Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Kasuga-so, located in a secluded spot on the slope, was an ordinary and unassuming apartment but had three distinctive features.
The first was the profuse planting of camellia trees throughout its surroundings and garden.
This matter, which could be called either sentimentality or pride on the part of the widowed manager Tsubaki Masae over forty, originated from how the boarding house—initially likely to be named Harukisō in reference to her camellia-derived surname—instead became Kasuga-so, resulting in the planting of numerous camellias.
When in bloom, the red and white single-petaled and double-petaled flowers were splendid.
The second was that the room rent stood slightly higher than other similar apartments.
Though called high, it amounted to about twenty sen per tatami mat—yet even this played some role in tenant selection.
The third was that a kind of morality had been imposed upon all residents.
For example, alcohol prohibition was enforced within the apartment walls, and any overnight stays required either prior notice or a telephone call, along with other similar regulations.
Single women found themselves barred from residency, being categorized as either lower-class mistresses or café waitresses.
In return, Masae attended to all residents with moral strictness yet human kindness, caring for them as if they were family.
If one paid one yen monthly to the maid service, they could have their room cleaned every morning.

That resident Lee Yeong-tae had disappeared without notice for three days, his whereabouts unknown, was therefore an extraordinary event for Kasuga-so.

Masae took the maid Kiyo and inspected Lee Yeong-tae's room.

“Since you clean every day, you should know how it normally looks.”
“Check for any changes—look carefully.”

“Yes,” Kiyo replied in a shrill, startled voice.

The eight-tatami room had about one and a half tatami partitioned into a shoe removal area and a simple kitchen space, its entire front consisting of glass-paneled doors.
Bookshelves, a desk, a tea cabinet—all modest yet orderly—and in the closet lay bedding, a Chinese-style suitcase, a trunk, and then a great many books.
In particular, general magazines were stacked in towering piles, with small paper slips protruding like fringes from between the pages.
They appeared to have been meticulously read, with paper markers pasted here and there as signs—Masae herself had some recollection regarding those magazines.
On one occasion when a visitor came bearing a business card imprinted with the title "Special Higher Police" from the police station, Lee had engaged in a lengthy discussion; after seeing the guest out to the entrance, he then said to Masae.
“He came out of concern for my ideological matters.
“When I explained various things, he seemed pleased.
“When it comes to that field, I’m the one who knows more about it.
“Auntie, come take a look.”
When Masae followed him to his room, there were magazines with paper slips stuck between their pages scattered about, and he pointed at them proudly.
Still uneasy, Masae later quietly inquired about Lee when the Special Higher Police officer visited again, receiving a reply that he seemed quite the studious and promising young man.
The guest and Lee were laughing together in a friendly manner.

Masae surveyed the room's condition but refrained from touching anything.
Yet she curiously picked up only the short bamboo tube hanging from the pillar.
It was a shakuhachi.
From the bamboo's lustrous surface to the shape of its root nodes, this was clearly an exquisite instrument even to untrained eyes - tied near the top with a purple braided cord and suspended from a nail on the pillar.

“Well, a shakuhachi... I wonder if he can play it... Or maybe it’s just decoration...”

When Kiyo showed no reaction, Masae returned the shakuhachi to its place, looked around the room once more, then left.

In the end, their only discovery was the shakuhachi—they found no clues about his absconding or going missing. Though fully aware of Kasuga-so’s policy requiring advance notice or at least a phone call for overnight stays, three days had now passed without any word from him. He had simply gone out for a stroll as usual; Kiyo said the room looked just as it always did, and there had been no signs of anything unusual in his recent behavior.

"But he was a bit odd from the start," Masae considered.

About a year prior, Lee had come to Kasuga-so.

When someone wanting to rent a room... was announced through the maid's mediation, Masae went out to find a long-haired young man in a student uniform standing rigidly at the exact center of the entrance hall, holding his hat with both hands at chest level.
Masae invited him to a chair beside the entrance where a reception thoroughly characteristic of Kasuga-so commenced.

“Do you attend school?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Which school…?”

“The law department at Meiji University.”

“And your country…?”

“Korea.”

And he presented a small business card inscribed with only his name in brush calligraphy.
In splendid brushwork, it read “Lee Yeong-tae.”

Masae looked at him anew.
His sharply defined, fair-skinned scholarly face held an unrestrained yet wild air that lingered.
His speech too had been clear.

Masae remained silent for a moment but ultimately persisted with her customary formalities.

"Might there be someone who could provide you with an introduction here?"

"I heard about this place from others."

"We generally prefer applicants who come through personal referrals..."

"I don't have one."
"If you require a school reference, I can procure that immediately."

"No, that won't be necessary..."

This exchange continued fruitlessly until Lee eventually withdrew without resolution.

The next day, Lee came again.
He showed his school student ID and train commuter pass to Masae.
Masae glanced at them briefly before rejecting them and said.

“Our establishment's room rates are somewhat higher than others', so it would be uneconomical for you.”

“That’s not a problem.”

“Moreover, cooking for yourself would surely hinder your studies.”

“Meals can be handled outside.”

“Eating out exclusively would lead to nutritional imbalance—it’s not good for your health.”

“I can prepare them myself.
I do so occasionally.”

“But for students, that’s rather... Well, perhaps you should give it more careful consideration.”

Once again, Lee left without reaching any resolution.

The following day, Lee came yet again.
And he showed a sheet of paper.
“Certifying the Absence of Bedbugs and Other Parasites”—a most peculiar document bearing the stamped seal of a certain apartment owner’s name.

“I told a lie.
“My friend claimed they’d reject us over bedbugs unless I provided proof.”

Masae was first taken aback, then found herself deeply moved. That he had perceived her as treating him differently due to being Korean struck her as profoundly regrettable. Until now, all her interactions had followed standard protocol—indeed, among Kasuga-so's fourteen or fifteen residents, six were university students who typically came with proper introductions. While she considered self-catering permissible for graduated professionals, Masae maintained a firm conviction that students immersed in studies should avoid it—a theory now seemingly twisted into ethnic discrimination. These reasonable policies appeared forcibly attributed solely to his peninsular origins. Reiterating her principles until Lee finally acquiesced, she at last revealed the vacant rooms. Two stood available. Selecting the corridor's end chamber as if commandeering rather than requesting permission, Lee transferred his belongings there two days later.

The reasons he disliked his previous apartment, according to him, were that every late night a Chinese soba vendor outside would play a mournful flute, that there was a quarrelsome couple in the neighboring room, that there were many single young women making the washroom dirty, and that the maids called him "Mr. Lee Yeong" instead of properly addressing him as "Mr. Lee," among other things.

As he himself had stated, he sometimes cooked for himself and sometimes ate out.
He had few acquaintances, his daily life was quiet, and he remained constantly absorbed in reading.
There were times when he would return severely intoxicated.
Without any shyness in public, he quickly grew familiar with Masae and the maids.
If there existed a kind of frankness that combined shamelessness and innocence, he left people deeply impressed by such candor.
He called Masae "Auntie" and consulted her about everything, and Masae looked after him in various ways.

In the lingering chill of early spring, on a night when faint snow had fallen late into the hours, around two in the morning, Lee Yeong-tae came home severely drunk.
Masae and the maids were asleep.
At the piercingly loud doorbell, Masae—who had been dozing—immediately rose and, as she made her way to the entrance, sensed it was Lee outside.

After the doorbell fell silent came a brief hush. Then the door was pounded fiercely, and even a voice calling “Auntie! Auntie!” could be heard.
Then silence fell once more.

Masae stood still in the entranceway, but as the silence outside persisted too long, she suddenly shivered from the cold and quietly tried opening the door.
Under hazy moonlight veiled by thin clouds, a figure clung to a small pole supporting an electric wire midway through the alleyway, swaying unsteadily back and forth.

“Who’s there? Who are you?”
“Drunk and coming back this late…”

Still there was no response, and the figure clinging to the pole continued swaying unsteadily back and forth.

"I don't allow drunk people into the house after one o'clock."
"I'll permit you until one o'clock."
"If it's past one o'clock, notify us via the public telephone once you've sobered up, then return the following morning."
"I've told you many times before, haven't I?"
"Do as you're told."
"I don't allow drunk people into the house this late."

Having said what she needed to say, Masae closed the door firmly.
But she stood there, listening intently to the sounds outside.

“Auntie, Auntie,” came a low voice.
Then suddenly, he burst into tears.
He wailed at the top of his lungs like a child—impossible to tell whether it was jest or earnest.
Masae kept listening intently.
Soon, the crying stopped abruptly.
Silence fell.
Angered, Masae returned straight to her inner quarters.

In such cases, if the maids woke up, it had been arranged that someone would open the door for them later.
Both maids Kiyo and Taka woke up that night.
About ten minutes after Masae had returned to her room, Kiyo got up and quietly opened the front door.
Right outside the door, Lee was crouched on the ground, his buttocks planted and both knees hugged to his chest.
He remained crouched without moving.
When his shoulder was shaken and name called, Lee looked up blankly.
He had been asleep.
He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, let out a big yawn, was helped up by Kiyo, staggered inside, kicked off his shoes, didn’t put on slippers, and climbed the stairs like a sleepwalker.

That morning, when Taka went to the entrance first, a large object was dangling from the ceiling in front of the office window.
Taka let out a sharp cry and fled back.
When Kiyo, holding hands with the trembling Taka as they drew close together, went to peek quietly, sure enough, it was dangling from the lintel above the window.
There were no legs, no head—upon closer inspection, it was Lee’s mud-covered coat.
Even so unsettled, the two went to wake Masae.

Masae abruptly turned on the light in the entrance.
When the light came on, what was dangling there turned out to be nothing but a dirty old coat.
She had a chair brought over and had it taken down.
The lintel had a small rusty nail that remained from when the New Year's wreath had been hung.

Masae got angry and took the coat away.

All day long，Lee lay in bed without eating a thing.
He was reported to have a fever of about eight degrees.

When evening came, Masae sent Kiyo to Lee’s room.
She was saying she would give him a fever reducer and that he should come.

Lee obediently changed into a kimono, draped a haori over his shoulders, and came out.
He made a deferential bow before Masae, who was leaning one elbow on the long hibachi and smoking tobacco through a kiseru pipe.

Masae first made him take the fever reducer, then abruptly launched into a scolding.

“What was that about last night?”

“I’m sorry.”
“Because it snowed during the day, I got so excited…”

Masae widened her eyes.

“By night it had already melted.”

“Even so, it did snow during the day, didn’t it?”

Masae started to smile but forcibly stifled it.

"If you love snow that much, you might as well become a dog."
"You got drunk like a dog."

Having said this, Masae herself looked troubled and sullenly closed her mouth.
Once again, a smile threatened to surface.
But that humor seemed lost on Lee.

“That’s right.
“But you're being awful too, Auntie.
“Because you wouldn’t open the door, I slept outside like a dog and caught a terrible cold.
“My fever reached eight point two degrees.”

Masae had remained silent but suddenly spoke out.

“What happened to the coat?”

Lee looked up with a bewildered expression.

“Why did you hang the coat in such a place?”

Lee didn’t reply and seemed lost in thought.
Masae pressed further, berating him about the coat until she accused him of trying to disparage Kasuga-so.

“Ah, I get it,” Lee said, hitting his head. “I had a dream. When you locked me out, Auntie, I felt so sad—so terribly sad—that while crying I wanted to die, and dreamed I hung myself in the entranceway. That must’ve been it.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I remember having that sort of dream. That dream was the coat.”

This time it was Masae who couldn't comprehend.
After two or three rounds of bizarre back-and-forth, they abandoned the effort.

"I simply can't make sense of any of this."
"You're running a fever, aren't you?"
"Off to bed with you now."

Lee left dejected, and once alone, Masae found herself growing angry again.
She took her anger out on the maids.

But the conversation ended there, and ultimately the coat was brushed clean of mud by Masae's own hands, even ironed, before being handed over to Lee.

At that moment, wearing an expression of utmost solemnity, Lee vowed to moderate his drinking henceforth, and having conceived of something that would serve as a pillar for such resolve, he began: "Please reduce the room fee of twenty-two yen by two yen."
Even when pressed for reasons, he stubbornly maintained he couldn't disclose anything until receiving an answer.
When Masae finally relented and offered to reduce it by one yen instead, Lee's face lit up with genuine delight.
He went on to explain that from then on, combining the one-yen reduction with one yen of his own contribution, he would entrust two yen monthly to Masae—this sum to be received when leaving Kasuga-so, with Masae keeping it as savings until that time...
Hearing this, Masae expressed approval but recommended depositing the money at a post office; however, Lee refused to consent, insisting this was a pillar of his spiritual cultivation and that Masae absolutely must be the one to safeguard it for him.

When the small notebook passed from Masae to Lee and her seal was stamped on the first two-yen entry, Masae was deeply impressed while Lee beamed brightly.

However, something slightly displeased Masae three months later when Lee began asking her to stamp proof that he'd saved two yen monthly for those three months.
When asked its purpose, Lee only laughed without answering.
Since it wasn't worth refusing, trusting Lee's smile, Masae stamped it.
About half a month later came a letter from someone claiming to be Lee's uncle, expressing endless gratitude for guiding Yeong-tae and even making him save money.
Along with it arrived a bizarre wooden mask supposedly warding off evil.
Masae felt as though bewitched by a fox.
Lee had no parents, they said, receiving tuition from this uncle.

“He’s a good uncle and truly loves me,” Lee said.

With a vaguely unsettled feeling, Masae gazed intently at Lee’s face—that of a brilliant scholar with a wild edge.

In addition to various other matters, Lee Yeong-tae—whose true nature remained strangely elusive yet whom she had unwittingly grown particularly fond of—suddenly disappeared, and as two days passed and then three, Masae found her worry deepening. She couldn’t possibly notify Lee’s uncle in the countryside north of Pyongyang, nor could she identify anyone particularly close among Lee’s few acquaintances. At a loss for solutions, she inspected Lee’s room regardless—but found no promising leads.

At that moment, there came an unexpected visitor concerning Lee.

II

Lee Yeong-tae ordinarily frequented Ehara Printing Shop.
This was a small printing shop with only five or six workers that handled subcontract work from larger printing houses and mainly did odd jobs, equipped with hand-operated presses and the like, which made it convenient for acquiring technical skills like typesetting and layout—skills Lee was indeed learning there.
Lee had often spoken to Masae about this printing shop as well, saying that if she ever needed anything printed—like business cards, flyers, postcards, or such—he would personally prepare them himself.

The owner of that Ehara Printing Shop suddenly came to visit Masae and said he had something to inquire about regarding Lee Yeong-tae.

Ehara was still in his mid-thirties, and while his courteous demeanor carried a merchant-like quality, his intellectual appearance and manner of speaking made him remarkably easy for Masae—who dealt primarily with students and office workers—to converse with.

“So that means Lee had been gone for four days now,” Ehara said, smoking a cigarette as he sank into thought.

Ehara seemed to have come merely to confirm that much, and this time Masae began asking him various questions about Lee instead.
Then their conversation jumped from topic to topic.

Ehara’s shop had been handling a coterie magazine called Pulp.
The members were all youths around thirty—since one was the younger brother of Ehara’s friend—making it entirely a goodwill project.
The name “Pulp” apparently referred to raw material before paper-making—the foundational stuff of literature and criticism meant for printing.
But its true meaning seemed rather to signify something all the more saturated with youth’s vigor and truth precisely because unrefined.
The coterie members voluntarily came to do typesetting themselves.
For them, the printing shop doubled as workspace.
Lee Yeong-tae counted among them too—differing only by lacking official membership status—allowed unpaid odd jobs amounting to apprenticeship.
There was another youth named Bessho Tsugio sharing Lee’s standing—available for mobilization during busy spells in exchange for daily wages.
Lee learned practical skills from Bessho while Bessho absorbed knowledge from Lee.

Bessho had sometimes visited Lee's room at Kasuga-so, and Masae had come to recognize his face.
He was a pale, thin man with nervous demeanor.

Exactly four days prior, Bessho and Lee were working together at the printing shop.
At that moment, two Pulp coterie members entered.
One was a man who had graduated school but remained unemployed and idle; the other was a bob-haired woman in Western dress assisting with editing a tanka magazine.
The two had been talking with Bessho for a while when suddenly his complexion changed.
A silence fell.
The man blew out cigarette smoke, the woman turned away, then both left without another word.
Immediately afterward, Bessho chased after them for two or three steps before suddenly seizing the ashtray from the table and smashing it against the ground.
Lee grabbed that arm from the side.

“Don’t act so unsightly.”

Bessho turned eyes brimming with hostility toward Lee.

“What’s unsightly?”

“Everything. All of it’s unsightly.”

Bessho’s mouth twisted into a grimace before he suddenly deflated, staring at the floor as he scattered ceramic ashtray fragments with a kick.

Neither spoke another word.

It was nothing more than that incident, yet it left people with an oddly uneasy impression. Ehara and the other workers had been working in another part of the shop, but since everything had happened too abruptly for them to fully grasp the situation, their confusion only deepened the unease. After about two hours passed, Lee and Bessho left together.

From that evening onward, neither man showed his face again. With printing work piling up, Ehara sent an errand boy to Bessho's boarding house only to learn he hadn't returned home. When they pieced together the timeline, it appeared Lee had briefly returned to Kasuga-so before leaving again immediately. Moreover, the day before this disappearance, Lee and Bessho had engaged in an extended debate. Bessho seemed to have shown Lee about a hundred pages of the novel he'd been writing, and their discussion apparently revolved around that work. The others could tell Lee was tearing into him mercilessly. Eventually, the two took their argument outside.

Those two days’ events hadn’t sat right with Ehara.
This was especially true regarding Bessho.
Bessho had recently been saying he showed signs of a nervous breakdown—his work became sloppy; he lacked energy and grew pale; his eyes lost their spark; and he sank into an oddly gloomy depression.

On top of that, there was that "Pulp"—
The bob-haired woman from the coterie apparently had some sort of romantic relationship with Bessho, and Lee seemed to have occasionally mocked this.
However, on both those days, Bessho had been strangely irritable, and Lee had harshly criticized him for it.

“Mr. Lee has been acting a bit strange too,” Ehara said.

At Ehara’s house, there was a female student entrusted to him by relatives from the countryside.
Because Lee was proficient in English, he would sometimes help with her school’s English homework.
Lee always kindly looked after her.
However, one time when Ehara went there, Lee was straddling a chair and cheerfully recounting a story to her.
It was a love story between a young geisha apprentice and an official’s son, where the geisha spurned all other men’s advances for the sake of her single-minded devotion.
Even when Ehara came near them, Lee continued narrating without pause.

Later, Ehara admonished Lee that he should refrain from telling love stories to schoolgirls.
Lee refused to comply.

"That story is Korea's oldest classical literature."
"It's called Chunhyang-jeon."
"Chunhyang is the heroine's name, but in English and French translations, the title becomes 'Spring Fragrance'."
"It's a tale as beautiful as spring fragrance."
"It's different from ordinary love stories."

Ehara could only fall silent.
In that moment, he sensed something reminiscent of his own longing.

Another time, even Ehara found himself somewhat taken aback.
Lee abruptly asked how much profit this printing shop made.
Ehara answered honestly that the business was barely staying afloat and making no profit whatsoever.
"I believe that's correct," Lee said.

At Lee's composed tone of conviction, Ehara couldn't even muster a wry smile.
Lee then presented expert-like opinions about various shortcomings: inadequate care in typeface procurement, the unprofitability of subcontracted work due to low unit prices, and the lack of developed methods for cultivating lucrative odd-job clients. Finally, he declared outright whether Ehara had the courage to make him manager there.
"I'll give it some thought," Ehara evaded.

“Please do give it serious consideration.”
“And courage—everything comes down to courage,” Lee declared, nodding to himself.

Various other stories about Lee came to light.
Masae also shared a few anecdotes about Lee.
The two of them conversed like old acquaintances, but whenever their words faltered, Lee’s image would loom large, and she grew anxious again—where could he be, what was he doing these three or four days?

"In ordinary apartments, lodgers would have complete freedom, but here at our establishment—since we feel responsible for looking after other families' precious sons—we maintain particularly strict standards, and Mr. Lee should be well aware of that..."

"Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, the fact that they disappeared simultaneously—whether together or separately—somehow troubles me."

When compared to Bessho's nervously fragile disposition, Lee's character—though academically gifted yet distinctly eccentric—had gradually begun to take on a sinister hue.
That said, even if Lee harbored no ideologically dangerous tendencies, there remained hesitation about involving the police due both to occasional visits from the Special Higher Police and his Korean heritage.

"In any case, let us observe developments a little longer," Ehara concluded.

After Ehara left, Masae deliberated for a while, then went alone to Lee’s room once more.
She opened desk drawers and peered into the closet, but everywhere was neatly organized—not even a fragment of writing that could serve as a clue remained.
Before long, Masae suddenly blushed and hurriedly left the room.

III

The next morning, despite having slept poorly the night before, Masae awoke unusually early. When she sat up, Kiyo immediately came rushing over.

“Madam, Mr. Lee has returned.”

“Mr. Lee...? When?”

It was still before six o'clock—even Kiyo had been roused because of it.
Lee had returned in his usual manner, casually washed his face, wiped down his whole body with water, then asked them to serve him breakfast just this once, saying he’d wait while reading the paper before going up to his room—or so they reported.

Masae became flustered.
She hurriedly washed her face and smoothed her hair, then as soon as the room cleaning was done, immediately sent for Lee.

Lee had changed into an unlined kimono and arrived laughing.

“You’ve been quite the late sleeper.”

Masae silently looked at Lee’s face.
A light of a smile appeared in his eyes; an expression of joy was upon his forehead and cheeks.
He appeared as though he had come into contact with something fresh.

He produced two large trays there.
On the round wooden trays, cherry blossom flowers were clumsily carved around the inner perimeter.

“Auntie, this is a souvenir for you.
Can you use something like this?”

Masae remained silent for a moment longer, but after taking a sip of tea, she suddenly spoke.

“Where on earth have you been?”

“So this is a souvenir from Karuizawa.”

“Karuizawa?”

“We made a brief stop there.”
“We climbed Mount Asama.”

“And Mr. Bessho—”

“We were together.”

Even when pressed about Bessho, Lee showed no trace of surprise, responding as though he'd known everything from the start.

“Asama Crater is magnificent. I did a truly good thing—I thrust Mr. Bessho into the crater.”

“What? Into the crater…”

“That’s what did the trick. He regained his spirits and we came back together.”

Masae remained silent for a while. Then she said in an unexpectedly low voice:

“Why didn’t you inform me before leaving? You can’t possibly imagine how worried I’ve been.”

“It was terribly sudden. Mr. Bessho suddenly said, ‘Let’s go.’ He said we should either jump into the crater or decisively put an end to that situation. So I went along to see it through.”

Masae couldn't follow his story and gazed blankly at Lee's face.

“Let me eat my meal already. I'm hungry. I haven’t eaten anything since last night on the train.”

“I’ll serve it now. But first, just speak clearly. I don’t understand a word of your story.”

“But Auntie, you already understand, don’t you?”

As if declaring her comprehension should be self-evident, he gazed up at Masae with limpid eyes.

“I do understand, but you must speak more plainly.”

So, according to the jumbled account Lee gave—

Bessho had been heartbroken by Noda Sawako—the bob-haired woman from Pulp—and on top of that, after being subjected to witnessing Sawako’s blatantly intimate behavior with another man, he grew resentful, convinced the pair were mocking him, and sank into self-destructive despair. It was Bessho who had introduced Sawako to Pulp, so this time, [Lee] sarcastically suggested that perhaps [Bessho] should withdraw from Pulp. That instead highlighted his position as a defeated man. In the midst of all this, the novel he had poured his heart into writing was, from Lee’s perspective, utterly nonsensical babble—something utterly trivial. It was nothing more than a string of words devoid of any truthfulness. He vomited blood in his anguish. Heartbreak, frailty, and loss of confidence—this was a ready-made formula for suicide. After alternating between tears and shouts, Bessho declared he would prove it by dying. He also said that if he couldn't die, he would come back to life. So Lee took on the role of witness and suddenly carried out their trip to Asama. Lee himself shouldered the role of "observing with immense interest" whether Bessho would commit suicide or return to life. The two hurried to Kutsukake, spent two rainy days drinking, then departed at midnight to climb Asama. They peered into the crater before dawn, welcomed the sunrise above the sea of clouds, then stood long at the rim. Bessho completely "immersed himself in the crater," while Lee too became entranced by that majestic caldera. The two quietly "exchanged celestial whispers," then hurried down Asama. They took the dangerous shortcut through Oiwake Pass, got lost in the foothill forests, kicked apart mountain ant nests until they were covered from head to toe in ants, emerged at Kutsukake, drove a car to Karuizawa for meals and souvenir shopping, then boarded a midnight train. “In a state of intense excitement,” they had hardly slept, and with their money gone, couldn’t eat anything, but being "empty in pocket yet overflowing in spirit," they had returned.

He parted with Bessho at Ueno Station...

Masae listened to this tale half in amusement.

“It’s just like a novel.”

“It’s more than a novel,” Lee said seriously.

"But since I’ve told you so many times before, from now on you must inform me when you’re going to be away from the house."

“That’s right.
When I’m at home, I understand perfectly well, but once I go out, I forget.”

“To forget such a thing…”

“I do forget.”
“I’m such a fool.”

Lee knocked his head two or three times with his fist.
And suddenly, he blinked rapidly.

“Auntie, will you scold me for what happened this time?”

Masae gave a wry smile.
“Aren’t you even worth scolding?”
Masae’s eyes widened.
Lee was tearing up.

“Scold me. What makes me saddest is being despised by you, Auntie.”

When Lee let tears fall, Masae was thrown off balance. She told him how worried she had been since then, how Mr. Ehara too had worried about them both, and even confessed it had been wrong to search his room without permission.

“Is that true?” Lee exclaimed. “Then I’m glad. Auntie, even if you turn the room upside down, I don’t mind at all. In all the world, there’s not a single person like a mother.”

At that, the two fell silent.
At that moment, Masae curiously recalled the shakuhachi.

“The shakuhachi was hanging there, wasn’t it? Why do you keep it hanging there?”

Lee’s face suddenly lit up.
When Lee was still in Korea, there had been an official from the Japanese Monopoly Bureau in that region who constantly played the shakuhachi.
Lee had been greatly fascinated by that “bamboo flute.”
However, when that man once went deep into the mountains on a tiger hunt and fell off a cliff while injured, he ended up having about half his body devoured by a tiger.
Lee’s family members took the lead and, at great risk, retrieved half of his body.
At that time, Lee received the “bamboo flute” from the bereaved family.
Later, when he looked into the shakuhachi’s history, he discovered that for komuso monks of old, it had served as an ascetic tool, a musical instrument, and even a sword.
He had obtained an excellent item and was keeping it with the heart of a komuso monk.

“You understand now too, don’t you, Auntie?”

Masae merely nodded vacantly.
The story’s fabricated plot and Lee’s earnest tone left her feeling out of sync.

“It’s fine bamboo. Please take a look.”

Lee immediately stood up, went to retrieve the shakuhachi, and hurriedly climbed up to the second floor.

Masae let out a sigh of relief.
Then she wore a gentle smile.