Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

On the calm early summer seaside, not even the faintest breath of wind could be felt. Four or five carefree students lay sprawled on the sandy beach, engaged in noisy, aimless chatter. "Crossing Yurano's ford, enduring boat oars and rudders—ah, the path of love with no known destination... Wait, now that I think of it, even that time has become nostalgic. No, I mean Mitsuri's karuta gathering." "Quit making those out-of-character eyes at me, you!" "But I've got proper nostalgic memories to share, so this ought to be impressive. Well, listen up."

“But…”

At that moment, a lanky man who had been winding a pocket watch under a sandy parasol spoke in a disgustingly sentimental tone, “When you think about it, isn’t it truly lamentable that such accomplished fellows always sit around together without a single one stirring up anything resembling a proper love affair?” “What on earth are you doing, gentlemen? You gather round noisily doing nothing but praising women’s beauty, then mope about feeling sentimental and go around in circles!”

Adopting an oratorical tone that seemed deliberately affected and crossing his arms heavily, the lively man who had earlier tried to speak up—clearly a spirited fellow— “I can’t stand how Tagami immediately puts on that serious face.” “This isn’t some novel—how could we possibly put up with all these tedious love affairs?” “If we keep finding lyrical moments in this emptiness—well, that’s what youth is.”

Having had his story interrupted, he muttered in a low voice while blushing slightly. “Gentlemen—don’t you all find yourselves pitiable? I’ve resolved as of today that I absolutely must find myself a lover.” Despite the previous man persisting in such talk, “When you put it that way, I can’t stay fixated either.” “Truly, not a single moment can be spared…” Lying on his back with his mouth agape—his bare chest and stomach exposed to the sky—one particularly carefree-looking individual among them suddenly voiced emphatic agreement,

“A whale!” Having shouted something like that, he exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke with a whoosh. The smoke stretched out slenderly and smoothly, reaching the sandy parasol beside them without dissipating. No matter who chattered about what or quarreled, it would all instantly vanish without leaving even a trace of ripples—it was truly a tranquil seaside nearing spring afternoon in its very essence.

“What a terribly long breath this guy takes!” “It’s just like Dr. Luther’s belly!” “If someone were to stomp this guy’s belly flat, how damn satisfying that’d feel!” They roared with laughter. But paying no heed to the oratorical tone, “Take everyone’s current situation with Miss Mitsuri Yuriko, for example—each of us has been getting so worked up, becoming utterly absorbed in being served by her. But what if she were to vanish completely before long? No, she’s bound to disappear…”

He involuntarily choked up.—“Not one of us making all this fuss has even touched her leg…”

“Lament all you want, but don’t let your feelings run wild—the moment I heard that, something cold like lightning suddenly tore through me from chest to belly with ferocious speed!” “So let’s all make up our minds already…” “But tell me—if such a radiant beauty were to marry someone in our group, forcing us to watch, versus her flying off like a peacock into some unknown sky where we’d just end up staring at each other—which would you choose?” “If I were asked, I would rather choose the latter.”

“It’s our spinelessness that pisses me off! Why aren’t we locking horns and competing? You idiots!”

Someone else shouted in a booming voice as though hurling it at themselves. Near the tideline, a flock of seagulls was swirling in a large vortex low in the sky.

“She’s one hell of a siren—manipulating the whole group so skillfully without ever giving anyone special cause for conceit.”

“She’s not manipulating us—we’re just letting ourselves be swayed by her charm.” “What sort of nostalgia do you suppose lingers in memories of the Karuta Club? Well, shall I tell you?” “No good—no good! It’s heartbreak!”

The man who had buried his face in the sand— “If we all get heartbroken—damn it all!—let’s cut this guy’s belly open!” Pointing at the man who kept imitating a whale, someone mocked him. Tagami, Onta, Kujirai, Mori, Aono—but there was no need to distinguish whose words were whose, as the youths, chattering away without restraint, merely carried themselves with the air of frolicking with the shifting time and light.

“Let’s swim.”

“Let’s swim,” someone shouted. “It’s not cold anymore.” They stripped down to their swimsuits in an instant and dashed off with a rallying cry of “Watsu!”, leaping through the air. Near the shore, the leader executed a brilliant somersault and plunged into the waves’ depths. The rest tumbled headlong through the water in unison, their heads stubbornly refusing to surface. “Why aren’t you swimming, Onta?” While Onta sat alone listening to the serenade, Yuriko shook a parasol from behind.

“I was watching from the second floor. Then I wanted to swim too and came out, but it still looks cold, doesn’t it!”

As she spoke, she aligned her bare white feet with Onta’s and lowered herself onto the sand. Then, as if thinking “I’ll try taking it off”—she removed the orange frock coat while undressing, leaving herself in nothing but a swimsuit. “I’ve gotten quite plump, you know.” “Last year it wasn’t like this at all, but now it’s gotten so tight—if I’m not careful, it might just tear.” Yuriko—in a maroon swimsuit cinched at the waist with a red band—rubbed her chest over the fabric and hunched her shoulders,

"You're impossible, Onta! Here I am talking to you, and instead of answering, you just keep staring at my face." "Earlier here, we decided Yuriko-san resembles Sylvia Sidney—but she claims it's disagreeable to be compared to anyone at all." “Disagreeable? Fuji-san said the same thing—and I’m rather proud of it!” “Who the hell is this Fuji-san? Where’s he from? Spit it out!” “Ha ha ha… Let’s just say… he’s not one of your little group—how’s that?” “...It’s not cold, but I’ve no energy for swimming.” “Those rowdy boys keep hollering for me, yet here I stay—”

Yuriko stretched one hand high, fluttering it, “I’ll give you a sandwich, so come on up…”

she shouted.

Beyond the waves,

“From here it looks like quite the picturesque scene, but with comrades around, we can rest easy.” “Let us—hypothesize a scenario where she’s steeped in intense emotion with some lover unknown to us…” “—Unbearable! Just imagining it makes my chest feel ready to burst." “We’ll taste jealousy’s bitter dregs to their fullest!” “This training exists precisely to prepare us for being cast into those depths of jealousy and despair.”

“There are happy bastards in this world—just where the hell’s the man she’ll choose living right now?!” “I’m the one who wants it!” “Up, up—save me!” The group thrashed madly through the water—splashing wildly, bobbing and sinking like corks—until, “That’s Her Majesty’s royal garment!” they torpedoed shoreward in unison with furious strokes the moment they recognized it. “Let’s build a fire—we’ll freeze solid!”

“Instead of a fire, let’s surround our mermaid…” With lips purple from trembling, the group found that rolling about in the sand failed to warm them, so they ordered Onta to clang away on the trumpet while encircling Yuriko and launching into a wildly chaotic carol dance.

“It isn’t cold, you fools! ...You’re spraying water like rain!” Unmindful of Yuriko’s screams as she fled in panic, the group—like lanterns whipped by the wind—whirled round and round with terrible force. They kept up their frenzied circling game until dizziness overwhelmed them and they collapsed in heaps.

“Are all these people mad?!”

Yuriko gazed at the group—sprawled here and there as if flung by mountain demons, feigning death throes—and muttered with creeping unease. ...Then who would Yuriko help up first? Having made their wager earlier, they lay perfectly still holding their breaths, each lost in dreams of sweet whispers—but wait as they might, no response came. At last hearing the lunchbox lid creak open, all at once they cried "Hey-hey!" scratching their heads as they lumbered back to life.

II

On a hazy evening when the scent of clove flowers beneath the window wafted clearly, as Mori and Aono were engrossed in a card game in Onta’s room at the edge of town, beyond the trifoliate orange hedge—

“Onta! Are you there?” Tagami’s voice—strangled as if gripped by an unseen hand, teetering on the edge of final breath—pierced through. The three in the room jolted upright, torsos thrust halfway out the window before they could think, “The mermaid’s losing her maidenhood! Hurry!”

Before he could finish speaking, Tagami’s figure vanished. As Tagami slipped through the pine forest with burglar-like swiftness, the three gave chase headlong. Then from the blacksmith and tobacco shops at the street corner came two or three people who had mistaken this for a real robbery pursuit—and in an instant, shouts of “Fire! Fire!” erupted from all directions. People gathered around in alarm, murmuring in surprise. “They say it’s a burglar!” “Well, to have such a ruckus so early in the evening…”

“Both those who intrude and those being intruded upon should be called the very pinnacle of fools.” At the time when people—making witty laughter with remarks like “stealing kettles on moonlit nights” or “young lords turning into foxes on spring evenings”—were pointing at the moon risen over the seaside, Tagami, having reached the pinnacle of his excitement before even running a block after descending to the beach, lost control of his legs and pitched forward, just as three pursuers caught up to him, “Isn’t this a dream, Tagami?! “How the hell can we believe the mermaid would lose her virginity?!”

The three of them had also flown into a rage without resistance and, as if rescuing a comrade, were frantically hoisting Tagami up by the shoulders. Tagami, like a soldier who had sustained a mortal wound, was being carried unsteadily with both arms slung over Mori and Aono’s shoulders,

“Don’t forget this moon—next year on this very night, and the year after that too—if the moon is clouded…” With expressions that seemed to say, “What’s with this ham-fisted dialogue when we’re already fooling around?”—the two peered again at the actor’s face, only to find that far from jesting, Tagami’s eyes were brimming with tears. “Once you realize it’s the night Yuriko-chan lost her virginity—there’s nothing left but to curse the moon!” Tagami screamed with all his might.

What had come over him? Onta—who had been leading the way—dashed off without a thought for his companions. His figure dashing across the sandy plain—resembling the surface of water under a hazy moon—seemed to dance through midair. “Onta! ...At the base of the Mermaid’s cliff—Whale’s fainted! Perform artificial respiration!” Tagami called out in a trembling voice—and then, as he clawed at his chest and barely managed to whisper something into his two companions’ ears, the pair stood rigidly in unison like tragedians from some antique play, gazing up at the moon that itself resembled an old stage backdrop.

Following the bow-shaped edge of the pine forest, Onta discovered a comrade clinging to a stone and raising a choked, sobbing voice beside a stone wall where the sandy ground sloped into a hill about to become a slope. “Whale! Whale! Everyone’s coming!” When Onta threw himself onto his back, he bit his lip, and the arm pointing toward the clifftop trembled violently, tracing futile circles in the air. He couldn’t bear to watch alone; in a daze, he had unintentionally slid down to this spot. Earlier, when Tagami and another had attempted to climb up here as usual and enter along the garden path with the aim of visiting Yuriko,

"They had been utterly overwhelmed by the truly outrageous scene!"

“So this Mr. Fuji really was her lover after all.” “So he showed up, huh?” Onta held his breath and glared up at the clifftop as though he had perceived everything. “The Maribuchi Yuriko Love Prevention Club will be destroyed tonight!”

Kujirai, together with Tagami, were in the midst of informing Onta about their discovery of the most passionate romantic scene at Yuriko’s window when the rest of the “club members” arrived. They had conceived a club under that very name and sworn to protect their Diana’s virginity to the bitter end.

When Tagami and Kujirai, having made an appointment to dance, made their way along the beach up to Yuriko’s house, they found a three-sided bathroom with glass doors—jutting out into the grassy garden in a structure designed to overlook the sea—blazing with light, Yuriko’s shadow cast upon its frosted glass. Realizing they had arrived too early, the two politely covered their eyes and were smoking tobacco in the gazebo at the corner of the garden when Yuriko suddenly began to sing. “Looks like she’s coming out!”

When the two turned around, Yuriko—wearing pajamas—darted swiftly down the hallway, and the light in her room directly across from the gazebo flared on. Since her family resided in Tokyo, Yuriko—now the sole occupant of this spacious house—could always be found by garden visitors in her illuminated room.—Yet now, when a light also came on upstairs and the two looked up, their eyes caught the shadow of a man leaning against a rattan chair in the corridor, leisurely smoking. Though his facial features were unclear, he was evidently a tall and impressive man who seemed to be eagerly awaiting Yuriko’s appearance; he stood up and began pacing back and forth along the corridor. Downstairs, Yuriko’s figure—wholly absorbed in dressing before the mirror—was clearly reflected on the curtain, through whose gaps glimpses of her pulling on stockings could intermittently be seen.

As soon as Yuriko finished dressing and went upstairs making her pure white dress skirt flutter, the man suddenly spread both arms and lifted up his lover. "Well, gentlemen? There can be no room for doubt." "On the man's lap she'd fluttered like a startled bird—then went completely limp!" Kujirai and Tagami heaved their deepest sighs. "And then?" The three men leaned forward in unison.

“Gentlemen, I leave it to all your imaginations!”

“After a suffocating scene lasting nearly an hour… Though to be precise, during that time she had fought with considerable resistance—”

“Several times we braced ourselves to jump in and rescue her, but…” As the first two took turns hurling their words, the other three followed suit, “Did she not scream?” and “Why doesn’t she resist with all her might!” they now belatedly postured, while others declared: “Major incidents do tend to erupt on hazy moonlit nights.” “And if that were to be her end…”—plunging a blade into my own throat as I spoke. As their circle formation began to falter,

“The man stood up holding the woman who seemed completely spent, and—” Kujirai’s voice made them sink into silence again. “Tagami, keep going—I can’t take this.” “Do you gentlemen know her bedroom?” “On the second floor of the study—under the window facing parallel to the sea—there’s a bed lying there.” “She’d often open that window wide and read in bed.” “It was originally meant as a sanatorium...” “No, no—that sunroom we’d never think to call a bedroom! That bright second floor where even we never imagined such things... Isn’t she being carried there right now by that man?”

“The man quietly laid her on the bed and drew shut the green curtains.” “We couldn’t just charge in—she wasn’t even struggling anymore!”

“Leaving a daughter all alone in a house like that—what kind of family does that? Just what the hell is her father thinking!”

When one of them finally gave vent to their righteous indignation,

“Naturalist bourgeoisie, no doubt!” and “Or her legal parents, perhaps!” “An American jump, no doubt!” The commotion escalated into such uproar that they finally began showering curses upon Yuriko.

“Completely outsmarting us—maybe even inviting us to dance was all part of her scheme to flaunt this.”

“No matter how we think about it, this resentment in our hearts won’t clear—so why don’t we all sneak into the garden now and sing something—” “No—we’re utterly wretched, truly defeated.” “Why don’t we just lose ourselves in utterly decadent dreams and play her funeral dirge right here!” insisted some, while others stubbornly demanded to first identify the man’s true identity and further observe Yuriko’s movements— While they had split into two factions—those who insisted, “If we can save her, we must save her!” and those who opposed them—arguing amongst themselves, Onta, who had gone out on a precautionary scouting mission, returned and—

“The entire house lay silent like a coffin—buried in the depths of the moonlit night.”

Having reported this, he clutched his head in both arms. And at that moment when the entire group, maintaining ineffably grave expressions, huddled together and were heaving sighs—

“Oh, everyone’s here!” From above the club members’ heads, Yuriko uttered in a hushed voice. Then she, in her nightclothes, lowered her voice further: “It was terrifying! I finally managed to escape here.”

Having said that, since it was dangerous here, she hurriedly ran off to hide behind the boats over there.

III

“Well… you see, Papa suddenly came. When I said we should invite everyone over to play, he glared at me like this—”

Yuriko pressed her rounded fingers against both eyes,

“He said, ‘Absolutely not!’” “And he did it just like this!” “Those guys are all delinquents—outrageous!” “—and then in this terribly loud voice…”

Amidst the hulls of boats piled with mountains of nets, Yuriko was surrounded by the men like a pirate leader. “When you put it like that, I suppose we’re not exactly upstanding citizens either.” “I kept thrashing about on Papa’s lap, screaming ‘No! No!’—but he absolutely wouldn’t let go!”

“For a Lady to throw a tantrum on Papa’s lap is just too sweet, man.”

“Why yes, he dotes on me ever so much—if I just thrash about like that, he’ll generally do whatever I say.” “He still thinks I’m just a child, you know.”

Twenty-something? Even so, the listeners found themselves strangely imagining this lady—who should be about their own age—perched on someone’s lap, whether Papa or whoever else, acting spoiled and coquettish, their hands gripping tight with uneasy fascination. “And yet today of all days, he simply won’t allow it no matter what.” “He just carried me in his arms all the way to the bedroom, told me to take off this kimono and go to sleep!” “Because he did!” Upon hearing her explanation, the listeners inadvertently exchanged glances, but none among them could muster the resolve to confess their own outrageous commotion. The group recognized that their faces had frozen in shame due to their indecent imaginings.

“We’ve gone completely out of our minds!”

Onta muttered belatedly, with feigned innocence, “Maybe it’s the weather’s doing?”—“A blunder of overexuberance!”—“Let’s just go home and sleep.” They merely muttered in unison, unbearably self-conscious.

“Onta-chan, lift that plank for me, won’t you?”

Told by Yuriko, he lifted the floorboard and peered into the boat’s bottom—

“Hey, there’s beer bottles lined up here!” He muttered without so much as a flicker of surprise, sounding oddly bored—Yuriko had hidden those things in the boat’s bottom at dusk so that when everyone grew tired of playing at home and came out to the seaside, they could gather here and toast! Even as Yuriko went on explaining all this, the group remained in a daze, not a single one of them lowering their hands. “Everyone, what’s the matter with you all? After I went through all this trouble escaping here and waiting so eagerly—what are you all dilly-dallying for?”

Then Whale, with haughty pride, “Ahh, we were really about to kiss her—just lost our nerve, that’s all.”

“Agh! Agh!”—He stood up on the net and kept taking these exaggeratedly deep breaths endlessly. Following suit, the other “club members” simultaneously aligned their chests and gazed up at the moon, then imitated real whales to exhale their breath in a roaring torrent.—Then this time, as if their very personalities had undergone a sudden transformation in exchange for all that came before, they began frolicking boisterously, each vying to be first in snatching up cups—a lavishly florid toast it was indeed.

The group all at once transformed into devils of drunkenness, as if— “Let’s dance! Come on!” Shouting such things, they went hopping down onto the sand. Yuriko tried to join them, but when she looked, their dancing had already devolved into a chaotic brawl—nothing but noisy roughhousing. While letting out incomprehensible shouts amid their commotion of punching, kicking, and throwing—now utterly uncontrollable—Yuriko stood rigid by the net and simply watched. A faint breeze carrying moonlight blew directly at her—stripped to a single gauzy robe—making her white garment flutter like smoke until only the vivid contours of her body remained visible. In that moment, her form equaled a nude statue.

She watched the preposterous commotion beneath her with a dreamlike countenance, as if entranced by her very self bathed in light and wind.—The strangely drunk men, still clinging together in a scrum while casting furtive glances at Diana’s statue, gradually began rotating across the sand in a windmill-like vortex of frenzy.

IV

At that moment, Onta—who had been struck in the bridge of the nose by someone’s fist and suffered cerebral anemia—remained bedridden for three or four days, unable to rise from his pillow. Seeing that no one else appeared thereafter, they too must have all been injured. Yet for Onta himself, looking back now, having acted out such a frenzied state felt unbearably mortifying—for the time being, he even felt reluctant to face his comrades. ——Still, imagining how at that rate the party members, cowed by Yuriko’s phantom image, might soon perform any manner of absurd antics, Onta found it uncannily dreadful to picture how they would look when her marriage was eventually announced.

That night, her father had apparently visited in part to discuss her marriage, but Yuriko dismissed such talk with a tone of refusal, "But I believe marriage must come from love to have any meaning at all," she had said. It was then—so the object of her affections was among us after all! That was what they thought! "If she's to choose from among club members," declared Tagami, "I want her to decisively single out one man without sparing the others' feelings! In such an event, we've even established a strict rule requiring all other members to transform into gentlemen overnight—so cast away this useless bashfulness!"

The one who resolutely voiced what was in each of their hearts that night was undoubtedly Tagami! Then she shrugged her shoulders cheerfully,

“That’s something I too have been considering…” And nod in agreement she did! “Then does Miss Yuriko’s beloved truly exist among us?” He had frantically pressed his question, hadn’t he! “That’s most certainly correct.” “I shall announce it ere long.”

She had said it in an exaggeratedly bravado-filled tone, as though deliberately cloaking her sincere thoughts in a jesting manner. And as they gazed at her lush smile hovering about her, that commotion erupted! Onta spent his days and nights in this peculiar condition—recalling one thing after another, suddenly leaping up from his sickbed with eyes shining rapturously, only to let out groans from despair’s depths moments later.

“Papa says he won’t interfere at home anymore, so if I have a lover I should just say so plainly—there’s circumstances forcing us to hurry the marriage—I mean!” Onta kept restlessly mimicking Yuriko’s speech from that evening.

“She does nothing but let slip these meaningful tones—just how long does she plan to keep tormenting us, I wonder?”

It was not long after—one dusky evening—that a pink envelope reached Onta’s bedside as he wandered through dreams of “Heaven and Hell,” passing time in anguished torment.

"The lotus flowers had bloomed since I last saw everyone—I’d been all alone too, you know. Alone, thinking all sorts of thoughts... And I’d come to realize how dreary solitude could be." After such meandering continued for two or three pages in her smiling script,

“Onta, are you ill?” Onta’s lips trembled involuntarily. “I tried to visit you with lotus flowers.” “I made a bouquet.” “...But I think I’ll give that bouquet to you in my room—I’m sure you’ll come, Onta—”

Onta jumped up and continued reading frantically.

“If Papa is there, it won’t do—but at dusk, enter through the back gate from the beach and check the state of the lights.” “If the light isn’t on in the second floor, then Papa probably isn’t home—” “And if my window is lit, please whistle from under the wisteria trellis as a signal—casually, like someone taking a stroll, blow it softly. The Lorelei would be nice—such an old-fashioned scene befitting the village’s Romeo and Juliet.” “If that window remains dark, rest assured I’m in the bath—wait hidden beneath the wisteria trellis by the lantern until it brightens. And when the light comes on, whistle softly. Do that, and the window will open for you, Onta.” “I want to tell you a story about the window where lotus flowers bloomed—one that will become a memory to cherish for a lifetime.” “Well then, I'll be waiting!”

V

It was a dark evening when sea and land became indistinguishable. Onta dashed along the shore with the exhilaration of a ghost in ecstasy. If he had a bit more time, he might have considered stopping by Tagami and Mori’s places along the way, but with no mental leeway for such diversions, he found himself practicing the melody of an old children’s song he barely remembered, basking in a radiant feeling as though he had become the protagonist of a story.

He passed through the pine grove, climbed the narrow slope between stone walls, and crept along the lotus hedge—the back gate stood half-open. After stooping to pass beneath the hedge's lower branches and confirming no one was present, he quietly concealed himself in the shadow of a lantern beneath the wisteria trellis directly opposite Yuriko’s room. The window remained dark. No light showed on the second floor either. Fortunately, Papa seemed not to have visited. Only the bathroom window behind the azaleas across the pond to the right stayed faintly bright and misted over.

When Onta considered waiting here while she prepared her attire after bathing, he found the longer this interval lasted, the more enjoyable it became. He crouched frog-like at the stone lantern's base and stared fixedly toward the bathroom area. The wisteria clusters with tender sprouts—now mere inches from reaching the lantern's crown—were faintly visible in the bathroom's glow. Remembering how Tagami and the others had once claimed the garden afforded a complete view of the house's interior—how observing shadowy figures here would resemble watching kinetoscope images—Onta now found that night's events absurdly farcical, while the composed elegance of his current position felt almost too extravagant by contrast.

“I wonder what time the moon will rise?” Yuriko opened the bathroom window facing the sea, and Onta suddenly heard her voice speaking to someone.

"Oh! That's how it is—still completely dark!" From Onta’s diagonal vantage point, Yuriko’s figure—appearing to lean out of the seaside window—showed only the faint outline of her backlit profile, though she seemed to be exposing her flushed upper body to the breeze. Then, closing the window with a rough sound, the shadow reflected in the frosted glass sank once more into the steam. Onta thought—she likely still didn’t know he was hiding here; otherwise, even facing the opposite direction, she’d never lean out the window in such a state—and felt that if by chance she were to ask him later, he’d have to claim he’d arrived precisely when her window lit up! He felt that he would have to cover it up like that.

It was a quiet night so still it stole one’s breath, broken only by the occasional splash of carp leaping in the garden pond. If he were to whistle now, how crystal-clear its resonance would carry—he should probably blow with utmost care at an extremely low pitch——Onta held his breath intently, feeling himself being drawn into the unfathomable silence between waves. ……Before he knew it, he became aware that he had crept along the pond’s edge to beneath the bathroom window——The sound of shower water reached his ears.

"The kimono's been laid out, so bring it over here, please." The other night, she had apparently dashed naked down the hallway clutching a towel, but upon reflection—perhaps she was being cautious now that he had already arrived—Onta suddenly felt envy and jealousy toward Tagami and the others who claimed to have seen her like that. As Yuriko began to emerge onto the balcony-like corridor extending from the bathroom, Onta panicked and fled to the cliff edge along the lawn's border. Peering back cautiously from the tree shadows, he saw her just pressing a towel to her chest as she sat before a Western-style vanity, polishing her nails. Truly, it was as though gazing at a mermaid within an aquarium—only that brightness emerged as a resplendent stage amidst the darkness.

“Don’t move from the lantern’s shadow—it’ll be disastrous if someone spots you—” read words to this effect in the letter, but observing every gesture of this stage-bound mermaid offered an exhilarating spectacle beyond compare. While suppressing his tremors, Onta had discerned every last motion as she finished putting on her dress. Then circling widely around the corner of the lawn, he returned to the original wisteria trellis and secretly clutched his chest.

“Though I know not why, my heart grows desolate…” Onta drew a deep breath and envisioned that plaintive melody in preparation to whistle, nearly feeling tears of joy well up. His entire body trembled so violently from anxiety that he wondered, “How could I possibly whistle?” Unintentionally curling up like a bird tucking its head beneath its wing to sleep, he exhaled hot breath against his chest. “Fair maiden standing upon the rock…” Ah, for Yuriko’s sake I’d gladly lay down my life—how radiantly this passion must blaze forth, transforming into a plaintive whistle—he grew so enraptured by the dream of drifting drowsily upon flowing waters like a hot spring that his breath nearly ceased.

By then, the pale green curtain above his eyes was filled with bright light, and the shadow of the flower vase by the window stood out distinctly. Beneath the window, even a garden chair—apparently meant to serve as a stepping stool—was visible.

There, Onta suppressed all passion, grandly expanded his chest, drew in a profound breath, and—now losing himself in the dream of a flowing river, entranced by the vision of the maiden atop the crag—began whistling with lingering resonance. As the trembling melody, charged with all his longing, carried toward his lover’s window and he—now utterly absorbed—started sounding it ever more resoundingly: could it be his ears deceiving him? Yet even after his whistle ceased, the melody still hummed around him like mountain echoes swirling up—unwilling to fade.

When he strained his ears once more, it wasn’t an echo at all—from every shadowed nook, the same nursery tune whistling came welling up! Yet he still doubted his ears, and when he himself began to continue whistling, soon the whistles beneath the window aligned splendidly, transforming into a strangely lively chorus.

"......"

Yuriko, her smile overflowing, drew the curtain closed and beckoned with a wave of her hand. Then from behind the stone lantern, from the azalea roots, beneath the veranda railing, within the hedge of riotously blooming lotuses, and from behind the shrine at the pond’s edge, five human figures—resembling frogs, kappa, and thieves—danced out with comically stealthy steps, teetering unsteadily as they startled at each other’s presence yet remained forbidden from making a sound. Needless to say, they were the five members.

"......" “I’m so fond of you all, I’m sorry!” When surrounded by her companions—their faces caught between demon, demon mask, and clown—Yuriko had barely laughed out those words before letting loose a wail and collapsing weeping onto the lawn.

VI

When the wisteria flowers bloomed soon after, they were informed by letter of Yuriko’s marriage—a missive that spoke of her being sent at last to a stranger’s home without ever knowing love…… Yet strangely, not a single one of them so much as changed expression. They discovered a new "mermaid" at a dilapidated fishing house on the town's outskirts and became fierce rivals locked in intense competition. When the new mermaid Osato—wearing a tattered student cap, men’s shirt, and long boots—appeared at the morning and evening dragnets, they would gather from all directions, cling to a single rope, and lose themselves in net-pulling labor while chanting “Heave-ho!” in unison.

The sea grew increasingly purple with each passing day, the seagulls' wings standing out starkly white against the water. The net was mainly filled with sardines and horse mackerel, the lively commotion of gathering the spilled small fish on the shore bustling with activity.