Pathway to Japanese Literature

The esteemed couple of Mr. Marimari, a Western-style painter who had been out of contact since being displaced by the war flames, came to visit Mr. Taitai, a novelist.

Mr. Marimari had only one daughter.
She had graduated from girls' school at eighteen and was now nineteen this year, but they wanted him to lecture her as she had recently begun falling in love.

However, Mr. Taitai was that very teacher notorious throughout the land as the ringleader of erotic novelists—even if he himself were to receive admonishment from some hypothetical Ministry of Erotic Affairs, he was hardly in any position to lecture others on their romantic affairs.
His embarrassment was only natural,

“You shouldn’t make such vulgar jokes when meeting after so long.”
“That joke of yours is more cruel than serious.”

“Now now, let everyone hear the full story first.”
“There’s a reason it must be you.”

“No reason could justify this.”
“If your daughter’s in love, you parents should judge her.”

“So first listen to everything.”
“My daughter hasn’t fallen in love yet.”
“She’s going to start falling in love.”

“Mr. Taitai, you really are such a flustered person, aren’t you? You write your novels in a frantic rush too, don’t you?”

With that, Mrs. Marimari laughed and shot a sharp glance, but even during their wartime displacement from the capital, she had always addressed him as "Mr. Taitai" and never called him "sensei" or anything of the sort.
Because it was permeated with an ominous aura, Mr. Taitai—who believed there was nothing in the world more terrifying than married women—ducked his head.

When evening comes these days, Miss Marimari leaves home and returns around eleven-thirty or midnight.
Eventually, she came home drunk.
When she removed her kimono, three hundred-yen bills scattered down from her obi, so when pressed for answers, it turned out she was working at some bar.
"Wait a second," said Miss Marimari as she pulled out one old magazine from the corner of the room, and took five hundred-yen bills that had been tucked inside the magazine.
"I’ll give you this—hand over those three hundred yen to me," she said as she exchanged the five hundred-yen bills for the three hundred-yen ones, then bid them goodnight and burrowed under the futon to sleep, or so the story went.

“It’s because my husband remains his usual negligent self that things have come to this.”
“He’s hungry—wants to gorge on rice, wants meat, wants fish, wants sake, wants cigarettes—grumbling about it all day long! So even she can’t bear to watch anymore!”

“Ah ha ha.”
“Words that rise unbidden from the pit of my stomach—I can’t help them.”
“Look here.”
“See how thin I’ve become?”

Mr. Marimari, who had once been portly from drink, had indeed grown considerably thinner. Being more of a gourmet than most, it was only natural he kept grumbling about the times. The family’s inherited assets had been frozen, their barter goods burned along with their house, and his paintings weren’t selling—so there they were, the three of them crammed into a single six-mat room they’d barely managed to find in a corner of the capital, desperately awaiting the return of good fortune. As Mr. Marimari had never made money through anything but his paintings, he was utterly incapable of adapting. To make matters worse, being the type who hated showing weakness to others, he detested revealing their dire circumstances so much that he wouldn’t even notify friends of their address via postcard. Back in his days of living like a young master, he used to declare with great bravado that once his daughter graduated from girls’ school, they’d make her work somewhere and let her find a man on her own. But when reduced to poverty, he grew stubbornly prideful—whenever she mentioned wanting to become an office clerk or something elsewhere, he’d fly into a rage and shout her down—so contrary to his earlier boasts, things had turned utterly disastrous instead, as the story went.

Since it seemed like a matter unrelated to Mr. Taitai, he too suddenly relaxed,

"Hmm.
Isn't she an excellent daughter?
Bravo indeed!
She's far too accomplished for the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Marimari.
I'm envious."

“That’s exactly it, Mr. Taitai.”

Mrs. Marimari had let them speak unreservedly with an innocent face before suddenly fixing them with a needle-sharp glare.
This was precisely why one could never lower one’s guard around the wife class.

“Our little hoodlum happens to be your devoted reader.”
“When we try to admonish her, she declares we’re stone-headed fossils who can’t comprehend the new era.”
“Since ‘Mr. Taitai would never spout such nonsense,’ she went to seek your counsel—my, what a magnificently shameless writer you’ve blossomed into, haven’t you?”

“Ah ha ha.”

“What is wrong with you? There’s no need for him to even humor you with a laugh. Even so, the fact that you don’t think to draw erotic art just to fund your drinking shows you still have some redeeming qualities. This is what we call austerity. Now, Mr. Taitai. Our little hoodlum can act as depraved as she likes—since you’re here backing her up, it’s perfectly fine. Since you possess the power to suppress anything old—morals, laws, Buddha, Christ—and since trusting your pronouncements will soon see all those stubborn hardheads dragged off to penal servitude while a paradise of depraved angels arrives... Mr. Taitai, where exactly did you write such shameless things? Even though no one asked them, they go and have a child on their own whim, then once it’s grown start saying ‘You mustn’t do this’ and ‘You mustn’t do that’—if they’d given any thought to what comes before and after having children, wouldn’t they be ashamed? Honestly, Mr. Taitai—how could you possibly impart such shameless ideas?”

“That’s quite admirable.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“So there—with what words did you respond?”

“What possible words could there be? ‘Instead of putting on airs as a married couple—Papa and Mama—you should try having affairs with other uncles and aunts,’ or ‘How ridiculous to act all grown-up when you’ve never even been divorced’—she declared all of this was properly written in your book, I’ll have you know.”
“That being a mistress is a far nobler way of life than being a wife—Mr. Taitai, how could you possibly…”

“Understood.”
“In terms of ideology—your top disciple indeed.”
“Let us set aside the practical facts.”

"As for that particular area, we don’t understand what it entails."
"According to my daughter’s declaration, she says she’s going to start a romance now—which would mean she hasn’t been in one yet."
“Therefore, that’s why we’ve come to ask you.”

“Don’t call it a request—spare me your presumptuous chatter.”
“I won’t deign to make any requests.”
"I demand it of you, Mr. Taitai."
“Mr. Taitai, give us back our little hoodlum as the daughter she used to be.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Never.”
“I will not consent.”

“That’s impossible, I’m afraid.”
“Time cannot restore this, I’m afraid.”

“It’s not about time.”
“It’s my daughter.”

“If we’re speaking of her, you should simply bear another child here and raise them ideally from scratch.”
“A flawed work must be abandoned—any revisions would have limited effect. One must start entirely anew—no, rather, embark on a completely separate creation. That is literature’s method.”

“This isn’t literature.”
“It’s my daughter.”
“Do you imagine a child could be born to an old woman like me?”

“Very well.”
“Then this humble one shall apply my brush to your failed work.”
“However, I must make this clear—since I cannot falsify my literature, I cannot make the revisions you desire.”
“My method is resolutely to correct only the mistaken points as my own work.”
“I will correct only the points that misinterpret my ideology.”
“For that reason, it may result in the opposite of your expectations and head in a direction you judge to be even worse depravity than now.”
“If you are prepared for that, then this humble one shall freely apply my brush.”

“How could anything so ridiculous exist?”
“Since all your ideas are worthless, scrub them clean away and give me back my daughter as she was.”
“To put it plainly—you must meet my daughter and instruct her that Mr.Taitai’s teachings are heresy—that none but madmen should imitate them.”
“Absolutely! Unconditionally! Resolutely!”

“Mr. Nikko, you mean? That is truly magnificent. I fall far short of such greatness. Futabayama is apparently the Welfare Minister in the Nikko Cabinet, while someone like me is merely a petty official in something like the Ministry of Education’s Public Morals Section, so—”

“Well then—go meet my daughter once. Use your own observations to determine her way of life.”
“If you do so, your conclusions will naturally emerge of their own accord.”
“Because I am counting on that conclusion.”

Thus, Mr. Taitai was promptly set to head out that evening to the bar where Miss Marimari worked.

★

Mr. Taitai, though called the ringleader of erotic novelists or the founder of some heretical sect and imagined to be amassing mountains of ill-gotten gains, was in truth of such station that he barely managed to dispel his gloom with cheap distilled liquor in a black market shack—hence had never ventured into bars where beauties provided service.
For an erotic novelist of all people—one who daily lamented his wretched inability to ever experience such lavish indulgences in those establishments, sighing “Ah, what a pity!”—he had accepted this task reluctantly yet secretly grown emboldened; after desperately pressuring various magazine publishers and finally securing the planned sum in his pocket, he abruptly felt Bunzaemon Kinokuniya’s exhilaration—for thus do all cash-deprived souls behave when they occasionally grasp lucre.

Therefore, Mr. Taitai had completely forgotten about admonishing Miss Marimari and was now solely preoccupied with eagerly anticipating tonight’s lavish splurge.
Such was the way of an erotic novelist.

However, his expectations were betrayed.
In the back alley of the back alley of the entertainment district—for what passed as an entertainment district in the second back alley was a shabby affair—there were huts dotting the burned ruins.
It was a gloomy shack that bore no resemblance to a name like Lumière—a counter that could just barely seat seven or eight people.

When he sat on a chair and looked at the wall—cheap distilled liquor thirty yen a glass—it was nothing more than the sort of place Mr. Taitai knew well. Thirty yen was expensive. At his regular haunts, it was twenty-five yen.

Sure enough, Miss Marimari was there. It was just Madam and her. There were still no customers.

“Oh my! Great Master Taitai! How delightful! How did you find this place? It was Dad and Mom who went to you, wasn’t it? And then—did you lecture Dad and Mom?”

“No no. I was the one who got lectured.”

“Well excuse me, Great Master. I’m your fan, Mr. Taitai. I thought about becoming your disciple, but I detest the idea of turning into some woman writer, you know. I detest woman writers and male doctors, you know. Oh, I forgot—Madam, this gentleman is Great Master Taitai.”

“Oh my. To such a squalid place...”
“No, no—it’s perfectly clear and quite alright.”

“Mr. Taitai, would you care for some whiskey?”

“No, no—cheap distilled liquor.”

“Oh, but think of your reputation! My friends, you see, are utterly convinced that Great Master Taitai is a dashing young gentleman. I also don’t tell them the truth and let them believe what they will. So have some whiskey.”

“No, no—cheap distilled liquor.”

Mr. Taitai had convinced himself through his ingrained stylist principles that one ought not drink whiskey where shochu was appropriate—but in truth, it was sheer stinginess; once he determined that drinking kasutori would not earn him contempt, he stubbornly stuck to cheap distilled liquor and nothing more.

The Madam here was a somewhat refined beauty around thirty. One day, when Miss Marimari was strolling through a department store, she noticed Madam struggling to walk under a heavy load and helped carry half her luggage. She helped carry it all the way to the store, was treated to coffee in the process, came to like Madam, and when Madam said she needed help, apparently decided to lend a hand. She had not told her parents this. She said she had gone out after seeing a newspaper advertisement. She had also claimed the establishment was much larger, with many women working there.

"Why don't you ever tell the truth? That way your parents would feel at ease."

"Oh, but this isn't your doctrine. 'The truth is trivial,' you say. That's right. 'The truth is vulgar'—didn't you write that yourself, Mr. Taitai? That doctrine—mine too. Lying isn't a bad thing, you know. Oh, Madam—I lied to you too, but forgive me, won't you? 'There's no one to work because Dad is sick'—but really, he's like a sick person himself. Those who do nothing but yearn for the past and curse the present, who don't know how to live in the now—they're the sick ones."

“Hmm.
“That’s spot on.”

“That’s right.
I’ve memorized all of your doctrines, you know.
I hate poverty, you know.
Even though Dad and Mom have that doctrine of theirs, they’re just perverse members of the declining class—doing nothing but sulk and being so vulgar, you know.
They’ve forgotten their own doctrine and do nothing but grumble complaints, you know.
So it’d be good if they got a proper scolding from Great Master Taitai, you know.
You must have done it for them, Great Master—it’s you we’re talking about, you know.”

“But it didn’t work.”
“Ended up getting completely outmaneuvered.”
“To tell you the truth—though it shames this Great Master Taitai to admit it—there exists here a formidable adversary: against that arrogant and ignorant class known as 'wives,' one finds oneself utterly outmatched.”
“The ones who remain impossible to handle whether boiled or roasted—it’s that lot.”
“The logic of things no longer reaches their ears, I suppose.”
“Any villain has room for repentance.”
“But wives—they’re beyond that.”
“That’s why Great Master Taitai doesn’t particularly fear gangsters charging in to eradicate erotic literature while wielding clubs—but wives? Impossible!”
“Even one alone is terrifying.”
“Impossible to overcome.”
“Always mercilessly defeated, never once having prevailed, and until death comes, there remains no prospect of victory.”

“I understand perfectly well, Mr. Taitai. But you're a man after all. No matter how mistaken you might be, there's no chance you'd turn into such a monster cat—so rest assured. As for us? If we're not careful, we end up becoming monster cats ourselves. We don't have that much confidence, I suppose—yet I feel we could very well transform into them. That anxiety, disgust, hatred—those are your own words too, Mr. Taitai. Do try to understand. We're struggling desperately here.”

“Truly, this is the pinnacle of shared sorrow.”
“By the way, not a single customer has shown up since earlier—is it always this deserted?”

“It’s not exactly popular.”
“Even at peak times, maybe fourteen or fifteen people.”
“On slow days, two or three.”
“I don’t know firsthand, but apparently there were rainy days without a single customer.”
“Four or five days back came this student—kept pestering that since our bar’s too pricey for daily visits, we should relocate to his regular coffee shop.”
“How utterly self-centered.”
“They prattle about literature while calling Mr. Taitai an erotic writer, mind you.”
“They’re far more obscene themselves.”
“Then the very next day these high school boys stumbled in drunk.”
“This lad here—flunked Tokyo University’s entrance exam.”
“On some question like ‘Name ten writers of significance in Japanese literary history,’ he listed Great Master Taitai for the modern era—that’s why he failed, they say.”
“What a heedless child.”
“His friend who tagged along called him too reckless.”
“He apparently couldn’t grasp why they’d say that.”
“‘Since you wrote the truth,’ I instructed him there, ‘it shouldn’t count as reckless.’”
“They say Mr. Taitai’s not one to write truths in entrance exams and such.”
“In entrance exams or job interviews, you never tell the truth.”
“After all, what works suffices.”
“You only speak truth when makeshift solutions fail.”
“‘Adapt to your audience—nothing strays further from truth than a fool’s rote memorization.’ When I declared these as Great Master Taitai’s words, I nearly startled myself!”

“He apparently stopped trying to commit suicide.”
“He’s apparently going back to the countryside and will write letters to Mr. Taitai.”

Mr. Taitai thought it regrettable to lower himself as a man before his beloved disciple, but resolved to ask nonetheless.

"So tell me—even in a place like this, do customers leave tips?"

This was by no means asked out of any insight into Mr. and Mrs. Marimari’s hearts.
Even if it meant lowering himself as a man to exhibit such vulgar detective instincts—for there was a truly base reason—Mr. Taitai had already come to find his beloved disciple deeply endearing.
He had become concerned about the source of the money.
It was a despicable state of mind, but he resolved to maintain his composure, convinced that the nineteen-year-old girl wouldn’t see through him to that extent.

“You apparently had eight hundred yen.”

“Oh, actually I had thirteen or fourteen hundred yen.”
“I spent it all myself, you know.”
“At first I felt awkward about it, but you see, even though I wasn’t giving anything here, oh really, I thought I had to let them leave at least some tips, and ended up completely broke, you know.”

“Oh my, so that’s why you went broke back then.”

“Oh well, that’s just how it is, you know.”

Mr. Taitai was inwardly unsettled.
Unthinkingly, Mr. Taitai gulped down too much cheap liquor to conceal his own brush with bankruptcy and choked on it.

The monster called woman—if she let her guard down, even a young girl could do her in.
If one naively viewed someone as a beloved disciple, they would abruptly abandon you—for their fundamental nature differed entirely.
It was unclear which of us was the disciple.

Mr. Taitai, having noticed his mistake, decided to abandon the saccharine view of her as a beloved disciple and instead regard her simply as a charming woman.

“Is that customer a young one?”

“There are four people who leave me tips.”
“One’s an old man.”
“Another one’s also an old man.”
“The next is a hatter—though he’s an old man too.”
“They’re all around your age.”
“Oh, Mr. Taitai, I’m sorry.”
“Not ‘old man,’ but ‘mister.’”
“But I prefer older gentlemen over young people, you know.”
“And I like drunks.”
“Because drunks aren’t scary.”
“Men who aren’t drunk are terrifying.”

“Oh my—you say such things while deceiving some good person.”
“How underhanded of you.”
“Is that too part of Mr. Taitai’s method?”

“Oh, do wait a moment. I’m going to explain everything in order, you see.”

Compared to the thirty-year-old Madam, the nineteen-year-old Miss Marimari was undeniably the one with the upper hand.
In other words, Madam was old-fashioned.
In such situations, any woman in the world could only utter the sort of phrases people typically said in such cases.
The sole difference lay in Miss Marimari chattering away in her own distinctive manner.

“Apart from the three middle-aged gentlemen, there’s another customer who leaves tips—but somehow he just won’t come around, and I can’t quite explain it, you know. I want Mr. Taitai to see him for me, you know.”

“So that’s it.”
“The one you declared to Mom and Dad that ‘I shall likely fall in love’ with from now on—who is it?”

“Yes.”
“But it is not merely that gentleman alone, you know.”
“When I fall in love, I simply can’t abide having just one person.”
“I intend to begin with three or four men at once.”
“Having just one man would not be sufficient, don’t you agree?”
“But for now, there is only that gentleman and another.”
“That makes two so far, wouldn’t you say?”
“Once I’ve assembled two or three more suitable candidates, then I shall commence.”

“Most excellent.”
“With both hands raised in agreement!”

“As expected of Great Master Taitai!”

Miss Marimari searched around her chest area and took out something resembling a packet of medicine.

“A customer who comes around sometimes gave it to me.”
“It’s a precious medicine passed down from the age of the gods, they say.”

“Hoh.”

“Emori’s charcoal-baked remedy.”

“Emori’s charcoal-baked remedy?”
“This...”

“Care to try it?”

“No, no.”
“This was definitely not meant to be drunk.”
“You’re supposed to sprinkle it with an innocent face onto their retreating back or something.”
“Since it’s a potion to make the unenamored fall for you, there’s never a chance to make them drink it.”

"If you make them drink it, wouldn't it work even better?"

"Once you've gathered four or five people, do you intend to make them drink this?"

"That's not it at all."
"I'm having each one of them let me drink it instead."
"Can't you do something about this?"
"I just don't have any confidence right now."
"The other day I made them walk me to the station and try holding my hand, but it felt utterly disgusting."
"They keep getting more irritating by the minute."
"It makes me so sick I want to slap their stupid faces."

“In that case, I’ll take my leave.”

Mr. Taitai stood up.
He splurged three hundred yen each time as tips.

Mr. Taitai was no good.
Being inherently wicked to begin with, when drunk he becomes even more base, so a woman who lets him hold her hand and delights in it better suits his tastes.
Mr. Taitai found himself compelled to recall that alternative and depart.

Miss Marimari twirled her index finger around her temple, closed one eye, and grinned slyly.

"As expected of the Great Master—how generous you are! I’m in trouble now. Maybe I should give you some erotic service?"

"Erotic service is not the Great Master’s taste."

It was there that Mr. Taitai first displayed an air of great dignity.

“Erotic service should be performed solely through affection.”
“This should not be performed according to monetary value.”
“This is nothing more than the already perished morality of bygone days.”
“Of course, according to the views of Great Master Taitai—whose lover is Manon Lescaut—erotic service should be performed according to monetary value.”
“However, such erotic service can only be sustained when the practitioner is a divinely inspired technician and artist. Just as in literature, in erotic service as well, those without talent—or those whose talent has not blossomed—must not involve themselves in this path.”

“I glared at your money jar’s contents from the corner of my eye,” she said. “Rich men should treat girls to tasty things, don’t you think?”

“Very well,” he replied. “Go get ready.”

“Ooh, how lovely!”

When Mr. Taitai stepped onto the street to wait, Miss Marimari emerged after changing clothes and immediately clung to him.

“I’m so happy, Professor!”

She drew her face close to whisper—then planted a wet kiss on his cheek. Entwining one arm through his while gripping his palm with her free hand, she began walking while leaning her full weight against him as if bodily shoving him forward.

“Do you do this sort of thing often?”

“Only the Great Master, you know.”

“For all that, you seem quite accustomed to it.”

“There’s genius involved. Don’t you understand, Mr. Taitai?”

However, through Mr. Taitai’s mind’s eye, there appeared to be no trace of genius whatsoever. Anyone could manage this much. Being a literary scholar who perpetually agonized over distinctions between composition and fiction—over the boundaries of genius and talent—a torment that itself formed the tragic root of his anguish regarding his own boneheadedness, this observational acuity of his mind’s eye was excruciatingly profound, incisive to the point of anguish.

Mr. Taitai was bewildered by the absurd comedy of being subjected to erotic service by his own daughter and by its insipidness.

When primitive culture arises, the reason father-daughter incest is first prohibited is likely due to the allure of its most intense primal eroticism.
Here exists a primal eroticism laid bare under the sun.

When a girl of twelve or thirteen—still immature—first discovers a man in her father and exerts instinctive eroticism upon him, the bud of eroticism manifesting there demonstrates the most intense primal hues of eroticism in her entire life.
This is because there is not yet any mental contrivance to soften the intensity of these primal hues.
Thus, primal-hued eroticism develops with father and brother as its objects while, simultaneously, the mental contrivance opposing these primal elements develops to envelop, conceal, and confine it as one reaches adulthood.
By the time one falls in love, the primal-hued eroticism has already been lost and concealed.

However, this primal-hued eroticism was not talent—it was instinct. Even if it appeared quite technical, instinct too was technical—did not spiders weave those delicate webs from birth? Manon Lescaut. Furthermore, the Marquise de Merteuil’s talent was not of this sort.

Everyone harbored the desire to experiment with the abilities they possessed. However, if the zeitgeist did not permit it, such experimental desires would wither away as tiny buds. But when the zeitgeist permitted it, it simultaneously nurtured them to full growth. After the previous great war, France found itself in the same situation as present-day Japan, and experimental girls like garsonnes emerged.

However, experimenters were not geniuses.
Nor were they fanatics who would devote their entire lives to that path.
When an experiment failed, that was the end of it—leaving nothing but the original mundane net now bearing an extra stain from the experiment’s exhaustion.

Moving from experiment to experiment, striving for ever better results—such garsonnes who ended their lives in the laboratory were rare.
After all, it was an experiment to be abandoned after a single attempt—what mattered was that this sole experimental subject be of high quality (or at least that was the issue)—but since Miss Marimari’s experimental subject had been derived from Mr. Taitai’s crude notes, even Mr. Taitai found himself in a rather distressing position.

The two first ate sukiyaki, ate beefsteak, and then ate sashimi and tempura.

“Mr. Taitai, let’s go to an erotic service bar.”
“I’ve heard three incredible names and memorized every one of them!”

“Wait.”
“Erotic service may be something the Great Master favors, but there are various kinds of erotic service.”
“Among these countless gradations of distinction—those with natural gifts, those highly trained in technique, those gifted yet still immature, boneheads, and others—erotic service that meets with the Great Master’s approval is exceedingly rare.”
“When one becomes an owner of progressive zeitgeist sensibilities like the Great Master, the Great Master no longer finds joy in things.”
“He is never satisfied.”
“The Great Master finds no enjoyment.”
“What the Great Master proclaims as the supreme delight and values above all is simply not growing bored, you see.”
“You just gave the Great Master a smacking kiss, and while the smacking kiss itself is acceptable as one method, the notion that the smacking kiss per se constitutes erotic service is shallowly vulgar—something predating the Great Master’s doctrines.”
“The Great Master may enjoy erotic service, but he also takes pleasure in lounging about alone or going on trips.”
“At such times, even in solitude, there exists a nostalgic form of erotic service, you see.”
“True erotic service is precisely that—rather than flaunting its very existence indiscriminately, it means not being a hindrance; moreover, the supreme variety ensures one never grows bored.”
“Have you understood?”

“Mr. Taitai.”

She spread her hands, and her face floated closer.

“Take me to stay at a hotel.”
“Mr. Taitai.
“I... Mr. Taitai... I like you.”

Miss Marimari pressed her head against Mr. Taitai’s jaw and vigorously rubbed her hair.

The Great Master was the very picture of disgrace. Whether to answer yes or no—for an extended period, he found himself utterly unable to form any reply. The Great Master’s doctrine was being crushed and dismissed on the spot. The whole affair was utterly disgraceful.

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Let’s head back, shall we?”

The Great Master evaded giving a proper response and did something harsh as if to thrust Miss Marimari out of the tatami room.
Miss Marimari shrank her body as if suppressing a ticklish sensation and chuckled quietly, but when she turned her gaze toward the Great Master, her eyes were clear.

“Mr. Taitai, you’re really forcing yourself, aren’t you? Even though you actually want to stay over.”

The Great Master, having already exhausted all his performative tricks, had no choice but to patch together his dignity through an angry countenance.
However, no clever reply befitting his expression came forth, so he silently pushed his way through, paid the bill, and went outside.

“I’ll take you to your bar, so let’s part ways here.”

“Okay...”

After a prolonged silence, she spoke.

“Mr. Taitai, you’re surprisingly innocent, aren’t you?”

“Did I contradict the doctrine?”

“You should contradict that doctrine.
I actually detest degeneracy.
Mr. Taitai, if you become degenerate too, I’ll hate it.”

“Fine.
I won’t.”

“Oh, how delightful!”

Miss Marimari clung to the Great Master and planted a smacking kiss on him.
And with that—"Alright then, goodbye"—she tossed over her shoulder before darting away.

Therefore, Great Master Taitai decided not to send any report whatsoever to the Marimari couple concerning the results of his observations.
He had even tried writing a postcard stating "Excommunication of this unworthy disciple," but he crumpled it up as well.