Pathway to Japanese Literature

Matsuo had lately come to think too much.
He thought that if he could graduate from university and get a job, he would marry Ayako.
That hadn’t been the case before.
It had begun as casual playfulness, but gradually that changed, and he came to think they absolutely must marry.

There was a reason he was thinking too much.
The meeting between Matsuo and Ayako was exceedingly vulgar and devoid of poetic charm.
It had occurred at a movie theater.
When the girl in the adjacent seat struck him as endearing, Matsuo felt his pulse quicken.
The film's love scene merging with reality temporarily heightened his excitement—before he could even gasp 'Ah!', he found himself clutching the stranger's hand.

Matsuo possessed such timidity that he couldn't properly face beautiful people's countenances, let alone achieve the daring feat of initiating conversation with an attractive woman no matter how he yearned for it.
He cursed this diffidence.
His perennial aspiration had been to obtain the courage for bold approaches to women, convinced this solitary virtue might revolutionize his existence; thus he damned his shyness while languishing through insipid days.

The reason he had grasped that unknown girl’s hand was that his soul had slipped away somewhere at that moment. Some measure of courage might have played its part, but ultimately it amounted to what could only be called a momentary lapse. Yet because the girl tightly gripped his hand in return, what should have been a suspicious act warranting intervention under the Minor Offenses Act instead became a publicly celebrated triumph—and as the saying goes that fortune births calamity, this planted seeds of future ruin.

Matsuo remembered having spoken these words just once.

“From the moment you sat down next to me, I thought you were a beautiful person. So when I got worked up by the movie, I ended up impulsively grasping your hand. Even when you grasped back, I was still in a daze.”

Then Ayako too responded in this way just once.

“I fell in love with you at first sight too.”
“I flopped down next to you without thinking, didn’t I?”
“I felt so vexed, like I’d been seen right through.”
“I thought you were a phony!”
“But I ended up grasping back anyway.”
“It’s agonizing to be thought of as easy.”

This conversation occurred only once.
As their relationship deepened and formalities faded, this matter alone was never broached again.

As his affection for Ayako deepened, Matsuo fixated on her hand that had grasped back. Of course he disliked his own hand that had grasped first, but that was not the problem at hand. He tormented himself with the thought that in such moments, Ayako might respond that way to anyone.

Overthinking was a bad thing—this he of course knew. But there was no stopping thoughts that arose unbidden. This too was due to affection. As his affection deepened, he fixated on Ayako’s hand that had grasped back. The torment grew deeper by the day.

The very origin of grasping hands in a movie theater was simply too vulgar.
The more he thought about it, the more hopeless it became.
Therefore, even when recalling his own act of having grasped her hand first—a sensation like a caterpillar crawling over his skin—that very discomfort would vanish when he considered Ayako’s reciprocated grasp.
It wasn’t mere discomfort.
It was anxiety.
It was jealousy, and it was fear.

"It’s agonizing to be thought of as easy," Ayako said.
It sounded thoroughly wholesome at first, but the more he thought about it, the more conventional it seemed.
After all, any woman would undoubtedly make such a remark when faced with that kind of situation—that was how it appeared to him.
Which meant that just as this was a set phrase, grasping back a hand that had grasped theirs might also be nothing more than a routine act for them—a matter of established custom.

"When a man softly takes your hand, you always grasp back without fail, don’t you?"

He must have nearly blurted this out countless times.
However, Matsuo knew discretion, so he did not voice this particular thought.
Just like a political heavyweight clutching bribes under his sleeve, he knew discretion when it came to secrets—to never spill them.

Yet fantasizing about posing that question to Ayako became his daily ritual.
The reason he kept the secret was his strict avoidance of touching her raw nerve and causing pain, but in these imaginings, she would instead rage at him and look down in contempt.
This meant she was precisely the sort of woman who routinely dealt in such secrets—and that his deepest fear of this truth had birthed these very fantasies.

“Fixating on this is unhealthy.”

There had never been an instance when he neglected to strive toward dispelling these thoughts through such reasoning, yet the hours tormented by them lengthened daily.
Then something peculiar occurred in that Ageku.

★

Among his university classmates was a female student named Mizuki Yuko.
Since her obsession with psychology was notorious, Matsuo too had come to know of it.
She appeared consumed by thoughts of the human mind day and night, resembling some master palmist who could dissect hearts with surgical precision - more ruthlessly effective than any common fortune-teller.
In this phase of her life, some regarded her with uneasy awe as possessing near-clairvoyant insight into men's souls, while others insisted her psychological fixation stemmed solely from infatuation with Professor Namura of the psychology department.
Professor Namura was that meditatively handsome scholar whose lectures some claimed held religious hypnotism, these same voices maintaining that Mizuki Yuko amounted to nothing more than his enthralled acolyte.
During her second month as an undergraduate, Mizuki Yuko had taken to wearing round-frame glasses despite having perfect vision.
Moreover, she now refused to speak without first etching faint lines between her brows.
In short, commentators suggested this too demonstrated how the university atmosphere had bewitched her since enrollment - proof of an innate susceptibility to becoming enthralled by intellectual fashions.

Matsuo too had taken an interest in Mizuki Yuko’s round-frame glasses and the faint lines she formed between her eyebrows.
A timid person like Matsuo might seldom ask for things, but in return engaged in rather unkind observations.
He thought it was a great relief for society that she didn’t get involved in politics.
Instead of round-frame glasses and faint lines and reading and meditation and human observation, he imagined her clutching a bag as she rushed about, screaming at this street corner and that square.
He even pictured scenarios where, after falling for some political heavyweight, her figure would swell up just like his, puffing out before his very eyes.

However, were it not for the round-frame glasses and the faint lines she formed between her brows, she would have had an innocent, cute face. Even before Mizuki Yuko wore those round-frame glasses, Matsuo had noticed her natural features. Though he lived with perpetually downcast eyes, Matsuo possessed the peculiar skill of never overlooking a beautiful woman. He had been more astonished than anyone when Mizuki first donned her Lloyd-style glasses, but now that both the spectacles and furrowed brows had settled into permanence—as she radiated deadly focus while devouring books, meditating, and observing others like some voracious insect—he had long since resigned himself to her being utterly unapproachable.

Outside the school grounds stood a small museum and spacious garden.
When Matsuo, exhausted by loneliness and obsessive thoughts, wandered into that garden and sat on a bench beneath tree shade, he noticed Mizuki Yuko seated on the lawn beyond shrubbery, reading.
Were the shrubbery removed, their distance would have been mere two or three ken.
Mizuki Yuko had been there first.

Of course being unacquainted enough for greetings, her continued feigned ignorance held nothing strange—yet he wondered whether she had noticed his arrival.

"There’s no way she hadn’t noticed.
Even if she were a bookworm, a young woman couldn’t possibly be that cold toward men."

There was nothing strange about Matsuo—who had arrived later—not noticing her as she read soundlessly, yet even so, he eventually became aware.
Even to hollow eyes now captive to obsessive thoughts, her presence eventually came into view.

"Or perhaps she alone was a transcendent being?"
"No, no..."

In those days when she radiated lethal intensity through reading, meditation, and observation—exuding an intimidating dignity that suggested her human observations might have reached profound depths—even Matsuo occasionally felt a certain threat.
Even so, could a young woman truly transcend men?

"If I grasp this lady psychologist's hand, will she grasp it back?"

Matsuo thought.
Recalling her innocent face from before the round-frame glasses, he still maintained a tendency to underestimate her—meaning he hadn't yet fully surrendered to the dignity she now possessed.

She was a master of psychology. If he considered it, even in her own psychology she wouldn't be an exception as a human. For it stood to reason that only with oneself as a foundation could one unravel another's heart. Rather, she herself as that foundation might harbor ordinary people's psychology at its greatest possible amplitude.

"If women generally grasp back when their hands are grasped," he thought, "then she must do the same. And if she doesn't, that would mean only Ayako is the exception." This exception troubled him deeply. But if that were settled, there'd be no more need for Ayako. Ayako should be forgotten. He ought to transfer his allegiance to this lovely psychologist.

Matsuo reasoned this way not because he underestimated Mizuki Yuko. It was because affection for her had suddenly surged within him like a torrent. Though bewildered by this abrupt love's origins, in that moment he found himself shredded by the flood of overflowing emotions.

He wanted to test this by grasping her hand.
He had no time to remember this wasn't a movie theater.
He had no time to consider she was reading a psychology book rather than watching a love scene.
Having at least perceived it was a daytime garden, he didn't forget to check for nearby figures.
Suddenly he found himself walking as if pushed by some force.
Before her, he called her surname while removing his hat and bowing once.
Without allowing her time beyond raising her eyes to look at him, he knelt down, pinned her hand, and gripped it tight.

“Please forgive my sudden rudeness. I regret interrupting your reading. But I loved you. And since I’m the sort of man who knows no other way than to suddenly do this, please don’t think badly of me.”

“It hurts. Stop it.”

Mizuki Yuko responded with words utterly disconnected from Matsuo’s declaration. Gripping his wrist with one hand, she began concentrating on the earnest task of forcibly extracting her trapped hand as if pulling it from a slammed door. Matsuo kept restraining her hand for some time. Her unexpected actions left him at a loss for how to respond. As he maintained his hold, he wondered whether there might still be some way to salvage the situation. But when her struggle escalated into the lawless ferocity of trying to wrench out a deeply rooted mountain yam, he perceived that no shred of poetic sentiment could survive this clash, and released his grip.

She picked up the book, took a step back, and stood up.
The round-frame glasses had come off and fallen to the ground along with the book, but since she wasn't nearsighted to begin with, their absence seemed to make no difference to the state of things, and she apparently made no move to pick them up.

“You’re not what you appear to be. How brutish.”

Mizuki Yuko spoke while holding the book under her arm and gripping her own hand that had been pressed down by the man.
Since Matsuo had no words left to say, he picked up the glasses from the ground and placed them precisely where fine wrinkles gathered at the base of her eyebrows.
Because she kept retreating and didn’t extend her hand to receive them.
After docilely letting him put the glasses on her, she said.

“You’re shameless.”
“What a brazen person you are.”
“You’re grinning like that after doing such a thing, aren’t you?”

There was no helping being scolded like this.
A laugh caught between a wry smile and awkward embarrassment—impossible to decipher—remained stubbornly plastered across his face.
Having been reproached for his laughter, he had to put on a bold front to conceal it.

“Let’s enjoy our youth. It’s foolish for someone your age to become a bookworm!”

It was a calm voice.
It was then that he first saw how unexpectedly brazen he had been.
He had no choice but to let things take their course.
And staring at her, he continued speaking.

“Shouldn’t you part ways with books and glasses around this point? For your life, isn’t that after all nothing more than a temporary phase?”

“How can you say such a thing?”

“Wait now. You have a compact, don’t you? Lend it to me.”

He took the compact, held the mirror up to her face, and once again removed the glasses he had just placed on her.

“This shows your lovely and true face. See? Glasses are superfluous. You really shouldn’t wear these anymore.”

“Glasses are simply another accessory.”

“It’s a harmful and useless accessory for you.”

“It’s a matter of taste.”

“True. But that’s your poor taste.”

“Do you really think that?”

“Of course I do. However, I’ll leave the glasses to your discretion,” he said, returning the glasses and compact to her, “but you should at least consider others’ opinions. By the way, what is your response to the proposal about enjoying our youth?”

“You’re the first villain I’ve ever met like you.”

“I’m just approaching life pragmatically.”

“Can you really do that? With life?”

“You should approach it pragmatically. I recommend you approach things pragmatically too. And your answer?”

“You’re being too forceful.”
“I’m all mixed up.”
“I’ll give you my answer here tomorrow.”
“At this time.”

Mizuki Yuko, still holding the books, glasses, and compact in both hands, spun around and ran off.

Matsuo felt dizzy from a liberation as if spring had arrived all at once.
He felt keenly that his own deeds had been far too "great."
"Great" attitude.
"Great" words.

"I'm just approaching life pragmatically." What a magnificent phrase that was.
It was a phrase utterly alien to his life until then, and one he had never even imagined until that very moment.
If only I could approach life pragmatically—who knows how many times I must have gnashed my teeth and wrung my hands over this until now.
In an instant, he suddenly rushed into another world.
That evening, during his time with Ayako, he acted quite aloof.
Ayako gradually grew displeased.

“You don’t love me anymore, do you.”
“That’s right, isn’t it?”
Ayako was domineering and self-centered.
It was Matsuo who remained passive.
When she issued high-handed decrees at him, Matsuo grew flustered.
To plant his feet and project great dignity had become impossible with her.
The only way he could show dignity toward her was by proposing a breakup himself—but if he’d been capable of that declaration, he wouldn’t have been suffering so.
Averting his eyes from Ayako’s piercing glare, Matsuo replied in a reedy voice.

“Graduation exams are coming up, my job exam results are bad, and every day is just so hard.”

“Someone like you should fail for two or three years.
“Even if you graduate from school, you’ll still be unsteady.”

Ayako, the office clerk, had more money than Matsuo.
Since Matsuo was treated to things more frequently, he ended up feeling inferior in every aspect.
That night, Matsuo continued muttering these words in his heart.

"What I need is a revolution.
A great revolution!
The revolution carried out today.
That liberation!
I can do all sorts of things too."

★

The next day, he deliberately arrived about thirty minutes late to the off-campus garden.
He had followed the time-honored strategy of Miyamoto Musashi.
And he considered this his own life-and-death battle.
He considered it not a battle against Mizuki Yuko, but rather a decisive struggle to determine how he would shape his future way of living.
He thought that victory here would mean conquering his entire future.

Matsuo was thinking about many different things. For example, he thought that Mizuki Yuko would no longer wear her round-frame glasses from today. This was proof that Mizuki Yuko had joined his revolution. And the two of them would immerse themselves in the joy of liberation. In other words, if Mizuki Yuko had been waiting in the shade of the shrubbery without her round-frame glasses, the serious battle would already have been decided in his favor.

However, if Mizuki Yuko had been waiting for him without knowing to discard her glasses, it was probably because her heart was still as immature as her natural face. Even if she was well-versed in academic romantic psychology, she remained ignorant of real-world decisive battles. That immaturity was something even a revolutionary should cherish, if anything. In that case, it would naturally fall to his hands to remove her glasses, but whether he should fling them down and crush them underfoot or calmly return them to her hands and patiently explain the rationale, he was still wavering. Rather, he had thought to leave it to the course of events. However, when he came to the bench in the shade of the trees, those sitting there were unfamiliar male and female students. And beyond the shrubbery, there was no one on the lawn.

In her place, he sat down on the lawn.
And he looked to see if there were any marks she had left behind, but he could find no trace that she had been there.

"Had I been mistaken to muddle together the Aibiki meeting and a swordsmanship duel?"
He realized for the first time that perhaps his stubborn fixation on revolution and decisive battles as matters of personal resolve had led him astray from psychology’s proper path, creating some flaw.
In a swordsmanship duel, he was waiting for his opponent, but perhaps love didn’t wait for people any more than a train did.

However, he waited patiently and motionlessly for about thirty minutes.
After that, he searched all around the garden and returned to his original position, but he could not find Mizuki Yuko anywhere.

However, the revolution wasn't over yet, he thought tenaciously.
He returned to school.
And he walked through the wide school grounds searching for her.
There was no sign of her anywhere.
The next day, and the day after that, he could not meet her.
His revolutionary fervor abruptly waned.
Diminishing by half each night until, after three days, it tipped into negative territory, he became unable to go to school due to his terror of encountering her.

The hand that had grasped Mizuki Yuko's now seemed to him like a beast's claw.
He couldn't help but blush when remembering.
And remembering terrified him so much that cold sweat broke out from fear alone.
Mizuki Yuko had resisted with the desperate seriousness of someone wrenching a trapped hand from a door.
In the end, she had treated her own hand like a mountain yam buried in soil—handling it roughly and clumsily while trying violently to pull it free.
That had undoubtedly been her true feelings toward him.
In short, he was nothing but a beast.
The Aibiki promise must have been mere bait thrown to divert the beast's eyes.
There was nothing as foolishly yet blindingly vivid as the revolutionary hallucination seen by the beast.

Matsuo could no longer bring himself to think about Ayako's hand that had grasped back.
Because if he thought about that, he would have to recall his own hand that had grasped Mizuki Yuko's hand—a beast's claw.

He now came to see even Ayako as something all the more terrifying.
Because he had become possessed by an inferiority complex that what he himself saw was likely nothing more than a beast's sweet delusion.

“You’ve seemed rather absent-minded lately.”
“It’s like you sometimes vanish in an instant.”
“If I turn around, you’re still right there, aren’t you?”
“In other words, you’re constantly zoning out.”

“It’s not really like that.”
“Job hunting isn’t working out, and exams seem to be going poorly too.”
“There are just so many disheartening things, I guess...”
He forced a hollow chuckle and replied.
He was naturally using polite language.
Ayako showed no mercy toward this shift.

“You’re being oddly self-deprecating.”
“You don’t give off any underling vibe at all.”
“It’s like you have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.”

“In other words—yes—I really am just an underling.”

“You’ve gone all red, haven’t you?
“Are you a bit ashamed?”
“Are you angry?”
“Which one?”

“It’s merely habitual.”

“You’re such a hopeless person, aren’t you? But that’s fine. I’m rather fond of underlings, you know.”

“What about the boss?”

“Of course I like him. But... I want to act spoiled with the boss. I want to be doted on. The boss’s kept woman.”

Ayako always kept him on edge. She felt like she might slip from his grasp at any moment. Why didn’t she become the company boss’s kept woman? Matsuo grew jealous, wondering whether the company boss was too upright or she simply lacked the guile.

Of course, Ayako wasn’t as bad as her words made her seem.
She wanted to become a wholesome good wife.
The real question was whether she wanted to become Matsuo’s good wife.
From her manner of speaking, it seemed Matsuo’s personality was not recognized.

“You should really fail for another two or three years.”
“For students, there’s part-time work and people are more forgiving, but once you graduate, that won’t fly anymore.”

“I won’t be able to graduate anyway.”

“That’s exactly why you’re hopeless.”
“This is how I think.”
“An eternal university student.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?”

“It means the same as ‘eternal underling,’ doesn’t it?”

“You know it well.”
“You’re too clever at thinking up the worst possibilities.”
“Life is a matter of expression.”
“Live brightly.”
“Live poetically.”

“So the eternal university student is poetry, huh?”

“Poetic expression. The eternal underling might be reality, but it’s all in how you look at it, you know.”

“However, I want to graduate from school, get a job, and marry you.”
“That’s my genuine feeling, but…”

“Haste leads to ruin.”

“I’m not rushing. It’s already time for me to graduate and get a job, after all.”

“But you’ll fail, won’t you?”

“I might not fail.”

“You won’t be able to get a job, will you?”

"That's why I'm rushing."

"It's futile isn't it? I might have fallen for you precisely because you're still a student."

“Is that your real intention?”
“What’s ‘real intention’ supposed to mean?”
“Do you want to make me an eternal university student...?”
“That’s right. I do like that.”
“But you know...”
“There’s no guarantee I’ll feel this way next year.”
“So ‘real intention’ seems like an impossible word to use, I guess.”
“How I feel now.”
“Just for now.”

If he failed, there still seemed to be some hope remaining for now.
Matsuo couldn't shake the premonition that he would never again be able to love anyone.
This feeling had grown particularly strong of late.
To put it plainly: he would never again find the courage to grasp anyone's hand.
He couldn't speak to anyone.
He couldn't even lift his eyes.
The last woman he might ever love—no, ultimately the only woman in his entire life—seemed to be Ayako.
This wasn't about complete or pure love—after all calculations and schemes, it came down to this single woman.
What remained could only be called a beggar's affection—the final clause.
Rock-bottom destitution.
Nothingness.
The barest shred.
Yet despite everything, Ayako was beautiful.
She didn't resemble some woman picked up at a movie theater.
That very fact made his chest ache.
Now he realized—it had been Matsuo who was picked up at that cinema.
This would likely be his last time ever being chosen.
His desperate need to cling to Ayako only intensified, even as his courage to forcefully assert these feelings steadily diminished.
For he could no longer believe any real capability existed within him.
Since that single day's revolution, he had been plummeting downward at breakneck speed.

★

During exams, Matsuo frequently found himself face-to-face with Mizuki Yuko.
Mizuki Yuko remained composed, but Matsuo always hurriedly averted his eyes and had to fidget anxiously, as if treading air within his mind.
Of course, Mizuki Yuko wore her round-frame glasses, but those glasses overwhelmed him with a terrifying force like steel weapons.
He cowered before them.
And what he had to associate with those glasses was his own beast claws.
Because of that, he ended up fearing the glasses even more.
Like a single beast targeted by steel weapons, his entire being—body and mind—froze in terror.

On the day of Matsuo’s final exam, after finishing it, he happened to cross paths with Mizuki Yuko.
She was alone.
There was no one around.
Even if he failed, Mizuki Yuko would certainly graduate—this would likely be his final glimpse of her.
When he saw her solitary figure with no other people in sight, Matsuo suddenly conceived the idea of using this chance to wipe away his beast claws.
The dread of those beast claws was unbearable to him.
Nothing felt more despairing than the reality that he must live with these hands until his dying breath.

Matsuo caught up to Mizuki Yuko and called out to her.
When he removed his hat, sweat overflowed endlessly from his head and forehead, steaming profusely.
He stood blushing and fidgeting nervously, looking ready to collapse at any moment.
The wretchedness of his current state—so starkly opposed to his dashing warrior-like bearing during the revolution—allowed Mizuki Yuko to calmly observe him from head to toe with newfound composure.

“I wanted to apologize about my beast claws.”
“Since this will likely be our final meeting, if I let this chance pass, I’ll have to suffer with these beast claws for the rest of my life.”

“Beast claws?”

“That’s right.
That’s how I put it.
No—it’s what I truly feel.
That’s why I’m suffering.
Even if this pain doesn’t vanish even after you forgive me now that I’ve apologized, I couldn’t let this chance pass without saying I’m sorry.
I’m suffering because I grabbed your hand.
These hands of mine look like hairy beast claws.
Nothing could be more hopeless than this.”

Mizuki Yuko’s round-frame glasses appeared steel-reinforced and stretched taut.
In other words, partway through Matsuo’s account, she had ceased being a woman and transformed into a psychologist.
Her eyes became those of a scholar, merging with her round-frame glasses to begin observing the pitiful creature with the cold detachment of a microscope.

“When did they start looking that way to you?”

“It started around the day after or the day after that when I grasped your hand.”
“I went to the promised place the next day—no, rather, the place you told me to go to deceive the beast—but when I arrived and didn’t see you there, I gradually realized I was nothing but a beast myself. However, I intend never to commit such rudeness toward anyone again.”
“However, the beast claws that grasped your hand have never disappeared since that time—and never will.”
“Even if I apologize like this, they might never disappear.”

“Can you see them?”

“Do not be absurd.”
“I am not a madman.”
“It is not a visual hallucination.”
“Whenever I remember it, I freeze up.”
“I despair.”

“Do you truly believe you are not a madman?”

“Of course I do.”
“I am an ordinary person—no, rather, one closer to an incompetent.”
“I am such an incompetent that I cannot even do wrong anymore.”
“Therefore, I wanted to at least offer an apology for my sins.”

“You’re sweating quite profusely. Did you run?”

“No. This sweat pours out like this because I need to apologize. In other words, I must be suffering this much from these beast claws.”

The lady scientist nodded as if to say she understood.
And for a while, she appeared to be thinking.
Perhaps because her observation had concluded, the steel reinforcement of her microscope-like gaze loosened, and her round-frame glasses seemed to gain a touch of feminine emotion.
Mizuki Yuko softened her expression.
And Dr. Mizuki said gently, as if instructing a child patient.

“Your hand wasn’t beast claws.”
“It was a truly splendid man’s hand.”
“That’s why I was so happy about the pain in my wrist.”
“Even the next morning after waking up, it still hurt.”
“I was happy.”
“I was enraptured, savoring the pain in my hand.”

“Will you forgive me?”

“Of course I will! I was never angry to begin with! You enraptured me—so gratitude alone remains; anger could find no place.”

“I’m happy you comforted me.”

“You must live more resolutely.”
“Even if you brood endlessly, life won’t unfold before you.”
“You know the verse—knock, and it shall not be opened.”
“That knocking hand couldn’t possibly be beast claws, could it?”
“The knocking hand is too violent.”
“You must unfold life itself.”
“But it’s not a beast’s hand—it’s an admirable one.”
“An admirable human hand.”

“Your admonition pierces deeply.”

“We must really say goodbye now.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“Since everything’s already over, I can say this lightly now—I was waiting for you that day at the promised time.”
“I took off my glasses and was waiting for you.”
“It was your lateness that was wrong.”
“We had no connection, but that was for the best.”
“It’s all in the past now, you know.”
“It’s something that can’t be taken back now.”
“But you know,”
“The pain in my wrist—I won’t forget it.”
“Take care now.”

Mizuki Yuko thus left quietly.

Matsuo, following the lesson "knock and it shall not be opened," inquired at the school for Mizuki Yuko's address and sent her a love letter, but no reply came.
Her words—"It’s something that can’t be taken back now"—seemed to hold a truth beyond mere lesson.
Her words—"It's good we had no connection"—too.