Pathway to Japanese Literature

The summer vacation was drawing to a close.
I was chafing at how barely a third of my vacation plans had come to fruition.
Moreover, this utterly literal daily life of sleeping, waking, and eating that had persisted for over a month had become something I could no longer endure for even a moment.

One day, my father had finished with both the outpatients and inpatients earlier than usual lately and, with his cheek propped on his elbow at the table in the front room, was staring fixedly at the kajika plant on the veranda. When I saw my father like that, I wanted to say something. I was feeling so bored that I would have welcomed even the most trivial stimulation. And I had no choice but to drag out even matters I didn’t particularly desire.

“Father, I’m going out to play nearby now.”

“There you go again with that talk.”
“Once forbidden means forbidden.”

From my earliest childhood, Father had done everything possible to keep me indoors.
Even visiting children from outside were typically turned away.

“Not one respectable household exists in this entire neighborhood.”
“Aren’t they all just dregs from the lower classes?”

Father added that.
In his tone, it was clear to see that Father was already agitated.
I suddenly found it unbearable how Father habitually believed—and declared—that the words he blurted out in his agitation were those of a parent admonishing a child.
"Human agitation isn't something that lasts forever..." — I forcibly concocted such logic to rein in my own heart.
But since Father kept making conditional statements along with his agitation, my freedom was being restricted further and further.

“You don’t have to say it so harshly… Father.”

“Not harsh in the slightest.”

Father replied with unnerving calm.

“Then I’ll go to the library.”

“Still on about that? If you need books that desperately, I told you I’ll buy them instead of you going to the library.”

Having said this, Father abruptly stood to water the kajika plant. He returned to his original position. Then he began speaking anew, as if starting afresh.

“That’s not the point—I’ve even started thinking I shouldn’t let you out at all except for school.
“Last night I discussed it with Mother too, but...”

When I heard that, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it was true.
I convinced myself it was nothing more than some notion Father had impulsively conjured up that very moment.

Father turned his face sharply toward the tokonoma alcove in the direction opposite me.
And so I too turned toward the garden and gazed absently at the base of the azalea.
I recalled when I was six years old and living in Hiroshima—how as I was about to go shopping with the maid, a snake had emerged from beneath the azalea at the garden exit.
Despite yesterday’s intense heat, today’s hazy sunlight filtered through, with occasional clusters of clouds threatening an evening shower darkening the parched garden soil, and a rare faint breeze skimming the ground swaying the weeds that had sprouted here and there—my heart fell into a mood ripe for wandering through memories, and that recollection of the snake gradually expanded.

I extinguished what was now stirring in my chest and spoke up again.

"I haven't even traveled once during this vacation, so I should at least get to go to the library."

"That's because you keep ruining your grades."
"I'm not saying I'll absolutely never let you travel."

“Precisely because my grades are poor, it would be better for me to try traveling.”

“I don’t know about such things.”

As Father and I were idly exchanging such words, in that instant, an overwhelming feeling surged within me—that by not traveling during this once-in-a-lifetime summer vacation, I was letting slip something precious beyond measure.
——It was a strange habit of mine: once, back when we were in Hiroshima, when Father departed for a business trip to Tokyo, I had been fine until then, but the moment his rickshaw finally passed through the gate, I suddenly felt as though I stood at some crucial crossroads of life, and tearfully chased after Father’s rickshaw for two or three *chō*, weeping desperately all the while.
Father had even sent a postcard from the train wondering if I might not have developed brain fever or something.—Exactly that same feeling was rising within me now.

“Father, I will travel.
“I will travel no matter what.”

“There you go again, suddenly bringing that up.”
“Once you start, there’s no end to it.”
“For once you had a morning with time to spare these days, isn’t that so?”
“You could at least consider me a bit!”

Father spoke more harshly than before.
I felt that Father—now harsher—seemed younger somehow, and this inexplicably heartened me.

“Every single day without fail, you’ve got some complaint.—You can’t even sit still in the study for half a day.”

“That’s exactly why I’m asking you to cast me off—this dissatisfied me.”
“Then I’ll return properly human.”

“Don’t—just don’t say that.”
“You couldn’t manage on your own anyway.”

Father was tearing up.

When I was in elementary school, Father often told me to get out.
Once, when a letter came from elementary school informing that I had no failing grades, Father placed it on the family altar and wept, then took six hundred yen he happened to have on hand and told me to go pick oranges in America or something.
Nowadays, when I was the one asking him to give it, if I said to hand it over, Father would always tearfully refuse.

“I’ll travel even if it’s just two or three days.”
“Right? Wouldn’t that be fine?”

I threw another tantrum.
But Father no longer responded to it.

“Dinner is ready.”

Mother called.
Father immediately went that way.
Since I had cigarettes in my pocket that I’d been secretly smoking behind Father’s back, I took them to the study and threw them behind the bookshelf, thinking it would be disastrous if they fell out during dinner.

When I entered the dining room, Father and Mother abruptly stopped their conversation.
I thought they had been talking about me.

When I tried to stop after just one bowl and stand up, Grandmother began asking if my stomach was unwell.
Both Father and Mother fretted and said things about this and that and him.
I brushed it off half-heartedly and returned to the study.

Without meaning to think "Family is so annoying," I felt this keenly, as ever.
And I secretly felt pleased that somehow, my argument with Father hadn’t escalated too much.

II

Mother had her hair done up.
In the room behind her, the step-grandmother was folding several laundered garments.
Grandmother—Mother’s mother—was also there beside her, mending children’s garments.

Having written a poem that turned out rather as I’d hoped, I felt an unusually refreshed mood and could no longer remain cooped up in the study.
When I looked out from the study toward the back, the road that had once been used by the light railway—stretching nearly two ri in a straight line through the rice paddies—still appeared to shine in what felt like morning sunlight.
The members of the high school horseback riding club rode past on their horses.
Sunlight glinted off the bell of a bicycle approaching from the opposite direction.
I found myself regarding all people besides myself as utterly enviable.

I sauntered out of the study.
And since Mother was having her hair done up, I flopped down on my back beside her.

“I was just thinking how rare it is to see you studying properly today, and here you come out already.”

Mother said.

“You need to study harder.”

“Not this strict talk again.”
“Anyone would lose their composure if they’re told that much.”

“But just look at your grades!”

“You really are such a neurotic person.”

“I’m not the neurotic one—you’re the one who’s wrong.”

Grandmother interjected.

If I were myself from two or three years ago, I would have tried by all means to explain why someone becomes neurotic.
But now I had become considerably more calculating in mind—even so, compared to before, I’d improved by leaps and bounds.

About two or three rooms away from the one with the dressing table was immediately the sickroom.
When suddenly loud laughter came from that sickroom, I grew worried they were laughing because everything I had discussed with Mother had been heard all the way there.
I do have a very cautious side to me.
Then I deliberately raised my upper body and looked toward the sickroom.
Because the visitors were looking this way, I felt extremely uncomfortable.

"What happened to the patient in the sickroom over there?"

“That—didn’t you know last night? Oh right, you were already asleep. That person got into a fight over irrigation water and had a stone thrown at his chest—even you people should know to stay away from fights, whether they’re between strangers or not. If a stone hits you—well, in his case it landed in a decent spot.”

I cut Mother off before she could speak and said.

“That’s precisely what makes you neurotic. You always steer conversations there.”

“No, all parents act that way because they love their children. It’s never meant maliciously.”

“I know that, but other parents aren’t nearly as extreme as you.”

“You only say that because you’re still inexperienced.”

“Shō-chan, people will laugh if you talk like that.”

Grandmother said indignantly.

"When parents love their children... How should I put this... In the realm of volitional consciousness, does that hold even three pennies' worth? —Well, parents must naturally love their children, but that's not something for humans to debate as if it were some sort of issue."

“Reason is reason; scholarship is scholarship.”
“Even you, Grandmother, should know better about reason—with all your years.”

Grandmother always immediately trotted out her stock phrase whenever my language became slightly too formal.
To Grandmother, educated at temple schools, middle school learning seemed an extraordinarily grand thing.

I thought the people in the sickroom were listening to our conversation.
They, the peasants, found our bourgeois household—though modest—already a sufficient object for their prying eyes to fixate upon.

“Seems their words are being heard quite clearly.” —Such a faint voice reached my ears.
I—I who fancied myself a genius—would often feel my self-importance swelling up and rearing its head whenever I saw them.
“What are you saying, dimwit?”

In a quiet voice, I said that.
Mother tried to stop me with a look.

“This person always has to interject,”
“Why engage with such people?”
“Even though he’s always shooting his mouth off.”

Grandmother said this in an exceedingly low voice.

“You don’t need to draw such lines between people,”
“After all, I’m aiming to become a beggar myself.”

“Stop saying such things,”
“Just stop saying them!”

Mother retorted hysterically.

“Shut up! Shut up!”

Having said that, I even thought about leaving that place. However, there was also the concern that arguments might break out between Grandmother and Grandmother again, and Mother would become shrill over them—and moreover, my own nature of getting carried away with trivial matters once I started talking wouldn’t allow me to leave that place either.

“They call me neurotic or hysterical, but it’s only because everyone pushes me to become that way… Oh, this wretched world, this wretched world.”

Mother said with a sigh.

“After all, it’s just a world full of cheap yes-men and sentimentalists—no need to be such a worrywart.”

“I do! I do!
“You might not understand this, but Father was a man who had his share of hardships too.”

“Mother, how unbecoming!”

I cut off Mother’s words and said.

“No—there’s no room left for keeping up appearances!”

“And now what are you suddenly starting again?”

“You wouldn’t understand that.”
“Mother has been thinking about something alone since earlier.”

Mother—her face naturally pale—furrowed her brow and said:

“I understand that too.”

“No no—still young, so young! No matter how clever you are—”

Everyone fell silent.
I saw Mother’s thinning hair.
I felt wretched.
I wondered why all women in the world couldn’t be beautiful.
I wondered if everyone’s hair wasn’t growing thick either.
Not only ideologically beautiful but also visually beautiful things—I wondered how much we needed them.

“Well, it’s precisely through variety that this world endures…” With such objective reasoning—compelled by a half-formed sense that my tendency to ponder everything might be a misfortune—I wanted to deftly gloss things over with superficial ease.

The grandmother by marriage went toward the kitchen.

“Grandmother never weighs her words when she speaks, so my position becomes untenable!”

Mother, unable to bear it any longer, immediately confronted Grandmother.

“What do you mean? —Are you going to twist things too?”

Such exchanges of petty complaints began once more.
I resignedly returned to the study room.

I fell before the bookshelf and looked at this book and that.
The things people had written grew too tedious, so I stood up.
Having said that, I sat down at the desk, but nothing came to mind.
For some reason—through force of habit—while mindlessly arranging the phrase “English at the Commercial School” across manuscript pages, this thought suddenly occurred to me:
“I wonder if someone might even get killed at an English commercial school...”

III

After all, I couldn't get anything done.

Absentmindedly, I took out the manuscript I'd written for submission to the XX Opera this time and began reading from the middle section.
For the first time, I thought my own work was good.

"If this gets selected, some money will come in.
The parents who underestimate my intellect based on school grades might finally open their eyes a bit.
I don't want them to open them—but if they do, maybe the nuisance would lessen.
Plus I'd look better in front of him—they'd probably invite me backstage.
And maybe even record it for me... Nitto... Tsubame or... Washi..."

I had somehow become caught up in a romantic buoyancy.
When my face appeared in the mirror at the edge of the desk—tossed aside—I finally came to my senses.
There, my child's face was reflected.
I came to think of myself as like a toy.

I thought that I, as a person, was quite sentimental and romantic—a human brimming with cheapness.

Though it was nothing major, I—who must always keep these domestic tragedies before my eyes—and I—who saw that what we call tragedy exists as tragedy solely through our own sentiment—chafed at knowing myself to be more sentimental than most.

"Spiritual tragedy. There’s no such thing! That is nothing but the product of worthless sentimentality. ‘The real, the true tragedy can only exist when grounded in material reality.’ — I had written something like this in my diary once before. That was written after the turmoil of the day when the lawsuit—which my late grandfather by marriage had passed on to Father—turned unfavorable.

Even as I wrote this way and tried to strengthen such thoughts, the fact that I was a sentimentalist remained unchanged."

"What I was born with will persist until my death—even if its quantity diminishes. But I deny this sentiment of my own. I will deny it—if only in thought. ‘And being able to provide a logical basis for that denial is strength.’—I forcibly dragged my thoughts to that point. But still, my thoughts hadn’t yet reached a place that could satisfy me."

My back, lying prone, and the space between the tatami mats were damp with sweat.
Father had returned from a house call.

“Tell him to go fetch some ice cream or something.”

“I’m here too!”

It was Father’s voice and that of my younger brother, who had just started elementary school this year.

With a heavy thud, I rolled onto my side and, while running my hand along the books lined up on the shelf, harbored a feeling that my future was indeed something thoroughly vexing.

As the pitapat of footsteps echoed behind me, the younger brother who had been talking with Father earlier came and suggested playing cards.

“What’s this, Down? Big brother’s decided he won’t play cards with Down anymore,” I said teasingly.
The nickname “Down” originated from how our teacher pronounced the character “ン” as “un,” causing me to read what was written as “Omiya no Dandan” in the textbook as “Down Down.”

“It’s written as ‘Down’ but read as ‘Dan,’ I tell you.”
“I already get it.”

My younger brother defended himself.

“Did you get the ice cream?”

“Nope.”

“I saw you!”

“Where from?”

“Heh heh heh, if I told you, everyone would start clamoring for some—that’s why I had to lie.”

My younger brother said in a somewhat spoiled tone, seeming to want me to know that even he understood about tactful lies.

"My younger brother was also, after all, a timid, conventional, and sentimental guy. In our household, he must have been born with a disposition that requires constant struggle..." Thinking this made me feel lonely.

"What nonsense! You’re the one who’s spoiled!" — my heart declared.

"Mr. Timid, Mr. Timid..."

I said it teasingly to my younger brother.

"What? What is it, Big brother?"

"Dummy, come here and I'll give you a high lift!"

I tumbled over and pressed both legs against my younger brother’s stomach before jerking them upward. My younger brother was delighted. As I lowered him onto the tatami and released my grip, glancing sideways at his face, he wore an expression as forlorn as a puppy abandoned on a hillside.

"Do it again!"

“No, that’s enough.”

The younger brother trudged back again.

“I’d like you to be more careful when mentioning such things…” — Mother’s shrill voice carried over from the main house.
She had been speaking to Grandmother.

“Sweets…” — said the younger brother to Mother.

“No no! Mother isn’t in a position for that!”

Mother spoke to the younger brother in a scolding tone.
I couldn’t bear it any longer and sat up.

“Just how many problems dwell within this labyrinthine breast of mine?” — On a spoiled manuscript page lying atop the desk, I attempted to inscribe these words. — To play with my younger brother too. To pursue my own work as well. For Father and Mother and everyone to shed their neuroses. That was all, I concluded.

I went out toward the main house.

“Mother, just because you’re feeling irritable doesn’t mean you should take it out on the child too…”

“If you keep coming out here and making things into a big deal, Mother will always be stuck in the middle and have the hardest time.”

“It’s because you keep blowing things out of proportion all by yourself.”

“Be quiet.—Until now it was only Father and Grandmother, but lately even you have been making Mother worry more.”

Mother couldn’t perceive any of my goodwill.
Indeed, lately, my words were regarded with considerable weight throughout the household.
I was still four years short of twenty.
And at least as far as my family was concerned, my poor grades were simply due to my lack of intelligence.
But in any case, it was because Father, Mother, and Grandmother had unwittingly been subdued by my daily pretense of genius.

“It used to be just Father and Grandmother before…” — Of course Grandmother, and Father too in the next room, were listening to Mother’s remark.
Thinking I must not anger Father, I went to that room to set up a preventive measure.

“Today’s going to be another scorcher from noon on, I tell you.”

I sat down beside Father and said.

“Hmm.”
“It’ll hit ninety-eight degrees for sure.”

Father said this while picking his nose.
He showed no trace of anger.

“But you must feel grateful to Father—he’s improved quite a bit now. Back when we lived in F Town before you were born, why, every last one of Mother’s friends told me to leave him—‘You’ll never last with him,’ they said.”
“Father was so harsh back then, and now he’s—grown so frail with age it makes you wonder how people can change that much when they get old.”

Whenever Mother became sullen after being scolded by Father, if I tried to console her by speaking too harshly of him, she would always say this to me. Each time, I couldn't help imagining how a model wife and mother like her must have had such an awfully hard time with that Father of ours. As I listened from the next room to what would have been words Father would never have held back under normal circumstances had he now been in Mother's former position, watching him sit there silently beside me in the present moment, I found it quite painful to behold. The wrinkles stretching from below his earlobes down to his neck testified unmistakably that this was indeed my father, who had already passed beyond his mid-forties. As I kept staring fixedly at Father's profile, all manner of thoughts rose to the surface.

When Father was thirteen, his own father had committed some failure and fled, so at that time Father traveled alone along the Tokaido road all the way to Tokyo.
And with the meager money provided by his cousin, Father barely managed to graduate from military medical school.
And when he tried to enter university again, a certain German man persuaded him: "You’re proficient in German, so instead of going to some Japanese university, make money and study abroad"—which led Father to abandon his plans for university.
After that, he apparently went to places like the Ryūjuton Garrison Hospital.
There, while the number of patients increased and it was quite popular, after a while when they brought in a university graduate as director, under the reasoning that Father wasn’t a university graduate himself, they summoned another university graduate as vice-director and placed Father under him.
—It was for this reason that Father declared he would send all five of us siblings to university, and now he has opened his own practice and is working himself to the bone.
And to Father, the fact that I, his eldest son, was recklessly dropping out of school and spouting wild ambitions of becoming a poet or playwright was nothing less than having his very life devoured.

“Father, parents who have a genius are fortunate.” — I said this when Father looked disheartened about me, as if discharging some minimal obligation.

“I haven’t the slightest wish left for you to become someone great. Just attend school properly—ordinary will do.”

Father always gave that same response at such times.

That very Father now sat silently beside me.

The whir of X-ray treatment hummed through the air.
Nurses chattered with theatrical affectation.
My younger brother’s shouts from backyard play with neighborhood children rose in boisterous waves.

Father abruptly stood up and headed toward the toilet.

“Everyone, play quietly!”

Father's voice could be heard.

I began to feel an intense desire to achieve success quickly and, as if dragged by that feeling, walked and walked around the room where Father was not.

IV

M, my classmate and a scholarship student, was hospitalized in my house for a duodenal condition.

Everyone, especially Grandmother, told me to play with M.

“Your friends are all such bad influences…”

Grandmother said discontentedly.

"This person doesn't have any bad friends—he's just reading silly books all by himself. That's why he must be doing nothing but staying away from school."

she added.

“As for M—anyone who can bulldoze through today’s middle schools with cat-like docility is a guy whose medulla hasn’t developed proportionally to his cerebrum, leaving the cerebrum to develop in a uniformly bad, egoistic way.”
“And nihilistic too, huh?”
“That’s just the kind of mind that can manage anything reasonably well, I suppose.”

I spoke hatefully about Mother and the others.

“If you keep spouting such carefree talk, Mr. M will become someone great while you end up a tofu seller. Or maybe a bathhouse owner.”
“Or a bathhouse owner.”

Grandmother listed off her usual tofu seller and bathhouse owner comparisons as if biting into me.

“If one were truly capable of great things, they should at least comprehend middle school matters. Yet here you claim to grasp higher learning when you can’t even manage middle school—doesn’t that strike you as utterly absurd if you really think about it?”

Mother’s words grew increasingly exclamatory toward their ends.
And Mother and the others believed that middle school studies, extended as they were, constituted all academic knowledge.

Just then, Father arrived.
When Father saw the mood between Mother and me, he said, “What now? If you were off playing with Mr. M or something, there’d be no complaints, right?” Coincidentally, he too had brought up M.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Mother said while helping Father out of his sweat-drenched diagnostic gown.

“Good grief, it’s hot! —Just change the hanging scroll in the entryway already. You never do anything unless I tell you to.”

“I’ve been busy too, you know.”
“Ever since this morning—”

“How could you possibly not have time for that?”

“Well then, why don’t you try doing my work instead? You’d see how dizzying it is…”

“Shut up.”
“Unpleasant...”

It wasn’t that Mother didn’t understand practical enrichments to daily life like changing hanging scrolls, but she had an oddly oblivious nature.
Father was now reproaching her for that.
But Mother couldn’t grasp Father’s mood.
And because Father was a man lacking delicacy, he did nothing but get angry.

Grandmother seemed to endorse what Mother was saying.
And since Grandmother’s expression was too blatant, Father noticed it too.
“The ceilings are low in this house—every last thing feels unpleasant.”

Father said dismissively as he placed his hands behind him and leaned back at an angle.
When Father returned from making house calls and being entertained by those irresponsible outsiders, the hardworking members of the household found it unpleasant.
And as if the low, familiar ceiling were the very root cause of that unpleasantness, he would bring up the ceiling every three days.

“It really is low…”

(My step-)Grandmother had been the one to say it.
Grandfather—Father’s adoptive father—had been too much of a pushover and used up all his property for others’ sake, ending up having to buy and build an old house as his residence—this was something Father would often say about Grandfather during his lifetime.
—(My step-)Grandmother’s remark had clearly been made upon recalling that.

Father had repeatedly said until now that he wanted to raise the ceiling.
However, in front of (her step-)grandmother, Mother had always said, “Please refrain from that one thing,” and thus had continued stopping him up until now.

“This morning I met M’s father again—he was thinking about your entrance exam grades—and when he greeted me with ‘Your child is so accomplished,’ I broke into a cold sweat.”

Father suddenly said such a thing to me.

“M hasn’t told his father about your poor grades, has he?”

“There’s no way such a thing could happen.”

Mother said.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Father agreed.

“Well, given M’s nature, he might not say such a thing after all.”

I said that.

“Even if M doesn’t tell him, Mr. M’s father will ask.”

Father had already decided he’d spoken about it.

“Even if he knew, he greeted me pretending not to.”
“That’s right.”

Because both Father and Mother were common people utterly devoid of that Kanto-style simplicity which is neither good nor bad, they seemed incapable of imagining anything that didn’t exist within themselves.

When I looked outside, the bright sunlight suddenly became nostalgic, so I went out back.
My younger brothers were playing hide-and-seek, so I had them let me join.

My head was hot.

Because I went barefoot and ran around like a small child, the people in the hospital room were laughing.
Despite being shy by nature, I was so delighted by hide-and-seek that I didn’t even feel embarrassed.
It had been three or four years since I’d done something like this.
The days from three or four years ago could no longer withstand the tears of reminiscence.
I tried to stop my younger brother by refusing.

“If Big Bro’s not doing it, then I’m not doing it either.”

The first-year elementary school boy said coaxingly.

My sentimentality once again began to roar.

“Hey, everyone, come here.”

I gathered my three younger brothers.
It was right before lunchtime, and there were hardly any people traveling along the country road.
After surveying my surroundings once, I said to my younger brothers:

"You guys are my brothers, my brothers!—The work you do has nothing to do with Father!"

I was swept up by emotion and blurted out whatever came to mind.
The twelve-year-old younger brother looked at me and laughed.
The ten-year-old younger brother hung his head in silence.
The first-grader younger brother simply stared blankly.

I no sooner said that than I ran off to wash my feet.
By the time I had finished washing my feet, the three of them were lined up watching me from a distance as if observing a beggar.

I went to the study.
Somehow I wanted to find meaning in the words I had blurted out moments before.

As I wrote that familiar "English at the Commercial School" on manuscript paper, I thought:

"My sentimentality is what makes me so damn irritable.
Sentimentality takes root and won't let me study."

I wanted to reject sentiment once more.
I wanted to declare it useless.
But when I considered that all the beauty we perceive arises from instinctual foundations—things like sentimentality or sexual desire—I couldn't bring myself to ruthlessly cast aside my tears.

“All instincts and instinctual things should not be denied. But when they become harmful, it is never because they themselves are harmful, but rather because sentiment clashes with sentiment, and desire clashes with desire. All human conditions arise from where My confronts Myself and where it acquiesces.”

Flippantly, I wrote that down on paper while thinking such things.
——“My confronting Myself…,”——“He is but a shallow dandy like Oscar Wilde, merely toying with sophistry…”—I felt as though some critic might level such cold words at what I had written.
It was as if I had already become an authority whom critics took on as their public adversary.

In any case, I convinced myself—swept up in joy—that what I had thought was true. But then again, I took the opposite stance—that this thought too was merely a product of my own sentimentality.

"What are the philosophical texts of all ages? Nothing but a haphazard collection of train window musings!"—I scribbled that in the margin. The paper being completely filled now somehow gave me a sense of completion. I began whistling.

“You guys are my brothers—my brothers! Your work has nothing to do with Father!”—“Ha ha, these are abnormally abnormal words coming from me.”
I tried repeating those earlier words mockingly, but somehow they ended up sounding disquieting.

I felt a sudden hollowness of hunger come over me.

Five

Thus living what would appear to worldly nihilists as the most foolish-seeming life—a life I myself now realize I clung to—I had now deliberately failed my grades and, using that as a pretext, transferred to a certain middle school in Kyoto, distancing myself from the environment of “that life back then.” And now, whether out of repulsion or something else, I had almost completely lost what you might call sentimentality. I could no longer compose such lyrical poems as I did back then, even if I tried.

I have come to consider parents merely as things necessary to send me money.
I have been attending school thinking of it as the endpoint of my walks, because staying cooped up in the boarding house all the time would upset my stomach.

I have been making grand pronouncements like, "At least for my sake, everything exists for my sake."
"I have no religion, no morals, no regulations—only resourcefulness," I have been going around saying.

I have become remarkably unconcerned.
I have ceased to cling to anything.

But I still harbor an ambition to rise in the world.

Six

I told the aforementioned matters to the man from the university's philosophy department.

“Ha ha ha, you’ve become even more fixated than before—this time in a grander sense.”

He proudly flattered and cajoled me, now a middle school student, as he spoke.

“Idiot! I’ve got nothing left to say to you!”

I suddenly got angry.

“What the hell are you saying?”

He didn’t believe my anger was genuine anger.

“I’m serious! You idiot!”

Once again I turned crimson red and told him off.
No sooner had his complexion abruptly changed than he grabbed his mantle and hat with his left hand and smacked my cheek with his right.
Then he left without saying a word.

I didn’t feel angry at all.
And I was deeply struck by how remarkably I had changed—I who had been so compromising in “that life back then”—now being capable of severing ties with a friend in such a manner.

It was six months after I had left "that life back then."