Pathway to Japanese Literature

Bokusui's Wedding

Asamaki Nobusuke had the nickname "Martian," but though this ostensibly referred to his large head and small mouth, it wasn’t because his face resembled one—it was rather a matter of essence.
When his close friend died, he stood before the weeping wife and declared, "His death should be mourned, yet it is an auspicious matter.
Or perhaps not?
However, anyway——"
He would trail off like this—which was ultimately because he was always pondering various matters, and had long contemplated even something like death in manifold ways—that he couldn’t resort to a simple expression like “death is sad.”
Unfortunately, he was born remarkably inept at expression; unable to fully articulate his inner thoughts, whenever something happened he would end up blurting out strange things—and consequently be scolded, laughed at, or scorned.
Hence he was called "Martian"—though this nickname stemmed from a charitable interpretation—meaning that only among his friends was the richness of his inner life acknowledged.
Moreover, his wife was an ardent Nobusuke fan who believed that had he been blessed with expressive talent, he would have become the world's greatest literary master; hence when the poet Akutagawa Nakasuke—naturally sharp-tongued and shameless—declared, "What's this? Nobusuke's head contains the same brains as an octopus,
“Because that Octopus goes around reading damn human books, he puckers up his mouth and spouts nothing but outrageous nonsense,” which led to a tremendous quarrel.

“What’s this, third-rate poet?”

“Heh-hey! Then have at thee!”

Nakasuke had a disposition to quarrel earnestly whether his opponent was a woman or child, but when he uttered strange incantations like “Then have at thee!” or “So be it then!”, this signaled his heightened combativeness.

“Heh-hey! Ladies and gentlemen! On this auspicious occasion of unveiling the strange creatures I’ve long been researching and collecting, today I shall first present—the enraged wife of the Octopus!—”

A sudden sound rang out.
Nakasuke had taken off his jacket and carefully hung it on the wall, then begun pacing about the room mid-speech when he found himself flat on his back in the center of the floor.
Mrs. Nobusuke brandished a wooden rolling pin and swung it down without knowing where—and without knowing where, it found its mark.
As for the actual circumstances of this scuffle, there were no other witnesses, so nothing more could be known.

Mrs. Nobusuke rushed off to her husband’s shop.
He had opened a bookstore in front of the station.
Unfortunately, Nobusuke had gone out on a customer round to promote new books, and a ladder was propped up in front of the store, upon which the painter was writing the signboard.
This painter was an amateur archaeologist who went by the name Seimindo Master and was Nobusuke’s close friend.

“Ah, is that so? It’s better if that guy stays knocked out for a while.”

The archaeologist replied from the ladder.

“By the way, you’ve come at just the right time,” said the archaeologist from his ladder. “Actually, I was about to send someone to your place. There’s going to be a wedding at painter Bokusui’s—unfortunately his mother took ill, so they need extra hands in the kitchen. Since you’re the only one without children, I want you to head over right away.”

“Oh my,” she replied, “whose wedding is it?”

“Mr. Bokusui’s.”

“But doesn’t Mr. Bokusui already have a wife?”

“Ah, his wife’s wedding.”

“My, how strange.
If she already has a daughter of marriageable age?”

“Well, you see...”
“Bokusui had apparently forgotten about holding the wedding until now.”
“He decided on it four or five years ago.”

“He’d forgotten for quite a long time, hasn’t he?”
“Of all times to hold it—during these recent material shortages!”

“It’s because of material shortages that he decided to hold the wedding.”
“If it weren’t for times like these, weddings wouldn’t be worth three pennies.”
“Anyway—I’ll have my child do the house-sitting, so please head out promptly.”
“The food needn’t be horse feed—whatever’s available will do.”

Feeling unburdened by this rather unusual tale and deciding it would be more convenient than returning home, she proceeded directly to Bokusui’s house.

The wedding invitations had been circulated the day before, but Nobusuke alone remained unaware.
However, since it was just a train ride to the neighboring station, they had determined there should be no inconvenience in making Nobusuke’s shop in front of the station the gathering place—but this very assumption proved to be their undoing.
When evening came, about ten people had gathered from various places, with even Seimindo returning home to bathe, wash off the ink stains, don formal attire with family crests, and make an appearance—yet two were missing.
Nobusuke and Akutagawa Nakasuke.
It had been decided that Akutagawa Nakasuke—given his poor drinking habits—should remain knocked out for the time being, but when the train hour arrived, not only did Nobusuke fail to return, even the errand boy who was supposed to leave a message failed to appear.
This errand boy had recently been frequenting the café in Shinkaichi’s new district, and whenever his master went out, he would leave as well.
The store became devoid of people and books were frequently stolen, but since the errand boy himself would take out a few volumes each time he went out and donate them, the ladies and layabouts of Shinkaichi had recently been reading André Gide and Valéry and such.
Either his screws were loose, or no amount of scolding did any good.

“Go on ahead without me. I’ll stay behind at this shop and bring Nobusuke along later.”

The one who had said this was Hosaka Sanpei, a literary man and private university professor. However, there was a condition to this—what Sanpei had recently set his sights on was the three shō of alcohol hanging at Seimindo. By nature, Sanpei’s nerves were particularly fragile; even when drinking alcohol, his spirits wouldn’t rise unless quite specific conditions were met. In other words, when drinking with hard drinkers like Seimindo and Nakasuke, he’d get outdone from the start—the more he drank, the more depressed he became, and he simply couldn’t get drunk. The only time he could drink comfortably and get pleasantly drunk was when putting on airs before his wife and college students; but when those students turned out to be somewhat intellectually astute and adopted a critical listening posture, not only could he not get drunk—he’d even end up retching. Especially at a gathering like tonight’s, where over a dozen of Odawara’s foremost hard drinkers had assembled, he simply couldn’t get drunk. He had come to drink a cup before heading out, but since that still wasn’t enough, he seized some portion of the three shō hanging at Seimindo; remaining at Nobusuke’s shop and drinking with either Nobusuke or the errand boy as company ought to get him properly drunk. Riding on that momentum, he was hiding his scheme to crash the wedding feast. Since Nobusuke was a Martian—a man with a clumsy tongue—Sanpei could properly get worked up and drunk with this person as his drinking companion.

“How about this—instead of me going late, why don’t you leave one bottle of that sake here?”

“What kind of underhanded trick do you think that is?”
“In that case, I’ll leave just three gō here.”

“Since Bokusui’s place already has alcohol prepared, wouldn’t it be fine to leave one shō here?”

“Bokusui’s stingy—there’s no way he’s prepared much.”
“That’s exactly why I came and made up the shortage like this, isn’t it?”
“The true essence of alcohol lies in everyone gathering to drink it together.”

Seimindo insisted on this alcoholic truth, but Sanpei remained impervious.
He stood at desperation's edge,
"Then combine it with Nobusuke's share—make it six gō total."
"Oi oi."
"It's already time."

“Isn’t there some container to divide the alcohol?”

“Since Sanpei’s neurasthenia won’t let him live long anyway, just leave one shō for him.”
“After all, we’ll end up drinking this at your wake anyway.”

“If there’s no container, there should at least be a bucket around.”
“They must at least do some cleaning, after all.”

“Hmm.”
“As for the bucket—”

Sanpei turned pale and clung to Seimindo’s arm, but Seimindo was not a man to be swayed by personal appeals—not even at the bedside of a patient teetering on the brink of death.
He found a cup, poured the alcohol in steady gulps, first drank a cup himself, then had five or six people drink from it—reducing one shō to about five gō—before handing it to Sanpei.

“Don’t let Nobusuke give any speeches when you arrive late.”
“That bastard never fails to spew his damn grievances at weddings.”
“Bokusui’s the one being carried, remember?”
“Right—I’m off ahead.”

The group had left, and within less than ten minutes, a train—whether inbound or outbound—arrived, sending people streaming through the station-front street in ragged procession. Under blackout regulations, not a sliver of light leaked from the shuttered shops; only the chaotic clatter of footsteps reverberated through the dusky paved street. Then a man slipped into the dim shopfront.

"Oh! You're here."
"Octopus Doctor."
"No—Nobusuke has gone out."

“What’s this? Sanpei! This is convenient. I was going to invite Nobusuke anyway and visit you. I’d been staying at the Yagyū dojo in Yamato until this morning, but since I left my temple unattended for so long, I thought it was high time to return to Kōshū. Since my sutra chanting has improved, I’ll recite them for you.”

“No, that’s quite enough. Keep them stored away until I die!”

The one who appeared was Tominaga Kyūsui, a monk who had fallen from the Communist Party.

Clad in a black priest’s robe with a bundle slung over his shoulder and leaning on a cane, he produced a square whiskey bottle from his luggage.

“Oh! There’s some here too!”
“Hmm, so it’s Bokusui’s wedding?”
“Perfect timing.”
“I’ll go recite sutras for you.”
“The darkness mars perfection, but let’s celebrate returning health after so long.”
“Odawara means kamaboko—are they selling any this season?”

With that, he disappeared to buy provisions.
Deeming this divine providence’s perfect opportunity, Sanpei tried to flee.
For if that lapsed Communist monk appeared now, his careful plans would collapse—better to go straight to the wedding.
But before resolve could form, Kyūsui returned swinging kamaboko.
They wouldn’t sell at the front, so he’d gone through the back door chanting sutras to make his purchase.

However, strangely enough, Sanpei had gotten drunk that day.
Perhaps the alcohol he'd drunk before leaving had taken effect, or perhaps the darkness that hid even Kyūsui's face and form had failed to embolden his nerves.
Sanpei was physically and mentally fragile—his puny, emaciated body would stagger from a single shove by any woman or child, and his mind perpetually floundered through labyrinths, having lost sight of any conclusion.
There was talk that it was strange he was still alive even at forty, but even in his puny body, there existed hopes as fierce as he was.
That was an analysis concerning an inextricable enigma derived from the concept of "dream and reality."

Indeed, behold this: even when considering the monk called Kyūsui sitting across in the darkness—though he be a corrupt monk reduced to dwelling in a mountain temple—who had carried the Communist Party's red banner and cloistered himself away, within him existed his own collision of dreams and reality, likely stumbling through that tangle of inextricable threads.

One of Kyūsui's lowly stature hardly merited consideration as a problem. When examining Communists and monks themselves, they all believe they can realize their respective dreams within this reality—the former seeking a communist society, the latter enlightenment and ecstatic trance.

Now then, what of literature? Zhuangzi dreamed he became a butterfly, declaring that whether the self in this dream-within-a-dream or the human in the waking world constitutes the true self cannot be unilaterally determined; Descartes too was gripped by the same quandary.

But setting aside such naive dream-dialogues—does there truly exist, as a literary question, any dream believed realizable in this world like those of Communists or monks? Such dreams might equate to happiness, but literature as a discipline generally denies this happiness' reality, striving instead to make phantom blossoms of nothingness bloom upon labyrinths and chaos, atop sorrows and misfortunes and vice.

Then are these phantom blossoms the dreams literature should realize in our world? To be sure, literature's aspect as sorrow's immutable plaything manifests absolutely—yet this isn't its entirety. Here Sanpei's contemplations always ruptured; henceforth matters would proceed thus: he'd drink alcohol, reach exultant drunkenness, then commence some new endeavor.

Thus his literature persisted pitifully—barely maintaining vitality through alcoholic rebirth—and one might imagine how desperately he craved that euphoric intoxication. That Sanpei, drunk on voices alone in the darkness, had already been born into a dreamworld infinitely removed from here—of this truth Kyūsui remained oblivious.

At that moment, the errand boy returned.

“Hey, errand boy. Are you lovestruck? How precious. Sit down here. Spill your heartache. You fancy that girl’s peepers? There was this brat who wasted away pining just for flaxen locks, y’know. That girl’s bound to pull some nasty trick before even saying ‘hi’ when she spots you. Females hatch from the egg scheming. But that’s just what gets your lot going. Menfolk walk around scabbed head to toe. Wanna be her slipper? Let her trample you? Your daughter—what’s her age, eh?”

“I don’t know any damn daughter.”

The errand boy answered irritably.
Not only did he hold great contempt for Sanpei—who looked like he might blow away in a stiff breeze—but he also harbored a sense of physical superiority, completely looking down on him.

“Hmph, this isn’t a liquor store.
I’m closing up, so get out.”

“Hey! You!”
“You insolent wretch!”

Kyūsui stood up, grabbed the errand boy by the collar, and punched him two or three times.
When an unforeseen assailant emerged from the darkness, the errand boy trembled violently—but the true object of his terror remained the degenerate ex-Communist monk who materialized unpredictably from nowhere.
This was because he—to demonstrate the torture methods he’d endured during his Communist Party days—would bind the errand boy’s hands behind his back, hang him from a pillar, and while offering lengthy explanations, hoist the rope higher when the boy pleaded “Help me!”, then after swinging him back and forth, drop him onto the tatami with a thud before dousing his head with water.
“The greasy sweat drip-drip-dripping down beneath these suspended feet.”
“What you call greasy sweat differs from regular sweat in being viscous—it doesn’t break apart and flow away but piles up into a mound about an inch tall.”
Kyūsui’s explanation lingered in the errand boy’s head like the voice of a demon’s curse.

"Please help... Mr. Kyūsui!"

“What do you mean by ‘Help me’? To say ‘Help me’ is what one says when you’ve done nothing wrong yet someone thrusts a sword before your nose. To begin with—you insolent brat—addressing this humble monk as ‘Mr. Kyūsui’? And sneaking off to cafés with stolen goods every time your master’s away? Utterly unpardonable! I shall conduct an investigation on heaven’s behalf. How old is this girl you’ve fallen for?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“You have a thirty-eight-year-old daughter?”

“No—it’s not a lie. Ah! Ah! It hurts! Please forgive me. I’ll die. I’ll die.”

“What is the name of that store?”

“It’s an oden shop called Oboro.”

“Hmm.”
“An oden shop, huh?”
“What an utterly bizarre fellow.”
“How many bottles do you guzzle down every day?”

“I don’t drink alcohol or anything like that.”
“I just eat roasted sweet potatoes.”

“Hmm. Do they sell roasted sweet potatoes at the oden shop?”

“No. The lady eats them every day.”

“At what price do you sell them?”

“It’s free. They say if you bring books, you can eat as many as you like.”

“Have you been eating roasted sweet potatoes until it gets this dark?”

“No. They told me to house-sit because they were going to the bathhouse, and also I’ve been feeling melancholy lately, so I don’t want to go back to the shop.”

“Of course.
“When one pilfers books from the store and gets force-fed roasted sweet potatoes, anyone would become melancholy.”
“Ah ha ha!”
“This is amusing!”
“Very well.”
“Lead me to that shop.”
“Let us present books and drink alcohol.”
“You carry the books there.”
“What sort of books does the lady prefer?”

“That’s pure literature.”

“What? Pure literature?”

“Yes. She doesn’t read lowbrow novels. She’s highly cultured. Since I pick out Gide and Valéry for you, she says you have good taste.”

“I see—you’ve got discerning taste. You’re too good to be just a bookstore errand boy. Ah ha ha! This is music to my ears! Hey, Sanpei! Let’s ditch this wedding and head to the literary oden shop! There exist truly preposterous corners in this world. Hey, brat. You pick out high-quality books and wrap them up.”

“I detest such sordid talk,” protested Sanpei.

“It’s not the least bit sordid, is it? It’s precisely because of such thinking that your novels remain counterfeits as garish as bathhouse murals, no matter how much time passes. Go do the ascetic training of life.”

“I detest life’s ascetic training.”
“If existence means pairing roasted sweet potatoes with Valéry, I’d hang myself and flee to another nation!”
“First answer me this—you, Tominaga Kyūsui—what manner of being do you suppose Hosaka Sanpei to be?”
“I am a doctor born from chaos as mother, with ten motes of dust dancing midair as my spirit attendants—this I declare!”
“When books I read, moderation in all things I forsake, draping myself in lifelong raiment of empty boasts; when swords I grasp, a knight for maidens I become—yet ever defeated, never once has my love been requited.”
“Thus would I ever boom with hollow laughter, becoming walls or hiding as hen’s eggs when pressed—for though wasted to bone and sinew, vulgar conjurations like brewing pimples on errand boys through cocktails of sweet potato and Valéry I utterly abhorred!”

"Hark, underlings—follow me! A storm approaches, I declare! I shall become a tempest and battle alongside the cosmos!"

Boy!

“Ring the bell!”
“Blow the conch!”
“Fight, fight!”

From this point onward, how events unfolded—this was something no one could tell anymore.

The story shifted as Nobusuke entered the surgical examination room of a certain hospital, a bundle of newly published books strapped to his back.
Surgeon Nagumo Minoru—an avid bibliophile—would casually purchase around ten copies of expensive new releases without a second thought.

“You’ve come at just the right time,” said Nagumo Minoru.
“There are no surgeries tonight—I’ll be finished shortly, so wait here.”
“Shall we have dinner?”
“To spare you from idle waiting, I’ll treat you to a homemade specialty.”
“You there!”
“Bring out the usual items.”
“Never mind the patients—prepare Sanmondō’s special concoction.”

A nurse appeared carrying a tray with two bottles and a water jug.
One bottle contained medicinal alcohol; the other held ersatz sugar water brewed from some cold remedy or another.
At this unforeseen alcohol deployment—as the nurse began mixing it into a graduated glass with pharmaceutical precision—Nobusuke felt an odd sensation rising within him before he’d even taken a sip.
Surveying the metal instruments, iron beds, scalpels and trays of forceps around him, his thoughts swelled beyond containment yet found no outlet in speech.
He drank the alcohol with a face clenched in concentration.
Then came clamorous noise—stampeding footsteps, doors slamming, shrill voices surging in chaotic crescendo.

“This is internal medicine.”
“No, no!”
“That’s gynecology over there!”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“You’re drunk!”
“Taking off your coat in a place like this! Good grief—and you’re still wearing shoes!”
“Where does it hurt?”
“We don’t even have a psychiatry department here!”

As a nurse shouted these things, the surgical room door burst open, and Akutagawa Nakasuke—his face deathly pale—clutched the doorframe and came staggering through. The first words he uttered were a single cry: “I’ve been had!”

Nagumo Minoru had long cherished Akutagawa Nakasuke’s poetry and recognized him as a demonic genius; thus in town they treated this titled rogue with considerable respect. Yet whenever people acknowledged his talent, Nakasuke would simply take it as his due and grow arrogant—so Minoru too nursed resentment on one side.

“Ah, so you’ve been in a quarrel, I see.”

"I was assassinated by Jacobin Party henchmen."
"Those bastards are professional killers—they've even hidden poison needles in their breast pockets!"

Nakasuke clung to the iron bed and released a sigh that seemed to emanate from his entire being.

“My life is in danger until tomorrow morning! Give me an injection!”

“Where were you hit?”

“Search my entire body!”
“Check inside my blood vessels too.”

“Where were you? Who did it? How were you attacked?”
“But looking at you—you’re not even drunk, are you?”

“Hah!”

Nakasuke noticed Nobusuke gripping a marked cup behind the iron bed at that moment and let out a mournful cry.
His pale face had turned as flat as sheet paper from despair and shock.

“Alas! I am vanquished!”
“Did you get here ahead of me?”
“O wise Jacobin Party, though my enemy!”
“A formidable foe beyond appearances!”
“Alas! I have been made to prostrate myself!”
“I had underestimated the enemy’s scheming!”

“Hmm.”
“Did you have a quarrel with Nobusuke-kun?”

“Alas! I have indeed been poisoned by his wife, the Female Jacobin!”

“Hmm. Was the poison forced down your throat, or was it injected?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“When I came to, I was lying collapsed in the middle of the room. My whole body’s numb from poison, and my head’s burning like fire. My life won’t last beyond tonight.”

“Let’s take a look.”

So Minoru made Nakasuke strip naked and examined his entire body—made him stick out his tongue, peered under his eyelids, and finally checked his head. When Nakasuke let out a shriek and leapt up, it all became clear.

“It seems the Female Jacobin Party member struck you from behind with a stick.”
“Otherwise, in some kind of stumble, you must have fallen over and hit the back of your head.”
“There are considerable contusions.”
“But since a wound formed and blood flowed, it’s nothing serious.”
“Among terrorism victims, this would be called a graze.”

Minoru cut Nakasuke’s hair and deliberately applied medicine that hurt terribly.
Nakasuke clenched his teeth, let out a gloomy moan of anguish as he clung to the iron chair, tears streaming down his face—then, still crying, pointed at Nobusuke’s cup and asked:

“What are you drinking?”

“It’s apparently a cocktail of medicinal alcohol and herbal tonic.”

“Let me have some too!”

“A patient whose life is in danger until tomorrow morning could not possibly drink alcohol.”

Minoru tried to stop him, but once Nakasuke started speaking, he wouldn’t listen. Deeming that such a man must be treated like a wild beast physiologically, Minoru too began pretending not to watch—whereupon Nakasuke drained his drink, thrust out his cup with a “Here! Another round!” mistaking the nurse for a café waitress. The nurse angrily refused to turn around. However, Nakasuke showed not the slightest hesitation; bringing each bottle to his nose one by one to sniff them, he poured with a knowing look, aligning with the measurement lines.

“Eh-heh-heh! How many times have you been beaten by the Jacobin Party?”

“I haven’t been beaten yet.”

“Ah, that’s right. Tonight is Bokusui’s wedding. By now, isn’t it about time everyone’s gathered at your shopfront to head out? We’ll be late if we don’t get going!”

“I’m not listening to such nonsense. You’ve probably gone senile from that concussion.”

“Ah, so that’s how matters stand.”
“But wait.”
“Seimindo definitely circulated the notice around and had his daughter deliver it.”

“So that’s what a hallucination is.”
“In the first place, how could something like Bokusui’s wedding even exist?”

With a grunt, Nakasuke widened his eyes and sank into thought, but then pulled himself together and began drinking heartily.
However, as his intoxication deepened, his consciousness began to return somewhat to its normal state.
“I have awakened!”
And he shouted, suddenly standing up.

“Bokusui’s wedding is not a hallucination."
“First, let us visit Seimindo.”
“If we do that, everything will become clear.”
“But if this is a hallucination, it’d be a shame to waste this alcohol. I’ll stuff the cork back into this bottle and take it home in my pocket.”
“Since this cup also has measurement markings and is a handy device, I’ll wrap this in paper and carry it by hand.”
“Since we’ve got our own water supply somewhere, we probably won’t need this.”

Nakasuke efficiently disposed [of the items], urged Nobusuke on, and exited the hospital.
As the journey from the hospital to Seimindo was long, the two of them occasionally borrowed faucets from unfamiliar houses to measure out and partake in drinking bouts.

In the back of Seimindo's shop, under a dim light, the wife was grilling dried squid and making the children eat their meal.
Nakasuke, instead of offering greetings, picked up a piece of dried squid and took a full five minutes to swallow it.

“This alcohol contains murderous intent.”
“It’s the drip-drip of scalpel blades.”
“Through dried squid, this poison can be neutralized.”

“Aren’t you going to Mr. Bokusui’s wedding?”

“Y-Yah! Behold! That’s precisely it! Come on, we must hurry to the station. Though I say that, there’s a train schedule to consider—hey, what time’s the next departure? Since this dried squid will serve splendidly as train provisions, wrap it in paper.”

“That’s no good. Our provisions will run out.”

“My provisions will run out too.”

And Nakasuke forcibly stuffed the dried squid into his pocket and dashed off toward the station.

At Bokusui’s house, the bride had yet to show her face; however, the wedding was proceeding grandly.
Since it was a rural farmhouse, the blackout regulations were completely ignored, and the lights shone brightly.
Bokusui, glowing radiantly from the alcohol, was thoroughly delighted with the groom’s joy—even his mustache bristled with drunken vitality—and though the assembled company was also greatly intoxicated, they had not yet descended into disorder.
There was some reason for this: Bokusui, if nothing else, was a Teiten juror, so the group maintained a certain degree of decorum.
Although Hosaka Sanpei and Akutagawa Nakasuke alone were hurling insults—saying things like "That guy’s stretching himself thin to finally paint something resembling a proper work"—the rest of the crowd maintained a certain degree of decorum, at least in their covert remarks.
That too was a matter of time.
Alcohol is the liquid that levels all.

At that moment, a loud noise erupted from the direction of the kitchen.
The crash of something falling, a woman’s shriek, the clatter of shattering dishes.

“How unmanly.
“Truly a failed excuse for a man and a third-rate poet.”
“This time I’ll strike your shin, so be prepared.”
“You won’t even see the view outside your window for a good month.”

The one shouting was Mrs. Nobusuke; her opponent’s voice could not be heard.
When the group sprang up and rushed over, they found Mrs. Nobusuke holding a fireman's hook low and inching closer, while in one corner Akutagawa Nakasuke had adopted a boxing stance using a one-to iron pot as a shield.
Mrs. Nobusuke maintained her composure, but Nakasuke already bore the visage of relentless defeat—his face twisted and haggard under the ghastly pallor of loss, his breathing rough and disordered.
Though there remained about five meters between him and Mrs. Nobusuke, he closed his eyes and threw right uppercuts, left hooks, straight punches to both sides—but having forgotten his footwork, the momentum made him lurch forward uncontrollably. As he staggered, his orientation shifted completely, and he began desperately unleashing killer uppercuts, hooks, and straights into empty space that bore no relation to his actual direction.
He was waging battle against only a shadow, approaching a state of exhaustion just short of collapse.
When Mrs. Nobusuke crept up from the side and shoved his shoulder, Nakasuke staggered into the wooden paneling, collapsed awkwardly, and lay still.
His entire body surged with waves of breath.

He searched for the alcohol bottle in his pocket but, upon noticing he had discarded his coat—coat! coat!—wondered if Nobusuke wasn’t there and pleaded.
However, Nobusuke already had that alcohol in his left hand and a marked cup in his right, leaning against another wooden panel as well, utterly absorbed in drinking without so much as glancing at the battle.
He could no longer hear the surrounding clamor; even as he leaned against the wooden panel, his legs wobbled, swaying unsteadily left and right.

“A fearsome Amazon.”
“I am no match after all.”

Nakasuke let out a groan of awe, declared his defeat, and since he could no longer walk, crawled out of the kitchen and vanished into the outer darkness.
The group returned to the banquet room and resumed the feast, but sudden drunken chaos erupted as hosts and guests mingled disorderly, everyone entangled in a chaotic tangle.
And there was none who remembered the vanquished Nakasuke—let alone could anyone have noticed someone tending to him deep within the shadows.

“Nakasuke! We can never be a match for women. They excel in brute strength, perpetually employ wicked cunning, deceive and entrap people at every turn, thrust fingers into eyeballs and scramble them about, hurl stones at drowning men, lend one yen and extort a hundred in interest—secretly glutting themselves year-round only to vomit indiscriminately! Ah, poor Nakasuke! You alone are the one who seems truly human.”

“O Heavenly Emperor.”
“Become thunder and fall at once!”
“Bah! Bah!”
“Behold that base and filthy banquet!”
“They’re a pack of drunkards sprouting tails like stray dogs!”
“You and I are the only two humans left on earth.”

And the one rubbing Nakasuke’s back was Sanpei.
He had arrived just as the brawl began, stood frozen in the darkness witnessing its entirety, and shed tears of sympathy as he observed.

“Now, let us return to the ancient nest of our lonely souls.
“Ah, the road is dark.”
“The wind is cold.”
“Yet I shall ever roar with hollow laughter, spin wild boasts, sing drunken songs—when peril presses close, become a gust of wind to strike it down; should that fail, transform into an unyielding wall or swift frogspawn slipping through disaster’s grasp.”
“Nakasuke!”
“We shall now loudly sing Bardeen and withdraw.”
“Now, let the storm rage!”
“Lion, roar!”
“Fight, fight!”

Nakasuke got up and staggered unsteadily back toward the kitchen.
Nobusuke, leaning against the wooden panel, was already drowsily half-conscious.
Nakasuke took up the bottle in his right hand and the marked cup in his left.
Nobusuke opened his eyes slightly and looked at Nakasuke, but immediately closed them again and began to drift back to sleep.

Sanpei sang a song, Nakasuke poured alcohol into the marked cup, and each disappeared into the depths of darkness in their own directions.