Pathway to Japanese Literature

When I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, a strange rumor arose.
The rumor was that I was a drug addict.
Three narcotics officers from the Metropolitan Police Department came, and it seems my attending physician, Dr. Chitani, along with the ward nurses, had a terrible time.
I heard they had been subjected to two hours of nonsensical interactions.
True to form, Tokyo University Hospital doesn’t allow meetings with patients.
If they were to meet, any misunderstandings would be cleared up at once, but the patients might become enraged for reasons unrelated to narcotics addiction, thereby running the risk of undoing all the painstaking treatment—which is presumably why such meetings aren’t permitted.

Thanks to permission from Department Head Dr. Uchimura (the star pitcher) and my attending physician Dr. Chitani (the star catcher), I was allowed to visit Korakuen.
On days without Korakuen visits, I called on Mr. Toyoshima Yoshio in Sendagimachi.
Mr. Toyoshima said,

“You’re a drug addict, aren’t you?”

“That’s incorrect. I did have an addiction to sleeping pills, but I am not a narcotics addict.”

“Aren’t they the same?”

I did not argue.

As the alcohol began to take effect, the conversation turned to the story of Mr. Toyoshima’s daughter, who had passed away the previous year.
She died of peritonitis.
Because she had complained of excruciating pain, they administered Narcopon.
Immediately, the pain had apparently vanished completely.

Thereupon, I said:

“Narcopon is a narcotic.
When Dazai first became addicted, it was apparently to Pantopon and Narcopon.
At my hospital, since there are no wards for severe cases, when violent patients appear, they apparently use Narcopon to put them to sleep and send them to Matsuzawa.
This is a morphine-based narcotic.
The sleeping pills I overdosed on are an over-the-counter product available everywhere—nothing strange or suspicious about them.”

“Huh, so sleeping pills and narcotics are different?”

At this, Mr. Toyoshima’s eyes widened in surprise.

Even Mr. Toyoshima, a leading cultural figure of Japan, deigned to utter such nonsense.
That I was tormented by the rumor of being a drug addict may have been only natural.

This story takes place about a week before I was discharged.

A black marketeer named Prince Kimigorō, about thirty years old, appeared unexpectedly to visit me.
I had self-righteously dismissed him as a black marketeer, but Mr. Prince Kimigorō might have taken issue with that.

It was at a Go club during the war that I first met him.
At that time, he was a factory worker and, as I later discovered, also frequented dice gambling dens.
However, he was not a professional gambler.
Needing money, he would occasionally go out, but it seemed he always ended up losing; he would skip work at the factory and usually come to the Go club, though his complexion always looked sallow.
At heart he was an extremely kind person and hopelessly bad at Go—even with a nine-stone handicap against me—but he would play with intense focus.
One could sense his alternating excitement and dejection at the gambling den.

Had it been only Go, our interactions likely wouldn't have deepened so much, but come evening, when queues formed at the state-run bar, I found myself indebted to him. The thirty or so people occupying the front of the line were all gamblers. He had timidly inserted himself among them, but upon spotting me, allowed me to cut in front of him. Compared to the genuine scoundrels surrounding him on all sides, he seemed utterly lacking in vigor—a solitary, dejected figure—and I felt ashamed to accept his offer while finding him painfully pitiable.

In the wake of the March 10th air raid, the Japanese Government panicked, and the factory district where I lived was suddenly ordered to undergo a large-scale evacuation. In just one ward alone, they ended up demolishing twenty to thirty thousand homes.
This was an order demanding its completion within the short span of about one week.
It was utter chaos—air raids and evacuation orders turning everything upside down.
Everywhere in town, student corps were tearing off roofs, twisting down pillars, and even tanks were mobilized to crush houses.
Thick clouds of dust billowed up, and amidst it, the evacuating people scrambled in panic to carry their belongings.
Due to the large-scale evacuation in this one ward, it was said that even things like chests of drawers dropped in price to around twenty yen.

And yet, even if they demolished houses to build dozens of hundred-meter-wide roads, it was nothing like an ordinary fire. The flames weren’t advancing from a single direction; with incendiary bombs being scattered indiscriminately, evacuation roads were not worth a penny. In the days that followed, when the area had become a perfectly scorched wasteland, those who profited were the town council chairmen and their ilk; since only the lumber they had twisted down during the evacuation remained unburned, they proceeded to rebuild without authorization in less than ten days.

Prince Kimigorō, poor soul, also met the fate of evacuation.
Despite frequenting gambling dens and being part of the front group in lines at state-run bars, he was utterly inept.
He packed his belongings, but the arrangements to transport them to the countryside didn’t proceed smoothly.
His luggage was sent off later than anyone else’s, so at that time, I let him stay at my house for about a week.

Shortly after Japan’s defeat, when he returned to Tokyo, he immediately came to visit me and expressed a desire to move into my single room. But with so many disaster victims in the neighborhood—the place was like a refugee camp—there was no space for him.
He stayed for three or four days, found another room, and moved out.

Afterward, on streets where anything resembling a proper market had yet to take shape, I caught sight of him selling and buying goods. That is why I called him a black marketeer. That too lasted only about half a year, and before long his figure could no longer be seen in my strolling grounds.

Three years had passed since then.

In the psychiatric hospital, having received a visit from Mr. Prince Kimigorō, I too was astonished.
At that time, both my attendant and wife were out, leaving me alone; but for anyone other than someone with a prior connection to me, passing through the psychiatric hospital’s locked checkpoint and clearing the nurses’ approval gate to locate and reach my hospital room was impossible.
Even the crime beat reporters and camera crews from various newspaper companies—adept at infiltration methods requiring ninjutsu-level physical prowess—had all been repelled by the doctors and nurses, driven into ignominious retreat.

“Well, you managed to get in.”

When I said that, he gave a nervous “Heh heh heh” and pulled an item from his pocket.

“I’ve always been in your care without ever properly expressing my gratitude. This humble token...”
“Having surmised your considerable hardships, Sir—and as I’ve recently gained some influence—I managed to procure this.”

“What is it?”

He gave a nervous chuckle, scratched his head, then pantomimed an injection.

“What’s this? Philopon?”

“Oh no no! That one—the narcotics you’d been using before, Sir.”

I too was utterly dumbfounded. That the rumor’s consequences would manifest themselves in such a bizarre reality—

“When you say ‘narcotics,’ you mean morphine?”

“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Heh heh heh.”

He scratched his head again.
As he continued chuckling, an oddly profound affection filled his eyes.

“I myself don’t use this, but I know it well.”
“You get addicted and end up hospitalized.”
“Even while hospitalized, you sneak out to go use it for a bit, I must say.”
“I’ve heard bits of those bone-grinding stories myself. Since you’re not part of any gang and have no connections to rely on, you must be in quite a bind. Heh heh heh.”
“That’s exactly how it is.”
“This psychiatric hospital—with its iron bars and locks on the doors putting on such a show—but for our side, it’s a piece of cake.”
“They’ve all got their connections, so it’s really no trouble at all.”
“Just have someone slip a syringe and drugs through the bars—nothing to it.”
“The gang’s addict patients all use them quite properly inside the hospital.”
“Heh heh heh.”
“It’s civilization itself.”

“Well...”
“Civilized indeed.”

And I too was utterly impressed. And I was so deeply moved by his kindness—which felt utterly pure and boundless—that I nearly wept; yet precisely because of this, explaining in detail the reality that was nothing but a rumor made me feel profoundly uneasy.

When he finished listening to my halting explanation, he put on a very pitiful expression.
I went to such great lengths to comfort him.

“It appears your discharge draws near, and I have had the honor of witnessing your robust condition.”

Then he abruptly shifted to a different set of formal pleasantries, as if adopting public decorum.

“Though perhaps it stems from your dwelling all too deeply upon such matters—when I consider how soon the day must arrive when you shall again undertake splendid endeavors, even one such as myself feels heartened and most profoundly honored.”
“When the occasion of your discharge comes, please do pay a visit.”

With that, he wrote down his address in meticulous detail, complete with a map, and left.
That place was a go club in a certain entertainment district—not his home—but he said he would definitely be there during the daytime.

It was an evening not long after my discharge.

I had business that took me to the entertainment district near where he lived, but it was an area I had never been to before, and to make matters worse, I was alone that day. Returning to familiar territory for a drink felt like too much trouble, yet I had no idea where to find a decent place to drink there either.
I remembered Prince Kimigorō.
Since it seemed a good opportunity to repay his kindness, I thought I’d invite him out and have a drink around here.

The go club was easy to find.

“Is Prince Kimigorō here?”

When I asked, the two girls pressed their foreheads together and whispered in hushed tones for a while—but then one called out, “Ah right—it’s about Kimi-chan.”

one of them shouted loudly.

“Oh.
“Oh. Kimi-chan?”

The two girls laughed.

“Kimi-chan isn’t here anymore—since he went to the bathhouse today.”
“If I go somewhere else...”
“That would be...”
“The shop?”
“Don’t you know? It’s called Café Gondola...”
“He’s probably...”
“But he might...”

I expressed my thanks and went to that alleyway.
That place was a row of cafes, each entrance manned by beautiful waitresses who called out to passersby straying into the alleyway, sometimes even grabbing hands to pull them inside.

I spotted Gondola and strode right in.
I thought Mr. Ōji Kimigorō must be the bartender there.
However, the bartender wasn’t him.
I looked around, but there were no other customers yet, and besides the waitresses, no man was to be found.

“I heard there’s a man named Ōji Kimigorō at this shop—by any chance, isn’t there someone like that among your regular customers?”

“That would be Kimi-chan.”
“Yes, he’s here.”

Here, she answered without hesitation, point-blank.

“Kimi-chaaan! There’s a customer here.”
“There’s a customer here.”

With that, one of them called out toward the back.

As for what happened next—dear readers who have been diligently honing your intellect with quiz shows like Twenty Doors and Fountain of Stories—do you understand? Thirty seconds left. If the bell hasn’t rung, then you all are more seasoned connoisseurs in this matter than I, the party involved.

Mr. Ōji Kimigorō had indeed appeared. However, to call this Mr. Kimigorō might not be quite right. He was Kimi-chan. Yet referring to him as "Kimi-chan" was indeed peculiar, but in a society where zoo elephants get called "Hanako-chan," "Kimi-chan" would have to suffice. It carried none of the sinister duality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The Kimi-chan who emerged was a woman.
Yet he was indeed also Mr. Ōji Kimigorō.
In Ueno's woods, this might have already been nothing more than an exceedingly commonplace Japanese phenomenon—a mere doppelgänger—but for me, who knew him as Prince Kimigorō the factory worker—a man who was anything but feminine, rather stocky and gnarled—this apparition was of such bizarre and startling nature that one must begrudgingly sympathize.

Kimi-chan was indeed cross-dressed, but beyond the cross-dressing itself, there was nothing feminine about him.
First of all, if they were ordinary male prostitutes, they would use feminine speech.
Kimi-chan was not like that.
It was not out of consideration for me that he behaved this way in daily life; one could discern this by observing his demeanor when conversing with other men and women, excluding someone like myself.

“Heh heh.
“Truly, I’m so terribly sorry.”

At first, he acted slightly embarrassed, but after that, he no longer seemed ill at ease.

“To tell the truth, it’s like this.
“This too is a way to get by in the world.
“I’m not some male prostitute, you know.
“Half-heartedly doing such things or trying to act like a woman would be ill-advised, so precisely because I’m not like that at all, there’s this knack where everyone finds it amusing and kindly takes an interest in me.
“At first, it was just a prank—well, something like a masquerade ball—and I suppose that sort of went over well.
“It doesn’t go over too well, but you see—I don’t have the guts to become a full-fledged hoodlum myself. Yet if someone like me doesn’t mingle with the worst of those gangsters, there’s no surviving these times, is there?
“If I keep cross-dressing like this, no one will pick fights with me, and I won’t have to get caught in bloody conflicts through gang codes of honor.
“On the flip side, there are no customers who tip generously, but by laying low safely in this getup, well, I’m just doing my part as a black marketeer.
“I must apologize for the trouble with the narcotics the other day, but as for that matter, I myself have never used even a speck of such things.
“I’m extremely wholesome, managing to support my wife and children—heh heh heh—actually, my wife doesn’t know about this cross-dressing of mine.”

His wife was quite a beauty. However, all the more because of that, she was an arrogant, extremely cold woman.

During the war when I first became acquainted with him, his wife’s family being farmers meant he maintained an enviable diet thanks to them, all while remaining completely under his wife’s thumb. That situation must have fueled his anxiety, driving even a timid, unpretentious good man like him to frequent gambling dens in a desperate gamble for instant riches. When an uneducated woman seizes domestic sovereignty, she truly grows arrogant, becoming an insufferable tyrant; the sight of him living under her thumb was unbearable for me to witness. If there had been no tyrant of a wife, he would have remained, both then and now, an honest factory worker, with no need to frequent gambling dens or cross-dress to play a role as a black marketeer. He would line up at the national pub, yet get thoroughly drunk on just two small mugs—a man so moderate with alcohol that he’d use all his extra ration coupons on me.

He changed into male attire and appeared.

“Tonight there’s a place I simply must show you—heh heh heh.
It’s rather disreputable, but so long as I’m accompanying you, no one will dare cause trouble for you, Sir.
I beg you to set your mind at ease on that score and allow me to guide you through society’s very lowest depths.”

“Not some narcotics den, is it?
There’d be no point seeing that sort of place.”

“Not at all.
It doesn’t contravene any national laws, I assure you.
Heh heh heh.
You’ve developed quite the narcotics phobia, haven’t you, Sir?
Just a moment, if you please.”

He was discussing something with a waitress in a corner, but soon returned alone and led me outside.

The strong liquor I’d drunk at his establishment had left me quite intoxicated, but after winding through unfamiliar roads in an unknown town, we arrived at a newly built, somewhat chic house.
I thought it might be a rendezvous spot, but it wasn’t.
It was simply an inn.
The area was clearly neither a red-light district nor the sort of place one would expect to find an inn.
Yet the rooms seemed designed like those of a secret meeting place, complete with an impressive bathroom.
There were no other guests.

“Is this place different from the shop where you do your side job?”

“Not at all.”
“Someone like me could work for hundreds of years and still never own a place like this.”
“Well, how should I put it—even the owner here probably can’t foresee what lies ahead right now.”
“They might be thinking food service will resume when the time comes, but for now it’s just a regular inn—not some prostitute lodging.”
“That’s why there’s no customers—just three or four in-the-know folks using it—keeping things nice and quiet.”

While we were drinking, the waitress he had been conferring with earlier in a corner of the shop entered.
She wasn’t unattractive, but neither was she what you’d call a beauty.
She was simply a woman of slender build, probably around five feet four inches tall, with a sullen expression and detached air.

He offered the woman a drink.
She gulped it down repeatedly yet showed no sign of intoxication.
She was called Yocchan—Yoshiko.

“To be honest, I should have talked about this with you beforehand, Sir, but I thought it’d be more amusing to lay everything out bluntly without hiding anything right before your eyes.”

He himself did nothing but pour drinks for others, hardly drinking any himself, but was already drunk, his eyes glazed over.

“This person here was born in the same countryside as me. Her father was an elementary school principal, you see, and after graduating from girls’ school, she studied painting.”
“Then, by coincidence, this person’s Tokyo boarding house neighbor happened to be a tattoo master.”
“Unlike now, that was during the war—tattoos weren’t something people commonly did back then.”
“Customers were rare, but this person was an odd one—she found merely drawing pictures on paper unsatisfying and wanted to try applying art to her own body. She thought she might as well attempt tattooing, to do it herself on her own body.”
“So she apprenticed herself to the neighboring tattoo master and finally did it to her own body, but when she tried it, the results were unsatisfying.”
“That’s only natural.”
“Since she did the work without any proper training, how could the results possibly be good?”
“In the end, what do you think she did?”
“She peeled off the skin from the tattooed area herself.”
“Fortunately, since it wasn’t a particularly large area of the thigh, she only ended up fainting briefly.”
“Well, since she’s that sort of person, her temperament differs from ordinary people’s.”
“In other words, though a woman, she possesses an artist’s spirit to the marrow of her bones—and when it comes to that, she has a demon-like tenacity.”

The woman did not move a single eyebrow.
The story was unexpectedly bizarre, yet it lacked the essential intensity to lend conviction to its content.
That was due to the woman’s character.
Essentially, there was no sense of the fearsome intensity one would expect from an artist possessed by such demonic tenacity.
She sat perfectly still, not moving a single eyebrow, yet there was something so superficial about it that you felt she might click her tongue at any moment, as if that were the entirety of her true nature.

“So, given her temperament being what it is, well, her personality’s also reserved and fastidious.”
“Because she’s picky, customers don’t stick around, but that said, she isn’t the type to engage in prostitution.”
“In the days of prostitution, with a temperament like this, she was far from being able to make even a single kimono—making a living to eat was difficult enough.”
“However, this person here has been a fan of yours all along, Doctor.”
“So, well—taking this opportunity—since she also has the idea of wishing to become closer to you, Doctor, and establish herself in literature, I thought to ask for your guidance. It may seem presumptuous of me, but given that she’s a tight-lipped contrarian, I’ve taken it upon myself to make this request.”

His words were laden with ulterior motives. It was not merely a matter of him taking the trouble to make an introduction. What flashed through my mind was their intimate connection—the possibility that the two of them were lovers.

I couldn’t answer carelessly. Even if we spoke of literary guidance, without gauging her talent first, nothing could come of it; moreover, the very narrative that had led to this conclusion of “literary guidance” was a bizarre, bloody thing—like some artistic chain of cause and effect—that left me deeply unsettled.

And after this comes another conclusion—are they going to suggest I take her as my mistress? She wasn’t exactly unattractive—a slender, elongated figure held a certain charm—and though silent and perverse, exuding an undeniably gloomy air, she had enough lecherousness about her to make spending a night together seem tolerable. Because I was drunk, even as my lecherousness was mercilessly stirred, the intensity lurking within that unsettling story still struck me to the core.

“Even when it comes to literary guidance—if one lacks innate talent for the arts, no amount of effort will make it work.”
“I can’t give an answer without seeing it first, you know?”

“But Sir, has there not been such a thing?”
“Let’s suppose—just suppose, you see?”
“No, this might not be mere supposition.”
“Suppose that geniuses are madmen.”
“Because geniuses are madmen, they must see things that others cannot.”
“If that exists, then isn’t this already an unshakable talent?”

I had never experienced this kind-hearted, gentle man turning so defiantly confrontational. I smiled wryly to myself. It was because I myself had just come out of a psychiatric hospital.

“Even if we talk about geniuses and madmen—you know, I myself have just observed madmen’s behavior in a psychiatric hospital—but madmen are quite ordinary.”
“They’re extremely commonsensical.”
“In fact, it may be that madmen’s true nature is to be more richly endowed with common sense and more self-restrained than ordinary people.”
“Geniuses are the same.”
“Even if they look eccentric, they’re neither madmen nor geniuses.”
“Even if one possesses a certain talent, artistic talent and literary talent are inherently different.”
“People with artistic talent inherently perceive things through color, and those with literary talent are born only able to grasp things through the composition of characters.”
“Therefore, simply having an abnormal personality doesn’t mean one can be said to possess literary talent.”

“But Sir, you’ll understand soon.”
“You’ll understand, Sir.”
“Sir and Yoshiko are, for instance, the sun and moon.”
“If a man is the sun, then a woman is the moon—that is the nature of your esteemed pair.”

He declared this resolutely, then hung his head.

Upon being informed that the bath was ready, when I had taken my bath, I was shown to a room with bedding laid out.
Soon after, the woman appeared having bathed.
By that time, Mr. Ōji Kimigorō had already left this house.

However, even though the woman lay down next to me, I felt somewhat intimidated, as if I were being watched.

“Prince Kimigorō mentioned Sun-Moon earlier, didn’t he?”
What an odd thing to invoke Sun-Moon like that.
“Does he often say such things?”

I asked the woman.
That was when—
As if some mainspring’s screw had come loose—she burst into laughter without warning.
It was like witnessing a silent pocketwatch, one that should never have made a sound, suddenly transform into a shrieking alarm clock.

“Taking that man’s words seriously—what, are you half-asleep? Madness? Isn’t he the one who’s mad? He even cross-dresses and all. If he’s a pervert, I’d get it. Even though he’s not a pervert or anything, cross-dressing like that—the screw in his head’s definitely got a left-threaded mark. There’s no way he could know about me carving something into my thigh or gouging it out. It’s all his delusions. Look, see for yourself. In my thigh, there are things like carved objects and gouged scars.”

The woman showed me her thigh.
There was absolutely nothing there.
And the woman’s manner of showing her thigh was that of a streetwalker’s completely unremarkable attitude, so much so that I felt abruptly relieved.

“So you’re not even an aspiring artist, then?”

“Well, even I can manage something or other—that’s just business.”
“But I’ve painted a few oil paintings before, you know.”
“If you go around spouting too many baseless things in this society—since I’m vain myself, I’m quite sharp at seeing through others’ vanity, you know.”

Once she began talking, the oppressive gloom from her earlier silence faded, and the woman proved surprisingly relaxed and at ease.

However, I simply couldn't make sense of it.
From when he had come to visit me at the hospital with narcotics, there had been no trace of madness about him anywhere.
Madmen are like that by nature.
I had kept that firmly in mind at the psychiatric hospital.
It cannot be discerned unless an episode occurs.
In other words, just as all human beings possess criminal potential within them, one might say all people carry within them the makings of madness.
One could even say there exists a view that madness is simply a matter of degree.

Ever since leaving the psychiatric hospital，I began sleeping heavily instead of suffering from insomnia as before．
However，I was receiving hypnotics from Tokyo University，and this was a hypnotic that took effect towards dawn．
I would take breakfast and then sleep again，which became my habit．

The next morning when I awoke, after breakfast, I sent the woman home and slept again alone.
I slept soundly.
Until the day before, I had been working, and it was also due to overwork.

When I awoke, it was already past noon.
Since I had asked the people at the inn, the bath was ready.
After getting out of the bath, I drank sake.

This inn still had no maids—only the proprietor couple, and no children either.

“I must say, Prince Kimigorō really took me by surprise.”

I spoke to the inn's landlady.

"I was taken aback by his cross-dressing too, but last night's story—I simply couldn't make sense of it—about the woman carving something into her thigh, being dissatisfied with how it turned out, and gouging out the flesh."

"This was a complete fabrication, but the terrifying intensity of his delivery made it feel like more than just a lie."

"As for this incident about gouging out the thigh—if he slept with the woman, it would be exposed immediately—and I simply couldn't understand his state of mind."

"The woman said Prince Kimigorō was mad, but aside from last night's incident, there was no sign of madness about him."

"If you think they're in some loving relationship, that doesn't seem to be the case—if anything, he seems completely under the woman's thumb."

The landlady nodded quietly.

Just as this establishment was neither clearly a traditional inn, a rendezvous spot, nor a proper restaurant, this landlady too lacked the hardened demeanor of someone accustomed to trade.
And yet, there was something inexplicable about her that suggested she might indeed have once been in trade.

The landlady flashed an awkward smile but returned to a solemn expression,

“You see, Kimi-chan brings in customers for us nearly every night.”
“I don’t wish to speak of such things, but he’s a madman—or rather, a type of lunatic, I suppose.”
“Depending on the male customers, the women differ, though.”
“This may depend on the gentlemen customers’ preferences, but Kimi-chan selects them based on the gentlemen’s dispositions—there might also be something of Kimi-chan’s own preferences at play.”

Having spoken this far, the landlady wore a slightly disappointed expression and cut off her words.

“But Kimi-chan’s stories about introducing girls to customers are always the same.”
“Just as you mentioned earlier—he claims to have gouged out a tattoo from the thigh.”
“And then, by any chance, did he mention something about the Sun-Moon?”

I was somewhat bewildered.

“Yes, yes, he did say that.
"The man is the sun, the woman is the moon—a pair forming the Sun-Moon, you see."

My despondency was terrible.
The woman was a genius at painting, I was a genius at literature—thus forming the Sun-Moon. My naiveté in having believed this was downright idiotic.

“What is this Sun-Moon about?”

The landlady let out another stifled, disappointed laugh.

“I suppose you could call it the Sun-Moon Deity.”
“It’s the religion that Kimi-chan has convinced himself of.”
“Man and woman—they are the Sun-Moon.”
“But you see, Kimi-chan himself—despite being a man—cross-dresses, which is to say, he’s convinced that he alone embodies the Sun-Moon.”
“Other than that, there’s nothing particularly unusual about him, and at heart, he’s a kind, gentle person, you know.”

To me, still dumbfounded, the landlady added with a perfectly straight face:

“The fact is, Kimi-chan himself did gouge out his own thigh flesh.”
“They say Kimi-chan’s wife wanted to eat human flesh—though this is just hearsay—and that there were all sorts of circumstances, but in his desperate fervor, he gouged out his own thigh meat to feed her. Well, so they say—the truth of it remains unclear.”

I was left utterly speechless.

This story takes place on a day when I myself had only been out of the psychiatric hospital for about a week.

I didn’t even feel like verifying the truth.
It felt as though everything was nothing more than a nightmare of mine.
For me, nothing could be neatly resolved—nor did I want to try resolving anything.

Then I returned home blankly, but three days later, the newspaper carried an article about a narcotics smuggling ring being busted—and among those named was Prince Kimigorō.
Even now, I remain plagued by these inexplicable sighs.