Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

At the hill's summit amidst flowers, the glass-walled sunroom shone. The balcony's ladder jutted out like a white spine. He returned to the sanatorium up the slope that climbed from the sea. He would occasionally leave his wife's side like this to walk outside, then return to see her face afresh. Each time he looked, his wife's face drew nearer to the death line with measured tempo, meticulously tracing its stages——From within the brick structure atop the hill, a cluster of nurses suddenly spilled forth.

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

Chasing after the discharged patient, they came running down the sunlit slope like a white mantle. They wheeled through the rose beds and formed a circle resembling a single bloom in the gate plaza.

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

On the lawn, pale fresh patients lay heaped like fruits formed into a slope.

He came softly through the patients' delusions into the corridor.
From the windows of each room lining the long corridor, a row of gazes gleaming with despair came coldly pressing toward him.

He opened the wife’s sickroom door.
The wife’s face lay still with a plaintive serenity, like air clinging to flower petals.

—Probably, the wife would die.

He peered at the wife from beside the bed.
There was no crime or punishment.
Her profile bore a neat blue line, as though she were recalling the beauty of that fulfilling wedding night when she had given him her virginity.

II

Between him and his wife, the time for sorrow had already passed.
He no longer knew how many times doctors had pronounced her death sentence.
Each time, he tried changing physicians.
With his final effort, he fought against death to the limit of his strength.
But the more he fought and changed doctors, the more starkly precise their pronouncements became alongside reality.
He had wilted.
He had grown exhausted.
He sank into void like a dazed storehouse, hands hanging limp.
Now they merely peered into each other's shadowed faces across death's cross-section cleaving them apart -
As if death itself had materialized between their eyes.
When mealtimes came, he silently scooped soup and poured it into her mouth,
Like feeding death coiled within her belly.

One time, he softly asked his wife in a low voice.

“Aren’t you afraid of dying at all?”

“Yes,” answered his wife.

“Don’t you want to live anymore at all?”

“I want to die.”

“Hmm,” he nodded.

To them both, their hearts felt as distinct as faces gazing at each other through opposite sides of glass.

III

Now his wife was but a lone monster tumbling between life and death. She who had loved him with such fierce ardor had now utterly vanished from before him. And what of him? He who had loved his wife with equal passion had become mere machinery with emotions worn threadbare. In truth, through their long shared suffering, these two were neither husband and wife nor even human anymore. Between their gazing eyes stretched only pliant air expanding and contracting through empty space. Until death came to claim her eyes, this air would brighten when sunlight fell and darken when it faded. For them both, time no longer stretched or shrank through love—it manifested solely as sunlight’s crude shifts casting brightness and shadow across the space between their eyes. It was a void still as vacuum. To him now, his wife’s recumbent face had begun appearing as a fine still life composition, like the medicine stand and tray beside her.

He brought marguerites and poppies from the flower beds to make the space between them as beautiful as their once-vibrant love. The white marguerites in the void faintly drew a smile across his wife's motionless face. When those delicate poppies arranged in vases swayed crimson in the faint breeze, she would gaze at them while releasing faint sighs. That from these composed lines of still lifes—vases and beds and walls and profiles and flowers arrayed in the square room—a threadlike sigh should escape. To hear this veiled beauty in her exhalations, he gathered every bloom obtainable outdoors into the room.

Roses swayed each morning, still wet with water.
Hydrangeas, cornflowers, wild roses, peonies, chrysanthemums—the canna lilies bloomed ceaselessly atop the three walls.
It was a room as gorgeous as a florist’s.
Every night after lighting the candlestick, he would peer at his wife’s sleeping face, wondering whether death’s guest might have slipped unnoticed into this pale florist’s room.
Then, one night his wife suddenly opened her eyes and said to him:
“When I die, you’ll find happiness, won’t you?”

He gazed at his wife’s face in silence.
And then, having returned to his own bed, he gloomily blew out the candle flame.

IV

He began striving to see every object within his visual space as beautiful to alleviate his weariness.
This had been the sole mode of existence left to him—something needing establishment within the void space where his emotions had disappeared.

He liked his bed.
Though identical to his wife's sickroom bed, it stood on the veranda meant for mild cases to rest.
The veranda faced toward the flower garden.
Each midnight when he awoke there, he found himself tormented more by the moon than by his wife.
The moon hung ceaselessly before his nose, blazing brilliantly as it refused to relinquish his gaze.
Under that moonlit night like a cross-section of sea, garden flowers endlessly formed faint white circles like swarms of moths.
And then, while contemplating those sheep-like wrinkles curling at the flower tips, the moon crossed pallidly toward the sea.

On such nights, he would slip out onto the veranda and wander through the flowers like a night gardener.
In a pond embraced by damp lawn, a single fountain scattered moonlight as it played with the surrounding stones and flowers.
It had the serene grace of prized livestock raised in the garden.
Moreover, the two capes enveloping the distant inlet curved like black arms embracing the flower garden.
And then, the horizon floated above the flower beds, swelling toward the moon like a single gleaming hair in the distance.

At such times, he had a habit of constantly looking back at the darkened ward where lights were extinguished and patients slept.
Then in his head floated a scene where countless lungs rolled like black fungi rotting among flowers.
Countless rotting lungs must have gathered into this hilltop flower garden while scattering innumerable spores into the sunless attics of low-lying towns, into dust heaps, into the interlocking gears of machinery and stacked utensils of eateries.
Yet the director of this garden—who prevented the holes in these pitifully dying lungs, revived them with vitality, and sent them back out to the streets—had himself once possessed a rotten lung condemned to death, just like the countless decaying lungs he now aided.
A single wounded lung, rejoicing in its own recovery, would continue aiding countless wounded lungs for as long as its convalescence persisted.
This was the unique system of motion exhibited by the breathing lungs within this flower garden.

V

In this flower garden here, fresh air and sunlight and love and abundant food and peaceful sleep were most required.
Here, as long as night and clouds did not appear, the only thing casting shadows on the ward was the roof.
The food—richly seasoned offerings from sea and mountain—stimulated appetites with their vibrant colors that changed with the seasons.
The air welled up from the three-hued green pigments of cloudless sky, sea, and mountains.
The only sounds were a silence so profound it ached in the ears—occasionally the faint strains of a minuet drifting up from the recreation room, patients' coughs, and the hushed sound of fountains cascading onto petals in flower beds.
And what of love?
Love flowed within the pristine white uniforms of nurses—selected from distinguished city hospitals—like a faint May breeze.

However, love was ever a trickster.
While idly gazing at sky and sea and flowers within this flower garden—if those who drew near were as refreshing as a May breeze—then it stood as natural law that tender fruits of amorous desire would ripen there.
Yet in this garden, romantic love was poison.
Should affection bloom amidst flowers, that very thing would soon scatter like petals.
For this hill's luminous sky and flowers existed solely to grant patients serenity in place of worldly passion.
Were love's blossom to emerge between them, the surrounding brightness of flowers and sky would cloud over from their ceaseless discordant strain.
But within this exquisite ambiance of sky and blossoms, when vivacious women's murmurs approached like smiles, any who resisted desire's pull might as well have been stone.
Thus the white-clad nurses here must regulate their smiles and alluring glances with the same precision as their pulse-taking techniques—like veteran actresses.
Yet even they bore pairs of ample breasts.
When ward lights extinguished and bedtime came, they would shed those austere white uniforms, complete their makeup, wrap colored sashes about their waists, and transform into supple nightgowned maidens.
But having become maidens, they all kept listless silence from weariness and sleepiness.
As though bearing that quiet torment of love-jilted girls who shun others' eyes in some indefinable way.
Some knelt to offer daily prayers, others penned letters, some sank into reverie, while at times certain ones stood vacantly in darkened corridors' centers, arrayed in finest attire.
Perhaps their sole chance to don most cherished beautiful garments came only when sleeping.

One night, one of them was discovered having sneaked into her lover’s sickroom late at night.
The following day, she was dismissed from the hospital.
As she left—surrounded by nurses lining the long corridor to see her off—her face flushed with faint shame, yet she walked out with haughty steps, as though demonstrating rebellion against long overwork and meager rations.
In her departing manner that disregarded courtesy, there indeed loomed imposingly upon her shoulders a pleasure akin to having exacted revenge upon the patients and hospital that had long tormented her.

VI

As the rainy season began approaching, this flower garden found its concerns no longer limited to matters within the sanatorium.
At the seaside village in the foothills lay a large fishing ground that sustained the entire livelihood of its people.
The fishing ground beneath the tuberculosis sanatorium saw its fish sales facing a fate far more certain to shrink than expand.
Torn between two contradictions—whether to suppress the active heart of the foothills or ignore the dying lungs at the summit—the village had split into opposing factions.
As if it had already been decided—even were the sanatorium permitted to remain atop this summit—this did not mean all hearts of the foothills had forgotten their terror.

Before long, the hearts that feared these rotting lungs began to torment the summit's flower garden.
They selected a spot near the flower garden and piled up mountains of unsold fish that had begun to rot—using them as fertilizer for those rotting lungs.
Suddenly, flies swarmed and flew about inside the flower beds and sickrooms.
In the sickrooms, a single fly was an enemy to be feared as much as a pistol.
Every window in the sanatorium began to be covered with wire mesh.
The sound of hammers disturbed the patients' rest for three days.
A single day's chaos destroys half a month's convalescence.
The patients' temperature charts began to go haywire.

However, this battle between lungs and hearts still continued.
The hearts, having learned that wire-mesh defenses had been put in place, burned straw upwind and sent smoke streaming toward the lungs.
Smoke obeys wind rather than morality.
The flowers of the flower beds grew increasingly hazy and dim throughout the day.
The smoke attacked with several times more force than what had driven away the flies from above flower beds—now assailing rotten lungs directly.
The patients began coughing.
Each cough robbed a day’s convalescence.
The sickrooms were sealed with glass doors from outside wire mesh.
Carbon dioxide began accumulating in rooms.
Once again temperature charts were thrown into disarray.
The patients’ appetites began to decrease.
The people merely gazed vacantly at sky from behind glass doors.

Thus, his wife—to the precise extent she was loved by the flower garden's people—found herself tormented by the fishing ground below as death approached.
Yet the flower garden had to maintain silence about all matters owing to its victorious occupation of that superior mountain position.
His wife persisted in coughing more violently with each passing day.

VII

On such a day, he was secretly summoned to a separate room by the Vice-Director.

“I’m terribly sorry, but your wife most likely—”

“I understand,” he said.

“I believe it will be by the end of this month…”

“Yes.”

“We did everything we could, but…”
“…However…”

“I’m terribly sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused you,”

“Well… Also, if you intend to notify your relatives, please ensure they don’t all arrive at once.”

“Understood.”

“You must be exhausted after all this time.”

“No.”

He found himself standing alone in the middle of the corridor.
The forgotten sadness assailed him once more like a pungent odor.

He started walking toward his wife’s sickroom.

But is this fact?

He stopped again.
The cello gavotte resounded brightly from the sunroom.

But even if facts were clearly trying to drag his wife into death, would facts always remain facts?

—It’s a lie, he thought.

He considered all his own senses to be illusions.
He considered all phenomena to be mere appearances.

――Why must we perceive misfortune as misfortune?

――Why must we not perceive funerals as weddings?

He had suffered too much.
He had borne too much misfortune.
He had grieved too much; therefore, he now had to regard all those sufferings and sorrows as false facts.

―Soon, his wife would regain her health.

—Soon, we would be happy.

From that moment, he suddenly forged a new resolve.
With this single resolve, he began striving to perceive all darkness in his heart as brightness.
For him now, the long-standing void had blown away like a brief dream.

He took a deep breath and approached his wife’s bedside with forced cheerfulness.

“Hey, you’re thinking about dying, aren’t you.”

The wife looked at him and nodded.

"But human beings aren't meant to die. Even if you die, dying isn't anything significant at all. Got it?"—Of course, he himself didn't understand what he was saying.

The wife remained silent, staring at him with cold eyes.

“You know such things better than I do. Dying is just trivial—utterly insignificant and ridiculous.”

“I don’t want to suffer any longer,” the wife said.

“That’s right.”
“Suffering? That’s just ridiculous.”
“However, just because you’re alive, you don’t need to hold back anything from me at all.”

“I’m happy because I’ll die before you,” she said.

He burst out laughing.

"You've thought of something clever too."

"I'm not the one to be pitied—you are."

"That's settled.
I'm the one who ended up the fool.
Fundamentally, the very fact that human beings are alive is trivial.
What's the point of loitering around like this and staying alive?
You should just die now too, right?"

“Yes,” the wife nodded.

“I’ll be dying soon too.”
“I don’t want to dawdle around living in a place like this.”
“You pulled off something clever, you know.”

The wife looked at him and faintly smiled.

“I... I wouldn’t mind living if just this suffering were a little less.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. What’s the use of staying alive—what exactly are we supposed to do now? Haven’t we both already done everything we possibly could? Just try to remember.”

“That’s right,” the wife said.

“That’s right—go ahead and die with your head held high now.”

The wife silently stared at his face, as though trying to ascertain the psychological changes written there.

“You look rather lonesome. Shall I call your mother for you?”

“There’s no need. If you stay by me, I don’t wish to see anyone else,” his wife said.

“I see. Well then,” he said and immediately wrote a letter asking her mother to come.

VIII

From the next day onward, the wife’s face suddenly began taking on a nectarous freshness, as if infused with dewy succulence.
The wife constantly gazed at the hillside lily flowers tilting to fill the window.
He added new flowers to the room’s walls in place of her mother.
Cyclamen and lilies.
Heliotropes and cornflowers.
Cineraria and hyacinths.
Roses and marguerites and poppies.

“Your face—why has it suddenly become so beautiful?”
“You look like a sixteen-year-old girl.”
“Even though you don’t drink a full bowl of soup, you have a face like you’ve taken down fifteen or sixteen chickens.”
“You’re a strange one.”
“Ah—so you did it secretly behind my back.”

“Take those lilies out of this room,” the wife said.

The scent of lilies kills the scents of other flowers—

“That’s right—this flower is a hero.”

He grabbed the lilies and carried them out of the room.
However, when it came time to discard them, their damply vibrant pollen's bold coloration left him nowhere to dispose of them.
He wandered the corridors with the lily bundle dangling like a kitten carrying its prey, peering into the empty nurses' station.
In the coffin-like room wedged between walls, disheveled sashes and tangled hairpieces lay scattered in the stifling air.
Soon to rest their weary bodies there, he quietly left the lilies arranged like scented sachets for the nurses—to cast visions of mountain wilderness purity—before returning.

IX

On the mountain above, they began stubbornly burning wheat straw again one day.
When he found a moment to leave the sickroom, he went to inspect the field that was the source of the fire.
Then, amidst the green grass, the young man who was sharpening a sickle looked up at him.

“How long will you keep burning that fire?” he asked.

“Just this much,” the young man said, indicating the burning wheat straw with his sickle.

“Is it necessary to keep burning that fire?”

The young man silently pressed the blade against a handful of green grass.

“My wife is being killed by this smoke.”
“If it’s possible to manage without burning, I beg you to stop.”

Without waiting for the young man’s answer, he descended from the back mountain toward the fishing grounds.
On the flat fishing grounds, intensely copper-colored thighs stood arrayed like a forest.
When the seasonal bonito arrived, they sent up sprays as they charged into the sea.
Children on the sandy beach snatched quivering jellyfish and hurled them at one another.
From the boats came barrels, thighs, tuna, sea bream, and bonito—all gleaming with marine hues as they surged up briskly.
Abruptly, the fishing grounds began glowing like a false dawn.
Hirsute thighs writhed through fish-swollen waves.
Sea bream lay straddled by thighs like rose-blushed women resigned to fate, while tuna—strategic artillery shells—stood composed in formation.
When occasional groves of rigid thighs swayed, invading sunset rays flashed iridescent scales like blades slicing through piscine crests.

He looked up at the hilltop from amidst the fish.
The hill's flower beds abruptly surfaced amidst waves of fish.
On tiers of roses, tuna, peonies, sea bream, and marguerites, the sunroom's polygonal surfaces now shone in the sunset, emitting sharp glints like eyes.

"But this sanatorium surrounded by fish was a castle under ceaseless assault from these waves of fish."
"Within this castle," he thought, "the first to fall in battle would be my wife."

In truth, to him, the fish before his eyes were countless brave enemies hastening his wife’s death with smoke. At the same time, for her, the fish were also compassionate doctors trying to shorten her painful days. To him, those ponderous rows of artillery-shell-like tuna now appeared jet-black and silent, suddenly seeming imbued with meaningless meaning he couldn’t ignore.

X

From that day on, he began to wonder whether what was truly causing his wife’s suffering was indeed the fish from the fishing grounds or the flowers of the garden—and which of the two it might be.
For as long as she remained in the flower garden, her painful days would undoubtedly have continued longer than with the smoke belched out by the fish.

During that night’s rounds, his wife looked at her legs and asked the doctor.

“Doctor, my legs have swollen up like this—what could be the matter?”

“No—it’s nothing at all.”
“Please don’t concern yourself.”
“It’s nothing at all, so…” the doctor evaded.

The fluid had begun spreading to her legs.

It was hopeless, he thought.

When the doctor left, he turned off the electric light and lit the candlestick.

--Now then, what should I talk about?

He watched his wife's shadow quivering minutely over the heliotrope flowers under the candlelight. Then suddenly he recalled her vibrant smile from their first meeting—a smile that seemed permitted existence solely for him alone. Tears seeped into his eyes. He quietly bent over his wife and kissed her forehead amid the floral scent.

“During the time I was sitting in that dirty second-floor room full of paper scraps, you came secretly to me every night, didn’t you?”

The wife silently nodded.

“I had the most fun back then.
“Your bright head from below would suddenly appear like a flower cart at that dark hole above the ladder.
“Then all my gloom would vanish and I’d start frolicking around.
“Anyway, back then I was poor but it was my happiest time.
“After that we both endured hardships in our youth.
“But well—it’s fine.
“We’ve both been stubbornly arguing our selfishness all along.
“And it’s not like I’ve ever done anything needing apology to you, nor you to me—we’re a couple who should feel grateful to each other.
“This is getting strange somehow, but anyway—thanks to your illness I’ve nearly earned my nurse certification and completely forgotten what unhappiness means. Such blessings don’t come often.
“You should rest properly.
“If you improve just a bit more, I’ll carry you piggyback through this flower garden here.”

“Mm,” the wife nodded quietly.

When tears nearly threatened to spill, he finally held them back with his brow and stepped down into the flower beds. He thrust his face into the clustered night flowers. Then tears overflowed. He wept as he burrowed through the cold flowers like an insect, moving from one to the next. He began praying fervently amidst the flowers while still sniffing them.

“O God, save her.
“O God, save her.”

He plucked a handful of primroses and wiped the tears from his cheeks.
The sea lay pale and secretive before moonrise.
A night crow traced a bizarre arc and flew away over the flower beds like a sharp shadow.
He circled the still fountain’s perimeter countless times like sorrow itself until his heart settled.

XI

Early the next morning, his wife's mother came.
When she saw her daughter's face, she began to cry.

“Kimbō, what’s wrong?
“Oh, you’ve gotten so thin.”
“I meant to come sooner, but there were things I had to take care of.”

His wife maintained her usual cold expression as she watched the other’s agitated state.

“Are you in pain?”
“Your mother had been thinking about you every single day.”
“She’d wanted so badly to come sooner—truly she had—but everyone at home kept falling ill.”

He no longer felt any inclination to tell her mother about his wife’s condition—the same details he’d omitted from his letters.
He handed his wife over to her mother and came alone to the sunroom.
Inside the sunroom’s glass enclosure, the morning patients lay in rows upon rattan lounge chairs.
The sea remained serenely clear, embraced by the cape.
When two nurses appeared laughing, they descended into the flower beds bathed in morning sunlight.
Their white garments crouched down into the bright red poppies.
And soon, tumbling crimson smiles arose from within the flowers.

The young female patient who had been lying next to him also began to laugh.

“My, how happy they look.”

“Really, though.”
“But you too will soon be able to walk there,” said the neighboring thin woman.
“I suppose that may be so, but...”

“Yes.”
“Yes, indeed. Just yesterday, the doctor did say that very thing.”

“I want so badly to walk on that dew-covered lawn just once.”

“That does seem to be the case.”
“But soon, you’ll be able to laugh like that too.”

The nurses emerged from the flowers again and broke off one branch each.
They walked between purple cornflower beds and rose beds, laughing brightly as they wove through the morning sunlight.
The fountain calmly sprayed a morning rainbow over the peonies in their path.

XII

The number of injections administered to his wife’s arm increased day by day.
Her food had become only water.

One evening at dusk, he climbed up to the veranda and thought as he looked down at the darkening sea below.

Right now, I am simply waiting for my wife’s death.
Into that idle time—what on earth am I trying to cram?

He understood nothing.
All he felt was that the unmoving veranda carrying him kept ceaselessly racing across time.
He stared at how swiftly the sun sank its semicircle toward the horizon.

"That is what wears away my wife's life," he thought.

Before his eyes, the sun trembled violently as it was devoured by the horizon.
The sea lay still like a bloodstained cutting board, its crimson voice hushed.
Above it all, the boat remained motionless like a felled bird.

He suddenly detected an omen in the air—a black sound.
He hurried down from the balcony.
From the opposite corridor came his wife’s mother, rushing.
They passed each other in silence, their faces rigid as stone.

“Um, excuse me,” the mother called out.

He turned around and remained silent.

“Kibo... tonight’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous,” he said.

The two of them stood still in the middle of the tube-like corridor.
After a while, he began walking toward the sickroom.
Then, the attending nurse approached again and stopped him.

“Um, I’m concerned about tonight.”

“Uh-huh,” he nodded.

He opened the sickroom door and sat down beside his wife.
His wife’s wide-open eyes stared at him like deep water, remaining silent.

“Soon, you’ll gradually get better,” he said.

By now, her face showed no response whatsoever.

“You seem tired,” he said. “Why don’t you get a little sleep?”

“I called out to you earlier,” said the wife.

“Ah, so that was you,” he replied. “I was on the balcony when my chest felt strangely tight.”

“You, lift my body up a bit. Somehow I feel like I’m falling into the valley’s depths.”

He placed his wife on his hands.

“It’s been a while since I held you like this.”
“There we go. Okay?”

After raising the pillow, he gently lifted his wife toward it.

“What a light thing you are.
“You’re just like a bouquet.”

Then his wife formed a smile swaying with joy and told him:

“You held me. Now I can be at peace.”

“Now I feel at ease too.
“Come on, you should sleep.
“You haven’t slept since last night.”

“I just can’t.
“I’d want to talk all day today...if the pain would stop.”

“No, better stay quiet now. I’ll keep watch here—just close your eyes and you’ll rest.”

“Then I’ll try sleeping a bit.”
“You—stay right there.”

“Mm,” he said.

When his wife closed her eyes, he turned off the light and opened the window.
The sound of swaying trees came like wind.
In the moonless dark flower garden, an elderly nurse walked gloomily.
He was withered in body and mind.
The wife's mother stood with her cheek against the balcony windowpane, gazing blankly into the flower garden.
As if every strategy had vanished.
On the distant sickroom's curtain lay a motionless withered shadow.
At times the flower beds' tips swayed like countless pale hands groping through darkness.

13

That night, when the tide came in, his wife began to suffer intensely.
The doctor came.
Camphor, saline, and Ringer’s solution took turns setting her body ablaze.
However, she was no longer the same as she had been the day before.
Only the oxygen inhaler at her bedside finally began its desperate activity, bubbling furiously.

He positioned himself over his wife as if shielding her, pressing the inhaler’s mouthpiece to her lips. With each agonized breath from her daughter, the wife’s mother contorted her face and exhaled in unison—as though determined not to let even a wisp escape.
He occasionally tried removing the inhaler’s mouthpiece from his wife’s lips.
Then she suffered with faltering breaths.

This is it.
He thought.

If the inhaler could permanently relieve his wife’s suffering, he wanted to keep holding that mouthpiece forever.
Yet when he considered how this inhaler before his eyes served only to prolong her suffering, he found himself feeling goodwill for the first time toward the fish from the fishery that had shortened her life, rather than toward the medicines attempting to preserve it.
However, in accordance with forensic medicine, the doctor coolly began to say he would administer another injection.
Only for those who remain.

“No, no,” his wife cut in before he could respond to the doctor.

“Alright, alright. Then we’ll stop administering them.”

“You, I’m done for already,” the wife said.

“No—not yet.”

“I’m in pain.”

“Hmm, you’ll be healed soon.
“It’s all right.”

“Why won’t you let me die?”

“You shouldn’t say such things.”

“Even though I’m in such pain, do you still intend to make me suffer?”

Now he resented this will that wished for her death.

“Just a bit more patience. Soon it won’t hurt anymore.”

“Ah...I can’t see your face anymore,” the wife said.

His vision darkened stormlike. As the wife scanned the room, she stretched her hand toward him. He funneled his violent affection into her solitary hand.

“Hang in there.”
“I’m right here.”

“Yeah,” she answered.

Her grasp, mustering the strength of a lifetime, came into his hand.

“You, let me die now,” the wife said.

“Can’t you wait a little longer?” he said.

“I’m in pain,” she said. “I’m sorry to die before you.”

Instead of answering, he burst into loud sobs.

“You—I’m truly sorry for all this time,” she continued. “Please forgive me.”

“I’m sorry too,” he finally said, voice breaking. “For making you care for me all these years.”

The wife pulled in her chin and nodded firmly.

"There was never anyone as happy as I was."
"You'll be left all alone, won't you."
"When I die, there'll be no one left to look after you."

From beside the wilted marguerites, her mother’s weeping rose like a cheer.

“Kibo, Kibo.”

“I’m sorry to you too, Mother.
“Forgive me.”
“Give my regards to Brother too.”
“And also, to everyone.”

“Ah, ah, you needn’t worry. They’ll all be here soon,” said Mother.

“Do I still have to wait? It’s so painful.”

“It’ll be soon. I called earlier—they’ll be here any moment now.”

“I’ll die first—it’s already so painful.”

“There there, just stay calm. You don’t need to worry about anything,” he said.

The wife nodded and kept her eyes wide open as she surveyed the room.
A crow began to caw over the garden, its cries mingling with his and her mother’s stifled sobs.
Then his wife coughed with an affectionate, caressing smile.

“My, what an eager crow—it’s already cawing, isn’t it.”

He stood dumbfounded before his wife's magnificently serene state of mind.
He could no longer produce tears.

“Goodbye,” the wife said after a while.
“Mm, farewell,” he replied.

“Kibo, Kibo,” Mother called.

However, she no longer answered.
Her breathing had become nothing but large exhalations.
Her grasp slackened like wood in his palm, in tandem with the movement of her jaw sinking moment by moment.
She stopped moving.
And then, at last, death rose abruptly upon her face like a radiant dawn.

This was it.

For a while, he stood transfixed in ecstasy, gazing enraptured at the beauty of death that had manifested before his eyes.
And then, like a sheet of paper, he staggered unsteadily down into the flower garden.