Pathway to Japanese Literature

I. Mountain Villa Night

“From here onward, the footing becomes dangerous, so everyone, please be careful!”

When they emerged at the small stream’s edge, Mitsuyo—who had been leading the way—abruptly turned right after throwing out these words.
The early July night, washed clean by sudden rain, held air of crystalline clarity.
Though looking up revealed countless stars glittering blue overhead, the darkness grew denser here where mountains pressed close behind.
Yet fortunately it was a sandy path—its faint pallor and soft crunch underfoot making walking not particularly difficult.
Mayumi—the younger sister who kept such silence she might have seemed sullen to observers—walked behind her sister.
Hiroshi followed after Mayumi.

At that bend in the path,

“Aren’t you going ahead?”

With that, Mayumi casually turned around.

“Oh, I find being last rather relaxing.”

“Right.”

Her figure disappeared into the small path to the right.
Hiroshi deliberately lagged several yards behind.

The path continued along the right with a considerable row of villa fences, but to the left, susuki grass spread out in a blanket, covering and concealing an additional third of this already narrow path.
Beyond that susuki grass thicket, some two or three feet lower, a thin stream blended into the darkness, occasionally letting out a dull murmur as though remembering something.
This was precisely the sort of path that unconventional Mitsuyo would choose.

The three of them continued walking in silence for a while. At any moment, the protruding susuki grass threatened to slice their feet, making careless jokes impossible. Until they had turned onto this path, though Mayumi had rarely spoken up, Mitsuyo and Hiroshi had been talking almost incessantly in raised voices. And in those intervals, it was especially Mitsuyo who let her shrill laughter ring out. To laugh in such a manner felt gratifying to Mitsuyo this evening. For Mitsuyo—who, being not particularly blessed with health, had to watch her marriageable years slip away even as she turned twenty-three, and who moreover had that recent failed entanglement with a man, however impulsive it might have been—it felt gratifying to laugh so merrily before her sister Mayumi, who with shrewd eyes had long discerned these circumstances yet never showed it outwardly, though she seemed to suppress inner mockery or pity, and to do so in the company of Hiroshi, who was after all a commendable young man. Moreover, the more cheerfully she comported herself, the more Mayumi’s demeanor that evening sank into silence, bringing Mitsuyo a sensation akin to conquest. Whenever Mitsuyo’s voice or laughter grew too loud in the drawing room or tearoom, her fingers—whether turning the pages of her Concise Oxford dictionary or fiddling with her jar of Pompeian Cream—would move in the same manner,

“You’re so noisy, Sis.”

With that, it was Mayumi—the willful daughter—deliberately making an exaggerated grimace.
When Mitsuyo thought how Mayumi must be desperately restraining herself from unleashing that masterpiece of a “You’re so noisy” remark and her grimaces tonight—all because the still unfamiliar Hiroshi was present—she found it unbearably amusing.

Has that girl actually started putting on airs a little? ...For a child.
...For a child.

Mitsuyo could not help but recall once more the bashfulness her sister had shown earlier before the vanity.
She wished to turn around and properly peer at her sister’s face.
Though the nineteen-year-old Mayumi occasionally put on a solemn frown that feigned an air of maturity, in her sister Mitsuyo’s eyes, she remained nothing more than a willful young lady.
――Until that time.

Before long, they emerged onto a proper path.
When they crossed the crude wooden bridge over the small stream that had run along their left side up to that point, the path rose steeply upward.
Were they to climb that slope to the top, the Kawase house in Ōgigayatsu they meant to visit would be immediately there.
Kawase Teiko was Mitsuyo and Mayumi’s aunt. As her husband served at the Yokosuka Naval District and seldom returned home, their rather spacious house in Ōgigayatsu typically housed just the aunt and her daughter—that is, Eiko, who was Mitsuyo and Mayumi’s cousin.
True, when Eiko had boarded at Tokyo’s F Girls’ School, the aunt had been alone—but being carefree, she turned this circumstance to advantage by whiling away ample hours practicing her cherished shamisen.
When summer vacation came, the eldest son Goro would return from Kyoto, making the Kawase household lively after all.

That afternoon as well, Eiko—who had tied her wet swimsuit into a neat bundle with a towel and was carrying it in one hand—stopped by the Shimoyama residence (Mitsuyo and Mayumi’s family home) in Yukinoshita. She relayed that since they were growing bored alone every evening with just the three of them, perhaps after finishing dinner they might come to Ōgigayatsu for an evening stroll, adding that if they returned late, her brother would escort them back. But around four o’clock, Hiroshi—who had been staying in Zushi—encountered a sudden rainstorm and hurriedly passed through the gate. This turned out to be opportune timing, resulting in the three of them embarking on an expedition to Ōgigayatsu.
Hiroshi was the cousin of Yoshihiko’s newlywed wife—Yoshihiko being the eldest son of the Shimoyama family who now worked at the Yokohama Specie Bank in New York—and a young man who had first appeared at the Yukinoshita residence that summer.

However, after dinner, a minor comedy unfolded.
Having finished bathing first, Hiroshi brought a rattan chair to the corner of the veranda and sat motionless for some time, gazing at how each drop of pine resin was absorbed into the sandy garden surface.
Mayumi sat slumped before the vanity relocated near the tearoom threshold—her flushed face dusted with pale powder beneath a carelessly worn hemp-leaf-patterned yukata that hung too large on her bath-warmed frame.
Evening breezes now stirred through pine boughs at the garden's edge.
Mitsuyo stood clutching her folded yukata when she snapped off the tearoom light—then paused at seeing this tableau, a sly smile curling one cheek.

“Hey Mayumi-chan, Hiroshi-san has seemed rather bored for some time now. Why don’t you take him ahead to Ōgigayatsu once you finish your makeup? I’m going to bathe now, so waiting for me would make us late.”

When she said this and fixed her eyes on Mayumi, she unexpectedly discovered her sister’s flushed face in the mirror. Moreover, when Mitsuyo affected a slight feminine grace in her shoulders—something she had never before seen in her sister—Mayumi,

“It’s fine, I’ll wait.”

she said with apparent irritation, half as if mindful of Hiroshi’s presence.

Due to her circumstances, Mitsuyo had reached an age where she unwittingly cast a cold, almost pathological gaze upon young women—and she did not overlook this moment of her sister’s.
It was at this moment.
It was now that Mitsuyo began directing that particular gaze—one she had scarcely ever turned upon her sister Mayumi as a woman—toward her. That they had all departed the Yukinoshita house together due to Mayumi’s stubbornness occurred when the lingering evening glow after the sudden rain shifted into summer’s translucent twilight, which then gradually began dissolving into nightfall.
With the sullenly silent Mayumi sandwiched between them.
……

“Is there no moon tonight, I wonder.”

Unusually, it was when they had nearly climbed to the top of the slope and drawn close to the Kawase house that Mayumi’s voice broke the silence maintained since leaving the riverside path some time ago.
Mitsuyo felt somewhat surprised that her sister was obediently following right behind her and involuntarily turned her eyes.
And since Hiroshi’s figure was nowhere to be seen, peering into the darkness revealed a shadowy form moving slowly some fifteen or sixteen ken away.

“Oh, what could have happened to Hiroshi-san?”

At her sister's words, Mayumi peered behind her but remained motionless.
Mitsuyo slipped past her sister and retraced her steps two or three paces,

“Hiroshi-san, what happened?
You haven't tired yourself out, have you?
It's just ahead now. Do hurry up.”

“It’s not that, but… it’s just so quiet.”

With that, Hiroshi approached at a slightly quicker pace—
“This area is truly splendid. Unusual for Kamakura.”
“You find it so much to your liking?”

Mitsuyo peered anew through the cluster of pine trees as she remarked,
“What a pity there’s no moon tonight. On moonlit evenings, this place becomes quite magical.”

As they conversed thus and began walking side by side, Mayumi appeared to have already marched through the mountain gate alone, her figure nowhere visible in the surroundings.
The Kawase house stood atop a small hill to the right deep within, past R Temple’s mountain gate.

“My, what a willful person. To go marching off alone like that.”

Mitsuyo spoke as if to criticize her sister once more but, after urging Hiroshi onward, immediately passed through the mountain gate.
The considerable elevation of R Temple’s precincts became evident through how the pine whispers of Ōgigayatsu spread darkly beneath the feet of the two as they now veered right from the stone pavement toward the contiguous hill.
The Kawase house, claiming as its own an area of about 150 to 160 tsubo that the rocky mountain pressing from behind had left uncovered atop that cliff, was skillfully arranged along with its garden.
It was no wonder that Hiroshi, upon first glance, felt this house was eminently suited to the two-character designation “mountain villa.”

As Mitsuyo was about to enter the small brushwood-like gate, there stood Eiko with a face full of smiles.

“Good evening.”

“Oh, do come in.
My, you’ve taken your time.
You were so late that I was about to come meet you there.”

Eiko had addressed them cheerfully but fell abruptly silent upon noticing an unfamiliar figure behind Mitsuyo.
Realizing this, Mitsuyo—

“This gentleman—Hiroshi-san.”
“Um, from Tokyo...”

“Oh my—I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Well—”

She had begun to speak, yet finding her own affectedly formal tone absurd, barely managed to suppress the laughter welling up within her—and as Eiko bowed with sleeves primly folded before her, the thick braids cascading down her shoulders grew disheveled. With that, Eiko pivoted her petite form lightly and guided the two along the stepping-stone path deeper into the villa.

On the eight-tatami veranda of the L-shaped annex jutting from the main house, Mayumi sat swinging her legs, her manner now transformed into boisterous animation as she laughed and jested with Goro. Eiko dashed up to the tearoom's stone steps and,

“Mother, Mitsuyo-san’s here! And Hiroshi-san too.”

she reported to her mother in the friendly tone characteristic of life at a summer retreat.
Teiko, who seemed about to begin tightening the strings of her shamisen, set the instrument beside her and rose with her portly frame, a kindly smile on her face as she appeared at the edge of the veranda,

“Good evening, Mitsuyo-san. — And Hiroshi-san, how good of you to come.”

Hiroshi had encountered Teiko’s good-natured smile about twice before in Tokyo.

“The house is stifling, so the garden should do.
“Don’t you agree, Mitsuyo-san?”

At her aunt’s proposal, Mitsuyo nodded in agreement and, in a brisk tone,

“That’s right—we’ll make ourselves at home, so please don’t trouble yourself, Aunt.”

“Yes, yes. This old woman had better stay out of the way. You young comrades should enjoy yourselves to the fullest.—Hiroshi-san, you’ll only disadvantage yourself by being reserved here. We’ve quite the assembly of rogues gathered.”

With affable words, Teiko withdrew into the house, and presently a low tuning note rang out sharply.

“Looking to lose?”

Goro at that moment pulled a face toward Mitsuyo as she approached the rattan chairs at the garden’s edge, but—

“Hiroshi-san, do come in.”

Goro greeted him in a worldly-wise tone.
Hiroshi and Goro had first become acquainted at the house beneath the snow earlier that summer.

“Patience again?”

Mitsuyo spat out the words and spun around to sink into the rattan chair.
Between Goro and Mayumi, playing cards lay scattered in disarray.
It seemed about two matches had been completed since earlier.
Mayumi—whose mind worked with remarkable precision when she applied herself seriously—never lost to the likes of Goro at patience.

“I’m out now. Hiroshi-san, please take my revenge.” As Goro began to rise, Mayumi—who had at some point averted her eyes to the darkness at the garden’s edge—“Coward! Coward!”

In the instant she turned back, she sent a swift glance toward Hiroshi’s face—one that held a sheep-like timidity in its gaze.
At that moment, her pupils—elusive as starlight upon water’s surface—held an ethereal quality, yet a strangely profound light flickered through them.—

“I don’t like book-smart types like you, Hiroshi-san. Too frightened to even be a proper match.”

“Well, well—then what on earth becomes of me? How tragic.”

This time truly standing up, Goro went toward the staggered shelves to retrieve the guitar while—

“Eiko, won’t you come over here? Mayumi-san wants to play patience with you, she says.”
“I’m making tea right now.”

Eiko’s voice came from the back.

“She’s gotten quite talkative lately.”

Goro returned with the instrument slung over his shoulder and addressed Mayumi,

“Shall I play for you?”

“I suppose.”
“Not that I’m grateful, though.”
“But Goro-san’s guitar—it’s been a while since I’ve heard that too.”
“You’ve gotten a bit better.”

“Oh, come now—you’ve improved wonderfully.”

Goro, in high spirits, began tuning his instrument.
At that moment, Eiko came out carrying tea,

“I’m afraid the soda hasn’t chilled yet.” As she said this, she offered it to the three of them, “Mitsuyo-san, please come over here.” “I’ve lost all desire to move. Somehow…” Though Mitsuyo recognized this as another manifestation of her capricious habit, she vaguely sensed the danger of forcibly stirring up emotions that had coiled tightly within her since arriving here, and so she made no move to rise.

“Very well, I shall bring it there presently.”
“Then we might have our pleasant chat together.”
“Truly now, remaining here makes me dreadfully drowsy.”

The compliant Eiko lifted the tea tray aloft, stepped down into the garden, and settled herself at Mitsuyo’s side.

“Sevastopol.”

Goro, having pretentiously announced the title, then composed himself with solemn gravity and began to play this reserved secret piece of his.
The piece appeared to depict the tragic conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War, its profoundly somber notes occasionally swelling slightly to make the dark July night air quiver quietly.
Moreover, Goro mastered the technique to utilize such effects.
In other words, by solemnly composing himself, he skillfully captured the gathering’s mood—a man possessing a certain theatricality in social settings.
And thus, the music infiltrated even Mayumi—who had never respected Goro’s artistry—with its gentle plaintive tones.
The martyr-like melody reached even Mitsuyo—sunk deep in her rattan chair facing away—conveying itself to her heaving bosom.
The gathering fell silent.……

“That’s about the measure of it.”

Goro smirked and placed his guitar beside him with practiced ease.
The gathering hovered on the brink of another artful transition.

“That was amazing, Goro-san.”

Mayumi’s compliment carried the dry edge of sincerity.
Goro lit a Shikishima to shed his momentary guise, then pivoted toward Mitsuyo in the garden.

“Well now, Mitsuyo-san.
Haven’t I improved?”

Yet to his surprise came the compliant reply:

“That was nice.”

When this response came, he seemed momentarily disarmed, but Eiko at his side,

“Brother only ever plays that one piece.
From morning till night, it’s Sevastopol.”

Seizing upon this interjection as their cue, the gathering burst into bright laughter.
The thread had been masterfully unraveled back to its original state.

Since Mitsuyo and Eiko were classmates, they seemed to have started exchanging school rumors or something as they conversed in hushed tones, and soon the three in the detached room began playing Two Ten Jack.
Though Hiroshi had made it his custom to spend every summer at his relatives’ house in Zushi, having scarcely ventured beyond the periphery of solitude, he had felt himself ill-suited to such a group; yet as he gradually grew accustomed to this atmosphere, he quietly joined the card game when urged.
However, Hiroshi—who had little experience handling cards—was naturally no match for Mayumi, nor was Goro, who was rather half-heartedly muddling through the game to be sociable, against her earnest memorization of opponents' cards.
Mayumi kept winning continuously.
When the match reached the fourth round of hearts, Goro made a displeased face, complaining that his fingers hurt from being forced to cut too many cards.
No sooner had he done so than he called out in a resonant voice to Eiko in the garden.

“Hey. What about the soda?”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “I’d completely forgotten about it.”

“Venting Edo’s grudges on Nagasaki now, are we?”

Mayumi glared sideways at Goro, descended into the garden, and while softly humming an English song, hid her lower body in the bush clover thicket near the cliff.

When the soda was brought, Teiko also came down and engaged Hiroshi in conversation about various matters.
She talked at length about how this garden offered exquisite variety across its seasonal vistas, and how climbing the hill behind revealed Yui’s winding coast in a single sweeping view—all while quoting phrases from Tang poetry anthologies.
And she added that they must be sure to come view the autumn leaves on the opposite peak this coming autumn.
However, when he looked at his wristwatch, it was already half past nine.
Hiroshi had to leave.

“That’s right.”
“If you were staying in Kamakura, it wouldn’t matter how late it got, but here in Zushi...”

As Teiko stood up and concurred with Hiroshi, Mayumi—who had been pacing the garden with an air of boredom, twirling a fan in one hand—muttered under her breath.

“Well then, perhaps I’ll go home too.”

“It’s perfectly fine for you to stay, Mayumi-san. Your sister will remain here as well, and should it grow late, I shall have Goro accompany you home.”

Following his mother’s words, Goro—who had been fiddling with the guitar beside Mitsuyo—
“I’ll really walk you back. I can’t stand being cooped up in a place like this all day. I’m thinking of going down to the beach or something anyway.”

he tried to stop her, but Mayumi ignored him,

“I’m going home after all.”

she said.

“Still as willful as ever, aren’t you, Mayumi-san?”

Teiko smiled.
Mayumi strode toward the Shibaorido gate ahead of Hiroshi but turned back abruptly as if remembering something.

“Goro-san. Why don’t we go listen to records at Mr. Yuzuru’s place sometime? They’ve imported quite a lot of new ones, I hear.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t mind going. But what time shall we make it?”

“Let me see... How about the day after tomorrow?”

Without waiting for Goro’s response, Mayumi slipped out through the Shibaorido gate...

Settled deep into the rattan chair, Mitsuyo listened to these conversations in silence, her deep eyes fixed intently on the mountain gorge's darkness. She didn't move at all. No—that phrasing wasn't quite right. Against her own will, she found herself incapable of movement. She felt her obstinacy twisting around to constrict her instead, refusing to let go. She tried to steady her mind as best she could, attempting to examine these feelings of hers that kept tangling so easily tonight. But when she realized it all remained unclear—vague as morning mist, nothing but her usual caprice—she felt sorrowful. To herself, she somehow seemed a pitiful creature. Had she been able to believe, if only in her own heart, that her emotions were twisting toward some concrete object, Mitsuyo would surely have found satisfaction.

At first, she wondered if it might resemble a vague jealousy toward the two young people returning home. But she had immediately dismissed that notion. For she held no romantic interest in Hiroshi as a man. Then—the instant this thought formed—she stiffened. Could this instead be her own anxious vigilance toward her younger sister's beautiful growth? she wondered.

Even this lacked any form definite enough to affirm conclusively, yet merely imagining it proved a devastating thought for Mitsuyo. A thought that cast ominous shadows over her future life. Within Mayumi dwelled a woman awakening serenely with each passing day; within herself, a woman withering relentlessly day by day—never before had she perceived this opposition so clearly, Mitsuyo thought. Knowledge, love, those endlessly expanding waves of a happy existence—every beautiful vision smiling upon her sister's future filled her with terror. Mitsuyo found unexpected anguish waiting directly in her path and trembled faintly. She kept her hands tightly clenched, staring endlessly into the darkness……

Mayumi and Hiroshi left through the mountain gate side by side.
An almost complete silence was maintained between them.
It was not so much shyness as something else entirely that kept them silent.
Mayumi—who while gradually entering the age of budding womanhood yet retained a girlish pride stronger than most, having coldly regarded nearly all men around her—now sought to scrutinize Hiroshi with her clear rational eyes before yielding to the natural new interest this youth before her inspired; while Hiroshi, romanticizing this taciturn and mysterious girl who seemed to harbor some singular esprit within her in his characteristic way, quietly attuned his listening ear toward the windows of her soul.

The two walked down the Ōgigayatsu slope toward Kamakura town in silence, moving at a leisurely pace.

II. Shimoyama Mayumi

With her hair neatly arranged under an olive-green bathing cap, eyes lowered as if avoiding the glaring sunlight, and handling a black swimsuit in her right hand, Mayumi walked along the pine-lined path before the girls' school toward the sea. Amid the approaching afternoon tide, young cicadas' cries scattered faintly from villa gardens lining both sides. Though the beach now seemed at its busiest hour, along this sandy path behind Mayumi—save for her own shadow sharply etched parallel to the road's length—no other figures appeared. This was an eerily luminous stillness—that prelude before surrendering one's whole being to the grand midsummer seaside symphony whose splendor far surpassed any urban magnificence.

Mayumi loved a measure of the loneliness within this fleeting anticipation.
For her, this midsummer beach was nothing less than a grand spectacle.
For there existed upon that white sand a luminous hour where she could assume her primal form and exult in her own vigorously grown, healthy limbs.
There were also beautiful moments of self-oblivion when her clear, radiant eyes would be drawn deep into the azure heavens alongside the fierce wingbeats of her dazzling trance.
Those few minutes filled with sunlight—this solitary time before emerging onto the beloved beach—were a gift of profound meaning for her.

However, when the tree-lined path reached the crossroads intersecting with the coastal road, Mayumi’s eyes clouded faintly, and she cast her gaze around the surroundings with an air of wariness, as if avoiding something.

It was exactly one week ago that she had first spotted the man at this crossroads.
The man wore a grimy navy-striped lined kimono despite midsummer heat, hatless as he let sea breezes sweeping over dunes toy with his unkempt sunburnt hair.
Had he not clutched a Western book with pages loosening from its makeshift binding, he would surely have been taken for a vagrant.
Rooted in place, he stared fixedly at Mayumi through sunken eyes.
That first day she passed by unthinkingly, dismissing him as merely repulsive.
Yet his figure reappeared at the same spot the following day.
She recalled his absence on perhaps two days during this week.
The man made no effort to follow her.
When her clear eyes absorbed the sea’s azure upon reaching shore, such shadows typically vanished without trace from her memory—yet still she occasionally scanned surroundings where his form never materialized among dunes or tideline. Still his existence repelled her.
Each encounter deepened her revulsion.
Though she dated his emergence to a week prior, countless times before might those shadowed eyes have fixed upon her unseen—along this pine path, on Hase Street, at the station.
……The thought became unbearable.
She willed his specter to dissolve from Kamakura altogether……

Memories from before she turned ten lay beyond the sphere of her recollections.
Though memories of playing with soil before the red earthen cave at the foot of the mountain with her brother and sister, along with other recollections, had of course not vanished, Mayumi did not like to recall them.
She believed the first page of her life had begun on the day the Shimoyama family moved to their current house under the snow—that is to say, on one summer day when she was ten years old.
From that day to the present, the pages of her life had been filled with joyful smiles no matter which summer one peered into.
This young lady, with her short hair braided into two and hanging from her shoulders to her chest, liked the sea.
She liked playing along the coast from morning until evening.
Her deceased father had often worried that if she kept gazing at the sea so much, her eyes would turn blue like a Westerner’s—such was Mayumi’s profound love for the ocean.

In the winter of her second year at girls' school, she read the Greek mythology her brother had given her, and among its tales, the story of Aphrodite being born from sea foam had greatly captivated her.
Mayumi came to love the sea even more from that time onward.
When she sat upon the white sand and fixed her deep eyes intently on the sea's azure, she would sometimes imagine whether the goddess of beauty might not rise from that pure white foam along the shore.
At such times, Botticelli's painting from the book's illustrations would appear vividly in her mind's eye.

Indeed, it was the following summer when, having wrapped her limbs—which had shown vivid growth over those two or three months—in a swimsuit, she lay prone on the sandy beach while continuing to dwell on the tale of sea foam as always, when suddenly she tried calling herself a daughter born of water and sand.
And this fantasy pleased her immensely.

From that day onward, this fantasy grew increasingly potent, gradually assuming complete form within her.
If a slightly exaggerated expression were permitted, it might be said that this fantasy, after a long journey of days, had advanced even to the realm of faith.
In any case, this "daughter born of water and sand" fantasy—combining with the girlish pride that had grown alongside her physical development—helped cultivate within Mayumi a life view full of grace, though not without a touch of willfulness.
As a daughter born of water and sand, Mayumi scorned the soil and dust of the land.
As a girl of strong self-respect, Mayumi coldly regarded the young men whose masks were carved and colored by every modern lifestyle.
She was the kind of girl who carved open her own pure white life history with the sensitive blade of her self-respect.

Given her disposition as described, the uneasy presence of that unfamiliar man—who seemed to drag dark shadows behind him—was more than sufficient to fill her with aversion.
On a summer morning when not a cloud marred the sky, if one were to awaken from tranquil sleep on a hotel bed to the caress of a gentle breeze, then take up the milk jug that the boy had brought and left behind, only to discover a dead fly floating hideously upon the pure white surface of the milk—what sentiments might this black speck bring to a person?……

The faint haze in Mayumi’s eyes cleared in an instant.
She did not find the man’s figure there today.
As if shaking off her baseless worries, she let a bright smile flicker in her eyes and, keeping her gaze straight ahead, began ascending the sand dunes leading to Yuigahama.
But just then, a young Western man leaning against the thick trunk of a red pine tree nearby, staring fixedly in her direction, caught Mayumi’s eye.

He must have been standing there since earlier, but being five or six ken distant from the crossroads and dressed in pure white attire, he had naturally escaped notice from Mayumi's eyes that had been seeking only dark figures. This elegant Western man first gazed with near-awe at the girl passing before him—a Japanese woman of unusually well-proportioned figure—but soon his eyes took on a glint of curiosity and desire, their focus seeming to trace the contours of Mayumi’s beautifully developed waist and legs beneath her thin summer garments.

Mayumi felt his gaze following her somewhat persistently, but she was not one to bat an eye at such things.
Rather, she merely felt a fleeting absurdity in the contrast presented by this pure white vision that was accidentally discovered in place of the black shadow.

……When she reached the top of the sand dune and breathed in the abundant happiness of the endless sea breeze, Mayumi’s chest swelled to the point of bursting.
Now was the time to be embraced by the water and sand that had birthed and raised her.
Under the golden glitter where the two o'clock sun scattered foam across the sea's surface, casting a bright, silent smile, Mayumi descended the sand dune.

She walked toward the changing room beneath the terrace of the Kaigan Hotel, the spot she had always designated for removing her kimono.
Amidst midsummer’s resplendent white daylight swaying with the sea’s roar that bared her spirit and emboldened her breath, Mayumi’s eyes devouringly drank in the ocean’s azure.
Her eyes and soul utterly captivated by sea and sky, she nearly walked past the group of swimsuited girls lying prone nearby in careless postures like mermaids drying their backs.
A burst of brilliant laughter welled up from around her feet.

“Mayumi-san, Mayumi-san...”

“How dreadfully dismissive you are.
“Do come here.”

“Now really, you mustn’t say such things.”
“Can’t you see how those eyes are utterly absorbed in searching for something?”

“Yes, yes.
“That’s precisely why you didn’t deign to notice even us members of the dear Indian Club.”
“How splendid! How splendid!”
“How splendid! How splendid!”

“But who could it be? Who?”

“Oh, stop it.”
“Don’t go saying things like that.”
“Mayumi-san, let’s not do any more of those long swims now.”

“Mayumi-san, Mayumi-san.……”

However, Mayumi turned back and gave a friendly nod with a smile to these bothersome mermaids, then simply walked past.
Letting the fresh burst of laughter that surged up behind her flow past, she entered the changing room.

Three minutes later, Shimoyama Mayumi—now changed into her swimsuit—aligned the tapered tips of her slender shoes upon the scorched white sand and stood with her entire body stretched perfectly straight.
The black swimsuit clinging flawlessly to her contours made her slender five-shaku-three-sun frame appear somewhat diminutive, yet this very effect served to accentuate beautifully the symmetry of her limbs.
Her girlish figure—likely developed to the full limit of her height—remained unmarred by fatty deposits, so even the lines around her modestly rounded chest avoided becoming the unsightly flaws typical among Japanese women of that age.
Rather, this quality—though one might have considered her overall contours slightly over-taut—lent her limbs' lines both gentleness and softness.
Mayumi's physique had already reached a certain state of completion preceding full maturity.
And though her form still fell short of Botticelli's Aphrodite—so beloved by her—it nevertheless belonged to that exceedingly rare type destined to attain such opulent perfection in time.

Placing her left hand on her hip and shading her forehead with her right, she began slowly tracing the curve of the shoreline from directly below Reisen-ga-saki to Zaimokuza with delighted eyes.
At that moment, from amidst the slightly distant waves ahead,

"Oh!"

A deep male voice was heard.
Mayumi shaded her eyes toward the waves from which the call had come, but beneath the man’s neck his chest emerged, followed by his torso, until at last his robust frame—charcoal-black from days spent under the sun—stood upon the shore.
When Mayumi realized it was her cousin Goro, she tilted her head slightly while raising her right hand high in a gesture of familiarity.

Goro approached with vigorous strides, but soon flung out his hairy legs and sat down beside his cousin, then in a resonant voice,

“Mayu-chan, won’t you sit down? Standing around daydreaming won’t get things started. And the water’s really muddy today. You’re better off not going in. After all, it’s a pitch-black crowd out there. It’s like a penguin migration.”

He rather cheerfully launched into his usual acerbic commentary.
Mayumi sat down beside her cousin and, sprinkling sand around her knees, cast her gaze toward the crowd squirming hideously around the Hase-side shore.
Goro still seemed to be searching for more acerbic remarks, but soon began directing an unabashed gaze toward his cousin’s shoulders.

“What, Mayu-chan isn’t tanned at all. Since you go in the sea every day, I thought it admirable, but what’s with that color? Isn’t it pure white?”

“No.”
“There’s no need to stare like that.”

“But it’s strange.”

“Why? There’s nothing strange about it.”
“However much I burn, I never darken—it can’t be helped. Besides, if a woman shone dark like you do, Goro-san, it’d be positively grotesque.”

Goro threw back his shoulders and roared with laughter.

Mayumi could speak unreservedly only with this cousin Goro.
To Goro alone could she bare her heart.
To Goro alone could she voice her whims without restraint.
When Mayumi said she wanted Fujiya sweets, depending on his mood and her manner of asking, Goro would cheerfully trek to Yokohama—even through torrential rain—to fetch them (there being no Fujiya branch on Hase’s main street then).
Not a trace lingered of that fawning manner common to most men.
If he changed his mind midway, he’d nonchalantly drink away all entrusted money and return empty-handed.
Yet when serious, he’d grow earnestly quiet to indulge her half-fanciful “consultations.”
Goro had already spent five years at Kyoto University.
That this resulted from his less-than-proper conduct was known even within the Kawase household.
Mayumi knew too.
In truth, he’d discuss women unabashedly even before her.
At times he uttered shockingly crude remarks, yet Mayumi listened unperturbed—they came from her cousin.
This man who knew everything—this sense combined with cousinly familiarity fostered not respect but intimate trust within her……

“Goro-san is in the law department, I hear.”

“Mm.”

“Somehow it doesn’t suit you.—You should quit.”

“So what should I do then?”

“Take up agriculture.”
“It would suit you perfectly.”
“You’re fundamentally the farming type.”
“As for yours—”

“……”

"For one thing, it's wrong for someone with a constitution like that to be idling about."
“That sort of person should be more fair-skinned and pretentious, and...”

Mayumi had been trying to continue her innocent interpretation but suddenly found herself at a loss for material.
She directed a lost gaze at her cousin's profile.
Goro was smirking.
Mayumi fell silent.

A peaceful silence descended.

“What do you think of Hiroshi-san?”

After a while, Mayumi asked.

“What do I think? …Who knows.”

“I think he’s amazing.”

“Who knows.—What about you, Mayu-chan?”

“I—don’t think so at all, though.”

Mayumi lowered her eyes fixedly to the white sand.

"What's that?"
"Well, isn't that just fine?"

Goro spoke in a teasing tone but said nothing further.
Thus this meaningless conversation had to end without meaning.
Offshore to the right, a mass of white scattered clouds had floated up unnoticed.

“Well, shall we head back?—Lovely weather we’re having.”

Goro stood up and brushed the sand off his swimsuit.

“Well then, I’ll go take a dip in the water too.”

“Give my regards to Mitsuyo-san.”

“Tell Ei-chan to come visit.”

The two parted.
Mayumi remained still for a while, then stood up briskly, leaving the imprints of her small, stylish shoes on the mirror-like smooth sand at the water's edge, and walked straight into the waves.

III

That night, it was nearly one o'clock by the time Mayumi finally got into bed.
The dim electric light filtering through the blue mosquito net left her with no desire to flip through the women's magazine by her pillow, yet as her increasingly alert eyes found no proper focus, she let her gaze wander aimlessly across the vague patterns of light and shadow cast upon the ceiling - until she heard the grandfather clock downstairs strike one o'clock, then strike half past once more.
The fatigue and excitement of that evening made it quite impossible for Mayumi to fall asleep.
The three of them—her sister and cousin—had made a terrible racket until late into the night.
And they had drunk too much cold black tea.……

Mayumi awoke to the sultry heat of the bedroom.
A fragrant morning had arrived.
It must have been nearly nine o'clock—white light streaming through the corridor's transom flowed through the room.
The blue mosquito net with its faint firefly-like scent hung limply, as if ashamed of her disheveled morning appearance.
Though Mayumi found the sweat clinging to her collar unpleasant, she felt the previous night's fatigue and sleepiness had been cleansed from every cell of her eyelids.
Suddenly aware, she tried groping for faint dream memories as usual, but it seemed she'd had no dreams last night—none rose to her thoughts.
Or perhaps the dreams had vanished without trace from her memory like morning foam on the shore, disappearing with Mayumi's awakening.
But if that weren't the case—without attempting to leave bed for some time—Mayumi lay with eyes wide open from which sleep's wings had long since flown, blinking quizzically as she pursued the mystery of having dreamt nothing at all.

Following that, her own inexplicably agitated state of mind from the previous night now came back to her once more—as if some unknowable force had been pulling the threads of Mayumi’s emotions in every direction.
She had been terribly restless and animated. Yet even this was tinged with a vexing shadow—one might say there was even a touch of resignation in her mood.
With a swiftness imperceptible to the eye, fragmented wills formed within her heart, and as if propelled by some force, they set Mayumi’s eyes and hands into motion.
It was also last night that she had wrested the cigarette holder from her cousin’s cigarette case and experienced for the first time the smell and taste of tobacco.
When it came to such extreme acts, she couldn’t recall exactly how many she had committed during the night.

Mayumi had been sketching vague contours of her feelings from the previous night when, faintly furrowing her brows, she found herself once more circling back to that afternoon's incident which even now insisted on occupying the whole of her thoughts.
That today had come to this was an irreparable failing.
Yet it remained undeniable—the time when she could no longer stand with hands clasped, watching from afar, had now arrived unceremoniously.
At any rate, she must act.
But how?……In the end, she couldn't deny that even today those two maddening impulses would continue their unresolved struggle within her.
And this realization blunted her will to rise from bed.

Sunlight streamed through the window gaps in striped patterns, and the stagnant room air grew increasingly stifling. Sweat damply moistened her forehead and chest. Mayumi suddenly touched her cheek with her fingertips and startled at its burning heat. When she focused her awareness, the sour stench of the pungent Western tobacco she had chain-smoked three cigarettes of the previous night still clung stickily inside her mouth.…

But when she opened the window and felt the refreshing morning breeze—even past nine—against both cheeks, Mayumi regained her healthy spirits. She cast her keen eyes absently into the distance and drew a fresh breath. Over pine forests and houses and paths, then further still over pine forests and the sand dunes beyond—even through this second-floor window so far removed from shore—the morning calm of the sea could be sensed.

“It will probably be hot again today.”

But after a while, for some reason, she found herself thinking in this manner.

Downstairs was hushed, with no sound reaching her.
Goro was supposed to have stayed overnight in the downstairs sitting room, but no matter how much she strained her ears, no such sounds reached her.
When she slid open the fusuma door to the adjacent sitting room that served as her sister's bedroom, she found it had been neatly tidied, but her sister was nowhere to be seen.
Mayumi felt an inexplicable sense of inferiority as if she alone had been left behind and began hurriedly changing into her kimono.

She went down to the first floor, but not a soul was present in any of the rooms. To Mayumi, who had overslept, it even seemed the cleaning had been done more thoroughly than usual. Every piece of furniture appeared uniformly cold and stark, as if concealing beneath their surfaces faint smiles akin to sneers.—

Mayumi decided to wash her face and entered the bathroom. Then through the flung-open shutters, she caught sight of her mother’s back as she tended to the small vegetable patch in the rear garden.

“Good morning, young lady.”
“Young lady.”
“Finally awake, are we?”
“Didn’t your eyes melt from all that sleep?……Goro had business in Tokyo and took the eight o’clock train this morning.”
“Sister said she was going to Yokohama to buy fabric for Western clothes and left on the same train.”
“Everyone was laughing about what a sleepyhead you are…”

The mother, who still thought of Mayumi as nothing more than a child, turned at the sound of her drawing water and spoke teasingly, but Mayumi sullenly fell silent and deliberately splashed water about violently.
The notion that her sister and cousin must have colluded to leave her behind was what had put Mayumi in such a foul mood.
It was less a feeling of vexation than somehow a forlorn sense.
Even after finishing washing her face, she left her hair as it was.

After leaning her cheek on her hand at the dining table in the family dining room and skimming through the newspaper, she removed the fly screen with an air of reluctance and began her breakfast.
But she had no appetite at all.
And so, she immediately set down her chopsticks.

Now that it had come to this, there was simply nothing left for her to do.
Granted she might have thought of something, she knew it would come to nothing anyway.
But suddenly remembering something, she heavily raised herself, and Mayumi stood to walk toward the three-mat area near the entrance.
Earlier, when she had come down the stairs upon waking, she had noticed out of the corner of her eye a small Western-style cigarette case that her cousin had apparently forgotten on the table there.

The beautiful small case was indeed still on the table.
The Western lettering "London Life" stood vividly embossed against an elegant crimson background.
Mayumi reached out and picked up the small case, then gently opened its lid.
But inside, only a small amount of brownish powder had spilled across the pristine tin foil—not a single cigarette remained.
She abruptly slammed the case back onto the table with a thud.
Hastily aligning all ten fingers before her eyes, she began scrutinizing them.
She was suddenly gripped by an anxiety as if her hands had been contaminated.
Mayumi sharply furrowed her brows and quickly left the room.

This minor betrayal struck her as nothing less than an omen for the day ahead.
It occurred to her that the card determining today's fortune had been a spade.
That wasn't all.
Why had I been so easily tempted by that small cigarette case carelessly left on the table?
Undeniably there lurked something beyond mere whimsy born of idle boredom.
And had I not been betrayed—had even one cigarette remained—what would I have done?
Would I have placed it between my lips and struck a match with clumsy fingers?
Yes—undoubtedly yes.
And without the slightest hesitation.
...That she could envision herself thus filled her with hollow dread.

The disgust turned inward made her body feel leaden with weariness.
Clutching at this final hope to soothe her frayed nerves through the morning's fresh chromatic harmony, Mayumi thrust her feet into garden clogs and went out to the rear flower garden.
It was a domain of crimson lilies standing thickly clustered in full bloom.
As she drew near, the lilies seemed to exude their fragrant morning breath toward their mistress in joyful welcome.
Though the morning dew had long since dried, the sea breeze from afar made the lily clusters quiver with renewed vitality.
She cherished the crisp purity of tightly furled buds.
Yet even the fully opened blooms—their great scarlet petals spread without restraint, sprinkled with dark brown speckles—she found herself unable to despise.
With her heart finally eased by this solace, Mayumi began moving her satisfied gaze from blossom to blossom.

However, she remained wretched.
From the heart of the most splendid blossom that had caught her eye - crawling along the pistil - emerged a single grotesque black ant that seemed to her as large as a spider.
Soon the ant nimbly leapt onto a petal, its narrow-waisted black form now starkly imprinted upon the extravagant crimson carpet of floral expanse.

Mayumi could do nothing but cover her eyes as she left the cluster of lilies.
Hurriedly climbing onto the veranda, she sank into the rattan chair there and sat for a while with her eyes closed in silence.

The morning passed amidst unmanageable restlessness......

When afternoon came, the heat intensified to a severity unprecedented in recent days.
The wind had died down; splitting the stagnant late-summer air that didn’t even whisper, only the cicadas shrilled incessantly.
On such a day, even the evening shower that had been promised to arrive earlier than usual showed no sign of coming.
There were no visitors, and she herself couldn’t bring herself to go out anywhere.
She was supposed to go to Hase to make up with Henry.
She had turned this matter over in her mind countless times, but merely circled around it without taking a single step closer to resolution.
Somehow today, unlike during that fleeting moment yesterday, she couldn’t bring herself to consider it with any joy.
In other words, she couldn’t even muster the slightest confidence to rely on the expectation that everything would go perfectly.
This morning’s various emotional stumbles had made her terribly timid, and moreover—as she dawdled about—her hatred toward Henry seemed to once again begin spreading through her heart like a fever…… Thus, until around three o’clock struck, she spent a considerable amount of time—not in bodily anguish, but merely writhing idly like a snake.
That was until the time when she had finally made up her mind to try writing a letter to Goro in Tokyo.

Rather, this thought had come to her inversely from having chanced upon her sister’s stationery and pen in a corner of the tearoom.
She spread out the paper on the tatami mats, then immediately lay prone, lightly resting her forehead on the pen and closing her eyes.
Sooner than expected, her thoughts for the letter coalesced, and Mayumi began to move her pen—

"I had thought to ask you to take me to Tokyo with you, but you went back without saying a word."
Thanks to you, Mayumi has been in a daze all day and can't accomplish anything.
You're truly dreadful.

The truth is, I have some shopping to do at Maruzen.
You must understand somehow, mustn't you?
……It isn't letter paper or perfume or anything of that sort.
I need to go to the second floor.
You'll be astonished.
But I'm not a child anymore, I tell you.
It's just that climbing up to the second floor alone to search makes me feel rather apprehensive.
……But I suppose I'm still a child after all.
Therefore, I am thinking of asking Brother to accompany me.

Lately I’ve been reading Stevenson.
I’ve become utterly enamored with this author’s novels.
"The novel I’m currently reading is called ‘The Frovidens and the Guitar,’ but I was told he has many other fascinating travelogues and essays too—suddenly I found myself desperately wanting them."
According to what someone mentioned, they’re surely available at Maruzen.
Therefore, please take me to that second floor.
I will certainly come within two or three days.
If it’s morning, you’ll likely be at home.

And then on our way back, let us walk through Ginza, shall we?
You do remember, don't you?
The Shiseido ice cream.
Last year I coaxed Brother into treating me.
……But this time I shan't make such childish demands again.
I've become far better behaved since last year.

And I am also looking forward to meeting Aunt and Ro-chan.
Has Take-chan not yet returned from Hojo?

"I will certainly come within two or three days......"

The pen moved smoothly along, yet her thoughts remained behind.
She had to read it over once more.
After reading it over, she smiled.

It was a letter she had begun writing with the mindset that it didn't really need to be sent.
In other words, it had been nothing more than the irresponsibility of imagining a romance and setting pen to paper accordingly.
But why had she decided to go buy Stevenson?
It was Henry who had told her that Stevenson had travelogues and essay collections.
That faint memory had idly spilled from the pen's tip.
But never mind.
This letter didn't need to be sent.
It wouldn't matter if she just tore it up like this......

However, the next moment, Mayumi began to think she might try sending this letter after all.
That too must be interesting, she thought.
Now that she thought of it, she hadn’t walked through Ginza in some time.……And before her eyes, various beautiful storefront scenes began swirling around.
And before long, before she knew it, Mayumi was pressed beneath the great wings of an oppressive sleep.
It was a torturous slumber.
A daytime nightmare lured her in.
——

......When she awoke suddenly, her face was pressed against her left wrist.
Her chest felt constricted, making breathing terribly difficult.
As she shifted her face, sweat clung thickly to her wrist.
Her head and neck throbbed with pain as if some unnatural force had wrenched her awake.
She lifted her face and exhaled a faint sigh of relief.

But at that moment, Mayumi thought she saw an angel’s face in the garden beyond the veranda.
It was Raphael’s angel, she thought.
This was truly mysterious.
Mayumi fixed her gaze intently on that angelic face.
Then, like a life-size projection from a motion picture, that face smoothly expanded while drawing nearer.
Its expression grew distinct.
The faintly troubled shadow on the angelic face cleared away—it dissolved into innocent disarray and laughed sweetly.

Mayumi was drawn into that smile and smiled back, yet felt an odd sensation as though laughing within a dream.
Even for a dream, this seemed too beautiful, she thought.
Simultaneously came the longing to linger forever in this beautiful, peaceful reverie—

However, in the next instant, she understood with perfect clarity.
That was the boy who came to her sister for basic English lessons.
Mayumi hurriedly got up and sat properly.
With an awkward smile, her face flushed crimson.

“Isn’t Mitsuyo-san here?”

The twelve-year-old boy had gentle vocal inflections like a woman’s.

"She went to Yokohama this morning."
“She might even head to Tokyo.”

“Oh dear, I’m in quite a predicament.”

“But she might be back already.”
“Why don’t you come up and wait?”

“Yes.……”

With that, the boy hesitated on the veranda.

“Come on up—while you’re here keeping me company, she’s sure to come back, I tell you.”

Mayumi repeated herself once more. She kept her gaze fixed on the boy's profile without shifting it. A strange flame burned within her eyes—flickering unsteadily as it danced. As she watched, she tightly clenched her lips. Mayumi swallowed her parched saliva with effort, then focused intently on the resonant beat of her own heart echoing through her body.

The next instant found her startled back to awareness. Yet the fluttering terror of that moment had already receded into the distance. What remained for Mayumi was the lonely sound of emotional retreat—the faint hiss of ebbing tide-foam withdrawing across sand.

IV

Drifting through summer and autumn's unsettled mingling while letting herself be carried by circumstance—yet while idly passing those hectic waning summer days—Mayumi had come to forever lose the opportunity to receive from Mrs. Barker both news of Henry's subsequent life and that meaningful little gift of his: the collection of stories.
This was because September 1st—exactly ten days after Mayumi had returned to Kamakura—proved to be the day ordained for that grotesque earthquake disaster.
And on this day, Mrs. Barker had suddenly brought her beautiful life's history to an end.……

Even so, Mrs. Barker’s sudden death tended to evoke in Mayumi’s youthful heart—rather than dark emotions—what might be called pure sentiments.

“Even if she were alive, she would be a lady with no joys in life.”

Indeed, was not Mrs. Barker one of those people placed in circumstances perfectly suited to such expressions—the kind Japanese women often discuss in hushed voices? And was this not all the more true precisely because she was Mrs. Barker—who, being all the younger and more beautiful for her youth, had maintained a perpetually bright, tender smile while finding solitary enjoyment in plans for utterly futile town charity projects, feigning happiness all the while?

“I wonder if there isn’t some part of her person that’s unwell.”

There had been a time when Mitsuyo—speaking during dinner as Mrs. Barker’s unmarried status unexpectedly became their topic—had voiced such thoughts while hinting at a chest ailment through her own infirmity; yet Mayumi could never bring herself to agree with that opinion.
Even so, she could vaguely imagine there must have been some profound hidden circumstance at work.
What could it possibly be?—Mayumi found herself inexplicably afraid to pursue such speculations further.
At times when Mrs. Barker would gaze at freshly plucked hedgerow blossoms or suddenly fix her deep eyes—during their quiet conversations—upon Mayumi’s own vibrant ones brimming with healthy light, Mayumi could only swiftly grasp, through girlish intuition, the shadow of sorrow veiling the woman’s past.
At such moments, several fine wrinkles—usually artfully concealed beneath her gentle smile—would emerge distinctly upon Mrs. Barker’s forehead, unexpectedly clear.
Though these wrinkles would sink back beneath her smooth smile almost before registering, this fleeting dissonance never failed to sadden Mayumi.

However, from such faint manifestations one could reasonably surmise that even if Mrs. Barker had trailed some shadow of misfortune through her past, it must surely have been consoled and softened through quiet prayer and resignation; moreover, a death that appears pure and beautiful in the eyes of those close to her after her passing—was that not what constituted a happy death?…… Such were Mayumi’s thoughts. To be precise, this was after about a month had passed since that calamitous day—when the frenzied sobs and lamentations had begun to subside, and it had become possible to contemplate the surrounding multitude of events with relative composure.

By that time, transportation systems were mostly restored, and people’s hearts were gradually beginning to regain their former composure.

Mayumi's family—mother and two daughters—abandoned their utterly destroyed house and took refuge at an acquaintance's home in Ōgigayatsu, an area of Kamakura that had suffered relatively little damage. Two rooms in the annex were provided for their accommodation. The house was a quiet dwelling surrounded by pine thickets in a mountain valley, and due to geological conditions, it had miraculously escaped the earthquake’s devastation—so much so that not a single crack marred its walls—allowing those here to flee from the ghastly memories of that calamity. Yet Mayumi, who had suffered through about a week of high fever and nightmares from intense terror and the accompanying mental exhaustion, still spent many days languishing in bed due to the lingering intermittent fevers that followed.

Lying still upon the sickbed, Mayumi—her feverish eyes wide open and drenched in countless tears—received through letters and oral reports the various distressing tidings conveyed to her.
The news of Mrs. Barker’s death numbered among these.
The tragic devoted end of her mentor from the Yokohama Seminary likewise stood among them.
Beyond these, there must have been numerous other misfortunes—various ones that had befallen friends in this town or perhaps Yokohama—still unknown to her.
All those people had played sundry roles in her life’s history—sometimes bringing her happiness, sometimes displeasure, at other times granting her vital experiences.
Now when she recalled those familiar visages, even the lingering shadows of their potent yet faint resentments seemed to soften into smiles beneath recollection’s tender caress.
Amid such meditations, Mayumi could not ignore the contours of her enfeebled character.……

Though she had tried to avoid them as much as possible, scenes filled with terror from her own experiences would still occasionally rise in her mind with such vivid clarity that it felt repulsive. The memory of that instant when the house collapsed suddenly without even imparting a sense of tilting was, strangely enough, recalled as one continuous grotesque and mournful sound. After that roar had passed, Mayumi thought nothing about the miracle—how the three of them had found each other uninjured amidst the piled wooden fragments, simply standing dazed—as though she had forgotten it entirely.—Such a distorted state of mind was hardly rare among most people at that time.

However, when they revisited the ruins of their own home early the next morning to retrieve the belongings that had survived unscathed, the impression was etched with vivid—even eerie—clarity.
When Mayumi stepped over the collapsed brushwood fence and stood in a corner of the garden, the first sight that met her eyes was the scene of numerous furnishings from her second-floor room—formed into a single mass—lying scattered in disarray beneath a pine tree at the garden's edge.
It assaulted her vision with hues resembling shattered pomegranate fruit.
It was a pitiful sight.
She knew this contained every memento of her cherished life.
Among these belongings were not few items for which she felt not merely spiritual attachment, but physical obsession surpassing reason.
That was not all.
There were also the kimono and accessories she herself had worn until yesterday.
Amidst fragments of the clothing chest smashed beyond recognition, those multicolored fabrics lay strewn about chaotically.
To her, these were extensions of her very flesh.
These things had been ravaged by cruel hands—indeed, their disordered state felt so deliberate it might have been human work.
Yet does not nature's hand often grow more malicious than man's?
——They had been ruthlessly torn asunder.

The moment she recognized this unbearable scene, Mayumi turned deathly pale and froze in place.
Her eyes were instantly veiled by a dull, expressionless membrane as though frozen solid.
Mitsuyo, who had been unobtrusively observing her sister’s condition from nearby, let out a small, involuntary cry at that moment.
Then, as if shuddering, she clenched both hands before beginning to violently shake her sister’s fingertips.…

From that evening onward, Mayumi developed a fever and took to bed.
Childlike delirious utterances caused her mother and sister to furrow their brows—

Besides these shuddering recollections, fragmentary thoughts about her own life from before she knew that calamity—shimmering like a sea beyond them in the distance—would at times course through her fevered mind.
For her heart, it was a distant and elusive form—like the soundless collapse of offshore breakers that often appeared in dreams.
That world was filled with nothing but glittering sunlight.
Mayumi stubbornly resisted accepting the judgment that she—now this self lying in bed, tormented by thoughts made heavy with fever—was the same vibrant girl who had once been the protagonist of such a life.
The distance between them seemed unbelievably vast.

Was that Japanese girl—the one who had swung her racket with all her might on Yamate Park’s court, where the slanting black shadows of towering Indian cedars and midsummer afternoon sunlight streaming unobstructed contrasted so dazzlingly, her eyes gleaming like crystallized thought and chest swelling like a pigeon’s—truly this self? Was that Japanese girl—who at that very moment had exchanged bright smiles and shouted high-pitched English phrases while hitting balls alongside her American teammates, girls and young men alike—truly this self?
And that Japanese girl who had stood at Bakurochō’s crossroads in twilight’s glow, cherishing Yokohama’s antiquated genre paintings while listening with a gentleness of heart made captive to fancy to old Madame N——ya’s tales—was that truly this self? That emotionally rich Japanese girl who had stood in Yamate Hill’s schoolyard playing with friends, calling the Ōoka River “Seine” and likening Yoshida Bridge to Ryōgembashi on flower market days—was that truly this self? That Japanese girl who until just recently had delighted in blissful lessons on “Providence and the Psaltery” in Mrs. Barker’s Hase residence—was that truly this self? And that foolishly headstrong Japanese girl who had not hesitated to hurl such insults at that kind young English gentleman—was even she truly this self?
Now she felt she could discover not even the smallest fragment of any of those elements within herself.
It was an event from a world too distant, a figure of herself too far removed.

After such moments of recalling her distant life, Mayumi would come to feel that her present existence was in truth but a shadow—like that of a ghost.
Because that distant life blazed with such radiance and brimmed with profound, wholesome happiness, her present self came to seem like nothing more than its feeble reflection.
At times she would consider whether her very existence had not in truth been lost—whether what lived on might not be merely a phantom formed when the light and heat of what once existed long ago became refracted or radiated through time’s uncanny layered haze before reaching this shore.
At midnight, such imaginings terrified her.
At such times, when she gently pressed her palm against her own forehead, it burned with a tormenting heat.

However, day by day, Mayumi gradually recovered.
Though her physical health remained slow to return, her mental recovery first began to show visibly favorable progress.
The house in Ōgigayatsu was the residence of a young naval officer and his wife.
The addition of those three to this extremely quiet and peaceful life was what brought calm to Mayumi’s heart above all else.

One day, Goro sat at Mayumi’s bedside, gazing fixedly with deeply contemplative eyes at his cousin’s haggard countenance—seen for the first time in ages.
Though the aunt and cousin being more energetic than expected should have gladdened him, his cousin’s unforeseen state instead deepened his sorrow.
He had anticipated Mayumi’s vivacity more keenly than either Aunt or Mitsuyo.
Yet before Goro’s eyes—eyes that had secretly envisioned hopeful expectations about how much that bright character might be clouded by this unfortunate month’s shadows (some dimming being inevitable), or how far she might still illuminate the gloomy faces around her—lay a Mayumi whose appearance proved far more unexpectedly pitiful than imagined.
Goro remained seated motionless, staring fixedly at his cousin’s sorrowful sleeping face.

It was the face of Mayumi that he had often teased by calling her "Miss Willful". Looking back now, the defining characteristic of that "Miss Willful" had been most evident in her lustrous crimson lips. Those small lips possessed a shape that leaned toward sharp curves, somewhat overly perfected in form. They bore an expression closer to intellect than emotion. Precisely because of this, those lips were sensitive. That was—more than her beautiful eyes or well-formed nose—the most active part among all her facial features. Yet this did not mean they were talkative. It was, so to speak, a voiceless volubility. For instance, even when Mayumi ate an apple, if one gazed upon the delicate movements of those small lips, the fresh scent and taste of the fruit would naturally come to be felt at the root of one’s own tongue. Those lips possessed such an artless technique. And those lips were willful. When something displeased her, her upper lip would curl upward smoothly with innocent defiance. Then the mischievous glint in her eyes would momentarily join in, completing what people called the "Miss Willful" expression.

However, those lips now manifested something bearing no resemblance to their original expression.
That sharpness seemed to have vanished somewhere.
The crystalline crimson that once appeared translucent had now faded into a murky reddish hue.
Waves of blunt curves seemed to exude an incurable weariness.
They no longer suggested fresh intellect, but rather appeared to ripple with faint sighs of emotion—abruptly and unnaturally cultivated through physical anguish.
This metamorphosis of her lips had wrought a profound transformation across her entire face.
Alongside the pallid luster of her cheeks, those prematurely matured lips had stripped away all traces of bright vivacity from her expression.
Her countenance now more closely resembled that of a languid "woman".

Goro gazed at that tormented face with something akin to wonder.
At that moment, the lips were tightly pursed.
Then the throat moved with a gulp, and the upper lip gently parted from the lower lip.
To Goro, it seemed as though something resembling the original bright and lively lips had fleetingly cast a shadow over the surface of that faint movement.

And Mayumi opened her eyes wide.
It was Mitsuyo’s presence—having entered with chopsticks in hand—that had roused her from sleep.
She lifted her neck straight up on the pillow and gazed fixedly at her cousin’s face.
For an instant, something resembling Mayumi’s former bright vitality seemed to flutter deep within those pupils.
But immediately it vanished, returning once more to a dull, enervated light.
With a nostalgic cast suffusing her features, she offered a faint smile.

“I’ve become utterly worn out, you know.”

Mayumi murmured weakly, as if half-speaking to herself.

After listening for a while to the quiet conversation between her cousin and sister at her bedside, Mayumi soon appeared to drift off again.
However, that sleep appeared to be a peaceful one.
The faint sound of regular breathing could be discerned.
Because she had found two dear ones at her bedside, a blissful sleep had come to her.
Upon that smiling face, a faint red—unusually present—had appeared ever so slightly.
It was not due to fever but rather a joyous harbinger of imminent recovery—this became evident when observing her tranquil sleeping countenance.
To Mitsuyo, that red seemed akin to the color of dawn casting its shadow upon a tranquil lake.

“Look, such a lovely color has come into her cheeks.”

The elder sister said as she averted her eyes from her sister’s face and swiftly turned her gaze toward her cousin.
It seemed she had been unable to contain herself and had let the words slip out unintentionally.
Rather, a childlike joy burned vividly in Mitsuyo’s heart.—

A week after that day, as Mayumi’s health recovered, she moved to the Ushigome house.