Pathway to Japanese Literature

1

Feeling quite content, Dr. Kin, the King of Weapons Invention, slept inside the mini tank.

The awakening from the sleeping agent was an utterly *thud*-like experience—akin to stepping off an engawa veranda with a sudden *thump*—whereupon Dr. Kin halted the snoring mid-breath, and in the very next instant,

“Now then, I wonder what kind of feast this embassy serves for breakfast.”

he said in a soliloquy that was clearly not sleeptalk.

The reason Dr. Kin remained so spry for his age could largely be attributed to his voracious appetite.

Before him lay an array of buttons.

Buttons are convenient things; pressing them with a finger generally suffices for most purposes.
It is said that a certain foreign spy who once came to Dr. Kin’s residence to steal new weapon technology ended up in utter disgrace after collecting over a hundred different buttons from the premises.

To return to our story—when Dr. Kin pressed one of those buttons, the mini tank’s lid swung open with a clunk.
Dr. Kin stuck his head out through the hole and looked around left and right.

“Well, well! Seems you made quite a commotion trying to open this mini tank.”

This mini tank had come to rest in a room of a certain country’s embassy.
The room’s bed had been shoved into a corner, with marks on the floor suggesting someone had jammed in a pole and yanked repeatedly. Spanners, screwdrivers, and acetylene gas cutting tools lay scattered about.

“It seems this embassy has its share of busybodies with too much time on their hands.”
“This is exactly why I can’t let my guard down for a single moment when traveling.”

Even as he said this, Dr. Kin showed no particular sign of alarm and lumbered out of the mini tank.
Then, peering once more into the mini tank, he pressed one of the buttons with a click.
With a clamorous clatter of metal grinding against metal, the mini tank disassembled into pieces. Soon, its myriad components and steel parts began gathering autonomously, ultimately transforming into three trunks.
What a handy machine this was.

Dr. Kin stacked the trunks in the corner of the room.
Then, rubbing his hands together, he opened the door and went downstairs.

Dr. Kin strode purposefully into the cafeteria.

“Hey, can you serve me some food?”

From behind the screen in the cafeteria, a large-bodied waiter with blue eyes came rushing out, but upon seeing Dr. Kin, he snapped to attention and—

“Ah, you must be Mr. Wang Laoshi’s guest.
“Then I will prepare it now, so please wait a moment…”

Having said that, he hurriedly withdrew behind the screen.

Dr. Kin snorted and moved to the window.
The vast garden was now covered in yellowed lawn, with what appeared to be pavilion-like structures here and there, and alongside them stood tank-like objects—a garden that seemed to hold some untold story.

“What a half-baked garden.
Even so, how is Wang Laoshi holding out?
Hey there, boy—has Wang Laoshi still not reported for duty at this embassy?”

As Dr. Kin barked out his words, the head waiter—who popped out from behind the screen—

“Yes.
“Mr. Wang Laoshi is currently staying at our embassy but has not yet awakened, so…”

“He still hasn’t awakened.”
“Well, for an old man, he’s quite the late riser, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”
“This has never happened before—it’s most strange…”
“The doctor has arrived and is currently conducting an examination.”

“An examination? Has the Teacher managed to contract an illness while sleeping? How impressive.”

“No, that is not the case. As he was sleeping excessively, we became so concerned that we called in a doctor. Additionally, Mr. Jiang Maishi has also been in a deep sleep since the night before last, so…”

“What’s this about Jiang Maishi?”

Dr. Kin’s eyes darted sharply about.

“Ah-ha, I’ve got it!”
“Hey, take me to Mr. Wang Laoshi’s room.”

“Yes.”
“Then this way, please.”

Dr. Kin visited Wang Laoshi’s room under the head waiter’s guidance.

He entered the room but came right back out.
And then he returned to the cafeteria.

At this time, a white cloth had been spread over the table, upon which gold-colored forks and knives were arranged, and the table was set.

Dr. Kin, tucking a napkin into his shirt, urged them to serve the meal.

The waiter brought smoked salmon on a gold tray.

“Oh, my favorite smoked salmon being served this early in the morning.”
“This bodes well.”
“I’ll eat my fill before those fellows wake up.”

Dr. Kin’s mood was anything but askew; as he used his fork and knife, the sight of him muttering something incessantly looked exceedingly cheerful.

At that moment, the head waiter brought the next course.
Dr. Kin grabbed the head waiter and,

“Hey there, buddy,”
“Keep it a secret that I went to peek into Wang Laoshi and Jiang Maishi’s bedroom.”
“This was my own initiative.”

Saying that, Dr. Kin took out a handful of gold coins from his pocket and placed them onto the palm of the dumbfounded head waiter.

2

Jiang Maishi, who had a penchant for cursing people, and Wang Laoshi, who remained unaware of being skillfully manipulated by him, both awoke shortly one after the other thanks to the doctor’s treatment.

“Clear the room!”

Jiang, upon waking up, let out a loud shout.

Even if he was a freeloader, it was a command from the C Branch Manager of ABCDS Corporation-State, now in its prime.
Startled by this, the doctor forgot his medical bag there and stood up, while the room attendant stifled a sneeze midway and left the room.

“Ah, Mr. Wang Laoshi.”
“Where are you going, Mr. Wang Laoshi?”

“Clear the room!”

“Ah, Mr. Wang Laoshi, you must remain here.”
“Otherwise, I can’t discuss this.”

“Then that means I don’t count among humans, does it?”
“What a pathetic sight.”

Wang Laoshi remained slightly irritable because his hip still ached where they’d forcibly injected him with the sleeping agent antidote.

“What business is this, Mr. Jiang?”

Wang Laoshi’s lower back was unbearably stiff, but he spoke while remaining standing.

“Above all else, what I rely upon are your capabilities, Wang Laoshi, and the formidable power of this embassy’s disposal mechanisms!”
“Last night was a failure, but today I want you to make full use and neatly dispose of Dr. Kin.”
“You’ll manage it, won’t you?”

“Those businesslike words of yours—color me impressed.”
“Today is the day I’ll put the disposal mechanisms into full gear and finish off that scoundrel Dr. Kin.”

“Ah, with those words of yours, I am relieved.”
“Now, please make yourself thoroughly comfortable.”
“Let’s call the attendant.”

Jiang twisted his upper body on the bed and pressed the button by the pillow.
Then the lamp by the pillow flickered out.

“Hmm, wasn’t this the button to call the attendant?”

Jiang pressed a button dangling from the wall this time with a look of dismay.
Immediately came a harsh grating static noise, followed by Announcer Miss Uguisu’s voice:

“……Today’s weather forecast for the 16th:
Today will remain clear throughout, so please pay attention to air raid warnings.
Tomorrow’s weather will take a turn for the worse—”

Jiang let out a feline-like hiss, scrambled to the radio receiver in the corner of the room, and switched it off.

Wang Laoshi wore an exasperated expression.

“Ah, even Announcer Miss Uguisu has gone quite mad.
She mistakenly called today the 16th when it’s clearly the 15th.
The youth of today sorely lack diligence.”

“Mr. Wang Laoshi, today is the 16th.”
“Since I received a report from my trusted subordinate, there can be no mistake.”

“That is not the case.”
“Mr. Jiang Maishi, have you forgotten your arithmetic?”
“The day after the 14th is the 15th, but it is absolutely not the 16th.”

“Ah, Mr. Wang Laoshi, we’ve overslept by an entire day.”
“Inferring from my subordinate’s report, this is the result of the sleeping gas meant for Dr. Kin having taken effect on both you and me as well.”

“That is not the case.”

“Ah, that is correct.”
“We two entered Dr. Kin’s room to check whether he had fallen asleep, did we not? At that time, we ended up inhaling the sleeping gas that remained in that room.”
“And we ended up absurdly sleeping through a span of two days…”

“Ah, I see.”
“No—even so, there’s no way we could’ve slept for over forty hours.”
“According to my formulation, I set the drug concentration to induce sleep for roughly ten hours at most...”

“However, the result is that it was effective for forty-two hours as evidenced here.”
“Now, Mr. Wang Laoshi—if you’ll pardon my impertinence—might you be somewhat academically fatigued? If that is indeed the case, then while I have great expectations for you to dispose of that Dr. Kin fellow using this embassy’s disposal mechanisms henceforth, it does become rather precarious, doesn’t it.”
“Mr. Wang Laoshi… are you really all right?”

Jiang Maishi said apprehensively.

“I don’t intend to make senile blunders like miscalculating concentrations, but… where did I go wrong?”

Wang Laoshi repeatedly tilted his head and stroked his goatee, but the mystery remained unsolved.

3

“Thanks to you, I was able to get plenty of sleep—my fatigue from the long journey has completely healed.”
“Ah, it’s all thanks to you, Wang Laoshi.”

At the dining table facing him, Dr. Kin bowed respectfully to Wang Laoshi as he spoke.
To Wang Laoshi, those words carried more than a hint of irony.

“Ah, at our age, sleep is indeed the only way to dispel fatigue.”
“That is to say, once one truly ages, a great deal of sleep becomes necessary—in other words, one ends up taking an eternal slumber, isn’t that right?”

“Your teachings are most gratefully received.”

Wang Laoshi began a pointless lecture to cover his embarrassment.

“Now then, allow me to offer you a cup of this wine.”
“This is what we call a type of fire wine in this region—specially brewed and exceedingly delicious.”
“When drinking it, they say one must use a deep silver goblet.”
“Now then, let’s pour it to the brim and toast.”

The fire wine was poured generously into two silver goblets.
The rims of the goblets rang out with a pleasant chime.

“Cheers!”

“Hah, pest!”

Dr. Kin reacted to those strange words and gulped down all of [the] wine from [the] cup at once.

Wang Laoshi also tilted the cup and brought it to his lips.
However, Wang Laoshi did not actually drink the wine.
Wang Laoshi’s thumb lightly pressed the protrusion on the goblet.
Then, a hole opened in the bottom of the goblet, and the wine trickled steadily through this hole into the goblet’s base.
It was a rigged goblet with an unexpected mechanism.

“Well now, isn’t this fine wine? Let’s have another cup.”

“Is that so?
“Thank you very much, I must say.”

Dr. Kin had his cup filled to the brim once more and repeated the toast with Wang Laoshi.

This was repeated three times.
And the goblet Wang Laoshi held grew heavier each round, until by the third time the wine had risen to the hole's entrance.
No more could enter.

Eventually, the breakfast came to an end.

"Quite a fine garden, isn't it? How about taking a little walk?"

“Yes.
Well then, Mr. Wang Laoshi.”

Dr. Kin, his usual contrariness nowhere to be found, became as obedient as if he were a different person before his mentor and went out into the garden.

“Since you won’t be joining me, Mr. Wang Laoshi…”

“Ah, I have some… business to attend to after the meal, so you go on ahead alone.”

“Yes.”
“Well then, I shall take my walk.”

Dr. Kin descended along the stone steps to the lawn and walked off at a precise pace toward the far side.

“Mentor, it seems to have gone well.”

From under the table, Jiang abruptly thrust out his long, gourd-like forehead.

“Shh!”
“The boy is looking this way.”
“No—never mind, he’s turned toward the window... No—Mr. Jiang, it worked perfectly.”
“He managed to down three whole cups of that peerless poisoned wine.”
“There’s twelve times the lethal dose here.”
“In fifteen minutes, Dr. Kin’s corpse will be sprawled in the garden, so have your subordinates make arrangements to clean it up promptly.”

“I see.”
“Fifteen more minutes?”
“That’s a great success.”

“Well… I’ve gone and done something quite dreadful for Mr. Jiang’s sake.”

Wang Laoshi assumed a displeased expression at the lingering aftertaste of his actions.

Jiang, thinking the conversation was over, burst out from under the table like a fleeing rabbit, dashed to the room where his subordinates were gathered, and issued orders for the disposal of Dr. Kin’s corpse.
Well, well—with this, they had managed to dispose of that fearsome Dr. Kin—or so Jiang Maishi thought, forming deep wrinkles around his nose in great satisfaction.

4

About two hours had passed.

At a table in the corner of the dining room, Jiang and Wang Laoshi sat facing each other, their heads gathered close as they talked about something.
Unlike before, both of their faces now appeared thoroughly irritated.

“Wang Laoshi, every single attempt has failed.”
“What do you intend to do?”

“As for your ‘What do you intend to do?’—I can only call it utterly baffling.”

“The only reason I paid such a substantial reward to you was because I placed absolute trust in this embassy’s disposal mechanisms.”
“And yet despite all that…”

“The disposal mechanisms of this embassy were absolutely trustworthy—they were, at least until yesterday…”
“However, I can only be astonished that they have no effect whatsoever on that Dr. Kin.”
“It might be that Dr. Kin’s remarkable appetite is thwarting everything.”

“Does appetite even have anything to do with this?”
“That poisoned wine and those snakes—they weren’t just fakes, were they?”

“That’s not true. With that poisoned wine, 1,719 individuals have perished in the past, and with those poisonous snakes, 193 have been felled—both have achieved one hundred percent success indeed. Especially when it comes to the tremendous suffering of those bitten by those snakes…”

“I have indeed witnessed that once myself—one truly couldn’t help but avert their eyes. Are today’s poisonous snakes equally toxic?”

“Regarding toxicity, I specifically selected today’s specimens for their extreme potency. Moreover, these specimens are extraordinarily ferocious—I handpicked five assault squad members blazing with such aggressive spirit that they’d dart like bullets to bite anyone they see. With those, survival would be impossible indeed. It can only be called utterly baffling.”

“However, according to my subordinates’ report, they confirmed through binoculars that those assault squad’s poisonous snakes had tightly coiled around Dr. Kin’s arms and legs—yet the doctor reportedly didn’t even make a pained expression and stood there imposingly like a bronze statue.”
“Are those truly the assault squad?”

“From how they immediately dart over and coil tightly around, it’s clear they’re assault squad members.”
“If those poisonous snakes could speak human language, we’d understand more clearly indeed…”

In the middle of their conversation, one of Jiang’s subordinates rushed hurriedly into the dining room from the garden.

“Chairman.”
“This is bad!”
“Dr. Kin will be arriving here right now.”

“Huh? Dr. Kin’s coming this way…”

“Th-that’s Dr. Kin’s footsteps!”

Thudding footsteps with an unnervingly deep reverberation could be heard.
Jiang, while frothing at the mouth, lost his escape route and once again scrambled under the table with a scuffling noise.

While the hem of the tablecloth was still swaying gently, Dr. Kin suddenly appeared in the doorway.
For some reason, Dr. Kin was heavily caked with mud from the top of his head down to his shoulders.

“Well, well, Mr. Kin.”
“Care for a drink?”

Wang Laoshi, also slightly surprised, took the cup that was in front of him and offered it.

“No, I’ve had quite enough wine,” Dr. Kin said in a calm voice.

Groaning “Umm,” Wang Laoshi sent the wine he was drinking into his windpipe instead of his esophagus and coughed violently.

“Well, Wang Laoshi,” Dr.Kin continued,“I must say,the sake here isn’t very impressive.”

“Th-that can’t be… ahem, ahem.”

“I really can’t approve of arsenic-laced synthetic wine.”
“The mouthfeel is pleasant enough, but once you drink it, a silver mirror reaction forms on the stomach’s inner lining and leaves you feeling unsettled for ages.”

“Well, quite the opposite, isn’t it?”

“It’s true.”
“Feeling unwell, I was walking in the garden when I came across something strange.”

“ ‘Strange thing,’ you say? That sounds intriguing—what happened there?”

“In this garden, snakes come out even though it’s winter.”

“Ah, that matter… no—a two-meter snake?”

“It wasn’t even two meters—a venomous viper with a swollen chin.”
“Resembles *Tonimeresurus elegans*, but slightly longer at ninety-five centimeters.”

“How dreadful! Did it not bite you?”

“It seems they bit me a little, but my senses are rather dull, you see. But they kept tightly coiling around my legs and arms, getting in the way as I walked, so I got annoyed and gathered them up to bring here. Here they are.”

Dr. Kin thrust out his right hand. In it dangled four or five of the snakes, swaying slightly like grotesque pendants.

“Whoa!”

Wang Laoshi, startled, remained seated in his chair, let out a deep groan, and rolled his eyes.

“Ah, Wang Laoshi, do you dislike snakes?”
“This is rude of me.”
“Then I’ll dispose of them.”

With that, Dr. Kin gently discarded the snakes he was holding under the table.

Then, under the table,

“Eek!”

No sooner had this terrified scream been heard than the table flew up dramatically, and from beneath it leapt a person with ghostly pale skin—who then knocked over a folding screen and fled into the kitchen.
That this could only be Jiang Maishi surely requires no further explanation here.

5

“Wang Laoshi.
With such half-hearted measures, it’s no longer enough, I tell you!”

Jiang was confronting Wang Laoshi.

Wang Laoshi raised his eyebrows and slammed the table with a thud.

“Now don’t be so hasty.”
“We’ve still got plenty of methods left—many more tricks to try.”

“If that bastard Kin lives even one minute longer, it’ll be a stain on my honor.”

“Don’t panic.”
“We’ve finally decided to put him in the VIP room today—this time it’ll work.”

“Ah, the VIP room?”
“How splendid.”
“I’d love to see… what’s happening inside……”

“If you want to see, I’ll show you.”
“Come here. If you look into the television device, the situation in the VIP room will be as clear as day.”

“Ah, that’s excellent!”

Guided by Wang Laoshi, Jiang entered the television room.
As the high-voltage transformer groaned deeply and the room plunged into total darkness, the round end of the CRT glowed like a firefly, and soon the interior of the VIP room appeared vividly upon it.

“Look here! Completely unaware, that bastard Dr. Kin has just walked in, I tell you.”

Dr. Kin opened the entrance door and entered the room.
And then he pressed the door handle and closed it.

The moment he did so, a fierce machine gun *rat-a-tat-tat* erupted from the loudspeaker, and as they watched the screen, thick smoke began billowing from the wall opposite the door.
In short, it was that closing the door had triggered an automatic machine gun installed within the front wall—precisely aimed at that spot—to unleash a rapid burst of fire.
Had this been an ordinary human, bullet holes like a honeycomb would have riddled their back down to their waist before they could even release the handle; but for Dr. Kin, matters refused to follow their natural course.
With an unperturbed expression, Dr. Kin merely gave his buttocks a rough scratch.

Seeing this spectacle, Jiang grew furious, and Wang Laoshi despaired.

“Wang Laoshi, did you fire a machine gun without bullets?”

“Oh, Mr. Jiang.
“It is nothing if not strange.”
“But there are still plenty of disposal mechanisms in that room, so it’s too early to despair.”

Inside the room, Dr. Kin lumbered to stand beneath the chandelier.
Then, suddenly, the chandelier came crashing down with a thunderous noise onto Dr. Kin’s head.
Dr. Kin’s skull was shattered, and it seemed his life had finally been snuffed out this time—but contrary to expectations, it was only the chandelier that had shattered.
Dr. Kin remained standing imposingly in the center of the room like a bronze statue, doing nothing more than irritably removing the chandelier frame from around his neck and tossing it onto the floor.

“Wang Laoshi.
“Did you see?”
“At this rate, one can only think the chandelier was made of dumpling wrappers, I tell you!”

“Don’t be absurd.”
“You can tell by the sound it made when it fell—it’s no lightweight.”
“Hoho, watch out—Dr. Kin’s about to sit in the chair!”

“Does sitting in the chair hold some grave significance?”

“Just watch quietly and you’ll see.”

Dr. Kin, unfazed, stepped on the scattered glass fragments and, attempting to sit down in the armchair placed by the window, placed his hand on the chair.

“Look, he’s sitting down!”

Dr. Kin was observed sitting down on the armchair.
The moment he did so, lo and behold, Dr. Kin’s body emitted a whirring groan, flew through the air, and collided with the wall with a loud crash.

“Look, did you see that?
“That there’s the smashing ‘chair,’ you see.”
“With that kind of impact against a hard wall, a flesh-and-blood human wouldn’t last a moment.”
“Poor fellow, did he die?”

“Wang Laoshi, there’s a hole in the wall.”
“It’s a hole shaped like a human body.”

“What’s this?”

“And there’s no sign of that bastard Kin!”
“Ah, he’s peering into the room through that hole!”
“Wang Laoshi! Kin used his own body to burst through the wall, safely jumped out into the hallway, and is now staring into the room!”
“What ‘might have died pitifully’? There’s no such thing!”

“Hmm, this defies all imagination. That Dr. Kin’s one tough customer.”

Though they mobilized and deployed this embassy’s various disposal mechanisms one after another, somehow eliminating a single doctor proved remarkably difficult to achieve.

“Wang Laoshi, what are you going to do about this?”

“Wait, you impatient fool!”

By now, the relationship between Jiang Maishi and Wang Laoshi had grown as tense as steaming vapor.

“There remains one more method to attempt.”
“This one will surely succeed.”

“Hmm—I find this difficult to trust.”

“No—this one’s foolproof.”
“We’ll push him into the gunpowder furnace, seal it tight, flip on the electric heating switch, and sizzle him to a crisp!”
“If it really goes as planned, that would be something…”

“It will surely work.”
“Now, watch!”
“The moment Dr. Kin turns that corridor corner now, the floor will give way, and his body will plunge into the abyss.”
“In that abyss, the gunpowder furnace waits with its maw wide open…”

“Save your sales pitch for later—just show me Dr. Kin reduced to bones!”

“Now, now—behold this!”

Wang Laoshi, breaking into a profuse sweat in the midst of this cold, pulled the switch to drop the corridor’s floor.

Dr. Kin was walking slowly down the corridor at that moment when, without any thought, he got caught by this trap and fell into the abyss…
Then, with a clang and a rattle, his body was sealed inside the gunpowder furnace.

The electric furnace’s switch was turned on.
Sizzling, the electric heating wire began to tremble, and the smoldering heat, as if longing for human skin after so long, crept closer.

Three hours of intense heat.
After being subjected to such prolonged heating, human flesh and skin would burn away, with even bones losing their form and scattering into pieces that resembled nothing more than a handful of lime.

“This should suffice by now.”
“Well, that caused us quite some trouble!”

With Jiang standing by, Wang Laoshi strained to open the crematorium lid with a grinding creak and a loud clang.
Then, lo and behold, from within the furnace emerged Dr. Kin—still perfectly intact in his original form—

“Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!”

With an unrestrained laugh that paid no heed to his surroundings, he exited the area and clomped his way up the stairs.

Dr. Kin strode briskly back to the original living room.

When he opened the door, the room was neatly tidied up.
In the corner of the room, three of the doctor’s trunks could be seen stacked up.

“Oh, you’ve returned.”

Dr. Kin’s voice rang out—it seemed to come from the corner of the room.

Dr. Kin stood silently upright in the center of the room.

Then, the topmost of the three stacked trunks rolled down with a clatter.
Then, from the two stacked trunks, a human head abruptly emerged.
To their astonishment, it bore an uncanny resemblance to Dr. Kin’s face.

Then, this time, the trunk on top lifted up.
The trunk sprouted two legs.
It wasn’t that the trunk had grown legs—rather, the naked Dr. Kin had stood up while wearing a trunk with a hollowed-out center fitted around his torso.
The naked Dr. Kin removed the trunk.
He then stepped forward nonchalantly and sat down facing the properly dressed Dr. Kin standing in the center of the room.

Two doctors.
What in the world could explain this?

The naked doctor let out a big yawn there, then reached out both hands and touched the properly dressed doctor’s body.
And he muttered,

“Hmm, properly cooled.”
It seemed to have withstood the heat adequately.
Those fools probably didn’t realize there was a liquid oxygen cooling system inside this artificial human’s chest—would they?
No—in fact, they might not even have realized that the Dr. Kin appearing before them those days was such an artificial human.

From this soliloquy, one could deduce that the naked Dr. Kin was the real Dr. Kin, and the properly dressed Dr. Kin was none other than the decoy artificial human Dr. Kin. No wonder he remained unfazed by poisoned wine and venomous snakes; even when struck by bullets or hurled against walls—he was never meant to die.

“Ah, I’ve grown tired of this embassy’s smoked salmon and fire wine.”
“I’ve stayed long enough by now—Wang Laoshi should be able to save face.”
“Well then, I’ll gather my tools and head back while I can.”

Having said that, Dr. Kin casually disassembled the artificial human Dr. Kin into pieces and packed them into the aforementioned three trunks. And this time, having properly prepared his travel attire, he shouldered the trunks and, puffing away on his cigar, sauntered leisurely out of the mansion.