Pathway to Japanese Literature

At the ×× Village Elementary School, they had the elderly janitor prepare meals while Principal Tanabe regularly handled night duties. Instead, tea expenses and newspaper costs for the staff room were covered from the night duty allowance. The night duty allowance was set at eight sen per night. With tea at one and a half kin costing ninety sen and newspapers including postage tax at fifty sen, deducting these left a remainder of one yen; combined with freely using the school’s charcoal and kerosene while paying no rent, Principal Tanabe inevitably made a monthly gain of five yen. Senior Teacher Konokida was calculating this in his mind. It may not have been because of that, but whenever Principal Tanabe encountered some incident preventing him from night duty, Senior Teacher Konokida inevitably faced complications. The role of substitute always fell to Kōda, the substitute teacher. The other staff member, Fukutomi—being a female teacher—was naturally exempt from night duties.

That day too, when Principal Tanabe announced he would go out to urge absent students to attend, Konokida said the spring silkworms at his house had begun spinning cocoons that morning and briskly began preparing to leave.
Principal Tanabe, having had some older students wait to guide him, hurriedly polished his shoes and set off.
As he was about to depart, he came over to Kōda’s desk and,

“Well then, I’ll be off briefly—I must ask you to handle matters once more,” he said.

“Yes.”
“Take your time.”

“I had meant to have Mr. Konokida take night duty today, but he made such quick work of leaving,” said the principal, smiling apologetically with crow’s feet crinkling at his eyes. He carefully undid the hooks of his winter coat, took up a staff fashioned from a mountain birch branch, and stepped outside.
It was an afternoon in late June.

The principal’s retreating figure could be seen through one of the staff room windows as he walked toward the gate. The way he ceremoniously placed that faded German cap on his head never failed to look absurd. He always walked like a beriberi patient, dragging his feet.
Kōda found him somehow pitiable.
Then immediately thought it ridiculous.
Just yesterday, that meddlesome County Inspector had come round to deliver his usual litany of complaints. At the time, he’d declared this school’s attendance rate ranked fourth from last among all twenty-nine schools in the county. This too, he’d said, stemmed ultimately from the staff’s negligence in pursuing absentees. The responsibility lay with none other than the principal, he’d concluded.
The good-natured Principal Tanabe had bowed his head and murmured, “Oh, quite so.”
Hence today’s expedition to round up truants.

This attendance rate matter was impossible to handle.
Among the farmers in this area, there remained many who believed it better to keep children home minding siblings than send them to school.
This was especially true for girls.
If pressed diligently, they would send their children, but those who came only heard lessons halfway through and couldn’t properly grasp what was taught.
There was no enjoyment in it.
Even for the teachers, lessons became disjointed, causing real difficulties.
After two or three days, the children would naturally stop coming again.
Yet this meant no hope of raising the attendance rate.
Thus, teachers across the area all quietly tweaked their attendance registers.
They falsified the rates in their reports just shy of being caught in outright lies.
Even at this school, where Principal Tanabe had mastered some of these secret methods, they still ranked fourth from bottom.
It was truly unmanageable.
Kōda hadn’t known any of this initially.
Then something happened.
At March’s certificate ceremony, two students from Konokida’s class received perfect attendance awards.
Kōda chanced to overhear those two talking.

“I should’ve taken three days off,” one said.
“I’d taken about seven days off with everyone else too,” said the other.
And the two of them worried whether the teacher had made a mistake or what was going on.
At that moment, Kōda recalled two or three such instances.
So from the following month onward, he too put it into practice.
He was still doing it now.

Then came an incident of this sort.

One morning when Principal Tanabe complained of a stomachache, Kōda took charge and attended the class the principal oversaw.
When he tried filling out the attendance register, he found an entire week’s worth of entries completely missing.
When he asked the students about it, they said Mr. Tanabe only occasionally filled out the register.
Kōda secretly rejoiced.
He realized Principal Tanabe was doing it too.
Then he wondered whether Fukutomi, the female teacher, was also doing it—or if perhaps she wasn’t because she was a woman.
Once when only the two of them remained, he asked her directly.
Fukutomi’s expression turned solemn as she said, “I’ve never done such a thing.”
Kōda thought women were honest creatures.
And,

“Then you’re the only one who doesn’t do it.”
Fukutomi widened her eyes,
“Oh my, even Mr. Tanabe?” she exclaimed in surprise.
“Absolutely.”
“He’s been doing it plenty.”

So Kōda proceeded to explain everything from how he had first learned that secret technique.
Principal Tanabe rarely maintained proper attendance records yet unfailingly calculated precise rates for monthly county reports.
Dividing inaccurate attendance totals by equally flawed sums of absences could only yield more flawed percentages.
Even assuming no initial intent to falsify reports, reporting such figures as accurate inherently established criminal intent.
No principal—however benevolent or incompetent—would underreport precisely because of recognizing these inaccuracies.
Thus he concluded:
Educators as spineless and inept as Tanabe existed everywhere.
With him at its helm,
this village’s education system would remain hopeless from inception.
Therefore we too must handle troublesome matters with calculated negligence.
Then there was the County Inspector himself—a man true to form.
When rumors spread about his promotion,
he’d reportedly visited the magistrate daily bearing gifts.
The magistrate allegedly remarked,
"Do you crave inspectorship so desperately?"
Then added,
"Thanks to your gifts I drink free beer daily,
but once appointed you’ll stop coming.
Perhaps I’ll delay your commission awhile."
Though possibly apocryphal,
if such inspectors understood education’s essence,
the field itself would prove worthless.
That man surely believed students bowing at gates signaled moral virtue,
while ledger-stocked classrooms indicated administrative excellence.
Buying education journals en masse
and displaying them during inspections
would guarantee promotions—
this outcome being absolutely certain.
Far wiser than enduring his lectures
was having falsified attendance rates properly from outset—

Kōda applied this half-formed logic with the intense focus of a timid young surgeon first grasping a scalpel, his jaw clenched against barely contained outrage. That thick left eyebrow danced erratically—a rare sight indeed. Even when arguments forced themselves upon him, he’d deem full engagement foolish, deflecting with ill-timed laughter or sudden logical gambits meant to disarm opponents through humor. Earnestness came seldom; when it did arrive unbidden, those bushy brows would quiver anew. Fukutomi found herself drawn into his fervor’s undertow, listening with grave attention until his words spent themselves—

“That really is how it is, isn’t it? It’s much easier than foolishly going around pressing them like some honest fool, isn’t it?”

Then, before long came the day when they needed to compile that month's end-of-month report.

Kōda and Fukutomi left through the entrance together on their way home.
Kōda asked, “How about it? Did you use the secret method?”
The female teacher laughed as if tickled and,
“No,” she said.

“Why aren’t you doing it?” Kōda uttered in a tone that accused her of failing to do what she ought to have done.
Thereupon Fukutomi explained that this month’s attendance rate for her class was 62.444.
It was only slightly higher by two decimal points compared to last month.
In months when farm work grows busier and absences are bound to increase，raising the attendance rate any further would risk arousing the county inspector’s suspicions.
“Admittedly，” she explained，“should it ever fall below sixty going forward，I would certainly resort to that secret method too—there being no alternative.”
Kōda thought women were such petty-minded creatures.
Then Fukutomi assumed that fawning look again and said as follows.

“Actually, that’s not the only reason. If Teacher tells me such things but doesn’t do them himself, it would be unfair to have only me cornered like this.”

Kōda laughed—a dry, hollow sound. In his heart, he felt the sting of humiliation, as though she’d turned her face away to sneer at him. Damn! She really is getting old! The thought struck like a physical blow. Fukutomi was twenty-three—one year his senior. This exchange had occurred two months prior.

Kōda had found himself thinking about Fukutomi without consciously meaning to.
To call it “thinking” would be an overstatement—it was nothing substantial.
Despite being a young woman, Fukutomi wielded considerable intellectual rigor.
When exercising proper discernment, flashes of calculated self-interest would surface in her words and deeds.
For a twenty-three-year-old teacher training school graduate this might be ordinary enough, yet Kōda found it perplexing.
Having scarcely interacted with young women outside novels, he couldn’t reconcile their supposed cold rationality with his mental archetypes.
This cognitive dissonance perhaps stemmed from being raised by a pallid-faced hysteric of a mother and a sister—congenitally lame, perpetually unmarried at thirty—whose world never extended beyond needlework.
Among literary heroines, he felt deepest nostalgia for Toshiko from Reminiscences.
Yet even in his imagined Toshiko’s visage, no trace of reason lingered.
The same held true for Namiko from The Broken Commandment or Omiya from The Golden Demon.
He believed women’s intellectual-emotional development plateaued around such fictional exemplars.
Occasionally though—mid-conversation with Fukutomi—he’d glimpse flaws in this calculus.
Not that these revelations necessarily discomforted him.
He did endorse the notion that female teachers better suited lower elementary grades.
The rationale being their capacity for maternal affection toward impressionable children.
Yet observing Fukutomi at her lectern shattered this illusion.
From every angle—profile or full-frontal—she stood undeniably as pedagogue first.
Her instruction traded maternal warmth for five-step didactic rigor.

However, Kōda was not deeply pondering such matters.
He merely felt a strange sensation at times.
And when Fukutomi wasn’t there, he felt as though the school lost its vigor.
Fukutomi rarely took days off for something as trivial as a common cold, but she did take one day off each month around the beginning of the month.
“Ms. Fukutomi must take a day off every month without fail,” Konokida remarked on one occasion, laughing in a peculiar manner.
Upon hearing this, Kōda too found himself thinking, “Ah, that does make sense.”
Thereupon Fukutomi answered, “I have heavy menstruation, you see.”
Kōda felt as though he had been told something grave, and when he looked, the female teacher—after having said it—had reddened slightly in the face some moments later.
On days when Fukutomi was absent, Kōda would spend the day with a sense of dissatisfaction.
That was all there was to it.
They rarely visited each other’s private homes either.
He believed that in this village, aside from Fukutomi, there was no one else he could converse with.
This was indeed the case.
And he was certain it would never be anything more than that.

In the old, large house that seemed devoid of life, on nights when the sound of raindrops kept him awake, Kōda would feel a visceral pressure upon his nerves and conjure up delusions he couldn't voice to others. At such times, Fukutomi invariably became their focus. Envisioning the soft contours of her sloping shoulders and rounded hips, he would heap endless degradations upon her phantom form within his mind. Yet this existed only in those solitary moments. When encountering her daily at school, he remained perfectly composed. He merely sensed some unresolved tension between them—indefinable yet persistent—that seemed less about their individual selves than about man and woman as abstract concepts. Whenever his mother broached marriage matters, Kōda imagined some Toshiko-like woman from Reminiscences might exist somewhere in the world—a consideration entirely separate from any thought of marrying Fukutomi herself. Fukutomi was a sharp-featured woman with sallow skin.

Fukutomi played the organ for about thirty minutes to an hour each day after classes ended.
After that, she would prepare tomorrow’s lesson plans and organize that day’s attendance register before leaving.
Fukutomi always left later than everyone else, no matter the day.
The reason Kōda did not resent being occasionally asked by Principal Tanabe to stay behind was because of this.
While cleaning his pipe, Kōda listened to the organ sounds drifting from the first-year classroom beyond the student waiting area.
Amidst the bass and soprano tones that intertwined at an ambiguous distance—now rising, now falling as they drifted—Fukutomi’s unamplified voice swam, surfacing and submerging.
It wasn’t a particularly good voice, but it was rounded, calm, and warm.
“— Clinging to the Lord’s hand— / My body finds peace—” she sang.
Kōda thought she was at it again.

Fukutomi was a Christian.
She was a woman who often sang hymns.
Kōda, if anything, disliked Christians.
When he heard about things like religious faith or socialism, he felt they could do without such things.
And as for Fukutomi, he thought she must have become a Christian because she liked hymns.
Once the female teacher said that no matter how lonely or anxious she felt, if she read the Bible, her heart would naturally calm down, and she would come to want to thank God with pious sentiment for both the sun shining and the rain falling.
Kōda criticized that it was because she remained unmarried.
And he thought he had said something quite cutting.
Thereupon Fukutomi, with a serious face, said, “You too will surely reach a time when you must cling to God.”
Kōda disliked that elder-sisterly manner of speaking.

After a short while, the sound of the organ stopped.
Just as he thought it was about time for her to stop, there came a deep, resonant thud.
She released the air.
Then came the sound of the organ lid being closed.

Just as he thought, “Here it comes at last,” there seemed to be someone at the entrance.
“Excuse me,” the person was saying.
It was a voice he had never heard before.
When he went out to look, a short young man was standing there.
And,
“Are you the teacher here?” he said.
“Yes, I am.”
“Could I rest here for a moment?
I’m terribly exhausted.”

Kōda looked the man over from head to toe before replying. The hair had grown out to about an inch and a half. He had a face like an emaciated dog. One eye was smaller than the other. A cloth-wrapped bundle hung around his neck. Having hitched up the hem of his coarse indigo-splashed lined kimono—ruined by grime and dust—high around his waist, he wore an ox-hide belt instead of an obi. Beneath this hung white ogura-cloth trousers of generous cut, their baggy legs revealing bare feet clad in straw sandals. He presented a truly shabby appearance—a youth of about twenty years, standing just under five shaku tall. With the sleeve of his lined kimono, he wiped the sticky sweat beading on his narrow forehead.

“Just here to rest?” asked Kōda.

“Yes. Just resting would be enough. I’ve already walked ten ri today—that’s why I’m completely exhausted.”

Kōda briefly scanned his surroundings,
“Go around to the back,” he said.

When he went to check the custodian’s room, two or three neighborhood children had gathered there, writing something on their slates as they played. A large hearth was built into the wall, with a stool placed along its edge. Before long, the man entered, gave a slight bow, and attempted to remove his straw sandals.

“You can keep your shoes on.”

“I see, but unless I take off my straw sandals, it doesn’t feel like I’ve properly rested.”

With this, the man cast a look that begged for pity.
Thereupon Kōda,

“There’s a washbasin there.”
“There’s also water,” he said.
At that moment, the sound of Fukutomi’s footsteps crossing the spacious waiting area toward the staff room could be heard.
The children looked on with puzzled expressions at Kōda and the man.

The young man took off his straw sandals, stepped up, and sat on the stool.
Kōda, too, thought he couldn’t just leave things as they were, so he sat down facing him.

“Are you the teacher at this school?” the man said, repeating the same question he’d asked earlier.
However, the “you” he used had changed from formal to informal.

“Yes,” replied Kōda, finding the man’s blunt manner of speaking disagreeable.
And then, he felt ashamed of himself for working as a substitute teacher in such a rural backwater.
At the same time, he realized he had no tobacco and didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“Ah, I forgot my tobacco,” he muttered to himself.
When he stood and went to the staff room, Fukutomi—
“Did someone come?” she asked quietly.
“A beggar.”
“What about him?”
“He says he wants to rest awhile.”
Fukutomi gave Kōda a dubious look.
This school normally kept beggars at a distance.
Kōda retrieved his tobacco pouch and pipe before returning to the custodian’s room.
Now it was he who initiated questioning.

“Where did you come from?”

“From ××,” he answered, naming a bustling town located about forty ri to the north.

And, as if suddenly remembering,

“When I tried going around begging for the first time, it’s really quite tough, isn’t it?” he said.

Kōda had noticed the white ogura-cloth trousers earlier and had begun to suspect that this might be some destitute student.
Somehow, he also found himself wanting to talk to this man.
But he also felt it might be better not to speak.
Then, as if trying to prove as quickly as possible that he was no ordinary beggar, the man—

“I’m a third-year student at ×× Middle School.”
“I’m on my way back to my hometown now.”
“Because I have no money, I intend to beg my way back.”
“My hometown is Mito—a place about seven ri from Mito.”

Kōda did not think this man was lying.
However, he thought it rather geographically inconsistent for someone from Mito to be attending ×× Middle School.
He found even listening to this explanation tiresome.
And then he said this.

“Why are you going back?”

“My father died,” the student said with a serious face.
“I’ve been supporting myself and working my way through school up until now, you know…”

Kōda remembered that he too had returned from Tokyo because his father had died.

“When did he die?”

“Apparently about a month ago.”
“I didn’t inform my hometown of my whereabouts since coming to ×× last year.”
“I never imagined my father would die around this time.”
“So I had to ask around in Tokyo, and just the other day I finally managed to get a letter sent.”
“If I don’t go back, my mother will die too.”
“I have to go back now and support my mother.”
“I’ve had to quit school.”

Having said this, he narrowed his already small left eye even further and pressed his lips tightly together.
He appeared genuinely regretful about abandoning his studies midway.
Kōda once again thought that this man was not lying.

“Were you in Tokyo as well?” he asked.

“I was.”
“I was at K—— Middle School.”
“But K—— Middle School closed last year.”
“Don’t you know?”
“It should have been in the newspapers, you know.”

“Was that so?”

“That’s right. See? You remember what a commotion there was back then, don’t you?”

“Was there really that much commotion?”

“There was a commotion. We lost our school, you see.” And he went on to recount various incidents from that time in an amusing manner.

However, Kōda didn’t find it particularly amusing.
Yet he found it strange to hear about the Tokyo school’s commotion in a place like this.
The student finally explained that a certain teacher—who had served as vice-principal at K—— Middle School and taken an interest in him—had become principal at ×× Middle School, so he had relied on that man and come to ××.
He had been a third-year at K——, but at ×× Middle School there were no vacancies in the third-year class at that time, so they placed him into second-year.
He mentioned that in ×× as well, he had worked delivering newspapers.

Kōda suddenly remembered something.
And then he asked.
“At ×× Middle School, isn’t there a teacher named Yoda?”

“Yoda? Yeah, he’s there.”
“The math teacher, right? That bastard’s a real hardass with grades.”
“How’d you know about him?”

“I was at ○○ Middle School before.
“Then got driven out to ××.
“We staged a strike and—”

“Ah! So you’re a middle school man too?”
“Not normal school trained then.”

At this moment, Kōda once again felt displeased by this student’s presumptuous familiarity. Two years prior, he had graduated from ○○ Middle School and gone to Tokyo intending to enter higher school, but just as the entrance examinations were about to begin, his father fell critically ill and died, forcing him to return home. After that, he had repeatedly argued with his mother and even writhed in anguish alone, but was never permitted to go to Tokyo. Finding life unfulfilling, as he spent his days riding horses, he gradually came to view his entire existence as something that no longer mattered either way. When a vacancy arose at the village school, the village mayor—a relative—and his mother joined forces to persuade him, so on the condition that it would be temporary, he became a substitute teacher. At times he grew restless with the sense that he must do something drastic, yet found no purpose in what to do. In such moments, the world became nothing but grievances—unbearable grievances. When that passed, everything turned utterly absurd. Since Fukutomi had transferred here at the end of last autumn, he had ceased to agonize so much.

The student, upon hearing that Kōda was a middle school graduate, seemed to become visibly more at ease.
And,
“You there—terribly sorry—but might I trouble you for a smoke of that cigarette?
I haven’t had a smoke since yesterday.”
The student took the pipe Kōda handed over and smoked it with relish, puff after puff.
Kōda silently watched this, having grown tired of speaking with this student.
As he did so, he thought Fukutomi might have returned.
Then the student,

“I mean to get to ○○ City by today—d’you reckon I can make it?”

“It’s not impossible,” Kōda said brusquely.
The student studied his face.

“How many ri is it?”

“Five ri.”

“Still that far, huh?” said the student with a sigh.
And again, he hurriedly smoked his tobacco.
Kōda remained silent.

After a moment, the student raised his head resolutely. “You there—I’m truly sorry, but could you lend me some money?
“Once I reach my hometown, I’ll definitely repay you somehow. I’ve only got one yen on me now, but I intend to avoid using it as much as possible until I get there.
“If I don’t do that, I’ll feel uneasy, you see.
“Any amount will do.
“I’ll definitely pay you back—I’ve been staying at the shrine for three nights now, you see.
“Even staying at a wood-fee inn costs something, you see.”

Kōda felt his curiosity stir at the mention of staying at the shrine.
But more than that, he found himself almost gladdened by the thought that simply giving money would make this fellow leave.
When he went to check the staff room, Fukutomi still hadn’t gone home.
“Lend me some money—I’ll return it tomorrow,” Kōda said.
The female teacher,

“I’ve only got a little,” she replied while extracting from her obi an olive-colored purse knitted with lace thread and upending it onto the desk.
Two one-yen notes, one fifty-sen silver coin, and a scattering of smaller change lay there.
Fukutomi,

“Are you giving it to him?” she asked.

Kōda simply said, “Yeah.”
And then, picking up the fifty-sen silver coin,

“I’ll borrow just this much.”
“That’s a student.”

When he returned to the janitor’s room, the student was still smoking.

Repeating that he would surely repay through a money order, the student accepted the money.
Then he asked for Kōda’s name.
“You don’t have to pay me back,” said Kōda.
But the student wouldn’t accept this.
He took out a notebook from his furoshiki bundle and insisted on being told.
“Even if I can’t repay the money,” he said, “not knowing the name of the person who showed me kindness goes against my nature—it weighs on me.”
“That sort of thing really doesn’t matter,” Kōda repeated.
The student turned to the child who had been watching them alternately since earlier and asked, “What’s this teacher’s name?”
Kōda found it amusing.
He also found it bothersome.
And he told him his name.

Before long, the student expressed his thanks and left. As he departed, he asked for detailed directions to ○○ City. He insisted he absolutely must stay in ○○ City tonight. He inquired what time it was. It was 3:22. Fukutomi too watched his retreating back from the staff room window. Later, after hearing Kōda’s account, she remarked, “What a pitiful soul.”

However, the next morning as Kōda was on his way to work, Fukutomi hurried after him from behind,

“Teacher, um, about yesterday’s beggar—I saw him this morning,” she said.
She spoke in a tone suggesting she had some triumphant news to share.
Kōda made a face as if to say that couldn’t be the case,

“Where?” he said.

Fukutomi’s account was as follows.
In front of the house where Fukutomi was staying stood the only wood-fee inn in this village.
Early this morning, when Fukutomi returned from her usual walk and stood before her house, the man from yesterday emerged from that wood-fee inn and headed south—toward ○○ City.
Soon, the innkeeper’s wife came outside, and when she asked about it, the wife said the man had arrived after dark yesterday and stayed.

“It’s a case of mistaken identity.”
“Definitely,” said Kōda.
But in his heart, he still thought it must have been that student.

Then Fukutomi,

“No, it’s not a mistake—absolutely not,” she insisted, detailing even his clothing. And she added: “It’s definitely him. After getting money from you, he lost all motivation to walk—slept somewhere until sunset, then sneaked back after dark to stay in this village.”

When he heard this, Kōda didn't feel very good.
After arriving at school, he summoned a child from the wood-fee inn who attended the higher division and asked whether a certain man had stayed there last night.
The child answered that he had stayed.
Kōda finally realized: I've been swindled.
And he asked whether that guy had said anything about the school.
The child, wearing a worried look as if wondering why he was being asked such things, answered that since he'd gone to bed early, he hadn't heard clearly, but it seemed that man had been talking with the innkeeper about some teacher.

“What kind of things?” said Kōda.

“What kind of things? Well, he said something like, ‘It’s a shame to keep someone like that teacher out here in the countryside.’”

Kōda gave a bitter smile.

It was the next day.

Just as classes had ended and the staff room had gathered its full complement, a postcard addressed to Kōda arrived with the newspaper.
Kōda tilted his head upon seeing the sender’s name: "Takahashi Jirōkichi, from ○○ City."
On the back was written thus:

My dear Sir, Your Excellency’s great kindness has my deepest gratitude.
I beseech you to understand the hardships of this humble one who has disguised himself as a beggar to return home; your kindness shall never be forgotten.
After bidding you farewell yesterday, I encountered great difficulty due to abdominal pain en route, finally arriving safely in this city at 11 PM.
I humbly request that you remain undisturbed by other matters.
In due course, once I have safely arrived in my hometown, I shall send you a Letter.
In closing, I wish youa happy.

June 28th, 6:00 AM, upon embarking from ○○ City.

Kōda burst out laughing.
He had claimed to be a third-year middle school student, but judging by this, his academic ability seemed barely at a first-year level.
Old Instructor Konokida said, “What’s this? Something amusing going on?” as he stood up and looked at the postcard.
“Well now, there’s some English written here, isn’t there?” he said.

Kōda showed it to everyone. He then talked about giving money to the traveling student. He also recounted how the student had claimed he was going to ○○ City and left, only to sneak off and stay at a wood-fee inn. Finally, he said:

“It seems his conscience did prick him after all.”
“So he told this flimsy lie about suffering stomach pains during the trip to make it seem like he’d reached ○○ City that very day, no matter what.”

“But if he’s someone we’ll never meet again,” said Principal Tanabe, “why on earth would he go to the trouble of sending this postcard?” He tilted his head in a show of contemplation. “What could his intention be?”

Fukutomi, who was holding the postcard, now said: “The date here is set for yesterday at six in the morning—but if he left this village at six yesterday morning, wouldn’t that be exactly when he departed. And the postmark is marked from five to seven this morning. He must have written this when leaving ○○ this morning, don’t you think.”

Then Konokida suddenly burst out laughing in a loud voice.

“Mr. Kōda, you’re quite the meddlesome one.”
“If you’ve been begging and get fifty sen, even I wouldn’t feel like walking anymore.”
“First off, these days most fellows can manage a bit of English—whether he’s a middle school student or whatever, isn’t that plain as day?”

These words wounded Kōda deeply.
No matter who the man was, he couldn't see what was so meddlesome about giving money to someone struggling on their journey—but he only showed a bitter smile.
By now, Kōda had already forgotten the feelings he'd had when giving the money two days prior.
He had believed he'd given the money solely because the other party was in trouble.

"Well, if he's a middle school student, then he's a middle school student."
"If he were a real beggar, he wouldn't have gone so far as to send a postcard like this—whether it's a lie or not," interjected the principal.
"Isn't it amusing that he mixed in some English when writing it?
"I can make out the first 'My dear Sir,' but what on earth does this closing phrase mean?"
"Mr. Kōda."

“I desire for you a single happiness—”
“Would that be...?” Fukutomi translated literally in a low voice.

Konokida stood up and began preparing to leave while remarking, “Even if he were a middle school student, rather than going out of your way to borrow money only to get swindled, I’d sooner just drink a nightcap here.”

“That may also be true,” the principal responded. “Though even if you were to give him something, fifty sen was rather excessive.”

“Well then, I’ll take my leave,” Konokida said with a nod to everyone.
At this sight, Kōda—still fuming from earlier—felt that if he didn’t somehow pin down old man Konokida with words now, this chance would vanish forever. He started to open his mouth, but finding himself at a loss for what to say, could only let his eyes glint and eyebrows twitch pointlessly.
And immediately—never mind—he decided it was fine not to speak now.

Konokida left.
Before long, Fukutomi brought the postcard from earlier and placed it on Kōda’s desk. “Elderly people have no sympathy,” she said with a laugh.
She then went to sing hymns in the first-year classroom where the organ was kept.
It seemed she was practicing a new piece today—the sound of her repeating the same passage over and over could be heard.

As he listened, Kōda looked at the postcard on his desk and thought how utterly pointless it had been to give money to that traveling student.
And even if he were to give something, fifty sen had been far too generous.

〔“Subaru”
[Meiji 42 (1909), October Issue]〕