Pathway to Japanese Literature

Yesterday

To use the parlance of the time, Captain I of the XX Anti-Aircraft Artillery Unit stationed along the XX Coast in XX Prefecture drank himself into a stupor day after day while ranting at his subordinates, until all XX of his men came to despise the military.

He bore the nickname Gramophone, and throughout all three hundred sixty-five days of the year without missing a single one, he would bellow out the same idiotic speech—lengthy as if compensating for its stupidity, reiterating that "your lives belong to me"—twice daily at dawn and dusk, until his voice ran hoarse year-round, his throat grew as ragged as a naniwa-bushi performer's, and every ten minutes he'd hawk up phlegm with wet ptui ptui sounds.
But he had the troublesome compulsion of using his subordinates’ faces as spittoons.
To be fair, he only flung phlegm at his subordinates' faces when in a foul mood.
But since he was almost never in a good mood, not a single fortunate soldier existed among his wretched subordinates who could escape becoming the Gramophone's spittoon.

Moreover, rather than using his subordinates' faces as spittoons, he would bring his hand to their faces as if to clean those spittoons for them—but his cleaning method was somewhat careless and violent, producing quite a loud noise.
He seemed to enjoy this sound as if it were festival drumbeats, perhaps imagining himself a drummer, and to satisfy this musical passion, he would keep striking until blood streamed from his nose.

And perhaps because this drumming exercise improved his stomach condition, he drank like a horse.
Naturally, he drank like a whale.

Of course, he suffered from a peculiar affliction—he couldn’t get a drop past his throat without watching his men’s entertainments first—so to satisfy that whale-like drinking appetite, the soldiers had to constantly stockpile their hidden talents.

Among all the entertainments, what pleased the captain most was first and foremost naniwa-bushi.

“Perform naniwa-bushi! Naniwa-bushi!”
“Aren’t you going to perform naniwa-bushi?”
“What?!”
“Can’t do it?”
“You’re nothing but military trash!”

And then, to his so-called “military trash” who lacked any hidden talents whatsoever—not even naniwa-bushi—the Captain...

“If you can’t do anything right, then try walking on your hands!”

he ordered, but as he would say,

“The better your naniwa-bushi, the better.”
“The worse your handstands, the better.”

Since Private First Class Kyosuke Shirasaki, the college graduate, was the worst at handstands in the unit, he and Private First Class Shinji Akai—a former rakugo performer skilled in *naniwa-bushi*—were constantly made into drinking accompaniments for the captain.

Thanks to this, Shirasaki was made to perform handstands every day until he nearly forgot everything he’d learned in university, while Akai was forced to bellow naniwa-bushi daily until he nearly forgot his original profession of rakugo—so much so that it was as if they’d been conscripted for the sole purpose of becoming the captain’s drinking appetizers.

However, they had not been conscripted solely to become drinking appetizers for the captain—to put it another way, that is, according to the captain’s own words—

“You lot must serve as my drinking appetizers while also requisitioning those very appetizers!”

This was what he meant.

In other words, unless Akai and Shirasaki both performed naniwa-bushi and handstands—either skillfully or poorly—before the captain while being given time off to requisition chickens, beef, fish, and such, they could not be considered full-fledged soldiers.

That day, Captain I decided he wanted chicken sukiyaki.

The captain’s thinking this meant that unless chickens vanished from the face of the earth, Akai and Shirasaki would have to seek out chickens all the way to the farthest reaches of China and India, whether they wanted to or not.

And this also meant that if the two men failed to return with chickens within the time limit set by the captain,

“You call yourself a Japanese soldier if you can’t even requisition chickens? As long as you wear that uniform, those peasants should be lining up to hand over their birds! So you bastards deliberately failed to requisition chickens to keep me from eating any, eh?”

Before these words had even finished, the familiar "spittoon cleaning" or "festival drumming" would commence—meaning precisely that they’d likely end up half-killed if things went badly.
Just as two plus two equals four, "The Captain wants to eat chicken sukiyaki"
"The two men must go requisition chickens"
and "If we can't requisition it, we'll be half-killed"—these three meanings were equivalent to each other.

“Within two hours!”

Propelled by this command, the two men shot out of the unit like rubber balls and scurried around farmhouses in a panic.

However, the two men were permanent private first class to begin with.
As evidence of this, whether skilled in naniwa-bushi or inept at handstands, when it came to their clumsiness as soldiers, there was no difference between them.
When it came to their sheer ineptitude in being utterly unable to carry out orders they were given with any promptness, there were none who could rival these two.
Moreover, in a manner unbecoming of soldiers, they lacked even the brazenness that should have accompanied their military service.

For men like these, chicken requisition was therefore an extremely difficult task.
But even if the two men had been efficient, brazen soldiers, there were no farmers left in August 1945 who would supply drinking accompaniments for the captain.

“After being dragged through this senseless, absurd war where we don’t know if we’ll live past the next hour, do you sirs really think we’d just say ‘yes, sir’ and hand things over, even to soldiers?”

When told this, the two men,

“We think so too.”

They had blurted out—carelessly, or rather, from their true hearts—and with that, they had no choice but to return empty-handed.

However, upon hearing this, they learned there was a household—a certain Matsuo family known as “soldier-obsessed”—that would gladly comply with any request from soldiers.

The two promptly and eagerly set off to visit the Matsuo residence.

However,

“Chickens?
"What a pity you came now."
“We’d have handed them over gladly if we had any, but we just slaughtered the last bird left here.”
“Mere moments too late.”

That was the reply.

As they dejectedly stepped out from the Matsuo residence's entrance,

"I knew it would come to this,"

Shirasaki said while looking at Akai's face, offering a wry smile.
He had long been repeating,

"I always hit some snag right at the crucial moment whenever I try to do anything,"

and had thus resigned himself to what he perceived as his fate.

Eventually, the two men trudged back.
The interminable summer day eventually came to an end, and as the last light of the setting sun sank below the western sky, night slid down swiftly.

They had to hurry back, or their off-duty time would expire. However, if they returned empty-handed now, it was as certain as the Earth being round that the captain—who was practically salivating for his sukiyaki—would violently lash out, and they’d end up half-killed. When they thought this, their feet naturally began to drag.

“Who’d rush back just to get beaten?”

But they had to hurry or they’d be late.
If they were late, things certainly wouldn’t end peacefully.

“This is exactly when you’d want to desert.”

Gazing up at the starry sky that seemed ready to pour down, Shirasaki muttered.

“You’re right about that.”

When Akai stepped outside the unit, his Osaka dialect slipped out.

“But if we desert, we’d be traitors, huh?”

“Yeah. But belting out naniwa-bushi in front of the Gramophone, doing handstands, or running around requisitioning doesn’t exactly make someone a model citizen either.”

“Well, if you put it that way, guess you’re right.”

“But somehow, I don’t like the idea of deserting. It’s cowardly, for one thing...”

“So we’re goin’ back to get beaten, huh?”

“No—”

With that, Shirasaki suddenly made his eyes gleam,

"We're going back to beat him."

"Huh? Who we gonna beat?"

"The Gramophone."

Shirasaki said it like tearing off old cotton wadding and throwing it away.

"Beating the Gramophone beats getting beaten by him."
"That damn Gramophone—I'll smash him to pieces."
"It's more manly than deserting."

"Huh? For real?"

Akai involuntarily peered at Shirasaki's profile.

"For real."

With that, Shirasaki too used Osaka dialect and smiled.

“That Gramophone—just because he graduated from military academy and chose soldiering as his profession, he wields that single fact like a privilege. While inflicting the worst possible humiliation one human can give another upon us, he struts around like he’s above God himself.”
“Moreover, since he thought winning and lording it over others was too commonplace to be interesting, once defeat seemed imminent, he started acting even more high and mighty.”
“He’s probably being cynical, thinking that lording it over others even in defeat is the ultimate way to show off.”
“Of course, now that the war situation has come to this, he probably thinks there’s no way left to assert his existence except through arrogance.—As a soldier, I can endure the Gramophone’s insults—but as a human being, I can’t take it anymore.”
“Akai, can you endure this?”

“Nah, can’t.”
“That guy had the nerve to call me seven different names in just half a day today.”
“Hey, trash!”
“Hey, fly!”
“Hey, bedbug!”
“Hey, maggot!”
“Hey, louse!”
“Hey, centipede!”
“Hey, pig!”—What kinda crap you spoutin’ now?
“If I’m a pig, then he’s a fresh turd so foul even pigs would puke at the sight of him!”

Though delivered in the humorous style of a rakugo storyteller, as he continued speaking, Akai himself gradually grew more agitated.

“Shirasaki! If you’re gonna beat Gramophone, I’ll beat him too!”
“C’mon, let’s go.”
“To beat—”

“Alright, let’s go!”

The two men returned to their unit with faces contorted in fury.
And, without saying a word, they entered the captain’s room.

But the Captain wasn’t there.

“Hey, where’s the Captain?”
“Where’s the Captain?!”
“Where’s Gramophone?!”

“Gramophone went to headquarters.”

“Just now—got a call from headquarters—panicked and rushed off like a madman,” replied the young sentry.
“He was drunk like a red demon, but when he left, he’d turned blue as a blue demon, I tell ya.”
“It seems Japan is going to surrender.”
“There’s gonna be a major broadcast at noon tomorrow, I tell ya.”

“Huh? Surrender…?”
“The red demon turned into a blue demon…? Hmm.”

Shirasaki involuntarily groaned, but as his agitation gradually subsided, he slumped as if—

"I always end up hitting a snag right at the crucial moment whenever I try to do something."

he muttered.

Today

Call it a demobilization train or a procurement train—the cars were as packed as evacuation trains from the time of the great earthquake.

Just shifting a single leg even slightly required effort equivalent to expending half a day’s ration of calories; they couldn’t even reach the toilet, and it was practically as if there were no exits besides the windows.

When packed to that degree, the passengers gradually lost all human-like sensibilities and reverted to primordial animal instincts, shrieking and clamoring in wretched desperation—yet if one were to name what little remained of their humanity, it might be an amorphous sense of misery and a sudden, inexplicable fury welling up from the pit of their stomachs toward some indefinable entity.

In a corner of such a crowded train car, Shirasaki and Akai sat huddled dejectedly, their faces clouded with gloom.

It was when the train arrived at Numazu.

“Please. Would you open this window, please?”

On a shabby platform that looked like burned ruins, a young woman in Western clothes timidly yet desperately knocked on the window where Shirasaki sat.

“Are you boarding through the window?”

Shirasaki opened the window.

"Yes."

He felt relieved.
The occupants of every window, disliking further crowding, had refused to open them for boarding passengers.

"Are you all right? Can you get in?"
"Then put your luggage in first."

After first taking the luggage, Shirasaki then pulled up the woman clinging to the window by her arms.
It was a surprisingly soft sensation.

The woman's body entered the car at the exact moment the train began to move.

“Thank you very much.”

“Well, that was quite brave of you.”

“But if I didn’t go through the window… I’d been stranded on the platform for five hours.”
“Thanks to you…”

“However, I was quite surprised.”
“Though Romeo and Juliet did from the window…”

Just as he began to say this, Shirasaki noticed the woman’s face turning red and thought, Oh?
It wasn’t her beauty that had startled him.
No—when she blushed and lowered her eyes, her long lashes lay against her lids like wet silk, creating a beauty that seemed almost asleep. Of course this startled him, but more than that—

“Um, excuse me—aren’t you the one who once came to our unit with a song comfort troupe?”

“Pardon…?”

With her head tilted slightly, she nodded immediately—but then suddenly, her eyes lit up,

“Ah—the anti-aircraft gun position. I remember now.”
“You are…”

When she finished singing the song—"When taking a wife, seek one talented, fair of face, and compassionate; when choosing friends, find those who read books, with six parts chivalry and four parts passion…"—suddenly,

“Please sing that song again.”

The soldier who had shouted realized that this was the person he remembered.

When he mentioned that, Shirasaki scratched his head,

“Well, to tell the truth, I’ve never been particularly fond of songs in general. But that one happened to be my high school dormitory song, so I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic…”

“Oh—so your school was in Kyoto.”

“Yes, Third High.”

When he said this, nostalgically,

“I’m from Kyoto.”
“I had evacuated to the countryside in Numazu, but now…”

“To Kyoto…?”

“Yes.”

When he thought they could talk all the way to Kyoto since they themselves were going to Osaka, Shirasaki felt a vaguely pleasant warmth, but suddenly noticed Akai had become excluded from their conversation.

“By the way—back then, after your performance, there was a man who did rakugo, remember? —this is Akai here.”

he introduced.

“Please, your kind patronage—”

With a comical thud, he bowed his head, yet there was a hint of loneliness in Akai’s expression.
Perhaps it was because he worried about his wife and children—from whom all news had ceased—wondering whether they would be there to welcome him safely when he returned to Osaka.

As he thought this, Shirasaki’s brows momentarily darkened, but as he continued speaking with her, his expression gradually brightened.

So, the time until Kyoto passed in an instant.

After passing through Yamashina Tunnel, they were in Kyoto.
The tunnel's length, too, was a brevity that passed in an instant for Shirasaki.

The inside of the train remained extremely crowded.
She still had to disembark through the window.

“Are you all right? Getting down will be tricky.”

“But I’ll try.”
“Please take my luggage.”

She placed her hands on the window frame and, with gymnastic precision, attempted to swing her feet out through the window.

“Look out!”

The moment her hand began to slip from the window, Shirasaki caught her from behind.
Though it was through her overcoat, he could feel the softness of her skin and her body heat as if touching her directly, and Shirasaki’s hands burned with a searing numbness.

When he hastily released his grip, her body slid down safely onto the platform.

“Thank you very much.”

“Oh— uh, the luggage! The luggage…”

Working together with Akai, they handed it over.

“Is this all?”

“Ah, thank you…”

“Well, take care—farewell.”

“Goodbye, and thank you for everything…”

She bowed her head, yet she showed no sign of leaving.

“Please…
“You mustn’t trouble yourself…
“You mustn’t miss the last streetcar.”

It was already 10:18 at night.

“But there are still two minutes left, so allow me to see you off.”

She looked at her watch and said.
The departure was at 10:20 PM.

"Two minutes left.
In these two minutes, I have to say something."

Shirasaki secretly muttered to himself.

"But what should I say?
No—what exactly is it that I want to say?"

While muttering this, Shirasaki gazed intently at her face standing on the platform.
That radiant beauty!

“But this was such a coincidence.”

Shirasaki blurted out without thinking.

“—Thanks to you, I didn’t have to be bored. A train journey—any companion is better than none at all, I say. Even an unpleasant one beats traveling alone.”

“Oh! So am I that unpleasant companion?”

“No—that’s not what I meant… Absolutely not…”

“I don’t mind at all.”

Because Shirasaki was flustered, she smiled faintly. Whereupon Shirasaki grew even more flustered,

“This is awkward...”
“No—you’re absolutely not an unpleasant person...”
“No—you were truly an excellent companion.”
“But when I think about it, it’s strange.”
“By nature I’m tone-deaf—from elementary school through today I always got fours in singing class, and even now there’s not a single song I can sing properly.”
“That someone like me would end up traveling with a vocalist like you...”
“No—actually I’m dreadfully tone-deaf.”
“So I wasn’t particularly fond of songs.”
“No—rather I’m the type who absolutely detests them.”

As he spoke, Shirasaki—Oh, what a blunder I’m making with my words—sank into dejection.
So immediately—

“But now, songs…”

Just as he started to say “I’ve come to like them,” the departure bell rang, and the train whistle’s blast drowned out his words.

And then, the train began to move.

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

Shirasaki—ah, I ended up saying the worst possible thing at the very end.
The moment I try to do something—anything—an obstacle always crops up at the critical juncture!
Disappointed though he was, a lingering sweetness remained within him.

Her figure eventually disappeared from view.

Shirasaki finally pulled his head back in from the window, and the moment he casually looked down at his feet,

“Oh!”
“This trunk…?”

“Oh! That’s the young lady’s.”

Akai also let out a startled voice.

“I forgot to hand it over. Do you know her name?”

“Nah, dunno. If you dunno, ain’t no way I’d know.”

“That’s true.
Now that you mention it—it’s true I was careless enough to forget handing over the trunk, and just as careless to forget asking her name.”

Shirasaki muttered those words.

Eventually, when the train arrived at Osaka Station, Shirasaki parted ways with Akai and went back to his home in Uehonmachi.

However, when he returned, his former home was no longer there; at the entrance of the makeshift barracks, the characters on the perfunctory nameplate labeled "Shirasaki" could barely be discerned under the dim glow of a naked bulb.

“Oh! So our place got hit too?”

“We got hit.”
“I’d thought about moving back to the countryside, but since you came home and were wandering around looking so lost, I went ahead and built this shack anyway.”

That became the first proper exchange between father and son alone in years.

“Is that all your luggage?”

“Isn’t it a bit meager?”

“No—it’s too much.
Too much.
It’s bad for appearances with the neighbors.
Though I say ‘neighbors,’ it’s nothing but burned ruins...”

“Knowing you’d say that, I gave away blankets, rice, bread—quite a lot—to vagrants at Osaka Station before coming.”

“Well now, that’s commendable.”

“Of course, with no streetcars running, I had to lighten my load to walk home through the burned ruins.”

“I figured as much. But if you’d given away that trunk too while you were at it, that would’ve been even better…”

“No, this one’s out of the question. This isn’t mine, you see.”

“Then, whose is it?”

“Ahaha…”

“What’s with that strange laugh?”
“Ahaha…”
“A weight on your chest and a load on your back—I guess that’s about it.”
“Ahaha…”

“Heh heh…”

Father and son were laughing cheerfully.

At that very moment, Akai stood dejectedly amid the burned ruins of Minamitanyamachi.

He could at least figure out that his former home had been somewhere in this alleyway, but of course, there was no trace of the house itself, nor could he discern where his wife and children might have disappeared.

The depths of his eyes gradually filled with whiteness, and in the chilling burned ruins where a pale wind swept across, Akai stood motionless for a moment before eventually trudging off.
But he had no destination in mind, no means to search for his wife and children, and no means to secure lodging for the night.

Aimlessly, Akai wandered about until he could no longer endure the biting cold that seemed to tear at his ears; seeking even a sliver of warmth, his feet naturally turned toward the subway concourse of Namba Station.

Then Akai, having entered the crowd of vagrants squirming within the concourse, took down the blanket he had been carrying on his back, wrapped himself in it, and flopped down.
Then, a ten-year-old girl trembling beside him,
“Uncle, let me in too.”

With that, she approached.

“Alright, c’mon in here.”
“Cold, are ya?”
“Here, get in.”

“Oh wow, ahh, so warm... Uncle, I’m starving.”

“I’m starvin’ too.”
“How ’bout we eat some bread?”

“Uncle, you got bread?”

“Yeah. Got some.”

“Oh, really... Just let me have one bite.”

“Don’t say ‘just one bite’—eat plenty!”

His voice grew choked with emotion.
The girl became engrossed and ate voraciously, then,

“Uncle, my name’s Mineko.
I’m nine years old.”

It was a heartrendingly brief self-introduction.

“Hmm.”

“Mineko… what about your dad and mom…?”

When he asked, Mineko burst into tears.

“I got it, I got it.
“There, there. Go on and cry.”
“When Mineko cries, Uncle ends up crying too.”

However, she wouldn’t stop crying easily.

“This is tough.
“Stop crying now.”
“I’ll tell ya a funny story now, so wipe those tears and listen up.”

Then, when he began recounting a rakugo story in a low voice, Mineko at first listened with apparent interest, but soon burst into quiet sobs.
Akai's voice gradually grew thick with tears, became a half-sobbing tone, until he could no longer continue.
In the depths of his heart lay the uncertainty of his wife and children’s fate—whether they were alive or dead.

“Hey, that’s good!”
“Keep it up!”

A voice came from among the vagrants.

“Don’t be daft.
What kinda heartless request is that?
Asking for rakugo now is more heartless than making someone dance at a funeral, I tell ya!”

While saying this, his voice breaking into tears, he hugged Mineko tightly,

“Mineko, will you be my child?”

“I will.
Uncle, you’re Mineko’s dad now.”
“Then... what about Mineko’s mommy...?”

“……”

Akai remained silent with a loneliness as heavy as lead.
The back of his eyes burned intensely, and the tear that rolled down the former rakugo performer's cheek was the helplessness of not knowing where he should search tomorrow for his own wife who was meant to become this child's mother, nor for his own children who were meant to become this child's siblings.

When dawn broke, Akai walked all around Osaka with Mineko.

Meanwhile, Shirasaki too had someone he restlessly wanted to search for.
But knowing only that that person was a vocalist living in Kyoto, he could not find any leads.

And time passed.

Tomorrow

In front of Osaka Station, rows of shoeshiners were lined up; among them, Akai had set up a modest shoeshine stall with Mineko. Since nearly all the rakugo theaters in Osaka had burned down, there were no longer any venues where Akai—a second-rate rakugo performer—could earn his living; and even had any theaters remained, he no longer wished to perform rakugo. Therefore, to feed themselves, their only choices were to become shoeshiners or peddle streetcar tickets around town. As for shoeshining, he had experience from being forced daily to polish his superior officer's boots back in the military unit. One reason was that by staying at Osaka's busiest station square, he clung to the faint hope that he might somehow encounter his wife and children there.

One day, as he was crouched in front of the station as usual, a man suddenly thrust out his shoe arrogantly.

“Here ya go.”

As he began polishing and looked up at the customer's face, Akai suddenly stood up and struck the man's face with the brush in his hand.
It was his former captain.

“Hey! What're you doing? Savage!”
“You brute!”

Captain I was startled but,
“Ah! You're Akai!”

When he recognized him, he immediately grabbed his collar.

“Oh? Feeling feisty now.
“Amusing!
“Try hitting me if you can!
“But I'm warning you—if you dare lay one finger on me...”

Akai looked around at the rubberneckers who had gathered with their “What’s this? What’s that?”

“I’ll tell these people every last detail about what you made ’em haul on trucks the day the war ended!”

After hearing this, Captain I involuntarily turned crimson and groaned, but soon,

“Remember this!”

And then，agitatedly fleeing，he hurried away.
With shoe polish stains still on his face.

"You daft fool!"
"You think I'd remember trash like you?"
"Ah ha…"

Akai laughed a refreshingly hearty laugh, one he hadn’t laughed in a long time.

Eventually, when the day's work ended and the sun set, Akai took Mineko’s hand and headed back to the dugout shelter they had built on the burned ruins of their home in Minamitaniya-cho.

Though the daytime incident had settled his indignation, the night road stretched dark and desolate, and whenever he wondered whether his wife and children were dead or alive, his legs grew heavy of their own accord.

Light leaked from a makeshift barracks along their path, carrying with it the sound of a radio song.

"Ah, the radio's playing."

Mineko came to a halt.
The song was "Moon Over Ruined Castle."

As he listened along with Mineko, Akai suddenly,

"This voice... I've heard it before," he said, his professional sensitivity to voices kicking in.

"Ah! That's it! The song from those military comfort performances!"

The moment he realized this, Akai grabbed Mineko's hand and dashed toward Babamachi, where Osaka's broadcasting station stood.

At that exact moment, Shirasaki too was listening to the broadcast. The makeshift barracks now had both a radio and telephone installed. His father called out.

“Hey, how about switching to the Second Program?”
“No, this one is better.”
“You were supposed to hate songs, though…”

“Ahaha…”

He laughed innocently while listening to "Moon Over Ruined Castle," but suddenly—
"Father, where's today's newspaper...?"

“It’s on your lap.”

“Ah, right.”

He put a hand to his head, looked down at his lap, and when he saw the radio listing that read “Solo and Orchestra: Setsuko Sugiyama, Accompanied by Osaka Broadcasting Orchestra,”

Setsuko Sugiyama...?
That’s right—that was definitely the name.
Osaka Broadcasting Orchestra?
So, it’s a broadcast from Osaka.

He muttered this, then restlessly stood up and went to make a call.

“...Hello? Is this the broadcasting station? Actually, I have an urgent matter regarding Ms. Setsuko Sugiyama who is currently on air. Could you please connect me to her?”

“Ohoho...”

The operator laughed,

“We can’t call someone who’s on air to the phone.”

“Ah! Of course—I was careless here.”
“Hello? Then, I’d like to leave a message for Ms. Sugiyama…”
“Oh, hello? The line’s busy…”
“Huh?”
“Electric heaters... a hundred units...?”
“Huh?”
“What did you say?”
“Can you deliver it to the Umeda Shindo office?”
“Hello? I’m trying to reach the broadcasting station here...”
“What? You idiot?”
“What?!”
“What do you mean, ‘idiot’?!”

The line had gotten crossed.

"Ah, whenever I try to do something, a breakdown always occurs at the critical moment."

Feeling disappointed, he hung up the phone and stood vacantly for a while, but then—as if something had occurred to him—he hastily grabbed the trunk and fidgeted his way out.

With his lanky strides, the distance from Uehonmachi to Babamachi was covered in no time.

When he rushed to the broadcasting station’s reception desk,

“Oh, Shirasaki, you came too?”

It was Akai who had called out.

“Ah. At last, the trunk’s owner has been found.”

As he was waiting in the first-floor hall outside Studio 1 for the broadcast to end, Sagawa, the head of entertainment who had come down the stairs, spotted Akai and—

“Oh my, what a rare sight. Why, if it isn’t Mr. Akadanji?”

Sagawa approached them. His fair-skinned, refined face and somewhat measured way of speaking were things Akai certainly remembered.

“Ah, back then, so many things…”

Before being drafted, Akai had broadcasted two or three times through Sagawa’s arrangements.

“Aren’t you doing rakugo anymore?”

“Oh.
“I’ve completely given it up.”
“I just can’t get motivated, y’know.””

“I see.”
“What a shame.”
“Why not try doing a broadcast?”
“Perhaps a new piece…”

Sagawa—ever diligent in his work—would grow voraciously enthusiastic whenever he found new performers.
His requests were gentle yet carried an obstinate delight in his own plans.

“No—I’m grateful for your kind offer—but I just can’t bring myself to make people laugh…”

When Akai refused like that, Shirasaki, who had been listening nearby, suddenly interjected,

"You should take up the offer! First of all, just as you and I found the trunk's owner through today's broadcast and rushed here—if your wife or children somewhere out there hear your broadcast, they might come rushing to meet you!"

As soon as he said this, Akai’s eyes suddenly glistened with raw intensity.

“That ain’t wrong.”
“Well then, maybe I’ll ask Sagawa-san for one favor.”

“I see, is that so? Well then, let’s go upstairs and discuss.”

At the same time as Akai and Mineko were heading up to the fourth-floor entertainment department room, Setsuko Sugiyama emerged from Studio 1.

“Oh,”
“Oh!”
“You brought the trunk.”
“Well,”

Setsuko involuntarily grasped Shirasaki’s hand.
Had it been because she had just sung a sweet song that such a gesture emerged so naturally?
She had indeed been still excited after her performance.
With her cheeks vividly flushed,

“This trunk contained the evening dresses and sheet music needed for concerts.”
“Now I can perform at concerts too.”
“Thank you truly.”
“I’ve done nothing but impose on you…”

“Oh—
“It’s not something worth thanking me for...
“First of all, it was my fault for being careless at Kyoto Station.
“However, if you wish to thank me, would you send me tickets to your concerts from now on?
“Since I’m rather scatterbrained, even if advertisements for your concerts are posted, I’d likely overlook them...”

“Oh.”
“But you dislike songs, don’t you?”

Setsuko was smiling.

“No, that’s been retracted. Let’s have that removed from the transcript. It was my own careless remark.”

“Well,”

“Ahaha….”
“Right now, I’m helping edit this peculiar magazine my father publishes—honestly, I can’t even think about music,” Shirasaki began awkwardly, then hurriedly added,
“But if you send me tickets—no matter how busy I am—I’ll come listen.”

He had finally managed to say the sweet words—It seems because of you I’ve come to like songs—and felt relieved, but his entire body was drenched in sweat.

Then, two weeks later that night, Akai's new rakugo was broadcast.

In the waiting room of Studio 5, as they waited for the broadcast to begin, an attendant—

“There is a visitor for Akadanji-san.”
“Your wife is at the reception,” the attendant came to inform him.

“Huh? My wife…?”
“Did she come ‘cause she saw it in the paper?”
“I’ll go right away.”
“Much obliged…”

When he tried to jump up and leave, Sagawa stopped him—
“Akadanji-san, it’s almost broadcast time.”

He stopped him.

Eventually, Akai—with Shirasaki nearby—

"So I wasn’t the only one who faced obstacles right at the critical moment when one tries to do something."

While hearing those words at his back, he entered the broadcast room.