Pathway to Japanese Literature

Finally, Botsu was expelled from middle school before completing four years.
He was expelled.
The concept of school was something he couldn't understand at all.
In the classroom, he would do nothing but pretend to pilot airplanes and mimic killings from motion pictures.
For Botsu, such things were—if you could call them interests—his only interests.

When he stayed home loafing around instead of going anywhere, his conflict with his father grew unbearably intense—until from some trivial quarrel, he was soundly beaten by his father and finally swept out like dust into the sleet-lashed street.
Botsu—with an air of being overwhelmed by boredom—sloppily rolled into his friend's boarding house while still dripping wet.

Stuffing himself recklessly with cheap sweets, guzzling alcohol he couldn’t handle with abandon, swinging a jackknife sharpened until water dripped off it—staying up late doing these aimless things was his only taste of freedom.

Amidst this, Botsu took an interest in something peculiar.
In the room across the single hallway, what seemed to be another lodger stewing in solitude would order pickled daikon from downstairs each night near twelve—the crisp crunching sounds that suggested clean bites, and the slurping of what appeared to be tepid sake, felt unbearably soothing.
Sitting cross-legged, Botsu—with eyes as endearing as a mouse’s—stared through thick corrective lenses at his friend’s face while straining to catch every noise from across the hall.

“Oh—he just ate the pickled daikon. What a weird guy… Look, now he drank sake.”

The man who drank sake with that pickled daikon would later form an ill-fated bond with Botsu—Ontsaan.
That was Ontsaan.

Before they knew it, the two had begun meeting each other at the accounts desk. Botsu perceived Ontsaan as something fluid. To Botsu, Ontsaan—a man in his early thirties—seemed like a father he’d had since before he was born. And then, without either one drawing the other in, Botsu began settling into Ontsaan’s room.

"You're such an idiot... Though I don't have any right to say that myself."

When Botsu acted violently in a drunken fit, Ontsaan would crawl into a corner of the room to avoid trouble and laugh like this while holding his head. At such times, Botsu would feel so attached to Ontsaan that he wanted to lick him all over.

Then again, Ontsaan would sometimes kick Botsu coldly, like an old bitch he detested. "For a failure like you, crawling back to your father's place—making yourself small while getting beaten black and blue—living like a fool's the safest path to happiness." "Keep dawdling around that fortune your father sweated blood to build, and it'll naturally become yours anyway. Then just eat off it till you die—that's paradise perfected." "Get tangled up with someone like me, and you'll stand there stiff as a temple gargoyle—no undoing that regret." "I'm trouble enough alone." "No need for more nuisances gnawing at me." "If I'm the only one rotting away..." Ontsaan trailed off, pinching his cup between two fingers as he squinted sweetly at the lukewarm sake before drinking. When spoken to like this, Botsu would freeze oddly rigid. Then fury would consume him utterly.

Ontsaan eventually managed to secure funds from somewhere and opened a small lending bookstore in a town lined with trinket shops and secondhand clothing stores.
At first he showed some restraint, but before long Botsu came to help even with the store work.

When Ontsaan and Botsu became engrossed in their work, they would labor three or four times as hard as ordinary people.
They worked so intensely they didn’t even exchange words.
As a result, their sales reached by no means insignificant levels.
Ontsaan used this income to acquire books he personally favored.
Yet the books Ontsaan preferred were hardly those that appealed to general readers.
What’s more, the first to mark lending books as pleasurable wasn’t the customers—it was Ontsaan himself.
No one could have foreseen this habit would eventually land Ontsaan on a blacklist.

Whenever some mishap struck, Ontsaan and Botsu would lose all restraint—heading out somewhere with the young folks frequenting their shop to clean out their sales savings and pawn every piece of shop equipment they could lay hands on as was their wont.

One time, Botsu suddenly slammed a single book onto the earthen floor at the shopfront.

“What the hell are you doing, idiot? Are you trying to lose your mind?”

Ontsaan made a face as if about to burst out laughing yet only his voice roared.
Botsu trembled lividly with rage.

“Ontsaan… If we keep doing shady stuff like this—is this really okay?”

Botsu pulled out from the bookshelf another book that the renowned author of that work had publicly released and placed it before Ontsaan.
When they compared it with the book that had been slammed onto the earthen floor, while the titles were entirely different, the contents were nearly identical.

That alone was enough to agitate them.
With fury that seemed to have nowhere to go, the two tumbled into a drinking den with their regulars.
And then, utterly wasted, Botsu plunged his trademark sharpened jackknife into his own leg, smeared the blood all over his face, and danced his signature “death dance” like a madman.

Because of this, the two were left battered and bruised for two or three days.

Ontsaan finally told him to get out.
Botsu completely understood Ontsaan’s feelings.
So, sulking, he pulled a red sweater completely over his head and cried inside the cupboard.

Even so, Botsu obediently went to Noboribetsu and became an elementary school substitute teacher.
Whenever a little money accumulated, he would take it and come all the way to Sapporo to see Ontsaan.
He was engrossed in the joy of spending his own money and treating Ontsaan and Ontsaan’s six-year-old daughter.
When he spotted an ashtray that briefly caught his eye on the café table, his cheek muscles twitched into a smirk.

No sooner had he exited the café and closed the door than he pulled out the ashtray from his pocket and brandished it in front of Ontsaan’s eyes.

“You idiot! You did it again! Since you’ve been at it nonstop I kept my eyes glued on you thinking you’d try again—figured today was safe but damn if you didn’t go and do it anyway! You’re hopeless! You’re a goddamn lost cause!”

Ontsaan laughed boisterously as if at a complete loss.
Botsu also laughed boisterously.
And then, with all his strength, he smashed that ashtray into the waters of the Shin River.

At first, he would obediently return to Noboribetsu whenever Ontsaan yelled at him, but gradually growing bolder, he ended up settling back into Ontsaan’s shop without ever formally quitting his teaching job.

Amidst all this, that wild uproar erupted.
The detectives had been watching the gathering from the second floor of the neighboring house, and once everyone had fully assembled, they stormed in with the police chief at their head.
They wore plain clothes, but Ontsaan instantly saw through their guise.
Yet Botsu paid no mind whatsoever—behaving as if he thought their crew had reconvened—neatly wrapping his draped mantle’s edge around his neck. With a flamboyant gesture aping the dashing leads of Italian cinema, he swept his right hand in a grand arc from left shoulder to knee and executed an elaborate bow.
Then came the blow—a strike to his temple so brutal it left his face mangled.

Ontsaan, Botsu, and three other companions spent four days in the detention center.
Botsu uncharacteristically became melancholic.
That was a terrifying omen.
Bombs, pistols, dirks—these were, so to speak, parts of Botsu’s very flesh.
When those cute eyes—like a rat’s—set into his pallid, ornate face, Botsu’s entire body appeared like an unsheathed dagger.

On the morning they were ultimately released due to insufficient evidence, Botsu—forced to stand before the camera—turned his face away and twisted his features into a horrible grimace as the shutter snapped. Such things were one facet of his melancholy.

During their absence, Ontsaan’s shop had been subjected to such a meticulous search that even the floor joists were ripped out.
Not only had his business been shut down in Sapporo, but every conceivable path to employment had been completely blocked.

Ontsaan cast off his wife, children, and all his companions, resolved to become a solitary human being.
Botsu was the first to notice that.

“Ontsaan, take us with you, hey?”

he pleaded plaintively.

“You’re hopeless.”

Ontsaan answered tearfully like this.

“Alright, if you’re going, then go ahead and try, Ontsaan.
“I’ll show you by finishing you off at the station!”

But Ontsaan had finally shaken off Botsu and come to Tokyo.
And then he told me all those stories from before.
And then,

“He’s the real deal.
“We just can’t help hating that guy.”
“But when that guy calls me ‘Ontsaan,’ we’re just a goddamn lost cause.”
“We’ve become completely worn out, so it’s hopeless, I tell you…” he concluded, but…

Not long after hearing such rumors, I learned that Botsu had chased after Ontsaan and fled from Sapporo with nothing but the clothes on his back.

One day, when informed that Ontsaan had come, I told them to have him shown to my usual study. After waiting awhile, I went to check only to find not Ontsaan but a youthful young man there instead. He was of average height but narrow-shouldered, his delicate frame clad in a kimono worn with slackened formality, so hesitant he could hardly bring himself to sit on the chair even after finishing the delivery of Ontsaan’s message.

“Well then, I’ll be off.”

With that, he stomped off home without heeding any attempts to stop him.
I immediately thought it must be that man, but we never exchanged names.

A couple of days later, Ontsaan came and asked if anything was missing. He had apparently said he’d intended to swipe something as a memento when he went there but somehow got cold feet—though with that guy, who could tell what really happened? Of course, nothing had disappeared.

“Yer a damn cute old man.”
“That forehead ’n hands o’ yours were so fuckin’ adorable we nearly licked ’em clean.”
“Ain’t that right—I’m Botsu ’n you’re the old man, huh?”

He apparently also said that.
I laughed.
And if I was Tossan-Botchiyan, then that man was Botchan-Totchiyan, I said.
And so from then on, among us, that man came to be called Botsu, and I came to be called Totsubotsu.
Therefore, Botsu was not his nickname from the Sapporo days.

After that, my interactions with Botsu never grew particularly close; I only heard through Ontsaan about how he was adored by women, how reckless he was, and how he could display a ruthless intensity when pressed. But this year, an opportunity to suddenly get closer to Botsu presented itself.

It was because Ontsaan had suddenly departed for Kyushu, and from there an incident had occurred that might send him to the very ends of the earth.
Though he grumbled jokingly about how absurdly large the red leather boots Botsu had bought were, Ontsaan remained unmistakably tense.
We hurried toward Tokyo Station, grimacing against the biting night wind as we desperately tried to catch the eight o'clock night train.
There stood Botsu—who had arrived first—waiting for us with his hunting cap's visor pulled low over his brow and his tonbi coat's collar turned up high.
Ontsaan lived under circumstances that required him to perpetually watch his surroundings.

Though the third-class car was packed, Ontsaan managed to sit near the window thanks to Botsu's quick thinking in boarding early to secure seats.
Ontsaan laughed in his usual way as he talked with Botsu.
I kept my distance.
Botsu wiping tears at the base of his thumb looked unnervingly vivid.
Ontsaan's face glistened with greasy sweat, his pallor becoming painful to behold.
Leaving behind a wife and child he could neither tire of nor be tired by—abandoning comfortable Japan for some unknown place where poverty and danger might await—he prepared to cast himself out like a blind man.
The only one seeing Ontsaan off with genuine care was Botsu alone—that youth branded delinquent.
Such a traveler and such a send-off likely won't appear again even in Tokyo Station's long corridors.
I'd unwittingly grown sentimental.
To shake off that trite emotion, I walked clomp-clomp across cement floors, shoulders hunched against the cold.

When his conversation with Botsu ended, Ontsaan slumped back and stared at the train car’s ceiling.
Botsu had completely hidden his face between his hunting cap and tonbi collar and stood rigid as stone.

The prolonged, ominous clang of the alarm bell—it must have gouged at Botsu’s chest.
The train, loaded with passengers, began to move into the darkness.
We parted like strangers, pretending not to know each other.

Botsu, I, and our other companion I walked in silence through the canyon of tall stone buildings.
The two followed in the direction I was heading.
Arriving at Hibiya Station, I pushed my way up to a large poultry restaurant.
The three were shown to a squalid six-tatami room.
Since it was a Saturday night, the entire shop was teeming with partygoers.

What surprised me was Botsu’s figure emerging from the darkness into the bright electric light.
Even as the gloomy spectacle of the corridor still lingered in my mind, his face was brazenly radiant.

“Holy hell! This place is damn incredible!”

He gazed about with childlike curiosity.

The restaurant’s signature electric pot arrived.

“They got these in Sapporo too.”

That guileless innocence welling from his core finally broke through and made me smile.
We drank lightly and turned to our meal.
As I began serving rice,

“Pile it sky-high—make it a proper mountain, yeah?”

When I—raised in a Buddhist household—handed him a bowl expertly molded into a perfect dome, Botsu glanced around and cheered with boyish vigor.

“Look, a mountain of it! Looks just like the Kamakura period, huh? Look, Yoritomo ate his rice like this. Right? Huh?”

Even in such offhand remarks, there remained something quintessentially him—a distinctive flavor of individuality that Japanese people generally lacked. Botsu and I gradually grew closer. He was no longer the Botsu who had frequented my study. His pale skin—what one might call the complexion of genius—would flush faintly pink at the slightest sip of alcohol, emanating an irresistibly endearing aura from both heart and body that made people of any gender cling to him once smitten. Each time the maid brought our orders, she paused to cast brief, attentive glances toward his not-yet-twenty-year-old self before moving on. That someone so young could already have his life reduced to domestic ruin—this thought would pierce me with sorrow.

The clamor around us was so tumultuous we couldn't hear each other's voices. From the staircase above came shrill voices relaying orders to the counter, while amidst them roared a raspy voice—bearing the lingering air of an ex-student befitting such an establishment's clientele—bellowing out as if making this its final stand. Our noses and eyes were choked by soy sauce and greasy vapor.

Botsu and I—who shared the same house—were laughing over the absurd adventure Ontsaan and Botsu had tried around Kagurazaka, using what seemed like backstage jargon that I couldn't understand half of.

“That Botsu—he got hold of S’s business card, pasted it on the wall, and has been bowing to it morning and night. It’s just too much to take.”

Though thoroughly upstanding, there was no foothold against Botsu’s bizarre freedom—he who seemed born without a shred of conscience—and even that bluntness of his took on a tone steeped in goodwill.

“It’s so damn good—I tell ya, I thought there wasn’t a single soul in this whole world who’d bother with the likes of me.”
“But then it went on all night, y’know.”
“I just... cried.”
“It’s so damn good…”

The power went out.
A roar of voices erupted throughout the shop.
Having nothing to do, we had to crouch in the pitch-dark room with a sensation of being dragged downward.
Only the electric wires in the brazier were emitting heat with a sticky red glow.
At first, Botsu—who had been so exhilarated by this sudden turn that he nearly leapt up—eventually fell silent.
The three faces floated dimly in the darkness, only their fronts illuminated by the fading light from the brazier.

“Ontsaan… just how far has he gone?”

Suddenly, Botsu blurted out.
We then fell silent again and stared at the brazier.
Outside the room, male staff and maids were scurrying about in confusion, holding things like candles and lanterns.
It was only natural that our room was left for last.

When the light in the brazier had completely faded, and around the time the candles had finally been distributed throughout the shop, the house’s electric lights flickered on like a prankster’s trick.
However, triggered by the blackout, our conversation had taken a different angle.

Botsu, so to speak, straightened up and began to speak of things that reminded him of Ontsaan.

"I like Ontsaan. I just really like him. If it’s for Ontsaan, I’ll do anything."

In this manner, Botsu solemnly began to speak.

“I just can’t keep up with studying for shit. Even at school I was just fuckin’ around. Then I finally got expelled. Yeah. Hated my old man’s guts. Just sittin’ there hoardin’ cash without liftin’ a finger, right? He beat me. Got hit here so hard I thought my eardrums flew a thousand miles away. After that, everything went straight to hell.”

“Ontsaan’s scary as fuck underneath it all, y’know? When we were drinkin’ with Fujikou that time—all three of us—Ontsaan tried givin’ him advice and Fujikou just snapped. Suddenly decks Ontsaan right in the face, I tell ya. Then Ontsaan plants one in Fujikou’s chest—bam!—and slams that twenty-kan motherfucker flat onto the floorboards like he’s tryna make plywood. That face Ontsaan made… still gives me chills. Fujikou thought he was gonna die. But being Fujikou, he gets right back up and charges again. Then Ontsaan goes dead white, tears wellin’ up, just sittin’ there waitin’ for Fujikou to come punch him. Fujikou lands a couple weak hits then chickens out. Lampshade was shattered to pieces all over the place, I tell ya.”

“Ontsaan tried to beat Fujikou to death,” he said, “but when he thought ‘He’s a comrade,’ suddenly he couldn’t move a hand or foot—only tears came pouring out. …Me, I’ve thought two or three times Ontsaan was gonna kill me.”
“Just from him staring at me like that—that’s all it takes to make me think it.”
“Like one night—I was singing ‘Carmen’ late at night, and Ontsaan goes ‘Gah!’ and storms right outta the room, I tell ya.”
“Back then too, I thought that deba knife was gonna plunge straight into my chest—trembled under the futon the whole time, I did.”

I wore an expression as though he had glimpsed some mysterious aspect of Ontsaan and listened intently, but—

“But Ontsaan is kind, isn’t he?”

I interjected.

“Just like me, Ontsaan’s got his own self and others all tangled up together, y’know.”

Botsu continued speaking further in this explanatory manner.

“When I was working as a teacher in Nopporo...

Speaking of teachers... kids are just so damn adorable.
The kids had really taken to me too, I tell ya.
Adorable kids—both the ones who could keep up and the ones who couldn’t were just so damn cute.
I damn well bullied the kids who couldn't keep up.
The ones who could keep up had adorable faces, but the ones who couldn’t had adorable hearts—I tell ya.
After school closed, I’d keep the ones who couldn’t keep up behind and teach them myself.
Once when we ended up crying, I bashed their head against the desk board, and the damn thing split clean in two.
That child just kept clutching their head like this and didn’t even cry.
I was genuinely worried, thinking they might be an idiot or go crazy.
Well, I didn’t feel like apologizing and went into the staff room, then waited for everyone to leave before going to check the classroom—and there that kid was, all alone, still sitting there holding their head and crying.
When I stroked the head and looked, a large lump had formed.
That kid’ll hold a grudge against us till the day they die, I tell ya.”

“But I got sick of school real quick too, I tell ya. When I’d go to Ontsaan’s place, he’d tell me ‘Get out! Get out!’ till I got so pissed off I’d just loaf around town doing nothin’. Then my uncle—my blind uncle—came all the way from Otaru lookin’ for us at Ontsaan’s place, I tell ya. When I went to Ontsaan’s place, Ontsaan said—”

“Starting today, you ain’t coming round my place no more.”
“I’m me and you’re you—that’s how it is.”
“Get yourself back to your old man’s place, I tell ya.”
“If my sickness catches you, you’ll be in proper trouble.”
“…I’m done wearing myself out worrying over you.”
“I can’t even keep hold of my own self alone.”

I couldn’t say anything.
It was a cold, rainy day, and having no umbrella, I got drenched from head to toe with legs caked in mud.
Ontsaan brought a bucket of water and washed my legs like a mother would.
Then he made me change clothes.
If I’d grown fat and rotten, Ontsaan would… it’s always like that, I tell ya… sweating buckets as he wrapped my things neatly in a furoshiki cloth, set it beside where I sat with a “Get out now,” then turned away without another word—wouldn’t he?

Thinking it was bullshit, I left Ontsaan’s place through the back door—but where the hell was I supposed to go? Under the eaves, I placed the furoshiki and sat down on it, trembling violently until evening fell. Ontsaan would occasionally peek out only to withdraw in silence. When night came, he shut the door tight without a word.

Because I understood Ontsaan’s feelings far too well, I just kept crying.

That night I pawned all the furoshiki bundles Ontsaan had made for me, went to a restaurant, drank myself stupid, and bought a woman—then come morning, didn’t have enough to pay up. With no other choice, when I went to my old man’s place with Gyuutarou, they were desperately searching for us—my mother was on death’s doorstep.

On the third day after that, my mother died, I tell ya. My mother was a good mother, she was.
While being constantly beaten by the old man, she doted on us adoringly, I tell ya.
It was like a beast doting adoringly on its own offspring.
She doted adoringly without understanding a damn thing.
So that’s why I turned into such a fool, but I was the only one who truly loved my mother.

Everyone kept saying to give her the death water.
"When I opened her mouth and poured the cup of water down her throat, she choked three times with a gurgling sound."
"That's all. ...That was it."

Botsu laughed as if it were someone else’s affair.
Both I［character］and I［narrator］inadvertently found ourselves laughing along—but that laughter quickly faded.

When I looked around and noticed that there were unexpectedly few customers left in the shop.
When I checked the clock, it had somehow become nearly ten, so I thought of heading home—but Botsu appeared terribly forlorn at the prospect of us parting ways.
Still thinking to at least settle the bill, when I called the waitress and began taking out my wallet to pay, Botsu also, as if noticing, took out his coin purse.
It was irritating how I put on airs despite having no money.
Botsu, without so much as listening, twisted open the coin purse and took out a small object wrapped in a scrap of washi paper.

“This is it.”

As he tried to present it before our eyes, I blocked it with my hand again,

“Hey now—this your prized S business card again?
Cut it out already.”

Paying no heed to what had been said, when he opened it, a small tooth-like object came rolling out from the crease.

“What’s that?”

This time, I tried asking.

"This...is my mother's bone."

And Botsu held out the paper-wrapped package before our eyes with a bored expression as if presenting nothing remarkable.
We fell silent again for a moment.
Then suddenly I took out a handkerchief from my sleeve and pressed it against my eyes before anyone could react.

Botsu soon stuffed it back into the coin purse.
At that moment, I thought I caught a flicker of melancholy flooding his face.
I thought, So that’s what Ontsaan meant by a dangerous look.

“Since I ain’t got nothin’ to do, I’ll do anythin’, I tell ya.”
“Goddamn it—I’ll do anythin’, I swear.”
“Lookit.”
“But while the old man’s alive, it’s still no good.”
“I hate that bastard, but as long as he’s around, it’s still no good.……Without Ontsaan here, I’d be a complete mess.”
“……You bastard……”

Botsu, without directing it at anyone or anything, uttered the words “You bastard” in a crushed, monstrous voice.

I found myself involuntarily struck by a ghastly feeling.
Because I did not know how to bring him back from such feelings.

About a week later, to our surprise, Ontsaan came fluttering back to Tokyo again.
Contrary to Ontsaan’s expectations, he ended up squandering every last yen he had down in Kyushu.

Even so, Ontsaan hadn’t forgotten about Botsu.
And by Ontsaan’s own account, the two of them became disheveled once more and started living together again—but at any rate, it had become necessary for Ontsaan’s own livelihood to make Botsu learn a proper trade, so he scraped together money from somewhere and enrolled Botsu in a driving school, while Botsu himself rejoiced over it like a child.
Then, donning a crisp driver’s uniform, he barged into the landlord’s place and proceeded to conquer every woman there one by one before declaring—with some premeditation—

One evening came an invitation: since Botsu was moving to a boarding house in Omori, would we come to see him off? Though it was already past nine o'clock, I headed out to a certain eatery in Kagurazaka.

"You've been kept waiting," said the waitress guiding us. When we entered a third-floor room under her lead, there sat Ontsaan, Botsu, and I around the table in highest spirits.

Botsu let out a voice that seemed to spring his entire body upward and shouted.

“Hey Ontsaan! Totsubotsu’s here!”
“Goddammit!”
“Fuck yeah!”
“C’mon Ontsaan—make some racket! Louder! And you—I! Get rowdier already!”

“Yeah yeah—makin’ noise, makin’ noise.”

Unaccustomed to the situation, I smiled bashfully and hurriedly brought my chopsticks to the sashimi plate. When I heard Botsu's voice like that, my resolve solidified as if to say 'Alright.' And I gulped down the sake being poured for me. The complete absence of any pretense or hierarchy seemed to have utterly liberated my constant state of mind.

Botsu had his kimono tucked up to his waist and was sitting cross-legged in nothing but a single cotton flannel undergarment that resembled coarse bonito stripes. His youthful, fair face was flushed as if burning, and his jagged teeth—which rather charmingly accentuated his expression—were insistently bared.

“Hey Totsubotsu, tonight’s the night—you’re coming to the brothel with us.”
“How about it? You coming?”

Ontsaan interrogated, the cup still clamped between his teeth.

“Hell yes, I’m coming.”

I answered, laughing.

“Damn!”
“This’s fuckin’ wild!”
“Totsubotsu’s goin’ under!”
“Damn!... Drink up!”

Botsu, swaying drunkenly, slid his sake cup toward me.

“When are you going to Omori?”

I asked.

“I’m goin’ tomorrow.”
“I’ll show ya all by becomin’ a proper driver…… Ain’t the geisha comin’ yet?”
“Shit!”

Just then, two geisha entered. Being the sort who frequented such places, they weren’t particularly skilled at playing the shamisen, yet one among them—a petite woman who looked no more than eighteen or nineteen—had an unexpectedly wild, fiery air about her.

“I swore off drinking when I do my hair up fancy like this,” she said, “but this party looks too good to pass up. Pour me one while you’re at it.”

As she spoke, she dumped the bowl’s contents into the rinsing bowl, made the other geisha fill her cup, then knocked back half of it in one go.

“What a damn fool this one is.”

Ontsaan said while glaring reproachfully at the woman, his eyes now firmly set.

“We’re country bumpkins, that lot over there.”

“Shit! What’s wrong with country bumpkins?”
“Get over here!”

Botsu drew himself up menacingly.

“Country bumpkins suit me just fine.”

As she spoke, the woman rose from beside me and wedged herself between Botsu and me.

The banquet room had descended into utter chaos.
While exchanging words with Ontsaan, I kept my attention fixed on Botsu’s conversation with that geisha.

“Which one’re you―――?”

“It’s a lowly trade.”

“Quit puttin’ on airs like some highfalutin geisha, you.”

“When have I ever put on airs? Since I’m stuck workin’ as a geisha in this backwater—I’ll quit!”

“You’re lookin’ down on streetwalkers, ain’t ya?”

“When have I ever—”

“Look here, damn you!”

“Damn me? What the—”

“I’m the one in this world who——likes ’em most.”
“Always you lot lookin’ down on harlots hardest.”
“……Shit, can’t even stand to look.”

“What self-absorbed nonsense…”

“C’mon—hey Ontsaan—go all dazed-like. Make that lonesome face.”
“C’mon—————————, feels like I’m back home proper.”
“Damn this stuck-up bitch.”
……”

“How hateful… Oh, do listen to me now.…… You’re a student, aren’t you?”

“You’re just right for messin’ with students, ain’t ya?”

“My my, what a warped, spiteful creature you are…… Trying to deceive me won’t work.”
“Oh, do listen up.”
“I may not look it, but I’m twenty-three.”
“Not that I’m playing big sister here, but you ought to show some restraint during your apprenticeship.”

“You idiotiotiot... I'll smash your face in!”

“If you think you can hit me, then go ahead and do it—I dare you.”

Botsu truly showed his intent to strike by placing his hand on the geisha's shoulder.
Ontsaan and I seriously moved to stop him.
That geisha too, as if angered, abruptly stood up and came back to my side again.
And then she began dramatically clinging to me.
I was impressed by how clever Botsu's tactic seemed.
But rather than any tactic, I realized it was an eruption of his overflowing nature.

We carried on with our heedless commotion in such fashion.
When drunkenness reached its peak, Ontsaan began singing Matsumae Oiwake in his customary ghastly-beautiful voice.
This was the death rattle of his feigned vitality.
From that point onward, his true nature began emerging with dreadful intensity.
A void-world where one could neither properly weep nor laugh shimmered hazily in Ontsaan's drink-clouded eyes.
Gasping through labored breaths, Ontsaan writhed drunkenly.

“Hey, Totsubotsu—if you strip away all the deception, what’s left in the end?”
“Ain’t nothin’ left, I tell ya.”
“But I tell ya, I’m sly.”
“Ain’t I been deceivin’ myself and even stealin’ others’ deceptions to keep on livin’?”
“I’m the worst of all, I tell ya.”

When it came to such moments, Botsu's drunkenness would sober up all at once.
He'd clamber onto Ontsaan like a stubborn cat clinging to its prey, stirring up chaos with theatrical lines and benshi-style narration.
That too was a feat I couldn't manage.
When faced with Botsu like this, Ontsaan's true self would crumble away unnoticed, reverting to his usual drunken wreck of a self.
What's more, sensing how deeply Botsu relied on Ontsaan and fretted over his welfare, I found myself overcome by an oddly heartrending mood.

Even so, Ontsaan kept teetering on the brink of sinking back into despair.
An unyielding gleam in his eyes shone painfully from behind his near-sighted glasses.
Taking "No good, Ontsaan" as his cue, Botsu abruptly brought up the matter of the teahouse.
Ontsaan, like withered grass that had found water, lurched toward the temptation before him.
Botsu too appeared to be growing drunk on his own words.

“Damn it!
“Bring it!”
“Bring it all!”
“Ontsaan, I’ll sink Totsubotsu for ya.”
“So damn amusing.”
“Hey Totsubotsu—tonight I’m gonna lick that charming forehead of yours for sure.”
“Damn it!”

Botsu, in a disheveled state like some frenzied child, clamped onto my neck and began licking my face indiscriminately across every inch.
Even the geisha doubled over with laughter.
“This time I’m kissin’ you proper-like, yeah?”

Botsu moved toward the geisha from earlier.
The geisha skillfully slipped through Botsu’s grasp and both of them made their way home.

We too followed suit and left that house.
The thoroughfare of Kagurazaka was sodden and muddy, and the night wind was cold.
And the pedestrian traffic ceased.
We forgot about the mud accumulating on our geta as we turned into the back alley of Bishamon, exchanging jokes.
When we thrust our faces into the noren of the street sushi stall, Botsu, who had taken on the role of accountant, paid afterward from behind.

Finally, we stepped over the threshold of a house that appeared to be decorated with lavish floral arrangements.
Around the same time as the beer bottles, about three women appeared there.
Immediately after that, a stout, rustic-looking maid entered and whispered something to Botsu.
Botsu,

“Don’t look down on me.”
“I’ve got it tonight!”
“Here, look at this!”

While saying this, he took out several five-yen bills from his drawstring pouch and showed them to everyone present, but suddenly his complexion changed, and he frantically pulled out everything from the pouch,

“Oh no!” he exclaimed.

With that, he stood up.

“What?”

I, who had been completely rigid until now, asked earnestly as if his moment to step forward had come.
Botsu searched from his immediate surroundings to the cushion he had been sitting on but left the room without saying a word.
"That idiot Botsu—he's always pulling those weird stunts," said Ontsaan. "Just like he's fox-possessed."
Having said that, Ontsaan didn't appear particularly puzzled.
"He's such a joker—bet that guy's trying to drag us into something again," said I.

I also laughed while chiming in agreement.

After a short while, Botsu returned slightly out of breath, but his energy seemed to have diminished somewhat.

“Did you drop something?”

Ontsaan asked.

Botsu floated a superficial smile with his rat-like eyes and charmingly uneven teeth,

"Yeah."

He nodded vigorously.

“What?”

“The bone…”

“The bone?”

“It’s the bone—”

“Here—my mom’s.”

We exchanged glances.
The gathering fell silent.
For some reason, one of the women—who didn’t grasp the situation—pulled an amulet from her obi, pressed it briefly to her forehead, and performed a charm to ward off poison.

Botsu suddenly noticed that.

“Hey, give me that.”

“This?”
“I can’t give this to you.”

The woman answered in a perfectly ladylike manner.

“Then a business card will do.”

The woman did as instructed and placed a small woodblock-printed business card—resembling a votive tablet—on the dining table.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Botsu snatched it up and shoved it into the depths of his drawstring pouch. Then with suddenly renewed vigor:

“Damn it! I’m worthless.”
“Ontsaan—this suits me better, yeah?”

He barked these words while hurling the pouch into his kimono’s breastfold, giving it a light smack with his palm. Then he stalked off toward the bathhouse.

Just as I thought Ontsaan's face had twisted, large teardrops began to flow.

The women watched Ontsaan with puzzled looks.