Pathway to Japanese Literature

Father died two summers ago at sixty-five from his chronic beriberi.
The previous year, having been bereaved of his stepmother and left alone, he hastily packed up the household belongings, and as the year drew to a close, abruptly came to live at his younger brother and sister-in-law’s house in Ushigome without prior notice.
From that time, Father appeared to have considerable difficulty walking.
Without his cane, even walking a block or two seemed laborious, but to our eyes, it also appeared that senility was partly contributing to his condition.
I too would occasionally come out from Kamakura and went to the bath with him two or three times, but Father always found it extremely bothersome.
"My legs have no strength, so my body feels like it’s floating—it’s unpleasant," Father said, clinging to the edge of the bathtub like a child with a helpless expression.
Worried about walking in the washing area, with me supporting his arm as if being dragged along, he finally managed to move his withered, thin calves.

“Even though I look this emaciated, my legs are still swollen, see,” Father would say, pressing his shins with his fingers in the washing area to show me.

“After all, you should try continuing the medicine a bit longer, shouldn’t you?”

“No—my beriberi’s a chronic thing. Medicine won’t work.”
“Instead of that, I’ll try walking a little each day around there from now on.”
“That way, my legs’ll get stronger naturally, you see.”
“And as long as my bowels keep moving...” Father would always refuse the medicine.

Father; my younger brother and sister-in-law; my fourteen-year-old son attending elementary school from my brother's household; and my younger brother's first son, born two or three days after Father's arrival—this was our entire family.
The narrow street in Ushigome's disorderly town—shaped like a shallow valley—housed a large printing company nearby, making both foot traffic and cargo wagon movements intensely bustling.
On that street, timing his walks for morning and afternoon hours—after patiently calming the infant laid in the sunny two-tatami space beside the entryway—Father would wrap his bent body in an old country coat with a hat brought from the countryside, cling to his bamboo cane, and shuffle beneath the eaves. When I, having come from Kamakura unexpectedly, encountered this sight of him, I was overcome by a feeling that nearly made me choke back tears.
I felt I understood Father's feelings.
"Father's walks!"
With a sorrowful smile, I murmured this to myself—or rather, it was a heartrending emotion.
Father wished to live for his grandchildren—I thanked him silently in my heart.

Just like me, Father was a drinker—not the sort of person who would ever cut back on alcohol or make efforts to recuperate, no matter what illness befell him. Father, who even in the countryside rarely went out due to his innate indolence and leg disability, now walked through the cluttered, bustling streets of Tokyo to strengthen his legs—this shift in Father’s disposition even brightened our own outlook on life a little.

Father came about three times to the temple on the mountain within Kenchō-ji—where I had rented a room for five years—with my younger brother and my son, drinking together late into the night.

“Lately, perhaps because I’ve been walking a little each day, my legs seem to be in excellent condition,” Father said cheerfully when I last saw him in late March.

“That’s splendid.”
“But given how rough that area is, you really must be careful during your walks.”
“If you don’t mind, what if you stayed here for a while?”
“As you can see, the room is spacious and quiet—you could manage your walks right in the garden...”

“No—even if I came, there’d be no use.”
“Better to be with the children than at your lonesome place.”
“Tokyo’s walks suit me well enough,” Father said, shaking his head.

But those daily walks of Father’s did not continue much longer after that.
From around early May, Father took to his bed and died in mid-July.
He had stopped taking all medication, and days akin to fasting continued for nearly twenty, leaving him emaciated almost to the point of a skeleton, but his originally robust constitution—particularly a strong heart that seemed not to have been significantly weakened by years of drinking or his chronic beriberi—instead prolonged the agony of his death.
Father, who had lived a life of failure and misfortune and seemed to have lost all attachment to living, in his final moments revealed a tenacious will to cling to life—this afterward made me ponder many things....

But having written this far, I suddenly felt embarrassed by how earnestly I’d been writing, stopped my pen, and left the boarding house for the daily walk I’d begun just four or five days prior. Pressed against the corner wall of the six-tatami room—her unkempt coiled hair untouched by oil for months—Osei had spread out the cotton-striped lined garment she’d been sewing for days, the one T’s wife had provided with lining included, and was working on it again today. I put on my overcoat, donned my hunting cap, and left without a word.

Even crossing the intersection at nearby Honkō 3-chōme was always a considerable effort for me.
After invariably hesitating once or twice at the traffic officer’s signal, I would finally steel myself and toddle across the tracks on my unsteady legs, only then allowing myself to exhale in relief.
From there, I would take the left-side sidewalk—peering into shop display windows, glancing at bookstore magazine covers, idly browsing stalls’ old books—walking as slowly as possible to the corner before the First Higher School, then retracing the same route back.
—it was what you’d call nothing more than a brief walk.
I didn’t carry a bamboo cane like Father did, but with my overcoat collar turned up, hands thrust into pockets, back bent in a posture that made my knees seem unable to bend freely, I walked step by step with great care.
The sensation of paralysis had disappeared a month or two prior, but the nerves in my motor muscles didn’t seem to recover easily.
I recalled the figure of Father walking along that sunken, cluttered street.
And I reflected on my own form.
But what a tedious, joyless task walking must be to maintain as a daily routine.
It must have been the same for Father.
But while Father must have kept it up because he wanted to live longer—what did I know about that?
If I was going to be bored either way, wouldn’t it be better to either burrow into my futon or blow cigarette smoke at the yellow walls of this earthquake-warped room—those walls showing terrible cracks in the small spaces below the lintel and ceiling?
In the corner of the room, Osei sat like a borrowed cat—without laying out a zabuton or positioning a brazier, wearing a ragged kimono with her back hunched, timidly raising her eyes to steal glances at my sullen expression.
Putting on an air of nonchalance, I thought: This is still a young woman of twenty-five.
And I’m still a man of thirty-eight.
So what does it matter—this decrepit state of mine...
And yet—when it suddenly occurred to me that this life had already persisted for half a year—I would feel an impulse like an incomprehensible moan welling up from my gut, and in that state of mind, I would end up aimlessly setting out on this burdensome daily routine.

It was said to be early March, but with hail the size of a little finger having fallen the previous night, it turned out to be a day when nasty cold winds blew.
I was about to turn back from in front of the First Higher School as usual when I suddenly remembered it was T’s day off; mustering my courage, I walked all the way to Komagome.
T had been laid up with a cold for two or three days, he said, and was in bed.

“Hasn’t anything come your way either? Nothing’s come my way either since then…” T said the moment I sat down.

“No—they wouldn’t have said anything to me either, since I sent them away like that. Even so, it’s strange they haven’t said anything to you either. Are they planning to drag this into some personal consultation again? If they come up with some unreasonable idea, it’ll be a real pain.”

“To think they came up with ‘personal consultations’... But they won’t do something like that again. They’d become quite crestfallen, hadn’t they?”

“But you never know what country people will do.”
“Either way, it’d be best if they went back.”
“We can’t exactly force them out—truth be told, I’m at my wit’s end this time.”
“I can’t focus on work, the boarding house debts keep piling up—I’m even considering running away somewhere.”

“That’s pitiful.”
“But what on earth could she be thinking?”
“That girl too.”
“She doesn’t seem to have any intention of staying by your side for life, and she’s fully aware of your wife and children and everything else.”
“And every day she’s like that—making herself small, then at night you get drunk and beat her, I suppose.”
“Even so, she doesn’t say she’ll go back—there’s something I just can’t grasp about that girl’s thinking,” T said with a probing gaze.

“That’s what I don’t understand either. If I could clearly grasp that, I might resolve my feelings somehow—but no matter how much I press her, there’s still no proper response. And with her crouching in the corner all day like some wild animal, giving me that stubborn glare... once I start drinking, I end up hitting her and such. Last night too—the student next door yelled at me in the middle of the night. ‘I’ll settle this tomorrow for you! Go to sleep tonight! You’re ruining my studies every damn night! It’s two o’clock! Don’t you know people have nerves?!’ He really laid into me.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you still have some nerves left.”
“After all, you’re making quite a nuisance of yourself at the boarding house—you ought to be more careful.”
“Isn’t that your own doing?”
“Anyway—once a letter arrives from them, I’ll go to Kamakura and settle things one way or another. But if they decide to leave her with you for now—can you handle that responsibility?”

“Well, there’s no helping it.”
“I’ve laid everything bare to my country wife too—that if it comes to retreating to the countryside, I could even take her along—but the one thing tripping me up is how she’s already pregnant yet seems to be hiding it from me somehow, damn it all.”
“Whether she told that uncle who came the other day or not—if she did tell him, then even if you go there, things might get complicated.”
“Truth is, I never once properly registered her as a woman all this time—but now that we’ve been living together, I’ve finally realized she too is that terrifying creature called a woman, and honestly, I’ve started feeling genuine fear—to the point where lately, bit by bit, it’s me who’s nearing surrender.”
“It’s not the prospect of children that frightens me—it’s women themselves I’m afraid of…” I found myself growing agitated and said with a sigh.

“That was careless of you!” T said with a pained expression.

“It certainly was careless.”
“I too had considered that matter from the time she first came, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to try to prevent it in any unnatural way.”
“Ah, there’s no defeating nature, that bastard…” I found myself unable to keep from sighing once more.

“But is that really certain? If that’s settled, it’s going to be a bit of a problem.”

“That’s something even I don’t clearly understand. Is that woman still hiding something from me out of some perverse stubbornness, or is she just putting on an act? I can’t make heads or tails of it. Fine! Tonight I’ll get a straight answer out of her…”

“You should ask about such things gently when you’re sober, so drop it tonight. If there’s anything specific, I’ll have my wife inquire—you should have her send whatever it is to my place.”

Having been admonished by T, I returned by train in a thoroughly exhausted, dark mood.
Yet again late that night, having gotten drunk, I ended up staging some outrageous wretched spectacle.

It began with the interrogation about pregnancy which then digressed into that recent police consultation about personal matters.
At dusk an officer came with a summons, and when Osei went to see with a pale face, the uncle from Kamakura had arrived.
In the end even at the police station they could only tell the uncle: "Since this is no longer about a child—even if you forcibly drag her back she'll just come chasing after him again—she'll come running right back out—so you'd better talk things through properly until she's convinced then take her home with you."

“Osei—it seems you came out here saying you’d collect that loan from him and return home, but now when we ask, you say you don’t want to go back for a while and will stay at his boarding house until you find work somewhere. But if you keep imposing on him that long and he starts demanding rent or something happens, even your family’s loan might end up being uncollectible, you know.”
“You should think carefully about those matters too and decide to go back with Uncle.”
“Anyway, first go to that person’s boarding house and have a proper discussion,” he said.
Uncle stayed in my room that night but ultimately couldn’t take her back.

“I’m the one being inconvenienced!
“Get out!
“Get out!” I shouted in my usual manner, fixing my gaze and raising my voice.
“Suddenly dragging this to the police—doesn’t that make me look like a complete disgrace?
“You scoundrel!
“If you’d just go back, there’d be no complaints from either side.
“What makes you stay like this forever? Say it clearly!
“Don’t you understand you’re burdening me?
“I want to be alone.
“Otherwise I can’t work.
“Haven’t I begged you enough?”
Day after day like this left me demoralized—unable to work, boarding fees piling up—and now my rural wife wrote how our eldest son and daughter studied past midnight for entrance exams, how she wished she could give them even one egg daily but couldn’t manage it—said their plight tore at her heart.
I couldn’t even send exam funds.
Passing would only mean more preparations needing money—less than a month remained.
However it went, I’d make her leave tomorrow.
I’d been your burden long enough.
I knew that.
But I’d repay it differently somehow.
This boarding-house cohabitation—I couldn’t bear it another day.
And now even my rural wife and children knew about us.

And I couldn't even send money to feed my children eggs.
"Get out!"
"Get out!"
"I'm going mad! I'm going mad!" I kept shouting through gritted teeth, forgetting the students nearby were deep in pre-exam studies.

The word "eggs" from my wife's letter I'd read that morning—which hadn't struck me so forcefully then—suddenly flashed through my drunken head as I kept shouting like this, summoned back as if by revelation.
I closed my eyes for a moment and, driven by an urge to shake it off, violently shook my head.
The memory of that September 1st earthquake—the demon gate—the demon gate—that had been the destroyer of everything.
"But eggs?
What was it about the eggs again?
Ah, right—so that's what it meant—that I'd survived thanks to those eggs," came the clear realization.

That day too I rose late, skipped breakfast in my hungover state, propped a mirror on the desk, smeared soap lather all over my face, and had just drawn the razor down from my right sideburn to my cheek with a smooth stroke—when came a tremendous thud.
I stopped my razor and looked around—though old, it was a sturdy building, so while fearing a landslide out back, I didn’t feel compelled to bolt outside in panic—and there on the tray atop the bowl Osei had brought to the breezy spot by the open ten-mat room entrance lay three eggs for the day, one of which had fallen onto the tatami and oozed out.

"This is quite intense.
"I mustn't dirty the tatami..."
Thinking this way—though still wanting to linger idly a moment longer—I placed the razor on the desk and walked about two tatami-lengths across the floor toward the meal tray when a violent rumble struck, slamming my body hard against the cedar door. Half in a daze, I rushed out barefoot through the entryway, crawling-like until I'd gotten another two mats' distance outside. The instant I glanced back, the two-story thatched roof had collapsed with a crash.
The elderly monk couple who had been in the parlor next to the entryway, along with the man from the street in front of the gate—the three who had come to receive shikimi branches and were drinking tea—were crushed beneath the collapse.
Fortunately, all three emerged unharmed after half an hour, but landslides continued and a fissure about five inches wide formed, so we barely managed to bring a plank to the edge of the peony field under a camellia tree where the elderly monk couple and I huddled together—clinging to the camellia trunk each time tremors struck.

All the large buildings within Kenchō-ji had collapsed except for the main gate, and the great cliff behind the main hall still crumbled with a dreadful noise.
About two hours had passed, but no one came to visit our temple on the mountain, and I worried about leaving the elderly couple behind to check below.
I stood rooted on the high stone steps, peering through cedars at Kenchō-ji’s collapsed roofs—the main hall, abbot’s quarters, Buddha Hall—imagining from the earlier screams that many must have died, yet remained there with inexpressible emotion.
From below the steps came the first cry: “Mr. N! Are you alive?!”
“Is everyone alive?!”
Wailing thus—straw sandals clattering, half-mad—she scrambled up through sheared stone steps, a flung well roof, snapped cedars thick as thighs, collapsed thatched gates: Osei.
“You’re alive!”
“Everyone’s alive!”
I too shouted involuntarily.
Osei’s face in that moment—I cannot forget.
The egg oozing across tatami and Osei’s earnest tear-streaked face—that impression burns strongest in my mind.
Until then I’d never missed drinking a raw egg with meals, but after coming to Tokyo they gave me diarrhea—since then I’ve strictly avoided them raw.
My health deteriorated severely since that time—certainly from weakened stomach and bowels—but I also believe my fragile nerves were terribly strained, terrorized, thereby causing these pathological physiological effects.

Yet these—the eggs, Osei’s face, the three children lodged at my rural wife’s family home—these three things created some incongruous, scattered sensation in my drunken head that night. Then when I accidentally let slip about my wife’s letter, my alcohol-addled nerves flared up even more fiercely.
Moreover, just three or four days prior, about three guests had unusually come together to my place.
In such cases, the small tea utensils borrowed from the boarding house were quite inconvenient.

After all, I had emerged on the fifth day after the earthquake wearing nothing but a soiled single-layer kimono. After spending two nights outdoors—since Osei’s house remained standing—I was allowed to stay there another two nights, but with food shortages pressing relentlessly at the time, I couldn’t summon the courage to remain any longer. In those brief days, instead of human beauty or sincerity, I was forced to swallow nothing but ugliness and depravity laid utterly bare. I wrote a promissory note for the food debts from my stay at Osei’s house—prepared to depart in straw sandals—and though stamp shops had naturally been destroyed in the disaster, Osei’s grandfather caused an uproar trying to have revenue stamps equivalent to the debt’s value affixed, dispatching searchers—all of which rendered my departure even more wretched, until finally I was driven out like a fugitive from the Kenchō-ji compound where I’d grown accustomed to living these past five years. Osei accompanied me to the street before the gate, but “Send word soon,” she insisted again and again.

“Alright, alright, I’ll send it soon,” I said, shouldering the small trunk I’d finally pulled out—filled with items from the desk and drawers—and began walking with my bamboo cane. Yet within my heart, I clearly understood: I would never have the courage to set foot in this place again.

And after spending a night huddled beneath the eaves of Hodogaya Station along the way, then somehow boarding a train from Higashi-Kanagawa the next day to tumble back into my current Kamakura boarding house—the very one I’d lived in before moving to Kenchō-ji—no sooner had I arrived than the beriberi that had shown signs for two or three years erupted in what was nearly a cardiac crisis.

Such being the case, everything I used—the desk, zabuton cushions, padded robe, tea utensils—were all borrowed from the boarding house, and even the kimono I wore had been collected from various friends—haori jackets, quilted garments.

When Osei came in early October, I had prepared some money and told her to at least bring bedding, but her grandfather didn’t hand it over.

Osei returned empty-handed that day, without even bringing a receipt for the money.

Though poor, I had continued living alone for over five years as if maintaining a household, gradually accumulating various belongings over time—so when I suddenly tried boarding house life like this, I found myself rather inconvenienced in many ways.

If I could just buy everything at once with money, wouldn’t that be fine?—Even when I resigned myself to thinking this way, there were no items that left me particularly dissatisfied.

The amount was small, but to take such unreasonably demanded money only to return empty-handed and utterly clueless—and then to keep loitering around here indefinitely as if waiting to press for more—the more I thought about it, the angrier I became.

When Osei first came, even walking to the toilet had become difficult.

And so I asked her to take care of me for a while—could this have been the greatest mistake of my life?

As T had likely told Osei’s uncle too, she had cared for me far too long, and I had burdened her far too long—though this was perhaps just a matter of phrasing—but to me, even after all that time, Osei never once struck me as a full-fledged woman. Three times a day she carried meals up from her family home at the mountain’s base in lunchboxes, poured drinks at night and tucked me into bed before leaving, nursed me when I fell ill—she was nothing more than that kind of convenience.

Now when I wake in the mornings, there she lies in the cramped six-tatami room—borrowed futons still spread across the floor—her russet-brown tangled hair slipping from the pillow as she sleeps snoring.

Every morning I have to shake myself awake multiple times.

Even from just that, my waking mood is utterly shattered, and from then until the hour of evening drinks arrives, I must stubbornly suppress this agitated feeling that lasts all day long—facing the soiled yellow wall, repeating dark fantasies over and over.

The two haven’t bathed for days on end，nor do they groom their hair.

And Osei too, with tenacious persistence, would clam up and continue sitting in the corner of the room all day long.

As the year drew to a close, I visited my wife and children in my hometown—both for my health and to discuss preliminary plans for building a cabin in the village for the children’s sake, aiming to resume family life after so long—and stayed for about a week at my wife’s family home.

At that time, perhaps thinking she would be left behind, Osei wept and insisted on coming along. Through the mediation of the boarding house managers, I somehow managed to placate her, but with an air that she might yet chase after my rickshaw. Only when the train departed Ueno did I finally breathe a sigh of relief.

I had no choice but to confess about her to my wife and plead for help.

“Well she won’t leave without a fight will she.
“You’ve certainly grabbed yourself quite a prize there.
“It must be because you’re such a handsome man I wonder.
“I don’t mind in the slightest—by all means bring her along”—my wife spoke these mocking words with a derisive laugh, her temples now streaked with white hair from relentless kitchen labor that had left her utterly haggard. Before me stood my own reflection—beard speckled with countless white strands, scalp visible through thinning hair, shuffling unsteadily about the room.

“No—it’s not that I’m saying that at all—but you see, that woman tended to me extensively when Father was dying, managed the whole ordeal with my brother’s wife’s illness this spring, and I’ve been sick straight through myself.”
“In summer I even came down with something like dysentery, and now it’s turned into this beriberi.”
“With all these obligations tying us together, I can’t exactly force her out.”

“Since I don’t mind in the slightest, why don’t you bring her along this time?”
“In that case, no matter who you tell to leave so easily, she wouldn’t go obediently like that.”

“Even if I pay off all her debts clean, I wonder if she still won’t leave?”

“That I couldn’t say.”
“It might not just be their daughter’s own thinking—who knows how her parents feel about it.”

“That’s exactly where I falter…”

“That can’t be helped, I suppose—since it’s something you yourself brought about.”
“And she’s already with child, isn’t she?……”

“That hasn’t happened yet.”
“In any case, I’m counting on you then.”
“If they pass their exams, both will have to commute by train—mornings will be ungodly early. You alone can’t handle both my work and my drinking.”
“She’s stubborn as a mule, but she’ll work herself raw if you tell her to…”

With these words, I parted from my wife and left.

But when I returned to Tokyo, the same such days continued.
I couldn’t even send the school bag I had promised to the second daughter, who had just turned twelve.……

"The second daughter was probably already asleep, but the older two must still be studying then."
It was still before midnight.
Was the wife still awake keeping them company?
And so I—drunk like this, repeating this nightly routine with Osei—was this the scene?
"...Ah right, right... Then comes that egg business... So that same old complaining letter from the wife arrived—the one about not being able to even feed them a single egg..."
In the distant hometown where snow still lay heavily piled despite early March—in the eight-tatami room with paper-covered windows where a kotatsu might have been set up—the figures of those pitiful children who must still be studying under the dim glow of a five-candlepower electric lamp materialized even in my drunken mind. I suddenly closed the eyes I had been directing at Osei and muttered these words within my heart.
And to shake those images away, I violently shook my head two or three times.
But immediately, I turned to Osei and shouted again.

“Look at this!”
“Read it yourself—see what’s written!”
“Daughter of a heartless old man!”
“The boy wrote the cover letter in his own name, but the contents are my wife’s.”
“I survived the earthquake because of eggs, but if you don’t even feed eggs to the children, they’ll fail their exams!”
“What’s that heartless bastard’s game? And that uncle who came recently—what’s his deal? Even when I say I’ll pay up if they return my things, they won’t utter a word!”
“Forcing someone to write an affidavit right after the earthquake and kicking them out—that’s intimidation!”
“They take my belongings without permission! Even when I make them take deposits, they don’t hand over receipts or inventory lists!”
“Grand theft, I tell you!”
“If anything, I should be taking this to labor relations—filing complaints!”
“There’s Father’s heirlooms money can’t replace! That dyed futon cover—Mother brought it when she married into this family! We’ve treasured it all this time!”
“Pull another selfish stunt and punishment will strike—just wait!”
“You country bumpkin wouldn’t know about Hongō’s Great Furisode Fire! But you’ll remember soon enough—just wait!”
“Anyway—leave quietly now.”
“I can’t endure living with that heartless old man’s daughter any longer.”
“My body—my nerves—everything’s ruined!”
“Your folks might resent me for toying with you—but isn’t that natural?”
“If leaving things untouched for five years wasn’t wrong, that itself would be unnatural.”
“It goes both ways—doesn’t it?”
“So I’ll apologize too—just leave quietly.”

“Tomorrow morning, while I’m asleep, get out and leave.”
“Don’t stop at Keian or whatever—go straight back to that uncle from the other day.”
“I’ll scrape together the money somehow—just take it for now.”
“Hasn’t it already been half a year?”
“And in all that time, I haven’t done a single piece of work.”
“I even sold off the cedar groves and apple orchards Father left for my children—forced myself this far—but now there’s nothing left.”
“The few books I had were lost in the earthquake—even if I wanted to sell the copyrights—nothing remains.”
“I’m begging you—just go back.”
“I’m not someone who can make something of himself from here on—you know that too.”
“I can’t work.”
“I’ll go mad.”
“If you’ve any pity for my children at all—get out quietly.”
“This is no time for me to be drinking like this.”
“Read this letter!”
“Read it!”
“What’s written here—read it and see!”
I shoved the letter toward Osei’s face as if thrusting it into her and shouted like this.

“Even without reading it, I know what it says,” said Osei in her usual combative tone, hands thrust beneath her ash-gray stained apron as she listened motionless.

“You won’t understand unless you read it.”
“But since I won’t force you to read what you don’t want to—does that mean you’ll leave tomorrow?”

“I won’t go back!”

“Even if you say you won’t go back, I’ll make you go back.”
“Haven’t you had enough? Why don’t you just go home?”
“Even for the boarding house, isn’t this a nuisance?”
“You’re being way too persistent about staying!”

“……When did I ever say it was a demand to leave?!”
“When did I ever say that?!”
Osei said this, her lips twisting into a face ready to burst into tears—small eyes beneath thick, masculine brows stretched wide as she stared directly at her own face.

“Whenever you said it… isn’t that how it is? There’s no other reason, is there?”
“Anyway, you’re a nuisance—get out.”
“Didn’t you tell the police that yourself?”
“Just get out tomorrow morning while I’m asleep.”
“As long as you get out, there’ll be no complaints from me.”

“I don’t care what you say—I’m not leaving.”
“Even if they drive me out, I won’t leave.”
“I won’t go home, and I won’t go anywhere else either.”
“As if I’d go!”

“You villain!”
“What an obstinate wretch you are!”
“Even though you’re the daughter of that heartless old man, do you really not understand?”
“……Then if it’s not an eviction notice, what in the world is it?”
“Then why don’t you just come out and say it clearly?”
“Or what—you’ll go back home, stand in front of some tea shop, and start cooing in that disgusting voice—‘Come on over, welcome back, good night, yeah?’—and you think I’d let that slide? So are you saying I should keep you here just until you find some servant job? Or that you want to stick with me forever? Either way, why don’t you just come out and say it straight?”
“If you keep clinging on like this, I’m telling you it’s a nuisance.”
“Just say it clearly—if you’re going to beg, then beg properly and make yourself clear!”
“Why don’t you just try saying it?”
“You’re so stubborn… What a villain you are.”
“You… you woman!”

“I won’t say it.”
“Who’d ever say such a thing?!”
“You’re the real villain here!”
“You know everything damn well, yet day after day, night after night—every single evening till the roosters crow—you start this nonsense and keep torturing me! Who’d ever walk out on you?!”
“I’ll cling to you my whole life if I have to… you villain!”
“You heartless bastard!”
“Have you forgotten already, you villainous bastard?!”
Gritting her teeth, eyes bloodshot, her face so contorted it seemed horns might burst from her wild hair, Osei shouted and cursed like this.

“Grr... You damn jailbird! As a father, that ruthless old man—don’t you get your mother’s worries? So why didn’t you just go back when she first came to fetch you? Hasn’t she been shielding us all this time? Even for that obligation’s sake, I can’t let you stay another day. Get out right now! To Keian or wherever—just get out on your own!”

“Who’d ever leave!”
“Old geezer!”
“You’re the one who should get out! I ain’t going anywhere.”
“What’s with those glasses and that beard? Think that scares me? Not one bit!”

“What did you say, old geezer… Say it again.”
“...Don’t you dare hit me!”

“I’ll say it as many times as you want!”
“I’ll say it, damn right I will!”

My own right fist flew two or three times in rapid succession toward Osei's round, crimson cheekbone.
But since it hadn't landed properly with enough force, this time I lunged up and tried to kick her with my unsteady leg—"What, you old geezer think you can kick someone? ...I won't lose!"
"I won't lose!"

Saying this, she charged forward like a coiled spring, thrusting out both hands, and I was instantly knocked back against the wall with a heavy thud.
Osei grabbed my collar and came charging down from above.
As I writhed trying to rise up, the lintel above the crack crashed onto my back along with plaster chunks in another heavy thud. Driven into a frenzy, I kept hitting and kicking Osei’s face and head—still screaming “You damn beast! You—!”—without caring where my blows landed. But when I heard that shrill scream and stopped to look at her face, blood streamed from her mouth, startling me cold.
Then she clung to me again as if possessed.

“You damn beast!”
“You damn beast!”
“You’ve forgotten about my thing, haven’t you.”
“You’ve forgotten that thing—that important thing of mine. I never showed it to you, but it had already taken proper shape.”
“It had taken shape exactly like a celluloid Kewpie doll.”
“I buried it stealthily under the peach tree out back so no one would notice, and on its death anniversaries I’d pour water and such.”
“On this nineteenth, it’ll mark exactly that.”
“What the hell do you call that?!”
“You think I’m just some stinking liar? You’ve forgotten all about it, haven’t you?!”
“You damn beast of a man!”
“Because you’re such a heartless man, you can’t even look after those dear children of yours in the countryside, can you?”
“Because of your heartlessness, isn’t it the same as cursing and killing my that thing?”
“I’m not a body that can just quietly marry into another household, you know.”
“A body that can’t play innocent and pop out some other man’s baby.”
“That’s exactly why I stay by an old wreck like you—even when kicked away! Don’t you get it?!”
“Even though you knew, you’ve been pretending not to understand and tormenting me all this time, haven’t you?”
“Come on, you’re the one who should say it clearly! Let’s hear it!”
“If I could say that to you, I’d leave right now.”
“I’ll get out of here, damn right I will!”
“Even if I drowned myself, you think I’d care?”

“Come on, say it clearly! Let’s hear it!”
“Or did you come here like this to make me say such things from my own mouth?”
“Aah... It’s so infuriating!”
“It’s so infuriating!”
From lips that had swollen purple before his eyes, blood dripped thickly onto the tatami, while tears overflowed from upturned eyes—Osei sobbed like a child.

“Aah…” I, overwhelmed, took both her hands.

“There now, enough... I was wrong.”
“Look—I’m bowing my head to apologize properly, so please forgive me.”
Truth be told, I hadn’t really thought that deeply about it.
I was just cowardly and spineless.
“Please forgive me.”
“I won’t drive you out anymore—I swear I’ll never torment you again from now on—so just forgive me for tonight.”
“And starting tomorrow, I’ll absolutely throw myself into work.”
“I’ll truly try to make everything better somehow—so please keep taking care of me like before.”
“I’ll handle things properly with your family myself.”
“And since I mean to fix both my body and mind’s health—tomorrow, even if it’s a nuisance—go bathe properly and fix your hair.”
“I’ll send money to those children in the countryside too—do whatever you need to feel right about it—please.”
“I’ve properly understood now—so stop crying...”
Even as I spoke these words, I found myself weeping without realizing it.

Leaving the room with yellow walls where the lintel had come off, I continued my daily walks twice a day—morning and afternoon—picturing my father’s figure, what Osei called Kewpie-san, and matters of the children back home.
The buds on the ginkgo trees along Hongo-dori had yet to appear, but the sky already held spring’s full color.
I wondered if that peach tree at Osei’s house might have bloomed already.
Perhaps I should go out soon under pretense of resolving Osei’s issues and check…
Turning these thoughts over daily, I strained to expand my walking territory bit by bit.