Pathway to Japanese Literature

Coming to the mountain hot spring threw off my bearings.
There must have been a miscalculation somewhere.

For what should been small items for a mere two- or three-night trip, Akiko had brought a slightly oversized suitcase containing a lined kimono and undergarments.
But there was no obi.
After emerging from the bath she would shed her yukata and tanzen robe, then sit at the dining table in a gaudy crimson-and-blue striped silk kimono with a Hakata-ori red sash cinched tightly about her waist—fixing her eyes directly upon my face.
Her eyes—irises riding high over seemingly dilated pupils—possessed a gaze that adhered not to seeing objects but to clinging upon their surfaces.
It clung to my face—to my skin—with tenacious insistence.

I had lost—I had no choice but to admit it.

“Won’t you have some sake?”

Out of habit, her words carried a polite yet familiar tone. It wasn’t an affectation of marital intimacy, but rather something that flowed out naturally.

“Yeah, I’ll drink.”

I felt compelled to drink myself into oblivion.

She too was fond of sake.
When the edges of beautiful double eyelids faintly reddened, and then cheeks and ears turned red, those eyes directed toward me clung even more tenaciously to my skin.

Naturally, I drank faster.

But suddenly setting down my cup, I sank into thought.

Separate living—if not full separation, then at least separate living.
—That resolution came surging back.
Of course, this had nothing to do with Akiko.
It was about sake.
To put it simply, it meant neither cohabiting with alcohol through constant drinking nor divorcing it through total abstinence, but rather practicing moderation through separate living—an utterly unreliable approach that was in fact the most difficult of all.

When I thought about it, I had always been fond of sake, but becoming such a heavy drinker seemed to have coincided with discovering my own talent.
When people called them bootleg magazines or whatnot, and I went around declaring that any self-respecting editor of a prominent publication favored by society simply had to drink bootleg sake at the very least—those days weren’t so bad yet.
However, when I discovered within myself—this very editor—the talent of an excellent writer, the situation progressed.
The talent of this excellent writer was rather peculiar—first and foremost, it lay in composing bad prose.
All so-called good writing flows smooth and slippery, offering no handholds to grasp nor footholds to brace against—but bad prose? Rubble litters every path, thorns protrude, uneven patches abound; it snags you at every turn, thoroughly satisfying one’s appetite for reading.
Secondly, it was about trampling on logical reasoning.
Well-reasoned things are all trite—disregarding reason, ignoring logic, piling up absurd leaps suits the tastes of modern half-paralyzed minds.
Thirdly, establishing abnormal characters and events.
This very thing satisfies curiosity while opening new frontiers of knowledge—it’s the most crucial element—yet in reality, one can easily achieve it with a modicum of observation and imagination.
I possessed talents in those areas.
And so, in addition to my real name as an editor, I acquired several pen names as a writer and began drinking bootleg liquor in quantities matching those multiple personas.

However, excessive labor cannot be sustained indefinitely.
What I wrote gradually became formulaic and lost its vitality.
Meanwhile, the magazine's sales themselves were no longer doing well, and I had to make double the effort.
Consequently, I came to rely increasingly on kastori.
However, kastori only depletes both physical and mental strength without providing any nourishment whatsoever.
By the time I noticed this, it was already too late; I myself felt that my drinking had begun to transition from mere habit into full-blown addiction.
Nevertheless, I did not lose confidence in my talent.
I resolved to quit kastori as much as possible and switch to drinking proper sake and Western liquor.
In other words, I simply substituted one type of alcohol for another.
Then, when staying up late, I employed Philopon, and when turning in early, I utilized Adorm in an attempt to regulate my mind.

Even so, the depletion of my creativity was impossible to conceal. To escape this crisis, I resolved—several times, ultimately daily—to moderate my drinking. That resolution conversely resulted in me drinking sake every day. To say "only today" meant nothing other than that just today was unconditionally permitted. And the day called today always, always existed. The fact that my magazine salary, manuscript fees, and editing fees had become somewhat freely available was problematic, but even without that, money for alcohol—unlike other expenses—could always be scraped together with a little effort. In short, the very existence of today was the problem. Even were I to cry out in Nietzschean fashion—"How base thy pleasures are!"—it would only hold true come tomorrow.

While dreaming of tomorrow, I spent each day called today.
My body was breaking down.
At times my stomach ached, my flank ached, my lower back swayed unsteadily, my knees trembled, my neck muscles twitched.
My mind was perpetually shrouded in a hazy fog.
Forgetfulness grew severe.
I often woke up in bed with hands and feet numb.

Late at night while drinking at Sugisachi, I suddenly broke out in a full-faced sweat, steam billowing from my head.
I vigorously wiped my face with a handkerchief, then asked Akiko to bring three sake flasks all at once.
Though there were no other guests left and the fire seemed to have died down, Akiko remained ever obedient.

I drank a cup from one sake flask.
"This is myself."
I drank a cup from the next sake flask.
"This is sake."
I drank a cup from the next sake flask.
"This is Sugisachi."

Tears welled up in my eyes.

“All three of us will live separately from tomorrow.”

“Is this some sort of incantation?” Akiko said.

“This is serious.”
“Even married couples sometimes practice separate living.”
“Me, sake, and Sugisachi—we got along even better than married couples ever did.”
“But I’ve made up my mind.”
“From tomorrow—separate living.”

“Why don’t you just divorce me instead?”

“I won’t divorce you.”
“Abstinence is a man’s shame.”
“No call for shame.”
“Just separate living, separate living, separate living…”

I drank one cup from each of the three flasks.

“I won’t give you a single drop of this.”
“I’ll end up drinking all of it by myself.”
Kinoshita Ryozo: first a cup of special-grade sake; next a cup of Sugisachi; then another cup.
“From tomorrow, let’s go with amicably separate living.”
“It isn’t some fight-induced split.”
“Separate living, separate living…”

Filled with melodramatic resolve, I shed tears.
There are various ways to get drunk, but for me, crying while drunk—this was the first time.
I lowered my face, mumbled incoherently into my collar, and drained all three flasks.

When I looked up, Akiko was still there. She was staring fixedly in my direction. Those eyes didn’t waver when I met their gaze, showed no expression, and clung tenaciously to my skin. Octopus suckers, leech mouth suckers—that’s the sensation. My insides suddenly ran cold.

Even now at this mountain hot spring, Akiko fixed upon me the same gaze as that time. My resolution regarding alcohol and separate living—she did not even glance at it. What I said through tears that time—she had clean forgotten it all. As soon as we came to this hot spring inn, she had specially procured sake for me. Even so, as I drank sake, I muttered “separate living, separate living” under my breath. As for me, I didn’t have such a firm resolution either. In truth, more than the alcohol, it was those eyes.

I cannot recall when it began, but I started seeing hallucinations of eyes.
At first, it was a vague sensation that something—someone—was staring fixedly at me, but eventually a single eye emerged in clear form.

The sensation that someone watches you during moments of mental distraction must be something most people experience.
This occurs most frequently when engaged in shameful acts.
And this watcher may be called God or devil or simply deemed self-consciousness.

Yet mine was no such ephemeral thing.
Something stared fixedly at me with concrete existence.
That eye would eventually manifest materially.
And there were only eyes - nothing else attended them.

Maupassant wrote in several short stories from his later years about how one’s form detaches from oneself and does what one intends to do beforehand. When you enter the study intending to work, that entity is already sitting at the desk working. When you try to drink water, that entity pours water from the pitcher into a glass and drinks it. When you try to pick a roadside flower, that entity plucks it first. In a momentary illusion, that entity’s form vanishes instantly, but the action is indeed accomplished. Lombroso proved that Maupassant himself was afflicted by such hallucinations. It was fundamentally due to illness. A doctor I know also said that such hallucinations were possible. I had that doctor give me a physical examination, but I had no illness.

My form detaches itself and acts independently.
I don’t suffer such absurd hallucinations.
Yet time and again, I distinctly see a third party’s eyes.

As I walked along the path through the burned-out ruins, I suddenly stopped to gaze at a clump of grass sprouting young leaves—when a single eye appeared within that grass, staring fixedly at me.

In the shadow of a cabaret pillar, licking a whiskey glass—the moment the music cut out and silence fell, a single eye materialized in midair and stared fixedly at me.

When I looked at the small willow branches drooping at the riverbank's edge and, in the evening, was pondering whether the branches were heavy or the new leaves were heavy—a foolish thing to wonder—a single eye emerged from within the willows and stared fixedly at me.

Exhausted from drink, I entered my room, flopped onto my back and closed my eyes; when I dazedly opened them, there was a single eye on the ceiling staring fixedly at me.

It was always a single eye.
Never two.
Yet this wasn't strange in the slightest—it felt perfectly natural.
They came in various sizes, yet there was nothing unnatural about them.
So while its form was distinctly that of an eye, it might just as well have been called a gaze.
And yet, it continued to stare fixedly at me.
There was no curiosity in that gaze—only persistence.
Therefore, it could no longer even be called a gaze.
In other words, it was an eye exactly fixed upon me.

I attributed the manifestation of that eye to alcohol's effects，to Philopon's effects，to Adorm's effects.
And I came to seriously consider separate living from alcohol.

But what astonished me was how those eyes had gradually come to overlap with Akiko's eyes.
Even calling it that didn't seem entirely truthful.
Whether they'd been separate entities from the start or fundamentally one - I could no longer tell.
When brought together they overlapped without any discrepancy, yet physically existed in separate spaces.
For me - if one was hallucination then so was the other; if one was reality then so was its counterpart; yet either could still mirror its opposite.

I had been possessed.
I was the one defeated.

The very foundation was flawed from inception.
It traces back to when we rented Sugisachi's second floor for that ill-fated symposium.

During that era when various faiths—whether you called them folk religions or heterodox sects—were emerging, with ecstatic cult leaders drawing followers to their circles, my magazine organized a roundtable discussion inviting three individuals: an authority on psychical research, a literary scholar, and a polymath, aiming to create something as accessible and engaging as possible.
After the transcription was completed, while continuing to drink sake, the casual conversation naturally veered toward the uncanny.
A great many absurd tales and eerie accounts emerged.

“There are things that simply defy comprehension,” said my colleague Kuroda.

He drank heavily one night and boarded the last train on the Chuo Line home.
Since the buses had already stopped running, he walked about three kilometers from the station.
There was a police box halfway, which he reached without incident, but beyond that point, no matter how far he walked, the path refused to end.
It wasn’t a single path, but since he sometimes walked it, there was no reason to get lost—yet no matter how far he walked, he couldn’t reach home.
As the intoxication from alcohol began to wear off, he simply kept walking aimlessly.
Even so, he began to feel as though he was moving further away from home, as if his house existed in some infinitely distant place.
It wasn’t that he had lost his way on the path—it felt more like being lost within space itself.
Even so, as he kept walking, someone called out, “Hey.”
A policeman was standing there and asked him where he was going.
When he came to his senses, he was back in front of the police box he had definitely passed earlier.
“You’ve passed through here three times already. Where on earth are you trying to go?”
The policeman questioned him suspiciously.
Kuroda’s mind began to clear, and he found himself appalled at his own state.
Apparently, he had simply been making a large detour, passing in front of the police box three times without noticing.
“It might have been the first step in being fooled by a fox,” Kuroda confessed.

Such things could happen even within the Tokyo metropolitan area.
In the countryside, even more inexplicable phenomena occurred in abundance.
Fox possession went without saying; the depth of mystery surrounding specters' curses, dead spirits, living spirits, and such matters defied measurement.
That was precisely what these experimental accounts had described.
Yet even this inexplicability had its limits: those who possessed and those who worshipped did not truly exist, while those who were possessed and those who were worshipped—in other words, the human psyche alone—constituted reality, reducing it all to mere psychopathology.
Having acknowledged this much, the authority on psychical research then insisted on the spirit world's existence.

“The spirit world exists.”
“It’s simply that ordinary people cannot communicate with the spirit world—those with special abilities, psychics, can do so.”

During the casual conversation after the stenographic session, Madam and Akiko joined in while pouring drinks.
Madam asked.

“In the spirit world, might there also be spirits like foxes and raccoon dogs?”

“There are.”
“There are all sorts of spirits.”
“Tengu spirits often reach out through psychics.”

Then the talk turned back to ghost stories.

I discovered something unexpected.
Until then, I had utterly despised ghost stories, superstitions, and the spirit world—yet in truth, those very things seemed to intoxicate my mind like alcohol and appeared poised to become an even greater nourishment for my psyche than liquor itself.
Religion may be opium, but setting aside such standardized doctrines, it was monsters, apparitions, and demons that seemed likely to invigorate my withered creative faculties.

I drank sake happily.
Even after the gathering disbanded, I entrusted Kuroda and Andō with seeing the guests off to Shinbashi Station and stayed behind alone to drink sake.

“Let’s drink a bit more. Tonight was interesting.”

I called over Madam and Akiko.

“If we suppose there are spirits of foxes and raccoon dogs, there must be instances of people worshiping them or being possessed by them.”

I thought what Madam said made sense.

“Mr. Kuroda, you’ve got no backbone. If you’d truly allowed yourself to be possessed by a fox, it would’ve been far more interesting.”

I found Akiko’s words bracing.

“That’s right! If it were me, I’d really let myself be possessed.”
“How about you?”

“I’ll show you I can be possessed too.”

“Then shall I possess you?”

“Yes, please do. In return, I’ll possess you too.”

Madam also drank sake.

“Foxes or raccoon dogs would be one thing, but I’d be in trouble if a snake possessed me.”

A ghost story about snake possession surfaced.
Women generally like ghost stories.

I grew intoxicated by ghost stories and sake until I collapsed.
I had them prepare a kotatsu and lay sprawled beneath it.
It’s coming. It’s coming.
I fell asleep mid-conversation with Akiko.

That night, I embraced Akiko and kissed her.

I didn't particularly like Akiko, but I didn't dislike her either.
She had a fair complexion with a rounded face—one might say her looks were slightly above average.
Yet there was something oddly unsettling about her.
First were those eyes of hers—they even carried a faint impression of vacancy.
Her mind wasn't dull—she made crisp judgments—but this only applied to individual matters; taken as a whole, there seemed something like a geological fault line running through her.
She was called the niece of the Madam at Sugisaki, though of course she was no virgin and nearing thirty.

After skipping a day, the following evening she came to my apartment swinging a bottle of whiskey.

“Is the shop alright?”

“I told them I was visiting a friend and came here.”

“Bring that stuff around and you’ll end up truly possessed.”

She smiled faintly and fixed her eyes on me.
Those eyes—clinging to my skin as if adhesive—possessed an uncanny allure.
I lunged at her.

After that, my encounters with her became frequent.
She was bold.
At the Sugisaki establishment, even in front of other guests, she openly displayed intimacy through ordinary conversation.
She also frequently called the magazine office.
She came repeatedly to my apartment, letting herself in during my absences and sometimes staying over.
I casually took her around with me.
Among acquaintances, rumors about us appeared to gradually spread.
What Sugisaki's master and Madam thought remained unknown to me.
Neither they nor I mentioned anything.
It differed from an ordinary romantic relationship.
There was no absence of affection, but marriage never entered consideration.

I had become completely possessed by her eyes.
The charm that first made me leap at it now bound me.
Even hallucinations joined the fray.
What had once been pleasure in those constricting eyes now choked me breathless.

Sake too became my possessing spirit.
Akiko’s eyes transformed into another.
The world’s lie—that only willing victims exist, never true possessors—crumbled before me.
Fox demons might be fantasy, but this thing riding my soul burned real.
No conscious choice bound us—it had slithered into me unbidden.
And so I withered, body and mind, reaping only emptiness.

To ascertain the true nature of the possessing spirit, I lured Akiko out to the hot springs at the foot of Mount Asama. I had harbored a rather paltry notion of diverting myself by viewing Asama's smoke. Yet upon arriving, there remained the same old sake, the same old eyes of hers.

Perhaps due to the change in environment, my position had become quite delicate.

Akiko meticulously took care of me.
She neatly folded clothes.
Because socks were slightly dirty, she asked the inn maid to wash them.
She knew about the habit of fussing over sock stains and that a single spare pair had been brought.
Noticing dress shirt cuffs blackened by train soot, she said, "I'll wipe them—hand over the lighter fluid."
She knew no spare dress shirts had been brought and that a small bottle of lighter oil was carried.
Because the knife accompanying the pear didn't cut well, she said to lend the knife.
She knew a knife was carried.
She asked if Normozan would be taken before drinking.
She knew a supply of Normozan was prepared.
That became more than a little unsettling.
She knows everything.
She knows nail clippers are carried.
She knows no cream is kept for after shaving.
She knows two paperbacks are carried.
She knows a deck of playing cards is carried.
She knows both Philopon and Adorm are carried.
Though she couldn't have opened the bag, she sees through everything.
Before those nearly expressionless eyes that seemed to see nothing, I completely shriveled up.

She was the heroine, and I was like her servant.

Even the inn maids ceased asking me anything and instead followed Akiko’s directives.
Akiko briskly managed every detail.
She even instructed me on whether dishes were tasty or not—down to each culinary particular.
She handed down decrees: two morning beers maximum, lunch entirely abolished.

What in the world was this? I wondered, gazing up at her with reverent unease.
Her bangs slightly curled, the back severely upswept to expose her nape—perched in a gaudy kimono with decorative obi, knees carelessly folded—this tableau radiated an alluring chill.
I felt utterly anchorless.
As I lay sprawled with hands cradling my skull, she kept those eyes fixed unblinkingly on me before finally speaking.

“When you lie down like that, your body looks much longer.”

I jerked upright and stood.

“Which is longer—when I’m standing or lying down?”

“After all, you appear longer when lying down.”

What a foolish thing to say with such seriousness.
I wanted to claw at my head.

“I’ll drink a bit more sake. Let me drink, will you?”

When I was with her, I would get this intense urge to drink. It was always like that. And when I grew drunker still, it became my turn to babble meaningless things.
We had never once exchanged those saccharine vows—"we love each other" and such rot. This modern arrangement was thoroughly proper.
But I truly loved you.
I did love you—but I wasn’t in love with you.
But romantic passion cools quickly, while affection takes longer to fade.
But even affection needs some pillar.
I would find that pillar.
But drinking sake like this would ruin us both.
I’d get more serious.
But I mustn’t get too serious.
What mattered was playing like a child.
Childlike innocence….

But but—this endless repetition—I myself couldn’t comprehend what it all meant.
Even so, Akiko invariably agreed to everything.
In other words, between the two of them, there was not the slightest difference in views or conflict of opinions.

I reached my breaking point.

"You’ve had enough sake, I think," Akiko said.

This time, I was the one who complied.

"Let’s stop the Adorm."

She said this in a tone as if she herself were taking it.
I understood that sentiment and complied with it.
However, she in the bedchamber was utterly passive, showing not the slightest initiative.
Nothing but thick fleshy bodily warmth.
She knew no techniques; showed no irregularity in breathing; didn’t even furrow her brow—merely allowed her abdomen to undulate slightly.
And after orgasm, she buried her face in my chest and chuckled low in her throat.
It was the stifled laughter of a child who'd pulled some mischief.
It was neither an embarrassed laugh nor a mocking one.
A guttural chuckle—merely an instinctive reflexive laugh.
That chilled my heart completely.
Far from finding it cute, I felt as though I’d collided with some flaw.

Occasionally, she would say, "Open your eyes." There were times when she said, "Look at my eyes." That alone was her sole demand. I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes wide, peering at her eyes through narrowed lids—but her eyes swallowed that gaze, and in the hazy glow of the night lamp, her eyes seemed like hollow cavities. Within that hollow a soft white substance swelled to bursting; her irises melted into liquid; her pupils remained dilated—all of it looming over me. They were not eyes that saw. Eyes that loomed over you, stuck like plaster, and blocked the very breath in your throat.

I always felt those eyes against my skin.
Akiko disliked being alone.

She disliked going out; therefore, I too was forced to stay cooped up in the inn room.
Neither the highland scenery nor the plumes rising from Mount Asama into the early summer sky seemed to hold much interest for her.
I would lie down reading a paperback book; she would play solitaire.
I couldn't comprehend why we had come to this place.
We just drank sake, ate meals, and bathed in the hot springs.
We had little to talk about.
The two of us stuck together like this...we must have looked like a couple hesitating to commit love suicide.

Beside the inn flowed a modest mountain stream.

I slipped out in yukata and padded robe, wandering aimlessly.
The mountain stream’s waters were sparse, the riverbed stretched wide with shrubs and weeds growing thickly.
Along the riverbed trailed a tenuous path.
I made my way up that slope.
White and red flowers bloomed.
A small bird took flight from an unexpected place.
No human figures appeared.
The path broke off intermittently until becoming lost in thickets.
When I descended to the riverbed and sat on a large rock, Mount Asama’s volcanic smoke lay directly before my eyes.

It was a quiet white smoke—so still it could hardly be called volcanic.
The sky was blue and endlessly high.
From the rounded peak swelling into that expanse of sky, smoke flowed languidly and disappeared without trace.
Unsteady and desolate.
Not a trace of vigorous energy remained.
Could it be because my mind was like that?
A slight dizziness came over me.
I lowered my face and gazed at the pebbles on the riverbed.
Even though the early summer sun was shining, I did not feel its warmth on my back; instead, a cold air flowing along the mountain stream seeped into my body.

Loneliness, desolation—I sank into such feelings.
Desolation swirled in a vortex, at whose center lay what might be called the eye of desolation.
Like the eye of a typhoon, that too was a void.
When I stared into it, another eye suddenly surfaced.
Akiko's eyes.
That much I could state clearly.
The eyes of an idiot.
The eyes possessing me.
Precisely because I was an idiot, there was no escaping them.
But those too soon vanished, and my body shuddered violently.
Only desolation remained.

I stood up, quickened my pace, and returned to the inn.

“Where have you been?”

Akiko fixed those eyes steadily on me.
She would never let go.

The meal tray had been set out.
Sake had also been set out.
After gulping down three or four cups of sake—even to myself, with sudden resolve—I said:

“Shall we try climbing Asama?”

Akiko seemed unable to make sense of something and remained silent.

“Let’s climb it.”

“Will you be alright?”

“What about?”

“Have you ever climbed it before?”

“I have.”

“Is that true?”

“Of course it’s true.”
“I can clearly explain what the crater’s like.”

“Then let’s climb.”

Once the decision was made, she wanted to set out immediately.

The upper part of the mountain was volcanic rock and ash.
Shoes would prove troublesome.
Akiko asked the inn’s Madam to procure two pairs of old tabi socks—one for me and one for herself—and even prepared straw sandals with strings, including spares for changing.

It was established practice to make the ascent at night.
The gurgling red-hot molten lava at the crater’s bottom remained indistinct during daylight but became clearly visible in the pre-dawn darkness.
Moreover, one could also enjoy the beauty of the sunrise.

There were climbers nearly every day.
Since there were people going by car to the mountain tea house, we hitched a ride with them.
From there on out—having overtaken the others—we climbed slowly as a pair.
I rolled up my trouser cuffs and pulled old tabi socks over my regular ones; Akiko, fussing with her skirt hem, drew old tabi over her stockings; both of us lashed straw sandals tight with cords.
It was a ridiculous getup.

The mountain path was steep, but if walked slowly, it presented no hardship.
After passing through wooded areas and shrubland came a barren land dotted only with patches of grass here and there.
There was no clear path, but since it was a single peak, one could simply climb straight up.
We sometimes stopped to rest.
When a rumbling sound like distant earth tremors faintly reached our ears, we emerged onto the summit surprisingly quickly.

Dawn was faintly breaking.
The midheaven already shone bright, but across the ground a dim twilight still lingered, and here and there along the crater walls, coarse human figures stood visible like shadow puppets.
When they reached the crater's edge, sulfurous fumes and thunderous roaring enveloped them.

It was a symmetrical crater - deeply gouged and massive.
In one portion of its base lay red heat gurgling and boiling; from there smoke rose to fill the crater's brim following swirling air currents, or streamed smoothly outward from one crater wall.
The cliff face, gray skin speckled with red and blue, appeared and vanished.

“Oh, how beautiful.”

Akiko let out a gasp and peered into the crater.

I flinched and stepped back.
Strangely enough, from the moment I saw the crater, I had forgotten her existence.
It was her sudden gasp that jolted me awake from my dreamlike state.
She had been right there.
She wore a pale green, simple suit; her hair—unlike when she was in kimono back at the inn—flowed down her nape, her profile waxen white.
At our feet lay a sheer drop of tens of meters and a red-hot furnace.
Dangerous.
I felt it not for her sake, but for myself.
The same danger I see in my dreams.
Standing on a bottomless cliff, where one misstep would send you plummeting into that abyss—with no foothold left already—in that single instant before the fall, a chill of terror coursing through one’s entire body: that danger.
And that danger spread from me to her.
She turned around.
Her expression—everything—failed to register in my eyes.
I lunged.
Whether to push her off or tumble down with her.
I lunged at her but pulled her down backward.

She lay stretched out on the sand, and I crouched beside her, gripping her arm.
“Dangerous.”
She raised her upper body and watched me.
“That’s dangerous!”

I shouted.
She stared at my face.
Overwhelmed by my intense fury, she couldn’t speak and just kept staring.
Those eyes were different.
Not eyes that merely clung tight without seeing anything, but a gaze raw and luminous—vision actively seeking to discern something.
I put my arm around her shoulders and whispered.

“You don’t need to worry.”

She nodded, but I couldn't tell what she was acknowledging, leaving me with an empty sensation. I stood up, she stood up too, and we began walking away from the crater.

Night was yielding to dawn. Light seeped into the crater as well; the red-hot glow at its base had faded to a dull smolder. The sky above turned a crisp blue, while a pallid sun floated in the eastern haze.

We settled on ground shaded by rocks and opened our bento. Inside lay seaweed rolls. The rolls contained dried gourd strips, pickled daikon, and rolled omelet. As I nibbled at them, I drank sake from a cider bottle while she sipped tea from a canteen.

“What were you angry about earlier?”
“I wasn’t angry.”
“I see.”

“I wasn’t angry.”

She smiled faintly.

Everything was utterly peaceful.
But for an instant, anxiety brushed past.
That was close.
I might have carried out one of those actions—whether to push her into the crater or leap in together.
Carried out—yes, it was as if that plan had been budding in my chest all along.
From the moment I invited her to the Asama foothills—or from when I proposed climbing the mountain—hadn’t that thought existed in my unconscious?
It could neither be said to have existed nor not existed.
But that moment was truly dangerous.
In that decisive moment, why did I pull her back?
Because it was dangerous—there was nothing but cycling back on itself.
Was it my weakness that made me avoid that danger? My affection? Or instinct?

However, even those thoughts were already mere recollections.
Anxiety quickly faded, leaving behind a tranquil state of mind.
Eating seaweed rolls and such on the mountaintop was a good thing.

“There’s quite a lot here.”

“Shall we eat the rest later?”
“No, let’s completely finish it off.”

We ate slowly, drank slowly, and smoked cigarettes.

"Ah, I'm stuffed."

I stood up and went to peer into the crater again.
The sun had risen considerably, and in daylight the crater looked like nothing more than a giant pot.
I threw the empty cider bottle with all my strength.
In the vast crater, it didn't fly far—merely glinted white before falling nearby, disappearing without a sound or trace behind the crater wall.

“That’s dangerous.”

Suddenly, unexpectedly, that sensation pierced through my defenses.
I spun around sharply, walked away from the crater, and sat back down in the rock's shadow.
I was lonely and wretched.
Nothing felt dependable.
I beckoned Akiko who had trailed behind me and pressed my face into her lap.
Nothing felt substantial anymore.
Stick to me—cling tight to me—or I'll drown in this loneliness.
Cling harder.
As these words echoed through my mind, my wretchedness only deepened.

I knew the meaning of possession had become something entirely different.
But that was fine.
I could no longer bring myself to push Akiko into the crater.
I was taking pleasure in being possessed.
When I raised my face to look at her, she pressed her vacant eyes intently against mine.
They were idiot eyes seeing nothing.
I sighed.
In that moment earlier, I remembered how vividly her eyes had revived.

"I'll go on an adventure."

“Let’s try heading down toward Oiwake Pass,” I said.

“There’s a path, you know.”

“There should be.
Even if there isn’t, I don’t care.”

Beyond undulating hills stood Alpine peaks lined along the distant horizon.
The horizon stretched endlessly.
Oiwake Station lay directly below my eyes.
A larch forest spread across that entire expanse.
Aiming for those trees, we arbitrarily chose our path down the mountain.
As long as I kept sake and her close, this meager descent remained my sole adventure—nothing more.