Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

The large glass entrance door opened, the automatic bell’s sound resonating loudly around the plantings as it did so.
But there was no sign of anyone coming out.

Hiroko stood on the old-fashioned shoe-removal stone, rubbed the heels of tea-colored shoes together to align them while taking them off, then stomped unhesitatingly toward the dim interior while still wearing a coat and beret.

When she opened the door separating the wooden-floored telephone area from the tatami corridor of the sitting room,

"Well then, that one goes with your share too."

The voice of her mother saying something to the maid could be heard.
When she went to look, Eiko was sitting in the middle of an eight-mat room facing south, surrounded by bundles wrapped in turmeric-dyed and arabesque-patterned cloths spread across the entire space.
Moreover, she had apparently been at it for quite some time.

"It must be tough. I thought you were out because it was so deathly quiet."

With one hand removing the beret from her head, Hiroko sat down near the veranda area where the strong smell of naphthalene and scattered old undergarments lingered.

“No, well, I couldn’t find Father’s camel-hair shirt anywhere, so I thought I’d tidy up a bit while searching for it.”

Eiko, who had been tying up a bundle placed on her lap over her silk crepe kimono, said, “Well then, put a label on this one too: Master Tatsuo’s old undergarments,” and handed it to the maid.

“Since the young lady has returned, let’s call it a day here.”
“Then let’s just put the bundles in the cupboard for now.”

Leaning against the open shoji screen in a relaxed posture as she observed the scene, a warm yet deeply mocking light glinted in Hiroko’s lively eyes—eyes that revealed her sharp sensitivity.
She deliberately nodded her head—neatly cropped with soft hair—emphatically within her sweater as she spoke.

“Yes, yes. And then after ten days pass, take out those same bundles again—spread them out, air them in the sun, shift things from there to here—then tie them up and stack them back in the cupboard.” She nodded emphatically within her sweater. “The bundles will never diminish—no end in sight—how perfectly splendid.”

“Let’s do exactly that!”

“But really—”

“Enough already!”

Eiko—her weak spot struck—involuntarily smirked while glaring at her daughter with a rejuvenated expression. Though unfashionable, her voluminous updo with full bangs accentuated her oval face through its peculiarly flamboyant styling. Hiroko gazed contentedly at her mother’s relaxed figure, finding her beautiful.

Almost every week from Saturday into Sunday, Hiroko returned home from the dormitory of her language-specialized cram school.
Since adopting this rhythm of life, the contours of the household existence in which she had been born and raised began to stand out vividly to her.
On some days Mother appeared sumptuously beautiful; on others, even when Hiroko came to see her in the afternoon, she might be found wearing a haori over sleepwear that revealed the collar of her underrobe.
That too impressed itself upon Hiroko as one undulation in her parents’ lives—perceived with striking clarity.

“Well then, go prepare tea in the dining room.”

When Hiroko opened the dining room door following Eiko, she lightly embraced her mother from behind.

“Today, Mother looks beautiful.”

“Oh my, thank you very much for that.”

The dining room faced north, its glass windows—patterned like frozen water up to two-thirds of their height—tightly closed.
Through the transparent upper panes showed the October blue sky that had illuminated Hiroko’s coat as she walked through the quiet residential neighborhood.
The ginkgo treetops in the neighboring garden were faintly visible.
Hiroko,

“Why don’t we open it a little?”

She placed her hand on the window.

“It’s actually warmer outside today—”

“I’ll pass.”

In the center was a large table, and Eiko had designated the farthest end of it as her customary seat.
Hiroko sat on her father’s zabuton cushion that was to her right.

By the time she had drunk about half her tea, with an air of having settled down now, Eiko—

“How was it?”

She looked at her daughter’s face anew.

“There wasn’t anything different, was there?”

And then she gazed around the area of Hiroko’s chest, wrapped in a plain beige sweater adorned with thin red lines.

As if trying to scatter that strangely wide, viscous gaze, Hiroko involuntarily shifted her posture.

“I’m still the same as ever. How about you? And Jun-chan?”

“Ah, that person’s still the same as ever.”

Eiko’s double-lidded, almond-shaped gaze changed once more. A fervent, affectionate glow—one that appeared only when discussing her second son, a student at Tokyo Higher School—shone brightly.

“He really is such an innocent soul.—Lately he’s been applying himself diligently to his German studies.”
“He should be back for dinner, but…”

“Did Tatsuo send a letter?”

“Ah, it seems he sent a postcard to Junjiro the other day. The Sendai area already has quite chilly mornings and evenings, I hear.”

In a voice that sounded like she was biting back a yawn deep between her teeth, Eiko—

“I don’t know what to say about him—it’s like he has no passion. After all, he’s completely single-minded about electricity.”

she said of her eldest son.

In the cemetery at Sōji-ji Temple in Tsurumi, the four Kaganuma children were buried side by side next to their grandparents' grave.
On the back of each small tombstone, Eiko had personally composed waka poems and had them engraved.

“After all, Mother can be quite intimidating. If one is too meek, you fret impatiently; if one shows too much fervor, you clash with them… Do you understand? You yourself—”

“Well, it does seem that way.”

Eiko fluttered her thick eyelashes, a faint, satisfied excitement rising to rosy cheeks whose complexion showed a luster and fine texture astonishing for her age.

The unique, unreserved naturalness inherent between a biological mother and daughter.
This intimacy—intertwined with what should have drawn them closer—instead kept perpetually palpable the awkwardness born of their differing temperaments; a sense of distance that dissolved only come evening when father Taizo returned home, releasing them into an atmosphere of genuine familial ease.

When the familiar honk of a car horn sounded from the entrance, Hiroko—

“There! Dacchan’s home!”

She dashed out with gliding momentum over the tatami in her short socks.
Already with one foot on the shoe-removal stone while untying his laces, Taizo saw Hiroko kneeling there, her navy-blue skirt’s deep pleats still billowing out.

“Oh, you’re here.”

He removed the brown soft hat and handed it to his daughter.

“What’s the matter?”

“And you, Father? Are you busy?”

“You’re staying over, right?”

“Yes.”

“How about it—has something special been prepared?”

Eiko remained seated at the dining table and, while placing a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, said “Welcome home” to her husband who had appeared.
Due to a long-standing habit, Eiko would occasionally see her husband off in the morning on some impulse, but she almost never went to the entrance to welcome him home when he returned.

Hiroko meticulously assisted her father with changing clothes, moving around him.
She also tagged along to the washroom.
Taizo energetically splashed water as he washed his face.
Hiroko stood by with a towel,

“That’s like a duck in a puddle.”

She laughed.
When her father finished washing his face, Hiroko peeked her delighted face from beside the mirror where his reflection—now showing considerable white in his beard—moved with the brush, then took her mother’s face powder from the stand there and applied it.

Even when they sat down at the dining table, Junjiro had not returned.

“How about it—shall we start?”

“Let’s do that. Well then, serve up.”

Eiko—

“Keep Junjiro’s portion from getting cold. When he returns home, warm it up properly.”

she pressed.

Junjiro appeared in his school uniform when dinner was about three-quarters finished.

“You’re late. You must be hungry.”
“Koeda, heat up the food from earlier right away.”

The middle school was run by an old-fashioned Frenchman who didn’t allow the students to exercise—perhaps because of this, Junjiro’s tall frame had a rather plump build.
His round face, with a soft, hazy black shadow beneath the nose, retained a blend of youthful maturity and boyishness.
Especially, like his sister Hiroko, he took after their father—the clearly defined mountain-shaped line of his upper lip was a striking feature of his face, yet it was precisely around those lips that his childlike qualities primarily lingered.

Though he knew nothing of the actual content, his father inquired about his German progress using broadly grasped, worldly concepts; his mother’s manner of pressing dish after dish upon him as if intensifying their flavor with her own affection—Junjiro did not seem particularly bothered by either.

“Oh?”

“No—I don’t need any.”

He responded in a relaxed, utterly compliant manner.

The conversation began to liven up between just the brother and sister.

“So your German studies—are you still going to Mr. Tazawa’s place?”

It concerned the person from German philosophy who had prepared him when Junjiro was taking his high school entrance exams.

“No. The German Mr. Tazawa introduced—Kaufman.”

“Do you still see Mr. Tazawa these days?”

“Mm, now and then.”

“Is he still as pale and serious-looking as ever?”

Huff, huff, huff—as Hiroko laughed mischievously, Junjiro’s plump face also broke into a smile, only without making a sound.

Meanwhile, between the parents, their own separate conversation had developed, and Hiroko caught snippets of names like Mitsui and a certain Mr. So-and-so—people one might read about in the papers.
It was just at the moment when the conversation between the brother and sister about German pronunciation and Esperanto was gaining momentum.
The mother’s voice—which had been discussing the disposal of her family’s Tsukiji property since earlier—suddenly rose in an angry tone.

“I know you’re busy, but you always make these quick promises on the spot and never carry them out.”
“Even Mr. Matsudaira is asking about how the Tsukiji situation is coming along—we can’t just leave it be.”

“I know, so I’ll go to Kangin tomorrow and check.”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow—you call yourself an architect yet show no business sense. If not for my poor health, I wouldn’t need your help at all…”

An awkward silence spread as both Hiroko and Junjiro stopped speaking.
The servant sat holding a tray.
Hiroko noticed,

“That’s enough,” she said.
Eiko’s volatile temperament always erupted in this manner.
Having finished the meal, Eiko continued to press her words upon Taizo, who had moved to a side stool.
“You are cowardly.”

“Well, this has become quite a serious matter.”

That was said with a bitter smile, barely suppressing the urge to shout.

“I do think there’s no model husband exactly like myself.”

“That’s exactly what makes you cowardly—you always act this way when people are around.”

“People—it’s not like there’s anyone else here anyway.”

“But Hiroko is here, isn’t she?”

Hiroko, who had been sitting facing her father, involuntarily raised her head at those words.
And she looked at her father.

“Who in their right mind would call their own daughter a stranger?”
“Anyway, I’ll go to Kangin tomorrow. Then you’ll have nothing left to say.”

“You always try to evade things like that when there’s someone on your side.”
“That’s exactly what I can’t stand about you.”

Hiroko looked at Eiko with a slightly pale face and said.

“Since I consider myself not some outsider but a child of this house, please feel at ease and argue all you like.”
“That’s far better.”
“I only side with someone when I believe what they’re saying is true.”
“After all, I’m your child too—I don’t particularly fear arguments.”

Junjiro, who had been sitting beside his father with arms crossed, spoke in a pleading voice tinged with melancholy as he jiggled his uniformed knees.

“Why does everyone have to get so angry?”
“Mother, please stop getting angry too.”
“It makes me feel so suffocated.”

Tears, illuminated by the lamplight, rolled down Eiko’s flushed, smooth cheeks.

“When you really think about it, life is such a lonely thing.
In the end, you’re alone.”

Taking out a folded kaishi paper from her sleeve, Eiko slowly pressed each of her tear-dampened eyes in turn.
With each movement of her hand under the ceiling lamp’s light, the large diamond on her right middle finger emitted a thick, heavy, flame-like purplish flash.

Taizo retreated to his study, and Hiroko stared fixedly at that light with a dark, intense gaze.

The coldly glittering beauty of the diamond, her mother’s words, and Junjiro’s gentle pleas—all were painful to Hiroko.

II

Toward the cloudless midday sky, the noon siren sounded straight on. Joining in harmony with it, bass tones of various timbres began resounding here and there. The sky and sunlight, which had been quiet until now, seemed to burst into momentary liveliness. Down the back street, the tofu shop passed by with the sudden, vigorous blare of a trumpet that had been spurred into action. It was a completely windless day, yet as if startled awake by those sounds of daily life, suddenly the treetops of the maple, oak, and podocarpus in the garden swayed lightly, and the yellow ginkgo leaves fell one after another, straight down to the black earth below.

In the heart of the metropolis, Hiroko watched this momentary trembling of nature with keen interest from a wicker chair.

If one were to speak of being connected to nature, the dormitory of Hiroko's cram school was indeed nestled deep within Musashino's mulberry fields and mixed woods. However, there existed only a vast sky that echoed with crystalline clarity the voices of hundreds of young women directly overhead while swallowing them with an eerie absence of resistance higher up, and the drone of military aircraft propellers churning through the liquid-thick air across the area. When converting post-earthquake temporary barracks into permanent structures, many vocational-level schools in Tokyo proper had taken advantage of land price differentials to repurchase sites and relocate to distant areas within the prefecture. Hiroko's cram school had been one such institution. This environment—isolated from both city and surrounding villages amidst mixed woods—was filled with countless inconveniences that disadvantaged student life while conveniently serving administrative interests.

When away, suddenly scenes of home would come to mind with such vividness—the zelkova treetops burning crimson in the western sun and the white front of the school building. Monotonous scenes of country roads where people sporadically appeared from afar revived in Hiroko’s mind. In the backyard, Junjiro’s voice had been audible for some time now as he chatted with the gardener. Since there was no other way to refer to it, this was the house Hiroko too called “my home.” There, saturated with her parents’ existence—something more complex than what had drawn her in yet simultaneously pushed her away. But of course, this was by no means what the cram school would dismiss as “nowhere.”

At this moment, a smile blending irony and innocent mischief appeared on Hiroko’s earnest young face as she leaned her head against the back of the wicker chair, both arms crossed comfortably beneath her sweater.
By morning, Eiko seemed to regret having told Hiroko in a fit of irritation the previous night that she was just another person here.
When Eiko passed Hiroko—who had just risen—in the washroom hallway, she gazed at her with gentle eyes,

“How was it? Did you sleep?”

Having asked, she didn’t wait for a reply.

“Didn’t you use my washbasin?” Eiko asked.

Hiroko
"No, I've only just woken up!"
she answered, but when she considered her mother's feelings, it struck her as amusing.
In the instant her mother tried to say something to Hiroko, only her typical phrases came out, and this morning she simply—

“Oh my, that really was the case, wasn’t it?” she meekly concluded. When she thought about that, Hiroko found herself both comical and infuriating.

The greenhouse with a boiler in the backyard was something Eiko had built for Junjiro as a celebration for his entrance into high school. The gate at the boundary with the storehouse opened and closed, and before long, the somewhat shrill voice of a young man who appeared to be Junjiro’s friend could be heard from there.

“Oda’s older brother has a greenhouse too, right? I went to see it with Oda the other day—it’s huge!”

“Is that his profession? … Oh yes, thank you for the other day.”
“Is your father back already?”

“Ah, a telegram came and he went back.”

Yoshimoto—his collar neatly fastened in a kasuri-patterned kimono with square sleeves and hakama—also joined them for tea.

Eiko said,

“Father, this is Mr. Yoshimoto—the one who invited Jun-chan to the hotel the other day—”

and formally introduced him again.
When Taizo inquired about Yoshimoto’s household circumstances in his habitual social tone—one that had gradually become second nature—Yoshimoto responded smoothly without awkwardness, giving concise answers that allowed his interlocutor to infer a certain social standing.

That Eiko approved of Junjiro’s friendship with this young man was evident from her cheerful demeanor—the way she laughed delightedly at even Yoshimoto’s slightest remarks.

The maid entered there.
The maid knelt down right beside Hiroko.

“Madam, Mr. Yutaro from Tsukiji has just arrived...”

“You.”

Eiko said in a harsh voice.

“It seems Yutaro has come. Tell him to hand over the tuition statement he’s been asked about since last time—this time without fail. Is that clear?”

And still facing this way,

“Show him to the Japanese-style room.”

she instructed.

“It’s truly troublesome how everywhere you go, relatives bring all sorts of difficulties... Your household must have its share of such burdens as well.”

Yoshimoto remained properly seated, simply smiling.
Before long, she entered with a tray bearing a single teacup and sugar.
Eiko looked at the teacup.

“Oh, did you put lemon in it?”

she said discontentedly, in a voice loud enough for those present to hear.
Before everyone present was black tea with lemon.
Eiko said in a displeased voice,

“It would’ve been better if you hadn’t put lemon in it at all—”

By chance, as Hiroko transferred a lemon slice from her teacup to the saucer, she kept her eyes fixed on the cup, her face flushing up to her chin, and did not raise her head for some time. In the interim, there were two business-related visitors for Taizo. Around four o'clock, when Hiroko checked her wristwatch and neared the stairway's base, she found Eiko standing in an incomplete posture by the tatami-matted corridor, wearing only a haori over her garments. Having opened the corner clothes cabinet door, Taizo turned his Oshima-patterned back—finely detailed—toward them and appeared to be extracting a wallet from the inner pocket of a hanging morning coat; yet though his hands moved with flustered urgency, they seemed to fuss over something wholly unnecessary. Eiko lowered her voice and spoke earnestly.

“But you can’t possibly do such a thing—it’s rude, don’t you think?”

“No, it’s not rude.”

“After managing things domestically all this time, to suddenly now—”

As Hiroko tried to slip past them,
“Hey, Hiro-chan.”

Eiko stopped Hiroko with a pale face whose expression wavered between bewilderment, suppressed anger, and a striking vividness.

“Father is being impossible.”
“Even though Mr. Tazawa went to the trouble of coming, he absolutely refuses to meet him.”

“…………”

It was abrupt; the atmosphere was charged, and young Hiroko couldn’t find what to say.

“If you get emotional all of a sudden like that—no one will understand a thing, don’t you see?”

“Don’t I understand the reason well enough? I can’t stand that bastard—I won’t see him.”

“Don’t raise your voice like that.”

“Let them hear!”
“I absolutely won’t meet him.”
“Tell him that.”

From that tatami corridor, each individual flower of the fatsia plant appeared piercingly white, and through the dimming shrubbery, the sound of a bell could also be heard—likely from a child in the neighboring house who had fastened it at their waist as they ran about their room.

III

At nearly the same time, among a crowd that had exited Yurakucho Station, a young woman emerged from beside the Asahi Shimbun building, avoiding trucks as she made her way toward Sukiyabashi Bridge.

The not particularly wide pavement on the bridge was characteristically crowded for a Sunday with couples ambling along while holding children's hands and grasping blue or red rubber balloons in their other hands, and a pair of young women companions wearing brand-new upturned tabi socks paired with gaudy sandals.

With the awkward stiffness of one unaccustomed to Japanese clothes, her white collar fastened tightly, the girl emerged through the pedestrian flow toward Owari-cho in long strides—a straight-legged gait that caused her right shoulder to swing slightly more than necessary. Then, after walking a short distance, she entered the large stationery store on the right. In the basement, she bought a notebook and a pen nib, then climbed the stairs and began examining display shelves lined with various kinds of imported toys. There was a ceramic ornament of a yellow kitten with a red collar perched daintily around its neck, looking back with startled eyes at a fly that had landed on its sunbathing back. The fly was so exquisitely lifelike that it lent genuine realism to the small cat’s surprise, and in that moment when one instinctively doubted its artificiality, there seemed to lie the creator’s faint smile. The girl, with her unpowdered, earnest face, momentarily flashed an expression of astonishment and found herself captivated by the fly.

At that moment, from beyond the display shelf, a tall young man wearing a striped suit too modest for his age appeared, ambling as if browsing the arrayed items, and came to stand at the side of the same shelf where the girl was gazing at the kitten.

The girl raised her face at the figure reflected in the glass.
However, without so much as a second glance at the approaching young man, she left the shelf and headed toward the exit with unhurried steps that paused nowhere.

Next went a party of women carrying the store's large paper-wrapped package, followed by the suited young man exiting behind them.
Before a street stall selling seesaw toys, the girl fell into step with the young man, and they began moving toward Shinbashi as if by mutual understanding.
When they had walked several paces and crossed a side street, the young man broke the silence first.

“How are things at the dormitory?”

“Saturdays and Sundays are fine.”

“Do quite a lot of people wander around this area?”

“Mostly Shinjuku.”

The young man—his head tilted slightly to the right in that habitual way beneath an inconspicuous mouse-gray soft hat—walked in silence without looking toward the girl for a while, but then spoke in an unhurried tone:

“Let’s turn here.”

They turned left from the bustling main thoroughfare.
The girl obediently followed along, handling the hem of her haori and matching Oshima tsumugi skirt with student-like efficiency as she walked beside him, but on her lips—adorned for an outing with just a touch of rouge—there appeared a sort of frustrated urgency, wanting to say something yet failing to find the words.
Haruko—who operated under the alias Takai, a name given with laughter by Sato Shigekichi (her brother's Shizuoka High School friend turned organizational contact now called Ota) due to her height—found herself harboring a particular sentiment she wished to convey to this man she now met through entirely new revolutionary channels.

A sushi shop delivery person wearing a red woolen belly band came running, weaving through the narrow paved path while swaying their upper body from side to side and clutching a delivery box in one hand.
As if spurred by the act of avoidance itself, Haruko maintained her earnest expression while—

“But I am happy.”

Abruptly and candidly, she said to Shigekichi walking beside her:
"I'd always thought that if I came to Tokyo, something like this would surely happen..."

At that time, the wave of left-wing thought had permeated deeply and widely into the inner fabric of student life.

Haruko had read her brother’s Senki in the upper grades of girls’ school.
She consciously served as a messenger for her brother.
After coming to the cram school, she had become an active member of the study group and come to take charge of Relief Committee and Senki distribution activities.

Haruko supplemented her own words with a kind of fast speech that revealed her temperament.

"Of course, not in a personal sense—you understand, right?"

And with her rounded chin and somewhat sunken upper eyelids, her face flushed faintly as she smiled. Her unadorned words and smile loosened Shigekichi’s tightly set mouth. He—

“—I understand completely.”

He answered, then gave a remarkably striking smile. It was a smile that broke through his seemingly stern brows, letting the emotional depth within shine through and spill out.

Without slowing her pace, Haruko opened her black handbag accented with red, took out a small bundle of money wrapped in Japanese paper, and handed it to Shigekichi.

“The m group hasn’t gone too public yet—but the magazine funds are properly accounted for.”

With a broad sweep of his arm, Shigekichi used his left hand to pull his hat down deeper while silently slipping the money packet into his trouser pocket.

“At the previous meeting, we’d decided to find a distribution assistant—how did that go?”

“There’s one candidate.”

“A cell member?”

“Yes, someone who joined fairly recently.”
“A classmate.”
“Ideally we want someone with a home in the city—commuting students prove relatively unreliable for us.”
“They must keep school, home and daily life completely separate—when they return home, family sentiments overwhelm them.”
“Generally speaking, students like me—Tokyo-born and educated here all along—don’t seem particularly steadfast, I think.”

…………

Shigekichi walked in silence, knitting his thick brows and lashes together as if tapping them in thought, but he did not directly return to what Haruko had said.

“What’s the situation with the new one you found—a commuter student?”

he asked.

“No, they’re actually from East Dormitory.
"But her home is around Mukogaoka—Hiroko Kaganuma’s family—they’re middle bourgeois."

“—Does she seem promising?”

Haruko tilted her head, thinking and thinking,

“What do you make of someone like that?” she said.

“She’s in the literary club at school. She seems like a literary girl, but there’s something different about her—and she has such strong critical faculties. The critique she wrote the other day on Galsworthy’s novel had everyone quite impressed.”
“—But politically, I don’t think she’s particularly strong.”
“…but I think it’s fine since she has sincerity.”

On the main street, night market handcarts began to gather.
Crowds hurrying to the bus stop with department store shopping bags, and groups surging out with fresh vigor to enjoy their Sunday night, made the paved path grow increasingly congested.
Haruko wove through the crowd with her characteristic wide strides that swung her right shoulder more than usual, yet even so, if she let her guard down for even a moment, she risked being separated from Shigekichi and swallowed up by the throng.
At the intersection, Shigekichi—jostled by a man in an Inverness coat coming from behind—came to a halt and checked his wristwatch.

“Shall we sit for a moment?”

When Haruko nodded, Shigekichi pushed the glass door beside them and entered the café—where a gaudy chocolate tower stood displayed in its large show window—surveying the bustling interior with his broad, straight gaze.
Having just missed someone who had been standing there, he found a booth where soda water glasses still lined the table, and took a seat on his side—the one allowing visibility of the entrance.

“Your order—”

“What’ll you have?”

“Coffee for me.”
“Then two coffees.”

The waiter with a white cap perched on the edge of his head mechanically called out, “Two coffees!” Haruko exchanged glances with Shigekichi and smirked faintly for no particular reason.

“Ah, the book we discussed earlier—there’s a copy of the letter collection, so I’ll pass it along.”

It was a collection of letters Rosa had written to Liebknecht’s wife during her confinement.
Among novice female students, it circulated with fervent devotion and exhilaration.
The copy Haruko possessed had been passed around until its stitching frayed—yet even this proved insufficient.
Shigekichi withdrew something wrapped in bookstore paper from his pocket and set it on the table.

“You should acquire a copy yourself if it interests you.—Keep in mind that one’s included too.”

“Yes.”

Haruko draped one sleeve of her haori deeply over the table and stirred her coffee with one hand. While doing so, she cast a glance—brief yet by no means indifferent—at that paper-wrapped package placed beside the vase where pink and white carnations were arranged.

Shigekichi explained the documents he had handed over using simple words.
Then, he looked at his wristwatch once again,

“Well, when shall we meet next?”

“For me, Saturday or Sunday would work.”

“Meeting weekly probably won’t work.—Let’s tentatively set the regular schedule for every other week.”
“That should work, then?”

“Yes.”

“Even though you must be busy with various things, do make sure to attend classes properly—after all, trustworthiness in such matters is essential……”

Shigekichi added meticulous instructions and informed Haruko of the next meeting’s location and time.
When Shigekichi picked up the bill and started to stand at the end, Haruko hurriedly—

“Oh, that’s all right,” she said. “I’ll pay for it.” The same natural smile he had shown earlier while walking down the street once again illuminated Shigekichi’s face. He said, flashing a youthful, healthy set of teeth: “It’s fine. This much is nothing.”

“—Well, this.”

Haruko rose to her feet, clutching firmly under her arm the thin book package that had been placed in the shadow of the carnations. She took out her share of the coffee money and—amidst the brusqueness of sleeves spilling loose arms that stretched from her kimono's hemline—passed it to Shigekichi while fluttering the youthful colors of her cuffs.

IV

A horizontal beam was fixed to a grayish plaster wall, from which hung a small blackboard.
Over chalk that hadn’t been properly wiped away, someone had scrawled in a student’s hand: “Shibuya—From Mr. Tanida: Phone call at 1 PM.”
On the wall beside it, way up high, “Gin 3490” was written in white chalk using Arabic numerals, and upon closer inspection, around that telephone—indiscriminately, as if in some sloppy office—there were papers pasted with changed numbers and numbers scribbled all over.
A dim electric light hung from the wooden-floored room’s ceiling, dully reflecting Hiroko’s figure pacing back and forth beneath it on one side of the glass.
Nine-tenths of Hiroko’s mind was occupied with waiting for the phone call to come.
When she had returned home on her day off, Haruko had made two requests, saying that if by any chance she didn’t call by six o’clock this evening…
If the call didn’t come, Hiroko would have to hurry back to the dormitory.
And she was thinking that she absolutely had to fulfill the promise she had made with Haruko.
When Haruko had made that request—though they were peers—the conviction that she was more experienced in certain matters had been clearly visible on her sunken-eyed face,

“Since you seem to come and go from home quite freely, I’m counting on you—all right?”

she said in a tone that took for granted Hiroko’s compliance.
Having started to leave, she turned back slightly,

“Take responsibility.”

Once more whispering in a low voice, she departed.

Hiroko, having tucked the hem of her beige sweater under her clasped hands, lowered her head and paced back and forth in the confined space, stepping alternately in a straight line as if counting floorboard lines through her socks layered over stockings.
The kitchen on the other side of the door was bustling with activity.
Amidst the sound of a knife chopping things,

“Oh! The eight hundred yen still ain’t here yet?”

came a voice.

The tension of waiting for the phone and the impression of the parents' quarrel in the tatami-floored corridor were causing Hiroko to feel a disinclination to speak with anyone.

There was a banquet, and Taizo had left about an hour prior. Earlier than that, Tazawa had returned home. Eiko was sitting on a large zabuton cushion in her customary spot in the dining/living area, wearing the Kanze-mizu haori she had changed into when Tazawa arrived. For some reason, Hiroko did not want to sit beside her. A vague yet heavy aftertaste lingered in Hiroko’s chest. More than her father’s barefaced anger before his daughter without restraint, what struck Hiroko was her mother’s failure to counter it head-on with her usual dignified logic—instead becoming oddly smooth, as if pulling something downward from the side with her words. Those beautifully alluring eyes and drawn-out vocal inflections from that time felt to Hiroko like something resembling servility, and connecting them with her mother produced a sensorily unpleasant feeling. Under the brilliant electric light, her mother now sat composedly in the formal position, her pale face carrying an air of nothing having happened as she issued orders to the maid. That, too, put her in a mood to send Hiroko out to the wooden-floored room.

Lifting her lowered head, the moment Hiroko shook her soft bobbed hair like a young horse flicking its mane in irritation, the telephone bell rang.

Having waited so long that it startled her instead, Hiroko reached for the receiver and rose slightly on tiptoe,

“Hello? Hello?”

Hiroko produced a voice lower than her natural one.

“Ah, hello? Is this Koishikawa 3375? This is a public phone.”

A drrring sound came from afar, and no sooner had the operator’s voice finished saying “Please go ahead” than—

“Hello?” Hiroko’s voice came rapid-fire.

“Oh, you?”

Haruko’s slightly raspy, weighty voice collided with hers from both directions at once.

“Heh, heh, heh.”

Haruko laughed through the telephone receiver, though no trace of actual mirth could be heard in it.
Hiroko,

“How did it go?”
She pressed even closer to the mouthpiece.

“Are you heading back now?”

“Yes, I’m about to board the National Railway now. How about you?”

“Hmm.”

“See you tomorrow then.”

Haruko regained her businesslike tone and began to hang up the phone.

“Don’t forget to write that thing by tomorrow.”

When Junjiro stood up, Hiroko asked while looking up at her younger brother's face from below, "Mind if I tag along for a bit?"

“Of course.”

Junjiro—large-framed in his kasuri-patterned kimono with cylindrical sleeves and black merino heko obi sash—climbed the stairs two steps at a time. From behind, Hiroko gripped the handrail with one hand, deliberately leaning her weight on that arm to arch her body backward as she followed slowly behind. There was nothing particularly distinctive about Junjiro’s room. Behind the second-floor guest room lay a mizuya kitchenette; he occupied its north-facing four-tatami space that stretched longer than standard dimensions.

Passing through the darkened front tatami room, Junjiro turned on the switch in the small chamber. The desk stood positioned to catch light from the left. Against the back wall rose a glass-doored bookshelf lined with olive-colored silk; from the white shade of the electric lamp now illuminating the cramped space—seemingly too bright—hung a rectangle of notebook paper meticulously cut and suspended at a short length.

Hiroko remained standing at the threshold,

"It's a bit chilly, but it feels settled here."

She added curiously, looking around at her surroundings. On the nail in the lintel where the light fixture with its pull cord hung, an oil painting of a cloudy seashore on a sketch board stood propped up without a frame. When he raised his eyes from the desk, it occupied an ideal position, but to Hiroko, the painting's gray, pale yellow, and vermilion color scheme felt lonely.

“Whose painting is that?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure, but isn’t it Wakun-san’s?”

“Since it’s north-facing, you should’ve found one with warmer colors.”
“—There must be one, right? If you looked.”

“It’s better with less stimulation, so this works.”

Hiroko found an old tripod chair pushed into the corner and sat down on it.

Junjiro’s face, as he sat properly in his own swivel chair, was directly beneath the light.
Hiroko, slightly shaded, had her face emerge at a much lower position.
The facial features of these siblings—born two years apart, one late-born and the other early-born—when viewed side by side beneath a single lamp like this, naturally held subtle differences between them.
Despite sharing similarly round faces and the same distinctive upper lip lines, an elusive withdrawn impression lingered in Junjiro’s overall expression, even amidst his cheerfulness.
In Hiroko’s bluish-clear eyes and around her mouth dwelled a kind of fervor—as if she demanded to see what she wished to see and say what needed saying—accompanied by the brisk blood flow of her unblemished skin.
Tonight, there was an anguished hue in Hiroko’s eyes.

Hiroko gazed intently at the scene—the notebooks and dictionaries neatly organized, and on the front panel of the desk, a high school timetable written on a narrow strip of paper and pasted there—but,
“Jun-chan, you’re so meticulous.”
she said in a voice that mingled a sigh with admiration.
And,
“Hey, Jun-chan.”

She looked up at her younger brother’s face and asked.

“Why don’t you move into the dorm?”

Junjiro shook his knees—clad in indigo kasuri-patterned fabric whose design seemed rather too childish for his large frame—as he...

“Because I can commute from home.”

“Well, that’s true—but don’t you want to try dorm life, Jun-chan?”

“I don’t particularly feel like trying it.”

For a while, Hiroko remained silent, stroking the back of her own bobbed hair—

“I think leaving home was good for me.”

she said in a clear tone.

“If you stay only within the place you were born and raised, you can’t truly see what it’s like—I think I’ve been very fortunate in that regard.”

An expression appeared on Hiroko’s face—somewhat hesitant yet unable to suppress her desire to know.

“Someone like you, Jun-chan—have you never once thought of leaving home? Is life here really harmonizing so well with who you are…?"
“That’s what puzzles me.”

“It’s not like I’m harmonizing from start to finish or anything.”
“But...”

Changing tack, Junjiro continued.

“If you say that, then isn’t the dormitory the same? There are still people there—I think my own feelings matter more than the place.”

“Then tell me, Jun-chan—what about this? When you entered Tokyo Higher School, they had that greenhouse built for you as a celebration. What do you think about that? Being treated that way—how do you feel about being treated like that?”

Junjiro twisted his neck under the lamp and met his sister’s gaze fixed intently upon him. After a brief pause, in a low voice tinged with solemnity,

“Is it really such a bad thing?”

he asked in return.
Hiroko felt affection and frustration intertwine, seething painfully within her chest.

“Bad—I don’t know if I can call it bad in the strict sense of right and wrong, but in any case, such things are undeniably rare—one in a thousand—in this society.”
“It’s undeniable that you’re inside such a special greenhouse—the greenhouse of your sheltered life.”
“With the money used to build that greenhouse, a person who earns forty or fifty yen a month could support a wife and children for roughly a year and a half.”

Still not taking his eyes off his sister’s face, Junjiro—

“I’d never thought about such things regarding that greenhouse before.”

Because he had said it so honestly and without false modesty, Hiroko found herself pitying this younger brother of hers—whose physique was far larger than her own.
Hiroko spoke in a comforting, encouraging manner.

“I truly understand that Jun-chan wants to live properly.”
“Well, but…”

As she spoke, Hiroko encountered yet another question, her eyes taking on an expression that seemed to startle even herself.

“Jun-chan, aren’t you part of any school groups?”

she asked simply and directly.

“The ones students are involved in… Of course such things exist right?”

Then, Junjiro slightly altered the expression around his mouth and began shaking his knees again.

“…………”

“Don’t you know?”

Without directly answering that, Junjiro—his youthful, soft face now wearing a sincere, pained expression—said:

“—I hate debates that are just for debate’s sake. Listening to everyone just talking to show off their own cleverness—it makes me feel sick.”

Hiroko’s heart, too, was touched by these words.
Somewhere within herself, there was also a weariness regarding a certain aspect of her own being.
But—

“Is that all there is?”

“…………”

“What do you think? Is that all there is? There certainly are people like that. But there are also those earnestly thinking about and striving to create the new history we ought to write. Isn’t that right? If we live without taking a single step beyond the old era, then what was the purpose of us being born as their children? Where is the meaning in us coming into this world twenty or thirty years after our parents? When Kipling went to Dublin University, the first thing he said to the students was: ‘I envy you all.’ Yes—deeply so. Because you’re young.’ He said those words—I think he truly meant that the future belongs to us, and we belong to the future. Therefore, we mustn’t compromise.”

Still shaking his knees, Junjiro—

“Sis, you’re always thinking things through.”

he said.

“You’ve been studying hard—”

A blush rose to Hiroko’s clear face.

“It’s not studying—it’s just that, here inside me…”

Hiroko pressed her left palm firmly against her own chest.

"There is something.
"It won't stay still.
"You understand, don't you?"

The siblings sat in silence for a while in the small nighttime room’s atmosphere—still under the same lamp as before, yet where darkness and light now seemed to deepen their intensity.

“But the three of us—how absurd we are!”

While forming a good-natured smile, Hiroko broke the silence.

“Brother Tatsuo is that kind of person—do you know, Jun-chan? When I once asked Brother Tatsuo what kind of friends are good to associate with, he said, ‘Well, those at the same standard of living as you are best.’ Jun-chan is Jun-chan—after all, you’re practically an angel—so someone like me, born upside-down, might be completely different from you after all, you know?”

The two of them laughed in unison.

Junjiro was a child born after his father Taizo had spent several years living abroad.
The family half-believed the story that when Eiko became pregnant with him, she had taken such a liking to the Virgin and Child oil painting her husband had brought back from abroad—just around that time—that she would gaze at it morning and evening, wishing to give birth to a boy like the one in the painting.

After Hiroko moved to the dormitory, the room she had previously used became a storage space for Tatsuo, who had gotten a job at an electric company in Sendai.
Now without a fixed place of her own anywhere in the house, Hiroko exited her brother’s room and entered her father’s study.

In the room—where a Noh mask hung from a pillar and a tall cabinet in the corner housed ceramics—remained the faint warmth from the gas stove Taizo had turned off before going upstairs.
Separate from the long desk lined with her father’s stationery stood an old marble table pushed against a folding screen.
Hiroko settled there.
She spread out small manuscript pages.
At the cram school specializing in languages, even subjects like Western history were taught in English by foreign instructors.
Yet their teaching relied entirely on outdated rote memorization—its lackluster content and pointless drills making it widely unpopular among students.
Though Hiroko had entered language studies out of literary passion, she despised how these missionary teachers equated linguistic ability with true cultivation, posturing as paragons despite their artistic barrenness.
When such discussions bloomed in the dormitory, Haruko—

“Ms. Kaganuma, you write it.”

Haruko said.

“We’ll put it in Keyaki.”

They—a group of fifteen or sixteen literature enthusiasts—had been creating something like a circulating magazine by that name, bound in manuscript paper.
What Haruko had said over the phone about writing was referring to this very thing.

Under the light of the desk lamp, Hiroko gradually gathered her thoughts.
What she wanted to say was becoming clear.
Along with that, however, the peculiar sensation—anxiety mixed with novelty—grew increasingly stronger as she realized her brother’s feelings and way of thinking might differ severely from hers, or perhaps be entirely different in nature.
When leaving Junjiro’s room, she had casually noticed a sheet of paper pasted above the entrance lintel bearing the word “Meditation,” its M-shaped peak sharply erect.
That too lingered in Hiroko’s mind.
She understood the impulse to govern one’s life through a self-imposed motto.
But before summer break, no such “Meditation” sign had adorned Junjiro’s lintel.

When she had written a little over three pages, someone quietly opened the study door from outside.

“I thought someone was here and got startled.”

Unexpectedly, it was Eiko’s voice.
Hiroko casually turned over what she had been writing on the table and flipped it.

“Weren’t you asleep?”

Eiko vaguely said, “Ah…”,

“What about you? What’s wrong?”
“Aren’t you cold?”

Approaching the table to look,

“Oh, I see you were writing something,” Eiko said.

“Yeah… After all, it’s Nobel Prize money.”

With half her mind still seemingly elsewhere, Hiroko responded in that manner. Eiko wondered why there were women with medical doctorates but none with literature doctorates. She would often say that if you were going to pursue literature, you should do it with the determination to win Nobel Prize money.

Eiko did not even attempt to laugh at her daughter’s joke and sat down on the sofa before the stove, gathering both sleeves across her chest. The hem of her nightgown—layered over a yukata—hung slightly askew over her tabi socks, and she wore an old striped silk haori jacket. In the space where even the distant rays of the desk lamp faded into darkness, there was something genuine about her mother’s silent figure that held Hiroko’s attention. After watching her for some time, Hiroko gently asked,

“Shall I light the stove?”

“Yes.”

When she moved to turn on the ceiling light, Eiko stopped her: “Don’t—it’s too bright.”

Her mother wasn’t crying tears. Yet she seemed to be suffering somehow—her anguish visible in her shoulders and neck. This suffering stirred within Hiroko a kind of physical ache.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“Your father’s jealousy is unbearable…”

Eiko spoke in a tone absorbed by her thoughts, eyes fixed on the floor.

“Shall I light the stove?”

Hiroko asked.

“I suppose so.”

When she tried to turn on the ceiling light next, Eiko—

“It’s too bright—stop that.”

She stopped her.
Mother wasn’t shedding tears.
But she seemed to be in some kind of distress.
Her heart seemed to be in anguish.
That anguish was manifesting around her shoulders and neck.
That awakened a kind of physical pain within Hiroko as well.

“Couldn’t you sleep?”

“Father’s jealousy is becoming such a problem…”

Eiko said in a tone absorbed in thought, her eyes fixed on the floor.

V

The station stood utterly deserted, a place where occasional boarding passengers could be seen stretching all the way from ticket gates to platforms above. Only during morning and evening rushes would crowds surge forth, country-style buses ceaselessly departing and arriving at the station entrance. With an air resembling school excursion day, waves of same-aged schoolgirls in identical uniforms - subdued yet charged with latent energy - overflowed into every corner. When those hours passed, even the buses slackened their urgency, taking aboard sparse passengers before swaying their lightweight rear sections with nonchalance as they traversed the brief station-front town and advanced down lightly paved roads flanked by mulberry fields and mixed woodlands.

After leaving town, there was only a bus stop in front of the cram school.
There were no houses in the vicinity.
After continuing further along the single road for some time, a newly opened bicycle shop with a red enamel sign hanging amidst the fields came into view, and the bus turned right.
There, large zelkova, oak, and cedar trees aged over the years grew thickly on both sides, merging into the Kawagoe Highway where stone walls topped with black-painted fences and thick gateposts bore signs advertising improved silkworm egg sales and purebred chicken breeding and sales.

The old-fashioned, wary countenance of this highway appeared entirely disconnected from the lives led by some four hundred girls clad in Western attire.
There was a single stationery store opened by the landlord’s second son, and from that store, an emergency bell had been installed connecting to the main house.
An old police box stood at the corner, and from the thoroughfare could be seen a wife in a purple merino kimono and white apron airing striped futons on bamboo poles in the vacant lot behind.
In such neighborhoods, even the sound of the cram school’s bell did not reach.

After two days off, there was an indefinably different mood about Monday.
During the dictation session using phonetic symbols, Hiroko made far more mistakes than usual in that mechanical transcription work.
“Miss Kaganuma, I know you can be more careful than this.”

Hiroko was told by Miss Sawyer, who wore a chestnut-colored dress.
When the period ended, Sugitobashi Takako, who was in the neighboring seat,

“You’re having a blue Monday today, aren’t you?”

She said in Akita dialect through small red lips. Hiroko pursed her lips into an inverted V-shape, nodded with a series of “uh-huhs,” and walked off toward the library with her. A flood of western sunlight poured through the bay window at the corridor’s end. There, three or four people clustered around Haruko.

“Which section are you using?”
“If we overlap, it’ll ruin everything.”

“Oh, but I was counting on that section…”

“Hm-hm-hm-hm”

The bluntly cut ends of her hair glittered in the western sunlight against the back of her blue sweater as they jostled each other in hushed voices. When Hiroko approached, Haruko silently showed her the book she was holding by turning its cover face down. The title was "The View of Nature in Poetry" by a certain literary scholar. Hiroko hunched her shoulders.

For students, the most challenging assignment was English composition homework. When stuck, there were times when they would scramble to find a Japanese source text, use parts of it here and there for translation, and make do. Since the foreign teachers didn’t read Japanese books, this method worked.

Hiroko entered the library, sat down by the window, and worked for a while. When Hiroko was about to leave, Takako, who had been at a distant desk, noticed this and came out together with her.

“...Going back to my aunt’s house now would be boring... I’d like to stop by your room instead, na.”

“Come on in—I won’t mind a bit.”
“But it’s so noisy there…”

As they were slowly walking along the gravel path toward the dormitory, Toda, who taught translation classes, came from the opposite direction.
Toda—who had two account books tucked under the arm of his checkered suit and was holding a large potted cyclamen in both hands—responded to Hiroko and her companion’s nod with an overly casual tone:
“Isn’t it lovely?”
As he said this, he lifted the pot in his hands to display it, smirked with a crinkle at the corner of his eye, and strode past them with vigorous steps.

“……”

“—But why is that teacher always so ingratiating? It’s baffling beyond words.”

“……”

“That third-year Kawara-san is a relative, I heard.”

That was the first time Hiroko had heard of it.

“Is that so?”

“That’s what it means, you see. Kawara-san commutes from that house, and yet she still manages to keep up with everything, doesn’t she?”

While talking, Hiroko saw Takako off outside the gate.
As she waited for the bus, the supervisor of Nishiryo Dormitory emerged in a kimono with an obi, accompanied by four or five preparatory course students.
Clustered together waiting for the bus,

“Do take care on your way.”

she was repeating.

Hiroko returned to the room.
Miwa, her roommate, peered up at the mirror attached inside the clothes cabinet while carefully parting her damp post-bath hair.

“If you’re going to take a bath, you’d better hurry.”

“Thank you, I’m fine. I already took one at home.”

Miwa took out pink felt slippers from the corner and changed into them. After doing that, she glanced at herself in the mirror once more, closed it, then came to the desk and sat down. Shifting hips back and lowering head,

“Hey, Ms. Kaganuma, I’ve gotten so gloomy!”
she said in a characteristically slightly nasal voice.

“Hmm, again?”

“What’s this ‘again’ about?”

“But you’re the one who’s gloomy morning, noon, and night...”

It was the hour when the newly lit lamp’s glow was beautifully reflected in the windowpane.

“But there’s no helping it—that’s just how it is.”
“Yesterday I went to see a movie with Ms. Tamaki.”
“When I saw their student life, I really came to think how dull we are in comparison.”
“Where lies the joy of our youth?”

Only the last line did Miwa say in English, in a tone as if reciting poetry.
Hiroko glared with what seemed like anger at Miwa’s face—its fine-textured smoothness, the nose as if pinched into shape.
She jerked her chin unpleasantly,

“There it exists.”

She said in French, short and curt.

“That’s right, it may exist here—but honestly, all the teachers here, even though they went and studied over there, seem to have done nothing but dormitory supervision.”
“They’ve certainly never experienced a truly enjoyable college life.”
“Since not everyone here will become teachers anyway, they could at least be a bit more pleasant—after all, the school is essentially here for us—we’re the ones who…”

Hiroko burst into laughter at these words—her first genuine laugh that day.

“Exactly!”
“I want to taste everything worth tasting in my youth.”
“How terribly naive to think students from the provinces come here solely seeking academics.”

“Are you part of the group because of that feeling?”

Miwa silently watched Hiroko’s face for a while after posing that question, then turned her glossy cherry-blossom-pink face toward the window.

“It’s all right.”

she said.

“I wouldn’t do anything like betraying you all.”

After a pause,

“I’m different from you and Ms. Haruko.”
“I’m an egoist.”
“So I wouldn’t do such things even if only for my own pride—it’s not for conscience’s sake.”

During free time, Miwa picked up a record from the table that she had apparently newly purchased,
“Want to come dance for a bit?”
and invited Hiroko.
“Why don’t you invite Ms. Toyoko?”

After about an hour had passed, Miwa arrived together with Haruko.

“I’ll let you sit here specially—consider it a privilege.”

Miwa tapped the spot beside her on the bed—where a French doll was placed near the pillow—as she sat with one leg folded beneath her.

“Thanks.”

Haruko then approached Hiroko and,

“Hey, that’s a bit of a hurdle, isn’t it?”
she said.

“—Well, if it’s inconvenient, I’ll lower the blind. Okay?”
“Okay?”
“About thirty minutes.”

Haruko moved her sturdy shoulders to open the window, positioned her hands and feet on the frame in one swift motion, then nimbly vanished into the darkness outside.
Hiroko stood before the wide-open night window that exuded a strange emptiness and listened intently into the darkness.
From the direction of the West Dormitory where Haruko had headed came the clatter of a well motor, filling the surroundings with a disorganized low murmuring.
Miwa sat on the bed like a Turkish woman, raised both eyebrows high up, pursed her lips, and began clumsily whistling a waltz.

Six

The following week, Hiroko did not return home.
The following Saturday happened to be her father’s birthday.

Hiroko stopped by a flower shop on the way and bought long-stemmed roses, which she then took with her.

The front door was closed.
She rang the bell, but no one came.
Hiroko made her heels click against the paving stones and circled around along the inner garden fence toward the kitchen.
The garbage can lid had been left open, and beneath it lay a black mixed-breed pet dog.
When the dog saw Hiroko, it remained lying down and lazily wagged its bushy, heavy tail.

At that moment, laughter erupted in unison from the maids' quarters—laughter utterly unlike their usual speech toward Hiroko and the others, unrestrained and fractured into two distinct tones.

Hiroko found it excruciating to be addressed in that suddenly affected manner immediately after hearing their genuine mirth. Without hesitation, she circled past the charcoal shed and opened the garden gate. No one was visible. Standing in the garden while gazing up at the second floor, Hiroko formed her hands into a makeshift megaphone.

"Hellooo?" she called out with exaggerated inflection. Junjiro also seemed to be absent. Opening the window there, Hiroko entered the house. She went to the kitchen, "Is Father coming home for dinner tonight?"

she asked.
Taizo had been away on a business trip to Yamagata since the day before yesterday.

"What about Mother?"

“She will be returning for dinner, I hear.”

Hiroko arranged the roses she had brought by herself and took them to her father’s study.
She went to the Western-style room and listened to records for a while.
Even so, there was something unsettled in Hiroko’s heart.
Hiroko wandered through the house with a face that seemed smaller and more taut than usual.

When she slid open the fusuma door to the small room that had become her own, she found the shutters tightly closed, with only the dim outlines of stacked old hat boxes visible in the gloom. Opening the guest room’s shoji and looking inside, Hiroko let her surprise show on her face. The yellow leaves of the young Paji tree—which had grown so obliquely through natural seeding that it now surpassed the eaves—lay scattered and piled upon the stones. Setting that aside, the low bamboo grass that had likely been confined only near the base of the stone lantern at first had now spread from root to root, growing thick all the way to the round asunaro tree on the left. With the onset of winter's withering, the edges of all those small bamboo leaves were turning pale. It was a view that seemed as though wildness itself were surging up from the very ground and closing in.

Hiroko let out a throaty groan, crossed her arms, and stared into the garden.
In her childhood days, this garden had contained a narrow vacant lot paved with small stones behind the stone lantern and maple tree, while the tea room's front planting grew thick with hinoki cypress leaves, creating an air of refined charm.
When they began using automobiles, Taizo had the garden partition moved forward, and simultaneously the garden lost its former composure and began deteriorating.
Hiroko contemplated her parents' way of living and felt deeply interested.
They had kept vigorously adding new Western-style rooms and second floors to the portion of the residence purchased back in some year of Meiji 30s—whether for what had once seemed likely to become many children or some other reason.
Though a single house, the entrance area differed from the inner quarters in blending Eastern and Western elements. Moreover, even within the Eastern-style sections existed variations in design, while the two Western-style rooms each followed distinct architectural approaches according to their respective construction periods.
Out of necessity, Father had unapologetically shrunk the garden.
There, in stark contrast to the refined tastes contained and polished within the house, one could even sense something brazen—a vigorous coarseness that seemed to seize hold of the dwelling through their ever-shifting lives year after year.
The Kaganumas were people of vigorous vitality.
Hiroko understood that fervor well.
Yet while her father would shine with such joy when they met, he had now forgotten all about celebrating his birthday—something Hiroko had wanted to commemorate—and had instead dismissed it to leave; her mother too had dismissed it and remained absent. It was in such aspects that Hiroko found herself harboring emotional textures that could never fully align with those of her parents.

Still moving about restlessly, Hiroko eventually put on a shoe that had been left exactly as when taken off—lying on the garden soil—and exited through the corridor she had entered from.
She called out from outside the kitchen.

“I’ll be back for dinner, so—”

Hiroko decided to go to the bookstore.

The side street by Ichiko was among the most inconvenient and unpleasant of all roads crisscrossing Hongo.
Harassed by cars shuttling along the sidewalk-less lane, Hiroko emerged onto the main thoroughfare and headed toward Sanchome.
As she waited for a gap in traffic to cross toward the bookstore's side—
A woman's face strikingly resembling her mother flashed past her vision from the lead taxi's side window among two or three cabs streaming along the opposite roadway.
When she looked again, the car had already dwindled into the distance.

When Hiroko entered the bookstore, she forgot all about that matter; her face slightly flushed as she became engrossed in browsing.
The biography of Tolstoy she had bought haphazardly the other day—approached from a new angle—proved fascinating, and she felt as though literature itself had appeared before her illuminated by a different light.
I want books like that—books about literature.
Regarding that, Haruko herself didn’t have much knowledge either.
Hiroko selected Plekhanov’s “On Literature”
and Fadeyev’s "Destruction"—two books she purchased.

This time, the entrance was open.
On the shoe-removal area, lined up neatly alongside Mother’s sandals were a pair of men’s shoes.

“A visitor?”

“Mr. Tazawa has come with Madam.”

…………

“Madam is in the Western-style room with that guest.”

Without going that way, Hiroko entered the living room.

“Shall I announce you?”

“No, no need.”

The impression of her mother’s profile she thought she had glimpsed on the street earlier reemerged in her mind.
It seemed that Tazawa’s presence wasn’t merely a coincidence on his part, and Hiroko found it painful to have her suspicions swayed in that manner.
The other night, when Eiko came to Hiroko’s room where she was up writing late, she complained to her daughter that Taizo was upset about Tazawa’s comings and goings and that it was troubling her.
At that time, Eiko,

“Even Father—when Mrs. Shoda came over, he went so far as to take another bath after already having bathed once—and yet…”

With that, she mentioned the names of several repatriated women from years past—names Hiroko only vaguely recalled—and gave a bitter smile.
“‘Even Father’ sounds strange,” Hiroko had said at the time.

Eiko was typically someone who spoke in a loud voice.
Yet now the parlor lay hushed.
Hiroko felt something unnatural, her painful emotions intensifying as she looked toward the clock as if considering whether to simply leave.
By that hour, there would be no meal left at the dormitory.

After going to the washroom, Hiroko combed back her hair and stared intently for a long time at her own somber face reflected in the bright mirror, scrutinizing it.
Am I jealous?
Hiroko couldn’t bring herself to think that way.
Hiroko had disliked Tazawa from the very beginning.
When Eiko relayed Tazawa’s critical remarks—something along the lines of “Miss Hiroko did this or that”—Hiroko would often,

“Hmm.”

That was all she said. While Tazawa was indeed a different type of person from Taizo, Junjiro, Hiroko, and even Eiko herself, Hiroko could not perceive this difference as being of a superior kind. *He’s decked himself out in German and philosophy*, she thought. *An artificial human*. Hiroko had always thought this way and had never even attempted to meet him of her own accord. To the one she rather felt contempt for—Eiko appeared drawn. And he had come on Father’s birthday while Father was away. For Hiroko, that too was painful. Moreover, if Tazawa knew of this feeling, he would twist his pale cheeks and slyly declare, “No matter what Miss Hiroko says, she’s jealous.” Hiroko was doubly annoyed.

As she tried to open the glass door, she came face-to-face with—

“Oh, Sis, you were here?”

The one who entered was Junjiro.

“—Jun-chan, were you here?”

“I was.”
“Where?”

“In my room—why?”

“Mr. Tazawa is here.”

“Hmm… I had no idea.”
“Oh… I see.”

he said.
The dining table preparations were complete.
On the large table, two portions had been arranged forlornly in a corner.
Hiroko and Junjiro looked down at it and, for some reason, remained standing there.

“What will Mother be doing?”

Hiroko asked the maid who was there.

“I’m not sure.”

“Go and ask.”

The maid returned and,

“She will be dining with the guest over there.”

Junjiro wore a disturbed expression over his plump, honest face and looked at his sister.

“That’s strange—why…”

Hiroko stood rigidly and said in a very harsh voice.

“Go and tell Madam that she will be dining here.
“Until Madam arrives, Mr. Junjiro and I will be waiting here, so—”

When the maid left, Hiroko’s tears welled up uncontrollably.
Whirling around to turn her back on Junjiro, who remained standing rigidly, Hiroko began pacing around the completely unappetizing, cooling dining table.