Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Female Guest: One Week

I

Kimiko came rushing in without any warning.
It was nearly midnight.
And yet there was no trace of alcohol about her—only an unnatural seriousness. It was the sort of misplaced earnestness seen in someone who normally drinks, frolics, and jokes around, but had abruptly forgotten all that in some passing whim and now stared wide-eyed with intensity.
Then she said: “You’re still awake… Are you busy?… Could you let me stay tonight? Would that be a problem…?”
But such matters held no weight for her. She had already unilaterally decided to stay.
When led to the cramped waiting room at the atelier’s entrance, she placed a leather handbag and small furoshiki-wrapped bundle on the corner table before sinking leisurely into the long chair.
She surveyed the room with fresh curiosity.
Her bobbed hair hung straight across her forehead, her large eyes lucid, an unaccountable flush lingering on her cheeks as she adjusted the collar of her purple-striped meisen kimono—she appeared four or five years younger than her age, like a girl of fourteen or fifteen.

“This room feels different from usual.”

It wasn’t as if… it had changed at all. She had visited only once before—dragged along by two or three men during a drinking spree. The room remained identical to that time: shelves lined with old, cheap pots and plates; a bookshelf beneath them crammed with assorted art and literature volumes; a bay window vase that had never held flowers; chairs and tables frozen in their eternal arrangement. Only the dust and grime had imperceptibly thickened day by day. Yet tonight she barged in alone, resolved to stay—a bar hostess transformed into a shrewd yet unnervingly earnest woman. Her makeup was sparse, her earlobes delicately lovely. Those same guileless eyes now harbored an ideology in their depths—not plans or convictions, but an autonomous presence, quietly pooled there.

“I must’ve gotten the wrong idea somehow.”

When Shimamura Yoichi said this and peered into her eyes, her gaze wavered momentarily before she laughed—an ironic laugh. But that was all; the conviction pooled deep within her eyes retreated into an elusive stillness beyond reach. Even when he pressed her about what troubled her, she maintained nothing was wrong. It wasn’t a quarrel. Nor had something displeased her. She hadn’t been driven out. She had simply left the bar—where she’d been living in a cramped second-floor room—but found herself stranded tonight after miscalculating her next destination.

“We’ll talk more about it later, at our leisure.”

And it was a laugh without any particular ulterior motive.

“Well, that doesn’t matter.”
“How about a drink?”

She drank just one glass of White Horse diluted with water, seeming to relish it. The rest was just water. She said she must not drink alcohol tonight. “What about cigarettes?” She said she’d quit and didn’t reach for them. It seemed she wasn’t suppressing it through willpower but was behaving quite naturally.

“I’m feeling a little shy.”

Shimamura gave a wry smile while holding a glass of whiskey.

“You may drink.”

Because of all that, it had gotten late.
The maids were already asleep.
That was the usual state of things.
There were those who came late at night or talked into the wee hours, but regardless, the maids were supposed to go to bed around twelve o’clock.
Otherwise, in a house with children, order cannot be maintained.

“Anyway, I’ll prepare a place for you to sleep.”
“That’s fine. I’ll sleep here.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”
“I’ll sleep on this chair.”
“I came here intending to do that from the start, after all.”

She had even decided her own sleeping spot. But on that hard long chair, no matter how one looked at it, it was too harsh. There were other rooms. Even so, she was oddly reserved—or rather, she had already made up her mind. He had no choice but to let her have her way. But she was happy just because it was warm. Shimamura gave a wry smile and headed toward the main house to wake one of the maids—At the atelier, a willful female guest. A thin futon was plenty. And if there was a woman’s nightgown, then one…

When Shimamura returned, Kimiko was standing stiffly in the corner of the room.
A purplish kimono, a crimson obi, disheveled short hair—her figure, illuminated by the late-night electric light, seemed utterly alone in the world.
Yet this solitude brimmed with vitality.
Before her hung a large hawksbill turtle shell on the wall, its carapace gleaming with iridescent beauty.

“This is a hawksbill turtle, isn’t it?”

“Hmm.”

“Even tortoiseshell doesn’t seem so bourgeois when you just look at the carapace like this, does it?”

For Shimamura to express agreement, the words that had come from Kimiko’s mouth were far too impertinent.
Shimamura remained silent and lit a cigarette.
She moved closer to his side.

“Do you know someone named Matsuura?”

“Matsuura… I don’t know.”

“Then, what about Mr. Nakae?”

“Nakae…… I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“…………”

“What sort of person is that…?”

“That’s fine.”
“And then, please list me as a model woman.”
“It might seem a bit strange, but….”

“…………”

Her eyes gazing intently were strangely serious.
There seemed to be a solemn secret lying at their depths.
It wasn’t a romantic backdrop.
It was some kind of background rooted in her daily existence.
Tapping her feet to jazz from the gramophone, feigning drunkenness, fending off customers’ crude antics with shrill, virginal shrieks—the ever-cheerful bar hostess she once was now appeared more intellectual than usual. Whether imagined or not, her figure seemed leaner and sturdier, exuding a solemn earnestness that commanded trust.

“Very well, I’ll leave it as you say.”
“Rest assured.”

When Shimamura extended his hand, she gripped it firmly.
He gripped hers back.
He too was out of rhythm.
This was the Kimiko he had only ever encountered in such moments—sloppy when drunk, bar-hopping and making a scene as she staggered about.
Even without particular fondness or aversion, her barging in like this—appearing as a meddlesome girl yet bearing some solemn ideology while he was being earnest—left him feeling ambushed instead, as if spied upon from behind, unable to settle.
On the high wall, the hawksbill turtle shell laughed—
A slick, derisive laugh.
Shimamura chain-smoked cigarettes.
Kimiko stayed silent…….

When the maid, wearing an obi-style sash, brought in the futon, Shimamura stood up and opened the atelier door to peer inside—despite having no reason to do so. He walked around the room. He tidied up the glasses and cups. What a willful guest. She insists on sleeping on that long chair. Just let her sleep already.

Kimiko looked startled. Her face flushed crimson as she apologized to the maid with exaggeratedly polite language. She was arguing with the maid about laying out the futon herself…….

“Good night.”

Kimiko bowed silently with a serious expression.

Shimamura left the two of them there and headed toward the main house’s bedroom.

The night air held a clear sky.

Two

When he woke up, he got up—this was Shimamura’s lifestyle.
Sleep duration was irrelevant.
Whether he went to bed early or late, the next morning he would rise when he awoke.
He was unfamiliar with smoking tobacco or reading newspapers in bed.
He would get up, wash his face, and only then attend to everything else.
Consequently, whenever he was sleepy, he would sleep at any time.
He would eat breakfast, read the newspaper, and sometimes return to bed immediately.
He called that his natural health method.

Despite having gone to bed late the previous night, he woke up relatively early and, following his natural health method’s habit, rose immediately. To his surprise, however, Kimiko—whom he had assumed would sleep in—was already up and working alongside the maids. Cleaning the room, scrubbing floors, sweeping the garden… She had apparently even helped the children get ready for school. When he called out “Good morning” while smoking on the engawa, she bowed politely, smiled brightly, and went away. She’s a strange one. And then, at breakfast, she insisted on eating with the maids and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Having been persuaded by the maids due to how the side dishes were prepared, she finally took a seat at the dining table with Shimamura.

“First thing in the morning... You’re being troublesome.”

“But I’m happy to work, you see.”
“But Sensei’s place is so clean everywhere.”

The tone of her words differed from last night’s.
Yet this felt natural.
It wasn’t just the morning light—her face shone brightly.
Her thick eyebrows exuded vitality.
No trace of ideological shadows lingered in her eyes.
A small mouth nestled within rounded cheeks.
The deep cleft beneath her nose and those large eyes gave her an air of childish innocence, yet somehow seemed to foreshadow an ill-fated destiny.

“Sensei, won’t you let me stay here for about a week? I’d like to try working in a proper household.”

“Does even a household without a housewife look that way, I wonder?”

“In that case, even a half-baked household will do.”
“I really do want to work.”

“Well, you should quit being so capricious.”
“If you’re just staying, I don’t mind four or five days… but if you go around rearranging everything, I’ll have to decline.”

“It’s okay—I’ll follow the maids’ instructions…”

“Well, who can say?”

When Shimamura directed his words toward the maid, the maid smiled quietly.
Those eyes met Kimiko’s, and her smile deepened.
Before they knew it, they might have reached a compromise.
But more than that, Shimamura had his own work.
He had to shut himself in the atelier and knead sculpting clay.
The atelier was his fortress.
He did not permit the maids, or anyone else, to engage in undue prying.
Yet even there, through a gap in the door, Kimiko’s bob-cut hair peeked in.

“Sensei…”

Her voice was sweetly clinging.
In a house said to be relatively clean, she had found a dirty spot.
There was work to be done.
Whether it was permissible to begin, even the maids could not judge this matter alone.
She wouldn’t interfere with his work…
The reason was that the room next to the atelier—the room where she had stayed last night—was dirty.
Especially on the shelves and between the books, dust had accumulated...

“Keep it quiet… and leave everything as it was.”

She seemed to understand this, wearing a bright expression. Not even the faintest chirp of noise could be heard. She had begun cleaning slowly - taking out each book one by one to dust them off while simultaneously studying their contents. With literary works she merely wiped away the grime, but art books received different treatment: examining every illustration in Western volumes, poring over Japanese history texts for hours at a stretch. She clearly knew nothing of these subjects. Trivial introductory passages absorbed her completely, and whenever Shimamura paused his work she'd indiscriminately bring him Western masterpieces or popular prints to decipher their titles - being wholly illiterate in European scripts. Yet acquiring even this fragmentary knowledge about art, so unrelated to herself, became as much her duty as removing dust. The strangest ritual involved cleaning jars. For reasons known only to herself she'd procured a dozen soda straws, inserting one into a vessel and blowing until her face flushed crimson. An astonishing accumulation of dust lay within each jar - now expelled in explosive puffs through the straws. Grime blackened her cheeks while powder whitened her hair, though both derived from identical dust - an odd chromatic discrepancy she observed in the mirror before giggling softly...

And so her temporary room—she still refused to sleep anywhere else—gradually grew cleaner.
There, during times when Shimamura was not in the atelier, she and the children would gather.
She would read books aloud to them.
Following the text with her eyes, she would recite it in simpler language.
When it came to this skill, she was every bit the intellectual.
She often read Tolstoy’s works.

“Long ago, in a certain place, there lived a wealthy peasant.”
“This peasant had three children.”
“There was Semyon the Soldier, Kras the Big-Bellied, Ivan the Fool, and one more—a mute daughter named Maranya.”
“Semyon the Soldier served the king and went off to war.”
“Tarasu the Big-Bellied went to town to engage in trade.”
“Ivan the Fool stayed home with his sister and worked hard.”
“Semyon the Soldier rose to a high position, acquired many territories, and married a nobleman’s daughter….”

(In the original text: Once upon a time in a certain country, there lived a wealthy peasant.)
This wealthy peasant had three sons—Semyon the Soldier, Kras the Big-Bellied, and Ivan the Fool—and additionally, a mute daughter named Maranya.
Semyon the Soldier served the king and went off to war.
Kras the Big-Bellied went to the town’s merchants to conduct business, and Ivan the Fool stayed behind with his sister and worked diligently.
Semyon the Soldier obtained high rank and territories, and married a nobleman’s daughter…….)

That was generally how it went.
However, while these simple parts went smoothly, when she reached slightly more difficult sections, she would stumble over her words or rephrase them.
The elementary school children, particularly the boys, criticized this.
They accused her of reading falsehoods.
She showed them the book and explained.
And still she continued speaking earnestly.
That manner of reading must have delighted the children.
Whenever they found an opening, they would pester her.
Shimamura too occasionally joined these gatherings.

A quiet evening settled in, the electric lamp casting a soft glow.
It was the sort of scene that made one want to light lamps or candles.
The children listened with rapt attention.
Kimiko translated earnestly as she read aloud.
Her voice flowed gentle and clear.
When she hesitated over words, she would tilt her head and pause briefly.
Her cropped hair swayed with the motion.
Yet even when flustered mid-sentence, she'd widen her guileless eyes as if perplexed before breaking into radiant laughter...

That was nothing like the bar hostess he knew. She was a guest who had barged in unexpectedly. And immediately, she was posing as a family member. She got along well with the maids and was on good terms with the children. But Kimiko—he didn’t know if that was even her real name—and when he asked about her surname, she would only laugh and not answer. On one occasion, he had overheard from the shadows the words she was speaking to the children. “Between Japanese people, it’s nicer to use given names for closeness.” “Toyotomi Hideyoshi is Hideyoshi, Kato Kiyomasa is Kiyomasa….” “You don’t have people switching between Toyotomi and Kato, do you?” “Even Fujiwara no Kamatari and Sugawara no Michizane are called Kamatari and Michizane—not Fujiwara or Sugawara—right?” “Even Tōgō Heihachirō—given enough time, people stop calling him ‘Admiral Tōgō’ and just say ‘Heihachirō.’” “But foreigners are different, you see.” “Forever things like Tolstoy and Kropotkin…” “Even so, take Napoleon—that started as a given name.” “His family name was Bonaparte, you know….” —That was sophistry. But in any case, she herself was called “Kimiko-san” by everyone. Before they knew it, it had grown familiar to the ear. Even Shimamura called her Ms. Kimiko.

Kimiko being a woman was acceptable, but had she been a man, that would have been slightly strange. However, there were also times when being a woman caused trouble. She had a habit of often combing her hair in her own room—the room next to the atelier—. The small makeup tools were kept alongside the household’s belongings in the bathroom’s changing area, but she also kept a single comb in her room, where she would groom her hair at any hour before the mirror there. After playing with the children and cleaning, she would briskly smooth down her short hair, which wasn’t particularly disheveled. That appeared to be her habit. Because of this, hair would sometimes scatter about.

Now, to Shimamura's way of thinking, women's hair stood as the very emblem of impurity.
It was a concoction kneaded from grime, dust, and grease.
Though her bobbed cut was naturally tidy with scant oiliness, this did nothing to negate its fundamental uncleanliness.
For one who treated cleaning as a solemn duty, it amounted to contradictory behavior.
What's more, this occurred in the room adjoining the atelier.
Shimamura would often furrow his brow.
She too became aware of his displeasure.
Yet a habit remained a habit.

Apart from that small habit, she was a good girl.
She would rise early in the morning and clean alongside the maids.
Then came meticulous dusting.
In the evenings, she helped in the kitchen.
And keeping the children company.
It was the life of a maid through and through.
However, that maid spent money freely.
She would receive pocket money from the maids and then buy whatever she liked on a whim—whether for the children’s afternoon snack or for the evening’s side dishes.
Fruits and sweets were one thing, but she would gather canned goods, sauce, and meats to concoct bafflingly Western-style dishes.
They were all inedibly terrible.
Everyone said it was terrible.
She laughed.
The maids laughed too.
It was a foolish waste.
Yet such trivial things delighted the children and added a touch of vibrancy to the household.

It was Shimamura who was in the position to be most sensitive to that color.
He would often seclude himself in the atelier and gaze intently at his own female figure sculptures.
They were all depictions of the female form.
The female form has a special scent.
He was trying to capture it.
But what about color?
That comes from women.
It comes especially from young women.
It was the elusiveness of that color—particularly the challenge of expressing it—that he discovered while gazing at his own sculptures.
In the next room beyond the door, Kimiko was blowing into the bottom of a jar with a wheat straw.
or reading something.
In contrast to that, he hardly sensed the female body, but rather a kind of womanliness.
And his eyes were once again directed toward the sculptures.
A certain irritation began to accumulate in his chest….

Due to such irritation, one evening, he ended up drinking heavily at a friend’s invitation and became utterly drunk, losing all sense of time and propriety.
It all started when he went out to eat tempura.
The next morning, when he awoke in his futon at home, atop the lingering haze of a hangover, his stomach was aching dully.
In his intestines, the tempura shrimp from last night must have stagnated and were stomping around.
Each time, the lining of his intestines would start to ache.
And inside his skull, the dregs of sake had settled, weighing heavily.
He lay still with his eyes open.
Moving felt like too much effort.
His limbs, and indeed every muscle in his body, had become separate entities merely gathered there.
He did not get up until afternoon.

It was then that Kimiko came and sat down precisely beside his futon.
Her posture resembled that of a sculpture someone had placed there.
And with utmost earnestness, she said she would nurse him if he was ill.
The fact that she meant it in earnest made it all the more comical.
To nurse a patient, something was lacking.
Her roughly cut hair was far too unkempt.
Her way of sitting was far too rigid.
Overall, there was far too little curvature.
A nurse must be like soft silk floss that envelops the prickly thorns of illness.
Shimamura lit a cigarette and looked toward her.
As he did so, she also gave a wry smile.
“So it’s a hangover?” she asked.
“Well, I suppose so.”
The cigarette smoke also harmonized with it….

“Were you at Cosmos last night?”

It was a question that flickered like a fleeting glint.
Cosmos was the name of the bar where she had been.

“Well….”

The memory of the hangover was hazy.
But certainly, he had not gone.
It started with a tempura shop, then a sake bar, and then a geisha house….
Because he’d eaten tempura first, his stomach was aching a bit.

“I certainly didn’t go.”

“Why?”

There was no one to ask why.
But that too had been Shimamura’s first realization.
Cosmos was Cosmos only because Kimiko was there.
Without her, it would cease to be Cosmos—or anything at all.
Another hostess worked there, and they stocked fine Western liquors, yet Kimiko alone had shone.
It wasn’t that she was beautiful.
As a bar hostess, her features were ill-suited.
Nor was she particularly adept at handling customers.
If anything, she was willful.
And yet—for him, only ever for him—it was their longstanding familiarity that made her luminous.
Familiarity and intimacy forged strange bonds between people.
Without her, Cosmos would revert to a grubby little bar.
Her presence—this woman’s existence—had lent the place its fleeting worth.

“If you weren’t there, going would be pointless.”

“Right. It’s better if you don’t go for a while.”

“He?”
“She?”
The tone was ambiguous.
Then, smiling, she peered curiously into his face and began asking things like what a hangover felt like—a state where, while dazedly tracing the threads of memory, he himself had no desire to speak at all yet paradoxically wished to hear the voice of someone close. “Then it’s completely reactionary,” she declared with a cheeky remark.
“It’s fascinating how even drunkenness has its reactionary aspects,” she mused.
But it was strange—when drunk, most anyone became excessively talkative.
Sensei’s case was particularly bad.
Normally taciturn, once drunk he would start chattering away incessantly.
No matter the topic, he seemed liable to prattle on about anything.
He couldn’t be trusted.
He couldn’t keep secrets.
“It’s true that drinkers cannot accomplish anything significant.”
“However, to accomplish something significant, there’s no need to keep secrets.”
“It should be done openly and fairly—that comes once you’re in the execution phase,” she would say.
“In the preparatory phase, a certain kind of secret must be kept….”
—But the discussion was a bother to him now.
Truly, he himself had no desire to speak.
Merely listening to her words sufficed.
Moreover, it wasn’t just her chattering away there.
It seemed there was someone else within her—someone other than herself.

And she—Kimiko—was gradually growing distant.
Her presence at Cosmos loomed larger than the one before his eyes.
She was a peculiar woman.
Or perhaps his perception fell short.
It mattered little if it did.
The stomachache had nearly faded, leaving only a fragmented heaviness lingering through his limbs—a weariness that clung like damp cloth.
The dregs of last night’s drink still clouded his mind.
As he drifted in and out of drowsiness, offering terse replies, even she eventually lapsed into silence.
In moments like these, he wished she might read to him as she did for the children…

When one of the children returned, Kimiko went over to them.

He drifted into a doze for a while. Unusually, he read the newspaper in his futon. When he sat up, the sunset was burning crimson. Amidst that light, in the garden, Kimiko played with the children while splitting an old wooden crate into bath kindling. With her bobbed hair and raised hatchet, she became yet another distinct version of herself—separate from both the Cosmos hostess and the ideological debater. Her face, turned toward him, glowed a healthy red.

“If everyone worked half a day and spent the other half doing as they pleased… I truly think that would make for a wonderful world.”

Her words were formulaic, yet they seemed like a genuine sentiment that had naturally escaped her heart.
Having said it, she smiled bashfully, revealing white teeth.
He too was drawn into smiling and lit a cigarette while standing on the engawa veranda.

III

On exactly the seventh day since her arrival, Kimiko went out for the day. She returned in the evening. Dinner would be ready soon. During the meal, she seemed lost in thought, quieter and more reserved than usual. And when the meal was over, she said that while she had been under their care for a long time, she would be leaving tomorrow. Moreover, as if dismissing any questions, she whispered into Shimamura’s ear that she was returning to Cosmos. And as today’s souvenir, she spread out a bundle of assorted fireworks before the children. The fireworks were in full swing. She herself began to laugh. It was that she hadn’t known what to bring back. It was simply that she had thought of it because there was a shop she knew that sold fireworks. Not only that—in fact, as she later confessed to Shimamura, she had bought each of the two maids a pair of straw sandals, which was also why her money had run out. But the fireworks had delighted the children greatly. When night fell, everyone played by setting off fireworks. The sparks bursting high in the air with a pop enticed the children’s hearts. She, too, seemed just as enticed. A passion for indulging in something wasteful and destructive seemed to have accumulated within her. Her cheeks, illuminated by the blue light of gunpowder, were more beautiful than usual. Meteors, lightning flashes, electric sparks, landmine fires—all sorts of things were recklessly exploded in the air and on the ground. In the garden, gunpowder smoke filled the air, pressing toward the shadows…

But in the moonless sky, stars crowded together.
In that vast night sky, the smells of fireworks and gunpowder tended to be overwhelmed.
There was no end to it, no matter how long they continued.
The children and Kimiko were strangely excited.
Shimamura felt compelled by the thought that he ought to put a stop to this soon…

“Let’s stop there for tonight and continue tomorrow.”

Everyone seemed startled.
But the children were clever.
Then they said, “Pine.”
They went into the house, and the sparklers continued—Pine, Chrysanthemum, Willow….

This incident with the fireworks—this chance occurrence she herself had brought about—must have left some imprint on her psyche. When the children had gone to sleep and she found herself alone with Shimamura in the room next to the atelier—just as on the first night, yet for the first time since then—she was filled with a vaguely irritated sentiment. Around her, the faint scent of gunpowder still seemed to drift.

“Coming to Sensei’s place was good,” she said. “I was able to experience, even if just a little, the joy of labor. No matter how dull the job, if you find joy in doing it, it has value. Even the work of maids, if considered from a household perspective, has a deeply satisfying quality. If you do things grudgingly, nothing will turn out well. Work with joy. Work from the heart. Even in petty bourgeois life”—she continued without so much as an apology—“even in petty bourgeois life, there are good aspects. What’s wrong is the petty bourgeois mentality and consciousness—but life itself, human life itself, isn’t so different anywhere. And it’s a joyful thing when people living different forms of life become true friends from the heart. You never know when or how it might be helpful. Even I might end up needing Sensei’s help again someday. I’m truly grateful…”

But even as she said such things, she was telling the truth while also lying. Things like family, petty bourgeois life, acquaintances between people—what she was thinking about wasn’t just those things. While speaking, in the depths of her eyes was pooled a certain other thought. It was the same as the previous evening.

When he gazed at that ideology, she lowered her eyes and suddenly said, “I’m sorry.” Without speaking of her background or circumstances, she said it was inexcusable to have only received his care. But the circumstances were related to a certain matter—she had been assisting with an ideological secret publication, and because the police were concerned, she had had to conceal herself temporarily—that was all there was to it. Or perhaps that was all she could disclose. Moreover, even that seemed to have been settled without incident. How trivial it was. There was no need to dwell on such things. Individual matters—things like Shimamura and Kimiko, or the obligation between them—seemed unnecessary to consider.

“You don’t need to ask about such things,” Shimamura said with a smile.
“I can roughly imagine it myself.
“You all ought to be thinking more about society and humanity, moving beyond personal matters, don’t you think?”

Kimiko raised her face and stared at him as if startled.
She tilted her head as though having often been told similar—no, exactly the same—things.
A clever-looking forehead peeked out from beneath her hair.

“I know that much. It’s just that I’m not yet one of you all.”

“…………”

With an expression that seemed to question whether that was truly the case, she still tilted her head. Her hair flowed to one side, creating a natural coquettishness… And she let out a gentle sigh. We—unlike authoritarianism—lack a tight organization; thus we find ourselves troubled by our inability to clearly distinguish allies from enemies. But if Sensei’s words were true, she absolutely wanted to introduce him to Mr. Matsuura and Mr. Nakae next time. Right now, they were conducting research on bird life as written by Hudson. It was an attempt to draw something out from that mere observation. “It was an extension of mutual aid research…” she chattered on about such things, yet she was nothing more than an innocent young girl. She suddenly stood up.

“It’s a secret, you know.”
“Don’t get drunk and start blabbering.”

She seemed about to stomp her feet.
He grabbed her arm and pulled; she obediently followed.
He seated her on his own lap.

“It’s all right. You’re the one being awfully talkative, aren’t you?”

“Well…”
After a long pause, “It’s because I trust you, Sensei.”

When he held her on his lap, she was rounder and heavier than he’d imagined. Entrusting herself completely, she leaned her head against his shoulder. The kimono had collar stains. It was the one she had been wearing since arriving. Her hair was smooth. And every night, she spread a futon on this long chair and slept there. This seemed like the real Kimiko. The her among Cosmos and the overly earnest her from days prior both melted into that... He gently slipped his hands around her sides and tried to embrace her to his chest—embracing her properly. She remained still. She kept her eyes open, resting her gaze on a corner of the ceiling. What was she thinking? Her profile’s cheek was blank, the groove beneath her upper lip deeply cleft, as if carved by an unfortunate fate. But now, in his arms, she was breathing peacefully… His lips moved toward hers… In that instant, she jerked away.

He smiled forlornly.
“Sorry… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that…”
“Yeah… it’s okay.”

She appeared to have come to an understanding—but what exactly had she understood?
With a radiant smile, she turned her back and hopped onto his lap again, stretching out.
Both Hudson and mutual aid had gone somewhere—she looked lonely.
And even through her kimono, she was warm.
There was nothing left to say.

“Come on, it’s late. Let’s sleep.”
“It’s still fine.”

“But there’s no point in keeping this up forever, is there?”

“I suppose so.”

She jumped down from his lap and extended one hand.
A gaze both large and devoid of doubt or desire.
He vigorously grasped that hand and shook it.

“Good night.”

He felt refreshed.

That refreshed feeling lasted until the next day.
When he got up, she had already risen early and was beginning the morning cleaning.
When she saw him, she smiled slightly, squinting as if dazzled.
When the cleaning was done, she said she would go out immediately.
Taking that with him, he entered the next room of the atelier.
Though not immediately noticeable, every corner seemed strangely clean.
In return for that, he had to do something.
He was racking his brain over that.
At the very least, she had worked exactly like a maid.
He couldn’t figure out what to give as a material item—would gold or silver not do?
“That’s no good,” she flatly rejected.
“Labor should not demand rewards.”
“The fault lies in demanding payment.”
“Instead, livelihood should be granted to everyone.”
She worked because she had to work.
She ate because she wanted to eat.
She stayed because the room was available.
Labor was everyone’s duty, and livelihood was everyone’s right.
Such things had once again taken root in her mind…

“Next time at Cosmos, I’ll accept it as a tip.”
“Consider it deferred until then.”
“...But there’s a problem.”
“When I come next time, I promised the children I’d bring loads of fireworks.”
“I wonder if that’s all right…”

“Promises must be kept.”

“…………”

She laughed, shaking her bobbed hair meaninglessly.