Pathway to Japanese Literature

While listening to the distant roar of the sea, I was playing the accordion.
As its bellows fluttered against the tidal roar - now low, now high - piercing through the pallid void and flying away, my soul and dreams transformed into fragmented white butterflies that surmounted waves, tumbled through air, then cascaded toward the distant nothingness of open sea before vanishing.

I was singing the "Pirate" poem with my legs crossed on the desk and my head resting against the back of the chair.

“…… …… ……

Ours the wild life in tumult still to range

From toil to rest, and joy in every change.”

The room became a ship and was swaying.
The ship was hoisting its sails against the raging waves that crashed toward shore.
It was a tattered triangular sail.
Caught in the wave crests, the ship spun through the air.
The sound of the flapping sail cut through the wind with a roaring cry.

I have been seeking words of rebellion against nature.
Truly, how swiftly the days and nights had passed before this truly hollow mental landscape of mine——.

“May I come in，Ossian?”
“It’s pitch black! Turn on the light!”
It was the wife’s voice outside the door.

“Open the door and see. You’ll be astonished by how bright the moonlight is.”

I answered, placing the accordion on my chest and closing my eyes.

“Ossian! — I detested it, this business of finding our silhouettes in a room without even a light lit at night—”
“Such extravagant dreams—”

Her words vanished mid-utterance.

The lamp had extinguished itself when the oil ran dry.

“Then I’ll go fetch it from the shed. Have the container ready.”

At that moment, I hadn’t particularly wanted the light—but all that way!
When this struck me, I panicked and,

“If you want it so badly, go fetch it yourself…”

He kept squirming restlessly.
It was the fisherman’s storage shed.
The path wound along the cliff base below wheat-covered slopes, demanding three detours before reaching the cape’s midsection.

“Ossian!”

She drove her shoe tip into the door with full force.
I startled upright from my chair.
What a cramped, shadowy room—books and neckties and jackets and God knows what else—endless clutter caked in dust, every surface buried in chaotic disarray!

“Don’t get angry and wait—I’ll open the window now, find the oil can right away, then go by myself.
“As for the mill’s stallion—whether it’s already been put in the stable or not—I’m truly sorry, but could you go check on that?”

I flung aside the gloomy window curtain while leaping up from stepping on a saber and staggering after tripping over a brass horn.
And then, by the moonlight streaming in, crawling on all fours, I barely managed to find the oil can that had rolled under the bed.

When I descended to the street, my wife was leaning against Dorian's neck—the draft horse hitched to a two-wheeled cart loaded with rice bales and withered grass—whistling a tune.

“After all, Dorian was about to make another empty cart run to the shed—the driver gleefully went off to the bathhouse.”

From the window of the communal bathhouse below the cliff—though grass sprouted, birds sang, butterflies danced; though spring had grown so tranquil—why was I so languid? Was it because poverty’s ceaseless gusts refused to abate, making labor bring no relief? Such meaningless songs along those lines—yet they resonated with a leisurely rhythm as if they were heartfelt sighs from the singers themselves—and when the songs paused, “Wahaha…” laughter swelled up in unison like a chorus.
The bathhouse chimney stretched pencil-sharp into the blue night sky, spewing smoke with a mocking visage that seemed to mimic their chorus.

"Instead of going to the shed, why don't we go all the way to the station?"

After gauging the time by moonlight, she said:

"The last train shouldn't have arrived yet."

Five days had already passed since Kyūrō had departed for Tokyo carrying my work titled "Ossian". As a day trip, Kyūrō was supposed to have returned. After Shichirō and Hachirō (myself included) had roundly berated Kyūrō, we borrowed the village office’s telephone to inquire at the magazine publisher, only to learn that they had handed over the money five days prior to a certain “Kyūrō” with a long chin and darting eyes.

Shichirō and Hachirō stood at either end of the ticket gate, thick arms crossed and shoulders squared like wrathful temple guardians, glaring down the station corridor. The two of them would appear here every day from dusk until the last train, standing with their arms crossed.

There were still two trains remaining until the last one—people disembarked sparsely, but Kyūrō did not appear.
The two men wordlessly gripped my hand tightly and, suppressing eyes brimming with tears, rushed out of the station.
When they turned into the back alley's side street, they separately entered the izakayas and cafés lining the eaves-aligned row.
Since I was abstaining from drink, I followed Hachirō and pushed open the coffee shop door.
Yet alcohol awaited even at that table—evidently Hachirō had interrupted his drinking to visit the station—and he now picked up his abandoned cup once more.
As the proprietor leaned from the coffee shop window, he pointed at Hachirō's back and told me how he'd repeated ten times daily that payment would come immediately if only Kyūrō returned—stacking cup upon cup—adding how this delay made him unbearably anxious.

Hachirō, tapping the table in a listless tone, was in the midst of berating my wife about how utterly flimsy Shichirō’s so-called romanticism was, and failed to notice the proprietor and I exchanging looks heavy with sorrow.
Hachirō was a Western-style painter who appointed himself a pragmatist.
He was a theorist who had cast aside all dreams and pretenses, possessing an iron will to analyze every natural phenomenon from the standpoint of monistic materialism.
We had all been artists dwelling in that house on the cliff's mid-slope, single-mindedly pursuing our respective creative paths—yet Shichirō and Hachirō alone had become aberrant zealots rigidly adhering to opposing doctrines, now transformed into such bitter adversaries that they would absolutely never exchange ordinary conversation, only hurl insults as interjections.
In every matter, the two men held differing opinions, their ceaseless clashes resembling ancient philosophers of fire and water who, amidst crossed swords, sought to perfect their arguments with sparks flying from their tongues.

"Let's just listen to this as a debate—" we would exclaim, frequently mediating their conflicts that teetered on the brink of physical combat. But from their perspective, this contained none of the naive indulgence implied by mere argumentation—being fundamentally rooted in mutual detestation of character, they now overflowed with an incurable fury that demanded resorting to final brute force to wrestle and crush their opponent.

"We are champions of two historically warring factions, so we cannot cease until we crush our enemy's windpipe beneath our shields!"

“In many cases, two personalities being...”

I had once muttered timidly in extreme confusion.
“Regarding the contradiction that even within a single breast there remains constant conflict—”

As I began to say—the two men simultaneously,

“We’ve never felt any such contradiction!”

Shouting this, they dramatically tore open their chests in demonstration.
“Moreover, such contradictions are nothing less than the enemy of art!”
Defiantly declaring this, they pressed toward me in unison.
I secretly revered and envied them as extraordinary optimists.
Simultaneously, I suddenly felt ashamed of myself for maintaining seemingly harmonious relations with two such diametrically opposed personalities, plunging into a bottomless valley of melancholy.
During that period, I frequented the third floor of the cape barn, seeking foothold in the atmospheric realm born from the contact between landscape and mindscape, exhausting every ounce of my being to recreate my ghost within the forest shadows of potential “landscapes.”

The ghost of himself that climbed up and down an imaginary tower in the barn’s attic would be startled into a shudder whenever their arguing voices roused it from its reverie.
I absolutely did not tell them the content of that work.
We were moths of communal life fluttering around the lamp of my touted Platonic theory of Ideas, and though I too had named myself with terms like “Gray Moth”—oh, even recalling it makes cold sweat break out, so I shan’t repeat that epithet—I perched my wings firmly on the lamp’s cover,

“Then let me retract those contradictory words—instead, why don’t we disperse tonight without waiting for tomorrow, each seeking our own light? The fact that I receive equal affection from friends each wearing gowns of completely different colors will ultimately result in me turning white, I suppose.”

I proposed.

I was an insect-like being bearing pitiful dreams—so I regarded myself at that time.

“Gray Friend—”

Using the then-customary derisive nickname, A answered me.
“Then why don’t we wait for you to finish the work you’re currently engaged in, and then each of us set out on our own paths?”

“Let’s use that for travel expenses—split it four ways—”

The opinions of A and B coincided only once at this time.

“Agreed.”

And so, the gray moth agreed, its antennae quivering faintly.
He had been arguing to them that unless we shared all communal notions regarding material goods, we would be defeated by "Nature" as long as we sought dwellings within this pastoral landscape—

Before long, I grew tired of the name that meant "Gray Moth."
――I had no name.
I was a ghost.
While longing for a pleasant parting as soon as possible, I flew DORIAN and frequented the barn.

“Gray Moth—”

The wife had also grown accustomed to calling [me] that.
“I do wish we could go to the capital soon and frequent dance halls.”

“I’ve stopped using that name.”
“Forgive me.”

“Then what should I call you now?”
“The hero’s name still isn’t settled.”

“...A ghost! Ah!”

I sighed.
It had been my custom until then that only after settling on a name first—once even I myself and those around me had grown accustomed to using it without that nervous edge—would I finally complete a tale where that protagonist took center stage.

“You worthless bastard should drop dead! Can’t you hear me here arguing with such passion?”

There had been an instance just days prior when my upright uncle came to censure my reckless way of living—jabbing my chest and finally delivering a solid blow to my head—yet I felt no pain whatsoever, for each time he shouted “Shin’ichi! Shin’ichi!” between phrases, it seemed he was calling some stranger’s name.

Into the gray dream, “Words” began to slowly descend.

The contours of the landscape viewed from the barn window settled into individual frames, and from beneath those same frames welled up scenes that never grew old. A horse bathing in the shallows, drinkers at the work camp, the shadow of a nude figure rowing a boat, fish glinting in nets, a distant island, a flock of seagulls—in each of these I sensed "myself." I felt the gate leading to a dream of Muou.

……But I had already reached my end.

Before the confidence of Hachirō and the others—who harbored neither delusion nor contradiction—each time I found myself, I became a demon struck by light and was driven to despair's abyss. I felt this as blasphemy against nature.
―I could no longer resist titling that work which had begun to panic me so intensely as Ossian.
“False Poet”
This was meant to signify “False Poet.”

At the table with the lamp at its center where everyone had just begun their evening meal, I came tumbling in,

“I am Ossian.”

He declared and momentarily collapsed.

When asked about its meaning, I was in unbearable agony, but I stubbornly insisted, “It’s just my name for now—names don’t need meanings!”
That none came forth to correct the etymology was fortunate for me—yet since then, as they smoothly adopted it for my personal appellation, each time I was addressed thus I found myself struck by lightning bolts of humiliation.
I had never regarded myself as a “false poet.”
I did not hate my ghost enough to banish it by branding it with the disgraceful name of false poet.
And yet I had come to despise this aimless state of mind of mine that seemed to hold equal interest in both the idealist and materialist factions of Hachirō and Shichirō—enemies and allies alike.
Like a ship that destroyed Andō’s measuring device and was swallowed by a tornado, left stranded, my ghost—bearing winds of “dream” and “reality” on each wing—made me fear that my very self would split in two.
Cowardice and depravity were whipped.—Even so, I—I who had given myself such a derogatory name—was struck by these mocking voices echoing from behind, my dreams extinguished with each occurrence, my words cut off, suffocating in the vacuum tube of contradiction.

Nevertheless, I somehow managed to finish the manuscript, and when spring came—could enduring these feelings perhaps become a thread tracing the beginnings of the next work's dream?—I perceived this faint semblance: a wisp of such murmurs barely rising tenuously.
When I closed my eyes, what rose before all else was that chimney of the mineral spring bath beneath the cliff, its disgustingly vivid outline loathsome to behold—a sight I found both pitiful and absurd.
No other dreams followed.
In a solitary room, whether I sang or attempted swordplay, merely continuing life as it was remained endlessly melancholy.

“Hey—Mr. Ossian!
“The moon has risen, and time grows urgent.”
“Quit gawking at those gloomy realists’ faces—come to the station with me.”
“Like a lone skiff beneath the setting sun by western hills—ah! At last I’ve won the tavern keeper’s trust! Let me regale you with my eloquence as we walk!”

From outside came Shichirō’s voice—"Ever following sail shadows to depart, reaching far to touch the vast heavens’ vigor!"—he bellowed!
In such fine fettle, they raised a mighty ruckus.

"That did sound interesting…"

Intoxicated by Shichirō's booming voice—as if "reaching the vast heavens' momentum"—I staggered to step out, when Hachirō seized my shoulder with demonic force.

“It’s no good, I tell you.”
“If you get swept up by those songs and link arms with that fool, it’s no different than riding a gas balloon with its tether severed—who knows where you’ll drift! Didn’t your revered Faustus say it himself?—fall for those drunkards’ chatter and you’ll forget how the firewater of your own making burns you alive. As for them? They’re content with scraps of wit, like kittens batting at their own tails. So long as tavern keepers trust them, so long as their pains stay unvoiced, they’ll keep spinning round in festival frenzy year after year—utterly besotted!”

"That’s not the doctor’s words—it’s the 'wings that snuff out love and light,' those very 'lines of temptation'—I realized, but without even a moment to correct him, and excited by the allure of Shichirō’s voice, I dragged Hachirō along as I slipped out the door."

“Just shake off Hachirō!”
“That sour-faced materialist bastard—trying to recruit friends as your sneaking-drinks road companion won’t fly, you know.”

Shichirō cursed at Hachirō while pulling on my arm from one side.

“You said it—who’s the thief here? You’re the one spreading rumors that Ossian’s wife fell for my songs and begged for kisses, you clueless drifter! Some beggar poet bastard getting all puffed up over someone’s casual kindness—”

Hachirō, still grasping my right arm, raised his leg toward Shichirō.

“Walk home in nothing but your ragged shirt—”

As their quarrel intensified, they kept wrenching my arms left and right while trading kicks between every volley of insults.
The blows failed to reach their targets, instead alternately striking my buttocks.
With my arms nearly dislocating from their sockets and me involuntarily leaping at each kick as their central axis, they spun round like a windmill in ceaseless pursuit.
The wife listlessly followed this human windmill while halfheartedly brandishing a whip.
Having always viewed so-called artists as nothing but drunken neurasthenics, she remained perpetually unfazed no matter what commotion arose.
She thought them all mad narcissists.

The turbine's rotation grew increasingly faster until I could no longer distinguish between Hachirō and Shichirō—or even myself. In the ferocious whirlwind, I heard growls of "Ugh!" and "Damn you!", saw two faces as blue as watermelons, and let out my own screams of pain—the round moon multiplied before my eyes. The distant lights here and there appeared like golden snow.

Under the railroad underpass, when we heard the train's sound, we scattered and ran off in all directions.

Kyūrō did not appear even for the last train.

The three fragmented windmills, once loaded onto the carriage, gaped open and gazed up at the moon.
The wife was whistling on the coachbox.
Dorian's hoofbeats clattered sharply along the country road.

With my chest heaving like an accordion, I finally caught my breath and—

"What a terrible bastard!"

I groaned.
"Even if I bundle up Shichirō and Hachirō's fighting words and hurl them at Kyūrō's face, I still won't be satisfied!"

“Even after witnessing that brazen thief right before our eyes—”

Hachirō groaned, and Shichirō too—
“He’s a decadent!”
he shouted.
What sort of man gazes upon this wretched thief yet still drinks to Kyūrō?
When the driver muttered sarcastically, the two men betrayed looks of bewilderment—Hachirō hastily offered to take the driver’s place, while Shichirō in a pitiful voice recited what might be called a mournful elegy, making liquor the receptacle for his sighs and tears.
My voice cursing Kyūrō grew steadily louder without respite, which seemed to gradually pain even those two men—yet I couldn’t hold back.

"Even if we meet again, I won't speak to Kyūrō anymore—I've come to hate everything about that bastard."

Without thinking, I struck Hachirō's head with my right fist and twisted Shichirō's ear with my left hand.
"And then—You idiot! Fool! Fool!"
I shouted.
Dorian, accustomed to my voice, suddenly quickened his pace.
Though I had always considered Kyūrō's novels somewhat more valid than Hachirō's paintings or Shichirō's poetry, I was shocked to find even his work now appearing tainted through such motives.
Kyūrō—by nature devoid of any assertions and receiving treatment from the other two akin to my own position—was someone with whom I had felt a peculiar kinship; yet now that very feeling had transformed into a grotesque shadow within my breast.
Kyūrō and I had once joined hands and even vowed to journey together.
That I—of all people—would seize this moment to thoroughly curse him... How could I feel no shame as myself? Hypocrite! Hypocrite! Hypocrite!
And so I tried to loose an arrow into my own breast, yet this idiotic agitation refused to subside.

Only Kyūrō’s spiteful face, banishing all dreams, remained seared into my retinas.

From the next day onward, I borrowed oil once more and set to work on a short story titled "The Man Who Reviles" in my room.
To Zoilas—I had already transformed myself by that day, discarding Ossian in an instant without even needing time to grow accustomed to the new title.
As I wrote it down, I read it aloud to my fellow members.

Zoilas (400–305 BC)—ah, that misanthrope rhetorician was an exceptionally long-lived figure.
He dedicated his entire life to denouncing Homer—so much so that his very name became an abstract noun meaning "the man who reviles"—his hatred for Homer’s poetry—
To emphasize his denunciations of Homer, he compiled every adjective from various languages into eight volumes of writings, authored seven rhetoric manuals, expounded his pessimistic philosophy in five books, and cast the wings of his influence as far as Schopenhauer.

My "Zoilas" was completed in a single breathless burst after three days and nights without sleep or rest.

"You've clearly grasped reality."
"To discover such a state within one aspect of you brings rare delight."

Hachirō picked me up and spun me round and round about the room.
He promptly vowed to rush to the capital and convert it into cash.
The author of "Zoilas," lying feverish upon his bed, bid farewell to this new emissary.
Hachirō donned my only suit—the very one I'd worn until that day—while my wife's coat provided our travel funds.
When she sneered that should Hachirō return late, "Zoilas" would have no choice but to venture out wearing the Indian gown hanging on the wall as decoration—he assumed an indignant expression and—

“I am not Kyūrō—I am a materialist who knows nothing of caprice.”

He set off with a swing of his arm.
And he promised the evening train the next day.—The following night, Shichirō and my wife, who had waited until the last train, stood vainly by my bedside.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

I urged the two of them outside. I found it rather inexplicable that not even a shadow of anger pierced my breast—it was likely the result of having poured every last bit of invective and resentful rhetoric I had been granted into that single work "Zoilas," or so I imagined.

As for the particulars of Shichirō's subsequent flight—which he soon carried out as well—I no longer felt any interest in recounting them.

I had been surrounded by a multitude of "revilers"—my creditors—and transformed into a wood owl trapped in a cage. I secretly scrutinized whether there might be any novel rhetorical phrases within those people's vocabulary of insults. They merely described me as an extraordinary immoralist—exactly as I had reviled Kyūrō—shouting the same refrains of "utterly unspeakable wretch," "crowd more brazen than thieves," and "spare us your talk," repeatedly declaring severance of ties. Among them was a banker who had once sworn lifelong friendship with me, raising our cups high together. There was a landlord who had believed in my character and vowed to journey together through life. There was a ranch owner. There was a brewer who insisted that if I had any income, he would only require me to contribute one-fifth of it and continue maintaining sake barrels in our household's dining room. Just as Shichirō and Hachirō had explained to the bar owner, I too had made promises to them of "Once Kyūrō returns—" and thus accumulated numerous debts. "Once Hachirō returns—" "Shichirō will…"

Night—I took my wife’s arm and fled down the cliffside road.
When I turned to look back, the windows of the moonlit rooms were all flung open outward in unison, shadows of countless Zoilases crisscrossing wildly within.
As if staging some grotesque relocation, silhouettes laden with belongings converged beneath the central window.
A man clambered onto a makeshift platform and planted a table before him.
People formed a ring around it.
Those shadows sharpened into focus—shouting incoherently, fists shaking skyward, limbs jerking in mock-dance.
—My impeachment must be beginning!
Still clutching my wife’s hand as I stared blankly upward, I realized what the platform man had seized—my rusted fencing saber.
He struck a kabuki-esque pose, brandishing it overhead with clownish ineptitude.
A guffawing chorus erupted.
The man kept flailing the saber while bellowing unintelligibly until—as if possessed by sudden fury—he hurled it through the window.
The blade clattered down at my feet.

The man next lifted the heavy trunk with two others.
“Is that a speech? Or perhaps magic practice? What peculiar people—” My wife and I tilted our heads in puzzlement, but as hanging scrolls appeared, vases were carried about, and we watched these items pass through the hands of those around us, I finally—

“It’s an auction.”

I realized.

“Ah, I want that necklace—how should I ask for it?”

My wife clung to me, her voice trembling.
—I suddenly turned toward the window,

“That’s a fake too!”

I bellowed.

The man had been temporarily discarding unsold items onto the terrace below the window, but since the stone wall repairs had left it dismantled, everything he threw out tumbled down to our cliffside position.
They who surged through the front gate in great excitement remained oblivious to these dark rear proceedings.
Thus we had been successfully collecting various cast-off items since earlier.
I now wore each successive American indigenous bird helmet tossed our way upon my head, clad in a grass-woven gown embroidered with totem patterns, a saber hanging at my waist and a vermilion crow mask clenched between my teeth.
My wife stood swathed in an Algerian mantle resplendent as a white peacock—its snowy base vivid even at nightfall, stitched with trumpet flowers—flourishing an elegant feather fan while clutching a walnut-hued Rigal under one arm, her feet bound in suede sandals adorned with what I'd described as cloisonné.
Through gaps in her mantle flickered glimpses of green velvet tights embroidered with verbena arabesques, their tie-dyed bands undulating like flames.
These costumes—crude imitations of Old Norman tribes we'd fashioned from colored paper and curtains for last spring's masquerade ball—had been rolled into a basket that our creditors inspected before exclaiming "Just trash!" and flinging them out.
Thus I must clarify that my earlier descriptions of "cloisonné-inlaid splendor" referred merely to paint and dyed thread—though truthfully, lacking coats against the chill night air, these paper mantles proved essential indeed.

“But...” I groaned under the crow mask while respectfully placing a hand on her shoulder.
I felt a hot tear dripping down my cheek.
While repeating “Creation, creation—” over and over, I came to feel unbearably guilty for causing nothing but such hardships even to my companion who possessed the most ordinary of emotions.
I had wanted to tell her how magnificent her attire was—how walking through this serene misty moonlight made it seem as though the world’s most blissful great king and queen were strolling through their gardens—but my words utterly failed me.

“What’s wrong, Ossian! — Could you be hungry?”

“That’s right—”
“But what about you—more than me?”
“If walking pains you, rest on my arm...”

“…………”

She silently bowed her head like a girl who had been whispered words of love—.

After sending spiteful winks toward the window, we took each other's hands and withdrew from the spot.
The sensation of sandals treading on green grass was as smooth as walking on clouds, making it easy to forget our hunger.

When we circled around to the entrance, a Dorian with an empty carriage—who could have ridden it here?—was waiting there, so I took the reins and urged her into the seat.
She gathered the hem of her mantle and, with modest reserve, became a passenger in the carriage.

We headed for the cape's storehouse as planned.
Discussing how those bearing the purchased goods would notice the missing carriage and be thrown into confusion, we circled the wheat field's foothill and followed the cliff path.
Above the cape's fish lookout tower ahead hung a full moon.
The black cape's ridge undulated like bat wings, and beyond where distant cliffside waves echoed, there stretched a boundlessly silent moonlit night devoid of any moving shadows.

I had begun feeling something akin to intoxication growing stronger each moment.
A drowsy sensation kept pressing down on my eyelids even when open.
Each time, I cracked the whip through air above Dorian's head.
—The moon hung low at the round watchtower's midsection before my eyes.
The tower abruptly narrowed into that pencil-like chimney—just as I glimpsed smoke—then smoothly floated upward to circle a giant clock dial cleaving the firmament, while the moon transformed into a pendulum tracing languid arcs.—For no reason, I found myself recalling that moon I'd once seen when becoming a windmill.
And how much more resplendent that moon had been!
Such thoughts came.

At the fishing ground’s plaza, a large bonfire had been lit, with people drumming on barrels, others dancing, and a swirling chorus creating tremendous uproar. When they noticed our carriage arriving, they all raised a cheer that soared to the heavens and welcomed us joyfully.

It was a bountiful fishing festival.
—There stood a blue demon.
There loomed a tengu.
There lurked a red oni.
Everyone had poured their efforts into elaborate disguises and reveled wildly.
Mistaking us for dancers who had joyfully rushed to this festival, they pulled us unresisting into that whirlpool and thrust cups and dishes of food at us from all directions.
Soon regaining our composure, we blended into the Carol dancers whirling about to the great ensemble—conch shells and drums and flutes and handbells and gongs all clashing and clamoring together.

Had the moon looked that way because of hunger—I wondered.

“Starting tomorrow, I intend to serve as the observer on that watchtower.”
“You must become my assistant.”
“Oh, how happy!”

And my dance partner raised a voice of joy beside my cheek.
“Ossian—you are the brave husband of this humble wife.”

I was secretly startled to realize my manner of speech had become womanly.
Ever since Kyūrō and the others had gone—with my wife becoming my sole interlocutor between heaven and earth—had I unwittingly succumbed to her influence and transformed thus?!
I thought.
I came to realize how all those varied scenes before my solitary eyes since then—neither dream nor reality—each framed as if in a picture frame, were affecting my heart with their novelty.
I did not fear this influence; I had recognized it as an illusory gate revealing the path ahead to the “ghostly psyche.”
Within my chest swirled the ecstatic din of spring night—piercing through bonfires, swallowing choruses, devouring every visible form—a breath that magnificently conquered nature, overflowing with vital force.

“Ossian! Will you still call me that way starting tomorrow?”

She had noticed how everyone moving about the fishing ground addressed each other with peculiar yet clear and simple nicknames, and abruptly asked me this.

“I’d forgotten—the watchtower attendants have special nicknames that’ve been passed down through generations. Let’s ask Mr. Doraken later. Since everyone will likely start calling me that from tomorrow, you should intend to do the same...”

As I danced and looked up at the tower, I saw that the lookout there alone was not joining the festival, adjusting his glasses and watching over the sea.

“Why don’t we go ask right away? It’ll be fun.”
“And starting tonight, I’ll be changing my name too.”

Muttering such things as we climbed the spiral staircase, when we reached the room I had rented midway up, from within came ferocious snoring—so savage it might well have been mistaken for a wild beast's slumber—roaring and rumbling with bestial intensity.

This room—absolutely none but myself may enter—is my literary study.

"This is burglary without a doubt."

Having reached this conclusion, when I slowly opened the door, I involuntarily let out an "Ah!"
I cried out and recoiled.
—For before I could be astonished that those collapsed there raising thunderous snores were Kyūrō, Hachirō, and Shichirō—the three men—I was stunned by how their sleeping forms resembled corpses fallen from a high tower's summit.

Kyūrō had spread his legs like a compass, propped one leg against the wall, lay supine with his chestnut-burr head rolled beside a sake bottle, grasping at empty space.
Hachirō lay prone in a turtle-like position, flattened out near Kyūrō’s head, scratching at the tatami with a rake bent like a demon’s claw.
Shichirō lay spread-eagled in an arrogant recline, his fingertips hooked under the lower jaw of his gaping mouth, in a deep sleep with both half-open eyes staring vacantly like glass eyes.
Pillows were scattered in every corner, sake bottles and dishes haphazardly overturned; amidst this, the three men raised volcanic snores.
Each and every one bore painfully evident marks of extreme fatigue, their cheeks hollowed and eyes sunken.
That made me associate it with how we looked after our creative work.

I was correcting their sleeping forms one by one, arranging pillows, and searching for covers out of concern that they might catch cold.—Algeria's Mantle, having proceeded ahead unaware of these events, seemed to be calling my new name repeatedly from the watchtower, but between the square's commotion and the thunderous snores of three men, my ears could never quite discern it.My behavior as I moved about attending to the three sleeping figures with concern—though resembling a primitive tribe bearing fearsome sabers—was nevertheless as gentle as a woman's.