Pathway to Japanese Literature

Masao Minami had nothing left to do.
He had insisted on staying at the mountain summer resort until mid-September through sheer willpower, but eventually he would have to return to his Tokyo home and school.
Somehow everything felt strangely empty.
When he lay alone on the grassy hillside slope, sprawled vacantly, countless thoughts would rise in his mind.
The sky stretched dizzyingly deep and blue.
White clouds floated past.
The air bit with icy clarity.
Distant mountains stood silent and wafer-thin like papercraft.
Somewhere insects chirped….

Suddenly, right by his ear yet in a tone as if from afar, a voice called out to Masao.
“Ah—‘that guy’.”
He showed up out of nowhere after a long time.
A small, nimble, suspicious-looking, clueless, odd creature—even if you told someone about him, they’d never believe it.
Since the creature had no name, Masao simply called him Chibi.
He had grown accustomed to him and even felt a certain familiarity, so he wasn’t particularly surprised.
Moreover, he was just thinking about mythology.
Gods and giants and monsters and all kinds of fairies.
Chibi, so to speak, was a being straight out of mythology.

“It’s been a while,” Chibi said.

“Yeah,” Masao replied.

“What’re you doing?”
“I’m not doing anything.”

“So you must be bored then.”
“Because I’m bored, I’m not doing anything.”
“Because you don’t do anything, you get bored.”
“That’s not right. It’s because I’m bored that I’m not doing anything.”

“Isn’t it the same thing?”

“That’s not right.”

Chibi scratched his ear.
It was a habit he had when troubled.
He remained silent for a while, then peered into Masao’s eyes.

“Then what were you thinking about?”

“All sorts of things.”

“What kind of things?”
“Gods, giants, mermaids…”
“Ah—stories from ancient times? All that stuff’s just lies.”

“It’s not a lie.”
“Do you think it’s the truth?”
“It’s not true either.”
“Then isn’t it a lie?”

“It’s neither true nor a lie.”
“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know what it is, but there are things that are neither true nor lies.”
“You just don’t get it.”

Chibi scratched his ear again.

“They exist even now.”
“What?”

“Such a thing…”
“The other day too…”

It happened on the highway winding around the base of the hill just ahead.
Approaching evening, in the thin haze that hung in the air where a lingering brightness still floated, it was an oddly desolate hour.
A truck came driving along the white highway.
At first it was small, lumbering slowly like a rhinoceros beetle, then grew larger and faster, swept by like the wind with a simultaneous roar, kicking up white dust.
At that moment, from atop a towering stack of large sacks—whether of wheat, rice, or flour—a single person tumbled lightly down, then rebounded heavily off the ground before going completely limp.
The truck drove away, and only the fallen human lay there stretched out long.

There was no one around.
There was no sound.
Eventually, two or three children appeared from somewhere.
Adults also appeared.
They seemed to well up from the ground.
They welled up from the ground and gathered there.
And they formed a circle.
Masao also entered among them.
There, left forgotten, was a man wearing a belly band over his undershirt and tabi work shoes, lying on his back with limbs stretched out, eyes closed, mouth agape as if asleep.
He was just covered in dust, with no visible blood or apparent injuries.
By now, over ten people had gathered around.

“They all welled up from somewhere in the ground.”

“Are you one of them too?”

“I’m different.”
“I’ve been watching from the start.”

“Hmm…”
“Well, you know—it’s just like when a dead insect drops somewhere and ants come swarming from nowhere.”

“That man hadn’t died yet.”

The surrounding people clamored like ants. One among them gingerly touched the man and tried lifting him up.
The man simply lay limp again, stretched out long on the ground.
His sunburned face had turned even redder.
He’d let out one big breath before settling back into profound stillness.
And occasionally—clenching his limp outstretched hand tight—he’d convulsively try raising his wrist only to let his fingers go slack again.
He kept repeating this motion.

That hand overlapped with another in Masao’s mind.
The other hand was his mother’s—she had been hospitalized, and one evening, Masao was rushed to her room.
When he opened the door, directly ahead was a wall; turning left there, he found a bed.
The lamp was covered with a shade, casting a brightness like that of being underwater.
Mother lay in a deep stupor.
It was impossible to tell whether she was breathing at all.
Her right hand lay thrown out over the sheet outside the futon, its slender, almost translucent fingertips terribly beautiful and endearing.
That hand alone left a clear impression of Mother’s final moments.
With her thumb tucked into her palm and the other fingertips slightly curled, she would lift just the tips of her hand from the wrist with a flick and drop them down, moving them at intervals—tap-tap twice each time—as if striking the sheet with the back of her hand.
It seemed as if she were signaling something, and yet also as if she were masking her weariness…

In his mind, Masao contemplated the movements of the two hands.

Lying on his back, he would throw out both hands with palms facing upward, completely relaxing them. And occasionally, he would grip his fingers tightly, as if in some effort or spasm, slowly lift his fingertips, then let them drop again with a thud. Or he would keep his fingertips slightly bent in a natural position, occasionally moving his wrist to tap-tap with the back of his hand, as if signaling something or engaging in a listless game. In the former case, the fingertips were astonishingly large and heavy; in the latter case, they were astonishingly small and light.

Masao said.

“I intend to move my hands like your mother when I die.”
“Do you really think it’s that simple?”
“Of course it will—it’s your own doing.”
“But it’s strange—you thinking about dying.”
“It’s not about dying—it’s about the moment you die.”
“When dying…”
“That’s right—there are all sorts of moments: when you die, when you sleep, when you feast, when you laugh, when you cry…”

“Ah… that moment.”

Chibi fell silent and said nothing more.
When he fell silent mid-sentence, it was proof he’d encountered something perplexing.
Eventually, he muttered.
“Humans are strange, aren’t they? Even though they usually consult others about every little trivial thing, when it comes to dying, they just fall silent all alone.”

Masao, albeit in a different sense, had been thinking something similar.
He retorted defiantly.

“That’s fine as it is.”

He had been thinking about his father’s recent death.

From aboard a ship traveling from Tokyo to Izu Ōshima, Masao’s father vanished in the middle of the night.
It was a clear, calm night, and the moon was beautiful.
Mr. Minami had been drinking and was quite drunk.
Nothing more was understood beyond that, and only a single small suitcase remained.
When leaving home, Mr. Minami had simply said he was going on a trip to stay in Ōshima for a night or two, and there had been nothing unusual about him.
――It remained unclear whether it had been an accidental death or suicide.
In the newspapers, it was largely reported as accidental death.

With all hopes ultimately proving futile, on the thirty-fifth day a public memorial service was to be conducted, and on its eve, only those closest gathered for an occasion that resembled neither Buddhist rites nor a traditional wake.

Centered around an enlarged photograph of the deceased and a mortuary tablet, a small, pleasant altar was arranged.
Since there were no particular cherished mementos, various everyday belongings were gathered together and placed there.
Fountain pens, pencils, a paper knife, auxiliary glasses, an old pocket watch, a tie pin, and an unidentifiable iron lump resting atop manuscript paper—common odds and ends like these came to serve as substitutes for the ashes.
And beautiful fresh flowers almost completely covered the altar, their colors and fragrance overwhelming the candle flames and incense smoke.
Given that the deceased had been a lover of drink, many among those gathered were of similar inclination, and the gathering somehow took on the air of a banquet.
Among the young people, lively debates were exchanged concerning issues of society, morality, culture, and art.

Masao also stayed up late.
Aunt Nakane, who managed the household affairs, had oddly allowed Masao his freedom that night.
Mr. Kihara—the deceased’s old friend, a language teacher and translator—introduced Masao to each person present one by one.
Masao ate fruit, nibbled at a sandwich, and took a sip or two of alcohol.
It must have been nearly midnight when Mr. Kihara approached him as he stood gazing vacantly at the ink-dark garden from the veranda of the downstairs back room.
Placing a hand on Masao’s shoulder, Mr. Kihara began speaking of the deceased.
In recent years, it was said, the man had been adrift in every possible sense.
He had sought life’s meaning and found none; sought moral foundations and found none; sought a woman’s soul and found none—yet these pursuits had taken shape as a vague romantic yearning. As this yearning remained perpetually unfulfilled, contempt for humanity and society arose within him. And as that contempt swelled into arrogance, he himself became utterly untethered—or so people claimed.
Masao scarcely understood such matters, but Mr. Kihara spoke with grave sincerity before dropping his voice further: So you see—since his spirit had already been adrift, and since he’d likely been drunk besides—that was how he came to fall from the ship into the sea...
The voice hung so quiet and weightless in the air that before he knew it, Masao had blurted aloud: “No—Father jumped in himself!”

There was a sudden hush. Then suddenly, a large hand convulsively grabbed Masao’s shoulder, and an angry voice shouted, “Don’t—don’t spout such nonsense!” Mr. Kihara was crying angrily. Masao was stunned. Father committed suicide—why was that wrong? The act of jumping into the sea and disappearing was somehow pure and beautiful. That altar—crowded with photos, a mortuary tablet, all sorts of odds and ends, and nothing but flowers—didn’t it clear people’s hearts? The only sad thing was that Father was gone. That and suicide were separate matters. To Masao, who was thinking this, Mr. Kihara continued speaking in fragmented tones: “You mustn’t think such things—your father fell into the sea by accident…” And finally, he pulled Masao close, hugged him, and shed tears. The breath that fell on Masao’s head smelled of alcohol. Mr. Kihara was drunk too—why did everyone keep getting drunk? Father had often gotten drunk. Such things made Masao feel lonely. And then he stubbornly fell silent…

“Are you still sad?” asked Chibi.

“About what?”

“About your father dying.”

“Dying itself isn’t anything.”
“It’s just that Father not being here makes me lonely.”

“Well, is that how it is?”
“But even then, you didn’t cry at all, did you?”

“I don’t cry at times like that.”
“Then when do you cry?”

“When…”

“You’ve never cried before, have you?”
“Not often… No—there is, there was.”
“When was that?”

“It was a long time ago, but…”

When he was still little.
Masao was taken by his mother to a house in the countryside.
There was a grandfather wearing perfectly round glasses.
The spacious estate had a pond, a bamboo grove, and towering trees lining the grounds.
There were many mandarin orange trees.
All sorts of insects lived there.
A beautiful spider had spun its web.
He shuddered with disgust at slimy things like slugs and earthworms, yet would gaze endlessly at lizards’ vivid colors and found himself strangely drawn to snakes.
There was talk of a large snake.
They said it ruled the rice storehouse, catching and devouring mice.

One time, at the base of a summer mandarin tree, a large snake lay coiled.
A blue-striped snake as thick as Masao’s wrist lay coiled in a perfect ring, raising its triangular head from the center and flicking its slender, sharp tongue.
When he approached quietly, it slowly crawled out, grew to an astonishing length, and without looking back or hurrying, slithered away.
When he circled around to get ahead, it smoothly slid sideways—still without looking back—crawling sluggishly away…
It’s mocking people.
Masao, angered, suddenly ran up and grabbed it by the neck.
A chill ran through him.
Next, a chill ran through his shoulders and hips.
The snake must have writhed.
Masao, now frantic, put all his strength into his hands and headed toward the house.
The snake coiled its head around Masao’s hand, its lower body hanging limp, the tail dragging along the ground.
Masao had begun wailing at the top of his lungs.
While crying, he dragged the snake into the house.
Whether he was terrified, overjoyed, or simply desperate—in any case, he kept wailing and wailing, completely beside himself…

“I really did cry.”
“Does that even count as crying?”

“Why?”

“That’s just like yelling ‘waah!’ when you fall from somewhere high up, isn’t it?”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s no different than pinning someone down in a fight and wailing while punching them.”

“That’s not true.”

“Hmm, really? I’ve never once cried myself, so I wouldn’t know…”

“It’s because you’re an idiot.”

“Why?”
“An idiot doesn’t cry.”
“It’s the tough ones who don’t cry.”
“Even tough ones cry. Those who don’t are just fools or pretentious bastards.”

Chibi scratched his ear and blinked rapidly.
Masao grew smug.

“Anyone would cry.
They just rarely ever truly cry.
If it were just sniffling and moping around like you say, then girls and old women would be doing it all the time.”

“They’re always smiling.”

“And at strange times, unexpected times, completely ordinary times—they start sobbing quietly.
And when it gets really bad….”

Near Masao’s Tokyo home stood a shrine with a spacious and serene precinct, and its Niōmon gate hosted a multitude of nesting pigeons.
They were so accustomed to people that they would even peck beans right out of one’s palm.
Young women carrying infants on their backs and old women holding children’s hands could be seen here and there in the square.
On Sundays, even women selling beans would set up shop there.

Among them was one relatively elegant-looking old woman.
She came alone without anyone accompanying her, always carried beans, and took a long time to feed them to the pigeons.
And she would sometimes gaze vacantly, look around her, mutter something under her breath, or sit down on the stone bench and bow her head to stay perfectly still.
She would sometimes circle around the shrine several times.
She never paid her respects before the hall of worship.

Both the children and the pigeons had grown familiar with the old woman and gathered around her.
The pigeons cooed and gathered in a flock across the ground, and the children’s eyes sparkled.
Only the old woman herself remained strangely expressionless, seeming dazed, as she mechanically tossed beans little by little.
There was something peculiarly unapproachable and distant about her.
What could her trembling lips be muttering?
What could the head drooping to her chest on the stone bench be thinking?
At times, like raindrops collecting on leaves, tears would gather on sagging cheeks, completely unbidden.
The clear light in her small eyes would suddenly cloud over, and tears would gather thick on her eyelashes.
Even so, she herself remained coldly still.
No one seemed to pay attention to her tears.
Even she herself seemed unaware of her own tears.

“I’ve never seen anyone cry like that anywhere else.”
“It’s strange,” Masao said.

“Is that old woman still around?”

“She was around until spring this year.”
“After that, she stopped coming out.”

“That… the old woman who wore zori, right?”

“Yeah. You know her?”

Chibi shrugged and laughed.

“That’s a lunatic—she’s already dead.”
“She’s a lunatic?”
“You don’t know the whole story, so you can’t understand.”
“A foolish story.”

The old woman had one lovely granddaughter.
She was four or five years old—right at that adorable age.
Because she was her granddaughter, she was all the more precious.
The old woman often took her along and came out to play with the pigeons.
The girl contracted pneumonia and died in the hospital.
The old woman had completely lost her mind.
After that, she began coming to that shrine alone.
On rainy days, she would sob quietly at home.
When the weather cleared up, she would cheerfully come to play with the pigeons, bringing beans.

Once, on a festival evening, she bought a furoshiki cloth stuffed with toys and brought it home.
She had scattered all sorts of things around the tatami room—flower hairpins, flutes, drums, spinning tops, fireworks, xylophones, picture books, building blocks—so even her family began to think something was a bit off.

It was a little while after that.

The old woman was taken to the hospital.
It happened during the hospital director’s rounds.
In the crowded third-class ward that accommodated many patients, the hospital director had finished examining them with his doctors and nurses and was about to leave.
There, with her back to the door, stood an old woman.
She stood rigid as a pole, her head trembling faintly, glinting eyes fixedly scanning the room.
But she wasn’t truly seeing anything—her gaze wandered aimlessly through empty space.
Having drawn near, the hospital director finally noticed her.
He froze in surprise.
The old woman made no move.
An uneasy tension thickened the air.
Fortunately, one of the doctors recognized her.
In the ensuing commotion, they tried everything to calm the vacant-eyed woman—coaxing her gently, reasoning with her—until finally dispatching her home with a nurse in tow.

The family members were at a loss about what to do.
Just because she sometimes behaved strangely didn’t necessarily mean she was a lunatic.

Then a clever doctor appeared and hung a single memento kimono of her deceased daughter on a clothes rack in the old woman’s room.
It was just a kimono hanging there, but it had an effect.
Seeing it, she grew calm.
Then she fell asleep.
After four or five days, she died peacefully.
It was as if the hanging kimono had stifled her breath.
However, it was a quiet death.
The crucian carp on the bamboo sieve—as if gasping its mouth open and shut—finally moved its large mouth two or three times with a gurgle from its throat before going still.

“I saw that,” said Chibi.

Masao remained silent.

“What’s wrong?”

Masao was still silent.

“Don’t you understand? Even I don’t really understand. It’s a strange thing. There are those who hang up a lover’s kimono and stroke or embrace it, and then there are those like that old woman who stare at a daughter’s kimono hanging there, gasping with their mouths until they die—even I don’t really understand it.”

Masao remained silent as ever.

“You’re frightened by that story, aren’t you?”

Masao shook his head.

“I was thinking about birds.”

“Birds? What kind of birds?”

“What was that bird called again... When you go to the countryside, there’s one that cries ‘hoo hoo…’ in the pitch-dark night out in the fields, right?”

“Yeah, there is.”

“That one—there’s a story that it’s searching for its child.”
“The child disappeared, and no one knew where they’d gone.”
“The mother worried and searched everywhere.”
“No matter how much she looked, she couldn’t find out.”
“In the end, she turned into a bird and wandered all night long, and even now, they say she’s still crying ‘hoo hoo…’”

“Do you really tell such stories?”

“It’s definitely a made-up story.”

“Then what happens?”

“It was from the grandmother that I remembered that bird. I really like the call of that bird. Before coming here, when I was in the countryside, I heard it every night. The middle of a pitch-dark night in the rice fields is incredible. But when that bird cries, I feel at ease. No matter how pitch-dark the night you go out into, somewhere, it’s crying ‘hoo-hoo…’.”

During the roughly half month Masao spent in the countryside, he went river fishing nearly every night.
There was nothing as filled with mystery as a night river.
There were shallows, deep pools, caves—things in the mud, things on land, things in water, even things of the dark night—all manner of them lurked about.

Casting a net in the shallows of a large river wasn’t particularly interesting.
Drift fishing also wasn’t particularly interesting.
Using a blade to catch fish was somewhat unusual, but the rice plants had already grown too tall.

What thrilled him most was setting basket traps to catch fish. Thinly split bamboo was bent around a circular hoop, attached so that the tip narrowed, then twisted and bound with rope. Inside the cylindrical bamboo grate at the head—so to speak—another funnel-shaped bamboo grate was attached. When fish entered through that funnel-shaped part into the interior, exiting back out became difficult; with no other exits, they became completely trapped inside. The basket trap would be placed along the fish’s pathway, allowing water to flow only through there while blocking other areas with aquatic plants and mud.

They mainly set the basket traps at water inlets—sections of the ridge between rice paddies and rivers that had been cut away. As a habit, fish would enter the rice paddies to search for food from around dusk when evening began to darken. Then early in the morning at dawn, most would return to the river again. That was why they went to set the basket traps at the water inlets at night. Whether the water flowed from the fields to the river or from the river to the fields—that wasn’t an issue. They set the basket traps facing the direction where fish returning from the fields to the river would enter. They would go to retrieve them in the early morning, when the morning sun had not yet risen.

During the day, they would wander around scouting out spots where fish were likely to be, and fully opening up the water inlet of that paddy worked particularly well.

Carrying two moderately sized basket traps on their shoulders, they would head out around nine at night.
A dark night was ideal.
Even on a dark night, the surface of the water was faintly white.
Using that as a guide, they walked briskly along the overgrown path.
Only the sound of water from the weir could be heard in the hushed night.
Water filled both the river and rice paddies to the brim.
The riverside catkin willows crouched in strange shapes.
At times, a young monk would stand upright on the path ahead and splash into the river.
That eccentric otter.
That one could no longer play tricks on people.
Last autumn, that one had entered an old man’s large algae crab basket trap on the village outskirts—neatly captured alive—and become the old man’s prized fur.
Even creatures like kappa had already retreated into dream worlds.
Still, by the night riverbank, some strange and eerie things lurked.
But they were all just shadows.
The hoo-hoo bird cried in a clear, calm voice.
Hoo, hoo… hoo, hoo….
It felt at once near and far.
It never stayed still in one spot.
In the sky, stars glittered and sparkled.

They arrived at the targeted water inlet.
They submerged about four-fifths of the basket trap in water, blocked off the rest with aquatic plants and mud, then covered the trap’s top with more plants and mud.
And then they sprinkled two or three scoops of water over it.
That settled it.
The paddies seemed full of fish.
It wasn’t just fish.
There were also things of unknowable nature.
All of them would enter the basket traps when returning to the river.
Great anxiety and expectation… it continued until they returned home, and continued even into their dreams.

Morning was something to look forward to.
The sun had not yet risen.
A white morning, then soon a red morning.
Dew clung damply to the grass by the roadside.
The stars in the vast sky glittered oddly bright.
Had the things from the rice paddies already returned to the river?
He wavered over whether to approach the basket traps slowly or quickly.
And finally, he set to work on them.
The rough resistance meant a big one had gotten in.
When pulling up the traps, those splashing with vigor were crucian carp, carp, and dace.
The heavy, sluggish ones were catfish, eels, and loaches.
When water drained smoothly from the basket trap, it meant failure—there might be four or five medaka at best, or sometimes nothing at all.
When successful, the basket trap would be about half full.

Masao went to set basket traps every night.
He couldn’t go alone, but there was a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old manservant at that house who always accompanied him and usually did most of the work himself.
The hoo-hoo bird was always calling somewhere, which was both pleasant and reassuring.

One evening, after setting three basket traps and preparing to head back, they spotted a single light in the distance.
It was coming along a single path between the rice paddies toward them.
In the thrilling work of dark nights, encountering someone carrying a light was an unwelcome thing.
While hesitating about whether to hide somewhere, the light approached with tremendous speed.
It was a large, bright red fire—not the light of a lantern, nor an electric light, nor a torch… an unknowable fireball.
The red fireball came alone, along a path through rice fields shut in darkness, soundlessly and with tremendous force.
Masao and the others stood rooted there, and in the instant they were about to leap into the rice paddy, the fireball vanished with a puff.
Their vision went completely dark, and their hair stood on end.
And after some time had passed, they first became aware of hearing that clear, nostalgic voice—hoo, hoo… hoo, hoo….
Never had they felt so glad for the hoo-hoo bird as in that moment.

“What was that fireball?” Chibi asked.

“I don’t know.”

Chibi snickered faintly.

“There’s no such thing.
You’re just seeing things because you’re so jumpy.”

“But there is such a thing. I really did see it.”

“You just thought you saw it.”

“I really did see it—both of us did.”

“Both of you…? If two people saw a ghost, then ghosts must exist—is that your logic?”

“It doesn’t matter. Whether ghosts exist or not—it makes no difference either way.”

When mother was still alive, he never went into the bathroom exactly at six in the evening.
At exactly six in the evening, it was the time when monsters entered the bathroom, and if people went in then, some part of their body would inevitably get clawed.
Mother used to laugh, saying it had been that way since Grandmother’s time—since ages past.
However, in reality, Masao would sometimes find scratches on his body that he didn’t remember getting.
He had carelessly forgotten about six in the evening.
After Mother died and no one spoke of it anymore, those things stopped happening altogether.

“What does it matter either way?”

Chibi silently looked at Masao’s face.

“It’s fine not to decide on one or the other.”

“That’s right,” said Chibi.

“Then what?”

“That’s fine as it is.”

Both of them fell silent.

After a while, Chibi said, as if suddenly remembering.

“Your father wanted to settle it one way or the other.”
“Or rather, I wonder if he was hoping for there to be something mysterious.”
“He must have been a little unhinged.”
“Once, late at night…”

It must have been around two in the morning when Mr.Minami, thoroughly drunk yet still giving directions to the driver, arrived at his home.
In the past, Ms.Yamane would stay awake and attend to him with an attitude that was neither quite sisterly nor wifely, but after various things happened, that too had ceased.
By midnight, Ms.Yamane would be asleep, Masao was already sleeping, and the maid too was asleep.
Mr.Minami had to climb over the wooden fence to get into the house.
A short distance from the roofed gate, beside the side door leading to the kitchen entrance, stood a stone post about half a meter tall.
It had originally been used to lean a trash can against, but now only the stone remained, serving as a car barrier.
Mr.Minami climbed onto it, leaped to the top of the wooden fence, grabbed the protruding trunk of the crape myrtle there, entered the inner garden, and moved along the bamboo-fenced path.
He pushed open the front door, entered inside, locked the door, washed his face and hands in the washroom, and then finally settled down in the tearoom.
These actions were governed solely by habit and instinct; no matter how heavily intoxicated he was, there was not a moment of deviation.

That night too, up to that point, it had been as usual, but after drinking two or three cups of the prepared bancha, Mr.Minami crossed his arms and sank into thought.
His face had lost both its drunken flush and natural color, turning coldly and starkly pale.
His eyes were fixed in midair, unmoving.
Then, suddenly flashing a sarcastic smile, he stood up, took out a blank sheet of paper from the closet, spread it out on the dining table, and held his right palm flat two or three centimeters above the paper, seeming to focus his mind intently.
His hand trembled faintly, but the white paper beneath remained utterly still.
After a while, he withdrew his hand and let out a sigh.
He stared at the blank paper once more and extended his right hand over it.
After repeating this several times, he suddenly stripped off his kimono, even shedding his underrobe, stroked his lower abdomen, fixed his gaze and held his breath while holding his right palm over the blank paper, throwing himself into the effort with utter abandon.
Despite this, strangely enough, a shadow of a sarcastic, self-deprecating smile floated at the corner of his pale cheek.
That nude bust was no longer a human figure…

It was rather absurd.
That slight absurdity lingering in your own mind’s corner—it was doomed from the start.

At Chibi’s voice—or perhaps due to the failure—Mr.Minami became enraged, tore the blank paper to shreds, crumpled it in his hand, and flung it away…

“Even back then, I already thought your father was unstable,” said Chibi.

Masao remained silent.

“Didn’t you realize what that was about?”

“That… why did he hold his hand over the paper?” Masao asked.

“Ordinary magic. It can be done with some chemicals.”
“The paper has a trick to it.”
“If you hold your palm over the paper, it’ll rise up and cling to your hand.”
“He ends up turning it into something like spirit or psychic phenomena.”
“You can’t do it with regular paper.”

“Seems like it could work, though.”

“No way that works.”
“If you can do it, go ahead and try.”
“But your father knew all about that.”
“Knowing full well, he tried it with regular paper—that’s what’s strange.”
“Though truth be told, he seemed a bit off from the beginning…”

It was a back room of a certain café.
The second and first floors formed an ordinary hall—though it was narrow—and at the back of the second floor, directly above the modest kitchen on the first floor, there was one small room.
It had probably been the previous owner’s bedroom—likely a Madame or someone—but now served as both a laboratory and reception room for the new proprietor.
A man around fifty years old, unmarried, harboring an aspiration to concoct wonderfully exotic beverages—the sort who wouldn’t be out of place in foreign metropolises but seemed a bit odd in Japan.
He delighted in having his friends sample sweet, spicy, intense, and suspicious-looking cocktails.
Moreover, he was a member of the Amateur Magician Club, and his skills here were more reliable than his cocktails.
The paper that clung to palms was something he devised—a hybrid of magic tricks and beverages.

That evening at Miyagawa’s place, Mr.Minami drank suspicious-looking cocktails with two or three acquaintances, watched Miyagawa’s magic tricks, and then conducted the paper experiment.
At that moment, someone suggested that the paper clinging to palms wasn’t solely due to chemicals but might also involve some mental power, sparking a drunken contest.
Miyagawa kept the specifics of the chemicals secret, but when one held their palm over the paper, the palm’s temperature acted on the chemicals applied to it, triggering a chemical reaction that drew the paper upward toward the hand.
Therefore, the closer the distance between palm and paper, the better; if it was even five centimeters apart, it wouldn’t work properly.
When he attempted to demonstrate it at roughly a cigarette’s length distance, Mr.Minami began insisting and obstinately kept trying.
He had become an advocate of mental power.
If one took the length of a Shikishima cigarette as eight and a half centimeters, he claimed that by adding mental power to the chemical action from that height, the paper would be drawn up.
He made them prepare sheet after sheet of paper, sweat beading on his forehead as he frantically reached out his hand—a spectacle that defied any notion of sanity.
Finally, he grew angry, declared he was leaving first, and stormed out alone.

About an hour later, Mr.Minami leaned against a wooden table at a certain bar, drinking sake while lost in silent thought.
Just then, a middle-aged man entered alone. In the cramped establishment, there were only a few tables, and only the spot in front of Mr.Minami remained vacant.
Mr.Minami raised his face, amiably offered the vacated seat ahead to the hesitating man, pulled his small dish closer, had the waitress wipe the table, and spoke familiarly to the stranger.
“Alcohol’s a strange thing—days you want to quit entirely and days you feel like drowning yourself in it, but never once does the thought of half-hearted moderation cross your mind…” he began abruptly.
The man wearing a suit jacket over his workman’s shirt—tanned face wearing a kindly smile, calloused hands with split nails carefully lifting the sake cup—replied mournfully: “I quit smoking alright, but drinking’s another matter. Even today I’m sneaking out behind my wife’s back.”
“Used mint when I quit smoking.”
“Eight years now—eight years.”
“Alcohol’s bad for the body sure enough, but with this construction contracting business… Drink all you like and never get drunk—rotten habit really. Must’ve gotten addicted somehow…”

“—Oh, is that so?”
“I don’t mind addiction, but not getting drunk when you drink—well, that’s truly a bad habit.”
“If you keep such a bad habit, you’ll never be any good.”
“There’s no need to quit drinking, but you should make sure to get drunk when you do.”
“That too comes down to how you steel your resolve.”
“It’s strange—when the other person gets drunk, you end up never getting drunk yourself.”
“You end up falling behind, I see.”
“You have to get ahead of it.”
“It’s like war—seizing the initiative.”
“When you have no opponent and are drinking alone, alcohol itself becomes your opponent.”
“You have to seize the initiative against alcohol.”
“One… two… maybe three—you resolve to get drunk with this, right?”
“You steel your resolve to get drunk and go into it.”
“Then next comes despising alcohol.”
“To drink alcohol while despising alcohol—that’s the crucial point.”
“To eat while despising food, to love women while despising women, to live in society while despising society, to interact with people while despising people, to drink alcohol while trivializing alcohol… From that arises a subtle flavor, and you can truly get drunk.”
“Even if it still doesn’t become interesting—if you truly can’t get drunk—you just toss it all aside.”
“You steel your resolve to get drunk, approach it with genuine contempt, and then you drink…”

While offering such advice, Mr.Minami smoked and drank, but suddenly—as if realizing Ah, your wife must be waiting—he prompted the man to leave and rose from his seat.
Then left alone, he wore a sneering smile of contempt—though its target remained unclear—as he drank another glass and departed.
He didn’t appear particularly drunk, yet his legs faltered.
It wasn’t so much staggering as his knees seeming devoid of strength.
He stepped down from the sidewalk to the roadway and walked straight ahead.
Each step had unnaturally lost its springiness, his knees threatening to buckle at any moment as if collapsing beneath him.
People sometimes walk like that before or after a grave illness...

“But he wasn’t sick,” Masao said.
“He wasn’t that drunk.”
“He must have lost his strength.”
“That’s why it’s strange.”
“If he’d been studying intensely or not sleeping at night, that would make sense… But if he wasn’t sick either…”

Masao remained silent.

“I gave him all sorts of advice too, but he didn’t seem to understand.”

“Your advice was no good.”

“Why do you think?”

“I think Father wanted something.”
“Like what?”

"Well... I don't really understand it either."

"It's probably something pointless anyway."

“But there’s something strange.”
“Another ancient tale? Or a ghost story?”
“No… It’s something that really happened.”

From school, Masao had been on a field trip.
All his classmates gathered and climbed Mount Takao.
On the mountaintop, among various things being sold, there were many bamboo flutes.
Most of them bought one.
After visiting the shrine and eating lunch in the back hills, when free playtime began, they started playing flutes here and there.
There were also those who entered the grove and became engrossed in trying to lure small birds.
One of them misstepped and tumbled down a steep cliff.
It was a pit-like cliff hidden by a small thicket of trees.
He plunged straight into it, startling nearby students.
Then it turned into a commotion.
The teacher came running over.
Fortunately, the cliff wasn’t that high.

When they circled around and reached the cliff base, the fallen student lay there in a daze. He had only scraped his elbows and knees slightly. The strange thing was that he had been gripping something in his right hand—even after being helped up, tended to, regaining his senses, and bursting into tears, he still kept that hand tightly clenched. When they finally pried open his hand, it wasn’t a flute—it was a pebble. Where he had picked it up—likely just as he was tumbling down—he was gripping it with all his might. When they made him open his hand and discard it, he suddenly burst into violent sobs.—Because that was so amusing, they gave him the nickname "Pebble." But whenever he was called "Pebble," he would fly into a rage and refuse to speak.

“So what about it?” Chibi asked.
“That’s all there was to it.”

“Oh, that’s not interesting at all.”

“But you know, when you’re in a dream or something and you fall from a high place—”
“You just keep falling smoothly through the air.”
“It’s really terrifying.”
“In moments like that, if you were gripping something tightly in your hand—a pebble or a piece of wood—maybe it wouldn’t be so terrifying.”

“Not sure about that.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“I don’t have dreams or anything.”

“So I don’t really get it.”

Chibi scratched his ear.
Masao said after a while.
“Actually, gripping a pebble or something like that is really awkward.”
“If it were me, I’d fall with both hands spread out.”

“Either way, it’s the same.”

“That’s not it.”
“You just don’t get it.”
“You don’t understand anything about Father either.”
“Even though Father had lost his strength, he still had enough left to jump into the sea.”
“I think he jumped in with both hands spread out.”

“There’s nothing impressive about that.”

“It’s not about being impressive.”

“Then what is it?”

Masao did not respond.
Chibi also fell silent.
Both of them had encountered something strangely lonely.

The slight awkwardness in Mr.Minami’s gait wasn’t only present when he was drunk.
Even normally, his knee joints sometimes lacked elasticity, and he walked stiffly, like someone with a mild stroke.
And then, for example, when taking a bowl or chopsticks, he would sometimes misjudge the distance, his hand veering off to the side.
He often knocked over teapots and cups.
He seemed to have lost his bodily balance.

However, Mr.Minami himself appeared deeply lost in thought, yet remained composed and calm.

When someone referred to as Ms.Mishima’s uncle came over, Mr.Minami amiably invited him upstairs—Masao also knew this Ms.Mishima, a young woman. Once when she visited their house, there had been a time when Masao received a large inkstand made of marble and blue glass from her. She was a short woman of medium build wearing a kimono with prominent purple stripes and white lines. The clean slender arc of her eyebrows and thin sharply defined lips became etched in Masao’s mind—both features that must have been artificially drawn. As for her eyes, nose or overall facial structure, Masao retained no memory.

Aunt Nakane told Mr.Minami that Ms.Mishima’s uncle was terribly indignant. “Did you really say such things?” she asked.

“I gave her ten or twenty yen each time,” he replied. “Whenever she said she wanted to buy something this time around, she always left happy.”

“Even if I’d been involved with some café waitress,” Mr.Minami continued, “I wouldn’t have spent a single sen.”

“She was the only one I ever paid.”

“Do you have any complaints about that? Think carefully.” Aunt Nakane calmly pressed him about whether he’d made such remarks.

After discussing matters with Mr.Minami in the second-floor room for about an hour, Ms.Mishima’s uncle left quietly. Mr.Minami saw him off with the same composed courtesy he showed ordinary visitors. Aunt Nakane too maintained her formal demeanor.

—After that, when Mr.Kihara came, Aunt Nakane appeared livid.
Mr.Minami had borrowed a thousand yen at exorbitant interest to give to Ms.Mishima’s uncle, with Mr.Kihara mediating to smooth everything over.
Though Mr.Kihara laboriously explained that this represented Mr.Minami’s utmost contempt rather than capitulation to extortion, Aunt Nakane remained utterly unreceptive until finally sealing her lips altogether.
This silence itself became her indictment.

The bizarrely tangled incident left the house cold.
Yet another incident seemed to chill Mr.Minami himself.

At that time, a sort of group had formed among Mr.Minami’s acquaintances and primarily his juniors. It was a liberal gathering that claimed to break free from all forms of established structures and habitual patterns of thought to return to primal wildness, but in reality, it ended up being nothing more than passive criticism, with no actual activities undertaken. One of them had been arrested on the grounds of being involved in left-wing activities or something. Regarding that rescue effort, Mr.Minami declared: “It’s best to leave it alone.” “One must not side with cheap sentimentalism under the banner of attacking individualism.” Then later, when reprimanded by the school authorities where he was employed, Mr.Minami stated that such groups were a sort of mental entertainment establishment, no different than drinking companions. When this became known, it seems several people confronted him, but Mr.Minami affirmed everything and maintained a cold, haughty demeanor.

However, both the story about Ms.Mishima and the matter of the group remained exceedingly vague and ambiguous, and even Masao didn’t fully grasp them. But around that time, Mr.Minami would often go out drinking, lived a rather dissipated life, and hardly studied at all; when at home, he would lie down as if lost in thought, only to drift into a doze before he knew it. He slept soundly day and night. When awake, he grew restless and irritable—climbing to the second-floor study or descending to the garden, his knees shaking, his hands trembling, his gaze downcast. He often wandered outside late at night.

One night, Masao woke with an uneasy feeling. A presence seemed to press down on him. When he half-opened his eyes hazily, the room swam in the dim blur of a two-candlepower bulb. Within that haze loomed a large figure at his side. Paralyzed under its oppressive weight yet finding it equally still, he took in the details—a crisply aligned kimono collar, angular shoulders, a neck craned forward, and the pallid entirety of a familiar face peering down. From below, cheekbones and nostrils jutted grotesquely large, hair streaming back like ink spilled in reverse. Masao widened his eyes and stared unblinkingly.

“Are you awake?” A whisper stirred the air as the figure swayed.

“Sleep quietly,” came another murmur. Without so much as a twitch in his stony cheeks, Father rose and glided from the room.

Masao half-rose.
Then he cast a glance toward where Aunt Nakane lay sleeping across the way, stood up quietly, and left the room.

Father was sitting in the tearoom.
When he saw Masao, he showed no surprise and smiled gently.
“It’s a splendid evening—the fog has blanketed everything,” he said as he stood up.
Masao came wearing a kimono.
Father had been waiting at the entrance.
The two of them went outside.

A thick fog, rare for Tokyo, hung so densely that nothing beyond ten meters was visible.
The sparse streetlamps cast striped patterns of light through the haze, their glow floating mid-air where roof edges and tree branches hung suspended—all else dissolved into swirling whiteness.
The fog seeped into eyes, noses, lips.
After walking silently for some time, Mr.Minami abruptly halted and stared intently with a soft “Oh…”.
From an earthen embankment sloped beside them protruded a hinoki cypress branch.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Mr.Minami asked Masao over his shoulder.
Peering closer, Masao saw dew clinging thickly to every needle tip—
crystalline droplets clear as ice, glittering coldly.
Not even rain could accumulate so densely.
The fog must have condensed here into countless water beads.
When shaken, they fell in a heavy shower.
“Let me show you properly,” said Mr.Minami, hoisting Masao against his chest.
Masao stared at the glistening cluster before yanking the branch down hard—
drenching them both in icy droplets from head to toe.
They laughed aloud.
They moved to the next hinoki cypress.
Masao pulled another branch—
and again they stood laughing beneath the cold deluge.

“There was something off about that night,” Masao said.

“Why’s that?” Chibi asked.

“It’s strange we walked outside so late with Father and played while getting drenched in droplets. Back then, Father never paid me any attention, and I thought he seemed kind of unclean too.”

“Seemed unclean?”

“I felt like all sorts of unpleasant smells had seeped into him.”
“Maybe so.”
“That’s not it. I just felt that way.”

“So you’re saying he doused you with dew to cleanse you?”

“Anyone who says that is an idiot.”

Chibi scratched his ear and fell silent.
Then he said, as if sharing a secret.
"You probably don’t know this, but that night—after we returned home and went to bed—Father was crying."

“That’s a lie. After I got into bed, I was happy.”

“As for Father, he was really crying.”

“…………”

“Even after he fell asleep, tears kept flowing from his eyes.”

“It’s the same either way.”

“That’s strange. You’re always saying ‘different, different,’ yet that’s the only thing that’s the same?”

“Different things are different, same things are the same.”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“That’s right. So that’s fine.”

“Oh well.”
“Anyway, foggy nights are strange.”

“Since then, I’ve made it a habit to walk outside whenever it’s foggy at night.”
“The other day too…”

It was not evening.
However, on days of thick fog in the mountain region, even daytime became indistinguishable from night.
To put it better, it was an eternal twilight.
The weather had been mild until afternoon when fog emerged, growing denser by the minute until it formed a pale white swirl of unfathomable depth and breadth.
Masao darted outside.
Walking uphill through the field as though swimming, he saw the forest's edge intermittently appear and vanish through the haze, beyond which an even heavier fog seemed to stagnate.
Masao headed toward the forest.
The surrounding woods consisted entirely of broadleaf trees, their leaves simply damp without any glistening dewdrops.
Masao gradually ventured deeper into the forest.
He reached a spot where coniferous trees stood intertwined.
Yet even these bore few beautiful dewdrops on their needles.
Masao pressed onward.
The terrain gradually sloped downward until he found himself in what resembled a valley gorge.
There the forest ended abruptly, giving way to a grassy clearing whose far side lay sealed behind curtains of dense fog.

A suspicious sound came.
Several more followed.
They quieted briefly before resounding all at once.
They seemed to come from trees at the forest's far edge.
Masao approached with utmost caution.
Through thick fog within what resembled a chinquapin thicket, something stirred.
It emitted noises.
Peering closer revealed two or three monkeys.
Smaller ones whimpered while larger ones scratched their heads.
More lingered beyond them.
Others perched above.
The little ones leapt between branches as adults occasionally gave chase.

Masao crouched there and stared intently. Then he chuckled softly. He wore Western-style clothing. He snapped off a small twig from a nearby bush, tucked it into the band on his back, and stuck another into his collar. Then he dropped to all fours and crept gradually toward the monkeys. Whether due to the twigs or his crawling posture, they didn’t seem to notice him. Masao reached the base of the chinquapin tree. Directly above, monkeys cried and leaped about. He meant to catch one of the small ones alive—but it remained out of reach. As he wondered whether he could climb the massive trunk… something suddenly pounced onto his shoulder. The moment it landed, it shrieked sharply and scrambled up the tree. As if this were a signal, all the monkeys erupted in cries at once. With a sound like rushing wind, they fled branch-to-branch into the distance. Masao stood alone, dumbfounded.

“You’re such an idiot. They didn’t have to run away,” said Masao.

“You’re being stupid – crawling around on all fours like that. You should just walk normally,” said Chibi.
“If you do that, they’ll run away even faster.”

“They wouldn’t have run away.”
“If they’d known you were human from the start, they wouldn’t have cared.”
“But you went crawling around like that, so when they jumped on you, it startled them.”

Masao was silent for a while but suddenly spoke up.

“Oh, I get it now.”

“Get what?”

“You’re always stuck in that way of thinking.”

“…”

“Even if you went, the monkeys wouldn’t run away.”
“That’s why you say things like that.”
“But I’m different from you.”

“That’s not it at all.”

“No—that’s not it.”
“We’re entirely different things.”

“So what does that mean?”

“And yet, you always assume people are just like you.”

“I don’t assume anything.”

“But you’re thinking that way.”
“So you don’t even understand about my father.”
“And you don’t understand about me either.”

“Well, I don’t fully understand that.”

“So don’t say such weird things.”

Chibi scratched his ear and fell silent.
Then he said ingratiatingly,

“When we get back to Tokyo, why don’t you take a walk on a foggy night?”
“With me.”
“The best time is when dewdrops have gathered on the leaves.”
“Then I’ll leap up to any height, sweep them all off, and drench you as much as you want.”

“Yeah, let’s walk.”

Masao simply answered like that and absently gazed at the clouds in the vast sky.
Chibi also fell silent and gazed at the clouds.
The clouds were flowing swiftly high in the sky.
Masao abruptly stood up.

“It’s gotten a bit cold.”
“Let’s run.”

The two of them started running through the grassland.