Pathway to Japanese Literature

...Ah! It's the Director.
"Pardon my intrusion."

Yes.
"To come straight to the matter—as my mental state has at last recovered through your gracious care—I've come today to request my discharge effective immediately. That being the consultation I wished to make... Though having imposed upon you so extensively all this time, I find myself quite unable to express adequate gratitude."
"...Yes."
"As for the hospitalization fees—I intend to deliver them promptly upon returning home—though..."

...Ah ha... Precisely.
"I see."
"You mean to say I cannot authorize your discharge without first hearing your circumstances?"
"No."
"Your argument is entirely reasonable."
"Then I shall explain everything... But you mustn't breathe a word of this to anyone."
"This concerns a matter of life and death for me..."

Ah... Of course.
If doctors went about leaking every patient's secret, their profession would become untenable.
Hospitals essentially function as vaults for society's hidden truths... No...
I swear my discretion.
This transcends mere matters of discretion.

Well then—to lay bare the facts and confess—what remains hidden? I am a murderer with prior convictions. I am a felon who escaped prison and fled. A vile abductor of women and, at the same time, an utterly shameless inhuman being who even committed bigamy...

No.
"I must ask you not to laugh."
"That you would consider it thus is something for which I can scarcely express sufficient gratitude. Yet I absolutely cannot bend the facts."
"As you well know, I am currently recognized as Hidemaro—the adopted heir of the Yamayama family once styled Hokkaido's Coal King."
"It may indeed seem natural that all should assume my birth family must have been splendidly distinguished—yet regrettably, the truth stands diametrically opposed... nay, proves far more wretched."
"As evidence—were I to confess the state I was in immediately before entering the Yamayama household—any listener would find their mouth hanging agape beyond closing."

I was nothing more than a vagrant corpse—washed downstream from the upper reaches of Hokkaido’s Ishikari River in early summer of Taishō Year X, trapped in unexplained suspended animation—my entire body covered in scrapes from rocks and peck marks from river fish, utterly naked like some primordial savage with wildly overgrown hair and beard—until I drifted ashore behind the coal king Yamayama family’s opulent villa overlooking Esaushi Mountain’s sublime vistas, where through the care of a certain Otaru Times reporter staying there, I finally revived as a nameless youth.

“No—please wait. You finding this laughable is entirely justified.”
“My account keeps veering off course at every turn… Moreover, these matters remain absolute secrets even within Yamayama family circles—your lack of prior knowledge being entirely natural—yet I swear by heaven and earth that every word I speak is fact.”
“No—this is absolute truth.”
“That’s not all.”
“Were you to hear this confession of my life’s circumstances from a dispassionate third-party perspective, there’s no telling how many more utterly outlandish facts might come tumbling forth.”
“Thus, should you fixate on each triviality, this hard-won confession would lose all coherence—yet simultaneously, I must implore you to acknowledge this single reality: that these truly inconceivable, bizarre truths have remained the Yamayama family’s ironclad secret, never once escaping these walls until today.”
“Particularly as this concerns events in Hokkaido—a land differing from mainland Japan in its uncivilized barbarity… or rather, its abundance of mysterious locales.”
“If you would fully weigh these contextual factors while listening, then whether this tale proves fabrication or truth—whether the splendid delusion of a madman or a sane man’s factual account—such distinctions will gradually clarify themselves as the narrative progresses.”

Now then...
Through the care of that Otaru Times reporter and a nearby doctor, I—who had finally been revived from a near-death state, though the cause remained unclear—found myself having completely lost all memory of my own past.
At that time, I still bore a severe contusion on my head, so even now I believe I must have fallen from some height and struck my skull, plunging into such an absurd condition… Though it may be impertinent to say, you—of all people—must be intimately familiar with cases like this…

...Ah ha...
I had never witnessed such cases myself, but they often appear in stories.
It might indeed be possible as a serious fact...
In any case, from that point onward I had completely concealed my own past, following every instruction from that certain reporter...

……I was born in Saga, Kyushu—an orphan with no parents or siblings.
Of course I had no formal education to speak of, but having recently failed in a business venture in Tokyo and grown despondent with this world, I resolved to end my life deep in Hokkaido's untrodden mountains—intending my corpse to become food for bears or eagles—yet in my reckless ascent through range after range, I accidentally fell into the Ishikari River…

With such fabricated nonsense about this and that, I managed to deceive the people around the villa.
After grooming my overgrown hair into a modern style and transforming myself into an unrecognizably dashing figure—though this drastic makeover changed nothing fundamental—being a wandering soul with neither destination nor home left me no choice.
I received the old yukata the reporter had been using as sleepwear, and while staying at the villa under their care, passed each day in a listless haze…

“……Oh? ‘The name of that reporter?’”

…Umm…
Oh?
Strange… What was it called… I had it clear in my memory until just now. How odd… I’ve gone completely blank and can’t quite recall.
Ah!
What’s this…

Are you saying it's inexcusable to forget the name of one's life-giver...? To— Preposterous.
If that Anna wretch were my life-giver, then cat repellent would be the elixir of longevity.

The demon who, having swiftly discerned what I had previously confessed—that I was no ordinary felon but a recidivist of grave crimes—and who then began gradually extending his hand to manipulate my fate through methods so cruel they seemed driven solely by some perverse satisfaction in the macabre, was none other than...
That very life-giver himself.
The beast who became a cankerworm within the Yamayama family’s body—methodically devising plans to torment me into near-madness—was none other than that reporter. ...Yes... Precisely.
Well then, until I recall that wretch’s name, shall we proceed by temporarily dubbing him A?

Now this man called A was a newspaper reporter practically living at the Yamayama residence who claimed expertise in bear hunting and skating—claims that were likely factual.
He was a well-built, dark-skinned, sharp-eyed man with an unmistakably haughty newspaper reporter’s demeanor.
In that manner, while keeping me at the Yamayama family’s villa, he asked me various questions and spoke to me, seemingly making strenuous efforts to restore my memory—to restore my memory.

Yes.
“Of course he was.”
No doubt he had intended to first restore my memory and then extract some sensational news story from me, but unfortunately, all his efforts ended in complete futility.
The past memories that had evaporated from my brain had likely already fled utterly to the vicinity of the Sirius constellation.
After that, they never returned easily...

Of course, had I by chance recalled my past history at that time, the matter might have ended right there and then with all being well.
I might have turned to earth without sound or scent, never having been made to feel that dreadful terror by Anna...

Then, after about two weeks had passed, on a certain sweltering day—
The coal magnate Yamayama family’s sole heiress—a famously willful young lady of twenty-three known as Miss Ryūyo, who had no parents or siblings and reigned as social queen from Otaru to Hakodate—suddenly came driving along the newly constructed road from Aibetsu to the villa at the foot of Esaushi Mountain, accompanied by two or three middle-aged women she called “aunts.”
And so it came to pass that I soon caught the young lady’s eye—yes.
That’s right… Though the tempo of this account may seem exceedingly rapid, there is nothing to be done—for it is fact.
However, as I later came to hear, that capricious queen Miss Ryūyo—upon learning about me through Reporter A’s report after he had circled back to the main residence in Otaru—seems to have been seized by an unbearable curiosity, abandoning all else to come see me. Moreover, they say that upon arriving and laying eyes on me—a drifter of unknown name or origin—she resolved then and there never to let go, even in death. From this alone, you can well imagine the extremity of her willfulness.

……I must apologize if this sounds like senile rambling…… but I too have my reasons. Since I was acutely aware of having lost all memory of my past—as I’d just explained—I perhaps should have considered then whether there might have been some woman I’d promised myself to long ago… Yet not a wisp of such concern crossed my mind—let alone any inkling that behind our backs, Reporter A might have been licking his chops—for I remained utterly spellbound by Ryūyo’s queenly demeanor, a creature of bewitching vivacity. By any measure, this was the gravest miscalculation of my life. Perhaps this was what they call fate… Ha ha ha….

As for the outcome—being common knowledge that requires no further elaboration—I shall spare you the details. However, when through Ryūyo's supreme capriciousness and Reporter A's mysteriously zealous mediation I came to be adopted into the Yamayama family, I must state for thoroughness' sake that there were three facts which astonished me above all else.

The first of these was that Ryūyo—infamous as Hokkaido’s most libertine soul—had, against all expectation, been a virgin. The second was that Ryūyo’s very character underwent an abrupt transformation after marriage, reborn into an exceedingly gentle, virtuous, and timid soul.

Third—and this is a rather sordid tale—even the Coal King Yamayama Family’s finances had suffered blows that brought them nearly to crisis, due both to the coal industry recession of that time and the manager’s misconduct.
……Thus ultimately I—thanks to being chosen by Ryūyo—was catapulted from a carefree drifter’s peace into being hurled headlong into inextricable passions and the very heart of a gilded hell…… Moreover, this proved to be my having been neatly ensnared by Ryūyo’s grand performance—her feigned libertine airs deployed solely to entrap a fool like me—a truth that became clear within less than half a year of marriage.

However, for my part, I was no coward who would flee from such a dual hell now.
In this regard too, Ryūyo’s foresight may have proven 100% accurate—but I, originally a rootless drifter cast adrift, from that point onward underwent a transformation of character no less dramatic than hers; though where I acquired such knowledge remains unclear, I began demonstrating talents that astonished even myself.

First and foremost, after expelling that corrupt manager I mentioned earlier and vigorously reorganizing the Yamayama family’s crisis-ridden finances on the side, I succeeded in the herring warehouse business—an endeavor no one had considered until then—secured distribution channels for Yamayama Smoked Herring, and swiftly began laying the foundation for the family’s eternal prosperity. Thus, the Yamayama clan’s trust in me only grew greater by the day… Even I—intoxicated by my own happiness at times—would discuss and vow with my wife Ryūyo about ever more grandiose dreams for the future.

But now that I reflect, such happiness proved indeed but a fleeting dream.
The bizarre fate coiled about my very being would not end so easily.

It was less than a year after our first son Ryūtarō's birth that this befell us.

My wife Ryūyo suddenly—with that very suddenness which defies anticipation—took her own life using Calmotin.
Through her suicide note, it became clear why the Yamayama inner circle had long turned blind eyes to Ryūyo's libertine excesses... nay more—why they'd endorsed as Coal King successor some nameless drifter fished from who-knows-where, without even cursory investigation... Having said this much, you must already grasp the circumstances.

The Yamayama Family was a lineage cursed with a hereditary disease that made marriage into other families nearly impossible. And thus, it was a situation where both their lineage and fortune—on the verge of simultaneous extinction—had been barely preserved through my efforts.

Yet no sooner had that precarious bloodline been barely preserved through Ryūtarō’s birth than it became clear the dreaded hereditary disease’s symptoms had already begun manifesting in Ryūyo’s own flesh. Thus, though most regrettable, she resolved—that is, I resolved—to part ways before showing you… before showing me… her pitiful state.
“Since this is my final act of selfishness, I beg your forgiveness.
…I, who resolved never to deceive you with my sincere heart—unable to deceive even that—married you.
As recompense for this profound sin, even should this fragile thread of life be severed, I shall surely remain by your side.
…I don’t want to part… I earnestly beg you to care for our child.
Clinging to your heart—you, the only one who believed in my sincere heart—I will go to my death.”
Now there was only resentment against Heaven’s merciless Providence… or so it went—a narrative of utmost heartrending sorrow—yet those very phrases left me utterly weeping.
“Ha ha.”
The past selfishness left no trace.
...tormented by transparent purity and reason... overflowing with fragility and beauty... Ha ha....

Of course at that time too, I hadn't the slightest thought of leaving the Yamayama family.
"Yes."
"Everything in this world is fate, you see."

However, at that time, the Yamayama family members seemed utterly flustered. After all, their abhorrent bloodline—which they had desperately concealed—now risked public exposure through Ryūyo's suicide. While begging police and newspapers to keep matters secret, they must have feared catastrophe should I escape now. Even before a hundred days had passed since Ryūyo's death, earnest discussions began within the family about urgently finding me a suitable new wife. Though arrangements were made to formally endorse their trust in me tomorrow, when talks turned concrete—"Who then? Her? Him?"—my enthusiasm strangely refused to budge. My feelings felt different from when I'd been with Ryūyo. Moreover, self-analysis revealed these emotions stemmed neither from deference to her memory nor concern for our child. Why this reluctance? Though unclear even to myself, I felt haunted by forgotten truths... until I plunged into bizarre self-reproach. Giving evasive replies to relatives, I wandered on sudden trips while pondering reasons—yet mysteries remain mysteries. My deepening gloom finally drove me to shocking action: an urge to visit Ishikari River's upper reaches. Convinced my unknown birthplace lay there—where all truths awaited—I secretly bought a canvas boat and provisions, absconded straight toward Esaushi's villa. But alas! A watchful household member who'd long suspected me intercepted me effortlessly, hauling me back to Otaru... Though you'd discerned these impulses long since, Doctor... hadn't you? You know such illnesses' progression all too well—don't you? You're thoroughly versed in these unfathomable subconscious machinations—aren't you?

“Ha ha.”
“Western medical records contain such cases—yet you yourself have never laid eyes on such a patient… How convenient.”
“For I am among those cases a specimen specially tailored—wouldn’t you agree?”

To tell the truth—it happened this morning. And it happened mere moments ago. I had carelessly slipped on tea dregs spilled across the hospital room floor and landed hard on my backside—but in that very instant, an extraordinary incident occurred. The long-forgotten memories of the past—those hair-raising recollections from before I plunged into the Ishikari River—came flooding back all at once in my mind. Simultaneously realizing I had now been completely freed from my mental affliction… I have come here directly in this manner to request discharge authorization…

“Well... To tell the truth, revealing this secret is more painful to me than being flayed alive.”
“Of course, socially speaking, this is a grave incident that would undoubtedly cause an enormous uproar—if this were made public, everything centered around me might face ruin. However, as I stand at the precipice of whether my entire life will rot away in obscurity within this hospital or not, I resolved that desperate times call for desperate measures—hence confiding solely in you… Ha ha… Yes.”

Doctor, you must have heard this kind of story from someone long ago.

In Hokkaido, upstream along the Ishikari River, deep within mountains beyond mountains, a single primitive hut stood visible.
The house was surrounded on its northern side by towering mountain ranges extending from Mount Asahi, while its front was blocked by a sheer cliff of the Ishikari River’s main stream, situated in a location beyond human reach—which explained why it had remained undiscovered by anyone until recently.

However, when herb gatherers native to Hokkaido—having lost their way on mountain paths amid fog—accidentally spotted this solitary house from afar, its notoriety abruptly swelled and spread throughout the region.
...Some claimed it must be an outbuilding of an undiscovered Ainu settlement.
Others circulated far-fetched theories—that it sheltered escapees from Hokkaido’s notorious prison barracks hiding from retribution... though such speculations weren’t entirely baseless.
Particular individuals even insisted it might be the dwelling of primitive humans surviving since antiquity...
Then again... why, they said—it was merely the herb gatherers’ mistaken sighting.
Some mockingly dismissed it as a hunter’s cabin near the Kitami border glimpsed from afar... And so it went—with no consensus reached, the rumors only grew increasingly rampant.

Eventually, when rumors reached the ears of the Tōtō Newspaper Company, the commotion only grew larger and larger.
Ultimately, an aerial photograph of the house—taken by a plane from Hakodate Jihō, the political rival of the Otaru Times where Reporter A was employed—was slated to occupy an entire page in the newspaper. However, upon closer inspection of the photo, it clearly showed a thatched hut likely built by Japanese people. Not only did it resemble the log cabins seen in foreign films, but the distinctly visible traditional Japanese vegetable fields and Western-style radial flower beds suggested that this was unquestionably the residence of a cultured individual—entirely contrary to everyone’s imaginings.
Moreover, considering its location—indeed situated within Hokkaido’s central mountain range, an unexplored mystical realm untouched by human footprints—it stands to reason that determining who could possibly inhabit that solitary house would prove no easy task.
Strange... mysterious... such facts were reported in detail by the accompanying journalists.
And so, remaining just as they are, they have risen to the lips of sensationalists, serving only as seeds for various baseless theories… This fact, Doctor, you must have likely seen in some magazine or newspaper.
“Ha ha.”
“You still haven’t seen it….”
“Because you’re so busy with your research, you see.”
“I see… In that case, there’s nothing to be done—but why hide it? That solitary house is none other than the love nest I built.”
“It was undoubtedly the second hometown where I lived with wife and children—leading a joyful self-sufficient life.”
“…No, really… Forgive me.”
“My chest feels so full… Ha ha… Yes… Yes…”
I had completely lost all such memories the moment I plummeted from the cliff of the Ishikari River’s main stream.
“Yes… yes…”
“It’s the truth, it’s the truth….”

The fact that my family register was forged would become glaringly obvious were you to inquire at the village office of my birthplace.
The one who had falsified that family register and deceived both myself and the entire Yamayama family was none other than Reporter A.

The reason I left home under the pretext of a trip while being pressured into a second marriage was also because I wanted to meet Reporter A without anyone knowing.
At that time, Reporter A had resigned from the Otaru Times and was rumored to be wandering through the Kyushu region.
Because I felt he might have gone there to investigate something about my past...
And when I ran away from home a second time, I must still have been under that subconscious influence.
Somehow I wanted to go upstream along Ishikari.
It was because I had come to believe everything would surely become clear if I did...

However, there was no longer any need for me to make such futile efforts. Since I had fully recovered my past memories... and thanks to that, I could now clearly see through and recount the movements of that cold-blooded, cruel Reporter A—who had been pulling strings behind the scenes of the Yamayama family's adoption case...

I am the third son of Hatakenaka Shōsaku, a sake brewer in Asakura District, Fukuoka Prefecture—a man once called Masao. I had enrolled at Komaba Agricultural College intending to cultivate grapes on my father's mountain property—nearing graduation—but who, embodying a Kyushu man's characteristic of meddling in politics despite lacking aptitude, became so enraged by the tyrannical conduct of the Kenseikai—then the dominant political party—that I assassinated its president and Prime Minister Shirahara Keigo. Sentenced to life imprisonment and dispatched to Hokkaido's Kabato Prison, I soon escaped and thereafter vanished without a trace... Having stated this, I presume there's no need to elaborate on finer biographical details.

Throughout the entire period surrounding the assassination, arrest, and prison escape, these events had been sensationalized in newspapers across the nation...

However, among all these, there remains one single point that nobody seems to have noticed—that every reason reported in newspapers for my prison escape had been nothing but preposterous falsehoods.
All those rumors—about me escaping to carry out another assassination, or for socialist underground activities, or to flee to Russia—were nothing but elaborate wild guesses, and I doubt there are many who know that my prison escape motive which shook the nation was in fact something utterly trivial.

It was not long after I had settled in Kabato.
Hisako Tomoki, a café girl who had been dabbling in romance in Tokyo, traveled all the way to Hokkaido and unexpectedly came to visit me.

This fact was soon reported in newspapers and even adapted into moving pictures, so there may be those already aware of it—but why conceal it now?
At that time, through clever suggestions I received from her and fellow inmates' sympathy toward officers they resented, I executed my escape without difficulty.
...Moreover, this escape method concerned matters vital to my survival and would greatly inconvenience my inmate benefactors—something I cannot disclose even if my mouth were torn open.
But... regardless of circumstances, having evaded arrest, I crossed Ishikari River's downstream with her to build our love nest in that mysteriously secure realm.

Of course, recounting it this way makes it sound like some trite fairy tale—yet speaking of the bitter hardships we endured to reach that point and our subsequent life of solitary struggle, there was more than enough extraordinary material to chronicle tales surpassing even Robinson Crusoe's.

Upon escaping Kabato, I immediately utilized my innate stamina to flee through mountain after mountain while earnestly beginning my search for Hisako’s whereabouts.
Since I remained dressed in prison garb, I could only venture into populated areas at night; however, adhering strictly to my principle of never stealing, I had no choice but to continue living in that blue uniform, existing much like wild beasts.
The suffering during those initial days was truly beyond imagination—yet conversely, such endurance made my trail absolutely undetectable, so in the final reckoning there may have been no net loss or gain.
Not only did that endurance bear fruit, but when—one month after escaping prison—I discovered the small magic troupe’s street poster hanging in some nameless village outskirts near Shin-Asahikawa, the very one she had hinted about, how immense my joy must have been.
With courage suddenly multiplied a hundredfold, I—disregarding all dangers—shadowed that troupe stationed in Asahikawa town under cover of the pitch-dark night. Then, when I finally succeeded in contacting her, I swiftly arranged the plan and pulled her out in one decisive move.

At that time, the only things we could rely on for survival were a single hoe she had hurriedly gathered and bought, one Western-style sword, two pots packed into a rucksack, and roughly six kan of provisions.
Still in my prison uniform—unable to make any other preparations—I took the hand of her who had just rushed out from backstage in her gaudy Western attire, and together we charged headlong into the depths of the endless primeval forest.
They say love is blind, but I doubt there’s another example of such reckless blindness.

And along that journey—wrapped in frigid mists so cold even seasoned herb gatherers would tremble—we went two days and nights without food, digging holes to bury ourselves in the earth or trampling through shrubbery taller than our heads. When we saw claw marks from a starving bear that had torn through over a quarter acre of roots, we resigned ourselves to our luck having run dry and clung to each other weeping. How many times did we face such pitiful ordeals—neither comedy nor tragedy—and terrors beyond counting?

Now then, under such circumstances—while gathering kaya nuts and barely managing—when I finally arrived at the unexplored mountain depths we had been aiming for, I used the hoe I had painstakingly brought and a knife to fell trees, built a sturdy log cabin, tilled fields to begin a self-sufficient life, and at the same time began preparing for winter seclusion by fishing trout from the stream to dry them and boiling nuts to store in wrappings.

It was there that we first realized the supreme freedom and joy of primitive living.
We no longer even wanted to return in our dreams to the world of fools who lived bound by elaborate conditions like science, law, and morality—laboring under the delusion of being cultured or some such.

The two made a promise.
……Even if children were born hereafter, even as they aged, they would never return to the human world again.
Just as Adam and Eve made their descendants multiply across the earth, let us make our offspring proliferate endlessly in this mysterious land.
Let us build a natural cultural settlement… and….

She then bore children yearly.
From when I was twenty-one until twenty-five, I fathered two boys and two girls—four children in all—and as they grew without a single illness, the mountainside gradually grew livelier.

However, I will never forget that summer when I was twenty-five.
The newspaper company’s plane I mentioned earlier suddenly crossed over my house...

The children’s terror at that moment defied description.
I had been in the meadow before our house creating a radial flowerbed and transplanting alpine plants gathered from the mountains when an unexpected rumbling like distant thunder approached from the northwest. In panic, I rushed into the house with the children darting about like startled dancers.
From within the dried bedding grass piled beneath the eaves, I watched the plane’s silhouette vanish into Mount Ishikari’s deep blue sky—when an indescribably ominous premonition seized me. As I heaved a long sigh, Hisako quietly leaned forward from behind me wearing an anxious expression,

“You don’t think they’ve come looking for us, do you?”

That’s what she had said.
When I heard that, I was momentarily startled, but with feigned nonchalance, I gave a faint wry smile,

“Nah...”
“Why would anyone go to such lengths just to search for people like us?”
“And now, of all times… Ha ha ha...”

Though I tried to dismiss it, I stood frozen, unable to quell the ominous foreboding that refused to be suppressed.

For the next four or five days after that, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to venture far from home.
Of course, I hadn’t the faintest inkling that we’d even been photographed. I merely sighed repeatedly while recalling the giant bird that had recklessly disturbed our sacred sanctuary, tending only to the fields around our house—but then, when I remembered the pressing preparations for winter seclusion looming before us, I grew too restless to sit still. Seizing the good weather as an opportunity, I shouldered my handmade scoop net and set out to catch trout.

Hisako had tried to stop me then too with an anxious look, but it was as if guided by some sixth sense. Shaking her off, I descended the mountain, parting through crimson wild cherry trees and katsura thickets until reaching the sheer cliff like a folding screen above Ishikari’s main current. Dangling a rope of green bark, I lowered myself to the stony riverbed below and began scooping up trout and small fish trapped between rocks—again and again.

Then… what do you know.
I had barely scooped up five or six fish when—from behind the rocky cliff at the river bend opposite—a Western-attired young man wearing a Homburg hat pulled low over his eyebrows abruptly thrust his face into view while dragging a foldable boat...

…For a while, I stood frozen there with that young man, our gazes locked.
In that moment of locked gazes, it struck me like lightning—...This is bad—...and upon realizing this, I thrust my precious scoop net into my loincloth’s cord, lunged for the rope dangling from the cliff, and began desperately climbing... but... it was already too late.
Before I was even halfway up, two or three unexpectedly violent gunshots echoed through the gorge—and the rope I was desperately clinging to was abruptly severed midway… The next moment, I plummeted onto a rock. In a state of catatonic shock, I slipped down the moss-covered slope into the raging rapids and vanished from sight—or so I’m told.

It goes without saying that the Western-attired young man who shot me at this time was none other than Reporter A, whom I mentioned earlier.
At the same time, you have surely discerned, Vice-Director, that those two or three gunshots echoing at this very moment constituted Reporter A's inaugural act—the first maneuver through which he began manipulating my fate like a puppet master.

However... I must briefly clarify here that up until this time, Reporter A had not yet harbored any particularly grave ambitions toward me.
Rather, it would be quicker to understand that Reporter A—having discovered such a peculiar human as myself and having his insatiable curiosity provoked—was gradually lured into a demonic world of sadistic tastes before he knew it...

To put it succinctly, Reporter A was merely a man driven by a journalist’s careerist ambition—one who had taken advantage of his summer vacation to investigate strange occurrences at a lone house at the foot of Mount Asahi.
……Having been beaten to the punch by their political rival, the Hakodate Jihō’s airplane, and with support from the Otaru Times—stomping the earth in frustration—and their supposed patron, the Yamayama family, Reporter A had ascended the Ishikari River’s ever-shifting chasms and rapids while shouldering a foldable boat, provisions, and a five-shot repeating rifle for bear hunting he prided himself on handling. Yet no sooner had he luckily discovered a suspicious figure who seemed to be the master of that solitary house than he nearly lost track of them. In desperation, he merely fired two or three live rounds aimed above my head to intimidate me.

Therefore, you can well imagine how utterly panicked Reporter A must have been at that moment. Immediately pushing out the foldable boat, he recklessly searched through the raging currents; but when it became clear my corpse simply couldn’t be found, he was overcome by an indescribable, hollow terror.

As I have often mentioned, Reporter A was an adventurous journalist. Given that he possessed nerves quite unlike ordinary people’s, there could be no doubt he was the sort of man who wouldn’t bat an eye at discreetly letting a person or two die—but… after all, this was a desolate place deep in the mountains where only the sound of water echoed through the valley. After all, he had unexpectedly shot down a single completely naked human in such bizarre attire there. …He must have been overwhelmed by an indescribably eerie aura. After rushing down in a mere single day through the raging rapids and deep pools that had taken four or five days to ascend, upon returning to the Yamayama villa at the foot of Mount Esaushi, he apparently drank whiskey and slept—secretly sighing with relief all the while.

But the following morning.
When the clamor of neighbors causing an uproar reached his ears, Reporter A—wondering what was happening—leapt up to look... what do you suppose met his eyes?
There lay my unmistakable, utterly naked corpse, washed up right below the stone steps beneath the detached room where he'd been sleeping.
……How profoundly unnerving that moment must have been…….
They say he was gripped by an even more repulsive sensation than when he'd shot me down upstream in that Ishikari River—and rightly so.
You might indeed call it a dreadfully karmic bond.

However, even Reporter A’s curiosity would not allow him to let that corpse go unnoticed as it was. Not only that, but even to an untrained eye, something about the corpse’s complexion seemed oddly different. With help from people nearby, they hauled it up the creepy, creepy stone steps onto the lawn, where they nursed it alongside a doctor who had rushed over. As they did so, I—now beginning to regain consciousness—apparently started raving deliriously while burning with an intense fever.

However, when he noticed that mixed within those delirious ramblings were occasional bits of prisoner jargon—incomprehensible to ordinary people—Reporter A was instantly liberated from his previous terror and, right before his eyes, reverted to his innate journalistic instincts—or so it’s said.
In short, he had exerted every effort to extract my confession and forge it into a sensational newspaper article—but when his labor finally bore fruit and I regained consciousness… utter shock… upon discovering that this very I had become an idiot-like being utterly severed from past memories, he was both crestfallen and disgusted… so enraged—they say—he wanted to bludgeon me to death anew.

However, when Reporter A saw that I—now groomed and transformed into an unrecognizably refined young man—had undergone this transformation, his feelings underwent yet another drastic reversal.
Needless to say...
It was there that Reporter A conceived of a clever yet unscrupulous money-making scheme.
In other words, having devised a threefold scheme that combined Reporter A’s unique morbid curiosity with his adventurous spirit, he vigorously drove the plan forward.

Having seen through to the very depths of the Yamayama family’s internal circumstances—particularly Ryūyo’s hidden licentious intentions—Reporter A then skillfully executed an all-or-nothing gambit to ensnare me as the family’s adopted heir. Once accomplished, he fabricated a flimsy pretext to extract a considerable sum from Ryūyo before vanishing without a trace.

Moreover, having seen this, Ryūyo—foolishly—had become completely relieved……that is to say, she believed Reporter A had departed for some distant place as per her instructions. In this regard, Ryūyo too shared the tendency common among wealthy heirs: an overestimation of money’s power.
Of course, she had apparently confided in me obliquely, believing that all matters had been settled—but this turned out to be a miscalculation beyond all expectation.
It was not in Reporter A’s demonic proclivities to abandon matters so easily at that stage.
It was nothing more than Reporter A lying low for just a brief period—to prepare his grand scheme of tightening the screws on the entire Yamayama family centered around us as husband and wife until we plunged into the very depths of hell, all while planning to watch from a safe vantage point.

Reporter A first targeted two clues lingering in his memory—the Kyushu dialect in my speech and prisoner jargon—and to advance his investigation, he promptly quit the Otaru Times to take a job at a small newspaper company in a corner of Fukuoka City, a major city in northern Kyushu.
From there, he doggedly searched through police stations and newspaper offices across the prefecture—centered around that city—for ex-convicts and missing persons matching my age. Then, by sheer chance, within a bound volume of newspapers from six or seven years ago preserved at a major Fukuoka City newspaper office, he discovered a large photographic plate bearing bold headlines reading “Youth Assassin” alongside a portrait that was the spitting image of me. Imagine Reporter A’s shock and elation at that moment!
Though the photographs of prisoners and students appearing in other newspapers were all blurred images bearing no resemblance to me, what a miracle it was that just one—that single photograph published solely in those pages, showing me as a boy in summer kimono—bore such striking resemblance to my current self.

Once he had come this far in his understanding, Reporter A’s work was already more than half finished.
Reporter A, having smuggled in sophisticated camera equipment unnoticed by the newspaper’s clerical staff, not only copied those pages but also reproduced every article detailing my upbringing and prison escape. He then returned directly to Hokkaido, where he proceeded to investigate my every move in exhaustive detail. Upon detecting—without fail—the fact that a child was beginning to take shape between us, he once more set out in utmost secrecy to explore the Ishikari River’s upper reaches, intent on securing his final piece of blackmail material.

By that time, Reporter A must have been certain that the solitary house on Mount Asahi’s slope had been my dwelling. Therefore, having delved that far and secured some irrefutable evidence, he must have intended to confront me with it alongside current newspaper pages or something of the sort.

However, up to that point, Reporter A’s deductions had been 120% accurate—it could indeed have been called a resounding success—but from there onward, matters took a disastrous turn.

……Needless to say...
Even Reporter A, with his demonic acuity of mind, remained unaware that he had made a small—nay, an utterly critical—oversight there.
Namely, having come to investigate Kabato, he had failed to give deep consideration to the whereabouts of Hisako the waitress—in other words, he had assumed that her actions of that sort were solely being exploited for publicity by activists.
And thus he had completely convinced himself that Hisako herself had vanished without a trace alongside those newspaper articles.
This was ultimately a mistake born from Reporter A’s mind being excessively sharp, and yet precisely because of this, his carefully laid plans ended up plunging into a truly unforeseen—indeed, a *nonsensical*—and utterly disastrous outcome.

Then, about a month had passed—it was the beginning of autumn.

A skeletal figure—emaciated body clad in tattered mountaineering gear, a wildly shattered camera slung around his neck—appeared abruptly in Asahikawa town, muttering incoherencies as he began wandering the streets.
The man’s face—bluish-black like mud, likely ravaged by intense ultraviolet rays or snow blindness—bore deeply sunken eye sockets from which his glaring white eyes shone fiercely. His golden teeth, stained by tree bark and grass-root juices, clattered noisily as he walked through the streets with a swaying gait, as if crossing a river—a truly monstrous sight. Yet even more bizarrely, whenever the faintest glimpse of a nude or near-nude woman’s figure appeared in the depths of his hollowed eyes, he made no distinction between painting and reality.
He kicked off his tattered mountaineering boots into the air and fled.
He didn’t care whether it was an unfamiliar house or an automatic telephone—anything would do.
He would recklessly rush into any place—seeking rescue one moment—then attempt to leap onto moving trains or locomotives only to be thrown off, making it extremely perilous and utterly unmanageable. Yes... that’s how it was.
Lately, nude paintings had been proliferating in front of various shops, you see.
Moreover, even though it was early autumn, the days in Asahikawa were still quite hot, you see.
If he caught even a glimpse of something resembling that—whether it be in front of a postcard shop or laundry women in the river—he made no distinction.
Whether it was a mile ahead or right under his nose—it made no difference.
He would scream and go mad, until eventually he became the talk of all Asahikawa town.

However, as this erotomaniac skeleton man—in his bewildered state—began rushing into Asahikawa Police Station to receive protection, society proved vast once more: unexpectedly, a philanthropist appeared who wished to take in that very skeleton man.

This philanthropist was the Vice-Director of a mental hospital in Meguro, Tokyo—a certain wealthy medical scholar who had been visiting Asahikawa at the time. Carrying newspaper clippings about the skeleton man… that is, Reporter A… he reportedly appeared at Asahikawa Police Station and humbly requested custody of A for use as research material.
Initially, the doctor who had assessed Reporter A’s mental state through newspaper articles reportedly believed it to be an extreme case of sexual perversion—an exceedingly rare specimen he intended to use as material for a research paper. As this aligned perfectly with the police’s own desire to rid themselves of a nuisance, they handed him over without proper investigation… Yet here the expert’s skill shone through: skillfully alternating between hypnosis and sedatives, he safely brought A to Tokyo and successfully confined him to his assigned hospital room.
And so, after about half a year had elapsed—once his nutrition had sufficiently improved and his speech had become somewhat coherent—the Vice-Director, timing it just right, began inquiring into various matters while alternately placating and coaxing him… This was no mere matter of sexual perversion.
Reporter A began to blabber a shocking truth.

In front of the Vice-Director, Reporter A not only laid bare all the Yamayama family’s secrets but even recalled the true cause of his own madness and readily confessed everything.

Reporter A explored the upper reaches of the Ishikari River and, after enduring countless hardships, finally managed to locate my vacant house at the base of Mount Asahi.
There he found Hisako and the four children—now fully accustomed to primitive life—playing completely naked under the clear midsummer sun. From behind a Todomatsu pine, he watched them to his heart’s content. But imagine his shock at that moment!
Confronted by this mystical sight beyond anything he could have dreamed, his jaw must have hung agape…… Moreover, when Reporter A—finally grasping the full situation—compared Hisako’s photograph from the copied newspaper pages with her living form before him, what elation he must have felt!
This discovery—one potent enough to hurl the entire Yamayama clan into hell’s deepest pit—surely set his heart ablaze with triumph.
……At that time, Ryūyo had not yet taken her own life…….

However, Reporter A failed to notice that there he was about to commit his second critical misstep. In other words, Reporter A should have simply taken a few photographs of Hisako and the children there, then promptly concluded his expedition and returned—but his failure to do so marked the end of his luck. …Though truth be told, for someone with a journalist’s mentality like A, it may have been utterly impossible to turn back after merely observing such a scene—too extraordinary to be labeled as either erotic or grotesque—from afar. Perhaps he had conceived his own brand of ruthless ambition toward this ero-grotesque heroine, but in any case, Reporter A—drawn as if by some magnetic pull—found himself staggering forward, pushing through bear bamboo thickets unbeknownst to himself as he approached that direction.

Then, before long, something terrible occurred.

A strong-willed woman who had endured a primitive existence for so long in these terrifying mountain depths devoid of human traces—without male presence—her maternal instinct, having single-handedly battled every form of hunger and cold while raising four children... How this reality transformed into such a ferocious temperament lay slightly beyond ordinary people’s imagination.
How much more so!
Ever since hearing two or three gunshots from the Ishikari River’s direction long ago, Hisako—who had convinced herself that her vanished husband had been killed by prison trackers—could hardly be blamed for immediately mistaking Reporter A, clad in khaki mountaineering gear and shouldering a rifle, for another such tracker the moment she glimpsed him... Unaware of danger, Reporter A approached the solitary house through butterbur thickets with his five-shot rifle—only to be ambushed from behind by a beast-like figure. When he leapt back in shock, there stood a naked woman clutching his stolen rifle, blocking his path with terrifying ferocity.
Fortunately, the trigger’s safety remained engaged, sparing Reporter A from dumdum bullet volleys—yet even so, he must have trembled at her menacing glare.
Seizing her fumbling with the safety catch, he fled—only for the woman behind him to raise the rifle barrel in reverse grip and charge like an Asura, hair bristling.
The terror intensified—though he fled through trackless thickets with desperate strength, his pursuer was a semi-feral woman bred to this terrain, moving with falcon’s speed.
Moreover, she had to batter Reporter A down and stop his breath.
Driven by maternal love’s semi-mad resolve to protect her children’s safety, she lunged—irresistible force incarnate.

Gasping for breath, he crossed fields and mountains until even his sense of direction had utterly failed him—yet still came the rustling sound of pursuit... Then, just as he thought so, from an unexpected flank burst forth a naked woman brandishing a rifle barrel, swift as a gale.
Startled, he tumbled down the cliff; the woman followed, leaping down like a flying squirrel.
When he leapt over the stream, the woman jumped over as well.
The woman proved far more agile than any man and utterly unpredictable, so Reporter A grew increasingly panicked, screaming as he fled in disarray.
As dusk fell amid this chaos, the woman seemed to have finally mastered releasing the safety catch. From several dozen yards behind, she fired two or three shots in rapid succession. The final bullet unexpectedly knocked Reporter A’s hat flying, at which point—his very soul now detached from his body—he plunged into a death-driven frenzy. Haunted day and night by visions of the naked woman, he began wandering through untrodden highlands in utter oblivion.

Even after night fell and dawn broke, the sound of wind that seemed to carry the woman’s pursuit echoed from all directions.
Even when collapsing from exhaustion, breath ragged, the moment he slept he would hear rifle shots or feel the woman’s tangled hair brushing against his face.
There, once again, he would rise in a half-awakened state and stagger beneath open skies and starlit heavens—reduced to a truly pitiable condition.
And so—somehow having crawled through god-knows-where without dying in the wilds—he stumbled out into Asahikawa town in the wretched figure of a living mummy, leaping up and screeching every time a nude woman caught his eye.
Then he’d dash into any place he could find,

“Ta… Disaster… The Yamayama family’s grave secret… Bigamy… The prison escapee’s wife… A beast in the form of a celestial maiden…”

That he had begun babbling incoherently about riddles and hailstones—this was the true cause behind Reporter A’s descent into madness.

Now then, the current Vice-Director of the mental hospital who extracted this truth reportedly remained half-convinced at first—but that was only natural, was it not? From start to finish, these were facts that defied all reason... And when they examined Reporter A’s tattered mountaineering clothes—kept at the hospital as a precaution—well, what do you think they found? Not only did they retrieve family register copies for Hatakenaka Masao and Yamayama Hidemaro from his inner pocket—sufficient to prove Reporter A’s words true to the last syllable—but they even succeeded in developing a single intact gruesome photo of my wife and children from the shattered remains of A’s camera.

It was there that the Vice-Director first became aware that Reporter A’s recovery from mental derangement would pose a grave problem for the Yamayama family. Thereupon, he promptly sent me an urgent confidential letter notifying me of the situation’s exposure and inquiring about its veracity—but when I received that letter, I too found myself momentarily stunned.

Of course, the letter included a postscript stating this inquiry was for academic research and any facts would remain absolutely confidential… Given that Ryūyo in question had long since become a name inscribed on a mortuary tablet, my worries were halved at most. Nevertheless, it remained a grave matter, so dropping everything, I hurried to Tokyo and visited Meguro Mental Hospital—only to be threatened anew, leaving me stunned once more.

Reporter A, seated inside a sturdy iron cage in patient garb, not only clearly remembered my face—I who had come to visit—but thrust some incomprehensible paper scrap through the bars while showering me with disjointed threats.

Of course, that scrap must have been what he’d convinced himself was a copied newspaper article about me…

In the Vice-Director’s private room, I was shown the actual enlarged copies of those newspaper pages alongside bromide prints of gruesome photos of my wife and children—but as I looked at them, for the first time, I was able to summon my past memories like a lightning flash. I fell into a temporary faint due to the sheer intensity of the shock.

However, before long, when I regained my senses through the Vice-Director’s care, I immediately mustered tremendous courage and, after confirming all the facts Reporter A had confessed, supplemented the missing details thoroughly in front of the Vice-Director.

After requesting adequate protection for Reporter A and entrusting the crucial decision of whether to disclose my past identity entirely to the Vice-Director’s discretion, I explained the matter in detail to the half-mad Reporter A and promptly withdrew to Hokkaido.

This goes without saying, but it was to mentally prepare myself to calmly undergo punishment in the event that my former self were to be made public.

……After all, I thought that even for a psychiatrist whose trade is safeguarding others’ secrets, crushing one of this magnitude would be no easy task.

“……Huh?! What did you say…….”

“You’re saying my story is incoherent…”

“This is outrageous! Where exactly is this incoherent? I believe I’ve been narrating everything in proper order…”

“What is this… Are you asking if I still haven’t recalled the real name of that Reporter A fellow… Well? I still can’t recall that… Though I do believe I’ll remember soon…”

“……Oh?… Why are you laughing?”

“Huh?”

“Is this the Meguro Mental Hospital?”
“Huh?!”
“So Mr. A is also here then.”
“Huh?!”
“Is he really here?”
“……I had no idea.”
“Where on earth is he…?”

“Huh?! ...He’s here...”

“……Wh... What are you... Are you saying I'm that Reporter A?”
“You’re full of jokes… As I’ve just stated, I am Hidemaro, the adopted heir of the Yamayama family.”
“I am indeed the husband of that beastly celestial maiden Hisako… just like that idiot who committed bigamy with Ryūyo…”

“Huh?!”
“That Hidemaro... Are you inquiring about the reason I, who became the Yamayama family’s adopted heir, was hospitalized here?”
“Th-that’s… that’s… since it concerns the time of my madness, I can’t quite recall…”

“I must ask you not to laugh.”
“I don’t need to look in any mirror.”
“I know my own face perfectly well.”

“……Wh… Wh… What are you saying?”
“That Yamayama Hidemaro still serves as the Yamayama family’s adopted heir and thrives in business circles.”
“They’ve dragged Hisako from the mountains to pose as Madam Yamayama… Th-that’s outrageous! We swore never to return to this human world… No! No!”
“This isn’t my imagination.”
“It’s undeniable truth.”
“Truly… utterly outrageous…”

“Huh? What did you say…… Yamayama Hidemaro, who had splendidly recovered his past memories through hypnotic suggestions given by the Vice-Director here, was able to breathe a sigh of relief after receiving a letter filled with the Vice-Director’s sincerity not long after returning to Hokkaido.” And so, after sending a reply requesting that Reporter A be kept confined in the hospital for life, did I immediately set out alone in utmost secrecy to fetch Hisako from the foot of Mount Asahi? “Huh… Even Hisako, that peerless beastly celestial maiden, succumbed to Masao’s tearful confession of longing.” “Haah… Moved by Masao’s unadorned sincerity, she resolved to become Ryūyo’s substitute and raise the Yamayama family’s sole heir—Ryūtarō—through tearful determination.” “Indeed… Thus it came to pass that the beastly celestial maiden, leading four children by her sides, descended from on high into the human world. But regarding this matter, Hidemaro—Masao—went to all manner of pains to secretly bring her from the memorable upper reaches of the Ishikari River to the villa beneath Mount Esaushi without anyone knowing.” “Well, of course… From handling Hisako’s family registry filings to conducting etiquette tests for the children, they were once again subjected to excruciatingly meticulous efforts. But when they finally managed to install the whole entourage into the Yamayama household, contrary to all anxieties, it proved easier than birthing a child—Hisako’s performance as the lady of the house settled into place with such radiant perfection that rumors of Ryūyo’s reincarnation spread, propelling her to suddenly lead the neighborhood’s social circles.” “At the same time, the household was extremely harmonious, and since they showed not the slightest discrimination among their five children, there was absolutely no prospect of anyone discovering the Yamayama family’s secret in the future… So regarding that matter, it is declared that you need not worry in the slightest… Well… there you have it.” You’re screwing with me…

No... Ahahahaha... I've messed up.
I carelessly let the truth slip out.

Ahahahaha.
Actually...
I thought I'd somehow trick the Vice-Director into letting me get discharged smoothly.
I'd been staying awake for days now, working out the story's plot.
And then, when I suddenly fell on my butt just now, I felt like I'd remembered my own background—one I'd investigated—
Thinking I had this in the bag, I immediately came to the Vice-Director's office, but... Ah, well...

Just whose background had I remembered… Could it be that I’d recalled someone else’s history—one I’d investigated myself… Hmm… Damn… damn…
I should’ve thought this through better before coming here.
There was a part that didn’t add up…
Alright… This time…

Huh?!
Yesterday I came to tell the same story too… The day before yesterday too… Over and over since way back… That me… Huh…
So even the Vice-Director has been explaining the detailed circumstances over and over as requested by Mr. Yamayama, telling me not to get worked up… but I still can’t understand… Is it me… Huh.
Moreover, since I jumble together my own affairs and others’ affairs when thinking about them, the story gradually becomes more nonsensical.
So your mind isn’t sound.
If I don’t forget all about the Yamayama family and recuperate more comfortably, there’s no telling when I’ll be discharged… Huh…
Who is that about…? What…? Me… Huh.
And then you…
Excuse me, but who are you?

Huh?!
The Vice-Director’s assistant… they’re researching my psychological state together…

...Agh... I messed up.

In that case, they must know everything.
I thought it was the Director again.
If it's the Director—since he's never met me before—I thought maybe I could trick him... Damn... damn...

Ah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah......

Agh—!
Exhausted... Hah... Hah....

“Hey Doctor... As payment for my story, could I have one cigarette please.........”

……Ohh—!
There’s no one here…….

This is a cell... That's strange.
Was I babbling to myself all alone since just now... Hmm... What on earth was I going on about...

......The paulownia flowers were scattering like that............

......Ah......I'd forgotten............

I was gonna take revenge on Ryūyo...... She sucker punched me...... Sneered about how she'd 'just use this woman as her plaything'......
So I went ahead and did exactly what she said.
Thinking that making her husband an ex-con would give her a good scare—it all backfired and turned into this mess.
Ended up with everyone treating me like the lunatic instead.

Wha—... This is absurd... Unfair...

I’ve got a grudge against the Yamayama family.
Let me out of here.
This is illegal confinement, damn it... Just you wait and see... Ryūyo’s demon...
Let me out let me out let me out out out... Let me out...
Let me out... Eeeee—!...