Pathway to Japanese Literature

She too had an instinctive maternal love—perhaps even more than most.
Though intermittent, thanks to having been in the business for five or six years—and precisely because her chances of pregnancy were slim—she found herself envious of others’ pregnancies, which seemed almost miraculous, and unable to shake the notion that women with children must possess a happiness unimaginable to those without such experience.
For when it came to children—she who would even adore piglets—if during a walk she spotted puppies at a pet shop, she would immediately approach and gaze at them with utterly helpless fondness; or if she found a pretty cat at a town store, she would make unnecessary purchases there—though these were fleeting gestures—even going so far as to reserve adoption of the animal; thus whenever she saw a child being led by its mother, even if the child wasn’t particularly comely, so long as it was pudgy, she would call out to Renmi and look back insistently.

“I want to have a child once.”

“No way.”

“If you get treatment, it can be done—Mr. Morimoto says...”

“Then you’d have to find a different man.”

Renmi’s deceased wife—who had claimed her body couldn’t bear children—ended up producing so many offspring one after another that once they grew up, economic matters aside, he found himself disgusted even by the sight of others’ infants, though emotionally it should have meant nothing.

Moreover, while alive, each child had to be settled somehow—this seemed the instinct governing ordinary humans.

That children’s fates should encroach beyond the reach of their parents’ lifespans and livelihoods pained everyone.

Maternal love, by comparison, appeared something purely animal.

In any case, Keiko ended up deciding to take in a child.
It was as utterly simple as acquiring a kitten or something of the sort.

One evening when he entered carrying a portfolio, the girl was warming herself with everyone at the Seto brazier.
She was said to be ten years old.
Her dusky complexion—though not particularly lustrous—
Her narrow forehead had thick strands of hair hanging down, and her plump cheeks gave her a somewhat square outline; though her nose bridge was sharp and her lips were thickly formed, there were no major flaws, and while her eyes weren’t wide, they were narrow and not unpleasant in appearance.
When she smiled with her mouth of misaligned, decayed teeth, there was a certain charm.
There was something boyish about her, and her slightly hoarse voice also had a deep, adult-like quality.
She wore a not-too-neat merino-padded kimono with her child's sash tied limply around it, and her frame wasn't particularly small.

“Where have you been until now?”

“Me?
“I was with my dad.”

“What does your father do?”

“My dad runs an oden stall, but he’s been in poor health.”

“And your mother?”

“My mom died when I was three.”

Having heard from Keiko the day before, Renmi had possessed a general understanding of the girl’s upbringing and environment; yet though her clothing and such carried the stench of back-alley slums, there was not a trace of timidity or weariness in her.
On the contrary, even when sitting before adults, she showed neither shyness nor fear.
According to Keiko’s account, the father of this child named Sakiko had been bedridden on and off for a long time with kidney and heart diseases that showed no prospect of recovery.
He could no longer tend to his business, and back rent and other debts had piled up considerably.
He needed to settle those debts, and since he’d rather die in his rural hometown if he was going to die anyway, he wanted to return to his older brother in Jōshū with some money.
And so he wanted to leave Sakiko—along with her family registry—with some decent person.

Keiko had previously looked after about two children through neighbors' introductions. One had no family registry, so before showing him to Renmi, she returned him—only for him to be taken in by a nearby broker's office, and even now whenever he spots Keiko outside, he comes running up to chatter at her. The other had been a printer's son from Tsukishima who, at six years old, described with meticulous precision his home's layout, the state of his neighbors, and the chaos when parents with many small children would fight and smash crockery—acting as if he owned the place by climbing to the second floor or stepping out onto the drying balcony to trail after Keiko—but she sent him back too, lacking even time to prepare spare clothes and deeming him too much trouble. The broker's office happened to be on a hill past the tram line, and while he stayed there, he often came peeking into Keiko's house; letting him stay even one night would kindle such fragile attachment it felt almost cruel—yet this Sakiko lacked any of those pitiable qualities.

“I prefer children who are brisk over those who whimper.”
“Moreover, the person caring for her isn’t just some broker.”
“In the countryside, he was even a prefectural assembly member, I hear.”
“With relatives running that business extensively in Kanda, they say he’s helping out with retirement work—a seemingly honest uncle.”

Renmi had heard such claims, but seeing the child firsthand left him unable to feel much fondness.

That evening Keiko took Sakiko to the bathhouse and inspected her body.
Her torso and legs were well-proportioned, and her skin wasn’t particularly rough.
Keiko suddenly felt she had become a proper parent.

Every night around that time, she developed a habit of buying and eating things like sweet bean desserts, pot-baked sweet potatoes, fish-shaped cakes, or arrowroot starch cakes; but that evening, under the pretense of a mental test, she sent Sakiko to buy oden.
When told the location, Sakiko happily stood up, fetched a suitably sized bowl from the kitchen, and—with her characteristic habit of blinking rapidly—darted out the entrance.

“Turn left at the tobacco shop...”

Sakiko turned back and pressed for confirmation.

“Then go past the car and turn right.”
“Then on the left side there’s a house with a black noren curtain that says ‘Furusan'an.’”

When Chōko—one of the geisha house attendants seated before the dressing table—spoke, Sakiko repeated the directions to herself as if cramming them into her mind, then thrust her feet into her geta.

“I’m shinoda-maki. Know what that is?”
“Know what that is?”

“’Course I know! My dad ran an oden stall after all.”

“I see.”
“Don’t go dashing off, you hear?”

Even as she spoke, Sakiko dashed off.

Renmi tilted his head.

“I have my doubts about this.”
“Will you take that child around?”
“If you’re going to claim a child as your own, there ought to be a somewhat better option available.”
“What if we check the family registry first?”
“If complications arise later, wouldn’t that be a problem?”

Renmi didn’t particularly like or dislike Sakiko either.
If raised as a mother’s own child, she might turn out well—or she might not.
What counted as good or bad came in many forms; it couldn’t be simplified.
Within their geisha house existed another child—one with lovely features yet so irresolute that she endlessly exasperated Keiko, who tended toward simplistic thinking. Even when instructed about banquet arrangements, this girl would perpetually bow her head in silence. Having already reached her limit with such behavior, Keiko found herself instantly drawn to Sakiko’s brisk efficiency.
With this child, she reasoned, there’d likely be little need for constant tending.
Keiko possessed a straightforward nature that abhorred clinging to regrets—even those born of her own choices.
She never lingered over squandered money or ill-advised kimono purchases.

“But decent children like that aren’t exactly common in this world, are they? If you think otherwise, go find one yourself!”

Keiko snapped, so Renmi too said, “Well, do as you like,” and fell silent—though he himself had no settled view of his own.

Everyone began eating the oden.
Sakiko ate more cheerfully than anyone, yet she wasn’t wolfing it down ravenously either.

“Which tastes better—your family’s oden or this one?”
When Chōko asked,

“Hmm, Dad hasn’t been going out for business in ages.”
“So you see, there are times when we don’t even have rice at home.”
“We’d eat steamed potatoes or mix rice bran with soy sauce and eat that.”
“And Dad—if he doesn’t drink, he can’t do anything.”
“When he’d lose his spirit, he’d drink sake and then go out to sell oden—but you know how it was.”

Sakiko laughed, baring her cavities.

Keiko had been made to thoroughly taste poverty since her father’s severe injury when she was twelve or thirteen, and Chōko too—having a lazy tailor for a father—had eaten the cold rice of merchant households from early childhood; thus they couldn’t bring themselves to laugh at it.

Sakiko stuck out her long tongue, licked even the broth from the small dish clean, and briskly took the dishes and bowls out to the kitchen.
Just then, the telephone rang.
Sakiko rushed over to the telephone in front of the closet and, crawling across the tatami, brought the receiver to her ear with a mischievous expression.

“No, no!”
“Hmm, just let me listen for a bit…”

Keiko had been watching with an amused smile but, noticing the floundering, hurriedly picked up the receiver.

“Who is calling, please?”
“Ah… Yes, we do.”
“Thank you very much.”

Keiko hung up the receiver,

“Ms. Chōko - Tsuki no Ie!”

As Chōko—having deftly retouched her makeup—began her preparations, Sakiko stood up alongside Keiko and, acting as though she knew every detail, made remarks like “You twist this around like so, right?” and “This one’s next, isn’t it?” while picking up obi cords scattered haphazardly across the mat.

“No, you’re just getting in the way.”

But Sakiko didn’t retreat an inch.

“I was taught by Dad, so…”
“Straighten the geta.”
“Mom, may I go with Ms. Chōko too?”
“Hmm, make sure to remember where you’re going.”

When the preparations were complete, Sakiko—as if she knew every procedure—stood on tiptoe to take the flint down from the top of the cupboard, then struck sparks with a click-clack from behind Chōko, who was slipping into her geta, making everyone laugh.

“This one’s something else.”
“Somehow she doesn’t act like a child at all, does she?”

“But any child with some wit would do something like that for amusement.”

“She must’ve been at some merchant’s place before.”

“That may well be.”
“Since that child’s older sister was apparently sent off as a live-in apprentice elsewhere at fifteen, she likely picked it up there.”

Sakiko returned breathlessly.

“Ah, that’s good. Now everything’s settled.”

Renmi pretended not to notice as he read a popular magazine spread out on the hibachi, while Sakiko eagerly pressed Keiko with questions about how geishas kept track of their appointments.

“Ah, so if one hour is three marks, then two hours would be four?”
“Then thirty minutes—one mark per thirty minutes, right?”

“That’s right.”

“How much is one mark?”

“You’re just a child—you don’t need to ask about such things.”

Sakiko hunched her shoulders and giggled stifledly.

“Dad, are you a doctor?”

“Don’t call him ‘Dad’.”

When Renmi spoke with a slightly displeased look,

"But I'm the mom here, aren't I?"

"You should call him Uncle. Uncle has many children."

"Ah, I see.
So Uncle and Mom aren't married?
I see.
So Uncle has a wife."

“He doesn’t.”

“He doesn’t?!”
“Did she die?”

“That’s right.”

“Ah, I see.”
“So Mom…”
Sakiko swallowed her words alone,

“So Uncle came from home earlier.”
“So he isn’t here?”

“There are times when he’s here…”

Sakiko pointed at Keiko,

“Mom—you’ll get dumped soon.”

“Idiot!”

“You go to bed early.”
“The futon’s out, so lay it out yourself….”

“Not at all—I’m not sleepy.”

Renmi had been studying the child’s face with vague distaste when he suddenly grabbed her head.

“Flat-headed, aren’t you.”
“I’m that way too….”
“Your nose is strange too—like someone carved away this part.”

“Uncle’s nose is like that too.”

Sakiko fired back defiantly.

As days passed, this child’s peculiarity gradually became more pronounced. Despite their poverty, she hadn’t been raised particularly badly—if anything, her father’s unwavering affection might have shaped her thus; a pride unbecoming in a child, fused with innate obstinacy, manifested as stubborn defiance that refused to bend no matter what. No matter how deeply one probed beyond practical gains, not a trace remained of that pitiable vulnerability—clinging to others’ affectionate hands or leaping at them with pleading eyes—yet she was never servile, much less docile. It was only later that it became clear—having already been dragged through thirty establishments similar to Keiko’s trade, it was no wonder she had lost all sense of where to settle down to sleep or whose hand to cling to. While one could argue her environment had gradually made her this way, there must have been reasons why so many had given up on her.

Keiko also felt a twinge of fear when she thought about this child’s future.
Sakiko, having been exposed to the winds of this world for barely ten years, struck her as something already hardening into a finished product in certain respects. Yet when she considered how what lay within might grow with the years, she felt an unease—the dread of not knowing what might be unleashed—and a creeping weariness took hold.

Renmi had instead begun to feel interest in her, but interest and practical matters were separate concerns. If this child was fundamentally incapable of respectable living, he thought her world would indeed remain this sort of specialized environment; she might make something of herself as the mistress of a nightlife establishment if things went well, while those Lumpen traits of hers wouldn’t be bad for working overseas either.

“If I become a geisha, I’ll work real hard and give Dad money.”

Sakiko said this while making haughty gestures, her face brimming with confidence—no doubt cultivated from frequenting such households—but she also took daily baths and, when left unobserved, would settle herself before the vanities of geishas like Chōko and Hinako to apply white powder and cream.

However, it seemed Sakiko still occasionally thought only of her father, for she kept asking Keiko, “Is Dad still in Shitaya?”

“He’s probably gone back to the countryside.”

“But he definitely said he’d come see me once before going back.”

“But he’d been saying back then that he’d leave right away.”
“Uncle Watanabe had…”

“So my dad’s a liar.”
“He tricked me.”

Sakiko’s eyes turned serious.

“Dad sold me, didn’t he.”

“It’s not like he sold you or anything. He gave you up because he said he couldn’t go back to the countryside without money.”

She couldn’t shake the feeling that her father was still upstairs at the tin shop in Shitaya. When she first arrived, she had seemed to wait for him to come here every day, but through Watanabe’s account, Keiko understood that the father felt entirely relieved after sending the child to her care.

The day after the child arrived, Keiko’s mother brought a complete set of items: hand-me-down Western clothes from her youngest child, a merino-lined quilted jacket, knit pants and shirts bought en route, and geta. She removed the child’s filth-caked kimono and had her change into an adult-style undershirt and a ridiculously thick, oversized underskirt. But with Sakiko adopting a tone that mocked Keiko’s mother—still unable to shed her rural mannerisms—the process became unexpectedly arduous, and since the child appeared dissatisfied with the garments too, the mother gave up entirely after just one attempt.
Keiko’s sisters had all been children any parent could have been thankful for.

Therefore Sakiko was not one to grow attached to people easily—which was precisely why she loved her father so fiercely all the more. Though feeling somehow betrayed by him, she appeared to comprehend this reality when she muttered at the time: “I already helped Dad once, so this’ll do.” Having largely grasped the ways of the flower-and-willow world by then, she now planned to work full-fledged as a geisha herself in five or six years’ time. Renmi found this rather detestable.

“You won’t make it as a geisha.”

“Why not?”

Sakiko looked at him as if about to retort, but her eyes at such times gave off an unpleasant air.

Sakiko indeed had severe trachoma as Renmi had pointed out, and on top of that, it was discovered at the neighborhood eye clinic that she was nearsighted. She had her eyes cauterized about twice and was supposed to administer eye drops daily at home, but the costs turned out to be unexpectedly high. Though it was a bit far, Keiko first took her to the clinic that Renmi’s family frequented, but eventually brought her to a hospital in Kanda.
There, they claimed that cauterizing or cutting would only needlessly damage the eyelids and conversely make her eye appearance uglier, and that a prolonged course of treatment would be better—so that’s exactly what they were doing.
Moreover, Keiko had become half in despair of this child, and had come to think that even putting in such effort would be futile.
She had always envied the neighborhood children clad in Western clothes with school backpacks heading to class, so when Sakiko arrived, she immediately began making inquiries about schooling. However, in this area, sending children to night schools was far more common.
The good schools were somewhat far, and since her business was at night, she would have needed to hire a maid to send the child out early in the morning.
She had been considering sending her to night school temporarily until she could find a maid who liked children, but she had been informed by those with experience that even these night schools had worse discipline than expected—rather than preserving the child’s innocence, they tended to corrupt it, making her liable to become a full-blown delinquent—so she now thought that option too required careful consideration.
Above all, the trachoma was the problem.
The doctor advised prohibiting her from reading magazines, avoiding prolonged baths, and reducing Sakiko’s habitual three heaping bowls of rice per meal—eaten three times daily—to two bowls instead. Keiko did her best to enforce this regimen, yet Sakiko would sometimes balk at going to the hospital and even slack off on the eye washing she could manage herself.
Keiko would often hold her down, peeling back her eyelids to let the eye drops seep in, restraining her for several minutes at a time—yet just as the discharge in one eye seemed to diminish slightly, the other would worsen instead, leaving no telling when she might recover.
There were those who claimed trachoma would never heal.

Hinako would sometimes teach her textbooks and arithmetic.
Sakiko seemed drawn to beautiful things—at times she would gape open-mouthed, transfixed by Hinako’s face—yet there she sat before this Hinako, whose childlike features contrasted with her brusque tone as she brandished a two-foot ruler instead of a proper pointer. At the small desk, Shorty would boom out the textbook in a comically hoarse, booming voice, layering playful cadences utterly mismatched to the material.
It was a throat made for the dramatic inflections of naniwabushi balladry.

“Hey! Don’t you slack off now!”

Hinako spoke in a mannish way and made Sakiko laugh.

“Big Sis Hinako, how many years did you go to school?”

“No need to ask such things.”
“A geisha just needs to be able to write love letters.”

“Oh! Love letters! Do you send love letters to your boyfriend too, Big Sis Hinako?”

Everyone gasped before erupting in laughter.

“Do you even know what a love letter is?”

Sakiko gave a heh-heh laugh.

“A brat like you must’ve given your teachers hell.”

“Oh, that’s right. And nobody’ll play with me either.”

More than that, Sakiko read kōdan storytelling books with adult-like vocal modulation and knew the names of chivalrous outlaws and bandits well. She closed one eye to mimic Tange Sazen (the one-eyed swordsman) and rattled off names like Udaemon, Kōtarō, Chiezo, Iizuka Toshiko, and Tanaka Kinuyo. Though unclear whom she truly favored, Sakiko nurtured a certain longing toward the young nagauta (traditional ballads) instructor who came to teach Keiko and Hinako, stroking her own chin area while—

“I really love this part of you, Instructor.”

Given how she spoke like that, she was indeed precocious.

Keiko, who disliked kōdan books, had hidden away all the magazines lying around, but she couldn’t muster the will to deliberately purchase those idiotic girls’ stories either.
Everything would have to wait until her eyes healed, she thought—it all hinged on deciding whether to raise her properly or not.

But more than anything, what grated most was this child’s ostentatiousness. The covetous glint in her eyes as they lingered on the parlor kimonos laid bare that yearning; even in Keiko’s room—still haphazardly furnished with mismatched belongings—she exuded a restless dissatisfaction, as though mentally comparing it to the wealthier, tidier households she’d glimpsed before.

Keiko, never one for idle chatter, now found herself scolding from dawn till dusk since Sakiko’s arrival. The girl being chased by local boys who hurled stones at the glass-paneled door, or barging into neighboring homes to prattle until complaints reached Keiko—these antics might have been endured. But as Keiko’s nominal daughter, her contempt for the geisha house residents—treating them like lowly maids—meant that whenever Keiko stepped out, Sakiko defiantly ignored every word they uttered.

One evening, Keiko went with Renmi to a familiar shop from her Asakusa days to buy seasonal children’s accessories like detachable collars and decorative sashes, and while there, they also purchased Sakiko’s child’s sash and wooden clogs.

“There are sailor uniforms here,” she said, “but I’ve told her I’ll buy one once she saves up enough.”
“That aside—they’re cheap enough to just get one now—but that child simply has no charm…”

Keiko stood at the storefront gazing at the display window of Western clothes and sweaters.
Renmi had his own thoughts too—after years arranging children’s clothing displays at department stores, he found this whole excursion wearisome.
He particularly disliked how Sakiko grew more presumptuous the more they indulged her.
Lately she’d even begun looking down on Keiko herself.
No matter how drowsy she was, when Renmi roused her she’d grudgingly shuffle to the toilet—but with Keiko, it only meant being fussed over.

Keiko and Renmi had gone out shopping and taken in a movie they wanted to see, but on occasions like today when the two went out together, Sakiko would circle around behind Keiko, who was taking clothes out of the chest of drawers,

“Mom, that’s nice.”

Sakiko said with such an intensely envious expression that even Keiko and Renmi felt pangs of guilt.
Had it been Keiko alone, one might have thought she would have surely taken her along on such occasions.

They returned around nine o'clock.
When they looked for Sakiko, she was nowhere to be found.

“What happened to Sakiko?”

Hinako was there.

“Sakko-chan went out front.”
“Since she wouldn’t listen to anything we said, when I told her to leave, she just up and left right away.”

“Where could she have gone?”

“She’ll be back soon.”

Hinako said, but Renmi and Keiko grew concerned.

"How long ago?"

"Well... about an hour."

There had been an incident where she entered the furniture store on the main street—where delinquent boys loitered—and received bad advice. They sent Hinako to check there, but she wasn't found.
They searched the area but saw no trace of Shorty.

After notifying the police box regardless, around midnight came a call from the station—a message relayed from Shitaya Police Station—reporting her father had now come to announce Sakiko's arrival.

Keiko and Renmi sped through the late-night streets in a car.

Sakiko was sleeping in her father’s arms on the second floor of a tinsmith’s shop—a dingy room where he seemed slightly drunk yet amiable.Charcoal braziers, pots, kettles and such lay jumbled in one corner of the dim space beneath an indefinable stench that stung the nostrils.

“Her older sister’s got herself a proper meek nature,” he said,“but this one here won’t mind her own kin nohow…”

Though showing little sign of hardship or sickness himself,the man shrank back with an Ebisu-like grin plastered across his face,the reek of liquor clinging thick about him.

When the next month came, Renmi decided to try entrusting Sakiko to his daughter’s care for a while.

Renmi’s house stood on a hill about twenty minutes on foot, and for times when something needed urgently fetched or delivered, they had taught Sakiko the way there for errands until she gradually became familiar with his family too. Yet getting her to enter through the back door—as she always insisted on using the main entrance—proved troublesome each time, so Keiko made a habit of giving small payments for these tasks. Lately, even when relaying phone messages from home to Masao—Renmi’s eldest son rooming with his lover five or six chō from Keiko’s house—they had arranged for him to give her three sen or five sen as errand money. But whenever he forgot, she would demand payment with the streetwise air of a back-alley urchin or badger him for mitsumame sweets—though when Keiko sternly admonished her, Sakiko—a child not inherently base—would then stubbornly refuse even offered coins out of sheer pride.

They came to understand her high-pitched voice stemmed from slightly impaired hearing, while her eerie habit of glaring sideways with white-rimmed eyes owed nothing to trachoma or nearsightedness.

Her intellect was warped, and though her calculations of profit and loss were uncommonly sharp for a child, they couldn’t shake the dread that some physiological flaw would surface as she aged.

Just when Sakiko had become a topic of conversation in Renmi’s household too, some even suggested her overdeveloped intellect might instead be evidence of mental deficiency.

"How about I leave her with you for a while?"

When Renmi proposed this to his eldest daughter Fujiko,

"Hmm, shall I attempt 'a mother's touch'?"

she quipped with a laugh.

Sakiko’s silver tongue and stubbornness had everyone exasperated within a week.
Whenever Renmi checked in, she’d invariably be holding court in the family room—sometimes sitting primly beside Fujiko while eating rice topped with stewed beef from the dining table—or he’d find her in the children’s quarters being fitted into hand-me-down kimonos altered from younger sister Mariko’s wardrobe.
Even Tappurin wore better clothes than anything Keiko had purchased.
The housekeeper auntie regularly escorted her to ophthalmology appointments.

Keiko would fiddle with the telephone during her absences, making unnecessary calls to where her employees were stationed—a habit that left them exasperated—but when she was present, she deliberately made them hold the receiver.
Behind Renmi’s house was a small apartment, and since Sakiko had convinced herself that Renmi was a doctor, she believed this to be a hospital ward. Whenever she found an opening, she would wander the corridors and try peering into the rooms.

“So, has she settled down a bit?”

One day when Renmi asked Fujiko, she responded with an awkward smile,

“Well, if we take our time, we might gradually reform her, but she’s such an unmanageable little Shorty after all.”
“She does listen to me somewhat, but she looks down on Mariko completely—just yesterday, after Mariko had finished cleaning the hearth in the back room, she went and deliberately stirred up the ashes until the whole area was covered in them.”
“Even when Mariko tries giving her simple tasks, she just turns away without even responding.”
“Mariko ended up in tears.”

“I see.”

“But she’s an interesting child.”
“When I was sitting at my desk today with my cheek propped on my hand, that child came up beside me, peered into my face, and asked, ‘Big Sis, do you have something to worry about too?’”
“Well, I have my own worries too, you know.”
“When I told her ‘Adults have worries little people can’t understand,’ she shot back, ‘Big Sis doesn’t have a single thing to worry about! Even if Uncle died, you’ve got this house and the apartment—wouldn’t be troubled in the least!’”
“Yet she doesn’t say a word about her own situation.”
“She’s got no equal.”

Renmi couldn't even muster a laugh.

“Hmm, Shorty’s subjective view.”

“Precisely because she’s so self-centered and shiftless, there’s something pitiful about her.”
“But she’s rather an unpleasant child, isn’t she?”
“Even when we try to have her sleep with Mariko, she digs in her heels refusing outright. Send her to buy cigarettes and she’ll linger around wasting time. The longer she stays, the more she barges into every neighbor’s house—it’s becoming quite troublesome.”

“She does come out with shocking things sometimes.”

The third son, who was nearby, was also laughing while eating an apple.

It was around nine o’clock, but Sakiko was already asleep in the storeroom.

According to Fujiko’s account, on one occasion Sakiko had stubbornly jumped into the cold-water bath over some trivial exchange of words. Though fond of baths and likely eager to take one sooner, she was always made to wait until after Fujiko and the others had bathed; owing to scheduling, the aunt would wash her, so Sakiko’s turn came late. Yet even willful as she was, she couldn’t have planned such a thing. It was merely an outlandish stunt—she stood giggling in the cold-water bath for quite some time.

“After all, she’s a bit odd.”

Renmi recalled that this child's eldest brother had gone mad and was confined to Matsuzawa.
The second brother had been a driver.
These two brothers—along with Sakiko and her sister, who was currently away as an apprentice—shared different fathers.
Their mother had died when Sakiko was three years old.

She returned to Keiko’s place again.

When Sakiko was sent to Renmi’s house, she was delighted at its spaciousness.

“Hmm, then this is a good house at Uncle’s place.”

She seemed happy at first, but the loneliness of her new environment gradually seeped in.
She couldn’t play pranks, nor were there any disreputable women in the neighborhood.
Having her manners and speech corrected felt unbearably stifling.
The songs always sung at Keiko’s place—like “Yarosan” and “If You Dance Okesa”—became sources of others’ amusement.
She could no longer eat the yakitori and mitsumame she’d grown used to, and visiting for her daily Hachiame candies became unimaginable.
Gradually, loneliness took hold.
Even when bullied or mocked, she found herself missing Hinako and Chōko.
Going on errands to fetch things, carrying changes of clothes, or helping with that business while making a racket—she hadn’t realized how much more engaging all that had been.
Sometimes at those errand spots, being teased by drunken customers or receiving silver coins became unforgettable pleasures.

“Hmm, you’re a good kid.”
“When you become a geisha, I’ll buy you for sure…” he said, his hat tilted sideways, completely plastered.

Sakiko said this while chuckling, though she habitually enjoyed such moods.
No—rather than being habitual, some children were innately predisposed to inherit such tendencies.
There were women in the world who could reform from prostitution, and likewise, there were women who were suited only to nightlife businesses.
To attempt molding women with such tendencies into models of strict respectability could rather be said to be a futile endeavor.

“How about your house, Uncle?”

When Renmi asked, she put on her usual charming smile.

“A large house becomes lonely at night.”

Sakiko had said this, but she was still resentfully complaining about having been kicked by the apartment manager—her aunt’s husband’s uncle.

“He didn’t kick you.”
“You were digging in your heels in front of the long brazier, so he just told you to move aside and pushed you with his knee—that’s all it was.”

Renmi defended himself.

However, through living at Renmi’s house, Sakiko had come to ponder things a bit more.
She seemed to have grown somewhat more docile, but as days passed, this apparent compliance only made her grow bolder than before.
What disappointed Keiko most was that Sakiko had apparently been instructed by her father to run to the police if she was ever bullied.
Moreover, she knew everything.
The amount her father had received—even how much the matchmaker had skimmed off from it.
Moreover, her father had fled under cover of night without paying the accumulated rent—waiting for a moment when the tinsmith and lodging house residents were distracted—a fact that became clear when the tinsmith came to Keiko’s place to inquire about his hometown whereabouts. Upon learning this, Sakiko seethed with anger.

“My father was a bad person after all.”

With her child’s mind, she seemed to turn her father over in thought from every angle. Judging by how he never interacted with his brother, she sometimes thought he might be wicked—though other times concluded her brother was worse. Yet wherever she went, she found herself remembering only her father fondly. She couldn’t grasp why she kept being shuffled from place to place like this, nor did she possess the mental capacity to even attempt understanding. Even if some sensitivity had existed initially, repeated upheavals would have withered those nerves until numbness settled into habit.

Her tendency to roll her eyes white had grown particularly pronounced lately—a hereditary trait that made people whisper how even if they somehow molded her into a proper woman, nothing guaranteed against madness sparking in her mind someday. That lusterless skin tone, that scrawny neck—they all hinted at some hereditary poison coursing through her veins, while her sudden bursts of laughter struck unnerving chords.—The moment these thoughts crystallized for Keiko, a surge of disgust rose within her.

One day, as if discarding a burden, Keiko took Sakiko and left her at Watanabe’s house.
Watanabe lived on a roadside very near the tinsmith where Sakiko’s father had been.

“I simply can’t take care of this child anymore.”

Watanabe was sitting by the kotatsu in the dimly lit room like a raccoon dog.

“I see.”
“Well, in that case, I’ll try to think of something…”
He stared fixedly at Sakiko,

“You’re such a fool.
“If you can’t even stay at Big Sis’s place, then no matter where you go, it won’t work.”
“Your father said he went to a good home and returned to the countryside reassured, but…”

“It seems your father also struggled quite a bit, didn’t he?”

“Well, I don’t know the full details myself, but through an acquaintance in my religious group, I was asked to take care of her.”

Sakiko, who had been sitting beside Keiko, suddenly let out a snicker.
At first glance, it seemed nothing more than her mocking the adults—until now, they had attributed this to her maladjustment, but they were gradually coming to realize that this assumption had been mistaken.
As Fujiko had assessed, it was not impossible that Sakiko would eventually suffer an episode of dementia.

In any case, Keiko had left her there, but after about three days, Watanabe brought Chibi back again.
And then, on the grounds that this was her registered home after all, he unceremoniously foisted her off and left.
This was, of course, the result of him having shown her around three houses or so.

Keiko lacked even the courage to push back.
She decided to take her in for the time being.

As for Renmi, he hadn’t entirely lost interest in Sakiko, and given how things stood, there was nothing to do but settle into a war of attrition.
He considered sending her to a church or something, but also deliberated about having her thoroughly examined by a doctor once.
Putting aside physiological defects, it was intriguing that she possessed a soul—something akin to a sense of justice—and when he spoke with some enthusiasm, her expression clearly showed a certain spark that seemed responsive to it; he felt that with the right approach, over time, something might come of her after all.

“It can’t be helped.”
“When something like this comes barging in, it’s all part of fate. I’ll just keep watching for now.”

One evening after Chōko had left, Hinako also received a summons.
Sakiko bustled about arranging her geta and handling invoices.

“Miss Hinako’s going out again too.”
“That makes two today.”

“Don’t get cheeky. It’s not like you’re making any profit from it.”

Hinako was in her usual manner.
Sakiko peered into the mirror at her large, black diamond-like eyes and grinned.

“Hmm, Big Sis Hinako is indeed beautiful.”

“As if there’s any beauty here.”

Hinako gathered the hem of her kimono and left.

Just as Keiko had gone to the bathhouse, Sakiko picked up Hinako’s discarded Murayma Oshima and Ankinsha osone to fold them, but when she gave them a sniff—

“Ugh, stinky!”
With that, she wrinkled her flat nose.
And instead of folding it, she rolled it into a tight ball and tossed it into the corner of the closet.

“Does it stink?”

When Renmi asked,

“Stinky!”

“Your father’s room was damn stinky. Even sleeping in such a filthy futon, held by your father who reeked of ripe persimmons—didn’t that stink?”

“It doesn’t stink.”
“It’s a nice smell.”

“What’s that stench?”

“When I wet myself, Father takes it out to dry the next morning. Then the cotton gets all fluffy—feels real nice.”

“You wet the bed?”

“Sometimes I do. But when I wake up, it’s too dark ’n scary to go downstairs, so I do it in the charcoal brazier.”

“That’s moxibustion for you.”

“What about you, Uncle?”

“Never did it, not even as a kid.”

“Hmm!”
Sakiko stared fixedly at him.

Before long, Sakiko entered the two-tatami mat room beside the entryway and went to bed.

When Keiko went down to open the door around nine the next morning, the lock she had definitely fastened the previous evening was undone. Thinking Sakiko had probably opened it and intending to praise her, Keiko slid open the shoji screen to the two-tatami room—but Sakiko's head wasn't visible, only the futon swollen round as if something had burrowed inside.

"Sakiko!"

When Keiko called out and peered in, Sakiko wasn’t there—the futon lay flooded.
Perhaps due to Renmi’s talk the previous evening—having dreamt only of bedwetting and moxibustion—the restraint she had maintained through long experience since arriving here or her father’s admonitions, avoiding water at night to prevent failures, had finally unraveled.

And after that, she never showed her face again.

It was about five days later that they learned she had been taken into the hands of the Salvation Army, led by her brother’s driver’s wife.

Where was Sakiko now, and what was she doing?
According to the Social Bureau staff’s account, they wanted Keiko to take her back, but if she had no intention of doing so, after conducting a medical examination, there would be no alternative but to send her to a child protection facility.
And that was the work of the Salvation Army—beating drums and pleading for charity in the streets.
This work of the Salvation Army did not trace back to the roots of social life; instead, it imposed what amounted to private punishments upon caretakers everywhere in response to such phenomena.
Of course, Keiko did not take her back.

(June 1935)