Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Pond Beneath the Cliff

Beneath a not very high cliff, there was a pond.
It was an irregularly shaped pond spanning over seventy tsubo (approximately 231 square meters), with many shallow areas and a maximum depth no greater than chest-deep for an adult.

Because there was a small spring seeping from the cliff, the pond’s water naturally renewed itself, trickling out from the lower end.
This living water was clear if one scooped from the surface, yet faintly murky when peered into its depths.

This pond was once a playground for children.
After that, it became part of a small garden.
During the war, the water was used for training exercises whenever there were fire drills, and when the water supply was cut off, it was drawn for various purposes.
As for what role this pond played when the entire area was disaster-stricken by an air raid, even amidst the chaos, it remains unclear.
However, it might have been true that only a few objects were thrown in, leaving it almost entirely unused and abandoned.

After the war, this pond once again became a playground for children.
The various objects that had been thrown into it during the wartime fires had all been collected over time, and what remained of the scarlet carp, black carp, and crucian carp that had once inhabited it—though only a few—had also been caught before long.
But small fish, shrimp, and crabs still remained.
The children gathered to catch them.

This shrimp and crab fishing was quite an interesting activity.
Creatures with shrimp-like bodies and large crab claws—said to be native to America—were placed in glass containers and sold as playthings for children.
Over several years, they had proliferated in the rice paddies and rivers of Tokyo’s neighboring prefectures, but within the city, this pond also held quite a few.
They didn’t get caught on hooks much, but instead, even without a hook, if one just attached bait, they would grab onto it and climb up.
The children would either fling them up onto land in one swift motion from just below the water’s surface or scoop them out with a hand net.
When they grew large, their bodies alone reached ten centimeters, and their claws were about the same length.

While the children were playing like that, cultivated fields were already being created here and there, and elsewhere rubble was being cleared and soil turned over as new fields were being made. And here and there small dwellings were being built. From the cliff top down to its base across the entire area stretched an extensive swath of burned ruins where even figures of distant passersby could be seen through the emptiness, taking on a thoroughly rural aspect.

A small house was also built beside the pond.
Initially it had been a barracks with corrugated iron roofing, but later became a tiled-roof structure.
The roughly two hundred tsubo plot encompassing the pond belonged to Shimizu Tsunekichi, and in the corrugated iron hut constructed there to deter others from using the land lived Takatori Shinsaku, who worked at the same company as Tsunekichi.
After Shinsaku secured another residence and moved out, the hut was demolished and a modest tiled-roof house built where Tsunekichi came to live with his niece Tatsuko.
Electric lights were installed and running water provided.
The former air-raid shelter dug into the cliffside became an adequate storage space.

Even when spring came, the children no longer came to the pond to play.
Bamboo four-eyed lattice fences were woven around three sides of the property, with fresh fatsia leaves arranged here and there, while on one cliffside, fire-scarred shrubs sprouted new buds as ivy and vines crept outward.

One day, as previously promised, Takatori Shinsaku brought the trees by truck. The assortment included maple, cherry, plum, hinoki cypress, gardenia, fig, daphne, and camellia—along with even a few clumps of kumazasa bamboo. Shimizu Tsunekichi wore a smile of complete satisfaction as he and Shinsaku planted them throughout the garden. Rather than centering around the house, they arranged everything with the pond as the focal point, replanting numerous times until it took the entire day.

For dinner, sake was served and beef was stewed. As vegetables for the meat hot pot, along with green onions, there was parsley. This parsley was Tsunekichi’s pride, growing wild near where the pond’s water flowed out. Shinsaku said while picking parsley from the pot.

“Truly splendid.”

Tsunekichi raised the sake cup.

“In Tokyo, beef hot pot always comes with green onions, but parsley tastes better than green onions. Though mind you, without sugar these days, parsley wouldn’t be any good. Perfect timing—Tatsuko had saved a bit of sugar for us, and the pond still had parsley growing. Both the woman and the pond—they’re good at keeping things tidy.”

Then he revealed he was considering keeping four or five ducks in the pond. This was less his own idea than his grandson Nobuo’s wish—Tsunekichi being already past fifty. His only son Nobuhiko was in Beijing, leaving the family as just Nobuhiko’s wife Masako, their child Nobuo, and his niece Tatsuko—who had returned from her marital home to live with them. When Tokyo started enduring air raids, they secured a house near Urawa to evacuate to, with Tatsuko staying behind to guard their Tokyo home while Tsunekichi shuttled between both places. After their Tokyo house burned down, they all moved near Urawa until a new house rose from the scorched ruins—then only Tsunekichi and Tatsuko returned first. The place being too small for everyone to live together, Masako and Nobuo began visiting Tokyo occasionally now. Nobuo, having grown fond of ducks in the countryside, now wanted them at their Tokyo home too—to let swim in the pond.

“I see, ducks would be quite nice,” said Takatori Shinsaku.

“In a pond, carp and turtles are standard, but ducks too…”

“You’re planning to put in carp and turtles anyway, but ducks…”
“They’d just peck around everywhere recklessly—what’s to be done?”
“If we’re going to keep ducks, we might as well go with geese instead…”

The image of white waterfowl swimming about the pond had been pleasantly envisioned. However, after a moment of silence, Takatori Shinsaku abruptly knit his brows together.

“Ducks or geese—do you truly intend to release such things into the pond?”

“That could be amusing too, I suppose.”

“Well… perhaps you should reconsider.”
“If they merely swim about it’s tolerable—but diving underwater and churning up mud… Above all else, it’ll ruin the parsley.”

Because Shinsaku had abruptly changed his opinion, Tsunekichi stared intently at his face. On his simple, sunburned face with thick eyebrows, an uneasy hue had surfaced.

"What if we were to dredge the pond once, I wonder?" he said with a sigh.

"What’s this about dredging the pond?"

"No, I simply mean—why don’t you try dredging it? After all, it’s quite an old pond."

"Well, it is old. But as you can see, the spring water flows, the water lilies bloom—there’s no need to dredge it. When this area burned down, it seems some things were thrown into it, but they appear to have been completely removed. Even the carp and crucian carp were completely fished out, you see. They all gathered around and dredged it for me. A clean, neat thing it is."

In reality, the pond appeared cleaner than it had been before the disaster.
There had been abundant growths of algae, yet strangely even these were beginning to disappear.
Tsunekichi habitually rose early, and his first act upon waking was always to go out into the garden where he took pleasure in viewing the pond.
The pond’s surface at dawn possessed a freshness as if dew had newly formed upon the water.
By his reckoning, the pond’s water comprised both dead and living portions—the dead water’s surface gathered no night dew while the living water’s surface did.
To wash one’s face with that dew-laden water would surely have been invigorating.
Yet this very act Tsunekichi himself refrained from at his pond.
Though no sewage flowed into it, the water of this urban pond remained steeped in city dust.

However, now that the surrounding area had become burned ruins—with cultivated fields springing up here and there across the wasteland, wheat leaves swaying, broad bean flowers beginning to bloom, various leafy vegetables sprouting forth—it was as though the earth’s skin had shed its dingy old garments of human habitation to stand utterly bare, finally able to breathe with spring’s vitality. Thus both pond and water seemed entirely renewed.
Yet still Tsunekichi could not bring himself to wash his face there.

It’s because I’m still a city dweller at heart, unable to fully embrace being a man of the wild.

That very loneliness had conversely deepened his attachment to the pond.

As he grew drunker, he spoke of various things about the pond—the moss clinging to the stones, the water striders, the dragonfly larvae, the small dace, the water lilies, and all manner of other things.
He spoke of how the morning sun reflected on the pond, and within that sun, the figure of a dragon—or rather, a shape resembling a water boatman—had been clearly visible.

“What did the dragon look like?”

Takatori Shinsaku asked with gleaming eyes, but Tsunekichi laughed.

“So, you know—you know what a sea horse is? I’m saying it looked like that.”

Tsunekichi was already drunk.
Shinsaku was growing drunk as well.

“Anyway, let’s dredge the pond to see what’s in there. The company has pumps and gasoline. If we bring two or three workers from the company, that should suffice. Let’s get started right away.”

“Fine. If the water lilies don’t bloom, we’ll do it then.”

“The water lily flowers won’t bloom this year.”

“No—they’ll definitely bloom.”

“They won’t bloom.”

If they bloomed, we’d drink sake while admiring them; if they didn’t, we’d drink anyway—with that settled, Shinsaku ended up staying over. And so only the matter of pond dredging remained in Tsunekichi’s mind, until eventually it came to be recalled with vivid insistence.

A short distance from Shimizu Tsunekichi’s house, across the cultivated fields, stood a small house where a couple lived.
Before the disaster, he had been a grocer, and now he displayed various sundries while covertly engaging in black-market dealings.
The master of that house, Ōi Masujirō, would frequently appear at Shimizu Tsunekichi’s place.
There were times when he came without any particular purpose, and others when he brought food supplies.

This Ōi Masujirō would hesitantly broach different matters depending on the occasion.

He advised keeping goldfish in the pond.
The fact that spring water welled up in the pond would make an excellent condition.
The colors of goldfish—from black, red, blue, and other intermediate hues to their variegated patterns—were not fixed but always gradually changing.
The colors would deepen or fade.
The patterns too would shift over time.
However, when kept in clear, limpid water for a certain period, their colors from subtle gradations to patterns would become fixed, and thereafter no matter what water they were kept in, they would remain unchanged throughout their lives.
These unchanging goldfish were the most premium grade.
If it were the Shimizu family's pond, those premium specimens could be cultivated.
It was said one could dam only the spring-fed area, raise specimens with superior coloration in the stagnant section, then fix those hues in the spring water zone...

He also asked if he would consider lending the pond.
It was to be made into a goldfish pond.
Since nearly all of Tokyo’s goldfish shops had been wiped out, if they cultivated goldfish and put them on the market, they would sell well no matter how expensive or abundant they were.
Moreover, feed could be readily obtained.
There were many exposed sections of sewer ditches, and midge larvae were sure to proliferate in swarms.
There were even goldfish experts who had expressed willingness to cooperate.

He also asked if he would consider selling just the pond area.
Leaving such a large area unused seemed wasteful.
He wanted to acquire it at the same price as regular land.
It was said he would never do anything that would become an eyesore.

He also asked if he would consider leasing the entire owned property.—Of course, this would be after purchasing the house currently standing at a fair price. Additionally, he would expand the barracks and turn them into a department store-style shop. He would open a café by the pond. He would guarantee it would thrive. Of course, a fixed term of two or three years would be acceptable, and if the Shimizu family were to construct permanent buildings, he would agree to conditions such as demolishing the barracks and returning the land at any time. It was said he would never cause any trouble.

Ōi Masujirō brought up all manner of such proposals—sometimes hinting at them obliquely, sometimes stating them outright.
It seemed as though he was thinking of some moneymaking scheme, yet also seemed not to be—the central aim remained unclear.
At first, Shimizu Tsunekichi had dismissively brushed it off, but gradually it began to weigh on his mind.

“Just what exactly are you really thinking about?”

“So, um, you could lend us the pond, or sell us the pond, or even lend us not just the pond but the entire property…”

“So the pond is the issue here, then.”

Ōi Masujirō lowered his face, glanced up furtively at the other man, and spoke hurriedly.

“No, that’s absolutely not the case at all.”
“It’s not merely a passing notion—I’ve given it careful consideration.”

“Then could you disclose your true intentions to me?”
“Depending on the matter, I might consult with you.”

“How grateful I’d be if you’d say that.”
“I feared my impropriety might have given offense.”

“As this concerns the neighborhood, speak freely.”
“So then—what exactly do you mean to do with the pond?”
“Keeping goldfish and opening a café—it can’t be just that simple, can it?”

“Well, I’m not particularly set on goldfish or anything, but even so—it seems a waste to leave it as it is.”

“Then what do you propose?”

“Honestly, I’ve been wondering if there isn’t some way to manage it, but…”

After that, Ōi Masujirō fell completely silent.
When Tsunekichi pressed further, the conversation would revert to its starting point and then sink back into ambiguity.

"It’s absurd," Tsunekichi thought.
However, precisely because its true nature remained unclear, it occasionally weighed on his mind.

The pond was always calm, and with trees planted around it, its scenic charm had grown.
Tsunekichi gazed at the pond morning and night, devising plans for garden designs centered around it.
Because the surroundings had become burned fields and fields were being cultivated, a regular garden would be unsuitable, necessitating some special design.

As Tsunekichi pondered these things, a strange rumor reached his ears.

—that there was a child’s corpse in the pond, still left untouched, it was said.

It was just a simple rumor, but it seemed to have spread quite widely through the neighborhood as people whispered it among themselves. Tatsuko heard it and conveyed it to Tsunekichi. It was a rather simple rumor, and precisely because it lacked any basis, it may have spread all the more—whispered among the neighborhood women and young girls in public bathhouses and ration lines. Even whose child it was or what kind of corpse it might be remained unknown.

“What a dreadful story,” said Tatsuko, furrowing her brow.

Tsunekichi laughed.

“It’s because our pond is so beautiful—someone must’ve gotten jealous and started that rumor.”

But for Tatsuko, it felt somehow eerie, and she couldn’t simply laugh it off.
She wanted to get to the bottom of the rumor, but there was no one she felt close enough to confide in.
The old neighbors from before had scattered far away, and among those now beginning lives in air-raid shelters or barracks here and there, she had no close acquaintances.
After much agonizing, Tatsuko one day took advantage of a minor shopping errand to sit down at Ōi Masujirō’s storefront. While making small talk with Mrs. Tokiko, she seized the opportunity to bring up the notorious rumor.

Tokiko was a few years younger than Tatsuko, just thirty years old, but she had an oddly low intelligence and a stubborn streak.

When Tatsuko laughingly brought up the rumor, Tokiko abruptly paled and fell silent.
Her slightly broad-cheeked, low-nosed, rounded face turned waxen, only her long, narrow eyes—as if fixed in place—gleamed.

Tatsuko started at something and fell silent.

Tokiko stared fixedly at Tatsuko.
After a while, she suddenly said.

“It’s true.” And she nodded firmly.
“There is a child in that pond.”

“Huh? You know about it?” Tatsuko exclaimed.
Tokiko repeated in a low, certain voice.

“There is a child in that pond.”

“Whose child is it?”

“The same child as Yukiko.”

Yukiko was Tokiko’s only daughter, who had died during the disaster—a fact Tatsuko also knew.
If she had lived, she would have turned five this year.

“When you say it’s the same as Yukiko-chan…”

“It’s the same child.”
“The child is inside that pond.”

“When you say it’s the same, what do you mean?”
“And when did it enter, I wonder?”

“It’s the same child.”
“It’s been in the pond all along.”
“But it’ll come out soon enough.”

“Huh? She’ll come out?”

“She will.”

Tatsuko found herself at a loss for words, feeling as though her breath was catching.
Tokiko’s gleaming eyes remained fixed on Tatsuko without blinking once.
A tear trickled from those eyes, yet still she stared unblinking.

Tatsuko could no longer bear it. She stood up and left with a hasty bow.
She felt those unblinking eyes on her back and continued to feel them even as she walked outside.

Tatsuko was waiting to tell Tsunekichi about this when he returned home from work.

“Don’t you think that person seems a bit off?”

Tsunekichi listened silently to Tatsuko’s account.
He stayed silent even after she had finished.

“It’s truly strange,” Tatsuko whispered.

“This has become quite a nuisance—I must do something about it.”

Tsunekichi muttered this, but before long, his furrowed brow relaxed into a clear expression.

“Right, I see.”
“I’ve mostly grasped Ōi’s story now.”

And the next day, Tsunekichi called Ōi Masujirō and confronted him directly about the matter.

Masujirō repeatedly apologized and was deeply contrite.

“To be honest, I did consider opening up and consulting you, but given how difficult it was to broach the subject—how I agonized over it in various ways…”

However, from Tsunekichi’s perspective, there had been nothing difficult to say—during the disaster, Yukiko had died, and her funeral had been properly conducted. As for why such a fantasy—that a child identical to Yukiko was in the pond—had taken root in Tokiko’s mind, that remained unclear. But in any case, all they needed was to rid her of that delusion.

Tsunekichi found himself growing angry.

“You shouldn’t worry unnecessarily—just drive those illusions from your wife’s mind. Isn’t that all you need to do?”
“Can’t you even manage something that simple?”

“I’ve already given it considerable thought myself, but given that the events of that time remain unclear…”

And what Ōi Masujirō recounted was as follows.
The incendiary bombs came raining down with a roar.
Flashes erupted everywhere—explosions boomed, flames surged, the night turned pallid then crimson—and every house burst into flames at once.
Masujirō, who had been on duty as a civil defense group member, could no longer keep watch. He plunged through a tunnel of fire and reached his house to find no one nearby.
Uninhabited homes burned unchecked.
Smoke thick with embers churned.
Breaking through it, he emerged into a crowd fleeing in panic.
He could not find Tokiko or Yukiko.
No one he asked knew anything.
He peered into the communal air-raid shelter carved into the cliffside—it stood empty.
Masujirō ran about in desperate frenzy.
By fortune, he found Tokiko far from the chaos.
Tokiko seemed demented.
Soaked through, she clutched Yukiko.
She remembered only this: leaving the shelter to be engulfed by smoke, then standing in the pond.
The child in her arms neither stirred nor breathed.
They reached a temple spared by the flames and spent a day beside Yukiko’s corpse.

“So that’s why Tokiko has no idea where exactly Yukiko drew her last breath—or how,” Masujirō explained.

—They buried Yukiko at that temple.
And then took shelter with an acquaintance in Kawagoe.
Masujirō frequently came to Tokyo to make plans for the future.
After the New Year, a modest house had been built on the burned ruins, and they began dealing in trivial sundries.

However, after moving into their home on the burned ruins, Tokiko’s demeanor began to change.
She had been extremely gloomy but became cheerful.
This was all well and good, but amid her cheerfulness, moments would occur when she seemed possessed.
In such moments, she would whisper to Masujirō that there was a child just like Yukiko in that pond.
That pond was the Shimizu family’s pond, the same one she had been standing in during the disaster.
The child in the pond was not Yukiko, but it was a child just like Yukiko.
Tokiko often visited Yukiko’s grave.
Even so, there was still a child just like Yukiko in the pond.
That child would surely emerge from the pond before long.
Her thoughts had taken deep root and could not be dislodged.
Masujirō was thoroughly overwhelmed and felt pity for her; moreover, if things continued this way, it would spread rumors of ghost stories and tarnish the pond’s reputation. So he thought—well, if possible—that if he could borrow the pond and let Tokiko spend time there, her feelings might return to normal.

As he listened to this, Tsunekichi grew increasingly irritated.

“If she’s just babbling about the child, that can’t be all there is to it, can it?”

“No, that’s all. But just once or twice, she got up in the middle of the night, saying she’d go see the child, and tried to go out.”
“Truly, that’s all there is to it.”

Ōi Masujirō hung his head, looking as though he wanted something to be done about it.
Tsunekichi shouted.

“So I understand.
Let me think about it a little.”

Shimizu Tsunekichi felt indignation rise within him.
He could not suppress indignation—not toward Ōi Masujirō, nor toward Tokiko, nor regarding the air raid’s devastation, but toward the entire story itself and the very fact that such a tale had arisen.

What an idiotic, unenlightened affair this was.

Then he felt compelled to confront this entire spectacle of foolish ignorance.
As his means of confrontation, he settled on dredging the pond.

Tsunekichi met Takatori Shinsaku at the company to discuss the dredging.

Shinsaku’s eyes widened.

“So it does come out after all?”

When pressed about it, Shinsaku confessed.
――Shortly before the relocation, one night, a woman’s figure had stood dejectedly in the pond.
He had indeed seen it.
After staring for a while, the woman’s figure glided to the far side and vanished….

Tsunekichi grimaced.

“So, since such a thing happened, after all, it would be advisable to dredge the pond.”
“Don’t worry—I’ll handle it.”
“If we use the company’s pump, there’s nothing to it.”

Tsunekichi simply entrusted him with the task.

——Here too lay a remnant of foolish ignorance.
Tsunekichi fully resolved to confront this.
He decided to have Takatori Shinsaku dredge the pond and invited the Ōi Masujirō couple to observe it.
By doing such a thing, perhaps new seeds of rumor would be sown, but I thought there was no need to mind.

There was nothing suspicious in the pond.
I would lay it bare under the clear light of day.

Tsunekichi gazed proudly at the pond.
It was a beloved, beautiful pond.

On Sunday morning, Takatori Shinsaku arrived with three workers, bringing the pump.
Ōi Masujirō and wife were invited into the house.

Broken clouds drifted across the sky as sunlight flickered between brightness and shadow.

The pond dredging began.
The engine emitted a brisk hum while pump-drawn water gradually receded.
The surface grew calmer than usual, sinking almost imperceptibly.
Later it started hollowing inward from the center.
Peripheral waters clung stubbornly to the banks, resisting descent as the central area retreated first, dragging down the edges—this was its manner of withdrawal.
Occasional ripples stirred its plane, betraying signs of movement beneath.
Whatever stirred there would inevitably surface soon regardless of will.
Though its nature stayed unclear, something unquestionably lurked.

Tsunekichi recalled draining ponds in his rural childhood. They would dam rivers and small pools, bailing out water with buckets. As the water dwindled, ripples would churn vigorously. All sorts of fish would thrash about in panic. Some leapt from the surface. Others emerged noisily from water plants and burrows. The water grew shallower still, the fish lying motionless in mud or flapping weakly. You might find an unexpectedly large specimen—or nothing but unremarkable creatures….

I should have brought Nobuo.

Tsunekichi suddenly felt something akin to regret.
When planning the pond dredging, he should have called Nobuo.
There’s no telling how delighted Nobuo would have been.
Tsunekichi had forgotten about that.

But…

This wasn’t merely a dredging—the purpose had been an investigation.
I had to confirm whether there was indeed a child in the pond, or bones, or anything suspicious.

Takatori Shinsaku stood with his arms crossed, gazing into the pond.
The workers too were gazing into the pond.
Ōi Masujirō was sitting on the veranda of the house, but Tokiko had come out to the edge of the pond at some point and stood rigidly like a stone statue, staring into the water.
Tatsuko was also standing there beside her, looking at the pond.

Outside the four-eyed fence too, there were onlookers.
They were people from the neighborhood.
Tsunekichi called out to them and invited them into the garden, but no one came in.
Only a few children came in.
They whispered among themselves in hushed tones, with an air of hesitation.

The whole scene had a somewhat peculiar atmosphere, as if they were burning with curiosity yet hesitating to approach.

Tsunekichi strolled around the pond while smoking a cigarette.
He felt like wearing an ironic smile toward the surrounding atmosphere and all of them.

And what actually inhabited the pond were only fish.
Unexpectedly, there were three black carp; the rest consisted of small crucian carp and gudgeon-like varieties.
After pausing for lunch, they proceeded to remove debris from the mud at the bottom that afternoon. During this work, they captured numerous shrimp and crabs along with several eels and loaches—plus one large catfish.
The debris proved remarkably sparse—just a few wood fragments and bamboo pieces—while the knee-deep mud remained relatively clean.

The water lilies potted in a large vessel were beginning to unfurl young leaves.
From the sandy soil beneath the cliff, cold water flowed out abundantly.

Tsunekichi wandered through the garden with a faintly lonesome air, smoking cigarette after cigarette.
Everything had unfolded exactly as expected—there was nothing even remotely suspicious in the pond.
That combative spirit toward ignorant superstition had already evaporated entirely.
Only a handful of lingering onlookers and children remained.

Takatori Shinsaku and the others were merely working mechanically in the muddy bottom of the pond.
Tatsuko was in the kitchen, mechanically working on the evening preparations.
The Ōi couple returned home once the pond had dried up.
Throughout this time, Tokiko remained completely silent, her body stiffened like a wooden carving, her face stripped of all expression—only her long, sharp eyes gleaming.

Everything had been laid bare in broad daylight.
What was making him feel so desolate?

Tsunekichi said this to himself and blew out cigarette smoke.
The captured fish were all released back into the pond.

Two days after the pond had been dredged, on an early morning, Ōi Tokiko’s corpse lay in the pond.

It was a tepid morning with mist hanging in the air.
The pond’s water had not yet cleared completely, still faintly murky, its surface appearing heavy under clinging mist.
On that water’s surface lay Tokiko’s corpse, neither floating nor sinking.

Her torso lay supine in a dark kimono whose striped pattern was indistinguishable, its obi untied to reveal a red-patterned underbelt. Her hem disheveled, her bare legs dangling in the water, her neck twisted slightly from the crisply aligned pristine white detachable collar—her face turned sideways with mouth agape, everything above the nose obscured by disheveled black hair.
The entire form, emaciated and stiffened, did not appear to be a drowned body but rather resembled a wooden carving.

The first to discover it was Shimizu Tsunekichi, who always walked around the edge of the pond in the early morning. After staring at the corpse for a while, he called Tatsuko in a quiet voice.

Tatsuko rushed off to Ōi’s house.
Masujirō came.
Tsunekichi and Masujirō pulled the corpse up into the garden and laid it on a futon.
Without anyone having called, people from the nearby huts gathered.
Then came the routine matters: doctors and police officers, a standard investigation, funeral preparations—all carried out as prescribed.

After the pond dredging, Tokiko had grown profoundly silent, though no particular suspicions had arisen about her, people said.
The sole peculiarity lay in what was found on the cliff diagonally above the pond—where a crude Inari shrine once stood and its small stone torii still remained—a red cloth wrapped around one leg of the gatepost, discovered by no identifiable person.
This red cloth reportedly hadn’t been there until the previous day—or at least not in recent days.
It was also said Tokiko had wandered near that area the day before.
Yet none of this could be verified; it remained mere hearsay.

However, those things left a deep impression on Shimizu Tsunekichi.
There was a path leading up the cliff a short distance ahead, and Tsunekichi went to the torii from there.

The Inari shrine remained burned out, now reduced to nothing but an earthen platform surrounded by stones.
Tsunekichi gazed at the torii, but eventually tore off the red cloth wrapped around one of its legs and flung it to the ground.
Then he placed both hands on the torii and assumed a stance to push it over, but suddenly grimaced, stopped, rubbed his hands together to dust them off, and walked away without looking back.

His cheeks twitched as he muttered aloud to himself.

“Foolish ignorance…but not only that.
Absurd… Yes, everything’s absurd—pointless.
Whether it’s the pond or these ruralized burned ruins—all of it’s trivial.
It’s these absurd trivialities that obstruct free breathing.”

He raised both hands high and took a deep breath.
His face had already cleared into serenity.
With calm contemptuous eyes, he gazed across the field of burned ruins stretching endlessly into the distance.
Then he returned home, took out the whiskey bottle he had stored away since daytime, and drank.

Afterward, Shimizu Tsunekichi sold off both the pond and the land, purchased a plot and a house along a river in the suburbs, and moved there to live.