Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Belle in the Brain

The Peculiar Patient

“Hey, Doctor.”
“Doctor, are you truly going to discharge Mr. Miyagawa tomorrow?”

“That’s right—discharge tomorrow.”
“Do you have some objection to that, Head Nurse?”

“Do you really think it’s wise to discharge him in that condition?”

“There’s simply no other way.
“No matter how long he stays in the hospital, it’ll be the same either way.”
“Anyway, the wounds have healed, he’s regained his strength, and given how he’s practically rioting to be discharged, I believe it’s best we let him leave.”

“Do you really think so?”
“I simply can’t stop worrying about this.”

“Head Nurse.”
“You mean to say you don’t trust this brain transplant surgery I performed?”

“No, it’s not that at all, but…”

“Not that at all, you say?”
“If that’s not the case, then what exactly troubles you?”

“No, it’s not that at all, but… I just can’t help feeling uneasy about letting Mr. Miyagawa leave the hospital.”
“It’s just… I can’t shake this feeling that something dreadful—something one could never anticipate—is about to happen.”

“So you truly don’t trust my surgery after all.”
“Well, setting that aside—in any case, discharging Mr. Miyagawa doesn’t mean I’m washing my hands of him.”
“I’ll be examining him once a week.”

“Oh, so that’s how it was. If you will continue to examine him in the future, Doctor, my concerns will be greatly alleviated. However, regarding the matter of future examinations you just mentioned, I had not been informed of it at all.”

“Of course you hadn’t.”
“When I say ‘examination,’ I don’t mean summoning the patient to an examination room.”
“Mr. Miyagawa detests being examined.”
“If he resists, it could adversely affect the cerebrum we so carefully operated on.”
“Resistance will most severely worsen that surgery’s prognosis.”
“Therefore, I intend to observe Mr. Miyagawa’s condition from afar at least once a week—discreetly, of course.”
“That is what I meant by examination.”
“This remains a secret I haven’t disclosed to Mr. Miyagawa himself or anyone else in the hospital, so keep that understanding.”

Mr. Miyagawa Utaro—the troubled patient who had been discussed in Dr. Kuroki and the Head Nurse’s conversation—remained completely unaware of these anxieties surrounding his circumstances as he paced about the hospital room like a zoo wolf.

This morning at the hospital barbershop, he had his overgrown hair cut short and his bushy beard neatly shaved off, leaving him looking completely rejuvenated.
But as he studied his face in the mirror, he became concerned by its strangely pale and bloated appearance—perhaps from having gone so long without sunlight.
In contrast, the surgical scar on the back of his head was nearly invisible.
This was because the use of electric scalpels in surgery now allowed even thick skin, robust muscle masses, and hard bone to be incised as easily as slicing paper with a knife.
If one looked closely enough, they might notice the skin beneath his hair forming faint folds, but even if seen, no one would take it for a scar.
Truly an astonishing advancement in surgery.

Despite the surgical scar being remarkably simple in nature, he had been hospitalized here for nearly a year.

"Oh! Starting tomorrow I'll finally be free! How wonderful!"

With that, he began hopping around the room like a child.
But no sooner would he do this than he'd suddenly adopt a stern expression and start muttering to himself, fully transforming into a caged wolf.

Even when I tried to remember, it had been a terrible year.
No—it’s true that a year had passed, but I had completely forgotten the entire year.
By the time I regained my senses, over half a year had already passed.
I was later told that during that time, I had been wandering between life and death in a complete daze.
Since then, strange feelings would occasionally assail me.
I found myself overcome by an intensely unpleasant sensation, as though my entire body were being ripped apart.
After all, as Dr. Kuroki had explained—since they’d performed surgery on the cerebrum itself, that organ responsible for thought—such an unstable transitional period was inevitable before full recovery; perhaps that was indeed how it worked.

Even now，excitement and melancholy continued to assail him in turns．He had many questions he wanted to ask the doctor about the surgery．However，the doctor was by nature a man of few words，and he seemed to detest patients asking probing questions about their own conditions．

“It doesn’t matter,” he said with a resigned expression. “Anyway, I’ve recovered like this and can be discharged. Well, starting tomorrow, I can finally go wherever I like and do whatever I want. How wonderful! Now then, once I pass through the hospital gates tomorrow, what should I do first, I wonder?”

Mysterious Notebook

Through Dr. Kuroki’s arrangements, he moved into an apartment called Kōfūsō in Meguro Ward.

He had lost his parents early, had neither siblings nor a wife and children, and was utterly alone in the world.
When it came to property alone, a considerable inheritance from his parents remained.
At the end of every month, a messenger from a certain trust company would come and leave five hundred yen as stipulated.

Separate from hospitalization and surgery fees, a large sum of money was reportedly paid by that trust company.
Therefore, both Dr. Kuroki and the hospital could thoroughly attend to him.

The room he was renting at Kōfūsō was a spacious, high-class place with three full rooms.

His familiar belongings and furnishings were neatly arranged in the room.

"Hmm, not a bad feeling at all."

Thoroughly pleased, he twirled the tip of his chin with his fingers as he surveyed the room.
A framed landscape of Southern France painted by Cézanne hung on the wall.
There stood an ornament made of rare seashells gathered from the South Seas.
The bookshelf stood tightly packed with novels, while on the desk rested a large inkstone box fashioned from cedar wood.
Every item appeared familiar.

He picked up each item one by one, stroking them nostalgically.

Before long, his hand reached for the desk drawer.
As he opened the drawer and rummaged through its contents, his attention was caught by a fine notebook bound in blue leather.

"Oh, there's a notebook like this inside."
"An unfamiliar item, but…"

Why was a blue notebook that wasn’t his own inside the drawer?
While thinking someone must have mistakenly placed it there during the move, he opened the notebook.
The moment he did so, he involuntarily let out a loud cry of surprise.

For why—the characters meticulously written in that notebook were unmistakably his own handwriting.

"Hmm, this is unmistakably my own handwriting.
But this notebook was an even more unfamiliar item.
What in the world was this about?"

He felt thoroughly unsettled.

Though it was unmistakably my own handwriting, I had no memory of the notebook.
How could something so bizarre be possible?

To resolve that doubt, he made a conscious effort to calm himself and began reading the text written in the notebook.

Such things were written.

“May XX.
The weather being fine, I decided to visit Horikiri Iris Garden.
On the way back, I went to Asakusa and watched a movie.
It was 11:30 PM when I returned home.
The moment I opened the room lock, someone called out from behind me.
A pungent scent of hair wafted over.
It was Y.
Y stood there.
With no other choice, I let her into the room.
I told her to leave, but she refused.
She forced her way to stay.
‘What a nuisance.’”

He read this and let out a sigh. And shook his head.

"Huh, what in the world happened here? I have no recollection of this at all, but…"

According to this diary, a woman named Y had stood outside the room until late at night waiting for the protagonist to return. The woman had called out when the protagonist opened the room’s lock. And then she had forced her way to stay overnight. From this account, Y was being treated coldly by the protagonist—a pitiful situation indeed. Her figure became vividly clear before his eyes, and he felt an overwhelming sense of pity.

And yet, he couldn’t fathom who the protagonist of this diary was.

Could it be that this protagonist was none other than he—Miyagawa Utaro?

"No—absolutely not me.
"I have no such memory."

Though I thought it couldn't be me due to my lack of memory—given that this notebook was in my desk drawer and the diary's handwriting was unmistakably my own—I found myself feeling thoroughly unsettled.
What in the world could this mean?

He turned the pages of the notebook further and continued reading ahead.

“May XX.
Y returned home as evening darkened.
‘With this, we’re parting ways,’ she said.
She also said she had given up.
It was all so suspicious.
She always uses that trick.
After returning home, when I tidied the zabuton cushion, my photograph emerged from beneath it.
The photograph had been torn to shreds.
‘Just now she’d earnestly begged me for one of my photographs, so I ended up giving it to her—but that damn Y didn’t take it away and went and did something this horrible.’”

The scene of the woman Y fiercely tearing the protagonist’s photograph seemed to appear vividly before his eyes.
But this episode too was something he had no memory of at all.
He began to feel somehow strange.
Staying still in the room had become unbearable.
Even the desire to pick up belongings and reminisce had vanished somewhere.

He went out casually, still in the same clothes, to clear his head.

Suspicious Follower

The rain had stopped, but the clouds in the rainy season sky hung heavy.
He walked aimlessly along the pavement, keeping his hands in his pockets.

What he wore was a serge summer kimono, and what he had slipped on his feet were shoes.
Dr. Kuroki seemed to have forgotten to buy geta.
For Miyagawa, the combination of a kimono with shoes wasn’t particularly unpleasant.

As he wandered up the sloping streets of the town, he soon came upon a large shrine.
Through the spaces between the torii gates, the broad shrine grounds came into view.
A thick ginkgo tree spread its branches like a theatrical wig.
He was about to step onto the stone stairs.
At that moment, he suddenly sensed a presence behind him and turned around.

There stood a young man in a suit.
He had a terribly haggard face.
A face lacking healthy color, swollen-looking, with lower eyelids that sagged limply, creating unpleasant hollows.
And large eyes peered out from under his hat.
Those large eyes were fixedly staring at Miyagawa.

“Hmm.”

Miyagawa, with a vague sense of being attacked, involuntarily groaned.

Perhaps it was his imagination, but the suspicious man too seemed to be shivering uncontrollably.

Miyagawa stepped onto the stone steps and ran up.
Then he hurried deeper into the shrine precincts.
He dashed behind the shrine building and there, timidly looked back over his shoulder.
The suspicious man was nowhere to be seen.
Thinking he was safe for now, he found a bench behind the shrine building and sat down while pressing a hand to his pounding heart.

"Who the hell is that guy?"

He was still panting heavily while visualizing the unsettling face of the suspicious man he had just seen.

Immediately before where he was sitting lay a cigarette butt someone had discarded on the ground.
The ember still glowed, purple smoke creeping along the earth like something licking the surface.
When he saw this, he suddenly wanted to smoke.
Without any sense of disgust, he reached for the butt, brushed off the dirt, and put it in his mouth.

The taste of the cigarette was wonderful.
But soon the fire crept toward his fingertips, coming dangerously close to burning him.
He was startled and flung the cigarette butt to the ground.

“Ahahaha, Mr. Miyagawa.”
“You’ve started smoking cigarettes—how terrifying.”

Suddenly being addressed from behind, he was so startled he nearly lost his footing.
He leapt up from the bench and turned around,

"Ah, you—" he said.

It was the man from earlier.
He was a suspicious young man with glaring eyes and a pallid complexion.

“You—who on earth are you?”

Before he knew it, Miyagawa found himself sitting back down on the bench.
He looked like a frog frozen under a snake’s gaze.

“Me? You don’t recognize me?”

The young man gradually approached him.

“I don’t know you. You’ve got the wrong person. Please go away.”

“You shouldn’t say such things. I am Yabe. You might not be aware of it, but I know you very well.”

The suspicious young man Yabe said in an unbearably slow tone and boldly sat down beside Miyagawa.

“Anyway, I don’t recognize you. I beg you, please go away.”

“Fine, I’ll go over there—but since I’ve come all this way, I have some business here.”
“Lend me fifty yen.”

“So it’s money you want.
“I might have fifty yen to spare, but why should I lend it to a complete stranger like you?”

Miyagawa too regained some composure and counterattacked.

“Ah, so that’s it. Are you truly unaware? This is quite shocking, isn’t it?” said Yabe as he removed his hat.

“Wh-what’s th-that...”

Miyagawa's complexion abruptly changed.
When Yabe removed his hat, from beneath it appeared a head swathed in layers of bandages.

“Now you understand, I suppose.”
“When you suffered that massive head injury and were on the brink of death, they extracted part of my brain here and grafted it onto yours.”
“If Dr. Kuroki, who brilliantly performed that major surgery, is your savior for being reborn, then I, who provided the brain matter, am also your great benefactor.”
“How can you forget that and cast me aside? Such ingratitude!”

The suspicious young man Yabe came out with an outrageous statement.

“It’s a lie! It’s a lie! That’s a lie!” Miyagawa denied vehemently.

“What? You think I’m lying?” The suspicious young man Yabe twisted his lips into a smile. “Ahahaha! Is that what you believe? Now let me ask—you were smoking earlier, weren’t you? Was it good?”

As he said this, Yabe took out a rolled cigarette from his pocket and lit it.

Miyagawa felt his throat practically reaching out when he caught the cigarette's scent.

"Shall I give you one?"

"Then I'll take it."

Miyagawa, unable to suppress his craving to smoke, reached out.
And, appearing impatient even to light it, he hungrily drew the smoke deep into his lungs.

“How is it?
“The cigarette’s good, isn’t it?
“Now, I have a question for you—you used to hate cigarettes before the surgery, didn’t you?”
“Try to remember that.”

“Ah—”

Miyagawa, startled, let the cigarette slip from his fingertips to the ground.

That’s right—I had always been known as a tobacco hater.
Yet now when I caught the scent of tobacco, I found myself unable to resist smoking.
What in the world was happening to me?

“Well? Do you understand now?”
“Because they connected my brain—this cigarette-loving brain—to yours, that’s why you turned out this way.”
“Well, while I did want you to spend all your money today, I also wanted to see what kind of state you’d end up in after having my brain implanted.”
“It’s truly horrifying.”
“You’ve developed a taste for cigarettes.”
“Thanks to that, my cigarettes have become utterly revolting—it’s rather depressing.”
“Under these bandages lies a surgical scar just like yours, you know.”
“If you were to open what’s beneath, my brain would be missing a certain part.”
“I sold that part to you for money, but now that I’ve spent it all today, I’m regretting it as a mistake.”
“Lately, my physical condition hasn’t been good at all.”
“I want to see Mieko too, but with this body of mine being what it is, I’ve been holding back.”

The young man Yabe chattered away alone, rambling on about nothing in particular.

To Miyagawa, while Yabe’s words didn’t quite add up, he still felt pity for him and decided to give him the money.

Yabe gratefully accepted the banknotes and tucked them into his pocket, but then spoke with a pleading look in his eyes.

“To be perfectly honest, if I hadn’t been desperate for money—or rather, if I’d never met that woman Mieko—I would never have sold part of my brain.”
“The price was just too good, so I ended up taking Dr. Kuroki’s offer.”

Miyagawa now found himself compelled to reflect deeply on the year of hospitalization that had followed.
Had such great sacrifices been made for me to be reborn and fully healed like this?
An unprecedented trade of brains.
Dr. Kuroki had truly accomplished it.
And this young man Yabe had sold his well indeed.

“Just how much did you sell part of your brain or something to the Doctor for?”

“That is—” Yabe started to say, then suddenly clamped his mouth shut.
Then, with a sorrowful expression, he said, “Let’s not talk about that.
“Anyway, it was an enormous sum of money.
“Enough to buy a large plot of land and build a splendid mansion.”

Miyagawa was shocked to hear that part of a brain could command such value.
From Yabe’s manner of speaking, it seemed to be at least fifty or sixty thousand yen.
Yet he had squandered that colossal sum in under a year, now reduced to begging for mere fifty yen.
Even if it was for some woman’s sake, this spending frenzy seemed too extreme.
Miyagawa grew suspicious.
Was Yabe lying?

“No, it’s not a lie.”
“I did get my hands on that much money.”
“Why do you say I spent it all?”
“Well, you see…” Yabe leaned his face closer to Miyagawa.
“I played the market.”
“I lost it all in the market.”

“That’s reckless.”
“To play the market with money from selling your own brain.”
“And what about that so-called lover of yours? Isn’t this pitiful for her too?”

Miyagawa too found himself unwittingly wanting to voice what seemed like protests.

Then young man Yabe shook his head from side to side and, fixing Miyagawa with a scorching gaze—
"I may have been reckless.
"I certainly did fail in the stock market after all.
"But Mr. Miyagawa—
"If I'd made several times that amount in the market...do you have any idea what I intended to do?"

Miyagawa, pressed by Yabe’s vehement tone, pulled back while—

“Well, I really have no idea what you intended to use such a large sum of money for,” he answered.

Then Yabe gritted his teeth with a grinding sound and shouted:

“I-I wanted to buy back the brain I sold to you! I was prepared to pay double or triple the selling price! But in the end, I failed. Still, someday I’ll reclaim my brain from inside your skull!”

Leaving the deathly pale Miyagawa on the bench behind him, the suspicious young man Yabe briskly walked away into the distance.

Forbidden Woman

Left alone, Miyagawa retraced the terror anew.

What a terrifying man.

He had sold his own brain only to use that money for stock trading, intending to buy it back with the profits if successful.

Even if he were to buy it back, his brain now properly resided in another person’s ventricles.
No matter how much money he offered, if I refused, what exactly did Yabe intend to do?

Violence?
In that aggressive state, he might try to take it by force.
If it was violence, he could carry it out even without money.

(This was getting serious!)

At this, Miyagawa trembled violently.

He could no longer stay still.
Then, hailing a passing taxi on the street, he rushed to Dr. Kuroki’s hospital to seek help.

“Oh, that’s what this is about.
There’s no need to worry.”

Dr. Kuroki remained supremely composed.

“Now, Mr. Miyagawa.
Why don’t you think of it this way?
Even if that man Yabe were to stack a million yen before me, if I refuse the surgery, there’d be absolutely nothing he could do about it.”

“Is that true, Doctor?” Miyagawa involuntarily gripped the doctor’s hand. “But that man might use violence to crack open my skull and take back his brain!”

“No matter how much violence he might resort to, the only one capable of performing brain surgery—if I may say so without boasting—is yours truly here. So if I refuse, wouldn’t all of Yabe’s fussing come to nothing?”

“That’s right.”
“Then I can truly feel at ease about this?”

Miyagawa felt his nerves settling for the first time.

After that, Yabe began coming to Miyagawa’s place frequently.
And each time, he would demand fifty yen or sixty yen or some such amount.
As long as he received money, Yabe turned out to be an unexpectedly calm individual.
Miyagawa was finally truly able to regain the composure he had lost since encountering Yabe.

When Miyagawa was released from the tension of the Yabe incident, his life suddenly grew tedious.
He found himself wanting a female friend.

He remembered, pulled out that blue leather-bound notebook from the depths of his desk drawer, and with a smirk, read through it again and again.
Though it didn’t contain anything significant, he found himself strangely longing for the woman named Y who appeared in those simple diary entries.

What ever happened to this woman called Y?
It seemed the protagonist of this notebook had parted ways with her, but what became of him afterward?
In any case, this woman called Y was indeed deeply yearning for the protagonist of the notebook.
Why was the protagonist’s handwriting identical to his own?

To resolve this doubt, he visited Dr. Kuroki one day and presented the problem.

“Huh? Was there such a thing?”

“There certainly is!”
“I’ve brought it here.”

He took out the blue notebook.

Dr. Kuroki was flipping through the notebook’s pages with a grave expression but suddenly burst into laughter.

“Ah, this belongs to my assistant—a man named Taniguchi.”

“But this notebook was in my desk.”

“Th-that’s it! Actually, I brought Taniguchi along to help with your apartment move. He must have dropped it from his pocket during that time, and someone likely picked it up thinking it was yours, Mr. Miyagawa, then placed it in the desk.”
“No—that must be exactly what happened.”

“That’s strange. The handwriting is exactly like mine.”

“This kind of handwriting style is quite common, I assure you. If you wish, we could summon Taniguchi—though regrettably he’s presently returned to his provincial home.”

“I can’t help wanting to meet that woman called Y.”

“What? That’s out of the question!” the Doctor glared.

“It’s no good—no good! I mustn’t get involved with another person’s woman.”

“Is that Y woman truly Mr. Taniguchi’s lover?”

“That’s correct.”
“There’s no mistake about it.”

Dr. Kuroki was flustered and trying to convince Miyagawa as quickly as possible.

At that moment, Miyagawa said.

“Doctor.
“I’ve recently realized I’ve lost various memories.”
“I feel terribly uneasy.”
“Doctor, please tell me.”
“Before living at Kōfūsō Apartments—where did I live?”
“Please tell me about that previous residence.”

Dr. Kuroki shook his head vigorously from side to side,

“Now, Mr. Miyagawa. You mustn’t dwell on trivial matters. The brain surgery may be over, but you mustn’t forget it’s still the recovery period. Once you’ve settled down a bit more, your memory will surely return to normal. Until then, hard as it may be, you must endure this once.”

Yabe’s lover

Miyagawa's life seemed to have grown even more tedious since then.

One day, when that young man Yabe came to collect money, he uncharacteristically invited Yabe into the room as if to seize his hand.

“You’re just in time.
“Yabe.”
“I was just thinking today that I might have you run an errand for about eighty yen.”

“Really?”

Yabe smiled, his complexion unhealthy.

“It’s true, I tell you. In return, you must answer every one of my questions honestly. Understood?”

“Ah ha, so it’s a quid pro quo? Very well. If I can have eighty yen, I won’t go without getting proper nutrition for the time being. What is it, these questions you mentioned?”

When he heard that, Miyagawa grinned slyly,

“Splendid.”
“Well, they’re not exactly serious questions.”
“Have you been meeting someone named Ms. Mieko lately?”

“About Mieko?”
“No—I don’t see her.”
“If I were to meet her in such a wretched, emaciated state, she’d only be disgusted with me, you see.”

“That’s strange.”
“Isn’t it strange that you can go so long without meeting Ms. Mieko?”
“Could it be that your love has cooled?”

“That does sound a bit odd when you put it that way."
"For one thing, my recent poor health must also be contributing to it."
“Is that all your questions are about?”

“No—there’s one more.”
“That Ms. Mieko you mentioned—she’s a round-faced woman with small lips and deep dimples on both cheeks when she smiles, isn’t that right?”

“Ah, that’s exactly right."
“How do you know that?”

“No—didn’t you tell me about her some time ago?”

With that, Miyagawa lied.
Why does Miyagawa know about Mieko?
If he were to mention that, Yabe would undoubtedly be shocked.

“How about it, Yabe? Why don’t we go quietly observe how Ms. Mieko is doing?”

“Th-that’s…”

Though Yabe balked, Miyagawa pressed him with various persuasions and finally succeeded in dragging him out.

Guided by Yabe, Miyagawa arrived before a certain building in Marunouchi.

Miyagawa cut an extravagantly luxurious figure in his brand-new suit with a red necktie, while Yabe remained wrapped in his usual threadbare clothes.

Presently, as if the appointed hour had come, young men and women came streaming out from the building’s side exit.

When he saw that, Yabe became completely frightened and tried to run away.
Miyagawa firmly grasped his hand, pulled it close to his side, and refused to let go.

Miyagawa was scrutinizing each face of the countless women streaming out from the building when he suddenly tightened his grip on Yabe’s hand,

“Hey, that’s her.
That woman wearing a sky-blue jacket and a black hat with a thin red ribbon—look, the one who just switched her handbag now.”

“Yes, that’s Mieko.”
“Mr. Miyagawa, please let go.”
“I don’t want to meet Mieko.”

“What good is being so spineless?”
“Look, Ms. Mieko is coming this way.”

While he was saying this, Mieko’s gaze turned toward the two men.
She looked startled and then quickly approached.
Yabe shook off Miyagawa’s hand with all his strength and fled.

Afterwards, Miyagawa stood alone.
His eyes were shining vividly.
It was as if Goethe had encountered his lover Beatrice on the street after a long absence.

“Ah, Ms. Mieko!”

"Oh my, who are you?" said the woman as she shook off Miyagawa’s seized hand while writhing bodily and crying out, “Ah—stop that man! Mr. Yabe!”

“Ah—you mean Yabe?”
“He said meeting you would shame him—that’s why he ran away.”
“But leave everything to me.”
“I mean no harm.”

“My goodness—who exactly are you?”
“A friend of Mr. Yabe’s?”
“People are staring.”
“Release my hand this instant!”

Miyagawa had embraced the woman in both arms before he realized it.
Startled by her admonition, he released his hold.
Why had he grown so agitated? Even he himself found it puzzling.

“Hey, Ms. Mieko.
I really wanted to meet you, so I had Yabe guide me here.
How about we go somewhere to eat and have a nice, long talk?”

From Miyagawa’s lips flowed such words effortlessly.
This too was strange.

“Oh my, you’re quite forward for our first meeting—but alright, I’ll let you treat me.
You’re truly a wonderful person.”

With that, Mieko stroked Miyagawa's slender body through his suit.

The Eerie Woman Who Waited

It was the next day.

Miyagawa visited Dr. Kuroki at the hospital for the first time in a long while.

“Oh, Mr. Miyagawa,”
“Your energy’s gradually draining—splendid indeed.”

Miyagawa offered no response to that,

“Doctor, I’ve come today to make a special request.”
“Please procure Yabe’s remaining brain tissue and implant it here in my head.”

As he said this, he pointed to his own head.

“What brings this about?”

“It’s... a woman.
“The thing is—”

According to what he began to explain, after recovering from surgery, Miyagawa had come to vividly see the phantom of a woman in his head.
He found himself yearning deeply for that woman and had thought he wanted to meet her real self by any means possible if she existed.
Yet it turned out this phantom woman was none other than Yabe's lover Yamazaki Mieko.

It was yesterday that Miyagawa met Mieko for the first time.
And he confirmed beyond doubt that the phantom woman was indeed this woman.
Mieko also showed great passion toward him upon their first meeting.

When he asked about Yabe, she explained firmly.

“Mr. Yabe says he’s madly in love with me.”
“And it seems he went to all sorts of desperate lengths himself.”
“But I just can’t bring myself to like Mr. Yabe, no matter what.”

(But didn't you call out to Yabe just now?)

(That's right.
Because he went through such trouble to buy those things for me.
I wanted to return them.)

At this, Miyagawa's chest swelled and he took Mieko's hand.

Everything had gone well up to that point, but eventually he made Mieko utterly despondent.

“What brought this about?”

Dr. Kuroki asked while intently gazing at Miyagawa’s face.

"That is to say, when I grew cold-hearted, she began to resent it."

"Did you do something cold-hearted to her?"

“That’s precisely it, Doctor. At first I seemed to overflow with passion, but upon reaching a certain point, that passion abruptly cut out.”
“Then I was suddenly assaulted by anxiety and discomfort.”
“At that moment, another woman’s face appeared inside my head.”
“A middle-aged woman with a traditional Japanese hairstyle and skin pallid from white powder.”
“She tilts the base of her chignon heavily forward, glaring at me with vicious eyes as she approaches.”
“No matter how desperately I try to fend her off, that eerie middle-aged woman keeps closing in.”
“How could I possibly explain such repulsive inner turmoil to Mieko?”
“For her to say I seemed cold was already putting it charitably.”
“I must have looked like a mummy that tasted salt—making some horrid face, stiffening up rigidly in that moment.”

“So why do you want Mr. Yabe’s brain?”

“You already know that, don’t you? In Yabe’s brain ventricles, there must still remain a part that generates passion for Mieko. Please cut it out and transplant it into me. Give whatever money I have to Yabe.”

Dr. Kuroki fell silent and pondered.

“And one more request.”
“Please cut out and discard the part of my brain where that unpleasant middle-aged woman with the traditional Japanese hairstyle’s phantom appears.”
“Oh right.”
“If Yabe wants it, please implant that part into him.”

“That would be a drastic procedure.”

“Doctor, please perform another surgery as soon as possible.”
“Who exactly is that middle-aged woman with the face discolored by white powder, and where does she come from?”

Dr. Kuroki did not answer that question,
"Hmm, let's consult with Mr. Yabe anyway,"
he said tersely.

Dr. Kuroki said tersely.

About a week later, Dr. Kuroki embarked on brain surgery once more.
In the operating room, Miyagawa was positioned on the right and Yabe lay arranged on the left.

This surgery proceeded relatively smoothly.
After six months had passed, while Yabe remained somewhat unwell, Miyagawa recovered enough to be discharged.

“Head Nurse,” Dr. Kuroki called out. “I was finally going to discharge Mr. Miyagawa tomorrow—do you have any objections?”

“Oh, Dr. Kuroki,” she replied deferentially. “What objections could I possibly have? Previously, since Mr. Miyagawa had suffered such severe external injuries, his postoperative recovery had dragged on like that, and his mental state had remained precarious.”

“Well, that’s likely the case.”

With a degree of recovery that even the Head Nurse found satisfactory, Miyagawa was discharged.

Exiting the hospital gate, when he turned a street corner, there stood a Western-attired beauty waiting, who suddenly leaped at him.
That was none other than Yamazaki Mieko.

“Oh, Mr. Miyagawa.
I’ve been waiting forever.”

“Oh, Ms. Mieko.
This time I won’t let you down.”

The two of them disappeared down the street ahead, nestling together happily like little birds.

However, two or three days later, Miyagawa was carried back to Dr. Kuroki’s hospital in a stark white ambulance.
A white cloth had been placed over his face.
Dr. Kuroki removed the cloth and examined the back of Miyagawa’s head, but there was a wound too horrific to describe.

“Inspector, what happened to the woman who was with him?”

“Ah, Dr. Kuroki, the woman who was with him has escaped.”
“We’re conducting an intense search for her whereabouts.”

“What about the perpetrator?”

“Ah, the middle-aged woman named Yakata Yae?”
“We restrained her on the spot and temporarily took her to headquarters.”

“I hear she escaped from a mental hospital.”

“That’s correct.”
“But this woman named Yakata Yae seems quite sane, I tell you.”
“In the previous incident, she probably pretended to be insane because she didn’t want to go to prison.”
“This time, she clearly stated that she had sneaked up behind victim Miyagawa and wielded the murder weapon.”

“Hmm, I see.”

“If the victim Miyagawa were to be revived by your hands again, Doctor, she was wondering whether she should refrain from killing him this time.”
“It’s just like theatrical dialogue, hahaha.”

“No, with this wound, Mr. Miyagawa will likely never return to life again.”

Miyagawa had been struck by violent blades twice because of Yakata Yae, whom he had abandoned.
Dr. Kuroki had kept this silent for Miyagawa’s sake, but the woman Y written in that blue notebook was undoubtedly this Yae—and that notebook must have belonged to Miyagawa beyond doubt.
It was simply that the brain region retaining memory of the notebook had been damaged, causing him to lose that recollection.

Since this incident, Dr. Kuroki ceased to favor performing brain transplant surgeries.