Pathway to Japanese Literature

This Morning's Snow

When the sun began to shine, cheerful sounds of melting snow started echoing all around.

With a small rumble from a rooftop somewhere, the snow slid down.
Amidst a chorus of sounds, the dripping began to be heard, and restless spray flew onto the second-floor eaves of the printing shop across the way.
The midday sun, not long past noon, shone directly on the row of houses across the way, the spray glittering as if creating small rainbows while scattering.

The snow that had accumulated overnight—still disrupting the Government railway schedule when Mineko and her colleagues commuted that morning—now began melting vigorously as sunlight touched it, like laughing children fleeing; sliding from rooftops, dissolving into rivulets that raced through the less-than-pristine gutters lining the neighborhood streets.

Even on the scale-patterned slate roof of this shabby rented office, the snow must have been melting vigorously. However, by the window where Tokiko sat, the shadow from the second floor cast sharply onto snow that still retained nearly half its overnight depth, while the neighboring house's lower roof pressed close. The shadows on the snow were an indigo-purple of such intensity they seemed almost fragrant. The freshly frozen snow's surface glittering dazzlingly and the indigo shadows cast upon it made Mineko envision the solemn undulations of snow blanketing distant wilderness and the creeping interplay of light and shadow.

Mineko’s fiancé Tsukamoto Shoji had been deployed, and in a letter from about three months prior, there had been news of the first snow that fell in that region.
True to his scientific background, Shoji had written how even here in these mountains hundreds of miles from Tokyo, the snow crystals were beautifully formed in the same patterns.
Tokyo was in late autumn, and Mineko found herself alternately savoring the poignant ache of autumn evenings without Shoji and the daytime tension of preparing to establish this office as she went about her days.

The cityscape she saw daily—its grime unchanged—appeared utterly transformed under snowfall’s novel gaze, becoming inexplicably fascinating as a snowy-day view.
Every winter, Mineko had awaited the snow.
Even mud became forgivable when called melting snow.

Before Mineko’s desk, glints from ceaselessly swaying meltwater began reflecting on the windowpane.
The light beam—intensified by this snow-cleared day’s special brightness—cast onto a conspicuously grimy ceiling patch, stretching and contracting there.

Near Mineko, the rain gutter suddenly burst into a lively gurgle that sounded like a song.
Mineko's chest swelled warmly, drawn by the rain gutter's melody proclaiming the vitality of their life.

After Shoji too had gone, through long discussions with Tokiko and mutual strenuous efforts, Mineko cherished and loved from the heart this shabby room they had managed to secure as their own office.

Three typewriters.
Office desks.
Work chairs.
A round table holding an enamel medicine jar and a tray with five overturned teacups.
A work schedule pinned to the wall with tacks.
Each and every item had been carried here and arranged by either Tokiko, Mineko, or Haruyo.
Not a single item had been gathered by chance.

In the outer periphery surrounding Marunouchi with its chain of massive office buildings, office districts of varied stature—some even bearing names like "Yamakan Alley"—were clustered together, existing through scraps fallen from the movement of enormous profits, just as subcontracting small factories swarm around a large factory. Sandwiched between a repurposed bag shop, a sporadically open sushi restaurant, and a hardware store downstairs hung the sign of a partnership company of obscure origin. This building stood a layer or two removed from such office districts near the Government railway station. Each time they used the phone, they paid five sen to borrow the one downstairs; far from having heating facilities, they even had to boil water for their boxed lunches themselves. Yet this place remained a fortress of life where three young women—each separated by two or three years in age—strove to live valiantly. On the wall beside the work schedule hung an old-fashioned yet comforting reproduction of a landscape painting. In this post-rain coastal scene was revealed what the three young hearts that had made this place their workplace sought in life—even through such trivial things.

Here at their base, the first snow day since its establishment had arrived.

Over her crisp light-blue woolen jacket now wearing a navy work coat, Mineko arched her back slightly as she turned toward Tokiko.

Tokiko too had paused her hands and was half-consciously rubbing them together.

The ten fingers honed through five years of machine work remained taut and faintly nervous.
During this brief respite while massaging her fingers, Tokiko kept her chest out and posture straight as she lifted her face to gaze at the snow.

Though her profile seemed innocent, the elegant lines of Tokiko's face remained composed, her expression still bearing the countenance of one who lived while containing multitudes within.

Mineko quietly closed her slightly parted lips that had been about to speak and straightened her posture.
The solemn stillness permeating Tokiko's entire figure in such moments—a quietude tinged with loneliness—made Mineko reluctant to disturb it with her own haphazard voice.
The pale blue birthmark stretching from Tokiko's left eyebrow to eyelid stood out more than usual, as if some shadow had settled there.
If only it truly were an object's azure shadow—if Tokiko could simply step away leaving that shadow behind, her face might emerge smooth and unblemished.

As Tokiko now gazed at the first snow from their office, her heart surely contained complex feelings—different from how Mineko took it as something to strive for and found joy in.

During her time as an English major student, Mineko served as a class officer and met Tokiko, who was two years her senior.
From that time onward, Tokiko enthusiastically engaged in extracurricular typing work and commuted to Kanda at night to study shorthand.
And as they grew closer in temperament, she stopped concealing that she was attending the school to prepare for her livelihood.

"My father has an unusual disposition, you know."
"What people in the past called adventurers—that might be what he’s like."
"Even so, he went so far as to let me attend this school…"
"From our family’s financial standpoint, it was impossible."

She had also made such personal disclosures.

After graduating, Tokiko had immediately begun working at one of Tokyo’s foremost banks—a quasi-national institution of considerable stature.
At the time of her employment exam, Tokiko had gone as her usual bare-faced self, and even after she began working there, that remained unchanged.
Mineko had not been indifferent to Tokiko’s attitude.
The foreign trade company where Mineko had belatedly started working happened to be located right near that bank, and particularly over these past three years or so, their relationship had naturally transcended the ordinary bounds of classmates.

The company where Mineko worked had a flashy culture, and the young female office workers put considerable effort into their makeup. Sometime shortly after she started working, Mineko expressed naive surprise,

“The people at my company are something else.”

she said.

“They go about with complexions completely different from their natural ones, acting all nonchalant.”

Mineko, whose father was a plain professor of linguistics, remained unaccustomed to such urban-style makeup.

“Since my workplace is like that, it’s somewhat different.”

Tokiko said this, but soon—

“But how mortifying! To have a completely different face appear—what an embarrassment that must be.”

The subtle shadow in those sensitive words startled Mineko.
Within Tokiko’s voice resonated her own feelings—an inability to endure masking herself through such cosmetic methods.

Since Shoji had entered her life, Mineko’s consideration for Tokiko’s heart as a woman had deepened with newfound sincerity.
Observing how Tokiko’s excellence as a person was being sharpened through sheer accidental misfortune as a woman, Mineko grew humble about her own ordinary happiness and came to believe that preserving it was her responsibility.

One autumn, the two of them had gone out for a walk in the suburbs. Chili pepper fields that looked like rows of crimson flames rising from the thin layer of cold black soil were beautiful, and there was a distant grassy path where geese honked noisily as they made their way back.

At a spot where a tall red pine tree on the embankment had its trunk illuminated by the western sun, when they rested,

Suddenly, Tokiko—

“In my case, retirement comes at forty,” she said.

“I wonder how it is at your place...”

“I wonder if it’s set in stone...”

Even when Mineko gave it just a moment’s thought, not a single woman over thirty came to mind among that vast multitude.

“Even though I’ll have to work my whole life anyway, being forced to retire at forty is truly troubling.”
“This is supposed to be the prime of my life, isn’t it?”
“The idea of not having to work beyond that point is absolutely impossible for someone like me.”

Mineko had another pressing concern of her own.
As the wartime situation progressed, changes arose in overseas trade work, and the company had begun scaling down operations while preparing to implement staff reductions.
On one hand, new companies were emerging in great numbers and a shortage of men was becoming apparent; therefore, even if that place were to fail, there was no immediate concern about Mineko losing her job.
Even Mineko was not gazing at her life’s path with reassurance.

Whether Shoji would return safely without fail in the coming years.
That was not something expressible through mere wishes or fervent feelings in her heart.
By envisioning herself as one who would work her entire life, she found she could live each day with vitality; indeed, this very approach to living seemed most fitting to complement those distant years Shoji was enduring.

When viewed from such mental resolve, a company job that merely involved receiving a paycheck was monotonous and mechanical.
When it came to that manner of working—even in something as basic as how time was used—she found it natural to want to discover a way to become more her own master.

Moreover, for Tokiko, there must have been feelings she didn't put into words.

Once, when Mineko happened to meet her brother’s friend who worked at that bank and Tokiko’s name came up,
“She attended school with me,”
she said.

“Ah, she’s here,”
“Right here in this section.”

With that, the young man made as if to touch his well-groomed eyelids,

“She’s a bit of an odd one, don’t you think?”

Although it had no connection to his own emotional world, he had phrased it as merely noting its distinctive features. Mineko regretted having mentioned Tokiko’s name. From the young man’s tone, Mineko could perceive that Tokiko gradually becoming a veteran at that bank was not entirely a pleasant circumstance.

Little by little, the plan grew more concrete: Mineko gathered work related to the flour company where Shoji had been employed through her brother—now transferred to the provinces—while Tokiko combined jobs from friends’ machine factories and various government offices, advancing their scheme for a Japanese-, English-, and German-language typing office. Later, Tokiko’s friend Haruyo also joined their discussions, and the three of them spent night after night on meticulous calculations and deciding on a name for their office. The work of stenography and typing had become abundant as society as a whole underwent major changes.

The rain gutter that had begun singing its watery song earlier now had torrents of melting snow water pouring into it, occasionally making choked gurgling sounds as it bubbled over.

A glint reflected off the glass right above Mineko’s face as the printing shop’s second floor across the street was violently thrown open. Simultaneously, as though this motion had stirred the air in their room, the door burst open with force.

“Good afternoon.”

With a voice unexpectedly cheerful for the place, Mineko and the others turned their surprised faces toward the entrance.

“Did I startle you? Forgive me.”

The one standing there laughing, carrying a large Kanebo paper package that was recognizable at a glance, was Koseki Kiseki.

“Oh...”
“How unexpected.”

Mineko rose slowly from her chair with an utterly surprised expression.
Kiseki stood adjusting the front of her thick black pure wool coat, her gaze sweeping from desks to walls as she surveyed the room.

“How splendid!”
“I’ve been thinking I simply must see your endeavors in action at least once,”

At Kiseki’s usual self, she couldn’t help but let out a wry half-smile,

“How wonderful…” she said. “But we’re managing quite well somehow.” In Tokiko’s eyes as she remained silent and smiling spread not only surprise at the unexpected visitor but also a vague hue of astonishment. It had been merely half a year since Mineko encountered Kiseki walking alongside her husband Sakamoto through the Shinjuku crowds, but between that Kiseki and the one before them today, there existed some starkly different quality.

“There’s no tea either, forgive me.”

Mineko’s impression from that statement also appeared to be the same.
“How is it? No changes, I trust?”

In that inquiring voice lingered a resonance that anticipated some sort of change.

“Oh, we met one evening in Shinjuku before, didn’t we? A few days after that, Sakamoto suddenly went to Niigata.”

Sakamoto was supposed to have been working for a political magazine.

“His position?”

“His job changed. This time through my uncle’s influence—he’s become president’s secretary at a military company.”

Sakamoto seemed to have possessed that sort of perceptiveness regarding the currents of the times.

“So you’re lonely living alone in that apartment now?”

“I’ve moved back to my parents’ home, you see.”

While absently resting her gaze on Tokiko’s nimble fingertips already engaged in continuing her work, Kiseki kept grinding the heels of her tall shoes against the floor with a grating rhythm.

In both her demeanor and her meticulously made-up face lingered an expression as though she herself were unclear about who she was.
Though she had always been lighthearted in temperament, this particular air about her had not been present during her days wearing an apron with Sakamoto in their apartment.

After a while, Kiseki began with something halfway between a sigh,

“But I truly envy you all.”
“You can act as you wish after all—it really does come down to talent.”

“There you go again with your old refrains…”
Mineko said with gentle reproach,

“You’re still saying things like that? Why, Ms. Kiseki, you’re the one who took action and surprised everyone.”

Kiseki gave a small, bashful smile,

“But…”

Kiseki gave a slight shrug.

"I’ve somehow become all confused lately."

She had married Sakamoto two years prior.
When Kiseki learned that her uncle—a moneylender deeply entangled with her family—was forcing the marriage arrangement upon her regardless of her wishes, she resolved that rather than let such a loathsome man serve as matchmaker, she would go meet Sakamoto directly. Once he agreed, they married on their own terms without waiting for their parents' so-called formal matchmaking to take its course.
Kiseki seemed to believe this approach had allowed her to maintain dignity within the marriage.
Several friends actively praised this initiative.
Mineko could not claim to fully grasp the psychological depths that drove Kiseki to act in such fashion.

It was around the time when Mineko, having become aware of herself developing new feelings toward Shoji whom she had known since their school days, found herself unable to smoothly comprehend Kiseki’s leap forward.

“So you’ll be going to Niigata as well then.”

Tokiko asked in a relaxed tone.

“Yes. But it’s been decided I won’t be going there for now.”

Kiseki ground her heels again.

“He says the company wives are such an uncultured bunch. Sakamoto says he doesn’t want me joining such company.”

‘Uncultured,’ he says…
Then what kind of people are we supposed to be?

“Mr. Sakamoto, isn’t it difficult for you every day?”

“That’s perfectly all right, you know.”

Kiseki answered with a simplicity unthinkable in a wife of two years, her response breezily dismissive.

“The amateur boarding house landlady handles absolutely everything for him, he says.”
“She’s apparently a kind person.”
“Moreover, he’s absurdly busy—apparently when he returns home, he just sleeps.”
“He says such a lifestyle would be pitiable even for me.”

While her face remained turned away, Tokiko—who had apparently been listening attentively—shifted uncomfortably.

“Sakamoto says that being able to breathe at least some intellectual air when he comes to Tokyo is his salvation.”

“So that means you have a heavy responsibility, Ms. Kiseki.”

Mineko spoke with the air of one suddenly reminded,

“Speaking of which, whatever happened to—” Mineko interjected with sudden recollection, “oh, your women’s history studies?”

“Well, ours is a business with people coming and going all day long,” Kiseki replied. “Land transactions have apparently become tremendously busy lately—when I’m there, they inevitably depend on me so much that libraries are quite out of the question.”

Layer by layer, their conversation revealed the unstable foundations underpinning Kiseki’s recent life—a series of half-hearted commitments lacking any solid anchor.

Mineko herself held no particular opinion of Sakamoto. Yet considering his current position as company president’s secretary combined with his innate social deftness and approachable manner, she found herself unavoidably imagining how those late-night hours in provincial Niigata might be occupied.

Sakamoto seemed to possess the very strength required to tread such well-worn paths in his own distinct way.

Sakamoto’s expressions of affection toward his wife, when heard through a third party’s ears, lacked earnestness.
That she should endure for her husband’s workplace—being taken along in this manner was what he could accept as married life.

Could there be anything as pitifully foolish as a wife who is both buttered up and deceived?

Mineko felt her cheeks grow faintly warm—not just for Kiseki’s sake, but her own.

“Ms. Kiseki, even if Mr. Sakamoto says that, he should simply go to Niigata himself.”

She murmured while aligning and binding the typed papers.

“Wouldn’t it be troublesome if he remains indecisive?”

Kiseki’s expression turned somber as she kept shifting her heels, yet she shot Mineko a sharp glance that seemed to skim past her like a blade.

“If it were you, Ms. Mineko, you’d certainly go.”

She continued in a challenging tone.

“Those who can always keep their feelings sorted out like you, Ms. Mineko—they’re exceptions, aren’t they?”
“It’s probably only natural that you wouldn’t understand such petty feelings.”

Facing Tokiko,

"But that's precisely it, don't you agree?"

she pressed harder.

"If one had a proper companion like Ms. Mineko here along with confidence in their own talents, couldn't anyone maintain such resolutely sorted feelings?"

The small sharpness contained in Kiseki’s voice was an unexpected stab to Mineko.

Mineko, who earnestly sought to remain true to her own heart’s desires and thus examined herself constantly, was startled to realize that such efforts as a woman could evoke a certain repulsion among women.

Mineko fully understood that her feelings for Shoji sustained her, yet it pained her that Kiseki could perceive them from such an angle.

“Ms. Kiseki, you seem to be misunderstanding various matters.”

Even as Kiseki countered this, she gave no impression of harboring any profound convictions.

Like riverbank soil perpetually submerged in flowing water—gradually eroding over time—Mineko intuited the imperceptible crumbling anxiety permeating Kiseki and her husband’s married life.

That anxiety must have been reflected in Kiseki’s feelings, if nothing else.
Anxious yet uncertain what to grasp or how, these must have been Kiseki’s still-undifferentiated emotions at that time.

If she thought this way, even the feelings that had assailed her could be endured as manifestations of that turmoil. Today, several years after graduating from school, what struck Mineko with renewed profundity was how education bore almost no relation to the manifestation of inherent virtues and flaws in people's character. Tokiko sat with one sleeve of her light brown sweater draped over the desk, her diligent hands resting demurely on her skirt as she faced their direction. Above those eyes, chance had etched an indelible shadow.

Compared to Kiseki—living with her parents, likely receiving an allowance from her husband, dressed well with shopping parcels on her lap—how simple and insignificant a figure that must have appeared. Yet how unintimidated that figure appeared. Tokiko, her shadowed face undaunted, was striving to live her life.

Yet in merely acknowledging the existence of this different way of life before her, Kiseki appeared to lack any mindset truly grounded in reality.

“The wind’s picking up, isn’t it?”

Kiseki said while preparing to leave and rising to her feet.

“Really.”

The broken latch of the printing shop’s outward-opening glass door glared with reflections of the sun through a clouded sky and began rattling violently.

Amid the intensifying wind, the packed government railway train raced headlong toward the endlessly sprawling city’s outskirts, skirting past a bamboo thicket where patches of remaining snow lay slightly soiled here and there.

Pressed by the momentum of the crowd and leaning against the window at the end-of-line stop where they had packed in, Mineko caught sight of a single ruled sheet of paper with an indifferent gaze.
It was an ordinary sheet of office ruled paper.
The contents appeared to be some sort of report, and the man with a mouse-gray collar in his forties periodically leaned his elbow carelessly against Mineko’s shoulder as he read through it.
What caught Mineko’s eye was neither the man’s appearance nor the ruled paper, but rather the feel of the written characters.
The characters were written in fountain pen.
The characters—bearing a crisp, clear script with evenly applied pressure from a well-worn pen tip that possessed a soft width yet gentle swell—reminded Mineko of Shoji.
Shoji also wrote this kind of characters.
At first glance, his handwriting appeared unremarkable, yet it was imbued with an alluring quality.
If one were to actually compare the two, they would surely be quite different.
Yet those pen strokes now filled Mineko with an irresistible longing that summoned Shoji to her mind.
When she looked at the characters—the set of his shoulders, his voice, the subtle emotional shifts in that voice and gaze.
It was as if the living Shoji had vividly appeared there.

Since Shoji had been deployed, Mineko had received several letters from him.
Every postcard and letter that arrived slightly delayed across the vast sea had been written with the fountain pen Shoji had used since before his deployment.
When she saw those unchanging characters, Mineko was filled with inexpressible tenderness at how Shoji—remaining unmistakably himself as he moved through villages and towns unknown to her, through unforeseeable events—persisted as this Shoji who understood her feelings so profoundly.

His everyday temperament manifested in his epistolary style—Shoji never wrote solitary reflections distant from Mineko’s life, but instead conveyed vivid accounts of people’s livelihoods in new villages and castle towns, humorous incidents, books he read, or else described how seasonal shifts transformed familiar places, all rendered as visibly as if spoken aloud.
Those unrippled correspondences always exerted a strange effect on Mineko’s heart.
Mineko found her heart calmed whenever she read and reread those letters.
It wasn’t solely because she knew Shoji was safe.
She couldn’t help but feel how much mental comprehensiveness, perseverance, insight, and self-compassion must underpin the composed flexibility imbued in the letters.
The impressions emanating from Shoji’s letters spontaneously influenced how Mineko carried her own emotions.
Mineko too gradually ceased being tripped up by her own raging emotions that surged toward Shoji in his absence, and while cherishing these surging tides of her heart, she began learning how to express themselves through letters to Shoji—conveying daily happenings in meticulous yet engaging detail.

Mineko deeply and profoundly rejoiced in this.
How insipid it would be if one could only write “I miss you” to their beloved.
Even if one were to write “I love you, I love you” until the paper turned black, where in that could the living resonance of the heart be expressed?
If two people who do various things, think various thoughts, and live and move through their days are to cherish each other, how could they ever truly blend together without reflecting their lives to one another?

Mineko had once read a collection of letters exchanged between a married couple by a certain person said to be a Meiji-era literary master.
The pages of that book astonishingly repeated the word "love" over and over.
And the reader would be left with the impression that the couple, chasing and being chased by these expressions of volatile fragrance—phrases that grew wearisome with repetition—were desperately hurling the same words at each other while they still held their warmth.
In this fervor, there was something utterly removed from the emotional tenor of life that Mineko’s generation faced.

Mineko had told Shoji about those things on some occasion.
With his inherent lack of pretense, what did Shoji’s epistolary style teach her?
And she had told him how the pen’s characters that wrote those letters brought his very flesh to her as if they were Shoji himself.

“If you feel that way so strongly about it, I can’t risk losing this pen I’ve grown so fond of through mere carelessness. I’ll take better care.”
This had been Shoji’s reply.
To Mineko, every detail of Shoji’s face—the short stubble around his mouth, the shifting expressions in his eyes—became as tangible as if she could reach out and trace them with her fingers.

On the glass windows of the government railway train now lit with evening lights, countless men’s faces pressed against one another in overlapping layers.
The color of her muffler spilling from her coat as she returned from work dotted the scene with vivid flecks of hue that swayed with the train’s motion.

The report-like ruled sheet that had captured Mineko’s heart was already stored away in the pocket of the man who had been reading it.

Such a great number of people were all hurrying along their own paths home.
Home—my home—our home.
The night before his departure, Shoji had come to the apartment where Mineko was now returning.

Mineko, her eyes strained wide from the urgency that had left her utterly speechless, silently opened the door for Shoji and let him inside.

It was a humid early summer night faintly thick with the scent of young leaves.
Having come from his classmates’ farewell party—though it was still too early for straw hats—Shoji roughly tore the soft hat from his head as if it had already grown heavy and tossed it aside, then settled himself cross-legged there.

“I finally got myself released,” he said.

“Thank goodness,” she replied.

Once evening had passed, Mineko was already waiting for Shoji.
She waited and waited—though everything should have been prepared, when the moment arrived she found herself strangely fumbling through the steps as she tried to make some simple food.

“Mineko, you still hadn’t finished?”

“That’s not it, but…”

“It’s fine, it’s fine—stop that, stop and come here quickly now.”

Shoji said that and stopped her.

“We finally have this time together—it’s such a waste.
“If you’re busy with that...”

In Shoji’s voice and demeanor remained not a trace of the excitement one might expect from someone who had just come from his own farewell party.

Mineko had dressed modestly in a white silk blouse.
The garment—with its small round collar and sleeves covering down to her wrists—always accentuated the luster of Mineko’s cheeks.
That night, instead of shedding a single tear, something like fire and chills alternately coursed through her youthful body.

“Are you trembling?”

Shoji opened the front of his coat and, with it, tightly wrapped Mineko close against himself.
Mineko trembled even more violently and pressed her face even more fiercely.

“Hey, do you think we’re okay just like this? Hey, are we okay?”

If only they could get through the year, Shoji’s family circumstances would improve somewhat, and the two were supposed to get married. The matter of parting as they were now, or parting after becoming something other than themselves, had ceased to be the kind of thing Mineko could think through and judge in this moment.

Shoji remained silent for a while but eventually,

“I’ve thought about it too.”

he said.

Then, pulling himself slightly away, he gazed long at Mineko’s face before stroking it toward her bangs with a strong palm.

“How about you, Mineko?”
“Can we keep going like this?”

What possible reason could there be for us not to keep going with Mineiko!

The two of them fell silent again.
Time that could not be measured by clocks passed moment by moment, and Shoji—who had been slowly swaying both his own body and Mineko sitting cross-legged within his embrace as various thoughts came and went—finally spoke in a clear voice:

“Alright.”

he said.

“Well then, I’ll keep this as my reward.”

With a brightness that suggested everything was settled, Shoji said this while innocently giving a light tap to the spot on Mineko’s lower back where his hand had just been resting.

“Is that okay?”

“That’s fine.”

Mineko’s reply came naturally.

The reply came from a place of genuine trust and calm assurance, born of heartfelt certainty.

“I’m sure Mineko thinks it’s fine too.”

With a faint hint of modesty lingering in his shining eyes, Shoji—

“Something like the beauty of a lake untouched by dawn?”

he said.

“I think it’s natural and splendid how it’s gradually, gradually unfolded by the morning light.”
“Wouldn’t you dislike having external conditions imposed?”

And then,

“Am I being a bit too greedy?”

Shoji laughed cheerfully.

As time passed after Shoji had gone, Mineko came to think that she hadn’t fully understood his feelings back then.
With those simple words—"Am I being a bit too greedy?"—Shoji had been contemplating his own precarious hold on life.
Mineko was able to act freely according to the truth of her heart.
Furthermore, Mineko—whose understanding of life had rapidly matured during this period—came to regard the meaning behind the restraint Shoji had imposed on their relationship as stemming not merely from his manliness, but rather from his husband-like depth of consideration.

What sustained Mineko in her solitary life was this: why did she—like flower petals in bloom, unaware of their fragility when tempted by the wind to scatter, perhaps still immature yet living with hope through their inherent sturdiness—find herself enduring this way?

The expression Shoji had used—calling it a reward—was apt.
It was apt in the most solemn sense.

This might apply not only to themselves but to the earnest hearts of countless young men and women living in Japan today.

After exiting the Government Railway station onto a blackout-darkened avenue, Mineko walked slightly past the corner leading to her residence and went to collect her individual ration at the fish shop where water was already being poured across the storefront.