Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

From childhood, whenever something came up, she would insist on going barefoot.
Even in winter she went without tabi socks, and in summer—of course—whenever doing laundry or such tasks, she would invariably slip off her geta with eager haste.
Walking barefoot on the plastered surface of the communal water area, padding along with soft pats—ah, how good this felt.
Even when she came of age, this habit didn’t stop, so even her normally silent father admonished her, saying “You’ll catch cold!”, but she wouldn’t listen.

She placed a snail on her palm, let it crawl up her arm from shoulder to chest, and reveled in its damp, slimy sensation.

Also, she liked bathing at the public bathhouse.
Water cascaded over her steam-rising naked body; her taut form quivered uncannily from the lively impact as she straightened up briskly.
Her sensuality throbbed within her.
She poured it over herself again and again.
“I’d douse myself five or six times straight.
Feels so good,” she later told her husband Keibe—the young Keibe frowned.

It was at eighteen years old that such an O-Kimi married Keibe.
Keibe was a teacher at Osaka Tennōji Dai-X Elementary School; advancement was this man’s fixed obsession, and though he studied jōruri while still young, it was of course to ingratiate himself with principals who were enamored of the art.
He had entered under Hirozawa Hasuke of Shimoderamachi and basked in the honor of being a fellow disciple with the principal.
Moreover, by attaching himself to the principal’s coattails, he also placed orders for practice manuscripts with Mōri Kinsuke—a jōruri manuscript copyist living in a back tenement of Nihonbashi 5-chōme.

O-Kimi was Kinsuke’s only daughter.
Kinsuke was a listless man as quiet and worn-out as an old paper screen, his sole ability being to hunch his back from dawn until late at night copying jōruri lines.
His wife seemed born solely for sewing; whenever one looked, she would be planted in the dim back room moving her needle.
Afflicted with diabetes, she died when O-Kimi was sixteen.

With no female help left, O-Kimi managed the household from early on like a full-fledged adult.
She cooked, sewed, turned away debt collectors, and even delivered manuscripts to clients.
There was a young apprentice, but he proved useless in his dim-witted vagueness—more pitiable than any real hindrance.

When O-Kimi went to deliver the manuscript to Keibe’s boarding house in Kamimachi 9-chome, the twenty-eight-year-old Keibe’s eyes bulged wide open.
O-Kimi wore a short kimono that showed two inches of her legs from the hem, so Keibe inadvertently averted his eyes.
A woman was a hindrance to advancement.
While choking on O-Kimi’s heated scent, he clung to his usual argument.
However, when O-Kimi came for the third time,

“Let me just check if there are any mistakes in the manuscript now, I tell ya.”
“Just wait there, I tell ya.”

and offered her a zabuton cushion, then opened the manuscript,

“And then Masaoka, seeing them off...”

He kept stealing furtive glances at O-Kimi, but gradually his voice began trembling, and he swallowed raw saliva,

“Spilling the water of tears...”

Suddenly, he grabbed her frostbitten red hand.
Her utter silence struck Keibe as eerie.
Later, O-Kimi would speak of that moment,

“Well, like… My vision kept flashing bright then pitch black, and your face looked as big as a cow’s!”

Having said this, there had been a time when she made Keibe feel unpleasant. Keibe was small in stature yet had large facial features—thick eyebrows under which bulging eyes protruded, a thick-lipped mouth over which his nose loomed, resembling the red face of a Bunraku puppet—but he prided himself on having a majestic visage. However, whenever his face came up, he couldn't help feeling uneasy. ...At that moment, Keibe was busily exhaling cigarette smoke from his large nostrils while—

“I’ve kept this matter quiet from everyone, see? You get it, right? I’ll be comin’ again, see,” he pressed further.
However, after that, O-Kimi did not come.

Keibe agonized.
He thought this would surely hinder his advancement.
Incidentally, his conscience pricked him as well.
He spent the entire day agonizing over whether that girl was pregnant or not and feared that Kinsuke might come calling.
“A Major Educational Issue”—
When he imagined newspaper articles with headlines like that, his anguish reached its peak.

After agonizing over every possibility, he realized that marrying O-Kimi now would render any pregnancy inconsequential—and felt relief wash over him. Why hadn’t this obvious solution struck him sooner? He cursed himself as an utter imbecile. Yet his original plan had been to wed no less than the daughter of a principal’s household. The notion of marrying some lowly manuscript copyist’s offspring wasn’t even worth considering. Only O-Kimi’s striking beauty offered meager consolation.

One day, a certain Kamochi—claiming to be Keibe’s colleague—paid an unexpected visit to Kinsuke bearing Tomoedō monaka confections from Sōemon as a gift. He rambled on about various topics to the bewildered Kinsuke before departing, leaving the old man utterly unable to discern the visit’s purpose.
The only vague clarity Kinsuke gained was that Keibe Murahiko—this Kamochi’s friend—stood as a man of upright conduct, esteemed reputation, and impeccable lineage.

Three days later, Keibe himself arrived.
He carried an out-of-season folding fan among other items.
Running two or three fingertips through his hair—tightly slicked with pomade—

“The truth is… regarding your daughter and this humble person—”

he proposed taking her as his wife.

When Kinsuke asked O-Kimi, “You—,” she—likely out of a habit formed since gaining self-awareness—didn’t change a single expression; or rather, if pressed to describe it, she wore a charming look as her beautiful eyes rolled round and round.

“Me? I’m fine with whatever, I tell ya.”

The next day, Kinsuke visited Keibe and,

“Since it’s about my only daughter, I’d like you to agree to becoming my adopted son-in-law…”

Without letting him say it was convenient, Keibe—

“That would be problematic.”

Kinsuke looked as if he had gone there to be scolded.

Eventually, Keibe rented a small house in Komiya-cho and brought O-Kimi to live with him, though he told colleagues he was "generally satisfied" with this young bride.
O-Kimi had a beautiful white body.
Moreover, she proved a hard worker—once dawn broke, she’d already be bustling about.

“This here’s Hell’s Third Ward—easy goin’, easy goin’, but comin’ back’s a fright!”

Her morning singing was soon banned by Keibe for its vulgarity.

“There’s not a single literary element here worthy of jōruri,”
he asserted firmly.
He was studying for the Classical Chinese Middle School Teacher Certification Exam.
So O-Kimi

“Alas, should our secret tryst succeed, let that day be our last—exchanging parting letters, steeling ourselves for death each night, souls adrift as we wander lost, burning with longing...”

sang the *sawari* section from *Kamiji*.
Since her singing was rather clumsy too, Keibe started to say something but decided to be satisfied.

One day during Keibe’s absence，a young man came calling，saying he’d heard something at Nihonbashi．“Well，if it isn’t Tanaka’s Shin-chan！What’ve ya been up to？”

He was Shin-chan, the son of a used-clothing store owner who had formerly lived nearby; he had enlisted in a Korean regiment and had just been discharged and returned home yesterday. Without further ado, he stepped up.

“Heard ya became the missus.”
“Why’d ya go and get married without tellin’ me?”

Shin-chan pressed.
O-Kimi—who couldn’t fathom Shin-chan’s inner workings, he who now bitterly regretted that their three stolen kisses and lack of physical intimacy had merely been a matter of missed opportunities—found such cross-examination hard to swallow, but seeing his sunburnt face clouded with dejection, perhaps moved by pity, she ordered a tempura rice bowl.
“How could anyone eat this?” he fumed at O-Kimi’s change of heart, leaving without even touching his chopsticks.
She told Keibe about it during dinner.

He had been listening with the newspaper spread on his lap, grunting in acknowledgment, but when the conversation touched on the matter of her lips, suddenly the newspaper rustled loudly, followed by the chopsticks, the rice bowl, and then O-Kimi’s cheek rang out with a slap. Her voice came first, followed by big tears plopping down, and after such exaggerated sobbing, Keibe set out on a gloomy stroll. As he left, the glimpse of a shoulder line he caught from the corner of his eye lingered unsettlingly in his mind, and when he returned within just thirty minutes, O-Kimi was nowhere to be seen.

After crouching with his hips slightly raised beside the hibachi for about half an hour,

"Soul adrift, trudging along in a daze…"

A voice was heard, and she returned reeking of bathhouse steam. After slapping her face once, Keibe—
“A woman must keep her body sacred before marriage—that’s how it is.”
“Even just a kiss…”
He was about to say more when he suddenly recalled having violated O-Kimi himself; sensing he was on the verge of contradicting himself, he settled for a simple admonition.

Keibe regretted marrying O-Kimi.
However, when O-Kimi gave birth to a son the following March, he counted the days, felt a chill run down his spine, and thought it had been good to marry her after all.
The child was named Hyōichi.
It was a time when songs proclaiming Japan's victory and Russia's defeat were still sweeping through Osaka.
That year, Keibe received a five-yen raise.

At year’s end, an amateur jōruri performance contest by Hirozawa Hasuke and Company was held in the second-floor hall of the Tamatsukiya Nihonbashi Club in Futatsuido, with an audience of approximately one hundred people—a grand success.
It was then that Keibe Murahiko, also known as Keibe Murasuzu, ascended the stage for the first time.
As it was his debut, he naturally served as the opener; he performed behind a lowered bamboo screen before an audience that had only begun trickling in—and yet they still cried out, “Sawashō!”
His performance was so impassioned that shouts rang out, and he received a teacup as the Passionate Performance Award.
Perhaps because after completing his opening act, he then busily worked as the event’s host while still drenched in sweat, he caught a cold the next day and took to his bed.
It worsened into acute pneumonia.
He had been examined by a fairly good doctor but died abruptly.
O-Kimi wept so bitterly that one might marvel at how readily tears flow, and the people were captivated by her display of grief, thinking this was what gave a husband and wife their worth.

However, on the 14th-night memorial, when a commemorative jōruri performance was likewise held in the second-floor hall of Nihonbashi Club, O-Kimi appeared with her baby and clapped loudly with resounding claps during the principal's rendition of the *sawari* section from *Kamiji*.
She raised her hand above her face, drawing public attention, and the people frowned.
Keibe’s young colleagues, each summoning up the faces of their respective wives in their hearts, showed unmistakably uncertain feelings on their own faces.
The principal seemed delighted by O-Kimi’s applause.

On the 21st-night memorial, at a family meeting held that evening, Keibe’s father—who had come from the countryside in Shikoku—spoke with a stern face about how O-Kimi should handle her situation: “If we return O-Kimi’s registry to Kinsuke and have Hyōichi adopted by Kinsuke as well, how about that?” When they asked O-Kimi for her opinion,

“Me?”
“I’m fine with whatever.”

Kinsuke did not utter a single word resembling an opinion.

When she finally returned to her family home with Hyōichi in tow, the interior proved appallingly filthy.
Dust clung thickly to the shoji slats; spiderwebs hung in clumps from the ceiling; the closet overflowed with soiled laundry.
After O-Kimi married off, Kinsuke had entrusted the housekeeping to an elderly helper he hired, but as luck would have it, the woman was bent-backed and hard of hearing.

“This time has brought such terrible misfortune...”

After entrusting the child she had been holding to the old woman who had offered her condolences, O-Kimi—without even removing her one good Obama chirimen haori—began briskly sweeping all around.

Three days later, the interior became unrecognizably clean.

The old woman had in fact created an excuse about her son in the countryside and resigned of her own accord.
The song "This Is Hell's Third District" could be heard morning and evening.
She worked hard.
Kinsuke was pleased by O-Kimi’s return, but this father remained silent as a turtle.
Regarding Keibe’s death too, he never once offered a coherent word of condolence.

Tanaka no Shin-chan, who ran a secondhand clothing shop, had already taken a young wife. When O-Kimi appeared at the men’s bath changing area to retrieve the child Kinsuke had taken along, that wife—who had also come to collect her recently born baby—became fast friends with her.
Compared to that bride with her freckle-covered, low-bridged nose, O-Kimi’s beauty once again became a topic of discussion in the men’s bath area.
There were some who blatantly proposed that she become my wife, but she laughed.
There were also those who took the matter to Kinsuke.
Each time Kinsuke asked O-Kimi’s opinion, as was her custom,

“I’m fine with whatever…”

Though she said this, Kinsuke refused with a gruff “Not for me,” dismissing the matter ambiguously.

Through summer’s stifling nights, Keibe’s rough caresses flickered heavily behind her eyelids.
The apprentice disciple had turned twenty now, burning with maddeningly futile passion at the sight of O-Kimi napping as she let her child suckle at her white breast—but being timid by nature, and O-Kimi paying him no mind regardless.

After five years had passed—O-Kimi now twenty-four, her child six—at year’s end, Kinsuke died abruptly in an unexpected calamity.
On that day, despite it being late November, Osaka saw rare flurries of powdery snow dancing through the air.
Kinsuke, who had grown thoroughly old and senile as his grandson grew up, received fifty sen from O-Kimi, took his grandson’s hand to see Tsuchikawa Fumio’s Shinpa chain drama at Sennichimae’s Rakutenchi, and on the return journey was struck by an Ebisuchō-bound tram at Nihonbashi First District intersection.
A young man from the neighborhood saw Hyōichi—who had been flung clear by the rescue net and narrowly survived—clutching a caramel someone must have given him, surrounded by a crowd and wailing at the top of his lungs.

“Ah! That’s Mōri’s little delinquent!”

The young man raced off on his bicycle to deliver the urgent news. When O-Kimi rushed to the scene, several electric trams—already lit against the twilight snow-filled sky—stood immobilized, their carriages looming over Kinsuke’s body lying curled beneath one.

She let out a shriek, yet strangely no tears came—only when Hyōichi clung to her with his hand sticky from caramel did a heat rise in her throat.
And everything went dark.
Soon, the sound of trams regaining their clamor could be heard.

That night, the owner of the nearby Ōnishi Pawnshop came over carrying a large furoshiki and offered his condolences,

“Truth be told, when Miss O-Kimi got married some time back, I lent Mr. Kinsuke money for your wedding preparations.”
“The items I took in back then didn’t include interest—they’ve already been forfeited—but seeing as how your family must hold ’em dear as treasures, I figured we could discuss what’s to be done.”
“Once the tram company’s...”

Assuming the compensation would amount to at least a thousand yen, she looked at the items he presented—here they were—and saw a single genealogy scroll and one sword.
These revealed Kinsuke’s distinguished lineage that faintly traced back to a Sengoku-period castle lord, though these were objects she had never laid eyes on before.
Kinsuke had never once spoken to her about such ancestry, nor had Keibe known of it naturally, and Keibe’s death without ever learning this truth counted among his misfortunes.
That Kinsuke had kept this from O-Kimi was true to his nature, just as O-Kimi remained true to hers—

“I’ve no need for such things.”

Having refused the Ōnishi Owner’s proposal, she subsequently forgot all about matters of family lineage. He persistently pressed the matter—undoubtedly driven by greed, going on about interest deadlines and such—but O-Kimi merely looked at him pityingly,

“Makes no difference to me either way…”
“And what’s the point anyway…”

For some reason, the tram company’s compensation amounted to a paltry sum of around a hundred yen, and she resolved to give most of it to the apprentice disciple who had been let go.

The relatives from rural Chūgoku who had come to assist O-Kimi grew thoroughly exasperated with her. After completing two days' worth of funeral obligations—the burial service and bone-gathering rites—they promptly departed. On the night when the house had emptied out, she suddenly awoke to an eerie presence,

“Who’s there?”

She called out into the darkness, but there was no reply. Whether the unexpected windfall had driven him mad or emboldened him, it turned out to be none other than the apprentice disciple after all.
She resisted, but for some reason her body was fragile.

The next day, the apprentice disciple appeared strangely dejected, avoiding O-Kimi’s gaze and seeming rather pitiable, but when a man claiming to be his brother came from their hometown that evening to collect him, he looked relieved.
After the brother said, “Thank you for putting up with this troublesome lad for so long,” he bowed deeply,

“Just a small token—please take it.”

...and held out a white paper bundle before scurrying off furtively.

Peering inside, she found a note clumsily written in manuscript-copying script—every yen she’d given him lay untouched within.
Pitying his frail frame and timid manner—he who’d vowed to return home and farm—O-Kimi sat dazed for a while in the emptiness of the deserted house, until at last...

“The ship we loaded up—where’ll it sail to now? Kizu and Naniwa’s bridges below—”

...and sang out a plaintive lullaby to Hyōichi in a clear, ringing voice.

In Kamishiochō Jizōroji, she found a single-story house with five-yen rent in the back tenement, and upon moving there, promptly hung a small wooden sign from the eaves that read “Sewing Lessons Offered.”

Written in an unusual script difficult for the tenement residents to decipher—a skill inherited from her father—her sewing, though not particularly skilled with silks or Kurume cotton, was inherited from her mother. For the neighborhood girls paying fifty sen a month in tuition, it managed well enough, and of course she also took on local sewing commissions.

The hectic year-end kept her rushing to complete commissioned New Year’s garments, days spent working through the night—but late one evening, when Hyōichi suddenly awoke to the sound of sniffling, O-Kimi was there with reddened hands, stoking the charcoal in the brazier.
Outside, the night was paling into the color of frost, and at the sight of his mother like that, even in his childish heart, Hyōichi felt a sudden pang of pity—but O-Kimi was a mother who knew nothing of such sympathy or sentimentality unbefitting a child’s years.
“You’ve had such wretched luck, Ms. O-Kimi.”

To even the tenement women with their consoling expressions,

“Can’t be helped.”

She laughed it off with a face that seemed to brush aside her string of misfortunes as if they were mere leaves in the wind, leaving the tenement women—who had expected to hear at least some complaints or share a sympathetic tear—strangely unsatisfied.

In the streets of Osaka’s neighborhoods, stone Jizō statues were often enshrined, and every year at the end of August, the annual Jizō Bon festival was held.
The Jizōroji where O-Kimi lived, true to its name, hosted a Jizō Bon festival as grand as any other.
That said, of course, being a poor tenement, each household hung picture lanterns, and in the cramped alleyway, the neighborhood men and women—

“Tote-tora-chinchin! Tote-tora-chin! Chinten-hoitoko! Ito-haiko! Yoyoito-sassa!”

All they did was dance to the chant, but O-Kimi strained herself to contribute twenty watermelons and was urged to join the dance troupe. Because O-Kimi had joined the dance, the police’s order to end by two o’clock was forgotten until dawn.

As always, she bathed in water at the public bathhouse. Her skin had taken on more luster than in her maiden years. She was asked whether she used a rice bran bag. The tenement women, who felt jealousy that left them breathless at her vivid posture as she stood erect after bathing, noticed O-Kimi’s neck one day and,

“My, Miss O-Kimi! Your neck’s covered in downy hair...”

Seizing on their noticing the growth—and because they made such a fuss—she stopped by a barber on her way back from the bathhouse and had it removed.

When the razor coolly touched her face, she felt a shudder of surprise, but as it began gliding smoothly across her skin, her body stiffened involuntarily from the pleasant sensation. Each time those hands—steeped in the scent of soap and cosmetics—pinched the muscles of her face, her body felt as though soaring through the air, and she remembered Keibe.

To such an O-Kimi, Murata the craftsman there had to occasionally check in the mirror a face that said "It’s just business."
However, Murata could no longer maintain his composure around O-Kimi, who now came without fail twice a month. One night, he arrived at the alley carrying a bolt of silk fabric wrapped in newspaper and,

“I went all out and got my finest fabric.”
“Excuse me, but could you…”

When he asked her to sew it for him, he lingered there making clumsy small talk, shouting inwardly *Now! Now!* for the chance to court her—but whether aware of his intentions or not, O-Kimi whirled her beautiful eyes and giggled merrily even at his dull story about how the priest of Naganenji Temple had reached his sixty-first natal year.
Hyōichi had been lying beside them but abruptly sat up, placed both hands neatly on his knees, and fixed Murata with a gaze that seemed to challenge him beyond his years—a look Murata feared.

Eventually, Murata left while deriding his own timidity.
He urinated at the entrance to the alley.
Listening to that sound, Hyōichi flopped back down.

II

Because Hyōichi was born early in the school year, he entered elementary first grade at seven years old.
During school recesses, he preferred playing with girls.
With his girlishly delicate physique and small, fair-complexioned face that was neatly proportioned, he was doted on by female teachers yet felt ashamed of his shabby appearance.

Though bashful by nature, he beat up roughly five male classmates per week until they cried.
For a child, he rarely laughed—and when he did cry, it was as if he grew enchanted by the sound of his own wailing.
His crying’s volume became neighborhood legend; he was known as a little hellion.
Once, in some fit of anger, he pissed on the stone Jizō statue enshrined by the alley’s well.
O-Kimi scolded him whenever it struck her fancy.

Hyōichi learned shogi from the priest of nearby Naganenji Temple.
The priest was an exceptionally kind man, but his fondness for shogi often made him disliked by others.
If he gave someone advice, he would refuse to speak to that man for a week; if they called his moves bizarre, he would spitefully open with a pawn thrust at his bishop’s head; claiming he couldn’t get into the game without a wager, he’d bet cigarettes or play such dirty shogi—staking life and death over a single butterfly orchid or camellia—that upon losing, he’d resent his opponent with a face like a bankrupt man. Since he was hardly skilled to begin with and everyone avoided him, having no opponents left, he decided to teach Hyōichi—who often came to play by the temple’s lotus pond—how to play.

Perhaps owing to his natural aptitude, within a day of learning three basic moves he progressed to a corner-drop handicap, and soon could play even games. One day, the priest,

“Hyō-bon.”
“Hyō-bon. It ain’t fun if we don’t bet on somethin’.”
“I’ll wager six white bean buns here, so you, Hyō-bon…”

Having nothing to stake, he decided that if he lost, he’d catch a baby turtle from the lotus pond for the priest.
He deliberated beyond his skill but fell for a trap move and lost.

Staring at the lotus pond’s surface steeped in twilight hues, Hyōichi lingered endlessly in the temple grounds.
The priest left to visit parishioners.
Though defeated at shogi, Hyōichi boasted of his turtle-catching prowess—all in vain as night fully descended and he mournfully heard the wooden fish’s beat.
Repeated failures to catch a turtle shattered his confidence; his chest tightened with frantic frustration until he half-wept.
When he suddenly turned at the sound of his name being called,

“What’re you doin’ here without eatin’ your dinner?”

At the gate, his mother stood glaring with a frightening face.

“I was tryin’ to catch a turtle.”

When he said that,

“What a fool!”

Scolded, he then let out a full-fledged cry.
Because of his usual habit of not stopping once he started crying, O-Kimi felt as if her face were being struck by his wailing,

“If you don’t quit bawlin’, I’ll chuck you straight in that pond.”
“Think I won’t?”

“Don’t care if ya do!
“Toss me in and my kimono’ll get filthy—then you’d hafta wash it, Mom.
“That’d put you in a fix, eh?”

"As if I care!" O-Kimi scooped up Hyōichi and plunged him into the pond’s muddy water with a splash.
Hyōichi flapped his hands wildly, half his gestures still searching for the baby turtle.
After hauling him out and dragging him home, O-Kimi brought out a basin.

When he turned eight, he returned from school one day to find himself suddenly forced into a brand-new Kurume cotton-padded garment.
Pressing his nose against the tube-like sleeve, he inhaled the pungent indigo smell that rushed into his nostrils—a fine outfit that should have delighted Hyōichi the dandy, yet somehow failed to send him over the moon.
O-Kimi had applied makeup thicker than ever before, and though through childish eyes he saw her face as beautiful, something kept him from wholeheartedly agreeing.
As she picked out the basting threads for him,

“When you go over there, mind your manners proper-like, hear?”

Though O-Kimi spoke in her usual tone, Hyōichi heard it as a scolding.

When three rickshaws pulled up at the alley’s entrance, his mother’s face stiffened into a mask-like rigidity. Child though he was, he saw in it the face of her twenty-six-year-old bridal self, leaving him despondent with nowhere to anchor his feelings.

As she sat in a shabby manner—holding her hands over the extinguished brazier, her white neck thrust out like a papier-mâché tiger’s with her collar loosened—Hyōichi was made to stand and put into a rickshaw.
A stranger was in the front rickshaw, Mother in the next, and Hyōichi in the very last one.
Whether thinking the figure perched neatly atop the adult-sized rickshaw looked comical, the rickshaw puller—

“Now now, little master, hold on tight so you don’t fall out, you hear?”

At that voice, mother glanced back.

The day had already grown dark.

“I won’t fall!”

Hyōichi deliberately said in a joking tone, then solemnly listened as his voice faded into the darkness.
His body floated up lightly, and the rickshaw began to move.
Gradually, the darkness deepened.

When they passed through the temple district where numerous quiet shrines stood side by side, the scent of osmanthus hung in the air.
Hyōichi felt dizzy—partly because he was already growing motion sick from the rickshaw ride.
The lantern light fixed to the end of the tiller pole caused the veins in the rickshaw puller’s hand to thicken and stand out.
With his second-grade elementary school eyes, he tried to decipher the two characters “Nose” written on the lantern, but a suffocating tightness in his chest—as though blood were draining from his head—made it prove difficult.
That night, he slept alone.

The naphthalene smell clinging to the futon made him feel keenly the loneliness of his mother’s absence, and his efforts to hold back tears only caused more to flow. Mother was downstairs in the room with a stranger. He would later learn it was Nose Yasujirō.

Nose Yasujirō was said to be the wealthiest man in Tanimachi 9-chome and was also called a miser.
He worked as a moneylender, had gone through three wives, and O-Kimi was his fourth.
It didn’t take much effort for forty-eight-year-old Yasujirō to take a liking to O-Kimi and finalize the marriage arrangement.

“Am I...?
“I’m fine with whatever you decide.”

However, O-Kimi did set the condition that Hyōichi be sent to middle school after graduating elementary school—a stipulation that pricked at the miserly Yasujirō’s heart like needles—but O-Kimi’s shoulders looked far too soft and were plump with flesh.

Yasujirō had no children, and after causing his previous wife's death, he immediately hired a maid to handle cooking duties while occasionally using her as a substitute wife. But when O-Kimi arrived, he abruptly dismissed the maid, making her the replacement this time. He didn't allow O-Kimi any freedom with even a single penny, handing her small change—ten or twenty sen—for daily market trips and demanding exact change upon her return. Sometimes he would go to the market himself, buy about six cheap sardines, keep four for himself, then give one each to O-Kimi and Hyōichi. After an incident where a collector got assaulted during rounds, he hired a forty-year-old man named Yamadani—who had the face of a defrocked priest—to handle collections. Naturally Yamadani worked without meals provided; not even lunch was ever given at Yasujirō's place.

One day, Yamadani said to Hyōichi,

“Hey there, kiddo. Wanna see somethin’ good?”

What he secretly showed was a small picture tinged with lurid colors.
And Yamadani linked that picture to O-Kimi and Yasujirō, telling a lewd story with spittle gathering at his mouth.
Suddenly, Hyōichi gritted his teeth and tore the picture to pieces.

“What the hell’re ya doin’?”

When Yamadani looked at Hyōichi’s face in surprise, he was terrifyingly pale, with blood oozing from his lips.
His eyes, filled with resentment unbecoming of a child, were glaring fiercely.

To put it in exaggerated terms, at that moment Hyōichi’s self-esteem was wounded.
He grew despondent again.
He felt humiliated—a seed of disgust toward anything sexual planted within him then.
Resentment festered from his wounded pride.
The look he gave Yasujirō changed.
He swung his fist at Yasujirō’s back.
Melancholy took hold.
Every night his mother briskly massaged Yasujirō’s shoulders.

Hyōichi walked over one *ri* along the road to Tsukijima Port, gazed at Osaka Bay growing dim in the dusk, felt sudden nostalgia for steamships departing the harbor bathed in sunset light, and cursed at the sea without reason.

One day at the port’s pier, suppressing the urge to let out whimpering sobs, he instead turned toward the sea,

“You idiot!”

he shouted, thinking no one was around, when the man who had been fishing suddenly turned around,

“Hey! What nonsense you spoutin’?”

And because his glaring eyes were taken as insolence, he got struck.
He trudged home crying all along the league-and-a-half road.
When he entered the house, Yasujirō was taking a basin wash to save bath money, and O-Kimi had her sleeves rolled up scrubbing his back.
When that finished, O-Kimi took her basin wash, and Yasujirō—acting all manly—scrubbed her back.
After that came Hyōichi’s turn to wash, but he feigned sleep and didn’t rise even when called.

He gradually became a melancholy boy and eventually graduated from elementary school. Once again O-Kimi asked Yasujirō to let her son enter middle school, but Yasujirō feigned ignorance. Suddenly remembering how Keibe had wanted to become a middle school teacher, all strength drained from O-Kimi's body as she lived quietly. She spread Hyōichi's honor roll certificates across her lap. Without uttering a word, she crawled on her knees toward the chest of drawers, and when she tucked them away near her hip, Yasujirō—for some reason—grew absurdly flustered and grudgingly agreed. Hyōichi did eventually enter middle school, yet Yasujirō's purse strings remained untouched. Every day O-Kimi took in sewing work from somewhere, using those meager earnings to cover Hyōichi's school expenses. When even piecework couldn't keep up, she pawned her own hair ornaments and kimonos or borrowed a yen here and there from neighbors. People would say, "Ain't it strange for the moneylender's own missus to be borrowin' from others?"

Hyōichi, now a middle school student, spread word that he had a fiancée. It added a veneer to his pitiable sense of inferiority. When he looked around and realized that every single boy around him was dim-witted, he felt relieved. However, he had absolutely no confidence in his own intelligence. So when he became top of the class without much effort, he wondered if it was some kind of mistake. His classmates admired his intellect and feared him, but Hyōichi remained utterly unaware of being admired by others. Therefore, even he himself often needed to remind himself that he was top of the class. He proclaimed it. Eventually "top of the class" became his nickname. In other words, he lacked the dignity befitting the top of the class. When he suddenly recalled his mother and the lewd picture Yamadani had shown him,

“Who’s gonna be second next time, I wonder?”

He seized his classmates and declared. Because he kept trying to burnish his position as top student this way, everyone eventually became convinced it was mere plating. When branded a grade-grubber and jolted to awareness, Hyōichi could no longer idly coast on his "top of the class" moniker without any artistry, now striving to make them all believe he’d reached the summit without proper study. The day before exams, he’d invariably visit Daiichi Asahi Theater in Shinsekai to watch Makino Teruko’s films, then bring the program leaflets to school on test days to flaunt them. Even those who’d initially detected something like modesty born of insecurity in Hyōichi found themselves forced against their will to deem him arrogant.

Eventually, he came to be hated by his classmates.
However, since his animosity had already marked people as enemies from the start, being hated instead left him cleanly composed.
When an upperclassman who had noticed his beauty approached with an eerie coquetry, he conversely fell into a peculiar confusion, not knowing how to return such affection.
He remained top of the class and became a third-year student.

One day after school, he was surrounded by all his classmates and pummeled with fists amid shouts of “Who do you think you are, acting so high and mighty for a grade-grubber?” He fought desperately against some thirty opponents, but it proved utterly futile. Blood streamed from his nose as he glared back with furious eyes. Stuffing scraps of paper into his bleeding nostrils, he made a grotesque face at the staff toilet mirror and roared, “Just you wait!”

About ten days passed, and the term exams began.
The moment he saw how wretched his panicked classmates looked as they clung to their exam papers, hostility surged through him like a physical force thrusting upward from his chest.
He erased the answers he’d started writing—*Serves you right!*—submitted a blank sheet, then marched out of the classroom with his chest puffed out.
For the first time, he felt a flicker of warmth in his self-respect.
He failed.

During his repeat third year, a love fortune-telling game spread through class—writing two names in Roman letters, lining them up, erasing matching characters.
Hyōichi watched sullenly as everyone crowded around the blackboard doing their divinations openly, but when he suddenly noticed every single person had written “Mizuhara Kiyoko” at least once, his eyes lit up unnaturally.
He cornered the class dunce and spent half an hour talking in circles until the baffled boy finally coughed up a few facts about her.
Learning she attended S Girls’ School along the Daiki Electric Railway line, he ditched afternoon classes that day and bolted for Uehonmachi Rokuchōme Station.
After two hours of waiting by the ticket gate, he finally spotted Kiyoko emerging—tall and stylish with that vermilion cloth bundle they’d described. *Top beauty at S Girls’? What a joke*, he thought—but since every middle schooler in Osaka seemed obsessed with her, he grudgingly conceded she must be beautiful.
It was just following public opinion, really—though her clear blue eyes did shine coldly, and there was something striking about her refusing glasses despite being nearsighted.
The two hours of restless waiting gave him momentum as he strode up to her side—

“Pardon my abrupt inquiry, but are you Ms. Mizuhara Kiyoko?”

These were words Hyōichi had agonized over to craft a manner of speech neither trite nor affected—leaving Kiyoko momentarily taken aback. Yet as such encounters were commonplace for her, she showed no particular flush of embarrassment.

“Yes?”

She answered, then looked at him with an expression that seemed to urge: *If you’re going to hand me a letter, just get on with it already.*
Faced with that businesslike demeanor, even Hyōichi found himself speechless. He turned tail and fled, acutely aware of his own gracelessness.

Kiyoko laughed at how timid he was for a delinquent middle schooler, but his beauty lingered faintly in her mind.
She thought of how if it were some boy like So-and-so, he’d want to take her to a milk hall and treat her to three five-sen imagawayaki pastries—then briefly brought to mind the faces of her pimply classmates.
But I’m different.
She was set to graduate next year at eighteen and marry her cousin currently in the Faculty of Law at Tokyo Imperial University; this elder-sisterly air she put on toward a sixteen-year-old boy who seemed a full decade younger was but one of her vanities.
Therefore, starting the very next day when Hyōichi followed her for three consecutive days along the paved road from Uehonmachi Rokuchōme to Kobashi Nishinomachi—half out of annoyance—she suddenly turned around—

“Do you need something?”

She resolved to confront him firmly.
Hyōichi’s self-respect—which had been mocking itself for the cowardice that left him capable only of trailing her for three days without uttering a word—restored its former pride when met with such an attitude from Kiyoko.
*If I falter here,* he thought, *it’s all over*—and his vision blazed crimson.

“I’ve got no business with you.
I’m just walking.”

When he snapped, Kiyoko too felt a sharp pang in her chest,

“Stop loitering and go home already.”

Hyōichi snapped back as if batting away her tone,

“None of your damn business.”

“For a kid...”

She started to retort but—finding no clever words—resorted to authority: “I’ll report you to the Kyōgo Renmei,” invoking the official who’d recently been cracking down on middle schoolers off-campus. “Out with it,” she pressed. “What’s your business here?”

“I’ve been tellin’ ya I got no business with you.”
“You don’t get it, do ya?”

When the Osaka dialect came out, Kiyoko smiled faintly,

“Following someone without reason makes you a delinquent.”
“You really must stop following me.”
“Which school do you attend?”

“The hat should tell you that much.”

“I know your school’s principal.”

“Go ahead and report me then.”

“I will report you.”
“I truly do know him.”
“It’s Mr. Shibata, isn’t it?”

“We call him ‘Turtle.’”

Before they knew it, they had started walking side by side.
When they came near her house, Kiyoko—

“Bye now. If you follow me again, I won’t let it slide.”

By all rights it should have been considered a success, yet battered by Kiyoko's commanding tone at their parting, he deemed it a failure.
Yet nothing spurred this boy like failure.
The next day he lay in wait for Kiyoko's return with fierce determination.
Kiyoko—who had somewhat regretted her rashness from the previous day—had resolved not to humor him today, but yielded to the anticipation that today she would finally confront him properly, and ended up walking alongside him.
In the end she found herself dumbfounded by Hyōichi, who proved far more arrogant than he'd been the day before.
Though his arrogance now exceeded even hers in scale, she maintained perfect composure.
From how Hyōichi's eyes kept darting about nervously and how he flushed without cause, she had seen through it—that beneath all his arrogant posturing lay an inherently timid boy.
Being literarily inclined, she observed Hyōichi's crimson-flushed cheeks and imagined this boy frequently setting off charming fireworks to arrest her antipathy just before it could curdle into hatred.
Moreover, she smugly convinced herself this boy was in love with her.
Finding amusement in extracting a confession from him, she walked alongside him as usual the following day—

“You like me, don’t you?”

However,

“If I hated you, I wouldn’t be walkin’ with you.”

Kiyoko found herself outmaneuvered by this unexpectedly deft retort.

“What a peculiar way to phrase it.”
“Do you hate me or like me?”
“Which is it?”

The fact that she assumed he liked her when he didn't rankled him, and Hyōichi struggled to respond.
Yet declaring his dislike would mean total destruction.
Having thought this,

"'Like.'"

He answered as if mentally enclosing the character for "like" in parentheses.
And so Kiyoko allowed herself, for the first time, to feel affection toward Hyōichi.

One week later, one day, Hyōichi went to see the mummy of a nun from a certain convent in Sanuki Province who had died at eighty-two years of age, exhibited as a spectacle in Sennichimae Rakutenchi's basement.
The female characteristics—breasts and other traces—remained starkly visible; drawn by the spiel about educational reference material, he stared with a contorted face.
It was a reckless curiosity driven by an inverse reaction to his secretly harbored aversion toward sexual matters.
The moment he stepped out of Rakutenchi with self-lacerating disgust, he unexpectedly collided with Kiyoko.
He flushed crimson instantly, convinced she had discerned his perverse curiosity that led him to view mummies.
Nearsighted Kiyoko, noticing a figure resembling Hyōichi, drew her brows together and narrowed her eyes to confirm.
That expression stabbed deeper into Hyōichi's heart.
Kiyoko, plagued by stomach troubles, had always licked her lower lip habitually; now too she licked it while imagining herself "setting off fireworks."
Abruptly, Hyōichi fled.

Once he convinced himself that having been seen in such a shameful situation meant he was disliked, Hyōichi lost all courage to meet Kiyoko again. Because Hyōichi hadn’t shown his face for two or three days, she felt unfulfilled. She was also concerned about how Hyōichi had run off without a word in front of Rakutenchi. Despite having been so close, she worried that perhaps he had come to dislike her, and when ten days passed without seeing him, she could no longer deny that she clearly harbored feelings for Hyōichi. So after about two weeks had passed, when she suddenly spotted his figure, she felt relieved and became quite animated. Yet Hyōichi was half poised to flee. Having thought he had no face to show her yet having chanced upon her, he grew flustered. The moment he tried to bolt away, his self-esteem reared its head like a snake and coiled around that leg—since he had been seen in such a shameful situation, he had to restore his honor. Barely managing to stop himself, Hyōichi acted with deliberate aloofness. Seeing such an attitude, Kiyoko, now convinced she was truly disliked, found herself liking him even more. And so at their parting that day, when Hyōichi—fearing rejection—timidly proposed meeting the next evening in the precincts of Ikukunitama Shrine, she happily agreed as if she had been waiting for this very offer, then went out half an hour earlier than the appointed time and waited.

That evening, Hyōichi briefly kissed Kiyoko. Catching the feminine scent of her breath brought him slight satisfaction for his self-esteem. Yet when he felt her not just accepting but pressing her hands forcefully against his back, his mood abruptly changed. Without a word, he shoved her away and left. This sudden turn to thoughts of his mother remained beyond Kiyoko's comprehension, leading her to send him a letter overflowing with tender emotion. Hyōichi brought it to class and showed his classmates. Though they'd long awaited such an event, upon seeing it they declared, "It's a fake letter, yeah?" They couldn't help adding, "You wrote this yourself, didn't you?" Hyōichi then wrested away a love letter his classmates had been secretly circulating from Kiyoko and read it aloud in class. Fists flew in retaliation. When the teachers learned of it, he received a week's suspension.

While being hated by his classmates, he eventually took the entrance exam for Kyoto Higher School in the winter of his fourth year and passed without difficulty.
There was satisfaction in his self-esteem from being hated alone.
But even after entering higher school, he had no clear purpose for his future.
On the night he entered the dormitory, he was taken by a senior to Maruyama Park.
With a hand towel tucked at his waist, wearing high-tooth geta and singing a dormitory song all the while, he wore a sullen expression.
Fearing it was a gathering of top students, his eyes darted around restlessly as he kept his competitive edge honed—only to soon realize every last one of them was dim-witted.
They were not only no different from middle school—it amounted to tacky marketing of cheap thrills.
The absurdity lay in how they seemed convinced that merely entering higher school made them something great.
When he saw those printing titles like "Third Higher School, 60th Class" on their business cards, he felt more pity than ridicule.

Within less than a month after entering school, he was beaten by members of the cheering squad for no reason.
On the day of the memorial festival, seeing a crowd of dormitory students dancing naked with red loincloths tied on, he shed tears from sheer contempt.
Every last one of them was pretending innocence while craving the audience’s applause.
However, even Hyōichi—who thought this way—had fundamentally needed it himself.
Taking his beating by members of the cheering squad on the night of the memorial festival as his impetus, from May 2nd through May 4th—the three days following the festival—he kissed one different female student after another beneath the same cherry tree in Maruyama Park.
And so, his heart was comforted.
He inwardly scorned the women who, enamored with high school students, allowed themselves to be easily taken—yet even on the final third day, his body still trembled from lack of confidence.
When told to sing, he sang "The Crimson-Burning Hill's Flowers" and the school song, but when thoughts of his mother suddenly surfaced in his mind, tears spilled over.
The thought of his mother, who had been scrambling to secure his school fees, now pricked sharply at his chest for the first time.
Those were the tears.
Seeing Hyōichi like that, the woman said, "How sentimental."
She placed a hand on his shoulder.
Hyōichi didn’t so much as melt.
Soon after, he submitted his withdrawal notice.
And then he returned to the house in Osaka.

III

Upon hearing that he had quit school,

“You didn’t need to quit.”
“But if you want to quit, then that’s all right.”

And yet, O-Kimi remained O-Kimi, but the area around her eyes had noticeably darkened. The realization that she had been driven by sewing piecework to such a sorrowful degree struck him, and unexpectedly, Hyōichi shed tears; yet upon seeing the darkness around her eyes, he found himself resenting Yasujirō. Yasujirō had already turned fifty, but he was hideously obese and glistened greasily. He remained as zealous as ever in his moneygrubbing. Seeing O-Kimi giving Hyōichi pocket money,

“Ain’t no call givin’ money to some school-quittin’ dropout.”

And he extorted the money O-Kimi earned through her sewing piecework.
When Hyōichi entered higher school, Yasujirō gave O-Kimi fifty yen.
Just as she felt grateful for having received it, Yasujirō had intended it as a high-interest loan.

Every morning when the newspaper arrived, Hyōichi would pounce on it to scour the job listings.
He wrote about ten applications, but only one interview notice came—from a third-rate newspaper company in Edobori.
While waiting at reception for nearly an hour, he suddenly recalled the face of the woman he had kissed in Maruyama Park.
Feeling the general affairs manager's piercing eyes boring into him with contempt, he nevertheless answered earnestly and was hired.
However, when he went the next day, the work assigned was no different from being a server.
The advertisement seeking a young man who could ride a bicycle—his failure to grasp this had been foolish.
He had rejoiced at becoming a newspaper reporter, but all he did was cycle around collecting manuscripts from press clubs.
It amounted to mere child's errands; even within the office, with shouts of "Hey kid! Manuscript paper!" or "Server! Sharpen pencils!", he was unmistakably treated as an errand boy and driven until dizzy.
He grew disgusted after a single day, but clinging to their promise of soon promoting him to reporter, he commuted daily with tears of frustration.
Partly because quitting would leave him nowhere else to work.

One day, he was beaten for acting uppity despite being just an errand boy.
Three days passed, and he kissed the beautiful switchboard operator who was renowned within the company.

On his first payday, imagining O-Kimi’s delighted face, he hurried home eagerly—but she wasn’t there.
It turned out that a summons had been issued by the police, and she had gone to appear.
She did not return for three days.
He hadn’t understood why she had been detained, but from O-Kimi’s haggard account upon returning home, he learned it concerned Yasujirō’s tax evasion.
If that was the case, then Yasujirō should have been the one to appear—Hyōichi found this suspicious.
As he gradually inquired, he learned that Yasujirō had used a feigned illness as an excuse to make O-Kimi appear before the authorities.
"How could there be such an idiotic thing?" he snapped back at Yasujirō,

“Don’t get cocky,” he said in a tone lecturing a child. “Whether I go to the police or O-Kimi goes, it’s all the same. Husband and wife are one body and soul.”

“Then why did you lend money at high interest to Mom?” said Hyōichi.

“If you’ve got complaints about me, then get out.”

He thought to take his mother with him, but Hyōichi ran out alone. As he left, he entrusted the debt collector Yamatani with his promise: “Once I can support myself with my own strength, I’ll definitely come back for Mother.” Yamatani had long shown O-Kimi an attitude resembling sympathy—something Hyōichi had bitterly resented as excessive—but now he bowed his head and pleaded earnestly. In the restroom, he shed tears in torrents. Then, shaking off O-Kimi who was tearfully trying to stop him, he dashed out of the house.

That night he stayed at a cheap inn in Sennichimae.
In the morning, he no longer felt any desire to go to the newspaper company.
Every day he walked around searching for work, but there were no employers willing to hire a runaway.
The money in his pay envelope was his only remaining funds, but gradually that too dwindled away.
Half in resignation, he went to the garage in Kasumichō that he had seen advertised in the newspaper and was hired as a taxi assistant.
There no one asked about his education or such things; instead he felt oddly unburdened.
However, since he spent thirteen hours a day driving around, at times his vision blurred.
One day he failed to notice a customer waving their hand, and the driver struck him.
The next day Shinako—the barmaid at Shinsekai’s Bar Kōjaku whom that driver frequented—became Hyōichi’s.
Of course they kissed, but it went no further.
Shinako was driven wild with pity for Hyōichi who couldn’t bring himself closer to her body, but Hyōichi—unexpectedly reminded of his mother by the distant wail of a Chinese noodle vendor’s horn—resisted her with a contorted face.

Even while enduring abuse from the driver, he kept working out of a sense of triumph at having claimed Shinako as his own—but one late night, after delivering a customer to the ××-rō in Tobita Yūkaku, the driver:

“How ’bout we have some fun?”
“This here’s Tobita’s top house, see?”

After all, they wouldn’t be able to pick up any customers until morning, and though the fireworks had been canceled that day due to rain—it being the brothel’s founding anniversary—they must be doing something special; he urged him to go up.
Of course he refused, but being mocked with “You’re already eighteen” struck him to the core, and he went up.
While writing a letter on behalf of the prostitute to her parents in Gotō, Nagasaki Prefecture, he listened to various stories of her circumstances.
The conversation ultimately settled on what she thought of this lifestyle, but upon learning that the prostitute had resigned herself to viewing it as a kind of labor converted into money, Hyōichi’s heart suddenly felt lighter.
What he had persistently loathed was now being casually transacted there as an everyday occurrence.
He found himself ridiculous for having been so consumed by disgust at such things.
Hyōichi knew a woman for the first time.
However, when the headlights of a car passing below the window momentarily illuminated the dark ceiling, he was overcome with the urge to wail.

For reasons even he couldn’t fathom, Hyōichi began visiting the prostitute frequently thereafter.
I thought myself wretched for scraping together the money to visit her.
I couldn’t comprehend why I kept going.
The simple words "I'm in love" just wouldn't come to mind.
I hadn’t noticed the self-destructive mechanism of being drawn to what I loathed.
One morning, watching the prostitute peel an apple for him, a warmth spread through his chest.
Clumsy as he was, he couldn’t even peel a single apple, and he was so moved by the sight of her doing so—finding her pitiable yet endearing—that he impulsively promised they would marry once her contract was up.

Tormented by the thought that he would never be able to bring his mother home if things continued this way, he kept visiting her nonetheless—but then the prostitute was bought out by none other than a gambler called Kantsuri no Han.
True to his name meaning "Twitching Half," Kantsuri no Han constantly convulsed his body yet remained oddly popular among the brothel's women—not a few prostitutes had destroyed themselves over him.
Hyōichi found himself growing tenderly attached to even a single mole on the prostitute's pale breast, feeling jealousy for the first time.
The moment he imagined himself defeated by this gambler, his blood ignited with savage fury.
When he pressed her about feeling drawn to Kantsuri no Han, his face drained of color.
His days filled increasingly with brawls against street toughs.
Then whenever he spotted men in gamblers' trademark merchant coats and straw sandals, he'd slam bodily into them without warning—and when they began appraising his bony frame, they'd trade blows until blood streamed from their noses.

One day, during one such fight, he was struck in the chest and vomited blood.
Ever since his time at the newspaper company, he had occasionally had a slight cough while riding his bicycle, but six months had passed since then, and his body had deteriorated to such an extent that the doctor immediately diagnosed him with right apical catarrh and left pulmonary infiltration.
He had been lying on the second floor of the garage, staring at the low ceiling, but when the employer learned it was his lungs, he was troubled,

“If you’ve got family somewhere, why not tell them?”

As if waiting for this cue, he wrote to his mother.
Please laugh at your worthless son.
This body that’s never done a single decent thing—even if I died apologizing, I’d still want to see you once before...
Using that final line as his excuse, he wrote while ridiculing himself.
He expected O-Kimi to come rushing immediately, but instead received an express reply.
The return address bore Mr. Mōri’s name instead of Mr. Nose’s—the realization punched through his chest.
I want to come but cannot.
I’m your mother with no face left to show you.
Don’t hold hatred.
The letter refused to make sense.
Then came Yasujirō—unexpectedly—arriving just moments after the letter.

Seeing Yasujirō’s face, Hyōichi was stunned speechless and for a time could form no words, but—

“Actually, it’s about your mother…”

As Hyōichi listened to Yasujirō’s account—deliberately avoiding terms like “O-Kimi” or “wife”—he came to understand the situation.

According to Yasujirō’s account, the debt collector Yamaya had violated O-Kimi.
Hyōichi could imagine how Yamaya had vilely exploited the emptiness in O-Kimi’s heart after his own running away from home, and upon hearing this, his face twisted in sorrow.
Yet Yasujirō’s expression contorted even more severely.
Though he had driven Yamaya out, that debt collector’s slimy, oil-slicked face kept assailing Yasujirō’s mind.
Anguish etched itself rapidly across Yasujirō’s features.
Even when hurling abuse or throwing punches, his heart found no respite.
Yasujirō descended into jealous madness, donning fifty different masks.
Anxious that O-Kimi might secretly meet Yamaya, he even tailed her to the market.
Though he himself found it shameful, he began ingratiating himself with O-Kimi at every turn.
Yasujirō too had visibly started wasting away.
While dashing about collecting debts during his absences, the mere thought that O-Kimi might be seeing Yamaya would strike him—whereupon he’d abandon his rounds mid-task, stripped of all avarice or purpose.
Now Hyōichi grasped every last fiber of Yasujirō’s torment.

“The truth is, I wanted to know where you were,”
“I’d been searching for you.”
“Didn’t you see the newspaper ad I placed?”

After saying this and returning home, when Yasujirō tried to thoroughly lecture O-Kimi and even asked her to keep watch over him, Hyōichi thought, Serves him right.
Yet whenever he saw this version of Yasujirō—and was forced to recall his own jealous self who had envied the prostitute from the ×× brothel—he found himself sympathizing with the man, as if Yasujirō too had finally become human.
Sympathized with unexpectedly by Hyōichi, Yasujirō found himself artlessly savoring a desire to share drinks with him if not for his illness—an unforeseen father-son reunion.

O-Kimi burst into panicked tears the moment she saw Hyōichi’s paper-white face.
Having been told he had worked as a yen taxi assistant, she blamed herself as if it were her fault,
“It’s all my fault—go ahead and laugh at my thoughtlessness,”
she said without even properly looking at his face.

Pulling and pulling at the hem of her kimono—seeing O-Kimi hanging her head, Hyōichi—
“It’s not that Mom did anything wrong.”
“It’s my fault for running away from home.”
“You mustn’t get discouraged now.”

He comforted her, pitying to painful excess the fragility inherent in women's physiology.

The state of his convalescence had completely changed from when he had been lying on the garage's second floor.
O-Kimi did not sleep at night nursing Hyōichi, even if it meant wearing away her own life.
Hyōichi—who had deemed himself worthless—looked back on his six months of wandering and found his mother's affection overwhelming beyond bearing. Tearfully vulnerable, he pressed his palms together in repeated apology: "I'm sorry... I'm sorry."
O-Kimi no longer raised her voice in laughter.
As O-Kimi's attention had shifted entirely to Hyōichi, Yasujirō came to regard his stepson's presence as a virtue; though instinctively fearing Hyōichi's illness, he never openly showed distaste.

However, Hyōichi had not slept for two months.
He—who could find no peace unless constantly burdening himself with duties—found his idle, bedridden existence unbearably pitiful.
To live sustained solely by his mother’s affection felt like a violation of life’s fundamental obligations.
The torment of his pride—shattered beyond repair when betrayed by the courtesan—drove him relentlessly.
When his fever dropped to around thirty-seven and a half degrees, he suddenly leapt from bed and went outside, ignoring O-Kimi’s attempts to stop him.
He descended Tanimachi Ninth District’s slope and emerged into Sennichimae.
It was an uncommonly foggy night; the entertainment district’s lights dyed the sky crimson.
Entering Hōzenji’s grounds from Sennichimae, he found a dimness as though the earth had collapsed—votive lanterns and oil lamps swayed like drowsy sentinels.
Exiting the precincts brought him to the theater district’s back alley, lined with rented banquet halls.
The murkiness seemed to ache in his chest.
Ahead, light streamed sideways with blinding intensity—Ebisu Bridge Street.
The luminous flow neither reached this alley nor the opposite one, frozen like water arrested mid-course through a bamboo pipe.
With leaden spirits, he turned from the light—only to emerge onto another bright thoroughfare.
Dōtonbori Street.
Passing a grand cabaret, he flinched as a shrill chant—“Aja! Aja!”—pierced the air, followed instantly by percussion and maracas hammering out a China rumba.
The frivolous rhythm resurrected the courtesan from ××-rō—her evening gown swirling as she danced with patrons.
Gritting his teeth, he entered the cabaret.
When he asked for their top girl and glanced at the indicated table, a woman in black kimono threaded with silver—collar daringly slipped—was being ardently wooed by a man in merchant’s coat.
Summoned, she unfolded her willowy height and approached.
Hyōichi flushed scarlet; attempting speech set his body trembling.

With an expression of appalling timidity and eyes—long-lashed yet intimidating with the knowingness of a woman who had mastered her trade despite her youth—she stared fixedly at him.

That night, he ate sushi at Sushisute in Sennichimae with the woman and rode to her apartment in a car he had bargained down to fifty sen.
For no reason other than that she had been courted by a man in a merchant coat, he vengefully claimed Kan-tsuri no Han—the woman—as his own.
Having tempted her himself, he told her she was a foolish woman, scorned her, then scorned himself too.
The woman was named Tomoko and possessed beauty, but she left no mark on his heart.

However, about three months later, as he walked along Ebisu Bridge Street with a sullen face, he unexpectedly encountered Tomoko.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Tomoko said, tears already streaming down her face the moment she saw him.
When told she was pregnant, Hyōichi startled.
Tomoko’s skin looked painfully pale without any white powder.
Hyōichi married Tomoko.
He rented a second-floor apartment nearby and lived with Tomoko.
Hyōichi walked around every day searching for work and was finally hired as a department store clerk.
Valued for his good looks, he was assigned to customer service in the Ladies’ Kimono Department—even taught how to give hand massages—a situation he found wretched by his own measure. Yet when he considered Tomoko growing visibly domestic, he came to be praised for his flawless bowing and speech toward female customers.

That autumn, Tomoko gave birth to a boy.
In that moment of childbirth, Hyōichi thought—with a sense of redemption—that everything he had detested until now had ultimately been beautifully prepared for this very instant.

That day was a crisp, sunny Indian summer day—as if a newborn's cry reverberated through the room—but from the next day onward, a steady rain began to fall.
They hung diapers throughout the six-tatami room like flags of all nations.
O-Kimi came repeatedly to Hyōichi’s place.
While drying diapers over the hibachi, Hyōichi, who had become a father at twenty, and O-Kimi, who had gained a grandson at thirty-eight, laughed cheerfully together.
When a messenger came from Yasujirō urging her to return quickly, O-Kimi said to Tomoko, “I’ll come again. Take care now,” and headed home through the rain.
Each shower of autumn rain nearing winter lightly knocked against O-Kimi’s umbrella.