Pathway to Japanese Literature

Here, dawn fell directly onto my eyelids.
Then the cough sleeping in my throat awakened before I did.
It kneaded and crushed my shoulders and chest pressed against the hard plank-floor bed.
No matter how much I tried to suppress it, nothing worked until the attack subsided.
Choking, tears overflowed down my cheeks.
As I shed tears in rivulets, hydrangea flowers blooming in the neighbor's garden floated hazily into view.
Was I the one crying, or were the hydrangeas remaining in that dim garden not shedding tears?
You who were dead, me, and then—on this cruel earth, there must still have been many people who knew such sorrowful hours.…

When the attack ended, I reached out while lying down and pushed the lightweight glass pane of the rotating window at my bedside.
Then through a five-inch gap, the chilly dawn air crept into this small glass box (the room).
That slightly stiff yet fine-grained air slid over my face.
From my nasal cavity into my lungs it was drawn.
With the attack over, I tried to slip back into sleep, clinging to something undefined.
(Air... it's such a good thing.)
Yes, sleep well once more.
(As long as there are transparent dawns like this...) The air I breathed gradually softened, and I became light as a feather.
The air flowing in from the small window continued infinitely.
You who were dead, me, and everything else seemed to be on the other side now, I...
I was…….
I might be able to sleep peacefully.
I might be cured and regain my health.
Let me be at ease.
As long as such gentle infinite transparency existed on the other side…….
I was…….

Suddenly, the creaking sound of a hand pump ripped through my ears，tearing me apart．It was their hand pump，right beneath my window．Its shrill screech tore through what little sleep I had．Water gushed from an overflowing bucket．My head spun upside down，violently shaken by water’s roar and metal’s scream．Was I a man who had survived tragedy itself？Or was I being rattled by its dying moans？．．．My own back pressed against this hard bed snapped back into me like sprung wire．I became aware—bone-deep—of my rootless existence．Was it branded on my forehead？Some curse reborn each dawn？Drifting—wandering—no words fit．I had somersaulted backward，crashed onto this scorched earth．Pump sounds washed over my brow；shadows of calamity swayed there．When death took you—I shut our house there，returned to Hiroshima．Then came That Day．Afterward—months gnawed by hunger in some desolate village．Then—as if fleeing—I came up to Tokyo this spring．．．Yet even this house that took me in—now．．．

Suddenly, I recalled the earlier attack and was startled.
As I pressed my back against this hard bed, the state of affairs downstairs became visible through a single thin ceiling board, as clearly as through a mirror.
Downstairs remained silent, yet in the depths of this cold, strange glass house, an indescribable anguish lingered.
Certainly, I felt as though that cough had been heard by the landlady of this house.
And to me, this entire glass house felt like a dead-silent apparatus that detected every single breath I took.

For some time now, I had been quietly advised by the landlord of this house to have a doctor examine me.
Fearfully, I once slipped through the hospital gate.
The doctor said nothing except that I was emaciated.
If anything, it made me into a kiss.
In such a terrifying season of starvation, what kind of recuperation can a penniless I possibly manage?
I was merely keeping my body—growing gaunt with hunger—as still as possible, so as not to fatigue myself, so as not to fatigue myself.

However, the eyes of this house's landlady when looking at me—though they had never been gentle from the moment I first came under her roof—grew increasingly barbed.
The starch ration had ceased without warning, leaving days where I could only fill my stomach with leafy scraps and water.
Then one day, the landlady's temper finally erupted.
I felt like a dog beaten flat against the earth.
The guilt of homelessness threatened to drive me mad.
Fear began creeping through me.
Before I knew it, the household had isolated me completely.
The landlord would look at me with something like pity, but kept his words guarded now.
The landlady made obvious efforts to avoid crossing paths with me.
Something crushed inward and confined—the whole house's eerie essence—surrounded me without a sound.
And this torment would not cease so long as I remained in this room.

This low white ceiling seeming fragile...the glass window grazing my sleeping head...the opposite wall brushing against my feet...this perfectly square narrow space, this too-constricting 2.5-meter cubic room...is this a hospital ward? An isolation cell?
But I had no choice but to live lightly, lightly.
Lightly, lightly—the air's sweet slumber that enveloped me at dawn's edge, something feather-soft...... Someone must be praying for me without cease...... I lay dazed in bed pursuing thoughts that would never cohere.

My own isolated meal had already been prepared downstairs.
I quietly descended the narrow stairs.
This narrow, aged staircase and ceiling—with walls lined everywhere in frosted glass—lacked any proper pillars.
The instability of this strange house threatened me with every movement, seeming ready to crash down upon my head at any moment.
I could only walk as softly as one in prayer.
Moreover, the fidgety mannerisms conditioned by this house had already become ingrained in me.
When I was downstairs, the people of this house retreated to the back rooms while I swallowed my meager morning meal with a prisoner-like unease.
Then I quietly climbed the stairs as though crawling.
As I ascended—passing her unseen—the sound of the landlady emerging downstairs reached my ears.

I returned to my room and came back to myself with relief.
But immediately, the sensation of being bound by something revived.
I collapsed onto the boards and gazed at the narrow square box—a 2.5-meter cubic room.
Was I being confined?
The light streaming through this small frosted glass window might have been from an experimental device.
How many hundreds of days could a human endure hunger? How many hundreds of days could a man—weakened, his lungs nearly consumed—survive in such brutal conditions? Perhaps these were the measurements being taken.
(But really—for what purpose?) Was I just a bug in a glass box?
I want to escape.
I want to run away.
Bit by bit, I grew more and more agitated......

When I leave this glass box, I think while still lying on the floorboards.
Then, the sensation of those ill-fitting rubber-soled shoes comes immediately to the soles of my feet.
Those shoes—which I acquired at a stall in Hiroshima’s ruins when moving to Tokyo—with their entirely rubber soles swaying loosely and ill-fittingly, made my starved body stagger all the more.
And when I put them on in this cramped entrance under the stairs—an earthen floor not even one meter square—and stood up, the instability of this entire constricted house transferred itself to the heels of my shoes.
So even as I began walking toward the road, the ground beneath my feet swayed dizzily, something like a terrifying light seemed ready to shoot down from high above, and a demonic hour clung to me...

The roads around here suddenly took on a magical quality.

Earlier I slipped out of the box; though it was still a bit early for work, I crossed Ditch Bridge through the burned-out ruins' thoroughfare and trudged up this slope.
It was a steep slope, but at the top lay a sprawling thicket.
I casually stepped into the thicket.
When I suddenly looked, the space spreading below the slope—trees, houses, sky—all were softened within the haze.
The grasses at my feet were yellow and withered, and the plumes of silver grass were faintly white.
Everything was faintly memory-like.
Everything was faintly feeble; even the chill air lay utterly still.
What sort of hour was this?
……Suddenly, a question welled up within me.
I surely must have possessed such hours and mental states many times in the past—had that now plunged me into a labyrinth?
Where did I intend to go from here…(to the usual night school?) Was I walking the usual path?
Was it I who was walking this road?
Was I truly existing?
The hazy soft air before my eyes trembled gently, gently.
Something like music began to tremble within me.
What sort of hour was this?
……The chill-chilled air and my body temperature……melding together, I walked on dazedly.
Perhaps I was an extravagant traveler wandering through desolate regions.
Even if the sand dunes and withered grasses were but faint shadow pictures, when I arrived at the marble inn, hot water gushed forth abundantly.
Fairy tales welled up within me.

Fairy tales?
Ah, right—it's been about a hundred days since I last had anything resembling a conversation with anyone (with living humans).
Fairy tales?
I seem to be a lonely traveler after all.

The broken collapsible umbrella I carried;...the rubber-soled shoes clinging heavily to my heels;...the dirty haversack dangling from my shoulder—these things suddenly plunged me back into being that wretched night school teacher.
Märchen... In anticipation of a season of calamity and starvation, the insects each stored food and treasures underground.
Before long came a storm that enveloped heaven and earth.
At that moment I was thrown out onto the ground completely naked.
From that time on I became a pitiable single insect.
That's right—if this were an insect's Märchen, it would still cling to the heels of my rubber-soled shoes.
Märchen?... But now was a different hour.
Something more beautiful, something indescribably gentle now resonated within me.
Perfectly suited to the moment, this road lay hushed, all foot traffic having ceased.
The air before my eyes trembled minutely, looking ready to turn into rain at any moment.
I was enduring something in silence.
But with each passing moment, time grew more unbearable to endure....A crystal palace at the earth's edge suddenly came into view before my eyes.
In that transparent spring a woman quietly cast her shadow.
That figure gradually became clear to me.
That face was enduring something, praying intently for something.

I gazed at the sky, nearly bursting with emotion.
The face of the woman reflected in the spring began to shimmer and sparkle.
Indeed, that woman—whose identity remained unknown—stood there in the motionless clouds, her eyes filled with hot tears and a gentle smile.
Haze-laden soft air…… That lay before my eyes.
Under my cheeks too was a trembling haze containing tears…
Suddenly, I found myself walking the usual familiar path before realizing it.
Was I going to night school after all...?
But what had moved me earlier still shimmered glitteringly somewhere in the distance.
It shimmered.
It faintly clung to me.
Was I thinking of you? Was I speaking to you? Or was it you—dead—speaking to me?

I came to the precincts of a burned-out shrine where the station front's hustle and bustle lay visible at a glance.
Beneath my feet I could see the pavement, and the station building stood quietly clouded.
My eyes faced the jumbled houses and the sea like a thin sheet of white paper at the road's end.
Within that white sheet, around where sky and sea met, I faintly traced a dream-like purple line.
It was land.
It was the land where I had once lived with you.
From that coast I had often seen a black mass where sky met sea; that must have been the spot where I stood now.
Even now, it seemed there was still someone gazing at this shore from the opposite land.
Could that still be me?
If that was the case, you might still be waiting for my return on that sickbed in that house on that land... My gaze gently brushed over something indistinct, then I trudged heavily out of the shrine precincts...

The steep stone steps and bustling crowd severed me from my gentle reminiscence.
I tried to stiffen my feeble posture in unstable rubber-soled shoes.
Since the disaster, the single feeble posture of resistance left to me... that returned to me now.
The crowd plunged me into faint confusion.
I walked along the station platform, pushed from all sides.
People who had lost their place to live relentlessly bore down and pushed toward me.
I was being crammed into the train.
I was being pushed and forced through.
Though I was the one who had truly lost my place to live, the bones in my shoulder burned with a feverish ache.
The shoulder of an unknown person right beside my chin.
From the direction of tightly packed shoulders came leaking groans…
Pierced by the weight of matter, I seemed to have slipped away somewhere.
How many times had these moments repeated themselves?
When I died, this cramped sensation might still leave traces.
In my dying hallucinations, hard human shoulders overlapped and tightened like a vise around my starving, staggering self…
At the speed of the swaying in my shoe soles, I staggered from time to time.
In such moments, what was I thinking?
I was matter... Shoulders were matter's...
Eventually, the train arrived at my stop and dumped me out.

I was pushed by the crowd of people and emerged into the station square.
Here already felt completely like dusk.
I crossed the streetcar thoroughfare and entered the fire-scarred backstreets.
This was a place you who were dead had scarcely known, but for me, it had long been a familiar corner.
In the continuation of these fire-scarred backstreets, where sorghum fields and now sparse rose bushes could be seen, my boarding house had once stood long ago.
During such cloudy hours before dusk, I, then a student, would often leave my boarding house to wander aimlessly.
The feeble, desolate light of the backstreets mirrored exactly my heart of that time.
My eyes traced along the large factory wall, lingering on rusty iron pillars and the withered leaves of willows.
All those wounded things alone kept strangely attracting my eyes.
At that time, I did not lack friends, and my circumstances could not be called unfortunate.
But for some reason I couldn’t comprehend, I was a being utterly severed from everything in this world.
For me, everything felt like an unbearable compulsion.
When the low-hanging premonition of death struck me, I felt as if I might be shattered at any moment.
I continued walking frantically, clutching something cold as glass.
Then, dizzyingly, my head gradually grew hot.

From the fire-scarred corner of stone steps that must have belonged to a bank or something, I emerged onto the main street.
Here, nearly everything had been newly built upon scorched ruins.
The tram tracks remained, but no tram was in sight.
The clinging twilight and passersby around me rustled past in swaying motion.
From behind me, two or three familiar faces overtook me.
They were my night school students.
I wondered when I had come to remember those students...
In an instant, I pretended to be a teacher. Then came a jolt through my body.
It was the sensation of being stripped bare and slammed down.
That made me stagger.
And I stood still before something that looked familiar.
It was a newly built flower shop.
I approached the shop window.
I was captivated.
I found myself captivated by my own captivation.
The flowers visible through the glass were exactly like memories.
Yes, memories now intoxicated me like sake, making me stagger.
Moreover, these rubber-soled shoes and the uneven ground made me stagger all the more.
I seemed to be seeking something more solid to grasp.
It seemed an orderly world was coming into view for me.

The mica-colored air clinging around me had likely been whispering that since some time earlier.
...At that time, the hospital where you were admitted stood atop a hill overlooking both fields and sea.
I walked through clear autumn light, counting my shoe sounds on that slope's hard paved path.
Your condition weighed heavy and darkness lay before my living eyes, yet strangely a transparent world began unfolding within me. Though your room existed inside that temple-like hospital on the slope, between us there always slipped transparent light.
I walked imagining my footsteps as a delicate second hand etching into enameled infinite time.
When I left your room and stood atop the slope, late autumn air trembled moment by moment into dimness, haze overlapping cold reason with feverish elements.
I tried recalling those footsteps' sound.

In the direction I walked, there lay the slope leading to my current school.
The half-burned building of X University standing on that hill appeared quiet in the dusk.
Faintly, I imagined myself walking that hospital-bound slope, when suddenly a memory of maddening resilience resurged from this hill.
When I walked this slope as a student, there were times when the surroundings would suddenly brim with vitality.
As if resisting something—driven by a mood that felt like hurling myself against some force—I used to climb this slope with ferocious intensity.

The May sun shone upon the stone steps, with crowds of students streaming about the area.
The small ditch running along the slope glistened, and the students were dressed stylishly.
Above my dizzy head, the green leaves on the hilltop burned.
I walked almost as if charging through the wind.

I was now unsteadily climbing the slope.
My slender shadow lay powerlessly in the dimly lit wind.
I had little doubt that my own appearance resembled that of a beggar.
Here on this stone slope, I would sometimes quietly pick up cigarette butts.
At such times, my figure...
I was being overtaken by students one after another from behind.
The ground beneath my feet was already dark.

Suddenly, I began to sway unsteadily. The concrete three-story school building across was abuzz with a crowd of students. My pace quickened slightly. I circled around the first-floor corridor and pushed open the faculty room door. In the cluttered corner of the electrically lit room, I placed my umbrella. Then I leaned against the large central table—this was our teachers' table. I stamped the attendance register. I sipped tea. Hunger suddenly came rushing back. Around me, teachers were discussing something—their faces under electric light bore such a wretched pallor. I sipped another cup of tea. Now outside the corridor came incessant clattering of shoes—some student passed by me toward the cupboard—taking a light bulb with them—thus daily they'd carry bulbs to classrooms then bring them back—but would such routines seem strange to one starving like me? The janitor in the corner started ringing the bell—then everyone shuffled out into the hallway.

I took the attendance register hanging on the wall and grabbed two pieces of chalk from the box.
I slowly made my way out into the corridor and began ascending the stairs to the third floor.
The unlit staircase was pitch dark, and I groped my way upward.
A light seeped from the classroom at the end of the dim corridor.
I pushed the door.
In the electric light, forty or fifty faces squirmed.
I sat down on the lectern chair, placed the attendance register on the desk, and flipped it open with a snap.
Then I hurriedly read out the students' names.
My voice reached my ears.
(Oh, so this is what my voice sounds like?) This was the first time today I'd directed my voice toward another human being.
I pivoted sharply backward and started writing the handout's characters on the poorly painted blackboard.
"I can swim, Can I swim? You can swim, Can you..." Suddenly I put down the chalk and stepped down from the lectern.
I walked along the sooty wall toward the back of the classroom.
I raised my eyes and gazed at my own writing on the blackboard, then looked at the sooty jet-black ceiling.
From the ceiling hung something like dark spiderwebs—strand after strand after strand.
What on earth could that be?
Was time leaving traces in such a place?

Long ago, when I entered the preparatory course of this university, this three-story building was still new, and to me it felt like some grand fortress.
One fine Sunday I spent strolling along a suburban riverside where lotus flowers bloomed.
The next morning too dawned beautifully, as if freshly burnished.
I stood on this third-floor balcony.
I gazed at the brick wall of the great mansion across the way, the luxuriant giant camphor tree, and the kite wheeling in the sky.
Then I felt blissful, as though I owned everything that lay ahead.
Suddenly a friend came to my side.
But he and I stayed silent together in that shared vista.
"Our time will come,"
he suddenly murmured.
Back then we'd convinced ourselves we'd become fine poets, had felt blessings were duly promised.

From the broken window where I stood, a cold wind stroked the nape of my neck.
I read the handout aloud.
“I can swim, Can I swim? You can…” I walked around the classroom while speaking.
Trying not to exhaust myself too much, moving unsteadily and lightly…
Then I returned to the chair.
Both my shoulders and legs felt throbbing and feverish.
Hunger made my vision grow dim.
The classroom suddenly began to buzz.
How did this unsteady half-sick man appear in the students’ eyes?
Suddenly, I was seized by the impulse to abandon the lesson.
But my eyes remained fixed on the handout as if searching for something.
Trying not to exhaust myself, trying not to exhaust myself—that prayer… that prayer suddenly returned to me.
I proceeded to find the next part of the lesson and continue.
Before long, the bell rang.
I returned to the faculty room.

When I first became a teacher at that middle school overlooking the sea, you were in and out of bed during that time, ill yourself. When I first stood at the lectern, I felt paradoxically like a middle school student being exposed—terrified of my own naked vulnerability. At times I would picture my shadow lingering at home. You, though ill yourself, tried to care for such a feeble version of me. That shadow of mine... I was now desperately drinking tea to stave off hunger when the janitor rang the bell in the room's corner. I whipped my fatigue into standing. I climbed the dark staircase as if crawling on all fours. Entering the lit classroom, I turned toward the blackboard. I stared apprehensively at its surface still filled with unerased characters, then resolutely began wiping them away with the eraser. Countless white particles scattered around me—now being inhaled into my lungs—and I remembered that morning's coughing fit. Pale hydrangea blossoms... Trying not to exhaust myself, trying not to exhaust myself—a faint, faint prayer... I continued teaching unsteadily while bracing for the bell's ring.

That hour flickered within the electric light's glow.
And then, the bell truly rang.
I groped my way down the stairs and returned to the faculty room.

Holding a bat-shaped umbrella, I descended the slope.
The lights in the darkness of the main street below were dazzling enough to swallow me whole.
The night's darkness thickened with tangible weight until it felt exactly like the sea.
I walked through it as if swimming.
I crossed the tram tracks and reached the National Railway Station.
The dim platform swarmed with people waiting for a train that showed no sign of arriving.
My legs stood rigid as wooden poles.
Rigid—yesterday, today, and likely tomorrow too...
A brightly lit packed train ground to a halt before me.
I was pressed forward like lumber through a mill.
People crushed against my chest from both sides.
The swelter of jostling bodies enveloped me.
What was I thinking?
Can I swim? Can I swim?... Trying not to exhaust myself, trying not to collapse—today's fragile duty had been fulfilled.
Though this couldn't possibly sustain my existence, I'd somehow endured yet another today.
Was this wretched routine granting me some semblance of peace?
The human heat... those countless souls lost in tragedy... this suffocating press of bodies now... these violent shoves... this living current—perhaps precisely this torrent kept supporting my crumbling self....

I was pushed out by the human current and got off the train.
The human current crossed the wide paved road and trooped up the steep stone steps in a line.
I too slowly climbed up the stone steps.
The dimly lit path forked three ways, and the human current also split threefold.
I was walking along the usual gentle slope, quiet like a valley.
The sparse human footsteps around me still continued.
Ahead of me, I could hear the clack-clack of hard-soled shoes…
The sound of footsteps hurrying home…
What kind of person was that?
The quiet footsteps advancing while distinctly marking a rhythm…
I was drawn to them and walked along behind.
The light, cheerful click-clack of shoes resonated in my ears.
That was quietly advancing from one clear purpose to another.
Suddenly, I heard the dull, labored sound of my rubber-soled shoes.
Before I knew it, the splendid footsteps from earlier had vanished.

I felt as if I'd been abruptly jerked away. The road had become a steep downhill. From there, I could see a formless mass of night. My path back lay within that. I crossed the bridge over the ditch and proceeded along the dimly lit road resembling a valley bottom. And then, within me, the dark slippery-looking stone steps before that house floated up like a scene from a dream. At the moment when those stone steps and my unsteady rubber-soled shoes made contact, I felt as if the glass house's suppressed anger—holding its breath in dead silence—might come flying toward me. But now I had already reached those stone steps. An utterly still place—not a single light visible downstairs or on the second floor. It seemed to be a power outage. I apprehensively trod up the steps. I pushed the door of that house gently, like someone gasping for breath. I crouched at the narrow narrow entrance and untied my shoelaces in an awkward posture. Legs like heavy sticks, a dizzy head—my heart beat fast, and I realized my breath was labored. I gently placed my shoes in the shoe cupboard and stood up unsteadily. Then my eyes wandered dazedly in the darkness for a while.

Beside the glass wall, on the table, something white like paper was dimly visible. That was surely the spot where my meal was always placed. I cautiously walked across the floorboards. With a feeling akin to crawling closer, I lowered myself onto the chair. When I gently moved aside the newspaper on the table, there was indeed something to eat placed there. I groped around to find the chopsticks. But suddenly, a vague doubt surfaced. Was it permissible for me to eat this? Was this truly mine…? Something unclear—a torment imposed upon me—wasn’t that very thing being coldly placed before my eyes… But, though I didn’t understand, I had already begun eating that still thing. The cold vegetable soup and slimy sweet potato registered through my senses in the darkness. I felt like I was faintly crying as I ate. I was tormented by an unbearable sensation, as if somewhere in my body was growing lethargically hot. I stealthily hurried to finish eating. Then, I left the chair and slowly walked through the darkness, groping my way. I climbed up the narrow stairs as if swimming. I groped for and pushed open the door to my room. The pitch-dark small glass box room returned to me. At last, I had returned. I gently placed the umbrella on the floorboards and removed the satchel hanging from my shoulder.

Then, I lay down heavily on the floorboards.
Exhausted, a faint hot something like wanting to cry... I lay exhausted on the floorboards.

And then, in the darkness, the resistant feel of the hard floorboards thrust upon me the awareness of being without a home.
I gently released my awareness of the floorboards' texture, lightly, lightly, trying to make my body feel as weightless as possible.
But no matter what, the lethargic heaviness pressed down on me.

Suddenly, I felt as if I’d been noticing a small, hazy light since earlier. When I looked, that light was indeed streaming through the three-inch gap in the pivoting window. A strange sensation gradually came over me. It was certainly starlight—but how could a single star from such a distant place find its way through this tiny crevice? On a murky night like this, how could it have chosen this very hour to begin blinking toward me? This faint light slipped into my space as if by chance, signaling nonchalantly like some spirit. ……Now before my eyes, that mist-laden soft air from daytime began trembling. The vision of a glistening spring at the Crystal Palace on the edge of the world…….

When I returned to my hometown carrying your urn, I was shown an old album at my brother’s house.
From among the old photographs, I found a long-missed face.
It was a photograph of my sister, who had died when I was a boy.
Was she truly such a gentle, lovely girl? I marveled that such a woman had existed in this world, and even felt pride at having been her younger brother.
Though my sister had died in her second year of marriage—too old perhaps to be called a young lady—to my eyes something delicate and pure was smiling at me, softly constricting my chest.
I carefully burned that visage into the back of my eyes.

After that, I would sometimes lose myself in such imaginings.
If you, who are dead, were journeying through some distant world, I wanted you to visit my dead sister.
But now, I think this prayer may have been answered.
I could feel the beautiful encounter between you and my sister in a place so distant it escaped my sight.

Within less than a year of being parted from you by death, I had witnessed the great destruction of my hometown’s streets and encountered one miserable fate after another—yet there seemed to be moments when a blissful, transparent world smiled at me from some unfathomably distant place beyond my sight.

My sister died in the year before I entered middle school.
I once visited the hospital room where my sister lay shortly before her death.
My sister in the bed seemed somewhat frail, but her complexion was strangely vivid and beautiful.
Her clear, wide-open eyes gazed at me—when I recall things this way, I suddenly can’t tell whether that woman was my sister or you.—My sister seemed about to tell me something.
I had been a terribly selfish and quick-tempered child back then, but in front of my sister alone, I could always feel honest.
I waited for my sister’s lips to begin moving with the same feeling as when I would wait for your lips to begin moving.
Before long, my sister quietly began to speak.
I was completely captivated by that story.
That was the Genesis story of Adam and Eve—the first time I had ever heard it.
My sister’s clear eyes held a gaze that did not doubt the existence of a place far beyond this world—a place you too had sought with such fervor—.
And that came to be reflected directly in me as well.
When my sister finished speaking, I felt washed clean to the very depths of my being.
Suddenly, the world appeared transformed to my eyes from what it had been until now.
That evening, as I left the hospital and was returning home, the blue mountain range at the edge of town appeared vividly alive yet mysterious, and I came to think that all things around me might be connected from some faraway place.
I thought I might be reborn.
I still didn’t know what world was opening within me, but I shuddered with excitement at the thought of light from an unseen world falling into me.

At the very moment when I trembled with a premonition of happiness and wanted to learn even more about that world from my sister—precisely then—my sister died.
Because I couldn't be present at her deathbed, the last time I met my sister remained that day I visited the hospital room.
I thought my sister had truly gone to that distant world she used to speak of.
But over me slid the emptiness of something left behind.
Before long came recollections of my sister to fill that void.
From childhood I had loved this sister most dearly, and felt she had nurtured endless dreams within me.
As a child I would sit spellbound by her sewing side, listening to wondrous fairy tales—yet even her wedding now feels like some fantastical story.
My sister, who had seemed as blissful as a fairy-tale princess, had truly died.
Even her death gradually came to seem like a beautiful story to me.
When evening sun dyed the second-floor window crimson, I became a boy dreaming of a far, faraway world.