Pathway to Japanese Literature

When I had a doctor examine me, he said my lungs were indeed bad.
He suggested a change of climate would be advisable.
I decided to go to a hot spring.

Having apparently miscalculated the train schedule, I arrived in the dead of night.
When I stepped off the train, the jet-black surface of the mountain suddenly loomed before my eyes.
The sounds of the deep night seemed to crouch in that space.
I had arrived at such an odd hour—as I stood there dejectedly, the station attendant who had been drowsily calling out the station’s name while swinging his lantern suddenly snatched the ticket from my hand.

After letting the train I'd arrived on pass by, I crossed the tracks and exited through the unmanned ticket gate.
A single light bulb with a blue shade was dimly illuminating the shelf at the ticket gate.
The image of some faded poster fleetingly caught my eye, and suddenly the lateness of the night felt acute.

When I stepped out of the station, I was suddenly enveloped in darkness.

A lantern came rushing out from the shadows.
When asked whether I'd come for the hot spring and replying affirmatively, he bowed once more,

"You must be exhausted..."

He was a tout from the hot spring inn.
His hair looked stiffly salt-and-peppered.

Seeing this tout's presence meant others might arrive even at this hour brought some relief.
Yet I thought his inn must be quite derelict, likely empty tonight too.
Later I learned there was only one inn at these springs.

Following the slope of his right shoulder, I began walking along the valley path.

However, before we had gone even twenty ken, the tout—who had pretended to be guiding me—leaped onto the bicycle he’d been pushing,

“Pardon my rudeness, but I’ll be takin’ my leave first.”
“We’ve got your room all ready and waitin’, so please take your sweet time comin’ on over now!”

In the blink of an eye, he had dashed off into the darkness.

I was taken aback by the unexpected turn of events.

“Oh, wait…”
“Where is the inn?”
“Which road should I take?”
“Should I go straight here?”
“Will I find the inn soon?”

“Oh, oh, you’ll find it right away now I tell ya. Just keep straight on, cross the bridge now I tell ya, and you’ll spot the light right there now I tell ya.”

The tout turned around and spoke.
The lantern light fixed to his bicycle shook violently before abruptly dwindling away.

Left alone in the darkness, I felt desperately exposed.
Between my train schedule miscalculation landing me here at midnight and the tout's inexplicable conduct, this peculiar sense of dislocation gnawed at me until my very skull seemed to prickle with unease.
The night's depths appeared to sink ever downward.
I lit a cigarette as I walked.
Smoke caught in my throat and I coughed.
Halting my steps, I listened to that sound for some time.
Resuming my trek, I'd gone perhaps two hundred meters when the river's roar swelled abruptly, leading me to the bridge approach.
There the path split in two.
Crossing the bridge as instructed and walking onward awhile, I glimpsed the inn's solitary light.
Wind swept through that expanse - a vista stretching into remoteness.

Suddenly, the smell of steam drifted over.
The glowing osmanthus fragrance was extinguished.

When I requested a well-ventilated room, I was led to a dingy six-tatami room on the second floor.
The maid who had gone ahead slid open the fusuma door, and at that very moment, the voices from the neighboring room stopped dead.

The clerk came with the guest register, replacing the maid. When I finished writing and glanced at the previous page, there was Kotani Osamu—twenty-nine years old.
The characters for "Wife Itoko—thirty-four years old" drifted vaguely into my vision.
Only the numbers struck me clearly.
Thinking that the woman was older, I returned the guest register to the clerk.

“There’s a spider here.”

“Hmm?”

The clerk looked up and said in a disinterested voice, “There is.” And he made no particular effort to catch or chase it—saying “Goodnight,” he left.

I sat listlessly and listened to the spider’s faint footfalls. It was the soft rustling sound of something walking across the fusuma door bordering the neighboring room. They were thick, elongated legs.

I had to sleep now, but first I needed to open the storm shutters, I thought. What exactly made a room well-ventilated? In this space sealed tight on all sides, not a single gap remained for wind to pass through—the damp air hung heavy and stagnant. I remembered the doctor’s orders about open-air therapy when suddenly a stinging pain prickled beneath my chest, or so it felt.

First I opened the shoji screen facing the corridor. Then stepping into the hallway, I tried opening the storm shutters. I rattled them awhile, but their weight resisted me. The shutters ran in multiple panels—I realized they needed sliding open one after another from the end. To manage this meant standing before the neighboring room’s entrance. I hesitated briefly before striding down the corridor—needs must when desperation drives.

As I kept wrestling with them, overexertion seized my arms and triggered a violent coughing fit. Listening dejectedly to its fading echoes, I heard another cough sound from within that room. I scrambled back to my own quarters.

Wondering whether coughs were contagious or if that had been a cough meant to admonish me, I gave up on opening the storm shutters and resigned myself to sleep.
The futon spread out in isolation at the center of that desolate room—an autumn night’s travel bedding—was a profoundly forlorn thing.
With a hollow heart, I changed into my sleeping robe and burrowed dejectedly into the futon.
The moment I did, a musty smell assaulted my nostrils, and an unexpected surge of travel-induced emotion coursed through my chest.

Lying still, I began to feel unsettled. When I considered it, the space between my pillow and the fusuma seemed too wide. Being accustomed to sleeping in a futon surrounded by bookcases, desks, and hibachi—with my bedside habitually cluttered with lamps, ashtrays, teacups, books, and manuscript papers strewn about—this barren emptiness around my pillow felt unbearably lonely. Loneliness struck abruptly.

I took out a pocket mirror from my suitcase and peered at my face—a habit when lonely. I stuck out my tongue, rolled my eyes, popped pimples. With my neck dangling limply from the futon in disheveled middle-aged wretchedness, I'd been at this awhile when suddenly an uncanny shadow flitted across the mirror. The spider. I saw my own startled face. Instinctively I looked toward the fusuma.

The spider froze instantly, motionless as it absorbed its own shadow cast upon the door panel, breath held taut. I kept staring at the fusuma without blinking. Somehow I remembered the guest register.

At last deciding to sleep, I turned off the lamp.
Keeping my eyes firmly shut, the Cassiopeia constellation materialized in the dimness.
I thought of the sky.
I thought of a starry downpour.
I craved pure air.
The room's complete airlessness tightened my chest with mounting suffocation.
I yearned for flung-open windows.
Abruptly, Sirius blazed.
My eyes snapped open.
The spider's eyes flashed with glinting light—I felt it staring fixedly at me.
When midnight coughing seized me, I was overcome.

When I awoke the next morning, a view of white river suddenly unfolded before my eyes.
The storm shutters had been thrown open without my noticing, making the room feel abruptly lighter.
Mountain morning air.
When I gnawed at it voraciously, my chest felt truly cleansed.
I felt relief, yet simultaneously began dreading nightfall.
The thought that come nightfall the shutters would close again—that I'd have to breathe that heavy, turbid air all night long—made my gaunt chest region feel somehow defenseless.
It was unbearable.

Closing the storm shutters at night would ultimately be the maid’s responsibility, so informing her beforehand should suffice—yet even so, considering how late autumn had already arrived, sleeping with the storm shutters open struck me as a strange state of affairs. The inn staff must surely consider it an unnecessary concern. To press through that and plead my case by explaining it was due to illness—such a thing lay utterly beyond someone as weak-willed as myself. Moreover, while another illness might have been different—having my lung condition known would prove excruciating.

Another thing—if I were to open my room’s storm shutters, naturally the neighboring room would have to do the same.
Therefore, it was necessary to at least formally seek the neighboring room’s understanding.
But the people in the neighboring room would probably dislike opening the storm shutters.

My heart grew completely heavy.

Toward evening, I went to the bathhouse.
Fortunately, there was no one there.
I was glad my small-framed, skinny, feeble nakedness had escaped everyone's notice.
When I sank into the tub, the water proved shockingly cold.
This hot spring normally heated its mineral waters through some mechanism, but likely the bath attendant had neglected the fire—or perhaps someone had diluted it too much.
Yet being weak-willed, I couldn't bring myself to complain to the staff either. Huddling in what seemed the warmest corner, trembling violently as I endured it, a young man entered.
He narrowed his puffy-lidded eyes in my direction.
He appeared nearsighted.

He soaked a towel in the bathtub,

“Quite warm, isn’t it?” he said cheekily.

“Yes, very…”

“…Lukewarm, is it? That so.”

As he said this, the man plunged into the water, but suddenly in a loud voice,

“Ah! This’s like water.
“This is insane!”
“This’s a damn ice bath.”
“If I’m stuck in this damn place shivering like a winter sparrow taking a cold bath, I’ll catch my death!”
And turning to me: “You’ve endured quite well, haven’t you?
“You’re quite the impressive one.”

While I offered an ambiguous bitter smile, the man—adopting a posture as if flapping wings—kept making a swimming motion with both hands behind him.

“Pardon my rudeness, but you’re the one who arrived quite late last night, aren’t you?”

he asked.

“Yes, that’s correct.”

For some reason, I blushed.

“Just as I thought, ain’t it?”
“Well, I kinda thought that might be the case.”
“Say now, seems someone made the door rattle quite a bit.”
“I’m in the room next door.”
“You must be bored stiff.”
“Why don’tcha come over for a spell?”

Realizing last night’s coughing must have come from this man, I suddenly felt I couldn’t stay and hastily left the bath.
And then, just as I opened the bathhouse door to slip out first, a monstrously tall woman in the changing area—half-undressed—fixed me with a piercing stare from one cockeyed eye.

I frantically put on the kimono.
And when I noticed, the woman’s eyes still hadn’t moved.
The other eye was directed elsewhere.
I thought she had strabismus.
If that were the case, then perhaps her eyes weren’t actually looking at me after all.
But regardless, I was being watched.
I was overcome by an odd sensation and returned to the room.

In the room that had somehow suddenly grown dim, as I sat listlessly with a sullen face, I detected signs that the people next door had returned from the bathhouse.

The man had been whistling when he suddenly called out through the sliding door.

“How’s it goin’?”
“You’re bored, ain’t ya?”
“Why don’tcha come over ’til supper’s ready?”

“Oh... thank you.”

I gave a choked reply.
I coughed two or three times and kept sitting there.
Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to face this couple.

“C’mon out now.”

The voice came again.

At this point, I could no longer refuse. Thinking this might be a good opportunity to seek their understanding about the storm shutters, I stood up and opened the sliding door.

In that motion, a crude mirror stand came into view.
The face of the woman who had her back turned while applying makeup was reflected.
Sure enough, it was the face I had seen in the changing room.
The lifeless skin sagging beneath the face powder became immediately apparent.
I suddenly remembered the “thirty-four” in the guest register.
She didn’t look any younger than that.

The woman turned toward me with an inviting gesture and gathered the knees of her inn-issued tanzen robe.
Her posture was desiccated and constrained.
Even seated, I could tell she possessed a frame so imposing it repelled.

The man was considerably smaller in stature and looked much younger, and with the addition of black-rimmed Lloyd glasses—unlike when I’d seen him in the bathhouse—he appeared even more diminutive. His facial features were unimpressive, but his lips alone were unnaturally large. This was true for the woman as well. Moreover, the woman’s lips were significantly distorted. What’s more, facing her strabismus directly proved far more severe than expected; given my habit of speaking while maintaining eye contact, I found myself unable to avoid faltering.

After some time of desultory conversation, I found my opening and broached the subject of the storm shutters.
Given how abrupt and peculiar this request was, though the couple said, "No, please—go right ahead and open them," they pulled strange expressions.
There was no longer any concealing my illness.

“...Actually, I’m ill.”
“I have to keep the air circulating properly.”

Then, an unexpected vitality rose to the woman’s face.

“So you are ill after all.”
“I rather thought that might be the case.”
“—Here?”

The woman jabbed her own chest.
For some reason, she bustled about with apparent eagerness.

“Yes.”

“You’re so terribly thin, you see.”
“And your shoulders—they’re so painfully slender there.”
“When I saw you at the bath earlier, I thought right away there was something wrong with your chest.”

To think I’d been observed so closely—a chill ran under my arms.

The woman fixed her elusive gaze upon me for some time—neither staring at me nor lost in thought—but then suddenly convulsed her twisted lips.

"My cousin had a build just like yours, but it turned out to be his lungs too."

she said while stroking her knee.
Instantly, for some reason, agitation flashed across the man’s face.
Then, as a wrinkle of spasmodic pain remained etched there, I stared at his face in surprise—whereupon the man fixed me with a piercing glare.

However, he quickly reverted to his original dullness—that heavy, deceptively kind-looking face,

“If it’s your lungs, drink up some petroleum.
“Petroleum…”

He came out with something unexpected.

“What?!”

When I asked back,

“Don’tcha know?
“That petroleum works wonders for lung disease—everyone these days knows that!”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Is that right.
“Well then, all the more reason to teach you!”

Citing an alleged true story of someone who, tormented by lung disease, tried to commit suicide by drinking petroleum only to have their illness cured instead, the man droned on about petroleum’s remarkable efficacy.

“That’s just an old wives’ tale.”

The woman suddenly cut in.
Her tone was like a blade’s slash.

The wind rapped against the storm shutters.

The man swiftly wiped away the foam that had gathered on the thick lips with the back of his hand.
A bit of drool fell.

“What superstition?!”
“Callin’ it superstition just shows how ignorant you are!”
“Don’t actual examples prove it plain as day?”

And then, turning toward me,

“C’mon, ain’t that right?”
“Right? Ain’t I spot on?”
“How d’you take that?”

When I noticed—perhaps because he was missing a front tooth—his speech turned sodden whenever he rattled off words.

“……”

I had nothing to say.

Then the man turned downright combative.

"You think it's superstition too, don'tcha? Course you do."
"'Cause you ain't got no education."
"But I know damn well the scientific basis for why petroleum works on lungs!"
"Ain't no stretch."
"You know what a rokurokubi is?"
"See now, that rokurokubi ain't no ghost story or nothin'."
"Whole thing started with women stuck in hellish lives—back when bosses were so greedy they wouldn't feed their female workers proper."
"They abused 'em."
"So these women couldn't get nutrients nohow."
"Add to that backbreakin' labor."
"They turned pale as ghosts—skinny wrecks swayin' on their feet."
"Ended up lookin' like actual specters."
"So they'd crawl from their futons at night when everyone slept and lick oil from lanterns."
"Guests saw that and thought they were rokurokubi."
"Makes sense though."
"Picture it—these scrawny necks under all that piled-up hair."
"You look up bleary-eyed from below—wouldn't their necks seem to stretch like snakes?"
"Now why'd they lick oil? Like I said—abuse left 'em no choice but to slurp even oil."
"Put plain—they needed them nutrients bad."

“Plus, regular cold stuff’s hard to lick, but lantern oil’s been warmed by the flame—goes down smooth.”
“That’s how it works, see?”
“Even today, don’t malnourished folks drink oil? Cod liver oil they call it!”
“You put that together, shouldn’t you get why they say petroleum works on lungs?”
“Superstition my ass! That’s pure idiocy!”

The woman turned a scornful face toward the man.

I promptly cut things short and returned to my room.

Before long, signs of what seemed to be an argument began seeping through from the neighboring room.
A short while later, the sound of the woman’s crying reached me.
The man was placating her in a muttering voice.
Eventually, even his voice took on a half-sobbing tone.
The woman screamed something hysterically.

Evening gloom flowed into my room.
Suddenly, the man’s singing voice rang out.
It was a trivial popular song.
As I listened in dismay at his dreadful singing, the woman’s voice joined in.
I grew even more appalled.
Just then, dinner arrived.

Turning on the electric light and eating my solitary meal without service, I suddenly caught sight of last night’s spider.
Today too, it squirmed across the same sliding door.

The next morning, while out walking, I was suddenly called out to from behind.

When I turned around, the woman from the neighboring room was approaching alone with long strides.
The moment she drew near, a strangely feverish body odor struck me pungently.

“Out for a walk?”

The woman asked in a hushed voice.
And without waiting for my response,

“Would you care to walk together?”

I found it bothersome, but there was no way I could refuse.

When we started walking side by side, the woman abruptly asked what I thought of that man.

“What do I think? Well, nothing really…”
“That’s not…”

There was no way to answer, nor did I want to.
There is nothing I detest more than women who seek others' opinions about their lovers or husbands.
I made no effort to hide my disgusted expression.

The woman stopped as if let down, gazed at the sky for a while, but soon began walking again.

“A discerning person like yourself should’ve immediately seen through that man’s flaws, but…”

As I wondered what made me seem discerning, the woman proceeded to enumerate various flaws of that man.

“...He hasn’t a cultured bone in his body.”
“I can’t even introduce him to people as ‘This is my husband.’”
“Even if you make him write a single character, it’s downright pitiful.”
“There isn’t a shred of intellect to be sensed.”
“Truly, with men, if you see their penmanship, you can understand the person at once, can’t you?”

A wave of nausea rose within me—since when could one gauge human worth through mere penmanship? Why did modern women persist in judging people through such trite symbols—cultivation, handwriting, intellect—as if reciting some dreary checklist? The weariness settled like damp futon stuffing.

"You're quite accomplished at calligraphy, aren't you?"

Yet whether this sarcasm had landed remained unclear—her expression and vocal inflection showed no alteration. Staring fixedly ahead, she continued in the same rigid tone,

“No, it is not that I am skilled.”
“Lately my mind has been in such turmoil—what with my hand declining and all—I have done nothing but get scolded by my calligraphy teacher.”
“Truly, writing good characters is difficult, is it not?”
“But when I practice calligraphy, somehow all my worries and pains seem to disappear—or so it feels—so I love it.”
“You must be quite skilled at calligraphy, I do think.”
“You are quite skilled, are you not?”
“I would love to see your work sometime.”

“I’ve never once studied calligraphy.”
“I’m terrible at it.”
“I can only write vulgar characters.”

However, the woman paid no heed,

“I’m fond of flower arrangement too, you see.”
“Calligraphy is all well and good, but flower arrangement also purifies one’s spirit.”
“What an unfortunate woman I am to have ended up with such an uncultured person, don’t you think?”
“So I practice calligraphy and flower arranging—there’s nothing else to do but console myself.”
“However, he doesn’t have the slightest interest in calligraphy or flower arranging as hobbies.”

“Do you practice tea ceremony?”

“It’s embarrassing to admit, but I don’t practice tea ceremony much.”
“I’ve been meaning to learn properly, though.”
“By the way—changing the subject—who’s your favorite Kinemaster?”

“…………”

“I like Kinuyo.”
“I don’t care much for Kazuo.”
“He says he likes Takase, you know.”

“Oh, is that so?”

I had apparently deduced that “Kinuyo” referred to Tanaka Kinuyo and “Kazuo” to Hasegawa Kazuo, but as I was pondering who this “Takase” might be—Takase someone-or-other—

“Who are you?”

“Takase.”

I blurted out.

“Oh my,”

She seemed genuinely appalled for a while, but soon enough,

“I might tolerate Takase, but that man claims to like ○○○ too.”
“I utterly detest those vulgar actresses.”
“Truly, I’ve never met anyone as uncultured as that man.”

I had grown sickened by this endless parroting of "cultured." It felt like swarms of insects crawling over my back.

“Truly, I think I’m an unfortunate woman.”

The morning sun cast its light upon the woman’s sallow skin, warming the fatty deposits flanking her nose.

The moment I glimpsed this, I found myself pitying her instead—though why, I couldn’t say. Even were she truly unhappy, I reasoned, this couldn’t be reduced to mere matters of what people call a man’s cultural refinement.

“I’ve lost count how often I’ve considered dissolution.”

The word “dissolution” rang peculiarly brutal.

“Yet whenever I mention it, he starts weeping on the spot to appease me.”
“When my hysterics strike, he’ll even cook rice.”
“Do laundry too—if I order it done.”
“He truly makes every effort.”
“But such excessive placating turns my stomach.”
“Like being slapped across the face by a mangy dog’s tail—over and over—until the disgust becomes unbearable.”
“And his jealousy! Positively monstrous.”
“I’m no stranger to envy myself, but his brand? Downright obscene.”

She said without moving a single muscle in the face.

What a strange couple they were.
I wondered how children of such a couple would be raised, so
“Do you have children?”

When I asked,

“We don’t do that sort of thing.”
“That’s why we’ve come to this hot spring like this.”
“I heard if you bathe here, you can conceive a child, so…”

Oh, I realized.
What 'dissolution'? I felt like I was being made a fool of.

Eventually the morning mist cleared, and the river's murmur set sunlight aquivering through the air.
The sunlight poured relentlessly upon the woman's burly shoulders.
Those mannish shoulders made her seem all the more a barren woman—or so I thought—when suddenly she froze mid-step.

When I looked, the man from the neighboring room was crossing the bridge.
He'd spotted me from over there.
Then he suddenly spun around and scurried off as if fleeing.
His gait was all fidgety urgency.
There was something pitiable in that.

The woman twitched her distinctive squinting eyes in rapid spasms.
She contorted her lips into a tight grimace.
Her struggle to mask her panic lay bare before me.
Witnessing this, I too was seized by panic without cause.

Eventually, the woman withdrew her hand from where it had been tucked into her obi and suddenly tapped my shoulder softly.

“He’s been stalking me.”
“He’s always like that.”
“After all, he’s such a jealous man.”

The woman said this without so much as a smile, then sharply raised her squinting eyes and stared at me as if to bore holes through me.

I returned to the inn one step ahead of the woman and went to the bathhouse.
Then, somehow having returned already, the man from the neighboring room had entered the bathhouse first.

He had sprawled on his back across the tiles, but upon seeing my face, he sprang up with an oddly vigorous "Hey!"

Then, entering the bathtub after me,

"I had a feeling you might come here,"

he said with an intensely solemn expression.
So he'd been lying in wait here for me? With no way to respond, I floated weightlessly in the water—when abruptly my arm was grabbed.

“Didn’t she say some nasty things about me?”

His tone was unexpectedly harsh.
Yet there was something flippant in how he said “her.”

“Well, not really…”

“Quit lyin’.”
“Hidin’ it won’t do ya no good.”
“You been askin’ ’bout me, yeah?”
“Ain’t I right?”
“No error in my glare, eh?”
“What’s the story?”
“Can’tcha just cough it up?”
“Don’t hide it, I’m tellin’ ya.”

He needled me with persistent probing.

I remained silent.
However, the man peered into my face and nodded to himself.

“Seeing how you’re keeping quiet, you did hear something after all.—You heard some bad things about me, didn’t you? But I’ve made up my mind to say it anyway. Ya can’t trust a word she says. That woman’s a liar, I tell ya. I’m the one who’s been deceived! It’s her habit to go around telling anyone who’ll listen that she’s some poor unfortunate woman. That’s her little trick, I tell ya. After spoutin’ all that, she’s real slick at pullin’ on folks’ heartstrings, I tell ya. See, last night she was goin’ on about her cousin this or that, right? That’s just another one of her tricks, I tell ya. What cousin? She ain’t got no cousin like that, I tell ya. You really gotta be on your guard, I tell ya.”

Calling it "being on guard" struck me as rather exaggerated—I couldn’t help feeling somewhat exasperated.

“By the way, what’d she say about me?”
“Didn’t she call me a bad man?”
“Didn’t she go callin’ me some jealous fool?”
“That’s about right, ain’t it?”
“What nonsense—me bein’ jealous?”
“She’s the real jealous one, I tell ya.”
“Even when we’re walkin’ together, she says I can’t look at other women—keeps on like that.”
“At the pictures too—if some pretty actress comes on, ‘Shut your eyes!’ she says—keeps on like that.”
“Downright crazy, I tell ya.”
“Get mixed up with a woman like that, you’ll regret it your whole life, I swear.”
“Don’tcha think?”

He narrowed his eyes and stared intently at my face, then abruptly changed tack and continued:

"How's that petroleum?"
"Haven't you drunk it yet?"
"Go on and drink it."
"It works wonders, I tell ya."
"Ain't poisonous at all."

At that moment, the changing room door clattered open.

“Ah, I’ve come.”

The man whispered this into my ear, and afterward didn't utter another word.

Returning to my room and idly wondering if that couple might actually harbor genuine affection for each other after all, I found that no sooner had they come back from the bathhouse than they launched into an argument.

Listening through the sliding door, it seemed they were making an issue of me walking alongside the woman; feeling thoroughly exasperated at being dragged into their marital spat over such a trifle—what an utter nuisance.

After dinner, the man seemed to have gone out somewhere alone.
I was following the instructions in my treatment manual, lying sprawled on the tatami mats for post-meal rest.

The sound of insects reached my ears.
Their voices held a clarity so piercing it seemed to soak through to my very back.

With a smooth rustle of fabric, the sliding door opened.
Feeling a feverish body odor, I jolted in surprise and leapt up.
It was the woman from the neighboring room who entered.

“Am I disturbing you?”

The woman said, remaining rigidly planted by the sliding door.

“Oh... no.”

I was sitting there dazedly.

The woman abruptly plopped down right in front of me.
I felt as though my knees had been jabbed.
Was this woman nearsighted, or did she simply lack any sense of distance? I found myself vaguely annoyed by this as—

“He just went out a little while ago.”

She had come to talk taking advantage of that opening—I thought it would be troublesome if she were to do such a thing. I made a troubled face.

The woman let out a deep sigh,

“That man truly has me at my wits’ end.”

With that, she twisted her thick lips tightly.

“...Did he say something about me?”
“I’m sure he must’ve been badmouthing me.”
“That’s simply his habit.”
“He goes around badmouthing me to everyone.”
“After all, he’s a black-hearted man—there’s no telling what he might say.”
“But please don’t believe a word that man says.”
“No matter what he says, please don’t take it seriously.”

“No, I don’t trust a word anyone says.”

Truly, I had steeled myself not to lend an earnest ear to what either the woman or the man said.

“Hearing that puts my mind at ease.”

The woman—having absorbed my words in some unfathomable way—said with a deadpan face.
It suddenly struck me that I still hadn’t seen this woman smile.

And I realized I’d never smiled in her presence either....

Her face grew more mask-like by the moment.

“Truly, you’ll find no one as vile as that man—he stands alone in his wretchedness.”

“Is that so?
“Is he really such a vile person?”
“Doesn’t he seem like a good person?”

When I said this without any such intention, the woman suddenly welled up with tears, startling me.

“You simply don’t understand anything about it.
“Truly, I am an unfortunate woman.”

She glared at me with teary, resentful eyes.
Her gaze was straying off elsewhere.
Which made her look all the more resentful.

I had no way to respond and remained silent, my face looking utterly artless.

Then, the woman’s lips quivered ominously.
And large teardrops fell, marring her ashen skin.
She truly began to cry.

I was thoroughly disconcerted.
I was at a complete loss as to how I should console her.

The woman skillfully retrieved a handkerchief from her sleeve and began crying again.

At that moment, unexpectedly, footsteps echoed through the hallway—heavy, almost violent footfalls.

For some reason, I started.
The woman too had abruptly ceased her crying.
She began hurriedly dabbing at her tears.
Both of us were thrown into strange disarray.

The shoji slid open with a rattle as the man barged in—"Hey there!"
Spotting the woman present, he seemed momentarily taken aback before plastering on a broad grin,

"Well now! Went and got it proper!"

With that, he placed the newspaper-wrapped object before me. Since it resembled a jar and I couldn’t figure out what it was, my puzzled expression prompted the man to cheerfully explain:

“It’s petroleum.”
“Petroleum.”
“I went all the way near the tram stop to buy it.”
“See, if I just told ya ’bout it, no matter how many times I said it, you’d never drink up! That’s why I figured I gotta corner ya face-to-face and make ya swallow it—no way around it!”
“Come on, down it in one go!”

With that, he took out a sake cup from his breast pocket.

“Just this much in one cup’ll do ya.”
“If you drink just one cup a day for a week, your illness’ll be cured in no time—poof, gone!”
He let out a peculiar laugh—three sharp barks of “keh! keh! keh!”

The man carried on ranting as if completely ignoring the woman’s presence.
“At some point, next time…”

“I’ll drink it when the opportunity arises,” I said, though in any case I refused.
Then the man’s demeanor turned threatening,

“Even after all this telling, won’t you drink it? You!”

He glared intently.

When I saw that glare, the woman’s words about him being a jealous man came back to me anew, and the fact that I had been facing her just moments before suddenly struck me with force.

“However, well, eventually…”

While vaguely refusing and fumbling with my awkward expression, I happened to look at the woman’s face—her strangely haggard look, as if wrinkles had abruptly multiplied—and found myself sinking ever deeper into the position of a man whose weakness had been laid bare.
It was absurd, but I thought explanations would prove futile.
I seemed to have reached a point where I could no longer refuse the man’s coercion—a realization that filled me with utter disgust.

But as I continued to hesitate,

“Even after I’ve said this much, won’t you drink it?”

said the man.

To my surprise, his tone was almost pleading.

“I’ll drink it.”

Drawn in，I blurted out.
“Ah! You’ll drink it for me?”

The man, with a pleased look, opened the mouth of the jar and poured thick oil into the cup.
I felt strangely unsettled.

“Ah, a spider!”

The woman said abruptly, and then in a tone as flat as if reading from a book,

“I really hate spiders.”

she said.

But I was in no position for that.
The cup had already been placed in my hands.

"Well now, just think of it as cod liver oil and drink up."
"There’s nothing poisonous in it, so rest assured and drink up."
"Heh, heh, heh."

The man laughed, his entire face creasing with wrinkles.

Looking at that seemingly innocent face, I thought there likely wasn’t any poison mixed in after all.

Then, closing my eyes, I brought the cup emitting a pungent, peculiar odor to my lips and gulped it down in one go. As I suddenly swayed with dizziness, the thought—what a cursed fate to be lodged beside such a couple—pitifully sank into my chest.

The next morning, the couple departed from that hot spring.
I went to see them off at the station.

“Well now, well now—once you’ve stayed this long, the effects must’ve taken proper hold.”

On the station platform, the station staff member was saying to the man.
He was talking about a child, I thought.

“D’ya think?”

The man pushed up his glasses and said.
And then, turning toward the woman who was shopping at the kiosk,

“Itoe!” he called her name.
“Yes.”

When the woman came over,

“The train’ll be here any minute now, so let me get my greetings in while I can.”

“Yes.”

The woman suddenly took off her shawl and made a long-winded greeting to me.
When she finished, the man likewise made an excessively polite greeting.

I suddenly sensed something—a certain tenaciousness in the workings of marriage.

The train arrived.

The man leaned his body out from the window,

“How’s it goin’?”
“How’s the petroleum working…?”

“Uh...
“Well, ever since last night, I’ve been having terrible diarrhea and it’s really troubling me.”

I told the truth.

“Ah, there now, that’s bad.”
“There now, that’s my fault.”
“Brew some bamboo skin charcoal and drink it down now.”
“It’s just the thing for diarrhea now.”

The man said in a fluster.

The train began to move.

“Bamboo skin charcoal now!”

The man shouted.

The train gradually moved away from the platform.

“Bamboo skin charcoal now!”

The man’s voice was absurdly loud.

The woman grabbed the edge of her sleeve, struck a pose reminiscent of a Shingeki-style actress, and waved her handkerchief.
They looked like a well-matched couple.