Pathway to Japanese Literature

I. Dawn Smells of the Forest

June’s refreshing dawn wind caressed my motionless cheek. I have been awake since Sakki. The full view of this Shonan "Seaside Sanatorium" is now about to be slowly exposed within the early summer's radiant light.

Even when I strained my ears intently, there wasn't a single sound. The branches of pine trees towering majestically on the opposite cliff swayed silently. The yellowed white silk curtains swayed languidly with the morning breeze, as if they were rising smoke or seaweed, just as soundlessly. The only sound was that of abundant rays of light pouring down brilliantly across the entire surroundings.

Pure white ceiling and walls, a pure white bed, a glossy floor reflecting pure white shadows... (The languor upon waking that never quite settles...) Before I knew it, when my eyelids closed again, there came a scent from the perpetually open window—as if parting through that deep forest, all the way through.

×

When I opened my eyes again, there was a sense of a nurse moving about somewhere in the distance. Keeping my body perfectly still and moving only my eyeballs, I saw that the clock at the edge of my vision pointed to six-thirty.

After coughing lightly two or three times, I busily worked the tip of my tongue to expel the stubborn phlegm that had accumulated overnight, spat it ptuh, ptuh into the spittoon, and while inhaling the pungent formalin rising from below, carefully examined the expelled clump of phlegm. Finally reassured, I propped myself up halfway in bed.

Thus began yet another unchanging day at the sanatorium. 6:00 AM wake-up, temperature-taking. 7:00 AM breakfast. 9:00–11:00 AM (every other day) examination. 12:00 PM temperature-taking, lunch. Nap until 3:00 PM. 3:00 PM temperature-taking. 5:30 PM dinner. 8:00 PM temperature-taking. 9:00 PM lights out… Beyond this, there was absolutely nothing to do. As if it were a tradition predating the sanatorium’s construction, this daily regimen was unfailingly repeated. I raised my upper body halfway in bed and, while looking through the window at the blackish-red petals of dahlias that bloomed riotously across the flowerbed in intensely vivid colors, habitually tucked the thermometer under my arm. Along with the cool sensation of the mercury column, I recalled the day I had been admitted months ago.

It was when I, having been newly admitted and still unfamiliar with everything, lay idly in bed—trainee nurse Yuki came around and suddenly thrust the thermometer into my armpit. The moment I gasped in surprise came the pain of two or three tangled hairs being pulled out... Nurse Yuki's complicated moan-like voice and her face flushed bright red... (Hmph, hmph, hmph...) Somehow finding it uncontrollably amusing, when my body shook involuntarily, the thermometer's tip began poking around this way and that inside my armpit.

“You’re in good spirits… Good morning――” “Huh...” Startled, I looked up from my bed toward the entrance to find Madam Kyōko from the same ward standing there, toothbrush in hand, laughing. “Oh... Good morning...” “What a lovely morning. Look, the lilies are blooming.” “Right.” I pulled out the thermometer and, while adjusting the front of my nightgown, looked through the mercury column. (36 degrees and a bit...) I murmured. (I’m feeling good——)

With my toes, I searched for the slippers and hooked them.

“Well—” “Look, up there so high.” Madam Kyōko’s translucent white arm extended bare, the toothbrush at her fingertips swaying. I wrenched my gaze from Kyoko’s veined upper arm—those subcutaneous rivers visible through translucent skin—and looked up at the cliff. “Oh, I see…” “That pollen—isn’t it bewitching? When you stare at dewy pollen clinging to stamens like that... it makes you shudder... don’t you agree?”

“Soo...” I felt as though I had touched the naked heart of Kyoko—Kyoko who, having overripened to bursting, now festered moistly within her chest.

Madam Kyōko wore a showy towel nightgown. It was not pajamas, yet against Kyoko's bobbed hair it exhibited a strange harmony.

“I’ll go on ahead—”

Madam Kyōko disappeared into the washroom, her slippers slapping against the gleaming corridor.

I felt something strange from that bedhead-mussed bob retreating down the corridor, entered my room, roughly yanked open the medicine cabinet drawer, grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste tube, then hurried after her.

×

“Mealtime...” The nurse went from room to room whispering.

It was the custom of this sanatorium for patients with mild cases to sit at the tables arranged in the Sun Room. This was because eating while conversing with others stimulated the appetite better than furtively eating alone in one's room.

“Good morning...”

“Oh... Good morning...”

In this ward, there were exactly ten patients upstairs and downstairs combined, but only four of us—myself included—came out here. They were myself; Aoki Yūrei—who had graduated from an art school and was teaching at a middle school in Korea—and Madam Kyōko—though her room’s entrance bore the name "Hirozawa Kyōko" in white letters, everyone called her Madam. But her husband probably disliked tuberculosis—he had never once come here to visit—and the fourth was Kimie Moroguchi, who had just graduated from girls' school.

When the four of us gathered, our first topic would invariably be earnest discussions about temperature fluctuations—how so-and-so seemed slightly worse or likely had a fever—debating each single degree or even a fraction like speculators. And even after finishing meals, we would spend the approximately thirty minutes before taking our post-meal powdered medicine gazing at the expanse of blue sea visible through pine branches from this second-floor Sun Room, listening to records, or passing time with trivial talk. At those times, it was almost entirely Madam Kyōko’s solo performance. Spreading her white, cream-colored translucent arms, she would overwhelm everyone with her dramatic manner of speaking.

“Today I’ve come down with a bit of a fever too…”

After a round of small talk, Madam Kyoko said this for some reason and looked around at us. "Why..." "What's happened—"

Miss Moroguchi asked with concern.

“Hohohoho, once a month I always get this feverish feeling.” “Oh...”

“Hohohoho.” At Madam Kyōko’s frank words, everyone averted their gaze in unison and sipped their cold tea. When I stole a glance at Aoki’s face, he kept his forehead furrowed while deliberately rinsing his mouth with tea—making a show of its foul taste. Aoki was thin as a crane—a trite comparison, yet fitting. He had graduated from art school and been teaching in Korea when he coughed up blood there; though he claimed to have taken immediate leave upon arriving here, his temperature had nearly stabilized by now. After departing Korea and crossing the Kanmon Strait, everything he saw grew so verdant it seemed to have cured his illness—though he would mutter things like, “Well, might as well rest properly while I’m at it.”

And recently—beginning with talk of his professional painting—he had taken to haunting Madam Kyōko's sickroom at all hours, declaring, "I'm going to paint Madam's portrait." Miss Moroguchi seemed to harbor some unease about this affair, and though I couldn't help but detect such signs myself, I—

*(Other people’s affairs—)*

The reason I pretended not to notice—as you might have guessed—was that I was fond of Miss Moroguchi. And the clearer Aoki and Kyoko's pairing became... while I too felt jealous... nevertheless, I harbored in some corner of my heart this despicably egotistical sentiment—so typical of a tuberculosis patient—that the two of us left behind, Miss Moroguchi and I, would consequently grow closer.

×

Today as well, even after the dining table had been cleared away, the four of us remained there talking as we were. In the end, as I had anticipated, the conversation remained mostly between Aoki and Kyoko exchanging banter, with Miss Moroguchi and I merely interjecting occasional responses.

Miss Moroguchi—having just graduated from girls' school, she must have been eighteen or nineteen—wore a flower-patterned summer kimono with the himo cord tied high across her chest to accommodate lying down and sitting up, appearing strikingly vivid; her adorable lips glistened as brightly as after hemoptysis, eyes possessing large dark pupils topped by long eyelashes unmistakably scrofulous in nature. Though her illness had finally entered a quiescent phase, perhaps due to lingering traces of consumptive fever, her cheeks bore a faint flush that formed a beautiful contrast with her translucent skin.

That vivid figure stood in complete antithesis to Madam Kyōko. In this woman—decadently overripe, perfected to an uncanny degree—I sensed an overwhelming force of active vitality that felt almost unnatural. Through these two women, I came to understand that feminine beauty exists in two distinct forms. Where Miss Moroguchi embodied a delicate, classically serene beauty, Madam Kyōko’s evoked a fiercely blazing demoness from passion’s prison—one that threatened to incinerate everything in its path.

Yet I could not prioritize either of these two beauties; even within Madam Kyōko's plump arms—their enchantress-like beauty that seemed to strangle necks like silk floss and suck every last drop of living blood—I too could not deny there existed an utterly mysterious allure. But I—terribly selfish yet consummately image-conscious—could not bring myself to overwhelm this vital force and plunge in; thus I merely smirked while watching Aoki, who seemed to have blazed the trail toward Madam. And I, as mentioned before, waited still as a spider in its web for Miss Moroguchi to approach me of her own accord—all the while feigning ignorance on the surface...

×

Serenely silent, bathed in the morning sunlight. A bell rang through the sanatorium like permeating liquid. Nine o'clock—the signal for medical examinations. In this hospital, it was customary for patients with mild cases to go to the medical office to receive examinations.

When the bell rang, patients from various wards—some coming through corridors, others crossing the promenade lawn—would line up on chairs in the narrow waiting room to await their turn; from the Third Ward, only the usual four including myself went via the corridors. In the sickrooms lining one side of the wide corridor, patients of all kinds—old and young, men and women—stared fixedly at the white ceilings. Those people would watch us walk to the medical office for our examinations with evident envy, following us with their eyes until we disappeared from view. Madam Kyōko would deliberately walk briskly down the corridor at such times and call out in a loud voice, “Good morn—ing!” to the nurses and familiar patients.

When I went to the medical office, four or five people had already come, each stripped to the waist waiting their turn. “Please...”

“Well then, I’ll go ahead…” Madam Kyōko slipped smoothly from her kimono and seated herself on the chair before the Deputy Director. “How are we feeling?”

“Nothing in particular...”

Their exchange followed the usual script. Deputy Director Narikawa lazily glanced through the chart and inserted his stethoscope into his ears.

Absentmindedly watching that motion with vacant eyes, I suddenly caught my breath at that moment.

Perhaps due to today's arrangement, Madam’s nude upper body loomed directly before us, and those Kyōko breasts—provocatively close-up—bore such robust swellings as to seem inconceivable for a tuberculosis patient. Her skin was so finely textured and soft that one might think her entire body were sheathed in dewy cream-colored silk; moreover, whether from backlighting or some trick of perspective, from where I stood her breasts appeared dusted with golden thread-like down across their full surface, while between their twin swellings ran a shadowed groove sunken like a devil’s lair—all displayed for blatant viewing. I felt my gaze shrink back—whether imagined or not—and hurriedly blinked two or three times. At that moment, I even sensed the rough breathing of Aoki sitting beside me.

×

When the examination ended, the four of us went straight to the resting area as we were. The resting area was located at the edge of the sanatorium, with reed screens spread beneath poplars and wisteria, rows of reclining chairs lined up in neat formation. When we lay there, the sanatorium’s red roof would appear vividly before our eyes, floating against the crystal-clear blue sky of early summer.

We remained there with our eyes closed for a while; when we closed them, it was as if we were at the bottom of the deep sea—not a single sound could be heard. Very rarely, a swollen gadfly would drift beneath the wisteria that was nearly ready to fruit, its dull buzzing reverberating through the air. A south wind arrived carrying the scent of tide—it was a deep blue wind from the ocean expanse. ...After keeping my eyes closed for a while, I suddenly felt as though someone somewhere was stifling laughter. When I moved only my eyes, I saw Miss Moroguchi lying on the neighboring chair—looking up at the sky while struggling to suppress a strangely distorted smile that resembled both a ticklish memory and something I too had experienced somewhere.

(Hm?) With that thought, I immediately tracked her gaze with my eyes. Her gaze collided with the red roof. (Hmm...) While harboring this thought, I followed her line of sight once more and struck upon something startling; before I realized it, I was scrutinizing the object intently.

It was a pure white cumulonimbus cloud floating large above the red roof in the blue sky. That cumulonimbus cloud—swollen and writhing as if twisting upward—had formed an unimaginably bizarre shape. The moment I clearly understood the meaning behind Miss Moroguchi’s stifled laugh—realizing that even this quiet, seemingly indifferent consumptive girl shared the same pulsing blood as Madam Kyōko—I suddenly felt revolted.

“Ahem.” I deliberately turned sideways and cleared my throat, “Miss Moroguchi, what fine weather… Those clouds are as white as sterilized absorbent cotton, aren’t they?” “Oh my—comparing them to absorbent cotton! One shouldn’t say such things!” She had already recomposed that distorted face into primness and spoke with a scornful tilt of her chin. I, (Hmph…) snickered silently behind closed lips. Yet whether from crimson dahlia shadows falling across her or some trick of light, her profile—slightly flushed—appeared more beautiful to me than ever before.

When I slightly raised my upper body, beyond Miss Moroguchi lay Madam—and pressed so close to her reclining chair it seemed about to touch was another bearing Aoki’s emaciated frame. Both had their eyes closed. On the bridge of Madam Kyōko’s sharply defined nose rested dewdrop-like sweat, while the recklessly bright sun made the entire surroundings shimmer like heat haze.

As the chair creaked with a groan, Miss Moroguchi also raised her upper body, stretching toward me as she spoke in a small voice.

"I... I’ve gotten all worried..." “What…?” "What do you mean...? My body keeps getting worse... really... I feel like I'm about to suddenly spike a fever any moment now, and I just can't stand it..." “Don’t be absurd… That very worry is what makes fevers spike. You’ve got too much time on your hands—instead of dwelling on such things, you’d do better for your health staring at cumulonimbus clouds and letting your imagination run wild…” “Well…” She flashed a momentarily startled, stiff smile but—

“How mean of you…”

She lightly glared while brushing back stray hairs near her earlobe. “Haha… What were you thinking about…” “...About Madam and Mr. Aoki... You know.” “What are you—” “Oh, you don’t know? How carefree.” “You mean they’re close?” “Everyone knows that much.” “Hmph, so there’s something more to it?” “Well… I suppose… Let’s go over there――” Miss Moroguchi soundlessly got down from her chair, stepped onto the lawn, and headed toward the pond. I also stood up quietly, confirmed with a sidelong glance that Madam and Aoki were dozing, and promptly followed after her.

In the pond, water lilies already held buds, and here and there, shadows of cottony clouds drifted like wheat gluten. "What's that—?" "You know... When night comes... After lights-out... Mr. Aoki goes to Madam's room..." "Hmm."

“And then… guess what they do――” “They go to draw pictures—on skin… In other words, to tattoo…” “No way――” “Oh please—it’s true! My room’s right next to Madam’s—I’d know.” “But if he tattoos her, it would be noticed during examinations...” “That depends…” “I see… But for what purpose――”

“Oh dear, I don’t know about such things—it’s through the wall, after all…”

“Hmm.” "...They look awfully close..."

Miss Moroguchi put her hand to her mouth as if yawning.

“Hmm.”

As I listen to this account，I feel an intense unpleasantness of a kind I've never experienced before．Is this jealousy？This bile-rising，unbearable，loathsome sensation．When I think about it－I shouldn't have been particularly interested in Madam－yet somehow upon hearing this story，I begin to feel a burning resentment toward Aoki．I feel a tight clenching around the pit of my stomach．And then，

(To Anna Aoki...) The moment I thought this, my heartbeat began pounding louder and louder…….

At that moment, the noon bell tolled solemnly.

When I came to with a start, from the window of a distant ward, a nurse— (Lunch is served—) I could see her mouthing those words while waving her hand.

II. Midday Smells of Sunflowers

During the meal, I suddenly noticed my gaze kept drifting toward Kyoko. Even when I tried not to look, the tattoo story I'd heard from Miss Moroguchi lingered in my mind, until I found myself helplessly fixated on Kyoko's every movement. Whether from the heat or something else, Kyoko—who had recently lost all appetite—sat at the table with glistening eyes, elbows propped on its surface, when suddenly, as if possessed by some thought, she began singing a passage from *Humoresque*.

Is it the moon's sigh? A faint melody— Flowing through darkness comes— Resound, melody, in this anguished heart. A solace-stealing melody draws near— Yet still unknown—a poem to draw forth tears While singing, her eyes began to gleam eerily. Strangely enough, they might be brimming with tears. “So… what do you think of this song……”

“How...” “I learned this song from Mr. Aoki, but I think it’s the ‘Lung Disease Song’.” “You mean the lyrics?” I was dumbfounded by her utterly bizarre words and asked. “No—well, that too—but this melody! Here, listen closely now—don’t the curve of that fever chart and this melody match perfectly? The rises and falls correspond exactly to those temperature undulations—it’s astonishing how precisely they align……”

“Right… Now that you mention it, I see…” “When I sing this song… it terrifies me… Because—” A solace-stealing melody draws near— “When it reaches that part—‘a solace-stealing melody draws near’—the tempo suddenly surges… My temperature would spike to about forty degrees… I feel like I’m right at that rising point now—any moment, the fever will come raging up…” Having said this, Madam Kyōko let desolate loneliness—unbefitting her usual cheerfulness—spread across her beautiful face.

(Ah well, probably just some bodily irregularity……) Even as I thought this, I found myself humming that eerie song. Indeed, the curves of the ladle-shaped notes dancing across the score transformed into sine waves, forming a strikingly similar shape to the curves of the fever chart. While attributing it to the delusional anxiety of tuberculosis patients, I could do nothing but watch with uneasy dread this patient’s unique latent terror—undeniable despite my rationalizations—and the convulsive spasms of her hyperacute nerves.

When I realized that even Madam Kyoko—this beautiful demoness as she was perceived—harbored such neuropathic yet restless terror, I sensed there a delicate woman I had never before imagined.

Aoki and Miss Moroguchi remained silent, but within everyone’s chests, that ordinary yet bizarre melody from *Humoresque* must have been repeating itself over and over…….

×

"Well, since it's rest period, let's go to the lounging area... What fine weather..." Trying to dispel the strange atmosphere, I deliberately thumped the table and stood up. "Well..."

Miss Moroguchi also suddenly raised her eyes and lifted her hips from her seat.

That was when it happened. Madam gurgled in her throat, then with a sickening splat—a sound like vomiting up her heart—collapsed onto the table she had half-risen from. “Ah!”

The instant the thought formed, translucent crimson blood bubbled from Madam Kyoko's collapsed lips, gushing forth to paint a scarlet map across the pristine white table—spreading rapidly as it seeped outward. (Hemoptysis!) The three of them gasped and leapt to their feet. With a deafening crash, the chair flipped over backward. “Nurse… Nurse…” Miss Moroguchi, trembling hands clasped near her chest and face pale, kept calling for the nurse in a murmuring voice.

“Madam, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Aoki hurriedly pulled up the tablecloth and pressed it against Kyoko’s chest. Her collapsed back heaved violently as she gasped desperately to expel the blood choking her throat……

“It’s all right, calm down, calm down—”

The head nurse who had rushed over supported her with practiced hands. Kyoko’s eyes—finally lifting her face—were wide open, drenched in tears as if her entire eyes had become pupils, glaring at an unseen corner of the room; then, perhaps having noticed us, she showed a faint, low smile that seemed to vanish instantly. At that moment, crimson remnant blood flowed down like a red thread from between her slightly parted lips and swiftly disappeared beneath her sharply defined chin.

Urged by the nurse, we hastily exited the sunroom and went to the reclining area. The moment we stepped outside, the dazzling brightness made the three of us—our nerves already frayed—involuntarily stagger to a halt. The sun seeped bluish through the crown of my skull like a rotten sunflower.

Collapsed into the lounge chairs, no one spoke. Even with my eyes closed, desperately trying to calm myself, my abnormally heightened nerves only recalled the frothing fresh blood and that eerie Humoresque—though I might refrain from singing it, the melody rode my pulse to whisper through every part of my body. After tossing restlessly for what felt like ages, overwhelmed by my heightened nerves yet still listening with closed eyes to the lazy buzzing of gadfly wings like Russell’s, the nurse came around.

“It’s three o’clock. Your temperature…” “Oh, I forgot… I’ll check now. How’s Madam—” “Haa…” While inserting the thermometer under my arm from trainee nurse Yuki’s childlike face— (—Madam’s in bad shape…)

I intuited. “Given that Madam’s condition has worsened precisely now, the doctor said the bleeding simply won’t stop...”

“Ah, right… Her condition must’ve been bad.” I too seem to feel feverish. When I warily peer at the thermometer, it reads thirty-seven point five degrees. (This is bad...) I suddenly begin to feel chest tightness. “I’ve gone and gotten a fever too.” “Everyone... after witnessing that... Miss Moroguchi has already turned pale and gone to sleep in her room.”

Now that she mentioned it, both Miss Moroguchi and Aoki had vanished without my noticing—I, (It's just my imagination.)

Even as I thought this, I muttered "thirty-seven point five degrees, thirty-seven point five degrees" two or three times and sank limply back into the lounge chair. Nurse Yuki quietly draped a blanket over my legs and left.

When at last the pale blue sky turned vaguely purple from the evening glow and water vapor began drifting faintly from the back woods, the dinner bell reached me where I lay as if nothing had happened all day. I felt no hunger whatsoever, but rising half from habit, I smoothed down my bed-mussed hair at the nape and went to the sunroom's dining hall. There sat Miss Moroguchi in the dining hall, her face slightly more angular than usual, perched utterly alone on a chair.

We remained silent; thinking of Madam Kyoko who had suffered massive hemoptysis here earlier left us with even less appetite. "Mr. Aoki..." I asked Nurse Yuki.

“Well... he came to the reclining area earlier and hasn’t been seen since...” (That bastard Aoki probably doesn’t want to eat anyway.)

At the same time, (I wonder if he's gone to Madam's room.) I imagined him earnestly cooling her forehead and tending to her, thinking "Hmph." Even after we had listlessly finished our insipid dinner, Mr. Aoki still hadn't appeared. From the ownerless meal tray's soup bowl, not even steam rose anymore. "Yuki, have you seen Mr. Aoki?"

The head nurse came around and said this. “No… not in his room…”

“He’s not in his room or Madam’s either—completely vanished.”

“Perhaps out for a walk?” “Even so, this is taking too long...” The two women exchanged whispers in hushed tones. “Isn’t Mr. Aoki here?” I interjected. “Goodness... what could have happened—I’m at a loss...”

At that moment, I felt an indescribably ominous premonition. “Strange...” “What could have happened…”

The head nurse leaned out from the second-floor sunroom's railing as though surveying the entire sanatorium in the gathering dusk, staring fixedly. Miss Moroguchi sat with eyes half-closed, sipping bancha.

III. Dusk Smells of Poppies

I finished my meal and went straight to visit Madam. Madam lay sunken into the stark white bed, her pallid forehead glistening with night sweat, each labored breath producing harsh friction within her chest. A young nurse sat slumped in a chair, clutching a damp washcloth as if uncertain what to do, keeping vigil over Madam's sleeping face. Suddenly noticing the metal basin beside the bed within my lowered gaze - seeing that vessel filled to overflowing with crimson liquid - I felt inexplicably guilty and fled the room in disarray.

When I left the room, Miss Moroguchi was standing at the entrance.

“How…?” “……”

I shook my head silently and began walking down the long corridor. (No good...) I mouthed it again. (Still... what happened to that bastard Aoki...)

On my way past, I peeked into Aoki’s room, but it was completely deserted.

×

When I returned to my room and opened the medicine cabinet drawer to take my post-meal powdered medicine, I noticed—perhaps it had been wedged inside—a thick white square envelope fall with a thud.

(Oh—)

For some reason, I gasped and picked it up to find that on the front was written "Kawamura Kyoji-sama," and on the back, "Aoki Yūrei" was scrawled.

I cut open the seal while suppressing my chest that surged and throbbed uncontrollably. As I read further on, my hands trembled violently, and a ghastly clammy sweat broke out across my forehead and underarms.

×

Mr. Kawamura Kyoji

I am in a great hurry now, and yet why did I write this letter—I want you to read it through to the end.

Now, to state matters with utmost brevity—I killed Madam Kyōko……Do not look so astonished—I have not lost my mind—no, though mad I certainly am—yes, to put it affectedly, I went mad with “love and art.” Never before had I encountered an ideal woman like Kyōko……But how cruel this world is—no sooner had I finally found my ideal woman than she had already become a great industrialist’s second mistress. Can you comprehend this feeling? And one more thing—when you hear this, even you will keenly feel life’s irony—guess whose mistress Madam Kyōko was. Kawamura Tetsuzō—that is to say, she is your strict father’s second mistress. You likely remain unaware—but has her family ever once visited during Kyoko’s long hospitalization? Has she ever been seen with this 'husband' she calls Madam? Of course not—they fear encountering you. Of course your strict father repeatedly urged her to transfer to another sanatorium—yet she refused to move... Because I was here—and moreover because you were here... It was precisely your presence here that allowed us to enjoy our love without interference—good-natured Kyoji—unwittingly, you became the breakwater protecting our affair. Thank you—I offer deepest gratitude... But still—a tragic catastrophe awaited us... Lately I had been tormented by relapses—my chest now teemed with countless toxic insects gnawing through me... Yes—our love awakened dormant tuberculosis bacilli... The temperatures on my chart were pure fabrication—nothing but Nurse Yuki faithfully recording my lies...

Even as I became aware of my diminishing lifespan, I felt a strange anxiety—I wanted to leave behind a work that would entrance even myself… And so I resolved—yes, resolved—to pour all my energy into creating a work upon this world’s most sacred canvas: Kyoko’s gauze-thin skin… Fortunately, Kyoko permitted this. "The Man in the Shadows" I crafted a tattoo using face powder to embody myself… The powder-made design stays hidden under normal circumstances, but when bathing or drinking reddened her skin, it would rise faintly white… Just as liquor recalls women from one’s past…

I carved a white moth there—one hairy, swollen and plump moth... The thickness of its abdomen, the density of its toxin-dusted wings... That venomous white moth clung suction-tight to her inner thigh, undulating its corpulent body as though alive... No—that moth does possess life, for there lives an extension of this Aoki Yūrei's very existence... But—but—recently, I have come to feel something profoundly unpleasant: that you seem to have developed more than ordinary interest in Kyoko, and what’s worse, that she herself appears not entirely without such inclinations. There is something about this that cannot be entirely dismissed as groundless suspicion. "For Kyoko had recently become noticeably less passionate toward me... I grew anxious, agonized—and whether because of this, my body deteriorated to a degree I could clearly discern myself—you must understand now why I refused examinations lately while claiming 'nothing's wrong'—my breath reeks of fever even to my own senses, I've become self-destructive... I would kill Kyoko and then myself... You must understand—left untreated, my life wouldn't last much longer anyway..."

Claiming it was the final touch, I inserted the last needle into her resisting body with near-coercion. The bundled silk needles—five blurred tips bound together—bore that virulent XX poison. You must know—that XX strips blood of its clotting power. Once bleeding begins, it flows unstoppable as hemophilia, hemorrhaging ceaselessly until death... I knew Kyoko's physical condition—now you must fully grasp everything... But one thing—why employ such half-hearted means for our forced suicide?... Ah, damn you Aoki... Though you'll surely understand—this patient clung fiercely to life... Had Kyoko's death gone unquestioned, I might still be speaking with you now. And I might have been plotting a second confrontation against you. But evil eluded me—Kyoko was lured into hemoptysis by that demonic song... Ah, what catastrophic error—to mistake her waning strength for coldness! She was truly unwell; enduring discomfort that seemed like indifference to my deranged mind. Kyoko did love me still—I wanted you to know that—yet I killed her... I've wearied of writing; by your reading this, I'll have left this world, the endless sea churning as it awaits me.

Please give my regards to your strict father, Mr. Tetsuzō. Yūrei Aoki

×

After finishing reading, I staggered and collapsed onto the bed; then with trembling hands, I took out three hypnotic drugs wrapped in red paper from the medicine cabinet’s drawer and gulped them down in one go. In the throes of such intense excitement that my vision threatened to darken, I couldn’t possibly remain upright. As the gritty medicine tumbled down my throat, a piercing poppy-like odor shot up through my nose…….

In my head, the gadfly I had seen during the day and the moth said to be carved on Kyoko’s inner thigh swirled indistinguishably—sometimes morphing into grotesquely enormous forms, sometimes shrinking to needle-tip specks—all while droning whispers circled about. And within the lukewarm, swamp-like slumber, I somehow retained a vivid memory of Madam Kyoko’s corpse being carried to the mortuary on a white stretcher.

("Detective Literature" July 1936 issue)