Pathway to Japanese Literature

What is smell?

I had lately come to smell words through my nose when listening to people speak. Ah, so that was the scent. That was all. In other words—since I'd stopped listening with my head and thinking things through—this business of smells must mean my head had become completely empty. I'd been feeling ill at ease lately because my dead mother had come back to life. I was gradually becoming more like Mother. Ah, again—I froze every time I discovered her.

My mother burned to death during the war. Since we were fundamentally separate beings to begin with, it was only natural that we became separated during our escape without even noticing—when I realized I was no longer with Mother, I didn't think we had gotten split apart, nor did I wonder where she might have fled; I didn't even form the thought Ah, so that's how it is. In other words, I had simply become aware of the natural fact that Mother wasn't there—nothing more than that. I was fundamentally alone from the start.

I escaped to Ueno Park and survived, but when I went to Sumida Park on what must have been the second day—where they said many people had died—I ended up stumbling upon Mother's corpse. It wasn't burned at all. Her arms were bent, fists clenched, both arms aligned at her chest, curled up as if in a gymnastic pose with brows furrowed and eyes tightly closed like someone declaring defeat. Her complexion had turned paler than when she was alive, giving her face the appearance of someone who had become virtuous.

She was a woman of weak constitution yet remarkably shrewd and tenacious, so while dying in flames would have been one thing, suffocating like this felt like a lie—it gave me an indescribable sense of unease. Ever since that time, I had felt vaguely deceived, so whenever I discovered Mother these days, I recalled that creeping unease from back then. When I was conscripted, Mother didn’t panic. This was because Mother operated under the belief that whenever men and women worked together, they’d immediately get pregnant. Mother wanted to make me her kept woman. Because she believed that virginity was a valuable commodity to be sold, Mother treated me like a precious object. In truth, Mother loved me. Even if I showed just a slight loss of appetite, she would make a huge fuss and have delicious food delivered from Western restaurants or sushi shops. When I got sick, she would become so flustered and confused that it pained her heart. In return for sparing no hardship to dress me in beautiful kimonos, Mother would grill me down to the last detail about who I was with, where I went, and what I did whenever my outings ran even slightly too long. When some unknown man would toss love letters my way and I showed them to Mother, she would turn pale as if I were actually in love, then finally regain her composure and lecture me on men’s treachery, the various guises of their honeyed words and cunning tactics. Her seriousness was beyond description.

However, I did not love Mother. Being loved as an object was utterly bothersome. People said I should be happy being doted on by Mother, but I never once thought I was. My mother was vain, so when my brother volunteered to become an airman, she agreed despite being desperate to stop him inwardly. Boasting about it to acquaintances and neighbors suited her better. Presuming I'd fallen asleep, she would rise late at night to prostrate herself before the family altar, weeping copiously as she entreated "Yukio dear, please forgive me"—yet come noon the next day, she'd bounce around like a rubber ball, bragging to some aunties about her son's gallantry while spinning wild fabrications.

When I was conscripted, I sank into weary despair—but seeing Mother panic even more intensely than I did made the whole situation feel absurd, her frantic concern filling me with disgust. I liked having fun and hated poverty. In this one thing, Mother and I shared the same ideology. Mother herself was a kept woman, but she apparently had two or three men besides her patron—actors and various instructors she’d entertain. She recommended that I become a kept woman for a wealthy man with a generous disposition—preferably an elderly one. She said that a luxury-loving playgirl like me could never become some stifling housewife, but if I absolutely insisted on being a wife, I should become the bride of either an eldest son from the nobility or an eldest son from a family with assets over ten million yen. She particularly insisted it had to be the eldest son. She maintained that unless you could freely choose between honor or money, there was no point in enduring the stifling role of a wife. She declared politicians and artists in transient professions might fall from grace no matter how famous they became, dismissing them as nothing but poor, fickle, arrogant creatures beyond control. She utterly despised company employees; in short, my falling in love with penniless young men was Mother’s greatest heartache and terror.

When I was in my fourth year at girls' school, I began playing golf after being invited by my classmate Miss Tomiko, daughter of a large wholesale merchant. The reason Mother—who would pull a sour face even when I just went to see a movie—granted my wish was because she had heard through others that golf was a pastime for nobility and plutocrats, an amusement beyond the reach of commoners. That’s why she bought me expensive golf equipment without so much as batting an eye. I was instructed to turn away from greetings by unmarried young men—be they nobility or scions of ultra-wealthy families—to never respond when spoken to, to report each day’s events and seek Mother’s instructions, receiving meticulous directives all while remaining unaware that this scheme aimed to have me catch the eye of some elderly plutocrat or grand aristocrat. Mother never noticed how utterly preposterous it was—two schoolgirls going golfing alone together—this unprecedented anomaly. Despite being a shrewd operator, she was utterly ignorant and naive.

Unfortunately, she failed to gain the honor of associating with elderly nobility or the ultra-wealthy, and instead became friends with a movie actor named Miki Noboru. His only talent lay in flaunting his good looks—he believed his appearance constituted his entire being, having completely lost any foundational artistic philosophy. He boasted about his guitar skills, insisting that were he to portray some tragic unlucky guitarist embroiled in profound heartbreak, his technical mastery would instantly make him the era's darling sensation—but precisely because this calculation was so transparent, he claimed colleagues' envy kept thwarting its realization. He persistently badgered them to come hear him play guitar until they finally went together, but his performance proved amateurish beyond measure—only he himself remained enraptured, arbitrarily stretching notes and adding vibrato while being utterly devoid of musical sense and finishing with a garnish of bad taste.

Miki Noboru tried to seduce me but was rejected, so he then tried to seduce Miss Tomiko and was also rebuffed. Since I kept silent about my own rejection, Miss Tomiko assumed hers was unique and adopted a self-satisfied air—but finding Miki’s superficiality increasingly absurd, I eventually stopped associating with him altogether. When golf became untenable in those changing times and we graduated from girls’ school, Miss Tomiko continued seeing him despite her refusals, privately reveling in the attention. She smugly attributed my refusal to join them as jealousy. “He tried seducing me too,” I remarked, “likely before you.” Dismissing this as further envy, she sniffed, “When I asked Miki directly, he denied everything.” Thereafter her self-importance swelled—ticket purchases for his performances and “study groups” ballooned from tens to hundreds: two hundred, three hundred, even five hundred at a time. Playing patroness, she bought him watches and Western suits, exchanged rings, funneled cash—yet despite overnight stays at hot spring inns and teahouses, she proudly maintained her virginity. On such occasions she’d contact me to fabricate an alibi of staying at my house. We called this arrangement our “alibi system,” though I too came to depend on Miss Tomiko for mine.

I asked Miss Tomiko to provide my alibi, but I never told her a thing about who I was with, where I went, or what I did. Miss Tomiko had a habit of grilling me down to the last detail, but since I would brush her off with responses like “It’s nothing special” or “Not worth mentioning,” she would declare: “You’re inherently sinister by nature—a schemer obsessed with secrets! You’ve no innocence whatsoever, just fickle tendencies that make you incapable of behaving openly and honorably in public.”

However, I had no desire to tell anyone about such things. It's boring—love affairs and all that. That's all there is to it.

After graduating from girls' school, Miss Tomiko became an office worker—her long-cherished career woman ideal—but finding it too rigid and stifling, she ended up as a department store salesgirl. I didn't particularly want to work, but being stuck at home with Mother was so unbearable that I desperately wanted to get a job. But far from granting permission, bringing up such matters only resulted in increasingly strict surveillance under the pretext that I was becoming "infested with bugs," and moreover, Mother grew frantic and tried to make me the kept woman of some construction boss. This boss was also a leader who controlled a certain entertainment district on one hand and was known as a major figure in the world of bloodshed on the other, but he was already past sixty—sixty-one or sixty-two—and on the verge of retirement.

I’ve always been fond of lively things, so I didn’t exactly dislike watching fights—but with my fundamentally dull nature, my slow-motion, utterly lethargic way of carrying myself, I simply couldn’t keep pace with the brisk, razor-sharp world of chivalry. It was hopeless. I didn’t particularly mind being a kept woman, but I detested having my freedom restricted—so long as they provided me a comfortable life and let me do as I pleased beyond certain obligations, I wouldn’t have refused even an eighty-year-old man’s patronage. Having daggers thrust at me over supposedly tarnishing the boss’s reputation and getting my pinky cut off, being forced to swear loyalty with blades only to have my freedom shackled—that I couldn’t endure.

I told Mother I didn’t want to, but now that she had already consented, saying I didn’t would put my life in danger. "Would you kill your own mother?" she threatened. Left with no choice, I decided to secretly refuse Mother's arrangement myself. There was a girl from the neighborhood laundry shop—a bit slow-witted but fiercely meticulous about delivering messages without error, so excessively fastidious she seemed deranged—who had developed an oddly affectionate rapport with me through her peculiar greetings. I entrusted her with conveying my refusal. She was three years older than me, twenty-two at the time. This girl, just as I had instructed, managed to secure a meeting with the boss against all odds and delivered the message flawlessly, so the boss laughed and said, "Is that so? Very well then," gave her a reward and sent her home. That very day, he dispatched a senior underling to formally annul the arrangement and presented me with an extravagantly adorned, costly gift—"a token of the boss's regard"—done up like a betrothal offering.

In the midst of all this, kept women had come to be treated like national traitors—with conscription threatening to target us first—so Mother frantically abandoned her search for a patron and began urging me to marry instead to evade the draft. But really, what noble family or millionaire’s son like Mitsutayu would come courting the daughter of a mere mistress? When the conscription notice arrived, Mother’s face contorted in panic. And that evening at dinner, she dissolved into frantic weeping.

Whether most girls in society were like that I couldn't say, but I and my friends didn't have much interest in things like the war. Men—from college-aged hoodlums upwards—all seemed possessed by this preposterous self-importance as if they were the central axle turning the world. They made such a racket over everything—war! defeat! democracy!—indignation and fervent cooperation, squabbling back and forth with puffed-up bravado. But we women simply assumed others would handle worldly affairs, leaving it all to them while turning a deaf ear to social upheavals—slipping instead into whatever fleeting pleasures each moment offered. Because we were daily tormented to the extreme by Osandon training, the "good wife and wise mother" ideal, and Ogasawara-ryū etiquette—even simple amusements delighted us, letting us remain untroubled even in war's midst. Even branded traitors, we'd nonchalantly surround the Nichigeki Theatre or such places and stand around for three or five hours—terribly boring, yet in that boredom lay a peculiar fascination. I've come to think boredom might actually be surprisingly interesting. After all—does anything else truly interesting even exist?

However, when it comes to wives, they're an entirely different breed—there's no creature more whiny and self-serving than that. If you consider the wives of career military men, among women called wives, there isn't a single one who actually likes war. They seethe with bone-deep resentment, hating the military and cursing the government—all because their own husbands get dragged off to war or conscripted. That's why I can't make sense of it—I can't help thinking if those useless, arrogant nuisances called husbands were conscripted off to war, you'd think their wives would feel so relieved—

To be economically dependent on men—and then for their entire world to collapse as if it were ending, just because a single man gets taken off to war—what absurdity! I couldn't endure such misery. My mother—though she was a kept woman, not a wife—also harbored an immense hatred for the war. Yet true to her kept woman nature, her resentment remained utterly nonsensical—seething over trifles like being unable to smoke cigarettes or eat fish—but above all, what truly fueled her bitter rancor was how kept women came to be branded traitors, destroying my marriage prospects.

“Ahh, ahh, what a world this is.”

Mother let out a sigh. “I wish Japan would just hurry up and lose already.” “I’ve had enough of this wretchedly poor country.” “Their soldiers can build an airfield in just two days, I hear.” “They can’t even wage war without cheese, beef, coffee, chocolate, apple pie, whiskey or whatnot—now that’s impressive, isn’t it?” “Why don’t you just perish already, Japan, and hurry up becoming part of their territory?” “The only thing I find regrettable is Japanese women wanting to wear Western clothes.” “If they issue an official order saying I can’t wear kimono, then what on earth am I supposed to do?” “You look good in Western clothes, so that’s fine—but really, when that time comes, you’d better hold firm.”

In short, my mother had prayed for Japan’s swift demise midway through the war and even schemed to make me a kept woman for the enemy, yet despite this she would sit bolt upright at ungodly hours and burst into tears pleading, “Yukio, forgive me…” “Yukio, hold firm—don’t you dare lose—but really, this is exasperating! You’re a pilot without any surveillance, aren’t you? Just land in enemy territory, surrender, and have them save you already! “Japan’s going to perish anyway.” “What a hopelessly foolish child you are!”

Mother killed my younger sister through excessive doting. When my sister was hospitalized for appendicitis and underwent surgery—despite strict orders prohibiting water intake for twenty-four hours post-operation—Mother repeatedly gave her water whenever the nurse and I were absent, ultimately causing fatal peritonitis. Though unrelated to that incident, whenever Mother showed me affection, I felt only a chill as if being murdered—never once did it bring me joy. She was ignorant. I detested poverty and ignorance.

At that time, I had already allowed six men my body without Mother ever noticing. Their names and ages, where and how we met—I had no desire to speak of such things, nor did I consider them worth considering. So long as they wanted me, that sufficed—be they strangers glimpsed once or anyone else. Should I ever need to remember them, I would simply meet another man rather than recall. I possessed not the past but the future—no, there existed only the present.

Many of those men had long been making advances toward me, but I only permitted them on the eve or a day or two before they received their draft notices and were finally departing for the front. Later, I heard there was a trend among young women to pledge themselves to soldiers on the eve of deployment to fortify their journey to battle—but mine had been nothing so noble. I simply found it detestable being pestered indefinitely by men harboring delusions of wretched bonds or claims like "you're my woman"—so aside from those six, there were two sickly handsome youths I considered allowing, but since there was a risk they'd be discharged and sent home immediately, I refrained. Sure enough, one returned on the third day while the other remained hospitalized until war's end.

Miss Tomiko was apparently frigid. Perhaps because of this, when she saw handsome men, tremors would run through her body—limbs stiffening, chest constricting, fists clenching, or feeling compressed—but I experienced none of that. I was the opposite of frigid; I felt intense pleasure. Yet I didn’t consider that pleasure particularly essential, so in that sense, I’d never once felt the need for a man. Even when I felt something briefly, it would immediately scatter and be forgotten. Thus even when I allowed myself with six men, I never considered it unfaithful, while Miss Tomiko—who would involuntarily blush or tremble in trains or streets—struck me as far more prone to infidelity. I preferred such things to be ordinary and moderate. Some men employed all sorts of strange techniques to make me lose myself in the moment, but afterward, recalling it felt unpleasant—as if I’d truly been toyed with or humiliated—so I detested men who played with women like that during those times. Such things had to be ordinary, conventional, and moderate.

After the war ended, I met Miki Noboru on the street and had tea with him, whereupon he suddenly began to seduce me. With his skillful techniques and inexhaustible stamina—able to keep going for two days and nights without opening the windows, nibbling on toast and apples at the bedside—any unfaithful woman would have become infatuated or felt grateful, or so he claimed. I answered that I didn’t like getting carried away, but he took it as feminine coyness. "C’mon, it’s fine," he said, putting his arm around my shoulders on the street. Though I was held in his embrace as we walked about a hundred meters, during such moments I’d be thinking about food or something—never about the man holding me.

I never particularly tried to shake men off when they embraced my shoulders or held my hands. It was a hassle. If they wanted to do such things, I figured they could just go ahead. Then they’d get conceited—thinking I was interested—and try to kiss me, so I’d turn my face away. But there were plenty of times I let them kiss me anyway. Because turning away became too much trouble. Then they’d immediately start demanding my body, but I’d answer “Sure, someday,” and already be forgetting about them.

★ At the company where I was conscripted, they seemed astonished that my work capacity—as slow as molasses—was only equivalent to that of a fifth-year student at a national school. I was immediately transferred to clerical work, but even there, I didn’t become a problem. Not that I was particularly lazy, nor was I the type to exert special effort—something I’d never done even for men I favored—so I didn’t consider myself inferior, and people were generally lenient.

The company decided to leave behind only its headquarters office and part of the factory while dispersing for evacuation, and my section manager became one of the factory managers in charge of relocation, persistently urging me to evacuate. What I hated most was falling ill—and even more than that, dying. I had planned to flee into the mountains to survive if war broke out on the mainland, but with air raids yet to begin, I couldn’t muster the will to escape to a rural backwater devoid of amusement.

I was courted in order by regular employees, section chiefs, department heads, and executives following the corporate ladder's progression, but I only felt a favorable impression toward the executives. I didn't particularly dislike that young men sought not so much to court me as to indiscriminately demand my body; though I myself had little carnal desire, I believed it natural for men and women to love each other and fully accepted that world—so even if someone like Miki Noboru was lascivious and had nothing beyond carnal passion, I didn't despise him for it. I couldn't bring myself to. Whether you call it culture or cultivation—though I myself can't quite distinguish—it was simply that something about their spiritual baseness repelled me.

Mother’s husband was the owner of a large store but evacuated to a mountain villa. When word came about a room being available in a farmhouse in the neighboring village, Mother wanted to evacuate there too. But since I couldn’t leave due to my conscription duties, she agonized endlessly—until the air raids began. Kanda was hit. Yūrakuchō was hit. Shitaya was hit. With sporadic damage creeping closer, Mother finally resigned herself and fled alone with her belongings. Like me, Mother hated illness and death more than anything else. Her decision from Yukio’s childhood to raise him as a doctor was driven by her calculation to prolong her own life even slightly.

Mother came down once a week to check on me. But in truth, it was to secretly meet a young man—the one thing she wanted to hide from me. However, with transportation and communication being so unreliable, their arrangements often went awry, so things never unfolded as splendidly as planned, and she sometimes ended up bringing the man home to drink and let him stay over. I didn’t have an ounce of expectation that Mother should live some special way just because she was my parent; just as I wanted my own freedom, I thought it would feel refreshingly straightforward if Mother didn’t hold back around me either. Yet I couldn’t help feeling pity when she’d lose all restraint after getting drunk and the men she brought home proved too cheap.

Mother said that since there would be a major air raid on March 10th, Army Commemoration Day, she would return to the mountains by March 9th. Yet because her arrangements with the man had gone awry, it wasn’t until late on the night of the ninth that she finally managed to meet him, bring him home, and share drinks. I stayed awake keeping the maid company as she cooked chickens and meats we'd brought from the mountains for this occasion in the dim light, and when the air raid warning sounded, Mother's drinking party still hadn't ended—she came over to the radio I was listening to and began pouring more drinks by the glow of its dial. About three planes came in from the direction of Boso but turned back without dropping any bombs; then, after some time, another three or so entered along the same course, which also turned back without releasing their payload. They were saying that since they’d already turned back, the alert would be lifted—when from the watch post outside came shouts: “Enemy planes dropping bombs! Fire! Fire!” Then a terrible rattling sound tore through the air above us. The maid who had gone to look out from the second-floor window cried, “It’s terrible—fires are breaking out everywhere already!” While I was dazedly trying to make sense of things, the air raid alarm sounded.

Though it took an exasperatingly long time for Mother—drunk and not even wearing her work pants—to get ready, I—who knew nothing but underestimating night raid damage—lay sprawled in the dark room without any interest in opening the window to look at the fires, ignoring each time the maid returned from hurriedly tossing bundles into the air raid shelter with her shrill reports of “Another one fell over there! Flames rising here too!” At that moment, the man who had gotten ready before Mother and come to my room pressed his liquor-reeking face against mine. When I turned away, he climbed on top of me and began undoing the strings of my work pants, so I slipped out from under him and stood up. Mother was shrilly calling the man’s name. She called my name and the maid’s name too. I wordlessly stepped outside.

At that moment when I looked around the sky, my feelings—grandeur, exhilaration, awe—none of these fit. When such things were done to me, my head would lose all capacity for thought like a cotton-stuffed ball, so I forgot about the air raid and shuffled outside—only to find a crimson curtain before my eyes. There were arrows streaking through the fiery sky. The fire pressed and crushed in frenzy, racing sideways with arrow-like speed—I was sucked in and left dumbfounded. I couldn't think of anything. Then when I turned my head, wherever I looked was a crimson curtain—where could I flee to survive? Yet in that moment, I became exhilarated by a bestial anticipation that if I could escape this sea of flames unscathed, a fresh world would open before me, or perhaps I could draw near to such a world.

When I surveyed the war’s destruction the next day—so far beyond all expectation—I had lost both my home and any family I had, yet I found myself burning with hope instead. I do not love war or destruction. I dislike the terror that approaches me. Yet I sensed something old was perishing, something new was approaching. Though I couldn’t clearly discern what that something was, I continued to feel that for me, something—no more unfortunate than the past—was drawing near.

It was truly a devastating sight. The burnt-out national school had refugees sprawled from the upper floors down to the staircases; men who nonchalantly brought whoever’s futon they pleased to sprawl out on; people wearing others’ Western clothes or work coats—when someone would say “That’s mine,” it would end with “Well, I’ll just borrow it then.” There was also a man who stripped off one of the three futons from a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl—her face burned and smeared with ointment, only her neck exposed as she lay there like a plaster mask—saying three were too many, then took it to cover a woman from his group. Someone rummaged noisily through another’s trunk asking, “Got any food?” while the owner stared blankly. “A hundred dead over there,” “Five thousand in that park,” “Thirty thousand gone there.” “If you’re alive, count it a win—cheer up!” A ghost-pale man urged his family onward. Another man—who’d survived by burying his face in mud beneath corpses—now lamented his destitution in the shelter: “Should’ve taken that watch from the arm sticking out of the bodies.” This man hadn’t properly washed the mud from his face, but then again, most people had similarly grimy faces—no one was even thinking about washing up.

Osoyo the maid and I fled with a water-soaked futon over our heads, but when it caught fire along the way, we discarded it; when my coat caught fire, I threw that away too; my haori met the same fate—until we were left in nothing but single layers of lined clothing, utterly possessionless. Through Osoyo’s resourcefulness, we managed to borrow futons and blankets, and through her further efforts secured three portions of hardtack—though that meant just three pieces, our entire daily ration. The staff member promised, "We’ll get you some rice tomorrow," so despite our hunger, we endured. As I listened to Osoyo complain—"I’ve had enough of Tokyo," "Want to return to my countryside in Toyama," "But how can I go back empty-handed?"—I offered perfunctory agreements like "How true," though in reality, being possessionless didn’t trouble me at all.

From among us refugees with nothing to our names, futons and blankets came rolling in; though three pieces of hardtack left my stomach growling empty, since they said rice would come tomorrow, I found it far more fascinating than hunger—the way people just took care of everything while I sat here like this. I found the ingenious workings of natural human interactions more enjoyable than a slight hunger. When in dire straits, a way opens; when troubled, things naturally work out—this was the life principle I’d acquired thus far, and my lack of desire to rely on Mother likely stemmed from this tumor-like conviction rooted deep in my heart. Though I was raised to be utterly spoiled, even when Mother and the maid went out on errands leaving me home alone—told to cook whatever I pleased—I wouldn’t touch the meat or fish in the refrigerator, opting instead to search for canned goods; if none remained, I’d make do with rice topped only with bonito flakes; and if even that prepared rice wasn’t available, I could endure with whatever apple slices or castella cake scraps happened to be on hand. Even with my stomach growling empty, I lay sprawled out reading a book. So even if one were to call me utterly spoiled, I had grown accustomed to hunger—and perhaps that too was due to being spoiled—for being spoiled also cultivates a spirit capable of enduring hardship and deprivation, such that among the thousands of refugees packed into the hall, I seemed to be the one voicing the least complaints.

Since I myself was in such a state of mind, people’s misfortunes—though to me they undeniably appeared as misfortunes—also assumed a different form. To me, it truly appeared as dawn.

I continued to feel myself sitting alone in a world distinctly separate from Mother. What suddenly concerned me was simply that I no longer wanted to see Mother—I was here like this, Mother was likely somewhere like this too, and that I wanted us to remain forever apart like this—that was all.

To me, my being utterly possessionless was merely the fledgling form of my rebirth; others' destitution seemed nothing more than a reassuring presence—like allies keeping pace with my new beginning. Though children wailed of hunger, adults grew pallid with chill and anxiety, patients groaned, and all people wallowed in mud, I felt no disgust toward the filth, no unease or terror—rather, it all felt strangely nostalgic. For a girl like me—though how many such girls exist I don't know—but in any case, for a girl like me, concepts of Japan or homeland or nation loomed too large; those words rang hollow and defied management. Newspapers and radio clamored about the homeland's crisis, street rumors whispered of Japan's demise—but I could trust in my own survival. And since I bore this tumor-like conviction that things would naturally resolve themselves in troubled times, I thought it wouldn't matter one whit what became of Japan.

I have no country. There was always only reality. The great destruction before my eyes was not the nation's fate to me—it was my reality. I merely accept reality as it is. I maintained the principle of neither cursing nor hating—simply avoiding what deserved curses or hatred—yet there remained just one thing I couldn't dismiss through this doctrine of avoidance: Mother and the concept of home. Since I wasn't born by my own will—since I couldn't choose my parents—but I suppose life generally unfolds in such a haphazard manner. Whether I meet someone I love or not is all chance—since I lack any notion of "the one" or absolutes, I feel no anxiety over men's affections—yet Mother's case pains me. I dislike notions like "the best," "favorite," or "the one." People say it's all fifty steps versus a hundred steps, but I think fifty steps and a hundred steps make a tremendous difference. It might not be such a big deal, but in any case, there's a difference of fifty steps. And those differences—those gaps—seem to me nothing less than absolute. I therefore merely choose.

Since Akakura lay along Osoyo's route back to Toyama, I had been wavering between going to report Mother's death at the mountain villa or showing my face at the company when the owner of the futon and blankets decided to leave; just as I resigned to heading for the mountains instead, the director came looking for me. The fact that things would work out—seeing them actually being carried out like this—especially emboldened me.

I disliked going to the mountain villa. Though Mother’s patron and I shared no blood ties, the anxiety of being domineered and constrained like some parental substitute remained, and I found boarding the refugee train to head off utterly miserable and unbearable.

The refugees exhibited moments of unbarricaded solidarity—a raw, indiscriminate strength born from shared displacement—yet this very absence of boundaries fostered warped dependencies. When nights grew too dark to distinguish irises from weeds, men of indistinguishable identity would come crawling from every direction; since I slept clinging to Osoyo-san, she would shoo them away like cats with hissed "shoo-shoo" sounds honed through demobilized soldier's training—a spectacle I found unbearably comical. Whether it was the same man returning or different ones each time, they pressed in relentlessly without respite for sleep, leaving us no chance to rest save by daylight.

Japanese people always laughed. It was said they even smiled during mourning—did that make someone like me a Japanese archetype? When spoken to, I usually smiled. Instead, I rarely ever responded. In other words, I laughed instead of replying. Why? Because Japanese people only ever initiated conversations with trite remarks that didn't warrant responses—"What lovely weather we're having," "My, it's chilly today"—statements so obvious they needn't be said at all. Were I to actually reply with "Why yes, it certainly is," I'd have felt as though I were looking down on them, treating them like fools. So I couldn't respond—I simply smiled sweetly. Because I genuinely liked people, I couldn't bring myself to disdain them or treat them with contempt—such refined behaviors were beyond me. "What lovely weather we're having today," "My, it's quite chilly"—I responded by smiling my most charming smile, proof that I accepted things as they were and never treated people with contempt. Then people said things like I was flirtatious or lecherous.

I was by nature a quiet person; if I could manage without speaking, I generally wouldn’t, and when I wanted a cigarette, I silently thrust out my hand. I didn’t need to say “Give me a cigarette” or “Pass me one”—if I simply reached toward the cigarettes, they would understand. So I silently thrust out my hand. Not that I expected the man to place a cigarette in my palm, but if he didn’t, I would stretch my torso further toward where they lay, extending my arm more insistently until sometimes I ended up toppling over. Yet being accustomed to solitude and disinclined to rely on others—and lazy by nature—even when alone I wouldn’t walk over to fetch them. Instead I would stretch my body and arm until finally grasping one, only to immediately lose balance and fall—that was my method. But since I understood that men were kind to women, even when a man placed a cigarette in her palm, I took it as a matter of course and rarely ever said thank you.

So conversely, when I realized a man wanted the cigarettes before my knees, I instinctively took them up and silently thrust them out for him. In such moments I was instinctively kind—that is to say, it must have been the instinctive kindness inherent to women toward men. On the other hand, since I was generally careless and absent-minded, I usually didn’t notice what men wanted. But at my core, I was kindness itself—so indiscriminately kind even to strange men—that Miss Tomiko called me a lecher of unparalleled rarity in all the land. In other words, whenever I happened to notice a strange man sitting next to me on the train searching for matches, I would instinctively grab the matches from my pocket and silently thrust them out to him. I harbored absolutely no ulterior motives—it was simply women’s instinct toward men, something that should be called kindness, entirely distinct in meaning from lechery. Though I didn't particularly consider Miss Tomiko—who flushed at handsome young men sitting across from her on trains, her body stiffening with chest and waist tightening sharply—to be lewd, since that too must have been instinctual, I did think she proved more fickle compared to myself.

However, men too, just like Miss Tomiko, took my kindness as a sign of fickleness and would immediately grow presumptuous, trying to flirt or worm their way in. In the national elementary school shelter especially, I grew utterly weary of their relentless assaults that refused to yield; the thought of fleeing the capital with such people to drift toward unknown lands filled me with an unbearable sense of being some overly indulged misfit. So when I saw the director, I sighed in relief; I immediately changed my mind and entrusted Miss Osoyo with a message for the villa; I was taken in by the director.

★

Kusumi (Director) was fifty-six. He wasn't particularly thin, but standing six feet tall made him resemble wire. With his pug nose, acorn eyes, and thoroughly homely face—yet somehow none of it struck me as disagreeable from the start. That unstreaked white hair of his looked rather endearing to me; even those acorn eyes and pug nose held a charm that made them genuinely—not deceptively or affectedly—cute. Since girlhood I'd never been troubled by men's ages; even as a schoolgirl I'd been desperately infatuated with a vice principal past fifty. That man hadn't been handsome either.

After the war ended, Kusumi provided me with a house, and he truly cherished me. And one time he himself said to me, "You may meet any number of lovers in the future, but you’ll never find a man who cherishes you as much as I do."

I thought exactly the same. Kusumi was an old man and ugly—I might someday find someone I liked more than him, but no lover would ever cherish me as much as he did. When he spoke of cherishing me, it wasn’t about the passion of brandishing a cleaver to chase me down without regard for distance, demanding reconciliation should I ever stray—no, he was someone who would forgive me even if I did.

He discerned my true nature, accepted all of it, and sought to satisfy it. The only real restrictions he imposed on me amounted to requests like "Try not to have affairs if possible," and "If you do, at least keep me from finding out." Generally speaking, someone like me—a slow-motion person—simply couldn’t keep pace with the world’s ordinary tempo. But when I made appointments with people or got burdened with obligations—though tormented by obsessive anxiety—my slow-motion nature inevitably failed me; back when I worked at the company, I’d be two or three hours late, five or six hours late. Even when I showed up about thirty minutes before closing and got sarcastic remarks like "You might as well take the day off if you’re coming this late," the very fact that I kept going in—knowing full well how meaningless it was—showed just how tormented by obsessive anxiety I must have been. Only Kusumi understood this; though others might grumble that "the director spoils her," he never uttered a single word of criticism toward me, always treating me with care instead.

When I made travel plans with someone I liked—say, Kusumi—I would end up missing trains by two or three hours. For instance, just as I’d finish dressing to go out, some retired old man I knew might appear—“Look at this tobacco pouch I made from our moso bamboo,” he’d launch into showing off—keeping me talking for an hour or two. Being the sort who couldn’t tell even disliked people to leave when busy, let alone a friendly retiree, I could never bring myself to say “Go home.” I couldn’t sacrifice either person through willpower alone—drawn instead by whatever immediate force lay before me, this reality’s pull until one side grew neglected—an irresistible compulsion where there was nothing to be done.

Kusumi looked after me like that. And so our trips became absurdly chaotic affairs—the train would be declared out of service ("This is as far as we go, please disembark") before reaching any destination, meaning it had simply ceased running altogether. Forced to alight at some unexpected place yet never reprimanded for these disruptions, I found their very absurdity refreshing—these journeys transformed into unforeseen pleasures, like watching panoramic scenes unfold before me.

There can be no such thing as a truly ugly human being, for beauty does not remain fixed in stasis—anything can appear beautiful or ugly in a given moment. To me, Kusumi in the bedroom was always endearing and beautiful.

I was a young woman—walked tree-lined avenues arm-in-arm with beautiful youths, had them carry my luggage or run to hail automobiles, was doted upon while shopping in Ginza, chased and were chased through human tides, exchanged glances and laughed when the crowd momentarily parted. Kusumi no longer had such youthful eyes. And in place of that intense gaze, all that remained was a hacking cough.

However, such youthful eyes amounted to nothing more than scenery in the connections between men and women, didn't they? Strolling tree-lined avenues, enjoyable shopping trips, movie outings, café visits—though such activities tended to be seen as lovers' exclusive privilege, I considered them instead mere diversions born of fickleness or spite, fleeting dreams at best. Long ago, I showed kindness to six young men departing for war in my bedroom, and after the war's end too, I had liaisons with several youths there without Kusumi's knowledge. But even that remained merely scenery between men and women—nothing beyond fleshly landscapes.

However, as far as Kusumi was concerned, I was no longer scenery.

When I lay all alone—reading a book, lost in thought, or dozing off—Kusumi would come to visit. No matter how engaging the book, how quiet the reverie, how peaceful the slumber—I never felt the faintest flicker of regret at abandoning them. I simply smiled, welcomed him, sought his caress, and extended both arms to await him. I was nothing but that innate coquetry.

This coquetry was something Kusumi had bestowed upon me. Until that time, I had never known such coquetry, yet with Kusumi alone I naturally came to act this way—as though he had created a singular version of me and crafted an entirely new form of coquetry.

That was sincere gratitude. This sincerity manifested not through heartfelt emotion, but through coquetry’s form. No matter how pleasant my slumber, whenever I awoke to find Kusumi there, I would smile from within that lethargic half-sleep, extend both arms toward him, and draw close to his neck. Even when ill, it remained so. Amidst excruciating pain, I welcomed him—never losing my smile, caresses, nor any coquetry. When the long hours of caresses ended and Kusumi fell asleep, I reclaimed that excruciating pain. Though now unbearable, during those hours I had voiced no pain nor let even the faintest shadow of anguish cloud my smile. This wasn’t mental fortitude—rather, blind coquetry inherently dulled even such agony. They speak of writhing in pain—I found myself immobilized in an unnaturally contorted posture from sheer torment, emitting my first-ever moan since birth. Kusumi awoke disbelieving at first, but by his frantic doctor summons it was too late—for despite the pain I hadn’t roused him until he naturally woke—my appendix already festered with abdomen filled by pus, requiring three-hour surgery where every abdominal organ was prodded and rearranged.

The only person who appreciated this innate coquetry that had been nurtured and shaped over time was Kusumi alone. When young eyes exchanged secret smiles across the human tide, there dwelled spiteful dreams, flowed the scent of flowers, and lingered youth’s inherent allure—but precisely because of this, there also resided boredom, emptiness, and a self-betraying rationality. In short, they were eyes of spite, play, and dalliance. There were times when I vaguely felt like wanting a handsome youth to hold my hand, or found myself enraptured while frolicking overnight with some beautiful young man—yet after such dalliances, I always ended up feeling hollow and bored, weary from the weight in my heart.

Yet when I gazed at Kusumi with an enraptured smile, extended both hands to draw near, then embraced the white hair against his chest while stroking and fondling with my fingers until lost in caresses, my smiling face and outstretched arms and fingers became nothing but temporary incarnations of spirit—fairies born from sincere tenderness, gentle spirits, grateful apparitions—no longer truly my arms or smile, nor anything moved by my own will. In other words, my true nature was that of a kept woman. My love was gratitude; though in my affairs I would let men entertain me until enraptured, when I myself transformed into natural coquetry and dedicated my entire being to a man, it was always born of gratitude. In short, I was a born career woman—in return for being allowed to buy what I wanted and live as I pleased, I naturally transformed into coquetry. In exchange, I never once thought of wanting to do his laundry or cook meals for him to eat. I believed such matters could be handled by cleaners and restaurants, and considered that to be what culture and civilization were all about.

Yet precisely because I felt so satisfied and doted upon, there were times I wanted to rebel. Rebellion is so corny—I hate that sort of thing. I don't like turbulence. I don't care for overwrought emotions or profound sentiments either. Yet that very sense of fulfillment would strangely breed dissatisfaction—was this too just my selfishness? The realization that I was unwittingly dedicating all my coquetry to that old, ugly man alone—this feeling of constraint, of bondage—would fill me with bitter resentment. In truth, I saw such feelings—rebellion, wasteful impulses, trivial matters—as pointless, but these spontaneously arising emotions were beyond my control.

When I suddenly returned to myself from lonely reverie or quiet trance, I would glimpse hell. I saw fire. I saw a sea of fire, an ocean of flames, a sky ablaze. That was the fire that burned Tokyo and my mother. And I was being jostled and crushed by mud-covered refugees, holding my breath in a corner. I was waiting for something. I didn’t know what that something was, but the one thing I did know was that it wasn’t Kusumi.

Long ago in that time—amidst those tragic refugees who had overflowed that mud-covered school—I saw emptiness and misfortune as dawn itself. In the hell I now glimpse within myself, there seems to be no dawn. I’m likely seeking freedom, but now that freedom appears as hell. It’s dark. Could it be because I’m no longer empty? I can love someone more than I do now—but could this anxiety come from knowing I can never be loved more than I am? In a burning wilderness without end, I saw my form as loneliness—a desolate, chill poignancy. Humans—what foolishly sad creatures they are. Oh, what ridiculous sadness—I would always think during those moments.

When I was hospitalized, a sumo stablemaster—suffering from a boil or some such ailment—had also been admitted, and his entire faction grew lively as disciples from sekitori down to trainees brought special dishes in rice bowls and pots or carried in sake bottles; among them was one called Sumidagawa of the juryo division—the child of our neighborhood’s beef shop who attended the same national school, and one of those I had allowed on the eve of his deployment. He immediately proposed marriage to me—though being no fool and working in a popular profession where women flocked to him, I pointed out how absurd it was to marry someone at juryo rank. When I said this, he suggested we meet occasionally instead. I used my post-illness state as reason to refuse at the time, but after each tour he’d return and come visiting nearly every day.

Sumidagawa, being downtown-raised, fought methodical sumo—pushing and thrusting with lean musculature rather than bulk, possessing strong hips and throwing techniques that fueled rumors of ōzeki potential—yet that very downtown spirit made him quick to concede clean losses, lacking the tenacity to stubbornly cling to unfavorable positions. In practice, whether he won or lost, his sumo remained impeccably clean—when in form, he’d plow through five or ten opponents, even dominating exhibition matches with raw power. Yet come tournament time, that strength vanished; he’d lose to weaker rivals the moment things turned slightly unfavorable. This stemmed from a rationalist’s fatal flaw: knowing his own weaknesses too well, he’d catastrophize minor setbacks. That overwhelming sense of *shimatta* eclipsed any capacity for desperate scrapping—the tenacity to claw back from disadvantage through sheer, ugly persistence simply wasn’t in him. The moment he thought *shimatta*, he’d get relentlessly pushed back and swiftly defeated without putting up a fight. This was especially true against weak opponents; against strong ones, he usually won. In other words, against strong opponents, he changed his mental preparation and mindset from the very beginning, confronting them with careful attention and fervent fighting spirit united as one.

I thought matches were cruel. The capabilities one possessed proved utterly unreliable; beyond sumo techniques, physical strength, and bodily conditions—did such mental factors and personality traits also constitute part of one’s true prowess? When advantaged, he never grew complacent nor overcommitted—dispatching matches with methodical precision that exuded metropolitan rationality and cultivated composure—yet toward disadvantage proved hypersensitive; even minor reversals his strength could overcome became mentally preempted defeats whose outcomes he surrendered to. Thus he’d collapse demoralized; by the time he rallied himself thinking *Must fight back here*, he’d already been cornered beyond recovery—utterly helpless.

I went to see his practice sessions and watched every day of the tournaments. He would come to my seat and explain each match from maegashira up to yokozuna, but I came to realize that behind those lightning-quick contests of strength and technique lay an excessive amount of psychological time. A time that was but an instant in terms of strength and technique held within their psyches fluctuations of thought far exceeding a day’s worth of contemplation. A grand yokozuna was hurled down—and in that split second before the throw landed, resignation flooded his face with a *shimatta*; to me, it felt as though I could hear that *shimatta* booming loud and clear.

In sumo, once the wrestler himself thinks *shimatta*, it’s already over—the match ends there, irrevocably lost. In other matters, even if one thinks *shimatta* once or twice, they can regain composure, stand back up, and start anew—but sumo’s structure of competition, impervious to such comebacks, struck me as cruelly contemptuous of humanity. The reason sumo wrestlers’ minds remain simple and temperamentally straightforward lies in their life’s work—a system where everything concludes with a single *shimatta*, terminating at mere expressions of human psychology. Thus though in that instant of strength and technique they simultaneously feel humanity’s most intense psychological thoughts—peak-compressed multitudes—and constantly witness supreme anguish, as if ridiculing, despising, and insulting their own immense sorrows through that solitary *shimatta*, none among them notice this tragedy; all remain simple and vague.

Ecchan (Sumidagawa was what we called him in our neighborhood) would settle matches through his peculiar psychological weakness—preemptively and excessively thinking *shimatta* even when unnecessary, then tumbling to defeat. Watching Ecchan’s matches, I’d catch his momentary shifts in complexion—*I’ve blown it*, *I’m done for*, *damn it*, *why?*—each time transforming into distinct cries resounding within me until I could no longer bear to watch.

“You’re too sensitive only to your own weaknesses—that’s why you fail.” “I detest people who spot others’ flaws but not their own—but in sumo, you need precisely that intrusive mentality.” “You must cling on with goddamn tenacity every single time.” “Do that, and you could become ōzeki—even yokozuna.”

I said this to him. This advice greatly motivated him—he won two or three matches and grew confident—but in his next bout, that familiar *shimatta* struck. Just as he fell into disadvantage, at the point where he’d normally collapse completely—whether from my counsel taking effect or not—he unexpectedly rallied and pushed back until achieving an even position. Magnificent—Ecchan had finally attained enlightenment! Yet even as he stood firm with Asura-like ferocity, thinking *Now I can win*, his spirit abruptly drained away and he slid helplessly to defeat. And then he reverted to his old mokuami stance—losing confidence only made things worse than before.

"Why did you lose focus there?" "But you rallied that far—if you don’t let your spirits sour and throw it all away, you’ve got the strength to recover." "Since you’ve already proven yourself up to that point, try pushing beyond it this time." Even when I encouraged him, Ecchan would wear a sullen expression; once his confidence crumbled, the tremendous courage and valiant efforts he’d mustered seemed to him like fleeting miracles, and thereafter his tenacity only dwindled further. The moment he thought *shimatta*, he’d collapse into limp, sloppy defeats without offering any real resistance.

I had thought it a crude world where only strength mattered, but faced with this excessively delicate realm of the mind—this contempt for spirit, contempt for humanity, this cruelty and heartlessness—I found myself utterly overwhelmed. A man once hailed as a future yokozuna after reaching sekiwake now found himself demoted to juryo, then makushita, finally sandanme—his hulking frame tumbling to defeat again and again. In the world of art—where there’s no clear-cut way to determine personal victory—even those left behind could cling to pride or self-deception. Yet in sumo, with its unequivocal wins and losses, those who fell found no such solace for their delusions. Sheer cruelty, contempt for the spirit—as if ripping out people’s natural tender hearts to fashion human monstrosities—unbearable contempt for humanity. That’s why when Ecchan won, I found myself oddly disinclined to praise him, yet when he lost, I felt compelled to offer comfort.

Before that tournament began, he had returned from his tour and,

“I know your temperament, Miss Sachiko—don’t want to belabor the point—but I can’t help loving you. Every time I try wooing you, it’s always ‘Sure, someday,’ or ‘Maybe later,’ or ‘We’ll see.’” “So, this is awkward for me too, but I’ve grown thoroughly sick of Tokyo—all because of the tournaments being here. I used to wait impatiently for them, but lately they’ve become such a burden that just having to return to my hometown Edo feels agonizing.” “Even so, the only thing that makes returning somewhat bearable is knowing you’re here, Miss Sachiko—otherwise, I’d be so sick of it all I’d want to quit. But if I quit, you probably wouldn’t give me the time of day, right? So I’m trying my best to put my all into these bare matches, at least.” “Given the kind of man I am, I’m full of desires—but I don’t want to voice my own selfish whims.” “It’s thanks to these matches that my only real merit is having come to understand men and women somewhat deeply.” “We often rely on our patrons’ support.” “Patrons have their mistresses, but they’re all such good people that even your patron, Miss Sachiko—when I think of them as patrons—I end up wanting to care for all of them.” “So from what I’ve seen too, there’s not a single instance where mistresses cheating ended well.” “You’ll be punished.” “But Miss Sachiko—since you’re my only motivation now—I’d never ask you to become my wife or make such unreasonable demands.” “If I could just be satisfied having you spend time with me like this every day, that’d be one thing—but when we part and I go home, the ache becomes unbearable.” “Other women just don’t cut it.” “While I’m away on tour, I can forget.” “Having you right here before my eyes like this—I can’t handle it.” “While I’m wrestling in tournaments and only when I return to Tokyo—couldn’t we have you spend time with me?”

At that tournament, Ecchan was ranked second in Juryo; maintaining a winning record there would have secured his promotion to Makuuchi. For some reason, I wanted to encourage Ecchan and help him succeed, so “Well then, if you win all your matches this tournament, I’ll go stay somewhere with you.” “Win all? “Winning all’s tough, huh.”

"But that's simply how a woman's heart works." "Even if a sumo wrestler were skilled at guitar or such things, I don't believe that would win a woman over." "You must prevail through sumo." "If I could believe your perfect record had truly earned me, even I might take pride in these feelings." "Alright, understood." "I'll do it." "If it's come to this, I've just got to win every last match!"

However, the result was the exact opposite. Ecchan was simply that sort of person. When he exerted himself or got fired up, if he stumbled at the outset, he would slide helplessly into a quagmire of such wretched, unspeakable sloppiness. "If you lose the first day, that's fine—just win all the rest. If you lose the second day too, fine—just win what's left." By the final day, even I finally burst out laughing: "Fine then! Start fresh with an easy first day! I'll keep my promise!" But no—it ended in a spectacular flop.

Ecchan, with his city-dweller's fastidiousness, must have wanted to fulfill his promise of total victory and properly hold me in triumph—but having stumbled on the first day, it was already hopeless. He possessed a temperament that couldn't erase this self-defeating mood through mere pity alone. Yet had Ecchan actually achieved that perfect record as promised, I believe I could only have maintained a dutiful relationship with him—precisely because he failed so utterly, I found myself unbearably moved by his pitiful state and filled with sorrow.

I encouraged Ecchan and went outside together. During the intermission break, Mr. Kusumi sat oblivious in the arena seats awaiting the top three division matches, but as my resolve suddenly hardened, he scarcely crossed my mind—only the pitiable spectacle of Ecchan's failure and this contempt for humanity constricting my chest, until even his relish for watching skilled bouts made hatred surge through me toward him. "I hate places like rendezvous spots or those cheap love hotels." "Take me to proper hot spring inns—Hakone, Atami, Ito." "I know channels where we can get tickets immediately."

“But starting tomorrow, I have hanazumo exhibitions for three or four days.” “Unlike honbasho tournaments, these come with social obligations, you see.” “Then you should take tomorrow morning’s train back to Tokyo.” Though I was the type who could only perform obligatory acts in prearranged matters and never initiate anything myself, whenever an unexpected window opened and my heart was suddenly drawn in, I would—uncharacteristically for my habitually lethargic self—start doing strangely committed things like compelling people without allowing refusal. I myself was startled by myself. Women are utterly unreliable, I thought at such times.

At the hot spring, having offered sake to a dejected Ecchan, when we went to bed,

“Ecchan, I’d forgotten to say this until now.” “What for?” “I’m sorry.” “What’re you on about?” “I’d forgotten to say I’m sorry.” “Forgive me, Ecchan.”

“Why?” “Because it’s downright contempt for humanity.” “What’re you calling ‘contempt for humanity’?” “Asking you to win every match—isn’t that contempt for humanity? I thought it would be okay if Ecchan slugged me.” Ecchan made a puzzled face, but I was the type to become completely absorbed in my own affairs, “Is the flop painful for you, Ecchan? Aren’t you bothered? I’m actually quite happy about it. Please forgive me, okay? It was my fault. So, Ecchan.”

I stretched out both hands. A natural coquetry I had never shown to anyone but Kusumi now permeated my entire being, leaving me as nothing more than the essence of my own tender heart.

The next day, Ecchan regained his cheerfulness. That was because the notion that a single night with me outweighed his official tournament flop convinced him, and the fact that he’d come to feel this way lightened my own mood. “You said ‘contempt for humanity,’ didn’t you.” “You’re saying that me slamming people into the ring is contempt for humanity?” “Then what—you wouldn’t be satisfied unless I lose all year round?”

“That’s not it.” “Then what’s this about?”

“It’s fine now. Because they’re just my own thoughts.” “If you don’t tell me, how can I not be curious? Even in passing—it’s contempt for humanity I’m talkin’ about here.” “Because if I told you, you’d just laugh.” “In other words, it’s just a woman’s sentimentality.” “Yes, well, that’s right. What a beautiful sea. If this were my home. I’ve been thinking about that since this morning.” “You’re damn right about that. The ring, the spectators, the tour trains, the inns—all we ever see are people and dust. They cling to us no matter where we go. I’m tellin’ ya, Miss Sachiko—if a sumo wrestler starts fearin’ official tournaments so bad that returnin’ to his hometown along the Sumidagawa River fills him with dread, then seein’ you laze around this place all peaceful-like... damn, I just can’t take it.”

“Is it okay if you don’t go back to ceremonial sumo?”

“I up and quit.” “Even if they chew me out, I don’t give a damn.” “Ain’t about obligation or compassion.” “Sometimes I just wanna be human.” “Hey, look at this.” “This—this topknot. It’s this one.” “It’s a mark that says I ain’t human.” “Just like chickens have their form, sumo wrestlers have theirs.” “Back then, this thing was my pride and joy—used to make me real happy, though.”

We didn't bring any rice. Ecchan had asked the inn staff to let us eat once, but since we were truly out of food and in trouble, he said we had to manage it ourselves somehow. When I handed over the wallet, Ecchan stood up with a gruff "On it." "Can you really get some?" "Do you have connections?" "Leave it to me." "Then take me with you, Ecchan." "There's reasons I can't." "I'll dash out and come right back—just sit tight awhile."

Before long, Ecchan returned loaded down with two bushels of rice, four chickens, and a heap of eggs, barged into the inn’s kitchen to cook up chanko stew and fried rice, then treated all the maids to a grand feast.

“Do you understand now, Miss Sachiko, why I couldn’t take you along? It’s this—the topknot. See, times like these—when sumo wrestlers go hungry and pitiful—farmers’ll hand over rice, cops’ll look the other way. But bring a beauty like you along sightseein’? They won’t spare an ounce of sympathy then.” He laughed harshly. “So the topknot’s practical benefits,” I observed.

“You’re damn right.” “What a cruel twist of fate.”

The sea, like oil dissolving into evening haze; scattered lights dotted the cape’s shore. It was a quiet evening. I’m not one to appreciate scenery by nature, yet somehow I found myself drifting into a poetic reverie and carelessly prolonging my stay.

★

In my house, besides an elderly maid and a housemaid, there lived a girl named Miss Nobuko who was two years my junior. During the war she had been a clerk at the same company, but the air raids took all her family in one blow. Mr. Tashiro, Secretary to Kusumi, had borrowed capital from him to open a bar in the black market side business. Given that Miss Nobuko was fundamentally a restaurant owner's daughter perfectly suited to customer service, they formally requested her to serve as the madam on paper—though being just twenty now and having become madam at nineteen makes it seem like a lie, in reality she shrewdly and confidently ran the place with more competence than any seasoned professional.

Due to an unexpectedly prolonged stay that left me short on funds, I had arranged for Miss Nobuko to secretly deliver money, but she came all the way to the hot spring accompanied by Mr. Tashiro to bring it. Mr. Tashiro was fond of Miss Nobuko and had conceived the bar madam position as mere pretext to properly install her as his mistress, but though Miss Nobuko likewise cared for Mr. Tashiro and their surface relationship appeared to all eyes as that of patron and kept woman, she had never permitted physical intimacy.

Since Mr. Tashiro, Secretary to Kusumi, had come, Ecchan stiffened up,

“No need for formalities—I’m the big-time black marketeer here, since that bastard’s by nature incapable of anything but fooling around anyway.”

In truth, I found it more reassuring that Mr. Tashiro had come. For he was, as he himself proclaimed, by nature a black marketeer; though called Kusumi’s secretary, the practical secretarial duties were handled by others—he specialized solely in behind-the-scenes matters: managing Kusumi’s women and, more recently, showcasing his skills in black market dealings. It was necessary for me to keep him from becoming an enemy. "You’ve opportunistically taken on a role here while seizing the chance, haven’t you?" "Because this lets you take Miss Nobuko to a hot spring." "You owe your thanks to me exclusively."

“Exactly as you said.” “With restaurants being ordered to close these days, Nobu-chan’s found herself in such a desperate spot that she’s had to turn to prostitution just to eat—that’s when she finally came to appreciate my worth.” “The service has changed a bit, you see.” “Since I caught wind of this situation, I figured I’d take advantage and actually try to properly court Nobu-chan here.” “Today should be the day it works out.” “Nobu-chan, how about it? Being shown this scene right before your eyes—if you don’t have a change of heart here, I’ll be at my wit’s end.”

“I’m truly sorry, Miss Sachiko.” “I meant to deliver the money alone, but I went ahead and consulted Mr. Tashiro on my own.” “Because I got worried—if we left things like this, later on…”

I had anticipated that Miss Nobuko would act this way.

Miss Nobuko appeared thoroughly capable and shrewd on the surface—she had handled office work with brisk efficiency during her company days, and even after starting the bar business while keeping an elderly maid as assistant, she would ride her bicycle for procurement, clean the establishment, manage everything single-handedly without hiring help. Beyond this, she would even handle shopping for three houses across and next door of her shop and other neighbors. When the person at the neighboring store fell ill and couldn't run their business—yet couldn't afford food if they stayed bedridden—Miss Nobuko closed her own shop to work at theirs instead. She was a woman of rare character.

So she was active and appeared to be a solid, hard worker on the surface, but in reality she didn’t make a profit. She had never glanced at triangular lottery tickets or treasure lotteries—being utterly practical and devoid of fantasy—but when it came to others’ affairs, she would forget all profit and loss, devote herself completely, then instantly squander every steadily earned penny. Mr. Tashiro had noticed Miss Nobuko’s beauty, activeness, and shrewdness with plans to make substantial profits, yet failed to gain any returns whatsoever; moreover, Miss Nobuko would set aside ten percent of the earnings untouched and deliver this portion to Mr. Tashiro’s wife even when making no profit herself. Everything having turned out unexpectedly, Mr. Tashiro was left dumbfounded—yet this very person who endlessly chanted “money-money-money,” who claimed he’d do anything for cash, abandoned pursuit of his anticipated money pipeline due to poor business performance and instead showed concern for Nobu-chan’s pure-hearted nature.

"But Nobu-chan, protecting virginity over something as trivial as your body—how pointless." "'It'd be bad for my wife,' or whatever—listen, Madam"—he addressed me this way—"humans are fundamentally philanderers by nature. Even fleetingly think of another man? Christ says that's already adultery." "The mind and body're the same damn thing." "Just the body alone—such a fake thing ain't gonna fly." "So I'm tellin' ya—follow Madam's example." "Madam doesn't give a damn 'bout affairs, her body—any of that." "So then, it turns out my old man and Madam here could have a connection that don't involve affairs at all." "You gotta see this part." "'Cause you're stuck on your body—that's why Nobu-chan gets worshipped by college boys an' layabouts. It's painful how she can't see how foolish all that is." "Why can't she grasp the natural order of things, huh, Madam?"

The reason Mr. Tashiro had Miss Nobuko live with me was due to his earnest wish to somehow impart my philandering spirit to her—which explained why he made a point of ardently courting her right before my eyes, but I simply laughed and watched the spectacle, never once offering him assistance.

“Madam, please find some way to help change Nobu-chan’s state of mind.”

“No. Courting must be done independently and self-reliantly.” “You ain’t got no sense of friendship, Madam. All these gentlemen and ladies got obligations. What I mean is mediating a friend’s romance. When I bring a dame to meet a pal—get this—I puff myself up like I’m top dog ’mongst ’em. That’s the privilege of philandering, see? So when some buddy parades his skirt before me, I play the dumb underling to make him feel big. They call this gentlemanly cultivation and duty—men and women being friends gotta mind this cultivation and duty without fail. Else they’re proper heretics among ladies ’n gents. You being the grandest lady of ’em all, Madam—figured you’d handle it without me spelling things out, but…”

Nobuko had college students courting her and sending love letters, while two or three market bigwigs also pursued her—even forcibly dragging her to dance parties hosted by various groups despite her not knowing how to dance. This left Mr. Tashiro in such an anxious state that he’d mutter things like “If those bastards get their hands on her, they’ll do who knows what,” remaining agitated until she returned home. Despite her talk about bodies and virginity, since she didn’t seem that way after all, I teased her. “Because really—it’s not like you’d become some tainted goods or anything. But if someone you loved got raped in some thug-like way, that’d leave a bitter taste, wouldn’t it?” He courted her so ardently, yet Miss Nobuko wouldn’t say yes. But she did like Mr. Tashiro.

Miss Nobuko, who bore no resemblance to me whatsoever, took pity on my fragile nature and hazy instability, worrying over me like an elder sister despite being older than I was. But in reality, I saw through Miss Nobuko—outwardly tough yet uncertain of her own path, wavering in business matters, love affairs, and every aspect of daily life, living in constant anxiety as if treading on thin ice. Though my silence meant I never comforted her with kind words, this orphaned woman came to rely on me as her sole pillar of support.

“Madam, that was a blunder. Affairs need handling without anyone noticing. But losing your temper here’d make it worse still. Since that’s the worst outcome, you must return acting clueless. They know you stayed with the sumo wrestler—can’t help that part. But even though you shared a room, there was no relationship—get this—hammering that story’s what matters most. Deny it, deny it till your throat bleeds. Even if they doubt, humans’re animals that’ll start thinking ‘Maybe there really wasn’t anything.’ Keep insisting ‘No relation from start to finish’ and you’ll have even yourself believing it in the end. Understood?”

But Mr. Tashiro's own affairs were more problematic than mine. Miss Nobuko had said she didn't want to sleep in the same room as Mr. Tashiro, but even he turned somewhat pale. "Nobu-chan, that won't do." "You can't humiliate me like that!" "Coming to an inn as a man and woman and staying in separate rooms—that'd ruin your reputation. There's no greater shame than this." "Even if we sleep in the same room—and I'll try to seduce you, I admit that—I won't resort to force. You've got to trust me on this. If you humiliate me to that extent, Nobu-chan—doesn't that make me seem completely devoid of character?"

When the men were soaking in the hot spring, Miss Nobuko said to me,

“What should I do? I’ve made Mr. Tashiro angry, but it’s so painful. Being courted in bed—I’ve never even let a man see my sleeping face before. Being courted like that—I might just give in because I can’t bear making him feel miserable or seeing him so pitiful. If I surrender that way, wouldn’t I end up feeling utterly desolate and pathetic later? That’s how it is, right? So maybe I should just take the initiative and give in instead. It feels like reckless despair. Miss Sachiko, what should I do? Please tell me.”

“I don’t know.” “I’m not much to rely on, Miss Nobuko—don’t be angry.” “I truly don’t understand a single thing about myself.” “I always just leave things to take their course.” “But really, in Miss Nobuko’s case, what should one do, I wonder.” “You mustn’t act out of despair like that.” “That’s true, I suppose.”

At that evening’s dinner table, I said to Mr. Tashiro.

“Even someone as worldly as you, Mr. Tashiro, can’t grasp Miss Nobuko’s feelings.” “With no family to speak of, her virginity becomes something like kin.” “Lose even that substitute family, and she’d be left with nothing but dark visions of becoming some back-alley woman.” “Even a drowsy philanderer like me feels this shadow—since women lack men’s survival skills, chastity becomes our ersatz family. A murky sort of thing.” “So if you mean to take Miss Nobuko’s last substitute kin, you’d need to build her a life foundation secure without such ties.” “A guarantee eliminating future anxieties.” “Mere words won’t suffice.” “You must show tangible proof.”

“That’s what you call an impossible demand, Madam.” “That’s because you—your man’s rolling in all the world’s riches—but you, most of those countless men out there ain’t got two coins to rub together.” “Treating virginity like some geisha’s mizuage transaction—that’s a goddamn insult to purity itself.” “Course I’ll treat Nobu-chan right.” “Same way I’m treating her now, plain as day.” “But that mizuage fee you’re asking? That’s fucking highway robbery.”

“Would that count as a deflowering fee?” “In that case, I was free of charge too.”

“There, you see? You—virginity’s free by nature.”

“Because my mother meant to merchandise my virginity, I rebelled.” “But thinking on it now—if a woman lacks family ties, virginity might become her capital.” “After all, geishas undergo their mizuage before becoming true geishas.” “In my case, losing that anchor called virginity brings anxieties—the fragility and darkness that might make one a nightwalker.” “So guarding virginity means guarding life’s very foundation.”

“A blade’s edge I’ve never seen before. For Madam to come defending virginity—women gotta form their united front and betray themselves so damn calmly. I can’t handle this. The principle of strikes is for common goals, but a strike that empties yourself out and betrays yourself—that kinda strike don’t exist. You see, you—I get that Nobu-chan’s loneliness comes from saying virginity’s like family. I do. But that loneliness is what you call sentimentalism—a fundamentally harmful and useless, specter-like emotion, I tell ya. Because they stake a woman’s purity on her virginity alone, if she loses that virginity, she ends up losing all her purity. That’s why they end up as women of the night. But you—purity isn’t such a cheap thing. It belongs to the soul. What I think is, Japanese wives ain’t nothing but monstrous characters born from that mistaken ideology of virginal purity. Since they ain’t got no purity left now, they’re truly monsters—evil spirits, I tell ya. Slaves to money and child-rearing fanatics, I tell ya. It don’t matter what happens to the body—even if you swap out five or ten husbands—you gotta keep that thing called purity in your soul, I tell ya. Now compare that to someone like Madam Sachiko here—born not giving a damn about her body to begin with. And you being able to convert love into material calculations like it’s some kinda gratitude exchange rate. Calling yourself a ‘career woman of love’ and all—hell, that makes you one admirably, exhilaratingly upright lady, I tell ya. You, of all people—no! A sympathy strike? That’s unacceptable. You’ve got to stay true to yourself, I tell ya. Sumo wrestler, isn’t that right? When even Madam Sachiko here temporarily forgets the grand principle of infidelity and goes about praising the virtue of virginity, this humble one ain’t about to come specially to clean up the mess, I tell ya. I spare no effort precisely because I fully respect and admire you, Madam Sachiko, and wholeheartedly approve of your disposition and actions. We can’t have such overflowing zeal making loyal subjects of the empire lament like this, I tell ya.”

Mr. Tashiro’s obsession burned too fiercely for me to find any ease. Though I myself wouldn’t feel compelled to forgive—albeit for different reasons than Miss Nobuko—the fact that she both loved and respected him made her obstinate guarding of mere virginity incomprehensible to me. In truth, all of it was simply tiresome.

That night, after Mr. Tashiro and the others left for another room,

“Oh, Miss Sachiko. Don’t you think Miss Nobuko seems pitiful?” “Why?”

“Because she was all sullen and mopey, brooding over something.” “She must hate it.”

“It can’t be helped.” “That’s all it amounts to.” “There are various things that happen when a woman’s alone.” “Hmm.” “What sort of ‘various things’?” “Different people try to court you in different ways.” “Is that how it works...” “Me—I’ve hardly ever courted anyone or been courted myself.” “But if she’s brooding that stubbornly over it...”

“You caused me quite a lot of trouble too, didn’t you?” “Ah, I see. So that’s how it is—and this is where we end up, huh?” “What do you mean by ‘punishment will strike’? Huh?”

“What’s that? ‘Punishment will come’?” “Sometime ago, you said it yourself, didn’t you? That there’s never been a single instance where kept women’s affairs ended well. That punishment would come. What do you mean by ‘punishment will come’? What kind of punishment?” “Did I say something like that? I don’t recall. But you—you’re different.”

“Why?” “But I’m also Kept Woman’s infidelity, you know.” “You aren’t infidelity. “Your heart’s too gentle.”

“Aren’t most Kept Women like that?” “Enough already.” “But I can’t go causing you pain, so I’ll just cleanly give up.” “From now on I’ll just recklessly throw myself into sumo with single-minded focus.” “But can I really do that without thinking of you?” “I won’t remember.” “Am I really already so insignificant?”

“Even if I remembered, it wouldn’t change anything.” “I hate remembering.” “You’re someone I just can’t figure out.”

“Why did you give up?” “Look, I’m just some broke low-ranking wrestler with zero ambition.” “And you’re a high-maintenance party girl.” “You could quit.” “Ain’t no choice.” “If quitting’s an option, it can’t matter much.” “Same goes for me.” “So I’ll forget.” “That how it works, huh...” “How tedious.”

“What’s so dull?” “This sort of thing...”

“Exactly.” “How dreary.” “I’m already tired of living.” “That’s not it at all. “I like being alive. “Doesn’t it seem interesting? “Because something unexpected might start up again. “I just hate this sort of thing.” “This sort of thing?”

“This kind of thing.” “So,” “Isn’t it stifling? Wouldn’t it be cleaner without? Isn’t it suffocating? Why does this exist? Must it exist? Is it something that can’t be left undone?” Ecchan didn’t answer, but slowly got up, opened the closed rain shutters, thrust his feet into garden geta, and went outside. Whether it was a moonless night or a moonlit one, I neither looked at nor thought about the outside, but Ecchan returned after some time and thrust his large hands onto my chest. Though he probably wasn’t using much force, I let out a gasp, my eyes rolling back as I went limp, and Ecchan thrust his hands onto my shoulders to pull me up,

“Hey, let’s die.” “Die with me.” “No.” “The hell I won’t—ain’t lettin’ you refuse.”

I was suddenly grabbed and hoisted up effortlessly. I was in a faint state and hoisted onto his shoulder without resistance, but when I bit into his neck, an inexplicable resolve welled up, “It’s fine. I’ll scream. I’ll shout ‘Murder!’ If that’s okay with you.”

While rattling open the rain shutters, he got one hand caught on the decorative rail, “Isn’t forcing your will cowardly?” “I hate dying.” “How can you coerce someone like this?” “If you want to die, why not do it alone?”

Ecchan eventually let out a groan like escaping steam, set me down beside the rain shutters, stepped into his garden geta, and walked out into the darkness. I didn't call after him. I'd been born unable to turn off lights even when sleeping. Even during the war, I couldn't sleep without keeping a small bulb lit—what I hated most about those days was the total darkness. When light vanished and I couldn't see anything, it revolted me. Waking at night to find the lamp extinguished would send me into panic, convinced I'd died. I suppose this meant I possessed an extraordinary fear of death itself.

About five minutes passed, and I gradually grew frightened. There was no sign of anything outside.

When I went to Miss Nobuko’s room, the two were still awake, but after explaining the situation, I had them let me sleep in Miss Nobuko’s futon. “So the sumo wrestler still hasn’t come back, huh?”

“Yes.” “Did he kill himself or something?” “Who knows?”

“Hmm, whatever.”

Mr. Tashiro began drinking his brought-along whiskey with Miss Nobuko, but I fell asleep first. I fell asleep immediately, as if numbed.

★

Summer came, and we lived at an inn on high ground along the coastal road. The rented annex was an independent building with five rooms including a bathhouse. Mr. Kusumi and Mr. Tashiro mostly commuted to Tokyo from here, while Miss Nobuko and I enjoyed swimming in the ocean during the day.

I woke up around seven-thirty every day. I ate, saw Kusumi off around nine o'clock, then lay down and read three or four pages of a magazine until I grew sleepy, dozed off, and woke around eleven or eleven-thirty. My appetite during the day was almost nonexistent. Sometimes I desperately wanted ice cream, cider, and cold coffee. There were times when I saw those things in dreams during naps. After lunch I went to the sea, returned around four, took a bath, did some laundry, then lay down and started reading magazines—only to doze off again. Kusumi returned, and I usually woke from his presence. Evening had come. The sea stood at twilight, nearing nightfall. I watched the sea for a while. When Kusumi turned on the light, I said, “Not yet, leave the light off a bit more.” After a while, I said, “You can turn it on now.” I washed my face, dried my body, fixed my makeup, changed into a kimono, and headed to the dining table. The bright light and the table full of delicacies set my mind at ease and gave me a calm as if I had returned to my hometown. I picked up the ladle and handed it to Kusumi, then to Mr. Tashiro. I found more pleasure in people eating than in my own eating, and in people’s lively conversations than in my own talking.

Lately I’ve come to dislike myself for sometimes talking needlessly. When given things, I find myself saying phrases like “Thank you very much.” I used to just smile. When receiving seasonal rarities, I might naturally comment “How unusual for this time of year”—that alone didn’t bother me much—but when presented with unwanted gifts, though I say “Thanks” and smile, my voice turns thoroughly cold. My mother would rejoice extravagantly over presents she liked, yet adopt an aloof attitude toward indifferent offerings. As a child I saw this as vulgar and crass, cursing her lack of cultivation. Back when I only ever smiled sweetly it was fine, but now that I’ve started naturally uttering superfluous thank-yous—saying “Thank you very much” here and “Thanks” there with organic variations in phrasing and tone—when those nuances fail me and I produce a voice so frigid it would be preferable to sound completely unfeeling, I suddenly remember my mother’s greed—that repulsive quality of hers—and shudder.

I preferred having someone I liked select things matching my aesthetic rather than choosing purchases myself. When shopping together, I hated being consulted at every turn—"Should we pick this? How about that?"—and found it far more pleasing when they decided independently and imposed their choices on me. Kimono, accessories, and personal effects formed my world; selecting them myself meant remaining trapped within my existing boundaries, but others' curations brought discoveries and creations. Through these unexpected selections, I would uncover fresh dimensions of my taste that delighted me like the birth of a new self-contained universe.

Kusumi knew that aspect of my temperament. His selections when shopping were excellent, and his consultant for those choices was Mr. Tashiro. Even when it came to my Western clothes, I preferred having Kusumi select the patterns and styles rather than choosing them myself. Because my measurements were on file at the tailor shop, unexpected garments arrived, and I found myself enchanted. Even in front of Mr. Tashiro and Miss Nobuko, I naturally let out a cheer and leapt at Kusumi.

I had to change clothes—the morning attire for seeing Kusumi off after waking, the daytime clothes, the evening clothes—even without going out, or else I couldn't feel alive. Even when dozing through an afternoon nap, I couldn't feel at ease unless wearing my favorite clothes. When beautiful shoes were bought for me, I became so desperate to walk in them that even on rainy days I couldn't resist going out for a stroll. All the more so with clothing—needless to say—but even when receiving a hat or single handbag, each time without fail I would walk around town for no particular reason. For me, the most delightful outing was those strolls—more than going to see movies or plays. When I donned a satisfying outfit, I could feel a sense of purpose like nothing else.

I was most troubled about how to express gratitude to Kusumi, who gave me that sense of purpose. My affairs were essentially of the same nature as my delight in clothing—while I never felt guilt about the acts themselves, my anxiety stemmed from the others' persistence, unlike with hats or dresses. At this beach resort, though university students, shady types, black-market gentlemen and others invited me for tea or walks or dancing, I always refused. At those moments I thought it would be wrong toward Kusumi. I considered that abstaining from affairs constituted one form of gratitude toward him. This notion somehow reeked of domesticity, which I detested. Whenever Mother spoke of duty and human kindness, I felt revolted and rebellious, cursing her ignorance—yet I found myself equally repulsed by how naturally I too had become domesticated, moving like a puppet driven by obligation through daily life. What pained me most was catching glimpses of Mother in myself at times.

I knew infidelity was an utterly tedious thing. Yet I also thought boredom itself held considerable charm—that life amounted to little more than this. Though Kusumi was thin, his shoulders stretched wide with solid bones beneath, each rib forming distinct terraces; his pelvic bones protruded while buttocks shrank to fist-sized lumps of flesh; only kneecaps jutted out as thigh muscles tapered like whittled wood, shins becoming rough sticks devoid of swelling—yet gazing vacantly at this six-foot skeleton from crown to heel and back again, I could spend whole days without tiring. Sometimes forgetting these were human ribs with anatomical purpose, I'd playfully poke and stroke the bones and hollows with my fingertips like handling musical instruments. Sprawling with a hand mirror, I could pass days studying my teeth's edges, tongue's texture, throat's hollow, shoulders' slopes and breasts' contours. Boredom appeared to me as nostalgic scenery. Hakone's mountains, Lake Ashi, Otome Pass—were such landscapes truly beautiful? If scenery held beauty, then to me that beauty was simply boredom made visible. Within my heart lay a lake reflecting scenery—Lake Boredom—a Mountain Boredom—a Forest Boredom—so when standing at Otome Pass or viewing Lake Ashi, I realized I was merely projecting my heart's tedium onto provisional landscapes.

“My dear old man, Santa Claus.”

I said this while caressing and fiddling with Kusumi’s white hair. But then,

“My dear child, my dear ice cream, my dear little white shoes.”

Kusumi fell into a deep sleep, exhausted. Yet five or six hours later he would wake, rise to gaze vacantly at my sleeping face, and when night began paling into dawn, open the rain shutters to look out at the sea. I wondered how I could sleep so soundly. It felt as though I could sleep infinitely—anytime, as much as I wished. I awoke abruptly. Kusumi had woken and was staring vaguely at me. Unconsciously I extended my arms and smiled. He looked exasperated yet with faintly glistening eyes before giving a single quiet nod.

"What are you thinking about?" Instead of answering, he would wipe the sweat from my forehead and the edges of my eyelids, sometimes tuck the futon around my collar, or simply gaze at me in silence. When I was met by Miss Nobuko and Mr. Tashiro, parted with Ecchan, and returned from the hot spring, I developed a fever on the train and was bedridden for several days after returning to Tokyo.

Miss Tomiko, who came to visit me, bluntly stated at my bedside: "Your body must be magical—able to conveniently develop fevers up to about thirty-nine degrees whenever you're struggling with excuses. A born enchantress, aren't you?" But my feelings of struggling with excuses were exceedingly scarce—more than anything, I detested being ill far more than making excuses anyway. Who would deliberately regulate themselves to emit a thirty-nine-degree fever? Yet whenever I briefly awoke from fevered sleep, Kusumi would always be at my bedside—replacing my ice pack or wiping my sweat. I felt profound relief—not relief from escaping excuses, but relief from discovering a power that fought the demon of loneliness in my heart’s depths and protected me. When I wordlessly stretched out both arms, he would nod deeply and ask, "Are you in pain?" His eyes held no particular spark or shadow of emotion standing out, so why did they seep so deeply into my heart as if melting into it? When I grasped his hand and said, "I'm sorry," though his eyes still showed no particular shadow of emotion, I could become intoxicated by a great relief—a vast calm akin to the very awareness of being alive itself.

Despite that, he came to this coastal inn and, as if suddenly struck by the idea—

“If you still love Sumidagawa and can’t forget him, I’ll arrange your marriage to him. I’ll even provide a substantial dowry.” “Why would you suggest such a thing?”

“Don’t you like him?” "I don't like him. I hate him now." “I don’t understand you saying you hate him now.” "It's true. Please don't torment me anymore. I don't find affairs enjoyable at all."

“But you see—an old man like myself.” “If it were me saying such things, I could manage it.” “But when a young woman like you speaks this way, I shouldn’t believe it.” “I care for you too genuinely not to wish for your happiness.” “I can’t bear seeing you bound to someone like me.” “What you’re saying makes even less sense to me.” “To claim you love me yet tell me to marry another—that’s a lie, isn’t it?” “The truth is you’ve grown tired of me, haven’t you?”

“That’s not it.” “There was a time you fell ill.” “You didn’t notice, but when asleep you’d sweat profusely—gradually faint shadows formed around your eyes that grew distinct during sleep yet vanished upon waking.” “The edges of your eyes had swollen slightly too.” “As I watched your sleeping face then, I’d already convinced myself it was consumption—became lost imagining you wasting away to skeletal thinness until your last breath—to the point I wished to die first rather than witness such a scene.” “I myself no longer particularly fear my own death.” “Since it’s drawn so near already, I’ve even come to regard death as akin to taking a stroll—an intimate companion by now.” “But you’re different.” “When one reaches my age, an age-based philosophy emerges that cleaves humanity into two distinct worlds—the realm of youth and the realm of elders.” “When young myself, I already lacked youthful qualities—solitary habits, occasional misanthropy—living a thoroughly withered existence. Though I sense youth’s world too is generally bleak at heart, through some age-specific instinct I find myself endlessly yearning for youth.” “Cherishing it.” “Youth must be happiness.” “The young mustn’t die.” “Yet I who already harbor such instincts toward youth—what prayers could I possibly hold for my most beloved young woman? Isn’t it utterly unnatural to contemplate severing my own happiness for hers...”

It was as though Kusumi had abandoned his wife, daughter, and son for my sake. For he now lodged at our coastal inn instead of his home, commuting to Tokyo from there. What would people say about us like that? Would they claim I'd deceived Kusumi? They'd likely envision the shameful obsessive madness of an old man blinded by love. Yet I thought nothing of such matters. To children, aren't parents ultimately insignificant? Even if parents fall in love, I considered that an unavoidable trifle. Kusumi hadn't concerned himself with such things either. I knew. In becoming blind to love, he grew blind to loneliness. Therefore he couldn't truly be blinded by love at all. He'd aged until even the screws in his tear ducts loosened, often spilling tears. They fell even when he laughed. Yet when emotion stirred his tears, he shed them not for me, but for humanity's destiny. A man with such a lonely soul viewed life through abstract concepts; even the reality surrounding him could only be grasped conceptually. Though loving me, it wasn't me he loved—rather some ideal of a beloved woman constructed in his mind, through which he perceived my actual existence.

I therefore knew. His soul was lonely; therefore his soul was cruel. Were he to find a lover more charming than I, he would coldly forget me. Yet such a soul - one that coldly abandons others only to find itself abandoned - suffered hell's punishment; but because he hated not hell but loved it, he became that demon who could deem it acceptable to marry me off for my happiness and depart alone, as if humans were ever thus.

However, there must have been another reason as well. Even a man as lonely and coldly detached from both himself and others as he was felt anxious at the prospect of me escaping. And fearing that I might someday flee of my own volition, he concluded it would be more satisfying to release me by his own will instead. The demon was selfish, utterly self-centered, an outrageously spoiled child. And the reason he could do such things was also because he didn’t truly love me—or reality—but rather, within his conceptual life, I was merely one well-behaved toy among others.

Mr. Tashiro had come to this inn and lived separated from Miss Nobuko by a sliding door, yet still hadn’t achieved his objective. He maintained a habit of staying at his own home around the third day, then would ostentatiously boast the next morning that he’d “shown my wife some affection yesterday”—but cracks were forming in his man-about-town philosophy and infidelity doctrines. Though carrying himself as a grand master versed in human relations—the ways of men and women, money, desire—his experience lay solely with geishas and paid women. Unacquainted with proper maidens, he remained oblivious that women who’d willingly offer themselves were rarities save for kept-woman types like me, inherently predisposed to such arrangements. Women harbor an instinct to resist even those they adore—protesting “I don’t want this” regarding intimacy, whether sincere or not; craving surrender yet feigning aversion when pressed. I too possessed this instinct but consciously suppressed it, deeming such impulses trivial. Women want their lovers to assault them. Men enjoy the privilege of claiming both body and gratitude through initial force—but Mr. Tashiro, acquainted only with transactional women and fancying himself a demimonde connoisseur, considered violent rape of resisting lovers an unthinkable depravity despite his philandering nature. Thus he courted Miss Nobuko with decade-spanning persistence, their romance doomed to stalemate without resorting to assault. Too absurd to enlighten him. Though often seeming ready to burst into laughter, Mr. Tashiro would solemnly inquire: “Nobu-chan, don’t you ever feel physical desires? You’re twenty already—isn’t that ridiculous?”

And yet he inwardly revered Miss Nobuko in her sullen silence as though she were a holy virgin, privately satisfied and even prideful at having secured her spiritual esteem. However, Miss Nobuko in fact had little in the way of physical desires and thus appeared to be suffering over something else—namely, working diligently while cutting back on her own living expenses to take losses for others’ sake—and Mr. Tashiro, who called this "money-money-money" and likened it to being a slave to currency, would say, "It’s fine, Nobu-chan. That’s just fine." But was it truly acceptable? Could squandering income earned through such stringent living to help others even be called a virtuous act? I found myself doubting.

Nobuko remained unperturbed by losses since Tashiro and the rest of us were supporting her, but she agonized over whether she could manage this way if she became independent; being a hands-on, pragmatic realist, her anguish was genuine.

“For a woman to do business herself—Miss Sachiko, isn’t that wrong?” “If I keep doing business like this, I’ll lose the ability to be kind to people and turn into a demon of money.” “Otherwise, I can’t keep going on like this.” “I suppose.”

I could only give vague responses. Nobuko's torment was genuine—indeed, she teetered on becoming the very money demon her anguish foretold—but what struck me as absurdly comical wasn't Nobuko herself, but rather Tashiro skulking in her shadow: that pragmatic realist who'd demand payment even after tripping over his own feet, yet whose bottomless naivete defied all reason. When Tashiro said life brimmed with uncontrollable matters, I agreed in principle—but whether he truly felt it as claimed? Here was a man declaring all humanity to be vermin of infidelity, coins and self-interest, while privately enshrining Miss Nobuko as some holy virgin, a freakish weathervane spinning counter to avarice. The sheer incoherence of this sentimental fool left me gaping at the void.

I consider that I will die a vagrant’s death. I consider it an inescapable fate. I consider the scene of evacuation shelters at national schools after the air raids; if dying a vagrant's death amidst such filthy chaos of red and blue demons jumbled together counts as having a death place, then I wouldn't mind perishing that way there someday. When I’m wrapped in a straw mat nearing death, blue demons and red demons might come creeping at night and I’ll die ravaged by demons. But if I were to wither away in some utterly deserted place—a wasteland, charred ruins cloaked in darkness, midnight hours when not a single soul remains—how exactly should I proceed? I could never endure such desolate loneliness. I want to be with blue demons and red demons—no matter when, be it demons, monsters, or even any man at all, I will fawn over them with all my might, and I want to die while fawning.

Amidst all this selfishness—while people couldn't eat rice or gruel, subsisting on beans and coarse grains—I had grown sick of chicken, cheese, and castella cakes, had twenty- or thirty-thousand-yen nightwear made for me, yet when lethargic, the thoughts that would suddenly surface were solely of death—vagrant's death—truly, it seemed I could think of nothing else.

I dislike the sound of insects and the shakuhachi. When I hear those sounds, I can’t sleep at all, but if it’s under the raucous clamor of a Trot jazz band, I’m the type who can drift off feeling perfectly at ease.

“If I fall asleep yet—No—”

“Why?”

"It's just that I still cannot sleep, you see." Kusumi endured and sat up. Having no more endurance left—since lying down would make him sleep—he sat up to stay awake and look at my face, but soon began nodding off. I extended my arm and shook his knee. He startled awake. And he discovered me smiling up at him from below. I knew that my smiling face he discovered in those moments filled his heart more than the distress of having his dozing disturbed.

“Still can’t sleep?” I nodded. “I wonder how long I dozed off.” “About twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes, huh? I thought it was two minutes, huh.” “What’ve you been thinking about?” “I wasn’t thinking about anything.” “You were thinking about something.” “I was just watching.” “What?” “You.” He began nodding off again and again. I simply watched. Whenever he awoke, he would likely see nothing but my smiling face. Because I was simply staring at him while smiling softly.

Go on then—go anywhere you please. I don't know. To hell, even. Even if my man becomes a red demon or blue demon, I'll still just keep gazing at his face with that coquettish smile. I was gradually ceasing to think, my mind emptying out—simply gazing, smiling coquettishly as I gazed—until even that awareness began slipping away.

“When autumn comes, let’s travel.” “Yes.” “Where shall we go?”

“Anywhere.”

“That’s a rather vague answer.” “I don’t know. Take me somewhere surprising.” He nodded. And he began nodding off again and again.

I was washing the blue demon's tiger-skin loincloth in the mountain stream. I forgot to dry the loincloth and ended up falling asleep by the stream's edge. The blue demon shook me. I woke up and smiled. Cuckoos and lesser cuckoos and mountain doves were calling. I preferred the blue demon's out-of-tune booming voice over those things. I would smile and offer him my arm. How boring everything is. Yet why does this feel so nostalgic?