Pathway to Japanese Literature

To Obihiro

A damp south wind blew as thunder rumbled from morning onward.
Rain began falling at noon.
Iyo went to deposit forty yen at the post office—severance money Kyūta had given her when ending their relationship.
Walking through the rain without an umbrella left her feeling weightless, as if her feet barely touched the ground.
When the four ten-yen bills became entries in a savings passbook, a peculiar loneliness gripped her—like having her limbs torn away by the wind.
Passing shops on her way home, she thought bitterly that receiving this passbook felt like being handed a graduation certificate for failed marriage.
Though she walked by the market where she and Kyūta used to shop together, none of her old appetite stirred.
Still she squeezed her eyes shut as she hurried past.
Just before closing them completely, she glimpsed ripe peaches lined up at a fruit stall.
Sour saliva pooled in her throat.
Iyo bought peaches and carried them home.

When night fell, the thunder turned truly merciless.
Iyo had laid out her futon early and now curled into a small ball in the dark room.
Remembering how Kyūta had shared this same bedding until mere days ago, she lay gnawing a peach in the darkness, tears pattering down.
The dampness made her catch the futon's oppressive smell.
Through warped storm shutters' cracks, lightning would occasionally stab inward - then thunder would follow moments later, quaking the earth's foundations.
Iyo tucked the passbook beneath her pillow and wormed into the futon.
Tears bubbled up violently until both ear canals pooled with them.
When he said he'd give me forty yen - why hadn't I refused to part?
"I won't care one bit if we separate!"
She loathed how she'd forced out that scornful laugh.

She had dozed for some time when she felt someone sit down by her pillow and say, "Hey."
Iyo turned her sleep-dulled eyes toward the gloom.
Kyūta was crouching by the pillow.
Iyo let out an unintelligible cry, sat up, and turned on the light.

“You’re late, aren’t you?”

It was a phrase that always came bursting from her lips.
Kyūta was a musician at a movie theater called Sanrakukan, so he always came home late.

“I’m not late.
“It’s still eleven o’clock, you know.”

As he always did calmly, Kyūta took out a large watch from his vest and showed it to Iyo.
Then, Iyo squinted at the watch face and gave Kyūta a coquettish smile.
Her eyes held a gentle plea as if asking him to remember everything they’d shared, yet Kyūta—his expression now as impersonal as a train conductor punching a ticket—scolded her, saying, “You can’t keep calling using Masako’s name.”
Kyūta’s new wife was named Masako.
There was a six-year-old stepchild named Saburō.

“Even if I call using my own name, you don’t answer—what, you think handing over forty yen makes you so high-and-mighty…”

Kyūta remained silent.
His cold eyes seemed to ask, “Is that all you have to say?”
Iyo found herself at a complete loss.
On the dust paper by the pillow lay a half-eaten peach, purple and swollen-looking, dripping juice.
Kyūta stood up, went to the closet, and said, “Can I take my umbrella?”
Iyo stayed silent and did not answer.
“Is this where it was?” Kyūta said as he reached for the closet, but Iyo sharply cried out, “Why don’t you just buy yourself an umbrella?!”

“Alright! Then I’ll buy one.”

Kyūta turned sharply around and began heading toward the ladder steps, his feet creaking on the damp tatami, whereupon Iyo flung open the closet while letting out a childlike wail.
When Iyo—now devoid of any lingering attachment—pestered Kyūta for his umbrella, she found herself wanting to cling to that very umbrella if only to grasp at the remnants of his heart.

“If you want to take it then take it already! It’s not like me having it does anything but get in the way…”

Kyūta stood silent on the ladder steps.
Within Kyūta too, Iyo's weeping resounded painfully.
The flower-patterned yukata clung damply to her skin, her eyes—swollen from having cried countless times over these two or three days since losing her husband—presenting a sight painful even for strangers to behold.
But Kyūta could not bring himself to go back and comfort Iyo.
Though he felt that uttering even a single word might settle his emotions into resignation, he found himself somehow utterly exhausted.
The thunder and rain had subsided, leaving only the sound of water dripping from eaves.
Downstairs, Mr. Kami—who knew everything—was hacking with dry coughs.

“Even if you keep calling me up, it won’t change a thing in the end.”
“I never thought forty yen would settle things with you.”
“She feels sorry for you too—we’re always arguing about it—but we’re worse off than you are.”
“Didn’t you say you’d step aside yourself? You okay?”
“You insisted you were fine when I pressed you. If you’re going to say you can’t forgive me now, what’s there to do?”
“Back then was still a mistake.”
“Everything’s gone to ruin.”
“This mess happened because I’m weak too—but you’re worse, lying through your teeth while acting stubborn.”

Kyūta naturally returned to Iyo’s side, took cigarettes from his pocket, and struck a match.
Iyo, even more despondent than when she had been crying out, pushed the ashtray toward Kyūta’s knees and bowed her head like a girl.
In her heart, she resigned herself to the futility of it all.
She had been vacantly staring at the area around the knees of the cross-legged man, but when she realized this man had begun treating her as unnecessary, Iyo felt fresh tears welling up again.

Iyo’s miscalculation had been thinking one man could be handled somehow.
“She’s a woman with Ainu lineage—well? Isn’t she beautiful?”
With those words, one day Kyūta took out a photo from his coat and showed it to Iyo.
Beneath thick brows, large clear eyes held a faint glow.
She had drawn her kimono collar tight, porcelain-like light falling on her rounded chin.
Hers was a face of crystalline clarity.

“What kind of person is she?”

“She’s the late bandmaster’s wife.”
“Her mother was Ainu.”

“So her hometown’s somewhere in Hokkaido…”

“Yeah—a place called Obihiro.”

“You love her, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“How much do you love her?”

“Just... at the level of a friend...”

“Like hell it is! You want to break up with me and be together, don’t you? I know that already. Well? If you break up with me and go be with her...”

At that moment, Kyūta struck Iyo’s cheek. Until then, things had been manageable. But seeing her husband—who revered the woman in that photograph so fiercely he’d strike his own wife—fret day and night through clenched teeth, a chill that raised gooseflesh and violent jealousy erupted through Iyo’s body and mind.

Three years had passed since marrying Kyūta. To Iyo, those years felt endless, yet she’d convinced herself she now understood Kyūta—the man himself—far deeper than he’d ever understood her, settling into worn familiarity.

Even after three years, she couldn’t bear separate beds. No matter how exhausted he returned, she never managed to leave him undisturbed—not for a single night.

Iyo’s body operated under its own laws, activating beyond her will’s control.

While obliging her, Kyūta would make that disgusted face—Enough already.

When Iyo mentally flipped through their shared calendar, it might have been nearly a year since he’d brought home that Ainu-blooded woman’s photo—long before then, his nauseated expression would float beyond her sightline, swaying listlessly like something lost.

Even when they conversed in bed, she’d failed to notice how her husband’s face perpetually held distant conversations elsewhere.

Perhaps first marriage naivety made young Iyo complacent—thinking one man could be managed somehow.

With fifty yen monthly salary passing directly into her hands, she’d grown nearsighted to the expressions on her husband’s face before her very eyes.

Iyo had been a dancer at the Revue Koya above the Asakusa Aquarium until she met Kyūta.
She danced among many others like a goldfish adorned only with a splendid tail fin, but while her peers cut through the waters to swim ever closer to their distant shores, Iyo—perhaps due to her poor diving—fell behind, clumsily wandering about without receiving a single call from anyone. Kyūta, like Iyo, had played the violin at Revue Koya.
After dropping out of Ueno Music School, for reasons unknown, he was hired as a musician at Revue Koya above the Asakusa Aquarium.
Kyūta’s eyes—still steeped in his government-school student sensibilities—began to harbor an inexplicable yearning affection for Iyo, who always lagged behind with a lonely air.
Kyūta also played the piano.
He could also compose.
Because he was handsome, he was adored by the dancers who affectionately called him “Kyūta-san, Kyūta-san,” but Kyūta would play the piano and compose little pieces for Iyo—squinting in the distance—immersing himself in wretched feelings.
Iyo was not a beautiful girl.
Her figure was well-proportioned, but her face—with thick, large lips and a wild expression reminiscent of a Tahitian woman’s—would, when the mood struck her, mimic tigers and lions to amuse her fellow dancers in the practice hall.

One snowy night after practice, Kyūta—hands thrust into the slits of his Genroku-style sleeves—called out to Iyo as she wandered listlessly down the hallway behind dancers preparing to leave, offering to walk her home.
They passed through darkened Nakamise-dori and out Kaminarimon Gate, following food stalls through snowfall toward Tawaramachi.
Between park and town center, Kyūta pieced together Iyo’s circumstances.
She had no parents.
One brother dealing in national flags housed her now, she explained—a sister too—all while gusts powdered her round nose with snowflakes she’d purse her lips to puff away.
Kyūta found this charming.
“No one scolds me whether I come home or not,” Iyo said as they walked. “I’m like a dog or cat to them—here or gone, nobody notices.”
Under a Chinese noodle shop’s light she fiddled with his cuff button while speaking.
Even family showed her no love.
Kyūta’s chest burned with youthful fervor.
Bare bulbs revealed her rough skin.
Yet bare-faced Iyo pleased him more than her stage makeup—sharp-witted beneath the grit.
Nineteen years old.
She sucked broth from his abandoned bowl, wiping lips with a child’s dimpled hand.

Not long after that snowy day, Iyo moved into Kyūta’s apartment in Ueno.
When Iyo moved in, Kyūta quit the aquarium and was hired as a musician at Shinjuku’s Seibukan.
When he settled into his position as a theater musician, Kyūta put an end to Iyo’s life as a dancer.
Kyūta’s youthful sense of justice must have been what couldn’t bear to leave his wife exposed on stage.
A year’s time passed between them.
Seibukan soon became a Tokiō theater, and musicians grew unnecessary.
The benshi also became unnecessary.
There had been several minor disputes with the hut owner, but Kyūta drifted between movie theaters in the new ward as if resigned, and by the third year, he had become a musician at a small cinema in Takadanobaba.
For Kyūta, that period could be described as the most detestable era—parched and utterly devoid of hope.
Ahead lay no objectives.
There were times when he fixed his eyes on the silver screen, but those ideal tragedies and comedies were nothing more than a meaningless caricature of a world to Kyūta.
Daily life was a dull thing akin to a one-good-deed-a-day philosophy, and no matter how amusing or moving something was, it never hurried to reflect in Kyūta’s mind.
There was a man named Tani—an ex-military man—who served as bandmaster.
Tani had loved Kyūta.
Tani would always laugh, saying, “This hut’ll turn into a Tokiō theater sooner or later—then you and I can become street performers or something,” but he ended up hanging himself on the second floor of his own home, driven by neurasthenia from overwork.
Of course Kyūta, along with many from the hut, rushed over and attended to him in various ways, but Tani did not revive.
The musicians felt a gloom as though shown their own fates, but none could endure it more than Kyūta.
When Kyūta would come upon the plainly dressed young wife standing vacantly in the empty parlor, an inexpressible ache would seep into his heart.
As he went to help every day, the child had grown quietly attached to Kyūta and come to adore him.
Gradually, Kyūta’s feelings toward the widow Masako began to transform into something akin to love.

“I knew all along.”
“You don’t need to hold back with someone like me.”

When Iyo responded to Kyūta’s confession like a reasonable woman would, his expression hardened at his core.
This might not turn into a tragedy after all, he thought.
For someone like Kyūta—who considered only grand silver-screen weeping worthy of being called tragedy—it must have seemed no real calamity was unfolding here.
But for Iyo, who had spent three long years cultivating love and familial bonds deep within her heart, hearing her husband confess another woman could only bring shock.
He called it a mistake.
To Iyo, this was no mistake at all.
Even a month after Mr. Tani’s death, he kept visiting—meeting Mrs. Tani time and again.
He claimed things hadn’t gone all the way, but to Iyo this reeked of calculation— “Unforgivable!” she raged—
—and in that moment, something tainted flickered through Kyūta’s mind.
“If you can’t forgive me, we’ve no choice but to part.”
“So—are you truly fine with this?” he asked her.
Iyo snapped back that she was fine—pure spite fueling her words—
Kyūta pounced on her answer: “Then I’ll leave this here. Truthfully, I wanted to apologize for everything—to make peace between us—but when you scold me so harshly…” His voice trailed off meaningfully. “My heart just drifts further that way.”
Fury choked her—no tears came—
The four ten-yen bills laid before her fluttered against the wall like trapped moths—
(They’d been renting above a geta shop near the theater then.) Kyūta backed a cart to the bewildered shopkeepers’ entrance—hauling away only his own belongings—
They clawed at each other with venom—
“Keep your filthy money! Take it to that Ainu bitch as a souvenir!”

“Your clumsy sympathy’s just a nuisance—I’m not unhappy being separated from you!”
Iyo glared at Kyūta in earnest.
Kyūta felt himself growing ever colder at heart as he looked at that face, but confronted by Iyo, who kept hurling incomprehensible abuse, he could only stare vacantly with tears in his eyes.

When Kyūta left, Iyo gazed through a gap in the shōji screen at the direction he had walked. When the scent-laden green of young leaves filled her vision, Iyo felt as though green tears might spill from her eyes. Even though Kami-san downstairs worried for her, for two or three days, Iyo had no appetite at all. She did nothing but sleep and wake up, remaining in a daze. Such an experience was too painful, she thought. Iyo, hovering between dream and reality, thought of encountering Kyūta somewhere after five or six years had passed. As days passed, he would surely remember and long for me who had parted from him so unhappily. But while lying down and thinking, she felt pleasantly lonely; yet when she got up, Iyo couldn’t sit still. When night fell, she tried calling the hut several times. The voice of Kyūta that came through the phone—more troublesome and aloof than that of any stranger—pierced Iyo’s chest.

“When you’re young, even your worries are part of life’s joys. Why don’t you put Mr. Kyūta out of your mind and throw yourself into work?”

As Iyo sat vacantly watching the passersby from the shopfront downstairs, Kami-san—replacing the straps on an old pair of geta—spoke these words to comfort her.
As for Iyo, she resolved to deposit the four ten-yen bills that had blown against the wall into savings and feign ignorance toward them for the rest of her life.
She didn’t want to lay a hand on that money.

Even when Kyūta came to visit, she did not say anything about having deposited that money.
After obediently handing over the umbrella and sending Kyūta off, Iyo took out the passbook from under her pillow and stared at it.
She wouldn't spend a single sen.
She also thought she must not add even a single extra sen.
The stamp bore a cancellation mark dated June 21st.
“June 21st…”
While muttering to herself, Iyo took a vulgar drag on the cigarette Kyūta had left behind.
Sandwiching a Cherry between the base of her right index and middle fingers, she struck a match.
The lipstick garishly stained the cigarette filter.
She stood up and opened the storm shutters; lightning occasionally flickered in the distance.
Along the riverside leading to the suburbs, rows of jet-black wild cherry trees swayed in the wind.

After parting from Kyūta for just a week, Iyo went out into the city to look for work as if returning to her original solitary life.
She wore a blue underbodice and white skirt, walking briskly hatless down the street, her long legs creating a crisp silhouette.
Iyo became a dancer at a small dance hall in the backstreets of Ginza.
When she danced, she always hung an amusing beaded handbag from her arm and performed in short sportswear.
Her appearance gave the exact impression of a girl who had briefly come to dance after returning from tennis or shopping, making her stand out more than the women in evening dresses.
As a former dancer, her legs were almost intimidatingly slender, and with her well-proportioned figure, she looked refreshingly vibrant even from a distance.

“I’m under the rooftops of Paris, you know.”

When the manager and fellow dancers fussed over her outfits, Iyo would coolly retort—“Iyo’s income was just enough for Iyo to live on.”

While dancing, when the man teased,“You seem full of energy,” Iyo tilted her head slightly and said,“This is just me being reckless.I’m all tangled up inside—can’t stand it anymore.”

Within about a month,Iyo took up with one man after another，going to different hotels each time.When she exposed her animalistic aspects to the men,Iyo strangely felt something resembling affection toward each of them.She couldn’t bear the thought of parting.When the hotel room lights came on and they finished dinner，leaning against the cluttered table,Iyo roughly puffed on her cigarette and said,“I’ve grown sick of going to the hall.”

But none of the men offered to keep Iyo company all night.When their business was concluded，they would take out their watches and begin to fidget.The men would only touch Iyo’s body as if handling a rubber ball.They had no need for things like air，moisture，or a woman’s soul.

While being touched by such men,Iyo would recall Kyūta.The journalist named Noma had hair as neat as a boy’s.The salaryman named Seki had shoulders that rolled like a lion’s,and Nakamura,the antique dealer’s son,wore a stiff silk shirt.From each of these men,Iyo would discover some resemblance to Kyūta close at hand—though none blossomed into lasting affection—and upon parting from them，her sorrow grew despondent enough to feel reckless.

The Sanrakukan Theater where Kyūta had been employed also suddenly installed Tōkii equipment.
"Serves him right," Iyo would think with vindictive satisfaction each time she saw the advertisements, but one day in September, Kami-san downstairs heard from somewhere that Kyūta had packed up his whole family and moved to Obihiro—the hometown of his new wife.
When she heard this, Iyo felt a loneliness that seemed to shrink her entire being.
As long as he had been near her, there had been something like a sense of purpose—but upon hearing he was gone, Iyo let her hands hang limply and collapsed in the center of the room.
She felt sorry for Kyūta, who was being driven to the brink by life.
Telling herself that as a woman abandoned by a man, it was fine to be as reckless as she liked—when she considered her current life that had suddenly become dissolute, she felt a dizziness as if hurled into high sky.
Even when going to the hall, for a while Iyo had become like a different person.
Even when encountering men she had been involved with, she would simply glide past them like the wind.

“Did you find yourself a nice man or something? Is that why you’re so quiet now?”

There were men who asked this too.
Iyo laughed with a squinted-eye smile.
When meeting a man who suggested “Shall we go eat at that place again?” she would answer “I’m ill right now” and walk past smiling.
Iyo’s solitary life grew increasingly bleak.
For days she left grimy pots and bowls soaking in the bucket—even as winged insects swarmed the murky water—staining her teeth and fingers yellow through endless smoking. Yet September’s days still blazed.
The heat kept the room deathly still all day.
Nothing now remained of what Kyūta had left behind, but in torn wall sections Iyo had coiled old violin strings to hang.
There were aged strings from aquarium days.
Lying there gazing at them, Iyo imagined Kyūta’s fingers touching each one.
Beyond these hung a single photo from her dancing years.
It showed her performing Paris’ can-can dance, black stockings pulled taut to her thighs.
Toward the riverside thick with wild cherries stood two sooty shoji screens.
No other windows existed.
One small tea table lacquered dark brown.
A battered chest missing its upper half, a hand mirror on nickel legs—nothing here gladdened Iyo’s heart.
The tatami stayed perpetually damp.
Iyo watched flies dart above the bucket on the bay window.
She observed without boredom—larger flies buzzing nimble circles round the bucket like comic Argentinian dancers sniffing filth; tiny flies atop rice-crusted bowls mimicking prayerful hands.
Through it all, Iyo thought nothing.

No matter how cruel her experiences had been, she had never once wished for death—but when thoughts of Kyūta arose, her head grew heavy and sank. Her hall colleagues used to say that after three years together, the tide of those three years would return, and Iyo now thought there might be truth to that. Every day—morning, noon, or evening—she inevitably found herself remembering Kyūta. At times these recollections flowed so ceaselessly that she nearly spilled tears mid-dance before catching herself.

When winter came, Iyo quit the hall and became a mannequin girl.
Though her figure was well-proportioned, because her face wasn’t particularly beautiful, she was hired by small kimono shops, pharmacies, and general stores in the new district for a daily wage.
But in the end, that arrangement was more comfortable for Iyo.
When Iyo became a mannequin, she vacated the second floor of the geta shop and moved to an apartment near a club in Shibuya.
It was better than the second floor of the geta shop, but even so, the drab papier-mâché walls thudded dully when knocked.
The view from the window offered nothing but the roof of a beer company, and when the wind blew, the room filled with swirling sand.
Iyo found some small relief in the mere fact that memories of Kyūta didn’t surface.
There were four glass-paned doors, though their frames were painted blue.

Iyo lived in this room for nearly half a year.
Her existence was even lonelier than that of a man living alone.
The forty yen Kyūta had given her had long since been spent, with only two or three yen remaining, but even so, for someone as simple as her, having that postal savings passbook served as an inexplicable source of strength.

Exactly one year had passed since parting with Kyūta.

In June of the first year, Iyo was hired for a month-long contract through a famous cosmetic cream advertisement and went to Hokkaido with seven or eight other mannequins.
When they arrived in Hakodate, the group split into two: one would travel from Otaru through Sapporo, Iwamizawa, Asahikawa, and Wakkanai in that order, while the other proceeded through Muroran, Obihiro, Kushiro, and Abashiri. But Iyo deliberately requested the Obihiro route and headed toward the Sōya Main Line, where mornings and evenings carried an unseasonably severe cold for June.
First, they settled in Kushiro.
When night fell, the sea fog thickened densely, and walking through the town would leave one's clothes slightly damp.
The town's lights appeared to glisten damply.
Every three minutes, the foghorn sounded over the town.

While getting into the bath, the women would exchange glances each time the foghorn sounded and say to one another, “We’ve come so far, haven’t we?” In the spacious dressing room, from behind the mannequins applying Dōran and eyeshadow, the inn maids came peeking curiously. When Iyo finished her makeup, she would mimic tap dancing and make everyone laugh.

When their makeup was finished, they were taken one by one to cosmetic shops around town. Iyo was taken to a cosmetics shop beside a large bridge called Nusamai Bridge. When she began touching up the face of the local shop girl who had been preparing and waiting facing the display counter, pale women’s faces began peering from within the dark night fog—encircling Iyo’s shop, peeking from here and there.

“While some people refrain from using Kōrudo Cream due to its unpleasant sensation, if you apply it evenly across your face like this when retiring for sleep and wipe it off with gauze, it will leave you feeling refreshingly clean.”
“And if there are any among you who’ve dismissed it as mere Japanese-made goods, I’d ask you to try it just once—as if you yourself were being slighted—so you may see for yourselves…”

The shop girl’s face glared blue under a solid cake of white powder.
Kōrudo Cream wasn’t spreading smoothly.
Among the crowd, there were those who said of Iyo, “She looks like a Westerner.”
Once she had finished applying orange rouge to the shop girl’s cheeks and completing her makeup, here and there were also girls who bought that cosmetic cream and left.
When she finished work and returned alone to the inn, despite it being June, Iyo’s Panama hat looked chilly.
Even after returning to the inn, Iyo kept thinking of various ways to seek out Kyūta.
Had she come to this travel setting, even Kyūta would surely have felt nostalgic for her, she thought.

No one else had returned to the room yet.
Listening to the foghorn, she wondered what pretext she could use to go see him.
Even now, a year later, she had meant not to think of Kyūta at all—yet being able to recall him as if through divine intervention wherever she went made her realize this lingering attachment was her own doing after all.
She wanted to say something tender like “I wanted to see you.”
Kyūta would surely have softened at those words.

The next day, Iyo and the others went to the city of Obihiro.
From in front of the station, rows of acacia trees were thriving.
A bus to the nearby lake was departing.
A Western woman in a white dress was aboard.

Upon arriving at the inn, Iyo immediately borrowed a telephone directory and looked up the movie theater’s phone number.
She felt an oddly restless sensation in her chest.
She told herself there was no reason to falter even if Kyūta’s current wife found out—yet her chest throbbed violently. Obihiro was a lonely town.
A cold wind blew down the wide straight main street.
Iyo was taken to a small department store in the city center along with a colleague named Matsuko.
When she saw a woman with thick eyebrows and deep-set eyes, Iyo started.
Every woman appeared to be of Ainu lineage.
Women with passionate yet calm expressions kept entering Iyo’s field of vision one after another.
On the ceiling, artificial gourd leaves rustled with a dry sound.
Even here in Obihiro, Iyo worked on the faces of the town’s women one after another.
When fair-skinned women with thick brows came, an inexplicable hatred welled up in Iyo’s heart.

“It smooths pores and reduces wrinkles, so I wholeheartedly recommend it.”

Even as she spoke, her mind was elsewhere.
Within her heart, she kept conjuring Kyūta's features, tormented by the pain of sharing the same town.
When a thick-browed model arrived with an expression that seemed to say Cover these brows then, Iyo thickly applied eyebrow makeup for her.
Still, the woman left cradling her own face carefully.
When Iyo finished work and returned to the inn, she immediately stood at the telephone.
The dim telephone nook in the hallway's corner suited Iyo perfectly.
Her toes trembled.
She tried calling the largest small hut named O.

“Is Mr. Noguchi Kyūta, the musician, there?”
When a female attendant’s voice responded, “One moment please,”
Kyūta’s voice immediately came through the receiver.

“Who?”
“Ms. Iyo!”
“Oh!”
“When—when did you get here?”

“Today.”

“Today? — Where are you staying?”

“The inn called Hokkai-kan near the station—I’m working there now.”

Iyo’s heart swelled as if she’d been thrust back into her Asakusa days. She wanted to speak, but her chest constricted like tidewater clogging her ribs. Kyūta proposed meeting at the soba shop before the inn soon. Iyo threw on her woolen coat and left. Rain misted the air. At a shadowed crossroads, she hailed a rickshaw and entered the soba shop facing Theater O. Beneath thick roadside trees, Kyūta—wearing those familiar woolen Western trousers—parted the noren curtain behind her and stepped inside.

“Hey.”

“Oh!”

They faced each other, but Iyo—who had imagined their meeting would leave her too tearful to speak—found her eyes parched and dry, unable to shed a single drop. Kyūta was not crying. With an ordinary expression, he said, “Right, you came today—the long journey must’ve tired you out,” uttering something that could’ve been said at any time. His black jacket appeared sun-bleached, and his Western-style trousers had lost their creases. He must be weary of life. Within a year, the flesh of his cheeks appeared worn down. Iyo instantly sensed that Kyūta’s life was not happy. Kyūta, for his part, was inwardly shocked upon seeing Iyo’s appearance. Her makeup had improved, giving her a somewhat ethereal air, but the fact that she wasn’t as unhappy as he’d imagined brightened Kyūta.

“If you’d like, come to the house.”
“Consider it a sightseeing opportunity—you might as well see how far I’ve fallen.”

Upon hearing those words, Iyo thought Kyūta had become oddly provincial.
Over the past year, the fact that she had cried over this man seemed utterly foolish.
With this, she thought she could return to Tokyo and live well.
As they talked, their hearts felt out of sync yet carried the relaxed air of meeting a country relative.
Kyūta did not ask Iyo how she had lived through that year.

“It’s only ten o’clock—call the inn and come over to the house for a bit.”

“No way—you think I’d come rattle your perfectly content wife just to feel good for five minutes, don’t you…?”

“Don’t twist it like that.”
“I’m saying come with pure intentions.”
“Hm?”

Iyo decided there’d be no harm in going without hidden motives.
Going back felt more natural anyway.

The two of them ate a bowl of soba each and walked through the town getting wet.
Kyūta’s residence stood in a field surrounded by sorghum fields.
When they opened the entrance, a petite old woman in a yukata appeared.
Her lips were discolored.
Iyo thought this must be his wife’s mother.

“Masako! There’s a rare guest here—come on out.”

Perhaps because she was sleeping further inside, there were signs of the wife stirring to rise, but whether the old woman had conveyed something or not, everything fell quiet again.
Kyūta stood and went to the kitchen to boil water.
On the sunken floor area, Kyūta's violin—the same one she had maintained for years—stood propped up, casting an elongated shadow.
What must have been his wife's gaudy meisen kimono hung on the wall.
From the kitchen came Kyūta's voice calling, "Hey, hey."
His wife appeared determined to maintain her silence indefinitely.
There seemed to be some commotion before Kyūta emerged bearing a tea tray, his face flushed.
The rain's roar grew fierce.

“Oh, it’s just hitting the sorghum leaves—makes it sound like heavy rain…”

When he dropped down cross-legged, Kyūta let out a drinker’s sigh and looked at Iyo.
Iyo’s eyes said, “Look here.”
Her gaze meant “See? Your wife still won’t come out,” but Kyūta, seeing Iyo’s mischievous face, took it as her saying “Do you get it now?”
“Well, we’re just getting by day to day.”
“Eventually I’ll move to a better part of town—open a violin school.”
“Can’t be helped like this,” he added quietly.
“You! You!” came a voice calling Kyūta from the back, but he kept ignoring it.
They’d talked through the rain until nearly eleven, but gripped by a desolation worse than feuding friends, Iyo thrust her legs at Kyūta, hitched up her glossy stockings, and stood.

“Leaving?”

“Yes… it’s late already…”

“What time tomorrow morning?”

“Well… I believe it’s the train around noon.”
“The Sōya Line is just unbearable—it stops at every single station one by one…”

“You’ll end up like me.”

Kyūta had come to walk Iyo back near the inn wearing mud-caked boots. They walked close together along the dark path several times, but within Iyo’s feelings, there was not the slightest disturbance.
She thought that was acceptable.
Kyūta too might have felt unburdened now that he’d met Iyo; he walked in silence.

“Well then, shall I go buy a prostitute now?”

Neither fully serious nor entirely joking, Kyūta left the inn chuckling to himself after saying that.

The next morning, the mannequin girls were discussing how, since they had come all this way, they should go see Lake Shikaribetsu.
Of course, Iyo was among them.
Carrying only a small cosmetics case, she was clattering down the stairs with the others when a maid came running up: “There’s a telephone call for Iyo-san.”

“Me?”

She sensed it was from Kyūta.
When she mechanically picked up the receiver, a young woman’s voice said, “Could you please tell Kyūta to come home quickly? We’ve had someone fall ill…”

“Kyūta-san?”
“Kyūta-san hasn’t appeared here… Hmm?”
“Since yesterday? He hasn’t visited my place.”
“I’ll be going to Shikaribetsu with friends now…”

It was unmistakably Kyūta’s wife’s voice.
Iyo boarded the large bus bound for Lake Shikaribetsu with others.
They passed before the movie theater where Kyūta worked.
A boy dragging his bicycle stood alone gazing up at dust-coated posters.
Flyers littered the ground before a shack while wind whipped its banner.
As Obihiro shrank behind them,the road wound into an oak-filled valley.
“He must’ve gone whoring,”
Iyo thought.
Remembering how provincial he'd looked last night—newsboy cap askew—she felt certain he'd sought out brothels.

The mannequin girls had begun unpacking boxed lunches inside the bus.
Iyo too spread out a boxed lunch and casually brought the side dish container up to her nose.