something new, to survive.
Asako felt this as her own anguish.
Those who belonged to the latter category encompassed themselves through both their intense exhaustion and the possibility of rebirth.
Those with broader perspectives could not forget the multitude.
Even if I were powerless against it—I could not forget.

Asako, pondering deeply as she sipped her coffee, suddenly felt that even this single cup was something they drank amidst countless footsteps in reality, struck by a sensation that ran down her spine.

Asako eventually asked Fukiko bluntly.

“Sometime—was it with you? Did you read the poem that says ‘bottomless depth’?”

“Well… I wonder.”

Distracted by a young group that entered as if scattering colors across the box where they sat, Fukiko answered carelessly—but
“Oh—is it already that time?”
Comparing her wristwatch to the flower-patterned wall clock, Fukiko
“Oh no—oh no!”

With that, she stood up, tapping the front of the obi decorated with an oil-painted rose.

Asako also arrived home by taxi a little past eleven.

10

There was a slim poetry collection by Beruhāran titled *Bright Time*.
Within it lay "Bottomless Depth" and numerous other brief verses Asako cherished.

Having returned home and begun reading it, Asako fell asleep nearing two o'clock.

She tried to turn off the light, then had an idea and went to get the travel guide.
It was the hour when Sachiko’s train was traveling between Shizuoka and Hamamatsu.

The next day was clear and bright, and even the quiet loneliness of dining alone felt pleasant within the transparent autumn weather.

In the afternoon, Asako went out toward Kameido.
She had business at the city’s lodging facility.
On her way back, she stopped by the settlement house.
A new children’s library had been established, and neighborhood children carrying infants tied to their backs gathered around tables divided by grade level, looking at picture books and reading magazines.
A woman named Kubo at the daycare center, who had known Asako for some time, showed her around.
She was resting in her private room on the second floor due to rheumatism.
Kubo, her hair tightly coiled and wearing a lined haori over serge fabric, looked back at Asako over her thin shoulders,

“Please look at my side too—I’m really putting in the effort here.”

She said while crossing over the planks of the covered walkway.

“They’re all just young people who think it’s enough to let the children play quietly until four o’clock.
“It’s precisely those people who end up being favored, you see.”
“Even if I quarrel with them, I make sure they do things my way.”
“I know you probably think I’m a nasty woman, but when it comes to actually handling the children, things inevitably end up requiring me to step in, you see.”

Kubo spoke as if she alone managed everything. She told Asako about a particularly difficult child who refused to listen to anyone—the type who would tear at their hair and throw tantrums—and about the efforts she’d recently made to fully tame them.

A separate building housed a spacious playroom, infirmary, and nursery. On the wooden floor of the playroom, slides and indoor swings stood where young children in aprons played. A teacher wearing an apron had gathered five or six children in a corner to tell them a story. Bright light flooded the room, making the children’s aprons and red-and-yellow sashes stand out vividly against the clean floor. Perhaps because Asako—a stranger—had entered, the children played with unusual quietness. Asako sensed something unnatural in their impeccable behavior. When she mentioned this, Kubo—

“It’s quiet playtime right now,” she said.
As she spoke, her eyes kept scanning the window area—
“Ah, there he is.”
She beckoned to the children by the window,
“Imamura, come here.”
The young teacher looked up from her corner, her gaze briefly touching both child and supervisor before turning away.
“What’s this about? Should you really be calling him over?”

“It’s quite alright.”

A large-headed boy wearing an indigo kasuri-patterned kimono and zōri sandals on his bare feet came and stood beside Kubo.

“Now，greet this ma’am properly.”

She placed a hand on the child’s shoulder and drew him close to herself. Though he obediently complied, his expression made it clear that the boy with sanpaku eyes—where the white showed beneath his irises—neither loved nor felt attached to Kubo. Feeling it resembled forcing a performance, Asako—

“That’s enough.”

she interjected.

Kubo, still gripping the shoulder of the boy who seemed eager to leave, persisted—

“Imamura, you do listen properly to everything the teacher says, don’t you?”

Asako was returning to her room while saying,

“You ought to let the children be more.”

“That’s enough,” she said.

“What’s the point of making children put on polite airs?”

Kubo seemed to attribute all her life’s pain—the lack of family, health, or comfort—to her innate stubbornness, using that very trait to push both children and colleagues forward.
She showed Asako tanzaku poetry strips by Toson that she’d collected through various means.

On the third floor of the main building was Aihara’s room.
Asako spoke there for nearly an hour.

Aihara had the portly build that people would describe as executive-like.
When he laughed, both ends of his upper lip lifted oddly, starkly revealing his neat row of small front teeth and gums in their entirety.
His small mouth was expressive in a way that left Asako with an unpleasant impression.

Aihara talked about rumors regarding a certain man who had recently retired,

“Why did he quit…? I was going to tell Mr. Moroto to handle it eventually, but—”

he said.

The facts Asako knew were not like that.

“Wasn’t it you who advised Mr. Moroto?”

Aihara remained unperturbed,

“Hmm, does it really sound that way, I wonder?”

he said.

Judging solely by Aihara’s attitude and words, it seemed to suggest that the facts Asako knew were mistaken.

He said something critical about Moroto’s measures,

“Well now, Ms. Shirakawa, do make sure to handle things properly.”
“Before long, we should be able to provide some funds as well.”

he said things like that.
Asako silently laughed.

Because he harbored a timid, petty ambition at his core, as long as he was looking at each individual’s face, a calculation arose that it would be disadvantageous to let them harbor ill feelings—Aihara seemed to possess that sort of mentality.

On her way back, Asako deeply contemplated what might be called the tip of human survival.
There are moments in life when morality, common sense, education—all the things that support a person—become utterly useless.
And even when not in such critical times, as we live amidst the decline of common sense, morality, and the authority of such things that surround us, what will become the anchor for our hearts?
If one were to ask how humans discern the path to live as humans should, it is through the tip of survival within their hearts—equivalent to the vital bud that allows plants to grow and flourish.
Even when Asako had read poetry the previous night—for instance,

To purify themselves, they join together!
Two golden rose windows of the same temple
mixing flames of differing brightness
as if piercing through one another.

What kind of heart must a poet have to capture such noble, gentle, beautiful, and profound sensations? she wondered.
He does not think.
He feels.—He feels.
And Asako gathered that sensitive, primal tactile sense of her soul into the phrase "tip of survival"—as if it were a cipher—and contemplated it.

While feeling licentious desires, I somehow refrained from plunging into them. To put it another way—even were I to lose my sanity—it was because that tip rejected them.

When Sachiko stood up last night,

“Are you all right?”

she asked. Asako automatically replied,

“Even if I’m not all right, I’ve made myself believe I am.”

Her answer hovered ambiguously—no, she wasn’t all right, but as long as that tip could feel, choose, and assert something, she would remain so. What if a flame large enough to smother even this tip of survival were to blaze?

If that’s how it was to be—then so be it. Long live.
Asako continued to think.
I, and the tip of my survival, will be at the heart of that flame and sing out a single song of my life.

Asako thought about Kubo, whom she had just met, about Aihara’s life, and about that which existed within her own heart—vividly gleaming and keen as a newly polished magnet’s needle—savoring these thoughts as she was jostled along on the long evening train.

Around six o'clock, the train was crowded, and both beside and behind Asako were throngs of workers and office employees returning home after finishing their day's labor.
At a certain intersection, the vehicle ahead became stuck, and Asako's train also remained stranded for a long time.
When she looked out the window, there was a sweet chestnut shop, and right by its storefront light, the municipal bus stop sign could be seen.
A bearded man around forty, wearing a black high-collared uniform that marked him as some sort of supervisor, stood there.
He was intently looking at something.
It was like a mirror.
When she looked closely, what was in his hand was a woman’s compact.
He must have found it.
Unaware that someone might be watching from the packed train that had accidentally stopped, he examined the compact with curiosity—looking at it this way and that—then soon opened its lid and briefly checked his face in the attached mirror.
He immediately stopped that and brought the compact to his nose, sniffing the scent of face powder—a scene oblivious to the surrounding bustle of trucks and bicycles coming and going.

He sniffed it for that long.