Pathway to Japanese Literature

Characters

Takagi Keisuke………24 years old, university student

Nakanishi Shogo………25 years old, university student, roommate of Keisuke

Yamane Keiko………21 years old, Keisuke’s lover who committed suicide

Same: Akiko………18 years old, Keiko’s younger sister

Murata Yaeko………21 years old, Keiko’s close friend, woman betrothed to Shogo

Others—Old Woman (63 years old, servant to Keisuke and Shogo), Nurse, Doctor, Takahashi and Saito (Keisuke’s friends), several phantom figures

He felt as though he had sunk into deep water’s depths.
He heard no sound; no form was visible.
There was only an unseeing comfort deeply suffused.
Then a brightness came streaming in from nowhere.
That brightness tried to pull him upward and upward.
But the back of his head was heavy as if made of lead.
And for some time, the force of the brightness trying to pull him upward and the force dragging his head downward waged a silent struggle.
When the two forces finally balanced, he felt as though a taut rope had snapped.
Then it suddenly brightened.—Keisuke opened his eyes.

The tungsten filament of a light bulb covered with black gauze came into view.
As he stared fixedly at it, something heavy surged up violently from the pit of his stomach to his throat.
He felt as though he were suffocating.
When he applied strength to both shoulders and pressed down on that oppressive mass, a large breath spontaneously escaped from his chest.
The surroundings fell completely silent.

Two or three faces—their outlines blurred into multiple layers—were peering toward him.
Their eyes alone shone with an intensely sharp gleam.
One of them suddenly swayed.
Then a tremendous noise occurred, echoing deafeningly in his ears and vibrating through to the base of his skull.

As the reverberation subsided, his consciousness began to clear.
First came the ceiling boards entering his vision, the overlapping seams between them grotesquely enlarged, then three people sitting there.

That simple scene came flying sharply into his mind.
And there lay another scene that had long been deeply etched.
And into that, a new scene snapped perfectly into place.
The two became one.
Yet there was something missing.
When he rolled his eyes around and looked, he realized the number of people was one short.
"Who was missing?" he thought.
His eyes swam.

“You’re awake!”

A voice like that sounded.
When he looked, Nakanishi was there.
The old woman was also there.
There was another young woman.
Her face looked familiar.
"Ah, that's right!" he thought (though in truth he didn't know who she was), and tried to sit up.

“You must remain quiet!” said the woman.
And they laid him back into his previous position.
At that moment, for the first time, he became aware only of these facts: that he was lying inside a futon; that all his joints lacked strength and his bones felt scattered; and that Nakanishi, the old woman, and the nurse were gathered at his pillowside.

He didn’t understand why.
Yet that seemed an utterly natural thing.

“I’m glad you came around.”
“You’ve no idea how worried I was,” said Nakanishi.

The nurse raised her hand.
It was a gesture like that of a cat stroking its face.

“Please remain quiet,” said Nakanishi.
And he suddenly pulled back his upper body, which had been leaning forward.

The surroundings fell completely silent.
Somewhere there was a faint sound like water dripping down，but it soon stopped.
"It’s night," he thought.
However，a strange feeling arose toward time itself.
He couldn’t tell whether its passage had completely halted or if one eternal moment persisted.
Though similar，they seemed entirely different things.
While wavering between these possibilities，the sensation of night barged in unceremoniously.
“Night!…Night!”
Repeating this bewilderedly in his mind，he began feeling as though he were dreaming.
Then his state shifted into something like having already dreamed.
His head was dragged inexorably toward that realm.
Nausea churned suddenly within.
He swallowed saliva pooled in his mouth.
A mellow fragrance reached his nostrils.
He caught his breath sharply.
“Keiko!”
He called out toward a phantom existing somewhere.
And he sat up violently.

Immediately he was restrained by the nurse and Nakanishi and laid back into the futon.
The illusion had vanished before he knew it.
Every joint in his body began to ache heavily.
He noticed an ice pillow had been placed under his head.
His head throbbed, and the lines of everything he saw flickered in tandem.
He closed his eyes.

After a while, darkness began filling his mind.
When he opened his eyes in surprise, the nurse’s gaze—which had apparently been fixed on his face until then—flickered away momentarily.
Nakanishi sat with his arms crossed and head bowed.
Across the way sat the old woman.
She pressed her sleeve to her face.
"What are they doing?" he thought.
When he suddenly looked, there behind everyone sat a single abandoned brazier.
A familiar iron kettle hung from it.
White steam rose from its spout.
Seeing this sent a chill through his entire body.
He hunched his shoulders within the futon.

“Why doesn’t everyone warm themselves at the brazier?” he said, looking toward Nakanishi.

“Ah,” Nakanishi replied in a shrill voice.

At that moment, the old woman sniffled.
No sooner had this happened than she suddenly burst into muffled tears.
Doubled over at the waist, she shook the shoulders pressed against her knees and let out stifled sobs that sounded like "Ohh, ohh, ohh!"—each convulsion making her reddish-brown hair tremble.
After a while, the nurse also let a tear fall onto her lap.

Keisuke stared with wide eyes in surprise.
Suddenly, the stillness of the night seemed to deepen.
And from the depths of that desolation rose a visage he had long—truly long—forgotten.
The face of his mother—her eyebrows shaven off, brimming with compassion—was dimly visible in the shadowed corner of the room.
He felt, for no particular reason, that his mother had died.
He thought everyone was crying over that.
However, he could not cry no matter what.
He even felt a kind of relieved reassurance.
Then, beside his mother, the stern face of his father appeared.
He tried to think of a way to say something.
But just as he started to bring words up from the depths of his throat, his father and mother stared fixedly at the sliding door at the room’s entrance.
He heard footsteps of someone coming up the staircase.
The footsteps were quiet and low.
He too stared in that direction.
Then the sliding door opened quietly, and a woman appeared there.
"Oh!" he thought—and all the illusions vanished.

A silence like being sucked inward settled heavily.
Then faint footsteps sounded anew on the staircase.
He recognized those footsteps.
Yet he couldn't recall whose they were.
As he listened motionless, the footsteps soon finished ascending the stairs and slid open the door.
Keiko's figure appeared.
She walked straight toward him.
When he lifted his eyes, she smiled tenderly.
He felt as if struck by lightning.
All illusions vanished instantly, and her final smile—carved into his mind yet long forgotten—now stood vividly before him.

Her lips twisted slightly upward and downward as she clenched them firmly. One corner of her mouth lay flat and tense, while a deep indentation had formed at the other corner. Two white teeth flashed briefly between her lips. What an anguished mouth it was! And her eyes shone with unnatural intensity. Those eyes that always held a cold, sharp light now burned with a profound radiance that seemed to lay bare the very depths of her soul. Though her irises appeared small, the pupils had dilated enormously. Within them swirled a feverish, chaotic light that seemed to devour everything while simultaneously expelling it all. What merciless eyes they were! Moreover, the curve of her cheeks framing those eyes and that mouth had collapsed with unnatural suppleness. The slackened flesh of her cheeks showed deathly pallor yet formed soft folds that appeared to have surrendered everything. A serene hue lingered upon her forehead. What a countenance of absolute trust it was! And yet the entirety of it maintained a smile.

Keisuke held his breath.
Her smile drifted faintly through his mind—and then he saw red.

“Ah!” he involuntarily exclaimed.
And he sat up.

Nakanishi suddenly grabbed his shoulder as he tried to stand up.

“You need to stay quiet…”

“Let me go! Let go!”
And with dazed eyes, he looked around the room.
On the desk that had been pushed in front of the bookshelf, various things were piled up and covered with a white cloth.
The scroll in the tokonoma and the storage area were both as they always were.
I was sitting on the futon, my shoulders gripped by Nakanishi and the nurse.
The old woman had been standing rigidly by the brazier, but now sat back down quietly.

He let out a deep sigh.
The area around his pleura suddenly began to hurt.
And so he lay down again in the thin futon.
The gauze cloth covering the light bulb felt somehow unsettling.

“Please remove that cloth,” he said.

The nurse stood up and removed it.

The room grew brighter.
Vision grew clear.
At the same time, his mind suddenly grew dim.
He felt as though a deep haze had settled over his consciousness.
Everything had resurrected itself at a dreamlike remove.
He closed his eyes.
And then quietly repeated that scene.

Everything was enveloped in a silence that seemed bottomless.

Keisuke sat leaning one elbow on the desk.
Keiko sat pressing her shoulder against him.
Before them burned a vigorous charcoal fire in the brazier.
The night appeared to have deepened considerably, everything wrapped in utter stillness.
No sound reached them.
Even their breathing seemed to have ceased.
Then Keiko's respiration suddenly turned ragged.
When Keisuke whirled around in alarm, he found her eyes shut tight and body rigid as stone.
Deep furrows creased between her eyebrows.
This marked her habit when agonizing over some tormenting thought.
Turbulent breaths stormed through small nostrils.
Keisuke jolted upright.
Her entire bearing now harbored something fearsomely potent.

“What’s wrong?”

There was no answer.

Keisuke grabbed her shoulder and shook it violently.
“Please tell me. Just say something!”

Keiko opened her eyes.
And she stared fixedly at his face.

“It’s time for us to part now, isn’t it.”

“Huh?!”
“Even after I’ve said this much, you still can’t believe me?”
“Can’t you even believe in our two hearts?”

“I believe you.”
“I believe you.”
“It’s because I believe that I’m telling you this.”

Within her existed something cold: all will and emotion concentrated into one.
Keisuke had always feared encountering that.
And in that moment he felt an even stronger impulse.
He felt as though he had collided with an indescribable stone wall.
He grew increasingly agitated.
And the more aware he became of his own irritation, the colder and calmer Keiko seemed to grow.
Was I still unable to impart firm conviction to her? Why couldn't we settle on a single path to move forward into the future!
He repeatedly expounded the belief in love, the power of love.
All the while she remained silent and listened.
And when he fell silent, tears streamed down.
"Please forgive me!"
She strained her voice as she spoke.

What could there possibly be to forgive?!
She had had a lover before.
However, as soon as she realized there was falsehood on the man’s side within that love, hadn’t she cast him aside?
Her attitude of not permitting even a single gap in love—wasn’t that purity itself?
That her position in the household had become precarious because of this, that her parents still found themselves troubled from time to time due to that man—hadn’t Keisuke known all these things and forgiven them?
Moreover, even if there was something else dark in her circumstances, hadn’t he repeated many times that it would be enough as long as her heart burned as one?
And so Keisuke asked nothing further, devoting himself entirely to making their two hearts burn completely with a single love.
With that single-minded heart, he also wrote a long letter of confession addressed to his parents back home.
A letter of rejection came from his parents.
It even included a note that his uncle would be coming to Tokyo soon.
But wasn't that something he had long anticipated?
He believed in the final victory.
“Just believe me!” he said to Keiko.

“What is there to forgive?”
“We have no path but to keep moving forward.”
“There’s no turning back anymore.”
“Are you still hesitating?”

“No no, I’ve made up my mind,” she said. “Because it’s too painful… because we’ve been pushed to the limit… I thought perhaps it’s already time for us to part.”

“Why would we part?”
“I’ll follow you wherever you go.”
“You’ll follow me wherever I go forever too, right?”

“Yes, absolutely!”

With those words, she closed her eyes again.

There was nothing left to say at all.
Keisuke closed his eyes steadily.
And so they remained motionless for a long time.
When words ran out, there remained nothing but for them to sink into silent prayers of love.
Against that indefinable something threatening them—that desolate force welling from the depths even after their oft-sworn convictions tried to separate them—they could only guard their hearts.
At that moment, Keisuke suddenly felt he had touched something cold, his entire body trembling.
When he opened his eyes, Keiko was staring fixedly at his face.
They gazed into each other’s eyes as though devouring what lay within.

Eventually, Keiko quietly withdrew.
Her face momentarily contorted all its features into an expression of anguish, but immediately regained serene clarity.
Her face—with its high nose and slender, gaunt contours—took on an inexpressibly refined elegance.
When he saw that, Keisuke didn't know what to do.
He bent over the desk and closed his eyes.
Everything vanished from his head.
A feeling of bottomless desolation surged through his entire body.
And he had no recollection of how much time passed.

A clack sounded on the desk.
Keisuke abruptly raised his face.
Keiko sat upright before the brazier, closed her eyes, and clasped her hands on her knees.
He stared intently at her figure.
Then suddenly startled, he shrugged both shoulders.
His nape lolled heavily.
That was a kind of instinctive intuition.
When he looked back, there was a small purple bottle on the desk.
He picked it up.
At the bottom of the bottle, a small amount of heavy-looking solution remained, visible through the purple glass.

At that moment, Keiko raised her face and stared fixedly into his eyes.
Her face was marble-like, utterly devoid of expression.
Under that single gaze, he felt pierced through to his heart's depths.
All functions of his body halted completely.
Everything sank into profound stillness.
He wrenched his face from Keiko's gaze, held the purple bottle quietly up to the lightbulb, and peered once more at the solution inside.
Then he gulped it down in one breath.
He felt something flow into his stomach's pit—a mercury-heavy sensation neither cold nor hot.
Keiko kept vigil over his form without moving a muscle.

Keisuke sidled closer to her and grabbed her hand.
At that moment she said, “I’m happy!” and smiled at him with an anguished mouth, cruel eyes, and trusting cheeks.
He smiled in the same way (or so he thought).
“Keiko!” he said.
“I’m happy!” she said again.
Their voices trembled with sobs.
Yet neither of them shed tears.

It was a nearly indescribable moment.
Their grasped hands trembled violently, gradually digging deeper into each other’s flesh.
In Keisuke’s head, all emotions tangled and whirled in a vortex.
A certain large black wing beat incessantly against it.
Then suddenly, the surroundings fell utterly silent.
Nothing remained afterward.
He closed his eyes and clung solely to Keiko’s hand gripped in his own.
Time flew away.
A rod-like sensation welled up from the pit of his stomach.
He held his breath and forced it down firmly.
Then that rod-like thing suddenly went limp, and a thunderous noise reverberated through his skull.
At that moment, Keiko retched up something crimson and collapsed toward him.
He caught her body in both arms.
And he shook her violently—or so he believed.
Then he lost consciousness.—

The scene rose vividly in Keisuke’s mind with the calm of something viewed through mist.
Though he couldn’t recall their actual conversation from that time, the emotional quality it had carried lingered fully within the remembered scene.
Perhaps because it stood at a fixed remove, everything appeared wrapped in serene air.
Staring fixedly, he felt himself gazing up at a mountain peak’s summit from some shadowy valley floor.
Yet everything preceding and following remained indistinct, impossible to discern.

He was being led into a kind of ecstatic realm.
Enveloped in pure wings, he felt as though he were quietly ascending higher and higher.
Somewhere, Keiko was smiling.
Love smiled and shone brilliantly.
He tried to stretch both hands high toward the empty sky.

At that moment, he felt a kind of vertigo.
And suddenly, he fell into a deep abyss of darkness.
He plummeted with sheer acceleration.
He involuntarily opened his eyes.

In the room, only the electric lamp's brightness pooled heavily as three people sat motionless.
The nurse had spread open a magazine across her lap.
And then he knew—for the first time—that he had been resurrected.
Yet it felt dreamlike.
Everything had settled into stillness, yet something uncanny lingered in the air.

“Keiko!” he tried to cry out within his heart.
“I’m happy!” a voice called from somewhere.
It pierced through to the very depths of his heart.
An indescribable feeling—neither cruel nor sorrowful nor melancholy—suddenly surged up within him.
Ah! he thought—and in that instant discovered himself abandoned at the bottom of an abyss.
He could no longer do anything.
He folded his hands over his chest and twisted them together.
He felt like tearing at the painful thing welling up from the pit of his chest.

“What happened to Keiko? Keiko?”
He writhed.

Nakanishi quietly came to his side and held his hand.
When he noticed this, he clung to that hand.

“Nakanishi!”

“Ah,” answered Nakanishi.

“What about Keiko?”

Nakanishi didn’t answer and arranged the disheveled bedding over his shoulder.
Then he tried to speak.

“Shh!” Keisuke cut him off.
There seemed to be footsteps on the staircase.
When he listened closely, quiet footsteps indeed came climbing up.
He recognized those footsteps.
Holding his breath and staring fixedly in that direction, he saw the sliding door glide open.
Keiko stood there.
She gazed directly at Keisuke’s face without blinking.
He tried to speak.
Then suddenly, the illusion was sucked into his chest.
The pale yellow sliding door—adorned with gold-painted bamboo leaves—remained tightly shut like a wall.

To him, everything became dimly clear.
He closed his eyes and gripped Nakanishi's hand.

“Nakanishi, will you tell me everything?”

“But now you…”

“No—I’m fine now.”
“I know Keiko died.”
“I just want to know the details.”

It was painful for him，yet strangely，those words held composure.
He himself felt a sense of calm settle within him.

“Well then, I’ll tell you everything.”
“It’s better that you know.”
“But do you now have the strength to steadfastly face anything?”
“And then…”

“I know,” Keisuke interrupted.
“I don’t need reasoning.
“I just want to know the detailed facts.”
“I have anticipated everything.”
“Tell me the unvarnished truth.”
When he said it， his chest ached.

“Very well.”

After that, there was a pause in their words.
Then Nakanishi began to speak.

“I’ll put it simply... The old woman found you both after you’d taken the poison and collapsed. When I returned home, she was running around in a panic. I rushed straight to the doctor’s place. He came immediately—but too much time had already passed by then. There was nothing we could do for her... But he said there was still hope for you.” Nakanishi paused briefly before continuing. “We later learned you’d taken a smaller dose—though at the time we couldn’t tell for certain... Keiko was beyond saving from the start... Still we tried treating both of you... At dawn your eyes opened—you kept mumbling things we couldn’t understand... Your nerves had been paralyzed... Then came days of coma... They gave you two digalen injections... In the evening your eyes opened again... But the doctor ordered us not to let you regain full consciousness yet—he feared for your brain... They administered morphine... And since earlier today—you’ve truly awakened.”

Keisuke silently listened to those words.

“……Keiko couldn’t be saved.”
“I informed them of what happened.”
“Father and Brother came.”
“Brother said, ‘At least save you.’”
“I cried.”
“Everyone cried.”
“……Keiko’s body was taken home that afternoon.”

Keisuke felt as though he had dreamed all this sometime.
And he remained silent.

“You have to live!” Nakanishi said.
“Keiko’s brother and I have arranged things so it won’t be made public.”
“The only ones who know are us, the Yamane family, and Ms. Yaeko.”
“Those around you are demanding courage from you.”
“They are demanding the courage to face this incident and rise up again.”
“Everything is fate.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not.”
“Just feel it—that’s all I ask.”
“That’s what fate is!”

A deep silence continued.

At that moment, the old woman stood up, came over, and sat at Keisuke’s bedside.
She peered into Keisuke’s face for a moment, then buried her face in her sleeve.

When he saw the old woman crying, something sorrowful welled up from the depths of Keisuke’s chest.
He clenched his teeth and gripped Nakanishi’s hand.

“Nakanishi!”
Thus he called out.
After that, he couldn’t find any words.
And when he stared fixedly at a corner of the ceiling, he felt a terrible blow strike his body.

Lost in a frenzy, he stood up.
His leg joints gave way, and he collapsed right there.

He felt everyone gather and lay him down in the futon. Then, feeling a desolation as if abandoned alone, when he opened his eyes, his right wrist was gripped by the nurse's hand. He let his hand remain so.

The nurse soon released his hand and brought a small paper box from the desk.
And taking out a packet of medicine from inside, she held it out toward him.

“Please take the medicine.”

Keisuke held his breath.
The face of her holding out medicine wrapped in white paper seemed like Keiko's for an instant.
But immediately it changed back to the nurse's cold visage.
Yet he felt certain this medicine was poison.
It struck him with unshakable conviction.
He nodded.
Then shutting his eyes tight, he swallowed the medicine down with hot water.
He felt his mouth and tongue turn rough and parched.
Next came a heavy thudding sensation in his stomach.
He kept his eyes closed and spoke no more.
Through distant pains suffusing his body drifted waves of calm.
A handcart rattled past on the outer street.
Silence returned afterward save for some far-off murmuring.
He strained to identify its source.
But meaning eluded him completely.

After that, he felt as though an immensely long and hollow stretch of time had slipped away.
A heavy shadow descended around his forehead.

Suddenly, from somewhere, a faint sound of music drifted in.

It was a vast field.
A crowd of men carrying something marched straight across the wilderness.
When he looked closer, what they bore was a woman.
A pale face peered through tangled strands of hair.
It held a beauty unlike any he'd ever seen.
He strained to recall this stranger's name.
As he struggled, the woman's form melted into his own.
The throng cradled him gently as they soared over the plain.
However far they traveled, the expanse stretched endlessly.
A faint luminescence saturated the air.
Within that glow, he felt his awareness unravel.
Then came only void...

When Keisuke awoke from sleep, the late autumn sun was shining brightly through the shoji screens.
He looked around the room with vacant eyes.
The nurse sat across the room.
Nakanishi lay sprawled out.
A sudden burst of light flooded the chamber, transforming everything into a world of uncanny radiance.
He stared intently from the pillars to the ceiling to the sliding paper doors.
At that moment he remembered—someone had come to his side earlier and wept in hushed tones.
He tried to open his eyes wider, but the thick fog refused to clear from his head.
Soon everything fell silent again.

“Hey!”
That was how he called out.
And he himself was startled by how loud his voice was.

Nakanishi jumped up and came to his side.

“Didn’t someone come here earlier?”

Nakanishi studied his face for a while, then finally spoke.

“Akiko was here.”

With that single remark, he could clearly recall everything from the previous night.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because you were sleeping soundly... Akiko said she would come again.”

Keisuke said nothing and averted his eyes from Nakanishi’s face. Tears silently welled up. He pulled the futon over his head. And he clenched his lips. An inexplicable surge of sorrow welled up from the depths of his chest. When he closed his eyelids to hold back tears, his head began to spin. When he struck his head once with a fist, everything grew distant.

Eventually, he quietly lifted his face from the futon. What a transformation this was. Everything seemed strange. His life, his time—around that incident—had suddenly been sucked into darkness. And only the scene from that time shone clearly before him. When he gazed at it from a certain distance, and when he realized he could no longer approach it, an endless surge of sorrow welled up. And yet, with what vivid newness were the things of the present being laid bare in the light!

“Could you close the window?” he said.

Nakanishi stood up, went over, and closed the window. Then, the light streaming in only through the veranda’s shoji screens blended harmoniously with the shadows in the room, creating a soft, dream-like brightness. He let out a sigh of relief for no particular reason.

From the sunlight shining through the shoji screens, he thought it must be around nine in the morning. (He found it strange that he himself had estimated the time that way.) Yaeko came to visit.

She bowed to the people seated in the room and silently approached Keisuke’s bedside.
Keisuke gazed fixedly at her face.
Then tears welled up from her eyes, and she finally collapsed there.

“I’ll be alright,” Keisuke said.

Yaeko raised her face.
She was no longer crying.

“Please forgive me.”
Having said this, she tried to smile.
But the smile stiffened halfway, twisting her facial muscles into rigidity.
Perhaps to mask this failure, she reached for the ice pillow beneath Keisuke’s head.
The ice clattered in its watery casing.
Only then did Keisuke realize his body burned with raging fever.

“Was I running a very high fever?” Keisuke asked.

“Hmm, there was cause for concern at one point,” Nakanishi replied.
“But it’s no longer anything serious.”

But it was a voice that seemed devoid of concern.
Keisuke fell silent.
He wanted to say something to Yaeko but couldn’t find the words.

Eventually, Nakanishi and Yaeko stood up and went to the adjacent room—Nakanishi’s room.
They seemed to be discussing something for a while, but the two rooms were separated by a wall, so not even their voices could be heard.
Keisuke looked at the wood grain on the ceiling while recalling that the only ones who had supported them were Nakanishi, Yaeko, and Akiko.
Then suddenly, Keiko’s figure floated into his head.
However, it felt like something from a distant dream.
He had tormented himself with it.
And he kept trying to draw everything back near.
His eyes betrayed that effort, growing hot and wet.

The doctor came.
Nakanishi and Yaeko returned with the doctor.

Keisuke gazed at the doctor's face for the first time. He was a young doctor. His hair was neatly parted, and he had grown a short mustache. His long, narrow eyes harmonized well with his facial features.

Keisuke felt antipathy toward him.
This was because the doctor was young.
He couldn't comprehend why this youthfulness unsettled him.
Still, he quietly submitted to the examination.
The doctor finished his routine checkup and asked:

"Do you feel pain anywhere?"

"I don't."

"Nausea?"

"None."

"Headache?"

"No."

Keisuke denied everything.
Yet in truth, he vaguely sensed all three symptoms lingering in some distant part of his body.
He waited for the next question.
But the doctor remained silent, head tilted at an angle.
With a swift turn, he rolled over to face the wall.

After the doctor left, it suddenly became still.
Keisuke closed his eyes.
A long time passed.
As he drifted in and out of sleep, a voice sounded from behind.

“I must be going now.”

It was Yaeko’s voice.
Keisuke turned around in surprise.
Yaeko also seemed surprised.
She had started to rise but lowered herself back there.

“Were you awake?” she said.

Keisuke did not answer.
And he noticed for the first time then that her eyes were red and bloodshot, that her cheeks were pale with rough skin, that her hair was disheveled—all signs of sleeplessness.

“I’m sorry.”
Keisuke said.

Yaeko flickered her eyes and looked down.
An agonizing time passed.
At Nakanishi’s words—“Then you should go now”—she raised her face for the first time.

“Well then, I’ll come again.”
“Take care…”
And she bowed deeply.

At that moment, as if storing away her pale face disappearing beneath her bun within his eyelids, Keisuke closed his eyes.

When Yaeko left, a lonely time—as if everything had been lost—came surging in.
The morning sunlight that had been striking the shoji had faded away unnoticed.
In the room, a damp air had settled.
There was nothing more to say between him and Nakanishi.

A glass of wine, two egg yolks, a bowl of chicken broth, and a small amount of rice gruel—that was all Keisuke ate.
The nurse had told him to eat as much as possible, but nausea prevented him from consuming any more.

“Well, if you’ve eaten this much...” said the old woman as she wandered about the room.
However, there was nothing for her to tidy up.

When he ate, Keisuke suddenly felt drowsy.
And before he knew it, he fell into a weak slumber.

In his sleep, he felt these things.
……Takahashi and Saito were sitting at the entrance of the room.
Nakanishi was talking with them about something.
He couldn't make out a single word.
Keisuke tried to open his eyes, but it was terribly burdensome.
Meanwhile, the three were talking about something incessantly.
And after a short while, the two stood up.
Keisuke kept feeling concerned.
At that moment, as Nakanishi stood up next, he uttered some words.
However, it did not emerge as a voice.
When the three left the room, he felt strangely relieved and drifted back into a doze.……

When night came, Keisuke woke up.
And he ate slightly more food than he had during the day.
Then he slipped back into sleep.

Late at night, nearing dawn, Keisuke woke again.
Everything was hushed.
Nakanishi’s figure was not visible.
The nurse was crouched inside a futon in the corner of the room, sleeping.
The old woman was lying face down in her quilted robe.
When he saw that, he somehow felt relieved and closed his eyes again.
And the black gauze cloth covering the light bulb lingered in his eyes for a long time.

...Thud, thud, thud—spaced apart, the sounds came from somewhere.
Then, before he knew it, they had turned into human footsteps.
They were sounds ascending the staircase.
Keisuke abruptly opened his eyes.
The footsteps still continued.
He waited intently.
However, those footsteps never reached the top of the staircase.
Then, suddenly, the footsteps stopped.

A shudder ran through Keisuke’s entire body.
When the terror subsided, his heart plunged abruptly into a dark abyss.
He looked around him, front and back.
The room seemed to have fallen utterly silent.
Before he knew it, he cried out, “Keiko!”
No sound emerged, yet it seemed to reverberate through the room.
“Keiko! Keiko!”
Such echoes arose from every direction.
And the realization that “Keiko is dead” took tangible form before him with merciless clarity.

He suddenly sat up.
Everyone had fallen into exhausted sleep.
The opportunity was perfect.
He tried to stand up.
But with no strength in his entire body, he ended up crouching there again.
At that moment, something flashed through his mind.
He crawled over to the front of the bookshelf.
And he quietly took out a dagger from the lower drawer.
When he drew the sheath, the blade gleamed pale blue with only a speck of rust at the base of the hilt.
A sinister smile rose to his face.
And then he quietly crawled back onto the futon.

At that moment, from one of the glass panes set in the engawa's shoji screens, something black peered intently into the room.
He shuddered, his hair standing on end.
Then losing all self-control, he suddenly hurled the dagger in his hand straight at it.
The violent sound of shattering glass resounded through the house.

The old woman and the nurse sprang up simultaneously.
From the neighboring room, Nakanishi came rushing in still in his sleepwear.
Keisuke became rigid like a stone and stared wide-eyed there.
A single moment of unchanged time passed.
Then Nakanishi, urging the trembling nurse, laid Keisuke down in the futon.

When he got into the futon, Keisuke noticed the ice pillow had somehow changed into a regular pillow.
"I'm alive!" struck him with visceral clarity.
When he closed his eyes, Keiko's phantom floated up behind his eyelids.

Keisuke turned face down and writhed.
In his mind surfaced Keiko's final smile and her words—"I'm happy!"
Yet within both arms lingered eternal emptiness.
With those hollow limbs he clutched the pillow.
He began weeping.
Sobs swelled from his chest's depths in relentless waves.
Scalding tears traced his cheeks in rivulets.

Nakanishi picked up the dagger that had fallen in the hallway.
And while holding it, he stood rooted to the spot and said something.
However, that voice did not reach Keisuke's ears.

Until dawn broke, Nakanishi, the nurse, and the old woman kept vigil by Keisuke’s side.

When he collided with the utter depths of despair, ruin, and desolation, Keisuke's heart stopped there. After that, he clutched his head in both hands and remained prostrate without moving. As if suddenly remembering, he would sometimes repeat Keiko’s name deep within his chest. And gradually, the intervals between these utterances grew longer. By the time dawn broke, all of his consciousness had been swept into a great whirlpool, leaving him utterly dazed.

When the morning sunlight pierced through the shoji, he stared fixedly at the broken glass pane. And he spoke to no one in particular.

“I’m sorry.”

Instead of glass, the old woman pasted white paper with paste.
Keisuke gazed at where her hands were working.
Then the cold, crisp morning sky entered his eyes.

“Could you open the shoji?” he said.

“Aren’t you cold?” Nakanishi said.
“I’m all right.”

When the shoji were opened, dazzling sunlight streamed into the room.
The sky was beautifully clear.
The leaves of the oak tree in the garden were wet with dew and glistening.
Keisuke pulled his head into the futon.

“After all, please close them,” he said.

Nakanishi closed the shoji completely and approached Keisuke’s bedside. Then he peered into his face and said, “Please stay strong. That may be heart-wrenching, but fate demands it of you.”

Keisuke gave a slight nod.

“Nakanishi!”
With that said, Keisuke firmly gripped his hand.
Tears welled up in his eyes.

But that morning he only slurped down two egg yolks and ate nothing.
And then he drank two glasses of wine.

Shortly past eight o'clock, Akiko arrived in a rickshaw she had hurried.
She lowered her eyes and entered the room as if being guided by the old woman.
Then she saw the white paper pasted where the shoji's glass had been.
Finally she looked toward Keisuke.

“Akiko!”
Keisuke called out and tried to rise from the floor, but ended up lying back down again.
He gazed at her straight eyebrows and her small eyes—their pupils touched with darkness—so exactly like Keiko’s.
Yet those eyes were red and swollen.

A silence lingered.

“How are you feeling?” Akiko said.

“I seem to be better now,” Keisuke answered.

A silence hung between them.

"My brother asked me to convey his regards."

"I’m sorry for troubling you."

Silence fell again.

“It must be cold outside,” Keisuke said.

“Yes, a little…”

Silence fell again.

At that moment, Nakanishi stood up.
And went downstairs.
The nurse was having a meal downstairs.

When they were alone, emotions suddenly welled up.
Keisuke sat up.
Then Akiko clung to his hand.

“Brother!” she cried out and began to weep.

That was the first time she had addressed Keisuke as Brother.
However, neither of them noticed this themselves.

“Brother!” she said through tears. “Please live.”
“I beg you.”

“Yes, I will live.”
Keisuke’s voice trembled.

“I remember,” Akiko said again, “what Sister said.”
“‘I might die—but I must save Mr. Takagi,’ she told me.”

Keisuke instinctively recoiled.
The matter of the poison that had only a small amount remaining in the bottle flashed through his mind for the first time.

Akiko held her breath and looked up at him with tear-filled eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

Keisuke came to his senses at that voice.
And he quietly clasped Akiko’s hand to his chest.

The two of them remained still, as stiff as stone.
Suddenly, Akiko’s shoulders shook.

“Yesterday… Sister’s—Sister’s funeral was held.
“And today—”

Keisuke closed his eyes.
Hot tears overflowed from his eyelids and streamed down his cheeks.
There was nothing more to say.
He felt faint and lay down on the floor.
While gripping his hand, Akiko laid the futon over him with one hand.