Pathway to Japanese Literature

The longer I stared fixedly at his profile—the Captain’s—the more he seemed to shed every trace of humanity.
Beneath a black, sturdy domed forehead—like a skeleton laminated with shibu-gami paper and varnished—two glassy, bulging eyeballs were embedded.
The mouth—clamped tightly around a sailor’s pipe in a straight horizontal line—and the massive jaw, like the ram of an old-fashioned warship, together exposed a stubbornness akin to a steel clamp.
He was leaning both elbows on the bridge’s railing, staring fixedly at the land spread out beneath the deep blue autumn sky.

Along the straight line of his glaringly fixed gaze, a red flag from what appeared to be a massive department store fluttered limply.
Around it spread the cityscape of Shanghai, over which rows of white clouds drifted serenely.

……It was a peaceful and uneventful morning, though.
It was around the end of October in Showa Year 2 (1927), if I recall correctly…….

I climbed up to the bridge with loud footsteps and deliberately stopped with equally loud footsteps behind the Captain.

“Good morning…”

I called out, but Shibugami-face didn’t even glance my way.
After all, even among captains, he was counted as a first-rate eccentric.
He seemed to be pondering something intently.

I dangled the yellow, square paper package I was carrying in my right hand in front of the Captain’s nose and spun it sharply.

“Here’s the Tibetan Red Tea you ordered. Took me forever to find it.”

The Captain finally flinched and drew his head back. Without a word, he pivoted his lanky six-foot frame toward me with naval precision and took the tea.

“Ugh… Chief… Thanks…”

he grunted. Not so much as a twitch—that was the Shibugami Captain’s trademark. For sheer unapproachability, he had no equal in Japan. With men like him, formalities were worse than useless. Better to speak bluntly, ready to trade blows if it came to that.

“...Last night, I heard a strange story onshore.”
“That boy you hired this time—Ina Ichirou—isn’t he?”
“They say that boy’s the infamous Shipwreck Boy—a cursed figure through and through.”

I said my piece and tried to gauge Captain Chokkura’s expression, but there was no reaction.
He remained as stiff and inscrutable as a brown riddle-statue.
He was a specimen of utter impassivity.

“They say any ship that boy boards is sure to sink.”
“When they hear ‘I·INA,’ even high-ranking Western crew members are said to tremble in fear.”
“Once he boards a ship, they say he’ll sink it without fail.”
“...So they say this Alaska Maru’s in danger now—there’s quite a stir about it.”
“As for those on land…”

Even after I said all this, the Captain’s Shibugami-face remained a Shibugami-face.
He puffed out a cloud of Navy Cut smoke and fixed his warship-like jaw in place.
However, the black glassy orbs remained fixed, glaringly staring between my eyes and nose.
He seemed to want to hear more of what I had to say.

“That boy’s small and pretty-faced, so those perverted Western degenerates take a real shine to him,”
“They say he makes a killing getting cozy with high-class Westerners—that’s why he’s always itching to board ships. But here’s the kicker: not one vessel he’s boarded has stayed afloat.”
“Everyone knows how the *Baikal Maru*—first ship to hire that brat on a Europe run—got torpedoed by some German U-boat near Gibraltar.”
“That’s when he scrambled onto a life raft waving his handkerchief—started his whole ‘SOS Boy’ legend. Then when the *Dainitanyo Maru* caught an uppercut from the *Emden* off Skotara, he just happened to be modeling some newfangled life vest. Jumped right in and saved his own skin again! Call him lucky if you want, but every time that whelp gets ‘lucky,’ the whole damn ship goes down—can’t beat that logic.”
“...They say he’s sunk two-three big ships besides. Doesn’t matter if it’s an ocean liner or a goddamn rowboat—if he steps aboard, it’s going under. That’s why they’re pissing themselves over him.”
“Take the Hakuro Maru on the Bōshū route—no sooner’d he board than she collided with a Yokosuka torpedo boat.”
“After trailing some Western bigwig on Bright Star Petroleum’s speedboat—only to flip it near Haneda—he got treated like gutter trash everywhere he went. Then he slinks into Kobe, sneaks aboard the *Empress China* as some A-class steward, plays dumb all the way to Shanghai.”
Some first-class Western passenger who’d seen his face somewhere spotted him and started hollering he’d jump ship if forced to share decks with the brat.
This time the Chief Purser panicked and tried booting him off, but the kid wouldn’t budge.
The lower-deck crew mobbed the little bastard—clinging to a mess hall pillar, howling his lungs out—jabbing him with pistol barrels and crowbars till he was half-dead, then tossed him onto the docks like a mangy cat.
So there he was—still in his *Empress China* uniform, clutching a beat-up suitcase with his whole sad life inside—bawling his eyes out on the customs house wall. That’s when you—Captain of the *Alaska Maru* tied up across the way—found him… picked him up… patted his head like you were spiting the *China* herself… comforted him all sweet-like as you dragged him aboard… or so the story goes.”
“Now every dockside bar and customs house from here to Shanghai’s buzzing with it.”
“Whether you knew you were scooping up a jinx with seven ships’ worth of bad luck in his pockets… who can say?”
“There’s even sick bastards taking bets on whether we’ll make Japan before the *Alaska Maru* goes under.”

I wasn’t by nature a delicate sort of person. To journalists like you with your refined common sense—the type who’d talk about “maritime superstitions” in that pretentious, scholarly way—I certainly wasn’t cut out for such things. Though I’ll admit in my younger days, I’d been that delinquent literary type who prided himself on reciting Byron’s “Ocean Poems” to schoolgirls and whatnot. But after years of rough seafaring life, my very nature had changed completely. Physically weak though I was, even among that engine room full of hardened criminals, I flattered myself that I had enough muscle and guts to keep them in line—hell, the crew even called me “Chief from Hell.” Yet every time I stood before this Shibugami Captain, I found myself strangely outmatched. It was odd how I always ended up spouting such cheap chatter this way. Worse still, the warnings I meant to deliver would drift off like some fairy tale—weightless, insubstantial. So many futile attempts.

“I’m not being superstitious here, but…”
“I even tried arguing there’s no such fool story.”
“If it’s true every ship that boy boarded sank without fail, then this one sinking must be true too.”
“This concerns the whole crew’s lives.”
“Ain’t like we can’t sail without that brat… But even if your Captain’s some oddball, he ain’t stupid enough to wreck crew morale with reckless whims.”
“You hired him easy ’cause you didn’t know his cursed history.”
“No hard feelings—just go tell the Captain quick and get that boy tossed ashore.”
“Oughta listen when many speak.”
“You’ll regret it sure enough… That’s why everyone’s jawin’ all sorts… Ha ha ha…”

The Captain’s expression remained unchanged.
The shibugami-colored mask remained motionless, as if frozen against the blue sky above his head.
Such profound expressionlessness began to take on a semblance of lunacy.
I spoke as if forcing the words out.

“How about offloading him right now?”

A wrinkle twitched beneath the Captain’s left eye. At the same time, he narrowed one eye halfway and twisted one corner of his lip upward. This was the Captain’s smiling face, but anyone unfamiliar would never recognize it as a smile—it resembled nothing more than a shibugami spasm.

“The Yusen Line’s famed S.O.S. Boy, I presume.”

The Captain rasped these words curtly. Simultaneously, two or three fresh wrinkles gathered tightly between his brows and near his cheek’s neck muscles. He was sneering.

“Heh, you knew about it?”
“You too…”

“Mmmph…”

The Captain started to laugh but choked on his cigarette.
He spat loudly from the bridge.

“Mmmph… I hadn’t known, you know.”
“Everyone’s saying that.”

“Who exactly is this ‘everyone’?”
“What kind of people…?”

“They’re saying it aboard the ship, it seems.”
“Ken the sailor, that bastard, came as their representative to negotiate.”
“That was just now.”

“Hmm… What did he say?”

“If you don’t hand him over, we’ll beat that brat to death—that’s what he said. He rolled up his shirt to show a tattoo of a severed head on his chest. Mmmph…”

“Huh.”
“So… you’re not going to hand him over?”

The Captain calmly opened and closed one eye.
Then he blew Navy Cut smoke directly into my face.

“……It’s superstition……”

“That may be so, but…”
“Superstition is superstition, but…”

“Mmmph…”
“I’ll transform the Shipwreck Boy into a Nonsense Boy.”
“Will superstition win?”
“Will our machinery win?”

“So this is a kind of experiment, then?”

“...Mmmph.
“It’s a nonsense experiment.”

“……………”

An ironclad silence persisted between the two men.
The Captain calmly began puffing out cobalt-colored smoke.
I continued to think about how I could persuade this Captain.

“When did you board this ship again?”

Then the Captain suddenly brought up something strange.

“Was it around this time two years ago?”

“When you boarded, you inspected the machinery, didn’t you?”

“I did, Captain.”
“I even whacked the very tip of the propeller with a hammer.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”

“Mmmph…”
“At that time, when you inspected the machinery, did you discover things like superstitions, super-scientific forces, ghosts, specters, or principles beyond reason getting stuck or caught in between?”
“When you inspected…”

“Th-that’s… there’s no such thing. This ship’s machinery is built and operates entirely on modern scientific theory, you know.”

“Is that still true now?”

“……………”

“Then… that settles it.”
“It’s something even a middle schooler could grasp.”
“If you can rationally prove that Shipwreck Boy possesses magical power to summon typhoons, tornadoes, and hidden reefs in this ship’s path—I’d throw that brat overboard this very instant.”

“……………”

“Fundamentally, we sail across the Earth’s surface—solidified by physics and chemistry—in a ship solidified by physics and chemistry.”
“Anyone who doesn’t believe that… anyone who claims that the mathematical calculations you and I employ are unreliable… should never have boarded this ship in the first place.”

I was utterly crushed.
I had no words… I was ashamed… and unfortunately bowed my head.

“Mmmph…”
“Steady yourself.”
“Hey hey, Ina Ichirou… S.O.S…. Hahaha.”
“Here, here… Come up!”

The Captain beckoned and called out to a blue-uniformed boy who—clutching a gigantic banana and seemingly searching for him—was dashing out of the captain’s quarters. Thrusting the box of Tibetan black tea I had bought against the tip of **the boy’s** nose**, he issued a command.

“Take this to the captain’s cabin and brew it with distilled water. The Chief of Hell and I will drink it together, eh?”

When I opened the door marked “CAPTAIN” with a brass plate, a violent stench of acids, alkalis, ozone, and alcohol surged up and slapped my face. Inside—thick glass panels, oak-framed chemical shelves, documents, beakers, retorts, delicate metalworking tools, copper plates, lead plates, zinc plates, assorted wires, hydrogen-oxygen cylinders, electric welders, scales, barometers—all lay heaped together like some dentist’s or barber’s cluttered corner… such was the captain’s cabin on the Alaska Maru. Beneath an eight-day clock in that corner, on a bent nail, hung two terrifying silver pistols—incredibly long, the kind only found deep in Mexican or Kentucky mountains—their barrels crammed with over a dozen live rounds as they dangled side by side.

This may be a digression, but the Captain of the Alaska Maru was naturally a lifelong bachelor who detested both women and alcohol.
He rarely went ashore.
Instead, he was a kind of invention fanatic who had obtained a Doctor of Science degree from the very fountainhead of applied chemistry—a university in France.
As for the number of patents he held, ten or twenty wouldn’t even begin to cover them.
Since they were all supposedly concocted in this laboratory, they must have been quite extravagant.
Wasn’t it last winter when he donated all those patent rights and his vast fortune to the Seamen’s Relief Association before dying of stomach cancer? A man of great loss… Around that time… around Showa Year 2 (1927), he had been engrossed in developing small, lightweight dry storage batteries of inexhaustible power.
His grand scheme to power the entire world solely through storage batteries was splendid in theory, but every time he conducted those experiments—siphoning off all the ship’s electrical power to dim the lights and blow fuses—we were utterly defeated.
Moreover, claiming dissatisfaction with imported silk-covered wires, he built his own machinery to manufacture them, only to discard each batch after creation—a process repeated over twenty thousand ri.
Whenever he hit an impasse in his work, he would grab those two pistols and dash up to the upper deck.
He would shoot down the frigatebirds swarming around the main mast with both guns—*bang bang*—laughing uproariously with an “Ahahahaha!”, then stride back to his laboratory without so much as glancing at their falling bodies. Such eccentricities made him utterly unapproachable to us ordinary folk.
After spending a week compiling an excruciatingly tedious power calculation report and bringing it to the deck, he’d say “Thank you,” then toss each page into the sea wind one by one as he glanced through them… Why, he’d just memorize everything at a single look.
Much later during hull inspections, he would stand by the machinery himself and rattle off hundreds of numbers from memory, leaving even the person who had calculated them gaping… Then suddenly he’d glare at a nautical chart crammed with the appearance times and locations of German U-boats and the Emden, declaring “I’ve got it now.”
“I’ve deduced their base, communication network, and speed,” he’d announce before crumpling the chart and hurling it into the sea.
Then he’d blithely sound the horn on Fridays—Fridays, which Westerners abhor—and set sail, startling every port along his route, only to return triumphantly from London to Singapore in one bold stroke. Such feats were utterly beyond the comprehension of minds like ours.

When I compared the Captain’s face—which held a kind of eerie aura—with the profile of the Ina boy cutting a banana in the corner of the room, the contrast felt as stark as the Arctic versus the South Seas.

His chestnut-burr round head—well-shaped and bluish like a young nun’s—stood out starkly. His skin bore what must have been that fashionable olive tone everyone was going on about lately. The edges of his eyes and cheeks swelled softly, lips ripe as strawberries. Thick lashes framing firm double lids, those long indigo crescent brows arching over a clean white nose bridge, the pale cabbage-green collar line flowing from crimson earlobes to shoulders—all coalesced into a womanly seductiveness. The blue steward’s uniform with gold braid clung to his frame like second skin; had you dressed him in a flowing-sleeved kimono, even with that cropped hair and no makeup, he’d have passed for a fresh-faced maiden. No wonder those Westerners want to grab him up, I caught myself thinking—just as the boy holding the banana-laden plate spun toward me with a crisp bow. He gazed up through his lashes, soft as beggar’s mercy, then bloomed a single peach-hued smile—the kind a girl wears when spotting her sweetheart across a crowded room.

I shuddered.
...Truly... I felt a demonic aura assaulting me from the darkness behind that boy.

I’d had enough of both the black tea and banana, so I returned to my personal hell—the engine room.
Facing that doll-like brat’s perversely charming face—seemingly ready to burst into “Ohohoho” giggles any moment—felt far less bearable than glaring at my engine crew’s pitch-black, beastly mugs...

However, when I returned to the engine room, I was shocked by how unexpectedly severe the sailors’ hatred—no, terror—toward Ina Ichirou had become.
If the Captain insisted on having that boy aboard, then they too had their own plans… or so they were in a fervent huff about it.
I heard the sailors were saying that once we’re out at sea, they’d use the boy as bait to catch sharks, while the engine room crew huffed about shoving him into the boilers to supplement the coal supply.
Sailors, when it comes to things like this, get strangely carried away and might do any reckless thing half in jest—it’s a real problem.
In fact, even among the sailors, their ringleader—Ken with the Scar—went so far as to climb down the iron ladder and come to force a negotiation with me.

“Ken with the Scar” was a man with fearsome buck teeth, hence also known as “Dega Ken.”
The forehead of his closely shaven head was split into two from the crown, and the scar where it had healed back together cut deeply into the space between his eyebrows.
That guy crossed his pitch-black arms—thick as our thighs—over the tattoo of a woman’s severed head clutching a kitchen cleaver in her teeth, plopped down heavily onto my bunk, and bared his buck teeth fiercely.

“Pardon the intrusion, Chief.”
“I just came back from the Captain’s place, see.”
“Hey Chief.”

“Yeah.”
“I went there.”
“What do you want to do about that?”

“Excuse me, but tell me what the Captain said about that boy. …Since it seems you said somethin’ to the Captain, I’ve come as the sailors’ rep to hear his answer.”

“Ahahaha.”
“Thanks for the trouble, but he didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t say nothin’ to the Captain at all, did ya?”

“Yeah.”
“I did mention it briefly, but…”
“He didn’t give any response.”
“The Captain…”

“Huh.”
“Ain’t said nothin’ back.”

“Yeah.”
“He’s always like that… the Captain…”

“Did he not ask you—the Chief—to take care of that boy or anything like that…”

“Idiot.”
“Even if he asked me, you think I’d take that on?”

“It’s not like we slighted the Empress of China or anything.”

“Of course not.”
“The Captain seems to dislike how everyone gangs up to fear that boy.”

“Got it. Understood.”
“So I get the Captain’s game now!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Captain isn’t out to trample on your feelings and dote on that boy, you know.”
“You’ll see.”

“Nah.”
“Ain’t like we’re badmouthin’ the Captain, see.”
“Ain’t like we doubt the Captain—he’s a goddamn sea god from day one on this ship, see? Not a single chance he’d slip up. What grinds our gears is that brat… Had the gall to come sneakin’ aboard without a thought for his own cursed past… Should’ve known better than to show his face… Right, Chief…?”

“That’s right. If he’d considered his own past, common sense would’ve made him hold back—but well, he’s just a kid. Wasn’t like he boarded this ship aiming to shame you all.”

“Even if our pride stays intact, if the ship sinks, it amounts to the same damn thing.”

“Now now—don’t go saying that. Leave it to me.”

“No offense Chief, but we ain’t leavin’ it to you. Even if Ken with the Scar here agrees, the others won’t budge. If you pity him so much, hurry up and toss that brat overboard. Just seein’ his face turns my stomach.”

“Ah hah hah!”
“You’re makin’ one helluva superstitious fuss!”

“Don’t you go makin’ a fuss.”
“Chief.”
“I’m dead serious.”
“Once this ship leaves this pier, there ain’t no doubt that boy’s life’ll be over… That’s why I’m tellin’ ya.”

“There, there. I’ll take responsibility.”

“Heh.”
“How you plannin’ to take responsibility…?”

“If your faces stay intact and the ship doesn’t sink, you’ve got no complaints.”
“Meaning I’ll take charge of that boy’s life.”
“You deck rats killin’ what the Captain’s keepin’ won’t end pretty.”
“Dog or cat makes no difference…”

“Heh.”
“That how it works?”
“Heh.”
“Fair enough.”
“If the Chief’s puttin’ his neck out, we’ll stand down. But if them engine-room gorillas make a move first—we ain’t answerin’ for it.”
“That brat’s deck crew through ’n’ through anyhow.”

“I know.”
“That much goes without saying.”

“Thanks much.”
“Sorry for my crude talk.”
“Have your engine room toughs go easy on us too.”

With a nod, Ken returned to the deck.
Coming to the engine room that gathered nothing but reckless felons, there was no sailor but Ken who could voice such complaints.
In truth, the engine room crew had crowded at my cabin entrance, completely blocking it as they listened to our negotiation… Of course, being deck bastards through and through, they seethed at Ken’s audacity—how dare he barge uninvited into the Chief’s quarters—and glared from behind the doorway with eyes ready to pounce. But when Ken bowed his head and said, “Have your engine room toughs go easy on us too,” his manner of apology seemed to placate them. Their expressions softened, and they cleared a path to let him through.
Under normal circumstances, these were men who wouldn’t let even a speck of dust fall from deck to engine room without consequence…

And so, the Alaska Maru—carrying the boy whose life flickered like a candle before the wind—departed Shanghai without incident.
Not only was there no SOS signal, but the ship didn’t even encounter a single storm as it passed through Moji and arrived in Kobe.
Then came one of those maneuvers only our Captain would attempt—saving six hours by driving our seven-thousand-ton hull straight through Naruto Strait’s whirlpools all while terrifying his precious S.O.S.-Boy half to death before docking nonchalantly in Yokohama.

After unloading all Indian cotton and South Sea timber at Yokohama came Vancouver-bound cotton goods loaded down to her Plimsoll line.
Then provisions and coal—enough for Alaskan waters until her beams creaked—work brutal enough over three normal days turned impossible when Vancouver wired demanding departure within twenty-four hours.
Add Yokohama’s roadworks choking off day laborers till engine room coal hauling became hell made literal.

Simply calling it “hell” wouldn’t convey the reality to an outsider. Ordinary passenger ships were a different matter, but the more sophisticated the foreign-going cargo ship, the more cargo got stuffed into every available space. Wherever humans could pass through—anywhere cargo could be loaded—was acceptable. Because they crammed coal into every conceivable gap, it could be said there was almost nowhere left to load coal except in the coal bunkers. Now, for a perilous route like this Alaska run, unless they loaded more coal than strictly necessary—risking shipwreck or being cast adrift who-knows-where—they had to cram coal into every narrow, twisted gap within the ship’s elliptical hull and boxy rooms: spaces so contorted that no human could pass through. As for the danger and backbreaking nature of that work—truly, even calling it a living hell in this world would fail to capture its horror. As for those who ventured into the void behind this ship’s galley, a single plank had been laid across a gap in the steel beams that pierced through the iron lid of the bottommost water tank. The walls on both sides were plastered with steam pipes as fiery as hellfire, so merely passing through left one gasping for breath and dizzy—and any contact with hands or feet meant severe burns. In that space, amid billowing heat swirling thickly with coal dust, only the carbon filament of a temporarily hung 200-candlepower bulb flickered faintly like a red thread—barely visible at all. After hauling coal baskets back and forth through that space two or three times, when suddenly exposed to the cold air of the upper deck, their eyes would swim, their legs would stagger, and a demon-like roughneck would collapse helplessly. But the moment someone collapsed, the senior crew would drag them to the gunwale, douse their head with a seawater hose, and whack their buttocks with a large shovel—so that anyone still breathing would jolt upright in shock.

“Look at this mess.”
“You damn bastard!”
“If you’re gonna die, make it quick and drop dead!”

Such was the way of things.
It may seem cruel, but with a limited crew and limited time to complete the work—work that concerned the Chief Engineer's honor—there was no other choice.
Within so-called modern civilization, such terrifying hells lurked everywhere.
Of course, since I myself had clawed my way up from within that hell, I wouldn't tolerate complaints from my subordinates...

There I stood rigid in the drizzling rain at Yokohama Pier, inspecting each load of coal as it came aboard, when the Second Engineer with the Chaplin mustache—his work clothes blackened by sweat and coal dust—came panting down to me. "We're critically short-handed," he gasped.
"Please do something!" he pleaded.

“Idiot.”
“You think you can just snap your fingers and hire people?”

“Even so, just one person from the deck crew—anyone at all—please…” he pleaded with a face on the verge of tears.

“Idiot! The deck crew’s swamped too. You’ll get beaten up.”

“...But the captain’s boy is just loafing around.”

“What use is a guy like that?”

“But... everyone’s saying that.”
“At a time like this, they’re saying… anyone who’s loafing around carrying a tea tray should just be beaten to death…”

“You go tell that to the Captain.”

“Well... I’m not good with him, you see.”

“Alright.”
“I’ll tell him.”

Irritated by the hectic work, I must have found the Second Engineer’s complaints unbearably grating. Without pause, I charged up the gangway in one breath and burst into the captain’s cabin. The Captain’s face remained its usual parchment-like mask as he sipped steaming black tea. On the lead-sheeted workbench nearby, the problematic boy Ina Ichirou was cutting hotcakes with a silver knife.

I kept both hands jammed in my work jacket pockets and glared sharply at the boy’s innocent, youthful profile.

“Can you lend me this boy?”

The color drained from the boy Ina’s profile.
He widened his eyes like a man haunted by nightmares, looking back and forth between my face and the Captain’s.
The white fingers poised to slice the hotcake trembled violently.
…Even the Captain seemed inwardly aghast.
He quietly set down his half-drunk cup of tea.
He immediately said.

“What do you intend to do?”

“They’re saying we’re short-handed for coal transport.”
“It seems they’re all muttering about it… I’m sorry, but…”

“Can’t we hire temporary workers?”

“We can’t hire them on such short notice.”
“It’s because we have to load everything within twenty-four hours, you see.”
“We might manage by tomorrow... but everyone’s... already worn out...”

Deep vertical wrinkles creased the Captain’s forehead.
His temples twitched and twitched.
It was a tense expression of bewilderment.
He understood all too well—far too well—the feelings of sailors in such situations.

Then the Captain meticulously wiped around his lips with a white handkerchief.
The Captain slowly stood up and looked down at the boy Ina.
The boy Ina’s lips turned deathly pale as he stared up at the Captain with tear-filled eyes wide open.

That look on the Captain’s face at that moment—an indescribable anguish, yet as cold as hardened steel—even now remains etched into the back of my eyes.

The Captain twitched his temples and blinked his eyes widely twice.
He stared fixedly at my face and said as if pressing for confirmation:

“Will it be all right?”

I nodded silently and casually.

The Captain—who had nodded quietly in agreement with me two or three times—turned to look at the boy Ina and flashed his glass-like eyes.
He spoke in a resolute, low voice.

“...Alright... Go on...”

“Aah— Ahh…!”

And the boy Ina fled the captain’s cabin with a scream... That indescribably terrifying cry, that anguished resonance, that desperate voice—even now, whenever I remember it, it sends shivers down my spine. The boy Ina had known the horror of coal-carrying. No—he had foreseen that a fate even more terrible than that was interwoven into the coal-carrying work.

But Ina Ichirou could not escape. Outside the captain’s cabin stood Ken with the Scar, who had come to observe the situation from behind me. Ken spread his large hands and simply grabbed the boy Ina.

“Agh—!”
“Uwaah!”
“Help me, help me… Please have mercy…”
“I’ll get off the ship… Please, please… Help me… Help meee…!”

“Ahahaha!
“Ain’t nothin’ to fret ’bout.
“Help out with the work an’ all’s square.”

“Forgive me… Forgive me, pleeease..."
“I… I… My mother… My sister are at home…”

The boy Ina, pinned down on the wet deck, flailed his limbs and wailed.

“Bwahahaha! What nonsense are you spouting, brat? Ain’t nothin’ to fret about… I’ll handle it. If Ken here says he’ll handle it, ain’t nobody gonna lay a finger on ya… Don’t listen, and you get this.”

Ken pulled the large Russian-made shovel that lay beside him closer. Then, with one hand, he hoisted the boy—who was clasping his hands together in prayer—into the air. In the light rain, the gold-braided uniform spun sharply.

“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!”
“I’ll do anything.”
“Right away… right away… please let me off the ship.”
“Don’t kill me.”

“So you knew, did ya?”
“Bwahahahaha!”

Ken looked around at us, laughing with his mouth wide open.
The Captain, the Second Engineer, and likely my own face too were rigid as stone.
Ken’s laughing face was so terrifying… so terrifying that even the scar across his forehead seemed to split wide open in a grin…

“...Just work obediently.”
“Ain’t nobody here talkin’ ’bout your business.”
“Hahaha!”

In the light rain, the retreating figure of the boy Ina, hunched shoulders descending through the cargo hatch, was a heart-wrenchingly pitiable sight.

And then we never saw the boy Ina again.

After departing from Inubōsaki and leaving the lighthouse off Kinkasan behind, the North Sea’s notorious fog swiftly thickened.
Because we were blowing the steam whistle incessantly, the boiler pressure gauge refused to rise.
Our speed was also halved, and the inefficiency was tremendous.

The First Engineer, the Captain, and I, in the mess room, while drinking whiskey-laced tea, had this kind of conversation.

“It seems the fog has come early this time.”

“I bet there’s icebergs bobbing around real close by.”
“The fog seems frighteningly thick, though…”

“Now that you mention it, it does feel excessively cold.”
“At times like these, whiskey-laced tea is the only recourse…”

“Speaking of tea—did you let that S.O.S. Ina Ichirou off the ship, Captain?”

The Captain stiffened his expression like a wooden statue.
He shook his head slightly in silence.

“That’s strange.”
“We haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since Yokohama.”

“Mhmhm…”
“I’ve nothing to say.”
“That was when I handed him over to you.”

“Come on, that’s no joke! I have no responsibility whatsoever. I don’t know anything after handing him over to Ken on deck, but you saw it too, didn’t you?”

“Maybe Ken killed him…”

As he said this, the First Engineer himself abruptly turned pale.

“...No way. He himself said he’d get off… He wouldn’t do anything reckless.”

“However, if he were going to disembark, you’d think he’d at least say goodbye.”

“Hmm…”
“He might still be on the ship… hiding somewhere…”

The Captain said with a sneer.
As usual, he gathered wrinkles at the corner of his stiff-paper-like face… and made his glassy eyes glint…
I shuddered for some reason.
I gulped down the tea just like that and stood up.

Our conversation, though it was unclear where it had leaked from, instantly spread throughout the ship.

“Find him! Find him!”
“Throw him into the sea as soon as you spot him.”
“He’s a damn good-for-nothing.”

While some of the crew ran around making a fuss, Ken with the Scar—who usually took charge in such situations—remained strangely composed this time,

“He’s still here, I tell ya. Ain’t no way someone can stay on this ship without eatin’ or drinkin’, I tell ya. He’s run away.”

Since Ken had restrained everyone, there was no one left who tried to search any further. However, even so, the whereabouts of the boy Ina seemed to weigh strangely on everyone’s minds, and the eyes of sailors passing through narrow corridors or corners of the deck would often dart about, peering into dark places.

The fog enveloping the ship grew increasingly dense and dark.

It had already been sixteen days since departing Yokohama, meaning we should have covered nearly three thousand miles on the great circle route. The Captain and First Engineer were discussing adjusting the helm to E.S.E., but I couldn’t shake the feeling we hadn’t actually progressed that far. What’s more, the coal seemed to be disappearing at an alarming rate relative to our supposed distance. Though this was just a gut feeling honed through years of experience, I still ordered them to reduce the steam whistle blasts from half to a third frequency as a precaution. With our economic speed halved again to four knots, the seven-thousand-ton vessel crawled forward like an ant.

“Hey. Whereabouts are we?”
“Well... Where could we be?”

Conversations of that sort could often be heard in every corner of the deck. Of course, since the fog was so thick that if you stretched out a hand, your fingertips would only faintly come into view, the identity of those speaking couldn’t be discerned.

“When you blow the steam whistle, it’s deafening, but not blowing it makes everything feel terribly lonely.”

“Must be near the Aleutian Islands by now.”

“Well… who knows.”
“There ain’t no sun or stars, is there?”
“The sextant ain’t doin’ any good.”

“Whereabouts are we, I wonder?”

“...Well... Whereabouts are we, I wonder?”

While such exchanges continued, the elderly Chief Cook’s spotted fox terrier came running onto the deck, then suddenly turned toward the bow and froze. It sniffed at the air again and again. At the same moment, it began barking wildly—woof woof woof woof—like fire catching to kindling.

“Hey.”
“Land! Land!”

"Land! Land!" shouted the bald-headed Chief Cook as he followed from behind.
Sure enough, the shape of the waves had changed, and the shadow of an island was hazily approaching before their eyes.

“Agh… Land!… This is bad!”

“Reverse… Go astern… Land! Land!”

“This is bad! This is bad!”
“We’re gonna collide…!”

Amidst a chaotic uproar like a stirred-up beehive, the ship abruptly went astern and, barely managing to check the seven-thousand-ton mass’s momentum, pulled away toward open sea. The men, having been shown the looming form of a sheer cliff bearing down on the bow to the very brink of disaster, all broke into cold sweat on their foreheads.

“Too damn close! Too damn close!”
“This ain’t no joke.”
“They don’t sound the whistle, so there’s no echo to go by.”
“So we couldn’t tell we were close to land.”

“That bastard Chief Engineer’s been stingy as hell with the steam… It’s a disaster.”

“Where was that island just now?”

“Might be St. George.”

“You… You ever been there?”

“Yeah.”
“Went to retrieve an airplane once.”

“What’s this? St. George, you say…?”

“Yeah.”
“Ain’t no mistake.”
“Got a memory of how that shoreline looks.”

“You damn fool!
“St. George’s supposed to be deep in the Aleutian Islands, ain’t it?”

“Yeah.”
“The ship’s gone and plowed right through the Aleutians in this fog—into the Bering Sea.”

“You damn idiot!
Since when’d the Captain go sendin’ us into some half-assed death trap like that?”

“It’s no good.”
“The Captain’s already been cursed, I tell ya.”
“He’s been cursed by the Shipwreck Boy, I tell ya.”

“But ain’t the boy already gone?”

“Of course he is!”
“The Captain’s hidin’ him somewhere.”
“I hear if you peek into the Captain’s room at night, they’re sleepin’ all wrapped up tight together.”

“Gah!”
“For real?”

“...It’s the truth… There’s still something more shocking to tell.”
“According to the Chief Cook, that Shipwreck Boy’s actually a woman, see… You know a dame called Kawashima Yoshiko, right?”

“Dunno.”
“That ○○ actress, right?”

“Yeah… They say she’s that kind of woman.”
“They say that foreign captain’s got some woman dressed up as a boy and keeps her stashed away.”
“They say he keeps her in a box under the bed.”
“Hoardin’ his own grub for himself, I tell ya.”

“Hmm.”
“Now that you mention it, I kinda see the sense in it.”
“If she’s a woman, then SOS ain’t no mistake.”

“So there you have it.”
“This ship’s guardian spirit done rotted away ages back, I tell ya.”

“I hate this! I hate this!”
“I’m freaked out, I tell ya.”

“So there you have it. The sailors are sayin’ they’ll beat that boy to death soon as they find him and purify the guardian spirit. Toss him into the boiler, and they say not even ash’ll remain in five minutes.”

“The old man’s got no sense of proportion!”

“Nah. I hear he told the Chief Engineer that SOS is just superstition. He snapped at him, ‘You think superstition’s crept into my calculations?’”

“What’d the Chief Engineer say?”

“Just went ‘Huh?!’ and backed off.”

“He’s got no discipline at all.”
“He should’ve just threatened to abandon the ship with the rest of us.”

“It’s no good.”
“Our Captain’s the company’s treasure, I tell ya.”
“If it’s just a slight bit of madness, the company’s sure to overlook it.”
“Even sailors—if the Captain stood on the pier and raised a hand, a hundred or two hundred’d come flocking.”
“That might’ve been the case.”

“So there you have it. After we get to Bankokuba, he’ll just casually have that SOS dame stand on deck—what do you think that’s about? He’s plannin’ to rub it in their faces—show Kochitora and all those foreigners who’ve been pissin’ their pants that we made it safe and sound, ain’t he?”

“Hmph.”
“This ain’t lookin’ good.”
“It all depends.”
“Kochitora’s stakin’ his life on this, ain’t he?”

“You’re damn right.”
“The Captain just loves that kinda thing.”

“The Chief Engineer’s kowtowing to him too.”

“Hmm.”
“With things like this, there’s no telling where we’ll end up.”

“Exactly. Even if there’s no fault in the calculations, if there’s a fault in the head, ain’t it all the same once the work goes to hell?”

“That’s right.”
“Even now, with that Sunde business, it’s all SOS ain’t it?”

“Ugh.”
“I hate this, I hate this… Pfft pfft…”

I, who overheard such a conversation from the shadow of the mainmast, was overcome with an indescribably rotten feeling and descended into the engine room through the fog.
...I don’t know whether this counts as superstition or not, but I felt as if a thick fog shackled even my own mind...

Then, around midnight three days later, the sound of the waves suddenly changed, so I awoke.
Thinking we had caught the warm current washing along the Alaska coast... I felt relieved and rose from my usual bunk.

At the same time, a call came from the bridge, and we immediately switched from half speed to full speed.
We stopped sounding the foghorn.
We turned off the searchlights.
The engine room became as lively as if it had come back to life.
The voice of the First Engineer resounded from the telephone receiver.

“What about the coal?”
“I guarantee we’ll make it to San Francisco.”
“Has the fog cleared?”

“Not yet.”
“The sea route’s clear, but since the whole sky’s still covered up, we can’t take star readings.”

“So we don’t know our position or direction.”

“We don’t know, but it’s already safe.”
“Because Sakki’s Empress Star Constellation appeared faintly nearby, right where we figured it’d be.”
“It clouded over quick-like, but it’s ours now.”

“Ahahaha.”
“What about the SOS?”

“It must’ve flown off somewhere—poof.”
“The Captain’s grinning away—says we’ll load salmon and crab at Bankokuba, then loop back from San Francisco through Hawaii before heading home.”

“I’m relieved, ah… Get some rest…”
“It’s Christmas in Hawaii, oh—…”
“Go ahead and do whatever the hell you want… Eh… uh…”
“Ahahahahaha…”

However, it was strange how these cheerful conversations were rapidly betrayed just as the fog cleared.

When night broke and the fog cleared, looking beneath the sun that had finally begun to shine after so long, the ship was indeed behind schedule. Moreover, the ship had veered far too northward, straying completely away from Bankokuba’s bearing and plunging deep into Admiralty Bay—there it sat, its bow rigidly locked between the snow-capped crags of St. Elias and Fairweather Mountain, leaving me utterly dumbfounded. [...] Not only had the Captain’s and First Engineer’s calculations gone awry, but even my own gut estimates had completely missed the mark.

But that wasn’t all.

Unless one has sailed through Alaska’s coastal waters, they would hardly be able to fathom the sheer scale and dread of those waves.
Even if one were to spin salmon-roe-sized tall tales here, I don’t think they could convey the overwhelming force of those swells—yet there was nothing at all.
What one might mistake for waves—this colossal mountain range of Prussian blue—came surging endlessly beneath the clear, azure sky, overlapping with such ferocity they seemed poised to engulf even the five-thousand-meter peaks of the St. Elias range.
The Alaska Maru was a first-class giant among cargo ships at seven thousand tons, but even had those seven thousand tons been seventy thousand, once caught in those waves, it would have been no sturdier than a withered leaf.

When riding up to the crest of a wave，the terrifying mass of St．Elias—solidified with rock and glaciers—would rise up right before one’s eyes．Unquestionably，it seemed within reach．This was because，with air so thoroughly dry，it appeared deceptively close；but coming from Japan，where water vapor hung thick，the effect felt especially jarring．Even through binoculars，not a wisp of haze softened its edges．The jagged rocks glittered so sharply in sunlight that one might imagine spotting ants crawling across mountain flanks．．．and in that instant，the seven-thousand-ton vessel would slide headlong down from that great range’s summit，trailing black smoke．It felt exactly like skiing．When I stared fixedly at propeller bubbles trailing along towering wave flanks，the hull began feeling no heavier than a thousand tons．

As I thought this, the moment we settled into the trough, the bow plunged into the flank of the next wave, and with a thunderous crash, a seven- to ten-ton mass of water battered the bow’s deck. With a deep groan, we sank, the deck swishing and swirling as we plunged into the next massive wave’s belly. After all, the hull was so densely heavy that once battered by a large wave, it couldn’t easily rise back up. Every cabin window remained shackled by blue, aquarium-like rays filtering through the waves’ depths, and listening to the bulkheads and inner keels groan and creak incessantly under the water pressure—*creak… creak… creakcreakcreakcreak*—even though we knew full well the hull had been built solely on formulas calculating material strength against such pressures, it never felt reassuring in the slightest. Just when we’d finally managed to climb to the crest of a wave and catch our breath, in that brief moment, the propeller spun uselessly once more, churning up a spray of seawater as we plunged headlong into what could only be described as an abyssal chasm. When this was repeated thousands or tens of thousands of times a day, even lying still in the engine room’s bunk left us utterly exhausted.

“Hey.”
“Chief Engineer…?”

A call came from the captain’s cabin.

“It’s me.”
“Do you need something?”

“Yeah.”
“Can’t we get more speed?”

“We can increase it, but why?”
“The First Engineer’s been griping that the ship isn’t moving an inch.”
“We’re pushing sixteen knots as it is.”
“That’s volunteer fleet speed right there.”

“Idiot. When I say give speed, you give it!”
“How much?”
“Just make it eighteen knots!”

“That’s the maximum.”

“Yeah. Is there coal?”

“There’s still some left. Enough for four or five days at full speed…”

“……Alright…”

No sooner had the phone clattered down than the thunderous roar of waves battering the hull suddenly swelled. Even a mere difference of two knots made the waves feel like they’d more than doubled in size. Moreover, in reality, the hull’s response had more than doubled—so even the coal consumption wasn’t just some trivial difference.

Before long, as was typical at high latitudes, the day faded hazily into dusk, and an aurora resembling the footlights of an infernal theater dangled limply from the stern. All night long beneath that aurora, ascending and descending those overlapping wave mountains—gnashing white foam in a ceaseless seesaw—dawn’s pale light revealed, astonishingly, that the hull remained fixed with its bow positioned exactly as it had been yesterday morning: midway between St. Elias and Fairweather. It was unclear whether it had stayed fixed since yesterday or been pushed back overnight.

“What’s wrong?”

“Steady yourself!”

While they were arguing with the engineer about this and that，yesterday morning’s white sun came blazing out again．Because the air was dry，the shape of the shore stood out distinctly．It seemed you could even see the shadows of ants crawling on the mountainside．Even the usually composed Captain seemed somewhat startled by this．Climbing up to the bridge，he stared intently at the white sun as though it were a rare sight．Beside him，the First Engineer was trembling from the cold without even a coat．

“We’ve reversed course.”

“No. We’re being pushed back by the waves. Eighteen knots means nothing against these swells.”

“Such nonsense…”

“It’s true. These aren’t like last year’s waves.”

“They’re the same damned waves.”

“No.
They’re definitely different.”

While the First Engineer and the Captain were engaged in such a trivial argument, I took the risk and climbed up the ladder.
The Captain said with a crag-like expression that rivaled the rocky face of St. Elias directly across from them.

“No more… we can’t get any more speed.”
“Chief Engineer…”

“It won’t go up. The safety valve’s been roaring all night.”

“This is… troublesome…”

This was the first time I had ever heard this captain utter such words of defeat.

“This is… strange, isn’t it?”
“This time of all times… we’re seeing nothing but bizarre things happening before our eyes.”

“Could it be because we took that boy aboard?”
“Even just slightly…”

The First Engineer muttered as if to himself while staggering.
A pale, rigid face... I cleared my throat loudly.

“Ahem.”
“Could be.”
“But he shouldn’t be on the ship anymore.”

The Captain said nothing.
With a deeply bitter expression, he trained the eighteen-power binoculars on St. Elias.

The three of us parted ways with lingering unease, yet even on the morning of the third day thereafter—when Fairweather and St. Elias still loomed directly ahead—even I felt a creeping, numbing wonder pierce through the core of my brain.
At the same time, I confess I was overcome by an indescribably mystical feeling that set my heart pounding.
For I felt as though my soul, together with the hull itself, had been seized by some inexorable and incomprehensible force.

The stone-hard faces of me, the First Engineer, and the Captain clashed once more in the captain’s cabin.

“I haven’t heard any reports yet about changes in the speed of the warm current flowing north around here.”

The First Engineer said to the Captain in a tone like that of a defendant on trial.
The Captain blew Navy Cut cigarette smoke as if it were someone else’s affair.

“Heh heh.”
“Even if it had changed, there’s no reason a current strong enough to sweep away an eighteen-knot ship in an hour could exist on Earth’s surface.”

he declared with unyielding scientific conviction.
I nodded while lighting an Enchantress.

“Anyway, it’s not my fault.
The coal is definitely decreasing.”

The First Engineer also nodded solemnly, his eyes wide.
At the same time, growing even paler, he moved his white lips.

“……Something… Could it be… that some belonging of that boy’s… is still… left on the ship…?”

The Captain closed one eye, twisted his lips into a sneer.
However, the First Engineer, his face now deadly serious, bent at the waist and began peering into every corner of the captain’s cabin.
In the end, they even lifted the berth where the Captain and I were sitting and peered underneath, but beneath the berth was nothing but a pile of German and French scientific journals crammed together.
They couldn’t even find the boy’s slippers.

At last, the entire ship had been seized by an unshakable superstition and left utterly paralyzed. The crew members’ gazes all trembled fearfully.

...The ship won’t move... It’s the curse of the SOS Boy...

A clear, blue, blue sky stretched overhead; a pristine, radiant sun shone down.
In the quiet, bitingly cold wind, a shipwreck amidst jade-like towering waves…

...A shipwreck with no end in sight no matter how far they sailed... A shipwreck with no reason to send an SOS... A shipwreck without explanation... An unprecedented shipwreck...

“Come on, come on! No one complains—dump every scrap of coal we’ve got into the boilers! If that’s still not enough, heave in the cotton bales from the ship’s hold! And if even that falls short, I’ll crawl into that boiler myself! Ha ha ha!”

“Come on, come on.”
“Everyone, coal hauling! Coal hauling!…”

In truth, not even a speck of coal remained.
They relived—in reverse—the ordeal of loading it back in Yokohama, digging like madmen from impossibly distant corners to scavenge scraps for the engine room. But no sooner had they begun than the Second Engineer with the Chaplin mustache—sent to inspect what little coal was left—came tumbling into my quarters.

“T-Terrible... The S.O.S.’s corpse has been found.”

“What? S.O.S.... Ina’s corpse...?”

“Yeah. That’s right... Oh god, it was awful. Give me some water—quick. I can’t take this!”

“Here, drink. You pathetic coward. Where was it?”

“I—I was shocked... It’s behind the galley. On top of the coal pile—still wearing that blue gold-trimmed uniform from the *Empress of China*—he was lying there half-rotted to a skeleton. That spiky chestnut-burr hairstyle... It’s definitely him.”

“Skeleton…?…”

“Yes. That area’s a tangled mess of iron pipes and gets terribly hot, so it must’ve rotted quickly.”
“It had all its white teeth bared.”
“There wasn’t a single maggot… but it stank something awful.”

I climbed the iron ladder in silence and came to the middle deck’s sailors’ quarters. Grabbing the entranceway, I planted my feet like a wrathful deity and bellowed at the top of my voice.

“Hey.”
“Ken! You there?”
“Buck-toothed Ken… Severed-Head Ken… You there… Huh…?”

“Ooooh…”
A groggy-sounding voice came from the dark bunk shelf in the corner.
“Who’s there…?”
“It’s me…”

“It’s me…”

“Oh…
“Hell’s Chief?
“Well, this is…”

“Sorry to bother you, but spare me a moment.”

“Agh…”
“So you finally found it, huh?”

“Shh…”

Silencing him with a look, I led Ken into the sailors’ mess hall.
While dangling from a ceiling rope, I gave Ken a gold-tipped cigarette.
Ken kept scratching his head.

“Well, back in Yokohama, the police were sca~red of it, see...”
“So we ended up keepin’ it secret...”

“Did you kill him during coal hauling?”

“That’s right on the money… Heh.”
“Well, we didn’t aim to kill ’im from the start, see. But the others kept sayin’ that boy was a girl—over an’ over...”
“Before puttin’ him to work, we thought we’d check a bit… dragged him into there, so… Heh...”

“You idiot… So was he a girl?”

“We couldn’t tell… so we pinned ’im down there an’ tried yankin’ up his clothes, but he started thrashin’ like mad…”

“Course he would… Then what happened?”

“He suddenly lunged at me and bit down there… right like this…”

Ken rolled up his work clothes and knit undershirt and showed a bandage above the bicep on his left arm.

“It’s still swollen… throbbin’ like hell… Terrifyin’, I tell ya.”

“You idiot.”
“Were you naked back then?”

“Uh-huh-huh…”

“What a weird way to laugh.”
“Then what did you do?”

“I just lost my temper, see. Even if this brat said he’d get off, he’d just board another ship and cause more disasters—so finishin’ him there was the quickest way.”
“We figured checkin’ whether he was a man or woman’d be quicker after finishin’ him—but then that S.O.S. bastard, his mouth all bloody, splattered the chunk o’ meat he’d bitten off right onto my cheek and snarled ‘Demon!’ or some curse… Hypocrite, callin’ *me* a demon when he’s the one cursed.”
“…And then he started yappin’ about reportin’ me to the Captain later… or some such crap… so I figured there was no savin’ him then… grabbed his neck and squeezed… damn… Heh…”

“What a cruel thing to do. So was he a girl?”

“…Well… he was… a guy…”

“Pfft. You idiot. Then what did you want to do?”

“And that was it… Got so fed up with it, so we just left it there and came back.”

“Why didn’t you toss it into the sea?”

“Because I wanted to toss it where nobody’d find… didn’t wanna trouble you, Chief, or the engine room guys… plus back in Shanghai, when I went to haggle with the Captain, he clacked his dentures and spat this out—”
“‘Don’t mind if you beat that brat to death...’”

“Hold on.
“So he said he didn’t mind you killin’ him?”

“That’s right… But he swore if even one hair from the corpse got hauled outside, he’d skin us alive… see?”
“When he said that and the Captain hit me with that icepick glare—I swear my guts turned to water.”
“Never seen a mug that cursed-lookin’ before… Heh… Damn it all…”

“Hmm.”
“He said something strange.”

“Since he said that… didn’t know what to make of it… but if we got caught and fired, that’d be a real pain.”
“Thinking we’d get holes blown through us with those two pistols if we weren’t careful, we just left it as it was.”
“It’s just… damn it all.”

“Didn’t expect you to be so spineless… you…”

“Damn it all… Ever since then, we kept frettin’ over that corpse—today we’d think ‘Should we move it out?’ tomorrow ‘Should we clean it up?’—and all the while, misfortunes kept pilin’ up on the ship… The thing’s rottin’ beyond handlin’, and I damn near fell sick myself… Had enough of this mess.”
“Please… spare me this.”
“Even if we apologize now… ain’t no use, but…”

“Ha ha ha.”
“That stuff don’t matter anymore.”
“No complaints today.”
“You go clean up that corpse with a large tarp.”
“I’ll go settle things with the Captain.”

“Huh?!”
“That true, Chief?”

“I ain’t gonna say the same damn thing twice.”

“……Th-thank ya…”
“I’ll clean it up right away.”
“……Ah… that’s a load off…”

“You moron… Feel relieved after you’ve cleaned it up.”

Ken split the SOS gold-braided skeleton clean in two from the torso with a shovel, packed it into two large buckets, and came out.
He emerged onto the deck and, clinging to the lifeline, hurled the two buckets out over the sea—but when a bone fragment collided with a wave and bounced back to Ken’s feet, he turned deathly pale, snatched up the bone, and teetered precariously while,
“Namu Amida Butsu…!”

and threw it far away.

It may have been Ken’s trembling, fervent prayer, but his appearance was so comical that I, watching alone, was doubled over with laughter.

The Alaska Maru arrived smoothly in Bankōha without any further trouble after that.

Over the same waves, at the same speed… It was a ridiculous story—but really… what had it all been about.

Now, the real story begins here.

The more one looked at the Captain’s profile, the less human it seemed.

Deep within his convex forehead—black and glossy as if layered with persimmon-tanned paper over a skeleton and coated with varnish—were two glinting eyeballs like glass beads firmly embedded. He kept a sailor’s pipe clenched horizontally between his teeth, leaned both elbows against the bridge railing, and stared fixedly beneath the blue, blue sky. Along the withered, fixed line of his gaze lay the snow-white pier of Bankōha. They had finally struggled to reach the point where beautiful lights should have spread across the far side in a row… but. Literally….

The crowd gathered on that pier were those who had been waiting impatiently, worried about what had become of the *Alaska Maru*, which had arrived roughly five days late.

“The SOS bastard… Even as a skeleton, he’s still cursing us…”

The Captain suddenly turned around and looked at my face.
He bared his white false teeth to their fullest and let out a tremendous roar of laughter.

“Ha ha ha ha ha!
“Well… It was a fascinating experiment, wasn’t it?”
“So there really is such a thing as a logic beyond logic… Tahahaha.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha!—”