Pathway to Japanese Literature

Prologue

Like other chronic diseases likely were—though leprosy was incurable once contracted—it did not suddenly worsen but made patients spend long months advancing and receding like waves until finally submerging white sands beneath its tide-like progression. When symptoms began advancing this way, patients would say “The illness has become agitated,” and when they stopped, “It has settled.” With each agitation phase grew another layer of severity. Though chaulmoogra oil injections—the sole treatment—undoubtedly had efficacy, they merely slowed rather than halted progression; fundamentally advancing parallel with time itself. It moved like a half-broken clock—pausing its advance only to lurch forward again. Some among them worsened without even these pauses. Such cases proved rarer among wet-type (bacteria-positive) patients than dry-type (bacteria-negative).

When Naruse Shinkichi first came here, he had indeed thought that diligent injections might bring about a cure, but before long he was forced to realize just how naive and ignorant such hopes were regarding his disease. It was only now that he came to realize it—shortly after arriving here, he had heard an innocent-looking girl of eleven or twelve answer an older man who had half-jokingly told her, “Get better soon so you can go home,” with the words: “My illness won’t heal unless I go to the dissection room.” Every time he saw that girl now, he recalled that moment—this embodiment of innocence—was she truly aware she had nowhere to go but the dissection room? The thought filled him with bleakness, yet hers had been words of truth.—And so it was that some eight months after his hospitalization, Naruse’s illness too abruptly began its “agitation.”

Although the rainy season had ended, the days were not consistently sunny—nor did it rain either. The weather persisted strangely: sweltering humidity would give way without warning to a penetrating chill that made one long for layered clothing. The instability of heat and cold tossed the leprosy patients’ bodies about like wooden fragments. That day, Naruse himself had felt vaguely heavy-headed since morning and strangely feverish in his body, but as usual he went to the printing department—where patients printed the hospital newsletter, literary magazines, medicine bags, and other materials by hand— Naruse, who had been assigned proofreading duties—went to work thinking he must have caught a slight cold, but by evening, a creeping chill began spreading through his entire body, and even his head started aching. Reluctantly laying out his bedding, he cried out involuntarily when removing his underpants. His left leg had already been paralyzed from the kneecap downward, and the front of his thigh had also lost sensation. Across this entire paralyzed area, heat nodules had erupted in scattered clusters. Heat nodules are medically termed acute nodules, though their true nature and formation remain unclear. These invariably caused fever—a high temperature of forty-one or forty-two degrees Celsius being far from uncommon. Startled, he removed his shirt to find red spots erupting across every paralyzed section of both arms. A roommate who happened to be present warmed gauze for him; covering his limbs with it and applying a poultice through tight bandage wrappings—yet by next morning, erythema already blanketed his entire face. When he pressed his fingers against it, hard lumps shifted beneath his skin like lodged candy drops that throbbed dully when prodded. When examined by the doctor—who laughed while speaking—he was kindly told it was nothing serious: just rest properly in critical care for about a month.

“You won’t die from heat nodules.”

“You won’t die from heat nodules,” the doctor said. Though likely meant as a joke—and such words hardly warranted dwelling upon—they struck Naruse, still a so-called new patient with only eight months since his hospitalization, squarely in the chest, suddenly confronting him with an abyssal darkness he’d never anticipated. “Admission” meant entering the critical care ward; within the institution, treatment wards were called “health wards,” and those capable of working were counted among the healthy. When entering the critical care ward, people began using the term “patient.” The critical care ward was, so to speak, the hospital within this leprosarium—admission to it amounted to true hospitalization. Upon hearing “admission,” Naruse—for whom this was a first—felt it resonate all the more powerfully within him. Visions rose unbidden: patients wandering between life and death in their sickly decline; critically ill men half-rotted and swarming through the ward. He now had to confront that he’d already taken a step toward that realm. Simultaneously, he recalled the frenzied days of the past fortnight—days when, after having every semblance of life stripped away physically and socially, even his mental existence had been driven step by step into extremity since hospitalization—all these days now rose up before him.

Anyone who entered this hospital was first placed in the critical care ward for one week, where their medical history would be examined, their disease severity and presence of complications assessed, after which they would finally be transferred to an appropriate treatment ward. However, in recent times, as the leprosy issue came to be vocally advocated and public sympathy toward the hospital spread among society—likely due to this—a special containment ward donated by a prominent foundation had now been completed. But when Naruse was hospitalized, it was still General Ward No. 3 that served that purpose. For Naruse, who until then had never seen another leprosy patient besides himself, the week spent in Ward No. 3 became a nightmare so visceral that even its memory made him shudder. The moment he stepped into the sickroom, the stench of pus that had assaulted his nostrils still clung obstinately even now eight months later—whenever he picked up chopsticks to eat, that foul odor would suddenly revive, and a gagging nausea would rise in his throat. What a bizarre world he had entered—for some time, even Naruse could not trust his own eyes. Was this truly the human world? It had become impossible to definitively call it the realm of humanity. When he looked to the right and suddenly encountered a face like a red demon, shuddering, he averted his eyes to the left only to find a pallid youngster with an identical face grinning and staring back at Naruse. To his right, left, front, and back—there existed no space suitable for directing his gaze. They were a single race living like moles beneath society, beneath humanity. Neither Easterners nor Westerners, nor South Sea Islanders—they were a "leprous race" belonging to none of these categories. It was a Narin-bou race that could only serve humanity by being driven to extinction and perishing at the hands of all humankind.

On the fifth day there, Naruse encountered an incident. This was but a trivial incident, yet it etched itself into Naruse’s frayed nerves as an abnormal event. He had been suffering from insomnia since the first day, but that night, he finally managed to doze off into a shallow sleep. It must have been around midnight when he suddenly awoke to the clattering of hurried footsteps racing down the corridor and urgent voices jumbling together. Wondering what was happening, he hurriedly sat up in bed and saw seven or eight people clustered around a bed far across the room in the opposite corner, all clamoring noisily. In a panic, the attendant roughly flung open the door and dashed out,

“Hurry up or he’ll stop breathing!” one of the clustered figures roared. Naruse couldn’t comprehend what was occurring, but compelled by the aberrant tension, he rushed to investigate. Rising on tiptoe behind the crowd, he glimpsed what seemed a young man—matted hair sinking into the pillow, face like putrefied fruit—lying supine like a throttled fowl, limbs flailing through faint convulsions. He would later learn this resulted from laryngeal leprosy obstructing the throat. Earthenware-hued veins bulged like worms across the dusky forehead as choked gurgles escaped the rattling windpipe. Eyes upturned to void, fists clenched bone-white—the man teetered at breath’s precipice. Soon the attendant clattered in with a wheeled stretcher, slammed the patient onto it, and careened toward surgery.

“Has the doctor come out yet?” Shouting this, three or four men gave chase. Those who remained muttered things like: “Poor thing—if they’re going to cut his throat, he should’ve just died.”

“Three years after a throat-cutting, ahh...” and so on, each muttering whatever they pleased as they rustled and crawled into their beds. The next day, Naruse learned the meaning of “throat-cutting three years”—those who underwent this surgery would die within three years. Of course exceptions existed—some survived five or ten years—but most had their lives claimed not long after the procedure. Not long after this incident, Naruse began his treatment ward routine—yet each night when he lay down, visions of those convulsing limbs flickered before his eyes, while that gurgling rattle echoed relentlessly in his ears. To keep living by drilling holes in one’s throat with a half-rotted body like that—the ferocity of life’s craving struck him as both accursed and pitiful.

Even so, lacking thorough knowledge about his disease, he could not bring himself to believe such matters were directly connected to him. Resolving that he must be discharged as soon as possible regardless, he continued receiving his thrice-weekly chaulmoogra oil injections without ever missing a dose. And with each injection, he felt some measure of relief, at times secretly touching his paralyzed areas—closing his eyes to test whether sensation might have returned—only to touch them again. Yet as days passed, he had no choice but to gradually yield to the reality of this “disease that grows more dreadful the more one contemplates it.” The initial shock and fear upon hospitalization had ultimately been mere sensory phenomena. They were nothing more than the astonishment of seeing things never before seen and the dread of hearing sounds never before heard. But soon enough, as if those perceptual shocks and terrors had slowly seeped inward layer by layer, his anguish only swelled and deepened further. No matter how much time passed, his paralyzed regions remained as insensate as withered wood. Still, about once a month he would remember them and try focusing attention there to test them—but this only accumulated futile repetitions. Each time, he would be gripped by such desperate agitation that he could neither sit still nor remain standing.

The life in the treatment ward could not be called dark or bright—those were days smeared with ashen white. The patients, who were not granted a single vivid hope, also harbored no profound despair; they merely continued their occasional reflex movements. For a youth of heightened sensitivity like Naruse, becoming fully accustomed was nearly impossible; particularly in his current position where he had come to believe he would never be cured until death, his anguish only intensified day by day. Yet they acclimated to the hospital and their disease with astonishing speed, each shaping their own life within this small world. At daybreak they would go out to work humming tunes, return for lunch at eleven, spend two hours until one o'clock sprawling on the veranda to lazily dry their backs while continuing their chatter about women before heading out again, then finish work and eat dinner at three-thirty. Then until ten o'clock lights-out, they would go out to visit the women’s ward and return after exchanging ugly insults with the patient supervisor. For some reason, leprosy had few female patients; in any sanatorium, women made up thirty percent of the total. Consequently, fierce competition would unfold. Whenever a single young woman was admitted, they would jostle to be first in rushing to her, pouring all their talents into making a favorable first impression. And in the end, thirty percent became fortunate ones and forty percent became unfortunate failures. Therefore, when one could declare “I’ve got a woman” or “found myself a caretaker,” it was considered a great success—and only then would they begin to gain credibility within the institution, recognized by themselves and others as full-fledged human beings. After all, given how scarce women were here, it was only natural that within these walls they reigned as kings while men were reduced to mere servants. The very element that enriched their daily lives was none other than these women. Observing them—their eyebrows completely gone, their faces swollen to a dusky black that seemed ready to burst with pus at the slightest touch, laboring to conceal balding patches with cheap cream as they peered into mirrors—Naruse wondered what else remained for them beyond such an existence. Had he been the man who first arrived here, he might have dismissed it all as wretchedness in a single breath. But now, having come to know the reality of this disease, he saw only lives driven to utter desperation and understood the futility of judgment. Whether one called them wretched, ugly, or anything else—the peasants near this hospital apparently had a custom of referring to the patients as “mountain pigs.” Those “healthy” ones who kept their bodies out of hospitals might get by with such mockery, but Naruse had to confront being one of those pigs himself. What a terrifying world had I come to? Must I spend all my remaining years within it? To live—to survive—this might be beautiful; this might be noble. But why must it be noble? Why must it be beautiful?—Naruse found suicidal thoughts now flickering through his mind at unexpected moments.

And then, starting about a month before the heat nodules appeared, he had formed the habit of wandering aimlessly through the mixed woods each evening. Of course he had no immediate intention of acting, but time and again he would startle upon realizing he’d been thinking of nothing but death. That he had developed heat nodules must have been due to these nightly walks poisoning his body. His disease type was wet-type—without which heat nodules wouldn’t form—but not only this type; all exposure to night dew proved harmful. Moreover, even on days when a light rain fell, he would keep walking past the ten o’clock lights-out time. He knew this harmed his diseased body, but when he considered what good preserving it would do him now, there remained nothing left to hold him back. Were they to hear of his death, his flesh-and-blood kin back home would surely grieve—yet even in their lamentations they might find some hidden relief. Or rather, truth be told: perhaps they secretly wished him dead at once. Of course Naruse too had occasionally let his thoughts drift homeward—but once death stared him full in the face, even if some longing for society—no, for life itself—persisted, all yearning for home had vanished.—Around that time, without fail as dusk approached each day, abnormal anxiety and despair would seize him until his heart burned with urgency to flee somewhere—anywhere—immediately. There were nights he forced himself into bed only to find himself sleepless and verging on madness. Then his nerves would congeal pathologically; at the faintest scuttle of mice in the ceilingboards a bolt of terror would course through him—freezing rigid like this, he’d feel himself plummeting into some bottomless chasm. In the end he always spent long hours wandering the woods. To die or live—this either-or question now pressed Naruse for an answer.

But until the heat nodules appeared, there had still been one small reassurance. Put simply, he was still a mild case. Even though there were paralyzed parts in his limbs and the disease had spread to one side of his face, he was still considered a mild case. He knew no neuralgia, had no wounds anywhere on his body, and for five or seven years yet, could have escaped if it came to it. The mere fact of being classified mild—this alone afforded him scant comfort. Though ultimately fated to progress to severity, the critical care ward still lay beyond reach. Until then, he had thought he would manage somehow—but now even that last reassurance had been severed completely.

When admission occurred, everyone in the room would mobilize—some carrying futons, others holding bamboo baskets filled with dishes—surrounding the handcart bearing the patient as they trudged along in an eerie procession toward the sickroom. The sickroom Naruse entered was Ward Five. Ward Five stood at the northernmost end among the rows of hospital buildings, its entrance directly facing Ward Ten. Ward Ten housed special cases—lunatics and idiots. The day after his examination, Naruse too was loaded onto a handcart and taken to Ward Five. The moment he became a handcart passenger, Naruse suddenly recalled the man with laryngeal leprosy who had been wheeled to the operating room—a man now said to be cheerfully cleaning the metal fixture with its attached tube lodged in his throat each day. Yet the memory of those limbs thrashing about remained stubbornly lodged in Naruse’s mind. He lay curled in the handcart, acutely aware of its violent vibrations resonating through his fever-dulled head, overwhelmed by boundless emotion at having finally become a member of the critical care ward. He must have been running an exceptionally high fever, for he felt no pain. When he raised his eyes, the distant grove visible between the rows of wards appeared dimly blurred, his entire body floating as though drifting through clouds. When helped by people to lie down on the bed, it was all he could manage to utter: “Thank you for your care.”

“Take care of yourself.” As people gathered around his pillow repeated “Take care of yourself, Mr. Naruse,” he heard their voices through his fading consciousness, his entire body being drawn into a drowsy, hazy world.

I

Naruse suddenly opened his eyes. His head felt heavy with a hazy smokiness, though his temperature seemed to have dropped significantly. When he pressed his palm to his heart, the beat remained fierce yet now pulsed in a calmer rhythm. For four days after admission, he had been delirious with high fever—his consciousness never fully clear—but last night his temperature gradually subsided, granting him a restful if shallow sleep. Though the sensation of floating midair still clung to his body, his awareness had solidified into clarity. What time could it be? He cracked his eyes open slightly, but beyond the curtain's gap at his feet lay only darkness—the window showed nothing beyond its glass save reflections of indoor light. Occasional groans of discomfort, repulsive snorts through clogged nostrils, and shallow breaths teetering on cessation were all that pierced the sickroom's hushed silence. Morning still seemed distant. He closed his eyes again, thinking one more sleep might lift this cranial weight, and waited for drowsiness to claim him.

How many hours had he slept? When he opened his eyes again, night had completely given way to dawn, the bright light stinging his eyes. Yet through the window stretched a leaden overcast sky—windless it seemed—where black clouds hung motionless in stagnant formation. Morning clamor filled the room: feet clattering across floorboards, cavernous yawns, water gushing violently from washroom faucets—all blending into a harried cacophony. As anticipated, his head felt lighter than before; with this improvement, Naruse briefly tasted a brightness of mood long absent from his palate. Yet not only did his skull retain that smoke-filled heaviness, but his entire body lay bone-drained of strength, making even the thought of rising feel Herculean. When he kept his eyes firmly shut, the memory of being carted here on that handcart resurfaced abruptly. An inexplicable loneliness gripped him as pale anxiety seeped through his veins—might this be how I finally die?

“Meal’s ready!”

After some time had passed, the booming voice of an attendant rang out loudly. Soon came the clattering sounds of tea bowls and plates being set out,

“What’s today’s side dish!”

A hoarse voice asked. “Today’s menu is—”

Probably the attendant—having said up to that point in a slightly solemn voice—

“Well, today’s menu—lunch is pickles.” “Dinner is simmered potatoes.”

The room erupted into chaos,

“Tch.” “They keep shovelin’ nothin’ but potatoes down our throats—we ain’t hogs!” When someone said,

“It ain’t my fault.” “If you don’t like it, then quit!” “You pigs in a pen!” Of course, they weren’t truly angry—it was more like a mutual showering of insults.

“Aaaah, what kinda hell is this?” “Day after day they keep force-feeding us nothing but potatoes—and this is what they call living?” When a woman’s strangely pessimistic voice was heard, this time others responded with what seemed exuberant cheerfulness. “Today it’s greens again, tomorrow it’s greens again.” “With greens and greens, the day fades away.” Some would sing their chants, while others might suddenly break into a gidayū ballad passage—"Now only sorrow remains where he once stood / Where could old Hannashichi be at this hour? / No returning to what's long past"—the words emerging in a voice so hoarse it scarcely seemed human. Voicing complaints and airing grievances, yet they still could not fully conceal the joy of mealtime.

Naruse too thought today he should at least try to get down a bowlful of gruel and attempted to rise, but a wave of dizziness struck instantly, causing him to collapse back onto his futon. It had only been a few days, yet he seemed to have weakened considerably. He felt a restless impatience and forced himself to rise, but now that his physical strength had diminished to such a degree, a dark shadow began to envelop his heart. At each bedside were affixed small cabinets resembling tea storage chests. These cabinets served as both desks for writing letters to their hometowns and tables for their three daily meals. Moreover, their daily necessities—soap, toothbrushing tools, hand towels, along with teapots and tableware—lay jumbled inside these containers. More square boxes than proper cabinets—the sight of patients lined up in rows before them for meals was truly ghastly. Naruse’s bed lay at the western end near the south wall, granting him a full view of the room at a glance.

The beds were lined up in two rows to the left and right, but standing in the passageway between them, all five attendants worked together to serve the meals.

“Meal’s ready!” “Gruel again!” “Hup!” “Here it comes.” While letting out chant-like shouts, the attendants darted right and left, sometimes colliding with each other and nearly spilling the miso soup. The rice tub and soup pot were placed in the center of the room, perched atop a bench-like seat such as one might find in a park somewhere. The sight of the patients at mealtime was a spectacle that could likely be seen nowhere else on earth. Some had lost all five fingers and naturally couldn’t hold chopsticks—clamping tea bowls between hands that had become like wooden clappers was still manageable compared to others who stuck forks between their bandages to eat, or the one whose peeling adhesive plaster dangled from his forehead, plunging into the soup each time he brought the bowl to his mouth. Even Naruse found himself involuntarily nauseated.

This was his first meal taken in the sickroom since the initial week of hospitalization when he was first admitted. When retrieving tea bowls from the cabinet, his own wretched figure would materialize in his mind with belated clarity, and Naruse found himself thinking he should just give up altogether. Both his face and arms were wrapped in bandages, and since exposure to cold was most harmful to the heat nodules, he had to hold his chopsticks while wearing gloves. Not only had he not washed his face, but he hadn’t even rinsed his mouth once. While he was hesitating,

“Gruel again, huh?” Without waiting for his reply, one of the attendants briskly took away the tea bowl and soup bowl. His fever-festered mouth had completely lost its sense of taste. When he tried putting the first bite in his mouth, it was like eating white mud—utterly flavorless. He resolutely swallowed each mouthful. Having finally finished the bowl this way, he felt a wave of relief. Suddenly aware of his fatigue, he washed down the scattered vegetable scraps with hot water and crawled back into bed.

When he shifted his gaze outside the window—lying on his back as he was, only the roof of Ward Four ahead came slightly into view—just then, a flock of pigeons came flying in. The sky remained cloudy, but showed no sign of rain. The pigeons had been shuffling awkwardly along the roof's slope when they all took flight at once, as if startled. Naruse keenly felt his own inability to move freely, and the daily erosion of even his pre-illness youthful vigor struck him as profoundly pitiable. Yet he found himself in a state of relative calm.

Naruse's heat nodules proved milder than anticipated, following a favorable course thereafter; after his temperature had fluctuated around thirty-eight degrees for about a week, it stabilized at approximately thirty-seven point three or four degrees. A reading of thirty-eight degrees with acute nodules was considered normal; to insist that only fevers exceeding forty degrees qualified as heat nodule flare-ups felt almost shameful. The bandages swathing his face and limbs ceased troubling him much once he grew accustomed to them, and he even managed at times to stroll about the room or rinse his mouth. As he gradually adapted to sickroom life, he came to recognize that the patients—who had all initially struck him as grotesque clay figurines—each possessed distinct lifestyles and personalities. Before long, he found himself deriving a peculiar fascination from observing their daily existences. Yet the more he observed and learned, the more acutely he had to acknowledge inhabiting a world where salvation grew increasingly remote. Even when speaking collectively of patients, their conditions varied endlessly—there were those with violent neuralgia who wept through entire nights, others whose leg bones had rotted internally to form cavernous hollows while appearing intact externally. There were tuberculosis patients and hemorrhoid sufferers too, along with gastric disorders, endometritis cases, and even rare instances of orchitis. Their sole commonality lay in being afflicted with leprosy. They spent their days discussing nothing but food or women, yet what Naruse found equally intriguing was how their interests extended to social affairs. When social matters arose—not tabloid scandals but topics like international crises, the Okada Cabinet's policies, or recent assassination attempts—the moment someone broached such subjects, they would alter their eye expressions and spew spittle with such fervor that one wondered when it might ever cease. Naruse occasionally pondered this phenomenon: why these individuals, utterly severed from societal life, should fixate on matters wholly divorced from their current existence. Strange indeed—strange beyond measure. Was this an unconscious effort to preserve severed social connections through speech? Or an attempt to glimpse their own reflections within society through shared imaginings? Or perhaps an instinctive political bent inherent to Japanese ethnicity?—What remained certain was this: it revealed both their latent yearning for society and their desire to forget their present selves—to prevent those selves from being entombed within the sickroom.

The entire sickroom would sink into a peculiar gloom. This invariably came after such discussions had reached their peak. Their consciousness returned to their selves. Rather than being conscious of themselves as leprosy patients and feeling irredeemable despair, they found themselves struck by a hollow void. When one person flopped down, they all plopped over one after another and lay still. They keenly felt the weight of their disease—a burden they had forgotten—and gazed into the endless darkness of their future. The room fell silent; now emerged the moans that had been forgotten during their animated conversation—

“Agh...gh...” Voices crying out in pain began to be heard, and the attendants would hastily dash to the medical office to request anesthetic injections. Naruse’s neighbor was a blind man, “I’d wanted to see my wife’s face just once more while my eyes still worked, but it’s no use now, Mr. Naruse, I tell you.” he would say over and over again. “First I got leprosy, then on top of that I caught tuberculosis. My life’s over, I tell ya.”

While saying this, he would fumble through the cabinet to retrieve the photograph and show it to Naruse. It was a wedding photo. The blind man would tilt his head as if gauging Naruse's reaction, and at the crinkle of paraffin paper covering the photograph, he would chuckle—a dry "Eh-heh-heh-heh"—before prefacing, "Not that I'm trying to brag or anything," then launch into tedious accounts of how his married life back then had overflowed with happiness. Naruse had no desire to look from the outset. While observing the accumulated eye discharge—so repulsive it nearly induced vomiting—he found himself assaulted by dark thoughts: that he too would eventually come to resemble this man.

Right by Naruse’s bedside was the western entrance of this sickroom. Exiting there immediately opened into a hallway, and across the hallway was a separate room. It was a small sickroom—two rooms that could each be considered about eight tatami mats in size lined up side by side, each containing two beds. This room was commonly called the "Separate Room" or "Special," but in reality, it served as both an abortion ward and a delivery room. Recently, as sterilization procedures had become more thorough, abortions had grown rare, and patients who were admitted while pregnant were made to give birth in this room; the resulting children were immediately sent to what was called an uninfected children's nursery, where they were raised. As a result, this Separate Room often went unused, and now that other sickrooms were constantly full, male patients were also being placed in this room. Naruse would sometimes venture out into this corridor when he had time.

In the room to the right was now a pregnant woman. She carried her large belly nearing full term and would occasionally show herself to Naruse and the others. According to her account, she had conceived the child at her home outside the sanatorium, but as soon as she became pregnant, her illness rapidly worsened. She had wanted to at least give birth to the child outside, but with this face of hers, she couldn’t even call a midwife—and upon reaching this point in her story, she would usually burst into tears. She was said to be only twenty-eight years old, but at a glance, one couldn’t tell whether she was thirty or sixty. Eyebrows were naturally absent; countless nodules covered her entire face—some already appearing on the verge of collapse—with bandages plastered here and there. Whenever she began recounting her circumstances, she would burst into tears, yet in ordinary times she appeared remarkably carefree, and from her room came the constant sound of singing. She did not sing loudly, but her voice carried clearly to Naruse’s ears where he lay at the western end. Her voice—beautiful in contrast to her face—carried a buoyant tone; she was likely sewing a layette for the child soon to be born. She must have existed in a state where feminine instinctive joy at impending childbirth clashed with awareness of her leprous body, leaving her unable to distinguish between happiness and sorrow. There were moments when what seemed like singing would abruptly shift into sobbing. Helpless against this turbulent confluence of emotions—sadness and anxiety and despair mingling with joy and delight—she had likely become someone who wept and laughed almost simultaneously. Naruse found himself realizing he’d begun directing sharp glances toward her without conscious intent.

And what surprised him was that three young patients were now vying for her attention. One was a small-statured dry-type patient with a grotesquely twisted mouth that perpetually drooled, endlessly wiping the saliva with his fingerless clenched fist. The other two were hulking men of the wet type. When dinner concluded, the sickroom abruptly grew clamorous. This was due to the visitors arriving from each ward. Among these callers, those three were certainly present. They would linger at other patients' bedsides awhile, affecting not to have come for her sake, yet constantly keeping watch on her room. Being romantic rivals, they naturally feigned ignorance of each other's intentions, and even when passing one another,

“Hey.” “Hey.” They exchanged only these brief greetings, never once stopping to converse further. When one man seized an opportunity to slip into her room, the other two feigned complete ignorance—yet until he emerged, they maintained a restless demeanor, drifting toward patients on the far side of the ward before lingering near those closer by. The moment a suitor reappeared, the remaining two would fix him with sharp stares, whereupon another would immediately slip inside. When that one came out, yet another entered. Though ostensibly mere sickroom visits holding nothing unusual, Naruse watched this covert struggle intensify each evening with mingled fascination and pity. Yet Naruse himself had never once entered the woman’s room. Moreover, since her room lay at the northern dead-end with no exit, he hadn’t even approached its doorway.

In the left-hand room were two male patients. When he stood in the corridor before that room, a cool breeze would blow in from the northern window—the one in front of the woman’s room—which was why he sometimes went out there. From the corridor, one could peer into the room through the glass door, but no matter when one looked, the two patients were always asleep, offering no chance to see their faces. When he peered through from the corridor, both patients lay asleep with their heads facing this direction, but the bedside cabinet obstructed even the tops of their heads from view. The temperature chart hanging on the cabinet was visible head-on, and seeing how multiple sheets were already layered there, they could not be thought to have entered the room just yesterday or today. A temperature chart, of course, covered one month per sheet. One showed traces of having suffered considerable high fevers, but the other’s temperature was not so severe, mostly fluctuating below thirty-seven degrees Celsius—clearly discernible due to the red line.

What particularly drew his attention to this room was that a young woman would always come and go there two or three times daily. The corridor before the room had a southern entrance/exit which Naruse thought had likely been installed specifically for these two rooms, but the young woman would always slip in and out stealthily through this passageway. She was probably either the wife of the man with lower fever or his sibling; from Naruse's observations, she appeared more likely to be a sister. When entering the room, she would first address a few words of greeting to the man with higher fever's bed before immediately turning to her husband—or brother—to murmur in hushed tones or begin cooking stewed dishes at his direction. Since keeping a brazier in the room made it too hot, it was always placed in the corridor. Whenever cooking began, Naruse found himself reluctant to go out into this hallway without any particular reason. She was probably already twenty-two or twenty-three years old. There was no doubt she had transformed from a former wet type to dry type; her eyebrows had thinned though there was no infiltration or ulceration whatsoever. Moreover, the little and ring fingers of her left hand were bent halfway inward, with noticeable muscle wasting around her thumb. Muscle atrophy naturally evidenced the dry type—that is, neurological leprosy—where destroyed trophic nerves caused muscular shrinkage. In severe dry-type cases, bodies became like dried gourds, literally reduced to skin and bones. Yet after observing leprosy patients for nearly nine months while monitoring his own condition, he had developed fairly sharp insights about the disease. This sort of acuity would likely be similar with any illness, possessing a sixth sense-like quality beyond doctors' understanding. This woman's illness was probably quite longstanding, but Naruse intuited it unmistakably belonged to the "hard" category. The term "hard illness"—this hospital's unique expression with sensory connotations—meant her disease had likely afflicted her not five or six years but closer to ten, yet showed minimal progression; it might remain unchanged for another decade. Naruse suddenly recalled when his illness first appeared, remembering how doctors had claimed leprosy was less feared than tuberculosis and would surely be cured by modern medicine—he couldn't help but smile bitterly. For according to such medical theories, this young woman should have been completely cured by now.

However, one day Naruse found himself speaking to her through an unexpected chance. This marked exactly fifteen days since he had been admitted to the critical care room. That morning, waking to find the sky unusually clear after long rains, he took his bedding outside to air—it had been ages since the futon last saw sunlight. With an orderly's assistance, he removed the bandages from his face and limbs, replacing them with fresh ones. To call them bandages—this hospital's version was a peculiar kind, better described as narrow strips of white rag than proper gauze. Reused through countless washings, they bore stains of pus and blood that lent them a grimy grayish hue. Yet even this stale routine brought faint refreshment when completed, enough that he took out a book from the cupboard—one he hadn't so much as glanced at in months—and let his eyes fall upon its pages. The heat nodules had faded to a pale white now, causing little pain when pressed. At this rate, he would soon be discharged from the critical ward. That morning's temperature check—conducted twice daily by nurses making their rounds—registered thirty-seven point five degrees Celsius, nearly normal.

Shortly after the temperature check, “Um, whose futon is this? It’s started raining.” Her voice carried a businesslike tone as she stood in the hallway peering in. The thin voice held a hesitant awkwardness. “Ah, that’s mine.” “Thank you.” Naruse hurriedly jumped up and went outside. Pitch-black clouds had completely smothered the sky, layering two or three deep as they drifted northward. Fat raindrops struck sporadically against his face and scattered. After deftly slinging two futons over his shoulder at once, Naruse dashed into the room. When he hurried back out to rescue the remaining one from the rain, he found her entering with it cradled in both arms.

“I’m sorry. Thank you.” As Naruse said this and reached out his hand, “They’ve gotten wet, haven’t they?” The spots where the rain had struck were wet in circular patterns. A section of her hair was exposed, shining white. Unlike her earlier nervous voice, she remained composed, her movements entirely undisturbed and steady. After spreading out the futon, Naruse lay down and spent some time contemplating her words. It was a low voice with an inexplicable shadow to it, yet there was a resonance suggesting something solid lurking beneath the surface. She once again crouched by the brazier today and began preparing her brother’s stew. The meager food provided by the hospital was insufficient to stave off the patients’ decline, so everyone made their own provisions this way. When Naruse casually glanced her way, she—who had been intently blowing on the charcoal fire—happened to look up, and their gazes met. She gave a natural smile and resumed blowing on the fire as before. By the time Naruse managed to return her smile, she had already turned back toward the fire.

As the rain suddenly lashed down, thunder began rumbling in the distance, and the room swooped into gloom.

Two “It’s time for your temperature check.” In the afternoon, feeling as though he had developed a slight fever, he lay down and before he knew it drifted into a doze. Not only had the rain not stopped, but it was now beating against the window even more fiercely than before.