Pathway to Japanese Literature

Pale Blue Dream

I

It was a winter dawn.
The night had not yet broken.
Yet dawn drew near.
The night’s uncanny eeriness waned as an immense, hollow sorrow began seeping through every crevice of darkness.
At that moment, Sōkichi awoke naturally.

Though both room and world beyond the window remained steeped in uniform blackness, through the gathering weight of cold and an oppressive air of grief-laden stillness, he discerned dawn’s approach.
He guessed it must be nearing half past four.

Sōkichi’s daily awakenings unfolded as though slipping into decline and fall, scarcely anything pleasant. During those few minutes after waking to it, nothing but strangely ominous thoughts surfaced in his mind. Was it perhaps due to a time when reason had been lost? It was a repulsive image—a venereal disease rotting away the flesh. The disease gnawed the flesh into blackness and squirmed through the brain matter pooled with foul water like maggots. For those few minutes upon waking when he gazed at it, however, what welled up in Sōkichi’s heart was neither discomfort nor fear. All was utter silence. All minds that enveloped it were as nothingness. All living things were nothing but ominous images; they were born into a distant void, flickering as they projected that void to their spectators, and then—like stars in winter’s sky—they themselves froze solid. It was a calm sensation that everything was freezing; as for Sōkichi’s pain and sorrow, if they existed at all, they too were indeed frozen solid.

The venereal disease had been transmitted to him by Shinobu, who was now Sōkichi’s wife and had formerly been a prostitute at the port.
When recalling the venereal disease she had transmitted to her husband, the woman with cold tears—who had forgotten ordinary emotions—lowered her face and wept.

It wasn’t an image that could be called particularly unpleasant, but Sōkichi, trying not to dwell on such things, would sometimes attempt to summon beautiful scenery in his mind the moment he awoke.
An expansive ocean came into view.
Distant mountain ranges also appeared.
Clouds, wilderness, foreign towns—they all pressed forward insistently, replacing one another in turn—but he couldn’t shed the sadness.

When some time had passed after Sōkichi naturally awoke in that predawn hour, there came a sense that a faint strip of white had floated up from the depths of the sky.
He sensed something—but it was merely Sōkichi’s imagination.
In reality, it had not brightened.
Yet he became clearly aware once more that dawn was approaching.
And so he thought to rise and face his desk.
In that half-crouched posture of beginning to move—there—his consciousness snagged for the first time on Yabukōji Tōtarō’s presence.
Tōtarō had come to Sōkichi’s house last evening and should have been sleeping in the adjacent seat.

From a sudden thought that he might disturb the guest’s sleep, Sōkichi hesitated to turn on the light in the midst of rising and remained motionless for a time there. But when he stood up, he turned on the light with a decisiveness bordering on abandon. Indeed, the reason he was delayed in recalling Tōtarō was that there had been no sound from that spot. When he looked, Tōtarō was not there. The bedding was completely empty.

Yabukōji Tōtarō was one of the regulars who frequented the establishment when Shinobu had been shaking cocktail shakers at Aimai-ya in the port district.
Sōkichi had been much the same.
The two had met at that very place.
Tōtarō was a young man of twenty-five—five years Sōkichi’s junior.

The bar called “Isuraeru” had a clientele split roughly half-and-half between foreigners and Japanese, though as was typical for such disreputable portside establishments, the quality of these foreigners left much to be desired.
Most were peddlers and low-ranking clerks—Indians, Russians, Filipinos, Chinese and their ilk—while among the white patrons, excluding transient sailors, you found shady back-alley types dangling signs for street vending, self-styled music teachers or private language tutors; yet these very sorts would invariably pull up by automobile from even the nearest crossroads just steps away, muttering “Good evening, Miss Hana”
through sullen, leaden faces as they entered reeking of cloying cheap perfume.

To such establishments, Yabukōji Tōtarō would come alone, uninvited by anyone.
No matter how many times he visited after that, he remained always alone, as though he possessed no friends on earth.
This was equally true of Sōkichi.
And so the two became friends.

The woman Tōtarō fancied was a fallen literary girl of twenty-three—the same age as Shinobu—whose name at the establishment was Maria.
Though emaciated like a skeleton, she was a woman plagued by pathological sexual excess, her every desperate yearning distilled into those two words—“sexual desire”—which she laid bare through black-rimmed eyes and raptor-sharp gazes that concealed nothing.
Maria herself declared this truth through her own words.
Among the patrons there arose an unspoken custom of calling her “Wildcat”—a designation that pierced with perfect precision to the core of Maria’s being.

The women working in such places were completely removed from the many futile endeavors in which we frantically tried to elevate our petty realities beyond themselves. Constructive labor, precious truths that the endless history of the spirit had grown weary of seeking—such things were utterly useless to them. They neither glanced at such things nor knew anything about them. However, when viewing our essence from its most physical, primitive, and instinctual angles, it was they who pierced through with an aptness that left no room for further comment.

The youthful, earnest anguish of those who burned to plant their truth’s roots beyond the flesh—and the unrestrained, independent souls of youths grown pallid from that anguish—when appearing before these women who staked everything on their bodies without so much as a twitch, would find all ideals dashed to the ground and feel a restful despair.
Tōtarō had been like that.

He must have felt a kind of salvation in the Wildcat.
And then, in the dark acts of wallowing entwined and overlapping with the Wildcat like two logs, he further fantasized about salvation.
Yet once he had fallen for the Wildcat—though she remained a prostitute selling her flesh—Tōtarō lost the vital courage to approach women.
This was a peculiar tale.

Having fallen for the Wildcat, Tōtarō—from what complex whim it arose—began wrapping bandages all over his body and visiting with the appearance of a critically ill patient.
His left arm slung around his neck, his right foot dragging in an exaggerated limp, he clung to a bamboo cane while adopting a bizarrely eccentric posture, all the while contorting his face into a terrible scowl as he made his way through the town.
That was a daily occurrence.
It was later discovered that Tōtarō was not injured in the slightest.

When he came to the bar, he wouldn’t so much as glance at the Wildcat, instead engaging in intensely serious conversations with other women.
He ended up spending every night with that woman and finally moved in with her.
He never made advances toward the Wildcat from the start, and the Wildcat herself never acknowledged the fake patient.

After cohabiting with a woman he didn’t even like for over two months, he found himself fleeing in a panic for reasons even he couldn’t comprehend.
It was less that he had escaped from the woman and more that he had been driven to flee by some larger, unknown pressure.
Driven by the feeling of being pursued by something, he fled every which way through remote mountains devoid of people, attempted suicide at an inn in Shinano, and upon reviving, seized the opportunity to come back.
A year and a half had passed since then.

After his return, his first visit to Sōkichi’s new home had been roughly five months prior—on his way back from being thrown into a detention cell simply for wandering the late-night streets. Though he complained of pain from wounds inflicted by bedbugs, he asked to rest a little, took a midday nap, and then left.
Then the next day, he immediately came over bearing a gift.
After that, he began to visit frequently.

As people observed this situation, it became clear that Yabukōji Tōtarō had taken an interest in the girl—Shinobu’s nineteen-year-old half-sister Yayoi, who was living with Sōkichi.

About a month after such matters had become clear, he suddenly appeared in the unfamiliar attire of a haori and hakama.
Upon being shown into the room, he specifically requested Yayoi’s presence, and just as he seemed to have properly straightened his posture once more, he began to speak his words of proposal in a firm tone and somewhat hurriedly.
Then, before anyone could offer a greeting, he now became utterly composed, further altering his tone before beginning to earnestly expound upon what he called his personal philosophy of life.
This was something one might call a recitation or a lecture—or rather, like water cascading off a standing board—as he rattled on nonstop for over thirty minutes.

The assembled company, who had been sitting dumbfounded, finally regained their senses upon receiving Tōtarō’s composed glance when his speech at last reached a pause—though in truth, they had merely heaved a deep sigh of relief, leaving them in a state where formulating a proper response remained thoroughly arduous.
Perceiving this reaction, Tōtarō—as if he had been lying in wait—further modulated his voice and now began expounding upon an even more convoluted, lofty state of mind.
This lasted a solid hour in total.
To Sōkichi’s ears came names he half-recognized—Plato, Epicurus, Husserl, even Baudelaire and Pascal—flying in here and there, but to the two women, it was utterly incomprehensible ramblings from start to finish.

Just as his interminable lecture seemed on the verge of ending, his tongue suddenly found renewed vigor. He repeated such performances time and again, thoroughly tormenting the assembled company—then abruptly slapping a conclusion onto his discourse, he adopted an entirely different countenance and took a breath. He then engaged in some utterly inane small talk entirely unrelated to the marriage proposal, yet did so with perfect composure. After exchanging a few words, he left with a brisk air, as though he had nothing left to say. Of course, Yayoi’s reply went entirely unheard. There had not even been a chance to reply.

After that, over two months passed without any word.

When he visited about ten days ago for the first time in two months, he claimed to have returned from a distant journey and spoke at length—complete with diagrams—about the glittering southern seas and scenes of conger eel fishing, but from head to toenail he appeared utterly indifferent to the matter of marriage.
After that, he visited two or three more times in the same manner, and last night, after talking late into the evening, he ended up staying over.
That Tōtarō was nowhere to be seen in the futon.

Had he capriciously gone back?
That wasn’t an unusual occurrence, Sōkichi thought to himself.

But what concerned him was whether he had sneaked into the beds of the women sleeping downstairs.
Sōkichi’s mind recalled that Tōtarō’s story from last night had largely been about sneaking into the beds of insatiable ama divers in a southern fishing village.
Considering the suggestive manner in which he had spoken at the time, there were ample indications that he had stayed over with the intent of a nocturnal visit—and moreover, that he derived perverse satisfaction from insinuating as much.

――I should go down and check……

However, Sōkichi hesitated again. A daze resembling fatigue came flowing in from some distant horizon at times like these. Listening intently toward downstairs was all that remained possible in this moment. Surely he wouldn't kill...? In Sōkichi's heart, obscene jealousy boiled up only to dissolve back into complex numbness. It became clear his calm mind resulted from chilled-over excitement.

At that moment, a small sound arose downstairs—the presence of someone rising. Unclear who it was; they slid open the shoji and began walking out. As this happened, a "Waaah!"—a scream like solidified mass—erupted. Then an indecipherable shriek resounded amidst deafening noises of unknown origin before and after. That was Yayoi's voice. A voice calling Sōkichi anew could also be heard.

Sōkichi stood up.
He had forced himself to remain calm but indeed hurried down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs was a hallway with a bathroom, and adjacent to it lay a six-tatami room where two women were sleeping.
The dwelling consisted of nothing more than this room and a single two-tatami space at the entrance.

When he reached the hallway, no human figure was visible.
The shoji partitioning off the six-tatami room was also closed.
When Sōkichi called out from beyond the shoji—"What’s wrong?"—Yayoi’s hoarse voice responded, "In the bathroom," her tone suggesting she had leapt back into her room and buried herself beneath the futon.

A light was on in the bathroom.
When he opened the door, Tōtarō lay crumpled across the floor.
He had hanged himself.
The rope had snapped, sending him down.
Before Sōkichi’s eyes, a severed cord hung limp from above.

The two women finally stirred awake and parted the shoji a sliver, yet remained hidden behind its paper screen.
As Sōkichi bent over the sprawled form to locate Tōtarō’s face amidst the tangle,

“He can’t go to a doctor…”

And in a trembling voice, Yayoi muttered imploringly.

When he found the face and tilted it slightly toward the light, something that had flowed from the mouth or nose had pooled below, tears were streaming down, and the entire face was smeared with grime.
Something black like blood had also flowed.
Had he lost consciousness?
Anyway—call a doctor—— Just as that thought had revived in Sōkichi’s mind, the two women who had recalled the same notion with even greater terror merely let their eyes gleam incoherently; they were fossilized.
When such silence had continued for a while, the form that had spread out below began to move around the contorted face.

Tōtarō revived.
He had lost consciousness.

“I’m alive.”

As if informing those watching over him, he groaned in a hoarse voice.
Yet even the head that had begun to stir sank limply back into place, and once more the sprawled form lay motionless.

“I botched it!
“I can’t even die right!”

And he groaned in quick succession.

“I’d regained my senses before you all woke up.”
“I was aware of everything that happened after you all arrived.”
“I’m a bit sleepy.”
“I felt like I was starting to understand all sorts of things.”
“And now it seems I can no longer understand even that.”
“Anyway, I’m fine now.”
“Don’t worry and go back to your beds.”
“I want to sleep a bit too.”

However, the form spread out across the three-foot-square floor remained completely motionless. Several seconds passed in that state. He suddenly began to rise up steadily. Once he had fully risen, he supported himself with both hands on the wainscoting and remained face down with his eyes closed for a while, but...

“Let me sleep until noon.”

He muttered as if soliloquizing, then abruptly turned and began moving like someone groping through darkness. Whether he failed to register their faces or willfully ignored them, he tried climbing toward the second-floor bedding.

“Wipe your face—”

Likely deaf to Shinobu’s shout too, he crawled up the stairs like a toad traversing twilight sky. Sōkichi trailed behind him—whether from smeared filth or leaked excrement, an intolerable stench persisted—one that impressed upon Sōkichi’s dazed, benumbed mind how human life, death, joys, angers, sorrows and pleasures seemed as petty and loathsome as reeking sewage.

When Tōtarō climbed to the second floor, he suddenly rolled into bed and pulled the futon completely over his head.
However, when he realized that Sōkichi had come up together,

“I botched it.”
“It’s no use.”
“I can’t die anymore…”

From under the futon, he let slip the same words as before. When Sōkichi asked whether he was truly not in pain and if there was no need to call a doctor, he replied that he really wasn’t in pain and wanted to sleep quietly until noon; then, removing the futon from his face, he began to sleep while making steady breathing sounds. By then, night had already begun fading into dawn—though the sun had yet to rise—and a faint, pallid light now fell upon Tōtarō’s grimy face.

When Sōkichi first opened the toilet door—and when he discovered Tōtarō’s corpse there—what first flowed through his heart was this thought: here lay another fool, one that resembled nothing so much as a giant maggot that had breathed its last, having rolled into a toilet; and what a troublesome affair this would turn out to be.

However, now that Tōtarō had revived, what flowed through Sōkichi’s chest anew was a cool, singular sadness.
It was a gall-like sorrow—incurable and inescapable.
Drowning in it, immersed in a stagnant flow like turbid water, he also felt a maddened heart that cursed, raged, and sought to leap at some great, quiet thing.

After a long time had passed, when Sōkichi went down to the lower floor, the two women were tormented by their respective states of intense stupor.

“Why did he decide to die?!”

Shinobu said through clenched teeth, her eyes blazing with fury.
She wore a look of bitter vexation.
That Shinobu was abnormally agitated could be discerned from how she huddled in a corner of the room, maintaining a rigid posture as if she had crossed her arms, her slightest movement appearing fraught with difficulty.
Yet Shinobu herself, though often assailed by the desire to die over the past few years, remained completely unaware of her own deathly appearance.

“The bathroom? How revolting!”
“Go ahead and die—you’d look no different than maggots dangling there!”

Shinobu snapped through gritted teeth.

“There are plenty of convenient and clean places to die.”
“How utterly thoughtless—he must’ve found it smelly and cramped too!”

“It’s fiiine—you wouldn’t understand anyway!”

Yayoi suddenly broke down crying and began to scream.

“How could Sis possibly understand the feelings of someone who wants to die?!”
“I’ve wanted to die in the bathroom plenty of times myself!”

With that, Yayoi let out a hysterical scream and burst into tears.

“I hate it—the bathroom, the bathroom! Can’t I die in the middle of a field?!”

Shinobu threw a coat over her chemise, thrust her bare feet into shoes, and dashed out for a walk before even finishing breakfast.

After noon had passed, Tōtarō awoke.
His face was severely haggard, but with his usual carefree demeanor, he left soon after waking up.

II

It was the next day.

Until dinner time, nothing had happened.

When dinner ended under the dim electric light, a distant fatigue and stupor—as if the day’s spirit had finally returned—became palpable.
Then, Yayoi—who until that moment had shown no signs of anything amiss—suddenly began to cry in a corner of the room as though she would split apart.
It was all too sudden, and her wailing was ferocious.

“Why won’t Mr. Yabu come to see me?!”
“And I’ve been waiting all this time!”

“Why won’t Mr. Yabu come to see me?!” Yayoi shouted. “And I’ve been waiting all this time!”

Until that moment, Sōkichi and Shinobu had no inkling what her tears meant, but those words finally made them understand. Yayoi had secretly waited all day in her heart for Tōtarō’s visit. When dinner ended and night descended—when it became clear he would not appear that day after all—she was overwhelmed by unbearable emotion. Even now that they grasped this, the incident defied all expectation.

Even on the day Tōtarō had laid bare his heart, Yayoi told the two people without hesitation that he seemed utterly unreliable. She appeared almost wholly indifferent. Moreover, when over two months passed without further word from him, even the faint traces Tōtarō had left behind vanished without residue from Yayoi’s heart; and when he finally returned from his prolonged southern journey, she showed neither lingering attachment nor concern—it was as though everything had simply passed her by. This new shift arose from Tōtarō’s attempted suicide. One could perceive it no other way.

“Huh! So you were brooding over that all day?!”
“You!”
“You’re impossible to leave alone!”

Shinobu was terribly taken aback and let out a sudden, frantic shout.

“But I want to see him!”

Yayoi wiped tears and said.

“What’s the point of meeting him?”

“What do you mean, ‘what to do’? Just meeting him is enough.”

“Did you fall for him because he tried to hang himself? You’ve got quite the twisted taste yourself. Are you planning to propose marriage?”

“No.”

Yayoi shook her head, remained silent for a while with her face downcast, then muttered as if to herself.

“I want to meet him with different feelings than before. Because until now, I hadn’t really thought about anything. So, I want to meet him while thinking it through.”

“You’re quite caught up in this yourself.”
“That suicide isn’t solely your fault.”
“Mr. Yabu’s suicide is like a rheumatic tanuki lost in Hachiman’s Yabu-shirazu.”
“It’s just his whimsy.”
“If you think you’re the only one leading him astray, that’s a terrible mistake.”

“Even so, it’s fine.”
“You’ll see once I meet him!”

“Is that how it works?!”
“Fine, do whatever you want!”

Shinobu was about to fly into a rage and stood up.
She walked toward where the mirror was but, without looking at it, lay down.

“It’s only been a day since yesterday—Mr. Yabu must be worn out too. He’s probably running a fever and groaning and moaning by now.”

“If he’s sick, I’ll go nurse him…”

Yayoi, on the verge of tears once more, spoke in a voice as thin as a trembling flute’s note.

“Brother! Bring Mr. Yabu here!”

Having shouted that, Yayoi once again let out a piercing shriek and burst into tears.

“It can’t be helped. Please go to Mr. Yabu’s place.”

said Shinobu, who had toppled over onto the tatami mats.

“Hmm. Shall I go and see?”

Sōkichi groaned and stood up.

Sōkichi, who had started walking into the frozen night, soon came to realize that his heart was utterly devoid of purpose. He had not the slightest desire to visit Tōtarō, nor did he feel like going anywhere. The only feeling he understood was the desire to keep walking.

When he came to yet another corner, he thought of visiting the go club. But when he thought about the unfamiliar men who would be his playing partners, his spirits immediately sank. He called out to a kind-seeming passerby who happened to be approaching that spot, stated a nonsense address near his residence, and asked for directions. Unfortunately, the man was someone who did not know the geography of this neighborhood, but Sōkichi found it pleasant to bow repeatedly with seeming delight and part ways.

He considered going to look at the movie theater sign, but his steps were naturally drawn toward the darkness, and he found himself in a marsh-like damp grassland along the railway tracks. Beyond the tracks stood a factory. All its lights had already gone out, leaving it transformed into a gigantic black shadow that loomed like a wind tunnel carved into the night sky. For some reason, Sōkichi circled the broad square embankment enclosure as though pulled by an unseen force. The great stagnant emptiness gave his heart a quiet sorrow resembling rest. He muttered inwardly.

Even for me, there’s no reason to go crossing over to those dimly visible tracks now.
And that this was no more than because I had seen the shadow of this gigantic, wind tunnel-like hollow building—is that such a strange thing?
And if that same I, having seen the shadow of this gigantic wind tunnel-like night sky, were to go to a port bar and sit a woman on my lap while gulping down sake—would that be so strange?…………

For some reason, Sōkichi’s heart began to surge with unexpected vitality.
He muttered aloud, as if to let his own ears hear it.

――Having seen that wind tunnel-like gigantic shadow of the night sky, and then neither attempting to die nor rushing to a port bar, merely walking this dark path as I do now―is my figure not something strange?…………

Sōkichi thrust his face toward the darkened sky and laughed.
He walked along the railway tracks toward the station and entered an awamori bar whose curtain he’d passed through two or three times.
He forced down five cups of a cloyingly sweet liquid with a peculiar aftertaste.
After that, the resolve to visit Tōtarō finally began to swell within him.
By then, it was already nine o’clock.

Yabukōji Tōtarō was the son of a rather well-known Japanese restaurant.
Since his father was dead, he should have been in a position of considerable responsibility, but the shop was managed entirely by his mother and younger sister, with him having no involvement.
It wasn’t that he disliked the family business, but he intensely hated the intangible constraints of the household.
On the other hand, he had an abnormal devotion to his mother and passionately loved his younger sister.
At the same time, that unbreakable affection became one of the causes of his torment, transforming into the household’s intangible constraints.

From childhood, Tōtarō had been unable to refuse his mother’s earnest hopes, obtaining even certifications in tea ceremony and flower arrangement—practices he himself could not come to like—while his nagauta was an art sufficient to astonish connoisseurs of the craft.
The man who frequented port bars—his arm slung around his neck, limping exaggeratedly, clinging to a cane with a gnarled grip, adopting a cowering posture—would, at home, keep his mother and sister company in tranquil afternoons or evening hours, performing three-instrument ensembles that seemed otherworldly, or sip with propriety the thin tea his mother prepared.
The antiquated customs and warped intangible traits of that world took on the form of an unbearable original sin for Tōtarō’s new and unrestrained world of life’s hardships, deepening his self-loathing.
He detested even showing his domestic self to friends, but being conscious of his own figure when alone was no easy pain.
He had become unable to discern in which of his daily wills or emotions he should seek his true self.

When Sōkichi went to visit that night, Tōtarō had been confined to his sickbed since the previous day, claiming illness.
When he was shown up to the second-floor room, books left half-read and papers scrawled upon lay scattered around the bedding, and Tōtarō was utterly exhausted.
His cheeks were hollowed, his forehead haggard, and his limbs noticeably emaciated, yet his eyes alone blazed like those of a maddened beast.
He said that ever since returning from Sōkichi’s residence, he had been writing and reading without a moment’s sleep.

Sōkichi briefly recounted the matter.
Sōkichi's heart held almost no interest in the affair.
Perhaps this disinterest transmitted itself through Tōtarō's frayed nerves—he too listened with an expression of disengagement—yet he answered immediately: "I'll go with you."

"Since last evening I've been trying to write you a letter. I felt something like understanding beginning to form—yet in truth there remained various ungraspable things. I thought perhaps through writing I might suddenly seize them."
"But once I began writing, even what needed no doubting appeared utterly false."

After standing up, Tōtarō spoke with the air of someone who had just thought of something.

“How is it that you remain alive?”
“Even when I consider myself unworthy of suicide, I feel I cannot find anyone as devoid of alternatives beyond death as you.”

His eyes abruptly kindled as he fixed an intense gaze upon Sōkichi, beginning to speak with breath slightly quickened.

“You are a streetlamp on a night path,” he said. “Single-mindedly trying to illuminate something—yes, stretching out its faint, misty glow. But in the end, the night enveloping you is undeniably vaster and greater. Every time I see you, I recall the pale sorrow of streetlamps.”

“I don’t want to die because I want to live,” he replied. “I consider suicide immoral. Even within time steeped in hazy boredom, through thirty years of life, I’ve likely never once genuinely thought of suicide.”

Sōkichi said in a quiet, admonishing tone.
Tōtarō bowed his head and remained silent for a while, but showed no sign of defiance whatsoever.
Eventually, he raised his face and, wearing a feeble, childlike smile, stared intently at Sōkichi while...
“But you’re the one who wants to die more than I do,” he whispered.

“It’s meaningless,” Sōkichi muttered dismissively.

As the two slid open the door to leave, the sliding door of the adjacent room was thrown open, and a petite girl came running out with a scream.
It was his younger sister Masako.

“Brother!”
“You mustn’t go!”
“You’ll die!”
“You’ll be killed!”

Masako stepped forward to block his path and took Tōtarō’s hand.

“Mr. Sōkichi will end up killing Brother.”
“Please don’t let Brother go!”
“It’s not just his body.”
“His mind has also weakened.”
“Brother hasn’t slept a wink since yesterday.”
“Moreover, over these past three or four months, his weakening has deepened in various ways.”
“After being in such a state, terrible things happen, you know.”
“Mr. Sōkichi does not understand Brother.”
“You don’t understand the weakness of Brother’s nerves beneath the mask.”

“There’s no need to worry,” Tōtarō said to his sister.
As he spoke, his face flushed.

“This person doesn’t require understanding.”
“Because something entirely of the same nature flows through us.”
“There’s no need to worry.”
“It’s not that I’m so tired.”

“Brother doesn’t intend to come back, does he?” the girl said in a fierce voice.
“I’ll come back.”
“I don’t care!”
“I don’t care!”
“I don’t care if you never come back!”

Masako’s face turned pale and tightened.
She shook her shoulders hysterically and screamed.

“I don’t care! If you’re going to kill yourself, then just go ahead and do it!”

She suddenly took up her sleeve, pressed it to her face, and burst into tears as though her heart would break.
A heavy silence fell.
However, the two men made quiet movements as if to leave.
Then Masako, from both hands pressing her face into her sleeve, removed just one hand and pressed Sōkichi’s sleeve.

“Please stop Brother.”
“I know it will lead to a bad result.”
“He’s not in a normal state.”
“Now is an exceedingly dangerous time.”
“Please, don’t let him go!”

“It’s alright.”
“There’s no need to worry.”

And, instead of Sōkichi, Tōtarō flushed red once more and muttered.

Then, from behind the sliding door of the adjacent room, a middle-aged woman’s voice—strikingly similar to Masako’s yet utterly hysterical—resounded.

“Let him go!”
“Anywhere!”
“If he can abandon me and go, let him go anywhere!”
“Don’t stop him, Masako—ah, don’t you dare stop him…”

The voice choked up as it trailed off.
An instant of tense, terrifying silence fell.
A faint flush suddenly rose to Tōtarō’s pale face.
He stretched his neck like a puppy mustering all its strength to bark.
And then, he called out sharply toward the unseen presence in the depths.

“Mother!
“It’s okay!”
“There’s no need to worry!”

But from beyond the sliding door, there was no sign of a reply resounding.
Tōtarō remained poised to keep shouting, stood rigid as a rod for a moment, then crumbled like scattered petals.
Taking that as their cue, the two men descended the stairs with clattering, entangled footsteps.
And then they went outside in silence.

Until they reached Sōkichi’s residence, the two men remained completely silent.
It was already nearly eleven o'clock.

Even the utterly exhausted Tōtarō suddenly lit up with vitality upon entering the room’s light. He then became as talkative as a carefree boy.

“I love this room,” he said with a cheerful smile, glancing at those present.

“Even when traveling far away, remembering this room became one of my happiest moments.”
“Both yesterday and today, thinking of this room has been my respite.”
“If you hadn’t come fetch me tonight, it would’ve been an unbearable night.”

“This isn’t a joke!” Shinobu’s temper flared up vividly as she shouted in earnest.

“If someone were to hang themselves in this room, I couldn’t bear it!”
“At our place, we won’t be letting Mr. Yabu stay for a while now, you know!”
“Even if it’s midnight or a stormy night, we’ll send you packing.”

“It’s not something I can do so often.”
“I can’t die anymore.”
“My suicide is such a completely pointless thing.”
“It’s that I’m spineless.”

And Tōtarō broke into an expression like a boy’s innocent guffaw as he said this.

“The Mr. Yabu who tries to kill himself isn’t the real Mr. Yabu.”
“The real Mr. Yabu is simple and innocent.”
“When a simple person puts on airs by imitating others and makes a face that feigns complexity, they end up with no choice but to die to save face, you know.”
“I’m like that, you know.”

And then, Yayoi suddenly began speaking in a high-pitched voice.

“I really wanted to meet you!”
“I kept waiting, thinking you’d come any moment now—any moment now.”
“I ended up crying after all!”

“But on my part, I had wanted to meet you about twice as much.”

“Then why did you not come alone?”

“Wanting to meet and going to meet are entirely different things.”
“For someone you truly want to meet, even without meeting them, you are meeting them.”
“No—it’s precisely by not meeting that you come to encounter their true self.”
“Someone who can’t be considered met unless you see their face isn’t a person you truly wanted from the heart.”

“Because on my part, if I don’t see Mr. Yabu’s face, I can’t feel like I’ve met you.”

“That’s right.”
“So I end up coming here lingeringly like this.”
“Then—that’s right, even if we meet, you wouldn’t find it particularly interesting or anything else, would you?”
“You don’t actually like me at all.”
“That’s fine.”
“But the reason I came here was mostly because I wanted to see your face.”

“That’s right! That’s right!”
“It’s not that I like you at all.”
“But—Mr. Yabu knows exactly how I feel!”
“That’s right. I don’t like you one bit.”
“The very idea that Mr. Yabu could belong to me—just thinking about it makes me laugh!”

Yayoi’s eyes brimmed with a joy of such simple purity it bordered on idiocy as she continued to shout in a passionate, high-pitched voice.

“But Mr. Yabu truly understands!”
“I—when you didn’t come, Mr. Yabu—I burst into tears, you know.”
“That’s right! Truly!”
“It’s true that I felt lonely when you didn’t come.”
“But it wasn’t that I liked Mr. Yabu.”
“But if Mr. Yabu came, I was thinking of trying to make him act like he likes me.”
“I had quite the scheme in mind, you know.”

“That’s right.”
“I already know such things even without you confessing them.”
“Acting like a grown woman despite being a child—if you keep up that attitude from now on, it’ll be a real problem.”
“But the way you’re confessing everything—you’re a bit strange too.”

“That’s right…”

Yayoi pressed her mouth into the sleeve and let out a high-pitched cry as she began to laugh.
However, mid-laugh, she suddenly covered her face and began to cry as if tearing silk.

“I am very unhappy.”

And Yayoi said while sobbing.

“No one can understand my true sadness…”

However, she soon stopped crying and abruptly began laughing giddily, murmuring “Hmph, hysterics,” innocent eyes devoid of any shadow sparkling all the while.

“That’s right!
“Exactly as I’ve thought.
“It’s precisely as I imagined—utterly unchanged!”

And Tōtarō shouted in a voice brimming with joy.

“I came here imagining just such pleasant conversation—a delightful evening spent exactly like this.”
“And now it’s unfolded precisely as envisioned.”
“My heart feels so unburdened there’s nothing left to dwell upon.”
“Now I can return home and rest contentedly.”

“Mr. Yabu, you can stay over if you want.”
“I was just trying to scare you a bit earlier.”

Shinobu had said this, but claiming that they were worried at home, Tōtarō soon stood up.

“I think I’ll take a walk too…”

Sōkichi stood up dazedly.

A dreary mist-like gloom poured down—until then no will to speak had surfaced within him, and people’s voices reached his ears only as if from some distant realm of dreams.

Sōkichi began walking toward Ōmori Coast.
The wind lay dead beneath a frozen winter sky where the moon had risen.
Tōtarō followed in Sōkichi’s path.
The sea swelled at high tide.
Rough waves shattered against rocky cliffs while dark calm claimed the offing.
An unbearably frigid sea wind swept through as crystalline moonlight flowed silent.

“Everyone’s bound by rotten ties.”

Tōtarō suddenly muttered softly.
“Even my being alive was bound by rotten ties…”

He lowered himself onto the frozen pavement as if sitting down. And then he huddled there. He might not have been crying. For a long time, he showed no sign of movement.

III

Several days later.

A long telegram came from Tōtarō’s family addressed to Sōkichi.
It was something along the lines of requesting your presence, as there was a matter regarding Tōtarō for which they wished to ask your assistance.

When he went there, it was not his mother but his younger sister Masako who appeared to receive him.
Masako continued to wear a quiet smile.
Her expression was devoid of gloom, as if she were about to begin a peaceful bit of small talk.

Masako’s story was as follows.

The next day, Tōtarō set out on a journey.
This time, it was a journey to the northern provinces.
He set out for a nameless town called Kujiranami in Echigo, facing the Sea of Japan.
On the day he arrived, it was a blizzard so fierce that even the sea was invisible.
Such details were written at the beginning of the letter.
However, upon reading that letter, there were parts that could only be thought of as a suicide note.
Thus, it was decided that Masako would depart for Kujiranami on that night’s express train; however, as Tōtarō’s suicide was beyond the family’s capacity to handle alone, they requested that Sōkichi accompany her.
Throughout that conversation, Masako continued to wear a quiet smile.

“After all, he’s bound to succeed at least once.”
“It’s happened so many times before.”
“I’ve resigned myself to it, but I still want to stop him as much as possible.”
“There have been many times when I’ve thought that even trying to stop him would be pointless.”
“This time too, it’s not exactly what you’d call a proper suicide note, but judging by the tone of the letter, it feels like someone calmly soaking in a hot spring, thinking they might just die whenever the mood strikes.”
“It’s an inescapable gloom.”
“It seems utterly absurd, but I can’t just not go and see for myself.”

“After all, he’s bound to succeed at least once,” Masako said. Even during such a conversation, she continued to wear a faint, quiet smile. Sōkichi, as though borne into a profound distance by the weariness of that smile, while barely half-heeding the conversation, heard with vivid clarity in his mind the sound of the withered thicket in the bamboo grove rustling and swaying in a dark corner of the garden.

At eleven o’clock that night, the two departed from Ueno, having boarded the late-night train.
At Ueno Station, snow had settled over the course of the winter.
Trains that had come running through northern blizzards were lined up with snow clumped on their roofs and windows.
The late-night train carrying them began running over snow from around Akagi’s foothills, passed directly beneath the Jōetsu mountain range, and continued onward under the deepest snows of Doai, Tsuchizawa, Ishiuchi, and other areas of heaviest snowfall.
Due to the late hour, none of this snow could be seen.

“Among my friends, there are three or four who were raped by Brother after coming over to our house to visit.”
“Even if he hadn’t raped them, they would have become his lovers if he’d just opened up.”
“Because Brother is so good at chatting with women, my friends end up becoming closer to him than to me.”
“After getting them completely attached, instead of letting things progress naturally, he’d resort to violence. There were quite a few victims among the maids as well.”

Inside the train, Masako, while wearing an exhausted smile, also told such stories.

“It’s Father’s fault. Lechery and syphilis are our family’s legacy.”

While listening to this, unbearable thoughts writhed and swarmed through Sōkichi’s sleep-numbed mind. In his imagination, Masako’s body now stood unclothed. Beneath roofs where a fierce north wind raged, enveloped by the sound of dark sea swells, the desolation of night closed in—an entanglement of flesh against flesh, or perhaps hatred intertwining with bestial instinct.

“I will become a beast,” Sōkichi thought.

――Another person’s suicide………… What other fact could there be so futile and distant, so nearly unbelievable, so utterly incomprehensible in its emptiness? Sōkichi kept thinking.
In contrast, the ferocity of carnal desire writhing within him became violently clear—transmuted into voluminous heat that filled every blood vessel in his body at that moment.
Rushing toward the desolate hot spring along the Japan Sea coast could only be perceived as hastening with a sinister resolve—solely to become a beast devoid of even a shred of compassion and simply embrace Masako’s tragic body, pale and wrapped in heartbreak.

Was he awake or asleep? There was a vast emptiness—hazy and indistinct—and there, a traveler’s melancholy hung pervasively. In a realm separate from carnal desire, a gloom akin to the Sea of Japan’s sea breeze spread darkly like a turbulent ocean, rendering the maddeningly throbbing lust sorrowful.

――That too must be a rotten fate…………

Sōkichi savagely cried out in his heart, as if cursing everything with hatred, and as if fervently despising it all.

In the early morning of the next day, they transferred at Miyauchi and got off at a station where the sea could be seen up close.
That was Kujiranami.
Around Miyauchi, the remarkable accumulation of snow covered the view, but as they drew closer to the sea, the snow gradually diminished, and in Kujiranami, they could scarcely see any snow at all.
Because of the raging, violent sea winds, snow could not accumulate much near the sea.
The snow was carried to the mountainous regions, where it accumulated to depths of over ten feet.
The line “Araumi ya / Sado ni yokotau / Amanogawa” was one that Bashō had composed near this very sea.

When they arrived at the inn, they found that Tōtarō had just finished breakfast and gone out for a walk along the shore.
The two also immediately headed to the sea.

It was a suffocatingly cloudy sky.
Dull-black clouds hung low over the sea.
Of course, Sado Island remained unseen, compressed beneath the sagging clouds into an absurdly small raging sea.
A small blackish sea that seemed to manifest despair's agony—even in its dark offshore depths high swells persisted, while white fangs of foam flickered in those distant shadowy reaches.
A solitary figure walked along the rocky shore.
Though separated by four or five chō*, they recognized him immediately as Tōtarō.

The roar of the raging waves continued without pause, resounding through the ground; it seemed even a madman’s scream would fail to carry beyond one *chō*. The two naturally quickened their pace, but driven by the desperate urge to keep crying out, Masako’s steps gradually accelerated. As their pace increased, tears welled up in Masako’s eyes. Finally unable to endure any longer, Masako broke into a solitary run. The instant her small, desperate whisper of “Brother” was sharply swept away by the violent sea wind—a gale fierce enough to tear off one’s face—she did not even glance at the geta that had bounced off and been left behind on the sand. Having already flung off one geta in her frenzy, now barefoot, she began running with frantic urgency. There still remained a full three or four *chō* of distance.

Sōkichi gathered Masako’s scattered geta, hung them from one hand, and began walking slowly in the opposite direction. When he took this chance to survey the sea in all directions, he realized that even its form—swollen with torment and writhing swells—harbored within its frenzy a vast, immovable stillness. Into Sōkichi’s heart too flowed that desolate respite, becoming a weariness beyond words.

Tōtarō’s complexion had improved compared to the exhausted pallor he bore on the night he parted from Sōkichi.

“I had just been gazing at the Japan Sea for the first time in my life.”

With a lonely smile, Tōtarō said to the approaching Sōkichi.

“A blizzard had been raging until two days ago.”
“Yesterday it poured all day and melted the snow—seems today’s finally the first clear sky we’ve had.”
“During that blizzard I tried walking out to where the sea begins—the wind nearly blew me clean over.”
“Couldn’t even breathe properly—and though this monstrous sea-roar kept growling right in my ears—couldn’t see one damn thing of the actual sea!”

When they returned to the inn and he stepped out of the bath, Tōtarō became as lively as if he were a different person.

“When faced with such intense nature, human artifice seems utterly wretched.”
“Whether a single human lives or dies isn’t something that matters.”
“Humans on this beach are the same as grains of sand.”
“Even if I tried to snuff out a life—when I realize after all it’s just a worthless speck like this—I come to my senses and actually feel relieved.”
“Anyway, when nature becomes this violent, there’s a kind of agonizing salvation.”

And with a laugh utterly devoid of gloom that boomed boisterously, Tōtarō offered such reflections.

However, when the next morning came, Tōtarō was nowhere to be seen.
They had only managed to ascertain that he had left the inn under the pretense of a walk.
When they made inquiries around, they were able to trace evidence of him boarding a train from Kashiwazaki.
He seemed to have wandered along the shore all the way to Kashiwazaki.

A day of restless unease passed and a night of profound gloom descended, yet still there came no word of Tōtarō.
When night fell, the wail of the north wind and the roar of the sea abruptly began their violent howling.

Once Tōtarō’s disappearance was confirmed beyond doubt, Masako instead retrieved a composure tinged with languor.
As time wore on, a pessimistic mood seeped into every shadowed corner of the room; as formless anxieties—like being thrust into an abyss—started their encroachment; as night plunged into utter darkness—then Masako’s languid composure took on a pallor sickly and wan beyond measure.

“By now he might be growing cold somewhere.”

With a quiet, listless smile beginning to form once more, Masako said:

“He’ll end up doing it eventually anyway.”
“Even if he didn’t die today, he’d try again soon enough. Worrying about it is just foolish.”
“I’m utterly sick of this!”
“But where could he have died?”
“If he’s at the water’s edge or buried under snow—how pitifully cold that would be.”
“Though given his spinelessness, he’s probably in some warm room...”

Masako sat by the kotatsu, idly flipping through the pages of an open book, but every now and then she would look up as if remembering something and, maintaining her listless smile, begin to mutter these things disjointedly.

“I wonder if they can’t load him onto the train while still in his coffin?”
“If we cremate him and bring him back, Mother would be so pitiful.”
“What was Brother born for?”
“It’s exactly for committing suicide.”
“To keep on struggling.”
“And also, to fall in love with women.”
“He was a philanderer.”
“He kept busily falling in love from woman to woman, but in the end, there wasn’t a single person he truly loved.”
“When I think about it, I do feel sorry for him, but he was so quick to act that I often found myself exasperated.”
“When I think he’s grown cold, even those things seem like something sad…”

In response to Masako’s musings, Sōkichi found no words to offer.
Only a single phrase—

“If he’s already dead, there’s nothing to be done.”

This response, drawn forth by some indefinable prompt, stood as the sole utterance he had managed to voice with genuine conviction.

The extinction of another—this fact so inconceivably remote and impossible to grasp—served only to deepen within him an uncannily distant void, a lassitude, an absence of place.
Simultaneously, from the very pit of that expanding emptiness, a savage carnal hunger began to squirm upward.
Lewd fantasies—swollen with lurid hues and layered thickly—ignited in sudden flashes.
Meanwhile, on another plane flowed an unceasing tide of desolate sorrow akin to dark oceanic swells, and when these elements knotted themselves into one tangled mass, they transformed into an asphyxiating hollowness or—in fleeting instants—a crushing despondency that evoked utter bereavement.

Sōkichi fled to the bathtub and tried to grasp at mindless emptiness.
Yet even when he hid where Masako could not see him, he could not escape the searing thoughts blazing within him.

After bathing and returning to the room, he abruptly approached in a state of profoundly awkward detachment, placed his hand over Masako’s fragile shoulder—she who leaned against the kotatsu flipping pages absently—and embraced her with a motion so quiet it seemed drained of all force.
He became acutely aware of a violent carnal desire flaring vividly within him at that moment, yet simultaneously felt a dark sediment of suspicion pooling in his heart.
But within this urgent flash of clarity came an awareness of an intensely fervent prayer to despise this dim, stagnant doubt—and even so, he now stared roughly at Masako as though manipulating a sacrificial offering.

Masako’s face tightened.
A simply pained expression appeared.
However, her face soon took on an utterly empty, exhausted expression—as if all emotion had been drained away.
And she did not resist.

The next day, Masako said.

“Brother alone was more than enough!”
“I’m so sick of it all, and yet…”

Her face was pale.
And then, with a resigned smile, she murmured.

As evening approached, news came from Tokyo.
The news was that Tōtarō had committed suicide by poison in a room of a certain inn in Niigata City.

The discovery had been made in the morning, but based on the address and name he had left behind, the notification was first sent to Tokyo and then routed back from there.
The two immediately departed for Niigata.

An exhausted, listless smile returned to Masako.
At the station resounding with the roar of the sea, waiting vacantly for the train was agonizing.

As the train’s speed increased, the shadow of a smile vanished from Masako’s face.
Thin, sharp lines ran across her temples; irritation and anxiety surfaced; and she began to maintain her silence.
There were times when merely becoming aware of Sōkichi’s presence would cause her to display pained movements.
She pressed her face against the train window and gazed at the snowfield fading into dusk, but tears overflowed from her eyes.

――I must be hated.
And it is necessary to be cursed.
"Even a demon would recoil from the vexation of all things tepid," Sōkichi told himself.
A distant traveler’s melancholy began to wash over him.

Sōkichi purchased a local evening newspaper at a certain station.
The traveler’s suicide, being an incident in the countryside where events were few, had been reported by the newspaper in a double-column spread.
As he read to the end of the report, the gloomy, fateful text darkened his eyes.
A chance of survival—it had been recorded.

He showed it to Masako.
How would Masako read this?
Even if there were complex feelings, feeling joy was only natural.

However, Sōkichi’s heart was dark.
The cruel irony of a chance of survival—bestowed upon a persistent suicide attempter—was not, to Sōkichi’s curse-filled heart, a circumstance that had befallen Tōtarō, but rather something that felt like his own.
How much longer will I go on living like this—like this!
As the train advanced, Sōkichi’s gall-like depression only deepened.