Pathway to Japanese Literature

White Magnolia

Momoyo's body seemed to have dissolved into the futon.
Two thick underquilts beneath, topped with a night-wear layer and feather futon—she lay so completely enveloped within their soft cotton layers that one couldn't discern where torso ended and limbs began.
Her frame must still have been there in truth, but even that had likely already been surrendered to death's cooling touch, rigor mortis, and decay.
This was not her body.—I felt the loss of flesh there.

When I sat near her bedside, the sensation was strange.
I had come to bid her farewell, yet her body was absent.
Still she remained there.
Her face remained there.
Shrouded by a white cloth, hair undone and flowing back, she lay supine buried within the long pillow.

Kimiko gently lifted the white cloth from that face.
She meant to show me the death face.
But soon she could bear it no longer—replacing the cloth, spilling tears that fell like quiet rain as she wept without sound.
A natural way of crying, like rainfall.

For a few seconds, I looked at the death face.
It was almost exactly as in life.
Who had done it—rouge had been applied to her lips.
Her eyes were not sunken, and on her closed eyelids, long eyelashes lay in a row.
However, the flesh of her cheeks looked as though it would dent if pressed with a finger—
It was said that after collapsing from acute pneumonia, her heart had stopped functioning so abruptly within three days that there had been no time for treatment.

“Ms. Momoyo passed away so suddenly…”

Without looking at my face, as if muttering to herself, Madam Katsu of Katsu-mi said.

“You’ve come to bid farewell, I suppose.
…I’ll go check on things.”

Kimiko made up her mind on her own and ran off to Momoyo’s house across the way.

And guided by Kimiko, I went to bid farewell to Momoyo, but what I felt was not sorrow—it was some great sense of loss.
Two days prior, when I heard at Katsu-mi that Momoyo was ill, and when I was drinking alone, I had felt a strange chill like a premonition—but even that had not become a cause for concern.
Then, faced with her sleeping form, my feelings settled precisely on the notion that something had vanished—her body was gone.

A chest of drawers draped with oiled cloth, a mirror stand covered up... In this austere room where miscellaneous items had been put away, a single incense burner was placed in the small tokonoma. Beside it, in a bronze vase, pure white magnolia flowers were arranged.—The faint fragrance drifting through the air came not from the incense burner, but from those white magnolias.

“Oh, did Kimiko-chan bring those?” I asked.

Kimiko had already stopped crying and nodded with crisp clarity.

“She really loved those flowers.”
“So I arranged them for her.”
“I’ve brought them before, many times.”

That much I also knew.
In Katsu-mi’s narrow garden stood a magnolia tree so disproportionately large it seemed almost out of place.
Rising higher than the plank fence, stretching vigorously upward above the low shrubbery and spreading its branches, in early spring it would become entirely covered in pure white large blossoms, scattering their fragrant aroma all around.
Kimiko had brought those flowers to Momoyo.
I too had been made to break off small flower branches about twice.
But these flowers had unwieldy branching for arranging, and Momoyo and Kimiko had spent considerable time because of that.

“I’m sorry.
“I kept you waiting…”
“But arranging those is such a hassle.”

When I would be there—wearied from waiting alone and then drinking—Momoyo would arrive with a flushed face and direct her smile toward the magnolias blooming richly fragrant just before the second-floor parlor’s frontage, not toward me.

I had never been to her house.
Because I was not her patron, and she had a man who, though he rarely came, was nonetheless called her patron.
A physical relationship was a matter of personal freedom, but visiting the home of a geisha with a patron violated moral code.

Her death had opened that moral gate.
Without hesitation, I stepped over the threshold of her house to bid farewell, but there I could no longer find her body.
There was her—no, her face.
Near that face veiled in white cloth were white magnolia flowers.
I gazed at those flowers until they seeped into my heart.
And for the first time, tears pooled in my eyes.

On thick-jointed branch tips they jutted out abruptly—large six-petaled white flowers, their gently pleading fragrance—there was something ineffably lonesome about them. As I stared, there was something that resonated more with Kimiko than with Momoyo.

Kimiko was at Katsu-mi, neither quite a waitress nor an adopted daughter, occupying a position of relative freedom.
With a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old frame—slender of build—her pale face gave an impression of thin flesh and delicate skin, both chaste and lonely.
When she spoke or laughed, her slightly elongated small canines would peek out from her lips, making her look particularly endearing.
The whole of her was strangely insubstantial—I always received an odd impression from her.
This person might meet with great misfortune.
She might fall victim to prolonged illness.
She might come to harbor in her breast a sorrow that would never fade.
Even now, those days might be lonely and insubstantial...
Of course, she remained unaware of such things.
But her very existence itself gave me that impression.

Is it because I love her that I think such things?
No—I do not love her in the ordinary sense.
I simply like the refreshing quality of her face and the adorable look of her incisors.
When drunk, being at a loss with myself, and staring at her, something in my chest grows painfully tight.

To say it was for that reason would be illogical, but I often went to the Katsu-mi café as well.

In the days following the war’s end, when no one could yet foresee what would become of the pleasure quarters, Katsu-mi had opened a small café right in the neighborhood.
Kimiko and a maid would be out in the shop, and Madam Katsu was usually there as well.
This Madam Katsu—Uyama Katsu—already pushing fifty, would apply stark white face powder, occasionally adorn her round coiffure with a crimson hairband, and don flamboyant brocade kimonos, sometimes even wheedling cigarettes from customers.
The ostensible façade was cheap coffee, mitsumame sweet bean soup, and sweets, but in truth it operated primarily as a bar.
The whiskey and beer were adequate, but the sake was terribly watered-down.
Unless one was already quite intoxicated, it was undrinkable.

“Madam, this here’s a bit awful.”

“Is that so… Let me see….”

In a hoarse, thick voice, Madam Katsu extended her hand, took the customer’s cup, and gulped it down in one breath.

“I see. This does seem rather harsh.”

With that, she feigned composure, making further conversation impossible.—Though of course, responsibility for the liquor’s poor quality lay not with Madam Katsu, but with the cook loitering backstage.

However, the pricing was primarily decided by Madam Katsu.
She decided it arbitrarily.
Even the same food and drink could fluctuate in price depending on the time.
Moreover, if you drank three glasses, the bill could end up being four or five times that of a single glass.
In other words, in Madam Katsu’s calculations, the tax additions were haphazard.

In such a Katsu-mi, Kimiko always comported herself with serenity, a faint smile hovering about her eyes and her adorable incisors glinting faintly as they showed themselves.
When addressed by customers, she would offer brief responses but never initiated conversation.
In the room's corner stood a large gramophone that went nearly unused.—I took pleasure in being alone with her, gazing at her face without speaking while quietly sipping from my cup; yet at such moments, an indefinable sense of her ephemeral fate and misfortune would well up within me, bringing a subdued yet piercing melancholy.

And yet—or perhaps because of that—when Momoyo came, I felt relieved.
Momoyo, with her unusually thick hands and overall large, striking build for a woman in such a place, seemed to shield Kimiko through her very presence.

Momoyo would bring young geisha and others to nibble on mitsumame, but she directed gentle gazes and words at Kimiko.
She took out a large lump of glucose wrapped in white paper from her sleeve and gave it to her.

“Do you know what this is?”

“Oh, I received some just the other day.”

In a manner that dismissed the past matter as inconsequential, Momoyo borrowed a knife and cut off a small piece for her.

“Go ahead and eat it.”
“It’s tasty, you know.”
“But if you eat too much at once, I hear it gives you diarrhea.”
“Eat it little by little now.”

Momoyo did this only for Kimiko.
The young geishas and Madam Katsu seemed accustomed to this routine and did not interfere from the sidelines—Momoyo had brought lumps of glucose to Kimiko many times.

Afterwards, when Uyama Katsu discontinued the café Katsu-mi and focused solely on Katsu-mi, Momoyo taught Kimiko nagauta instead of giving her glucose.
Though Kimiko was not to become a geisha, she had learned a range of performing arts, and since Momoyo was a licensed nagauta master, she took the initiative to teach her without setting specific times, leaving instruction to their free moments.

Kimiko would sometimes take up the shamisen in front of me without any hint of shyness. Her skill had not yet advanced, but there was a certainty in how she made what she had learned her own. As far as I knew, she liked *“Kogatana”*. From the very first line of *"The Path of the Smith Who Polishes His Heart with Three Lantern Lights of Inari Mountain..."*, her bright face grew clear—so pale it could be called alabaster. Then, where the clang of hammers forging swords intermingled with the rhythmic thud of fulling blocks beating linen robes, her plectrum’s tones grew vividly sharp.

Was it because I, stupefied by drink and anguish, yearned for famed blades like Kogitsunemaru that I perceived things this way? Or was it because I harbored a shred of pure affection for Kimiko? Be that as it may, Kimiko was ill-suited to the murky air of Café Katsu-mi, and equally ill-suited to the decadent air of Katsu-mi.

Outside a certain area of Katsu-mi, scorched wasteland from the war stretched as far as the eye could see.
Just over a year and a half had passed since the war’s end, and though small houses were sprouting here and there along the main streets with streetcar lines, it remained mostly open fields.
Here and there lay heaps of rubble, clumps of withered winter weeds still stood, and in small partitioned plots, wheat stalks stretched upward while broad bean flowers began to bloom.
When she stepped out into that field, Kimiko grew even more freshly childlike.

A short way from the road stood a stone well-suited for sitting, so when I invited Kimiko whom I had met on the path, she nodded obediently and followed along.
And we turned our backs to the road and, feeling as though we were the only two people on earth, blankly gazed out at the scorched wasteland.
The air was cold, but sitting still, the faint warmth of the setting sun’s light could be perceived on the skin.

Kimiko was born in the countryside and came to Tokyo with young parents.
The parents were already dead.
In the countryside there were an uncle and a much older brother, but she had never gone there.
In memory surfaced a beautiful stream.

“The water was always clear and clean.”
“Even in the deep parts, you could see all the way to the bottom.”
“There was sand, pebbles, and mud—where there was mud, algae grew.”
“In the algae there were various fish, and we all went to catch them.”
“The fish were hard to catch, but we often caught the small shrimp.”
“Once I had my finger pinched by a large crab and started crying.”

“Kimiko, you were such a tomboy.”

She shook her head and laughed.

“No, that wasn’t me at all.”
“But I was only five or six back then, you know.”

“Don’t you ever think about wanting to go back to the countryside sometimes?”

“But even if I went, it would be boring.”

“Well, there’s nothing fun about it. But living in town makes someone like me yearn for the countryside at times. Even sitting still like this in the scorched wasteland feels nice, you know. But even a scorched field needs a river with clean water. If there were a flowing river, the wasteland would truly come alive.”

When would a beautiful metropolis—unlike any seen before—rise from these scorched ruins? Until then, this forsaken space would see wheat stalks stretching upward, broad bean flowers blooming, weeds thriving, and shrub thickets forming. Gazing at them brought me pleasure. But to fully savor this pleasure required a single clean stream.—Such things I murmured to Kimiko. She listened to my words with a smile. She merely listened without offering any clear reaction. Yet did she herself not remember, above all else, that stream when it came to her countryside? Cherishing that memory and clinging to it, I continued my soliloquy.

In the pauses between my muttering, when I turned to look, she seemed to be enjoying herself as if she were by a stream.
The clarity of her eyes accentuated the brightness of her face with its thin flesh and delicate skin, and one of her slender little incisor teeth accentuated the adorable cuteness of her faintly smiling lips.
The whole of her suggested a certain weakness against fate—in other words, a frail existence.
If I were to sweep her protectively into an embrace, what would she do?

When I fell silent, she too remained quiet.
Holding a shopping bag on her lap, carrying a white handkerchief, wearing a red obi, and exuding a faint scent of makeup—a city girl.
If a country girl were to sit on a stone and gaze at the sunset, she would surely find it boring.
The setting sun, wrapped in thin clouds, spun round and round like a disk as it swiftly sank.
A chill wind flowed along the ground at our feet.

“Shall we walk a little?”

“Yes,” she answers.

“Shall we head back?”

“Yes,” she answers.

I found myself wavering over which course to take. Simply put, parting ways with her there proved too difficult. I followed her. I followed her all the way to Katsu-mi.

As for Katsu-mi, Kimiko enters through the back door, but I cannot do the same.
If I enter from the front, I get ushered into the parlor; once in the parlor, I become a customer.
Oshima-san takes care of everything, Madam makes an appearance too, and even if I stay silent, Momoyo will likely get summoned.

“I need to do some thinking alone for a little while, so I’ll just order sake.”

Leaning half my body against the lukewarm kotatsu, I lost myself in aimless musings during that twilight moment—yet felt somehow out of place and restless.
Flee... or drink myself into oblivion...
When Kimiko brought the sake flask there, I couldn’t help breaking into a guileless smile.

“Well, you didn’t even turn on the lights...”

Kimiko disliked dimness.
And I liked having her turn on the lights.

“Were you thinking again?”

“Hmm, just a bit. Since we’d been sitting on that stone in the scorched wasteland for so long earlier… I thought you might’ve caught a cold or something…”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Forgive me.”

“It’s not about me.”
“Whether Kimiko-chan might have caught a cold…”

She blinked her eyes two or three times and looked at me.

“So you should have a drink.”

She hesitated slightly, and then smiled.

“Just one drink.”

After dividing that single drink into multiple sips over time, I said pleadingly.

“Let’s call Elder Sister Momoyo.”

From Kimiko’s mouth came two forms of address—"Elder Sister Momoyo" and "Ms. Momoyo"—with utter naturalness.
This was something unusual among others.
The version with “Elder Sister” was for banquet rooms—that is, when she was acting as a geisha—while the form without it appeared reserved for moments of intimate trust.
I found myself oddly fixated on these dual appellations, yet there was no way to explain this fixation to Kimiko.

“Come on, it’s all right, isn’t it?”

I couldn’t oppose what Kimiko said.
When I nodded, she immediately stood up and left.

If Elder Sister Momoyo were to come, I would be relentlessly cornered—leaving me no choice but to get drunk.
It had been the same back then.
Of course, that time both she and I had been drunk from the start.
It was snowing when we drank something strong.

They say snowy nights are relatively warm, but that night had a silent, bone-chilling cold.
After Tomiko left, Madam Katsu appeared too; Momoyo settled in saying she didn’t want to make other rounds anymore; and the three of us sat around the kotatsu absorbed in idle chatter.
Since we’d just left Katsu-mi, our conversation—starting with debates over whether it truly functioned as a café or a bar—eventually turned to Kimiko.

“After all, she’s already eighteen.”
“In time, I intend to take in an adopted heir, but until then, I’m at a loss about what to do,” Madam said to me in a consultative tone.

“It’s too late to make her a geisha now, and there’s no way to have her pursue studies either.”
“When it comes to the arts, as you can see, she’s only managed a superficial grasp here and there.”

Momoyo took a gulp of whiskey and said impatiently.

“Madam, you’re so spineless when it comes to Kimiko-chan. Why not just leave things as they are?”

“Do you think so?”

“Of course it is.”
“Why not keep the girl here?”

“Well, if I were to live another ten or twenty years, that would be fine… but these days my stomach’s been troubling me…”

Madam’s stomachaches were a regular occurrence; to those who knew her well, they sounded like nothing more than a habitual complaint.
I laughed aloud.

“You won’t die from a stomachache.”

But then I straightened my posture and said:

“Even if you were to die… whether you die today or tomorrow, when it comes to Kimiko-chan, I’ll take responsibility.”
“If it’s Kimiko-chan, I’d be willing to get married.”
“After my wife passed away, I was absolutely determined not to remarry, but if it’s Kimiko-chan, I think I’d be willing to get married.”
“However, I refuse to have her as the adopted daughter here.”
“Only with Kimiko-chan…”

I couldn’t tell whether I was being serious or joking myself, but Momoyo too got swept up in my mood.

“Mr. Kajiyama, acting tough won’t help.”
“You can’t even manage an affair with Ms. Tomiko, yet you talk about marrying Kimiko-chan...”

“I don’t cheat, so I get married.”

“No good, Mr. Kajiyama, I tell you.”
“First of all, the age difference is too great, and nothing about you two matches in any way.”
“So wanting to marry Kimiko-chan—that’s still cheating, isn’t it?”
“If that’s the sort of affair you’re after, I’ll shut it down.”
“The same as Mr. Ishizuka.”

As for Ishizuka, I knew the general circumstances well enough—
he was said to be the second son of a major merchant family, young with well-proportioned features, his neatly styled hair glistening with pomade.
He would often appear at Katsu-mi to drink sweet cordials and strong liquors alike.
Though never truly drunk, he perpetually maintained an air of mild intoxication.
Frequently he brought Kimiko trifles—special sweets or imported soaps—lingered in leisurely conversation, then attempted to coax her out to plays or films.
When Ishizuka grew increasingly persistent and bold toward Kimiko, Momoyo lured him to a certain teahouse and set him up with a young geisha named Koshū.
Afterward, whenever she encountered Ishizuka at Katsu-mi, she would ask why he didn’t bring Koshū along—skillful turns of phrase that exposed their liaison to all present.
For Koshū, being a geisha who earned her living through physical charms, this posed no difficulty, but Ishizuka became awkwardly self-conscious and soon ceased visiting Katsu-mi altogether—I still cannot fathom why Momoyo orchestrated such a thing.

When I stared fixedly at her face, she too met my gaze without flinching.

“You’re such a strange person.”
“Why?”
“You get so carried away whenever it comes to Kimiko-chan.”
“I can get jealous, I tell you. It seems to be a case of homosexuality.”
“You’re talking nonsense….”

“No, it’s true, I tell you. Because I’m the serious one here, I’ll protect her from men’s philandering. Hey, Madam… Mr. Kajiyama’s no good either, I tell you—he’s a philanderer.”

“If it weren’t an affair, then what?”

“Lies, lies! Even with other women, you wouldn’t get it.”

“Would I ever have an affair with another woman?”

“You would never?”

“I won’t.”

“Then what if it’s me? You wouldn’t cheat?”

“Well… if it’s you… I can’t say for sure…”

“You’ll regret this later.”

“You’re the one who’ll regret it.”

Madam rose from her seat holding the empty sake flask.

“Now, now—let’s have some quiet here.”

Slumped unsteadily against the dining table with my elbow propped, Momoyo grabbed my shoulder and yanked me upright.

“Mr. Kajiyama—do you truly care for Kimiko-chan?”

“Yeah… I like her.”

“In what way do you like her?”

“What way... It’s not like I’m in love or anything, but I just like her. To tell the truth… when I look at Kimiko-chan, I feel like something terribly unfortunate will soon happen to her… and somehow, my chest tightens with pain… That’s how it is…”

“Is that true?”

Momoyo leaned against me and suddenly began to sob. Startled, I asked while supporting her shoulders whether Kimiko might be her relative, but she had already stopped crying and answered firmly.

"No, we're complete strangers, but I truly care for her."

Then she pressed herself against me.

“Now then, tell me.”
“Tell me everything about Kimiko-chan.”
“I’ll tell you too.”

Strangely enough, Kimiko was already somewhere far away, and only we remained there, nearing collapse from drunkenness. When Madam Katsu brought the sake flask, Momoyo spoke while still in her disheveled state.

“Madam, forgive me.
We’ve been bound to Kimiko-chan, I tell you.
Where’s Kimiko-chan?
Bring her here.”

As if she would come—she had gone far away, I thought.
And then Momoyo bore down on me with an immense weight.
Her thick eyebrows, red lips, fleshy earlobes, the slightly disheveled hair at her nape, and above all, those round, near-sighted eyes—each of them spun separately before my eyes.
And when they settled into a single focal point, she was no more than a lump of flesh discarded there.

Her body was simply soft, warm, voluptuous, and well-mannered.
As if devoid of will or emotion, it lay wantonly exposed before me.—From that night onward, how many times had I clung to that flesh?
There was no intense pleasure, yet neither did weariness come.

In that locale, Momoyo was a prominent senior geisha of stature who worked exclusively at Hira's teahouse as she pleased.
My relationship with her remained secret to others.
But at Katsu-mi it was an open matter—we showed no restraint even before Kimiko.
Kimiko seemed to regard our bond as perfectly natural—or rather appeared even pleased by it—watching us both with a beaming, delighted expression.
For my part, it wasn't heartbreak but something akin to it.
Kimiko seemed both just beyond reach yet cupped within my palms.
I felt somehow restless.
That's why I would take her out to the burned fields and speak my soliloquies while watching sunsets—Kimiko paid no mind to such things.
Mention Mr. Kajiyama and one immediately thought of Elder Sister Momoyo.
Even after those monologues—still Elder Sister Momoyo.

Momoyo took time to arrive.
When she came, she was slightly drunk.
She lightly pressed her fingertips down, offered a greeting, and sat squarely at the side of the dining table—up to that point it had been all formality, but what followed remained oddly subdued.

“Mr. Kajiyama, I must apologize today.”
“Forgive me.”

Without looking my way, she kept her eyes downcast.

“It seems I bullied Kimiko-chan a bit too much.”

“If that’s all, then there’s no need for you to apologize to me, is there?”

“But Mr. Kajiyama, you’re involved as well.”
"No matter how much I ask what you and Mr. Kajiyama talked about at the burned-out field during the day, she insists you didn’t discuss anything."
“After sitting together for such a long time and exchanging words, how could you not discuss anything? Such a thing can’t be possible.”
“But it seems what Kimiko-chan said was true after all.”

“Ah, that.”
“I see. That’s a clever way of putting it from Kimiko-chan.”
“I was just rambling to myself about the field and the river.”
“I don’t have a clue whether Kimiko-chan was even listening.”
“So we truly didn’t talk about anything at all...”
“You saw it too?”
“Then you could’ve called out to us.”

“I stood watching for a while.”
"But there was no opening to call out to you, you see."

“No opening to call out… What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How should I put this…”
“Well… You two looked like you were discussing a lovers’ suicide or such. There was no space for me to interrupt.”

“Don’t be absurd, saying such things…”

"But if I were a man, I might consider a lovers’ suicide with Kimiko-chan myself."

“Utterly preposterous.”

However, in Momoyo’s words, I sensed a certain unease.
It did not pertain to me.
It pertained to Momoyo and further to Kimiko.

When I fell silent and became lost in thought, Momoyo was the one who cut it off.

“Let’s stop this talk.… Kimiko-chan—I wonder what’s keeping her.”
“I’ll bring her.”

I simply drank alone.

Momoyo carried a shamisen and brought Kimiko along.

“As an apology for earlier, I’ll give you a lesson.”
“Since it’s Mr. Kajiyama, it’s all right, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think this counts as a teahouse.”
“But at other teahouses, it’s absolutely forbidden.”
“The master wouldn’t allow it.”
“What would be good, I wonder…”
“Mr. Kajiyama’s… favorite… shall we do Kogatana?”

Kimiko always had a bright face and bright eyes.
When her incisor smile faded, she faced Momoyo and settled into position.

Momoyo adjusted the shamisen's tuning and paused for a moment.
Then with a vocal cue, she plucked the strings—the second and third rang out together with a metallic clang—and Kimiko's beautiful voice carried the melody of the song: Inari Mountain's three lantern fires burn bright.

Such things seeped into my heart.
Was this shallow sentimentality?
Tears welling in my eyes, overcome by an unbearable emotion, I stood and opened the glass door.
Immediately before me bloomed a large white magnolia flower.
In the already darkened night's gloom, it appeared bluish and faintly pale—resembling an artificial flower or some incarnate spirit.
The fragrance drifting through the cold air gently caressed my skin.
I stood transfixed as though possessed.

That white magnolia flower was now placed beside Momoyo’s corpse. Momoyo’s corpse lay completely buried within the soft futon, its form indistinguishable. It was as if she had slipped away somewhere, her entire body escaping.

It was a hushed, fleeting moment.
In the time it took for the old woman to make tea, I completed my farewell.
When a middle-aged woman who claimed to be a relative came out and offered a terse greeting, I rose from my seat.
I slipped past the few people gathered at the entrance and stepped outside.

Kimiko seemed to have stayed behind.

And in the second-floor room of Katsu-mi, I clearly felt Momoyo’s death while simultaneously conjuring her form with vivid clarity. To me, she existed solely there—yes, nowhere else did she dwell. Only in that room, that teahouse space alone, did she truly reside.

She always kept her hair immaculately coiffed. However violently she drank herself into stupors, never did those tresses fall into disarray. From face to shoulders, white powder perpetually coated her skin; never once did she reveal bare flesh beneath. Water might have washed over it without effect. Thick brows arched above eyes that seemed nearsighted, her features broad yet animated by subtle expressions—as though manipulated by invisible strings—yet never did her composure falter. Though her kimono collar hung loosely open, its edges aligned with precision, the obi perpetually fixed in flawless position. Her upper body arched slightly backward, chest and back rigid as planks, bending only at the waist. Knees locked upright like hinged joints required a hand upon the tatami when sitting sideways. Her entire being carried a faint perfume that permeated skin and clothing alike, leaving no trace of bodily odor. Even when retiring to bed, she would cinch an underkimono tightly high on her chest with a sash, lay down her ample frame with practiced ease, and never once disturb her prescribed posture—every aspect cast within an unyielding mold.

What was lost was that body.
A body trained and conditioned to a fixed mold.
Could that be Momoyo?
No—it could be anyone.
In that case, where is that Momoyo now?

Lost in desolate thoughts, alone and drinking, before I knew it, Kimiko had arrived.
When I stared back, Kimiko was also staring fixedly at me when suddenly tears began to spill down.
She made no sound, her shoulders didn’t shake—only tears flowed.
It was a way of crying as natural as rainfall.
It was the same as when she had been at Momoyo’s bedside.

Waiting for the tears to stop, I asked.

“Kimiko-chan, did Momoyo say anything when she was dying?”

Kimiko shook her head.

“She didn’t say anything at all.”

“Yes.
But before that, there’s something she said solemnly.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Never yield your body to men,” she said.
“If you yield to one person, you’ll end up yielding to a second.”
“If you yield to a second person, you’ll end up yielding to a third…”

And she stared into space, as if trying to recall something, and continued speaking.

“And then, she said to marry a reliable person.”
“And then she said it again.”
“If you marry one person, you’ll end up marrying a second.”
“If you marry a second person, you’ll end up marrying a third…”

“And then?”

“That’s all.”
“And Ms. Momoyo laughed.”
“But somehow I felt strange—I can’t forget it.”

“Oh come on—it was just a joke.”

I had said something I didn't mean.
Momoyo might have truly loved Kimiko.
She might not have wanted to hand her over to anyone.
But if that were the case, why hadn't she embraced Kimiko or pressed cheeks to hers?
Kimiko said she had never even had her hand held.
Or perhaps Momoyo held extreme contempt for contact between bodies?

I lost Momoyo's body.
But I still feel Momoyo lingers nearby.
For Momoyo's sake, I resolved to harbor only a dreamlike, hollow affection toward Kimiko.
Kimiko was perfectly suited to this.
She was a girl like a white magnolia blossom.