Pathway to Japanese Literature

After Ryūzō’s uncle—who had run a clinic—went mad, though not so noticeably to outsiders given his profession, and after his violent outbursts toward those in the household grew too severe to dismiss as mere “bad drinking habits,” they finally had him admitted to S Mental Hospital about three months prior. Since then, night after night, Ryūzō had to stay up late listening to his aunt’s same litany of grievances.

“But, Ryūzō,” said his aunt while adding charcoal.
“Affection isn’t something that can be forced.”
“I’ve been so thoroughly impressed.”
“Because—”
“Uncle was so terribly drunk, just like a madman—” She caught herself mid-sentence and laughed bleakly. “Oh my!”
“No—really.”
Regaining her composure at once, his aunt said: “No matter how violently he’s raging in the moment—the moment you step in—he quiets down like a cat.”
“So it’s no wonder your father suspected he was a fraud,” she said with deep conviction.

“That’s correct.”
Ryūzō could answer this way without any reservations because things were exactly as his aunt had said.
At least in this one thing, he could believe in his own power—and indeed, by the results, he had managed to do so.

“That time, if you’d come back even five minutes later, I might’ve been killed for sure.”

“Yes, that’s how it was back then.”
Ryūzō felt a peculiar pride, as if he possessed some particular skill, and with a composure that seemed coldly detached, he leisurely smoked a cigarette.

(Ryūzō’s father had lived abroad since his childhood, so when Ryūzō first encountered his father’s face in his teens, he couldn’t bring himself to feel that this man was his father.
Even now, Ryūzō could recall how he had felt a father-like closeness toward his uncle—the uncle who had commuted to school from Ryūzō’s home.
Back then too, his uncle had once gone mad.
He had been warned that it was dangerous to approach his uncle, but since his uncle treated him with such kindness—so much so that he could never believe him to be a madman—Ryūzō felt guilty for thinking that way.
Listening to Uncle’s voice as he berated the household with terrifying ferocity, he even began to feel there was some valid reason behind his words.
Even when Uncle, in the dead of night, scooped up Ryūzō—who had been sleeping in one spot—and went thudding along under the cold winter stars, he hadn’t been particularly startled.)

Ryūzō abruptly recalled those things.

“……‘It’s cold—let’s go home. This is so boring. What’s the point of staying out?’ he said.”

“Hmm—alright! Let’s do one splendidly fun thing… How about tag? Or maybe cops and robbers?”

……………………………

They spent that night in a police detention cell, and from the next day onward, he developed a terrible fever and was hospitalized for a long time.
Uncle nursed him more zealously than ordinary people.

“It’s Uncle’s fault. That I’ve ended up like this.”
“It’s my fault I ended up like this,” he said with feigned resentment.
When he saw tears welling up and rolling down Uncle’s cheeks, he felt such pity that he ended up crying too.
Uncle,

“Alright, alright—my fault,” he said, gently pressing his forehead.……)

Ever since dropping out of school midway, Ryūzō’s relationship with his family had soured; thus, resolving to follow his uncle’s advice and obtain a medical license through certification exams, he had relied on his uncle’s clinic for about three years now—yet he still hadn’t even secured the preliminary license.
Lately, he had even given up on that hope—though he could hardly bring himself to say it aloud—and continued to lead an aimless, unnatural life, self-diagnosing as having neurasthenia and the like.
He spent the entire day sprawled in bed—sipping coffee and nursing whiskey within that sprawl—opening his eyes, dull and fish-like in their helplessness, only to lose himself in morbid fantasies.
I wonder if I should become a painter, he sometimes dreamed such things.
When night fell and Uncle’s work was done, he would come clattering downstairs, gather the pharmacy clerks and nurses, and noisily play cards and flower-card games with them, laughing and chattering as if having a grand time.
More than anything, he feared the coming of sleepless midnight.
Ah, have all the people who kept me company fallen peacefully asleep…? he wondered, staring blankly under the stark electric light—until even a madness-tinged fear began to grip him—and then, startling himself, he suddenly burst into overly loud song (a feeble attempt to shake off that mood). He even considered fleeing his uncle’s house altogether, but his fantasies merely grew more restless and vagrant, entirely separate from his affair with the nurse Miura—leaving him cowed only by a timid and passive rationality.
Day by day, real life grew increasingly constricted.
He cursed this ugly boredom from the bottom of his heart.
But no matter how he reconsidered, he couldn’t bring himself to enter the pharmacy to mix medicines or spread out his notes for the exams.

He thought deeply about wanting to do some other kind of work.

Since his uncle’s descent into madness, Ryūzō—a man who had been utterly useless—had become an indispensable necessity for Aunt and the others.

Even in the recent past, when Uncle had barged into Ryūzō’s family home—located right nearby—and gotten into a huge fight with his father, it was unclear what might have happened had Ryūzō not stepped in to mediate.
His mother came to fetch him in a tearful voice; though Ryūzō had no desire to see his father, he returned against his will.
“Uncle, really—why are you arguing over such trivial things? This isn’t a joke,” Ryūzō said. At this, Uncle abruptly shifted to an embarrassed demeanor. “Oh, you… well…” he laughed awkwardly, “I was just about to talk to your old man about you.”
“He shouldn’t belittle his own child like that—but seems the old man just doesn’t get it… Ah, well, alright—don’t fret.” His words resolved with a comically trivial finality.

“Let’s get Miura and Ryūzō together,” Uncle blurted out.
Those nearby paid no attention at all—but Ryūzō shuddered.
“How long has Uncle known about that?”
He had convinced himself that not a single soul in the clinic knew of his relationship with Miura.
“Despite that, Uncle… who never showed any hint of such a thing in his usual behavior…”

Ryūzō silently clasped his hands together in prayer to his insane Uncle.
“If a normal person had said such a thing in front of Father…”

Every couple of days, Ryūzō took on the role of escorting Uncle—who would barge into his family home—back out, and he was highly valued by everyone for this. —— Ryūzō, who until now had been utterly useless, thought: How comical.
"I’ve been so busy lately," he mused, feeling as though he’d taken up some bizarre profession.
Amidst a peculiar loneliness, impatience, and contradictory complacency,
"I must quickly establish my own work." — he felt this practical anguish grow ever more urgent.

When he thought of Miura, Ryūzō felt dizzy.
About five months earlier, she had decided that after leaving Uncle’s clinic she would enter a certain large hospital—but when the time finally approached, four or five days prior,

“Something’s wrong,” she said with a face on the verge of tears.——He had no choice but to frantically find a rented room.
Ryūzō had not noticed the woman’s pregnancy until that day. ——.

Ryūzō had spent these past few months trying every possible method, but he could no longer do anything. ——.

…………………………

Ryūzō sank into pitch-black depths of his mind and lowered his gaze to his aunt’s hair as she stared at the fire.

“Well then, Ryūzō—please go to the hospital again tomorrow.
If we were to go ourselves, it would only worsen Uncle’s condition.
And while you’re there—could you settle this month’s hospital payment too…?” Aunt said with a deep sigh.

“Yes yes—of course! Absolutely!” Ryūzō began—“But Aunt—you really shouldn’t—” then froze mid-sentence. To offer such sentimental comfort—the realization chilled him.

But when he looked, Aunt was pressing her sleeve to her face, sobbing quietly.

“Hmm… A tragedy is unfolding.”
“Poor thing,” Ryūzō thought—and then, having even forgotten about Miura, he felt a faint surprise at his own cruelty: how he could think of it all so lightly, so refreshingly detached, as if watching a play or someone else’s affair.

Ryūzō, unable to find any words to say—stared fixedly at the steam billowing from the iron kettle’s spout.

……and he felt like muttering, “Oh, uh...”
The outlandish delusions in his head seemed to dissipate like that steam, leaving him hollowed out from the very depths.

The next moment, he—

"Hoho," he pursed his lips as if to laugh—startled by surges of emotion that rippled two or three times through his gut.
……"Just exploiting the chaos."
Repeating phrases like "It's been ages—no harm done," he—driven by a clownishly gloomy, wretched yet absurdly cheerful mood—took advantage of his compliant aunt and spilled out whatever glib phrases came to mind.

"Since I'm asking anyway," he began incrementally raising the amount from his initial target. In any case, he successfully obtained what was for him a substantial sum.
Because Aunt had given it so readily, he simultaneously felt regret bordering on coercion, loneliness, and an odd indifference.

“At least I can manage the woman’s upkeep,” Ryūzō exhaled sharply through his nose.

“Maybe I’ll head up to the plateau tomorrow—been ages,” he remarked airily, voicing this preposterous notion.
To conceal his relationship with Miura—though he’d never actually engaged in any debauchery before—he resurrected that old pretense of having a lover in the pleasure quarters, a fiction he’d carelessly let slip long ago.
Aunt swallowed this fabrication whole, commiserating with his estrangement from his family. “Youth must have its fling,” she’d sigh with performative worldliness typical of her middle-aged set, adding conspiratorially, “Do keep it quiet,” while occasionally loosening her purse strings. But he knew perfectly well her own coffers had grown desperately thin lately—such indulgences belonged to bygone days.

“Please go to the hospital as early in the morning as possible,” Aunt pressed coolly.

“Of course, Aunt! After all, I’d feel uneasy myself if I didn’t see Uncle for a day,” Ryūzō declared cheerfully.

The next day too, Ryūzō left his bed past noon.
Last night when receiving the money, he'd been so elated—or so he'd thought—yet now, this notion of himself as someone who would take funds to reassure the woman felt somehow false.
"Even without humiliating myself to get money from Aunt, it's not like we'd starve," he muttered around a toothpick, then caught himself—"Wait, I'm thinking such strange... no, utterly idiotic things." These two sentiments swirled in his head like dense smoke, while another icy part of him stood witness.
It felt like staging a play solely for his own observation.

He slowly let fall a large white glob of toothpaste spit, and it made a wet, crackling sound as though something had been crushed.
He gazed blankly at the white spit on the ground.

"Oh, it's nothing. Hmph."
Absentmindedly muttering those words, he hurriedly—as if detached—began moving the toothpick.
Sparrows were chirping atop the fence.

Ryūzō, his pockets swollen with the hospital payment due that month and Miura’s living expenses, left his aunt’s house in Fukagawa Tokiwachō with a grim expression—it was already nearing three o’clock.—Until the moment he departed, he had naturally intended to go first to his uncle’s hospital (since there was a time constraint), but once he stepped outside…

“First I must see the woman at once—even just ten minutes.” With this single thought propelling him, he half-ran across the bridge.

For no particular reason—the pallid phantom of the woman who had been reduced to ceaseless weeping now crouched at the base of Ryūzō’s mind, her figure waiting like some pitiful ghost yearning for the man’s arrival.
……Ryūzō shook his swimming head with desperate violence.
——As if to twist a thick drill into his skull and force out that wretched phantom through the hole it made, he quickened his pace in frantic urgency while crushing the wallet in his pocket until it might burst.

……Suddenly, in that instant, the woman’s phantom smiled contentedly—but no sooner had he seen it than the wretched vision swiftly flowed away like water…… Ryūzō was thinking such things.
“Should I hole up at a hot spring for a couple of weeks? Or treat myself to a lavish theater outing tonight and go speeding off by automobile…” As these fragmented thoughts began to intoxicate him with drowsy sweetness, his chest fluttered like a sparrow from sheer exhilaration.
“Yes—that’s possible—yes.”

It seemed he could at least manage to think through calculating each item in monetary terms.
"Was such happiness waiting for us all along?" he wondered—and why hadn't he noticed it until now?
(Of course, this was a fantasy he'd conjured by tallying up every last bit of money he now possessed—but this intoxication far surpassed any criminal rationality involved in it.)

“How amusing, how exhilarating—when does an opportunity like this ever come?” he smiled with childlike glee.

When his thoughts reached “Maybe I could pawn her best kimono…”, the image of the woman—× months pregnant—flashed vividly before him.
…Two months’ rent, food expenses, medicine costs, milkman’s fees… He figured covering just those would leave plenty to spare, yet squandering even a fraction on such trifles… No—worse still was how inserting these dreary tasks into his glorious fantasy’s path made his enthusiasm wither.
He even considered summoning her by telegram.—

Ryūzō found himself entertaining such a utilitarian thought.
“It’s not like the woman expects such sightseeing trips anyway. If I just leave that much behind and go home, it should be fine—as for me, well…”

When he conjured up the next scene, he shuddered violently.
"In times like these, I might as well at least have such dreams," he resigned himself.
The thirty-some minutes on the train to Yamanote’s K-chō had been an unbearable terror.
Finally alighting from the train, he dismissed with a huff the vehicle that had brought him there.
"Foolish delusions," "Cruel smirk."
He stood dazedly, intending to send off the unpleasant feelings of disillusionment and such along with that train.

“I wasn’t such a fool after all,” he found it absurd that he’d taken it so seriously. But suddenly, tears threatened to surge forth. He spat out the unlit cigarette he’d been clenching in his mouth along with a glob of saliva.

Clutching at the woman’s chest—he would sob aloud, and if he just kept pleading “Forgive me—forgive me—” surely something would change, surely someone would relent… Until then, he’d hold back his tears… Panting frantically with these thoughts, Ryūzō labored up the slope. The air still clung damp from last night’s rain, making even the wind gusting up from the moat feel lukewarm. Yet the mud had frozen perfectly, his geta clogs creaking sharply against the ruts. In that sound, he found a sliver of solace.

――“What kind of face am I making right now?” This composed feeling—having muttered it almost jocularly in a corner of his frayed emotions—was something he kept holding onto as he strode onward without pause.

"Oh, again?"
...... he thought rather dazedly—I've truly had enough—as...

While clearly aware of the woman's house gate on his left, he had passed right by it.

“Che, idiot!”—he gritted his teeth and bit down hard on his lower lip.
He was still walking at the same speed.
……And suddenly, he felt as if cold water had been poured down his back—his chest thudded.
With a furtive glance feigning nonchalance, he quickly scanned his surroundings—*it’s alright now*, he felt—the alley was deserted.
And, in a panic, he turned back.
……But when he came again to the front of the woman’s house gate, with the same vague, embarrassed feeling and a certain utilitarian desire as a minute before—he passed right by.
……“What a weirdo. Creepy.”
“Creepy.” Even as he wailed inwardly, he maintained a faint, enigmatic smile—vanity veiling his turmoil.

“The woman was surely in that fireless room, hurriedly stitching together some makeshift garment with that pale yellow cotton she’d claimed to have bought herself,” Ryūzō thought.
When he thought this, he felt that the woman in that room was far happier compared to him.
――With exactly the same mindset and movements, he went back and forth along the road of about half a block that flanked the house three or four times.――

At one moment incomprehensible, the next moment all too clear—in the wake of such overwhelming restlessness… he discovered his own body: a hollow vessel from which all emotion seemed to have vanished.
When he came to the original bus stop and stood still, he spread open the palm he had been tightly gripping in his pocket and stared intently at its lines.
He felt a piercingly cold yet refreshing wind strike his sweat-drenched palm.

“Well, what now?” he muttered under his breath like something shameful, wishing for it to arrive as late as possible as he watched the train clatter around the curve of the junction with an unpleasant screech.

Ryūzō, who had barely managed to get his toes onto the step of the overcrowded train, clung to the iron bar for fear of being shaken off and had to think about where he was headed.
He—terrified of danger akin to performing acrobatics and barely clinging on despite being on the verge of tumbling down—found the physical pain strangely pleasant as the train barreled forward with utter disregard for such things.
The net of foolish delusions was satisfyingly overwhelmed, leaving him feeling almost distracted.

"If this were a car I could ride in comfortably, I’d surely jump out midway," he thought—and no sooner had this crossed his mind than a clear-headed urge to return to the woman welled up within him.
No sooner would he think the car had stopped than it would start moving again; just as he resolved to get off, it would lurch forward once more. He found it strange how the instant the car began moving and the moment he decided to disembark coincided with not a hair’s breadth between them, making him feel he’d missed his chance to alight.
He even convinced himself that by attributing his failure to visit her to external circumstances, he might evade self-reproach.

Just as Ryūzō planted his foot to steady himself, a large, ammonite-faced old man—pressed up against him—was struggling awkwardly, barely supported by Ryūzō’s body as he grunted, “Ugh… ugh…” Gradually, their faces drew so close together that they were pressed tightly. The old man exhaled a greasy breath from his sepia-stained mouth unhesitatingly onto Ryūzō’s slightly sweaty nose. The throat muscles, spilling out from the fur scarf, formed a double layer, their warmth seething before Ryūzō’s eyes. Ryūzō seized every chance to exhale a large breath into his own chest. When rounding the curve, the cluster of train cars lurched heavily. The old man’s cheek nearly touched Ryūzō’s nose. “Damn, this is unbearable,” muttered the old man, barely managing to turn his face away as he forced a strained laugh. Ryūzō felt a touch of familiarity in that laugh. Staring fixedly at the ammonite-like section of the old man’s enlarged cheek before his eyes as though observing something uncanny, Ryūzō began to search one by one for scenes of pleasure he would soon pursue. An indescribable sense of desolation welled up, and forgetting even the numbness in his fingertips, he closed his eyes. When he imagined contrasting one pleasure—whether it was going to see a moving picture or attending a vaudeville show—he found he could fully conceive of the corresponding enjoyment suited to each scenario. He could anticipate the same degree of excitement for each one. “Returning to the woman’s place” had also come to be considered as one of those options.…

“Dissipation,” “heavy drinking,” “a flashy trip accompanied by prostitutes.”
“Luxurious shopping”
“……” … He agonized over choosing just one.
……When he fluttered his eyes open, the old man’s profile still lay before him.
Burying his face in his chest, he secretly let out a laugh.

Ryūzō’s wrist sensation was beginning to fade.
His chest remained compressed and felt intensely suffocating.
His toes were barely touching the step.
The hem around him was flapping up like a flag, snapping sharply.
Curved like a bow, his body was almost entirely exposed outside the vehicle.
That ridiculous body of Ryūzō’s cut through the cold evening wind of the streets and ran like an arrow.

About an hour later, Ryūzō—who hadn’t stopped anywhere—returned to the Fukagawa house with the same expression he’d had when he left earlier, drifting back aimlessly.

"Let me forget just today."
"Let everyone wait for a day."

Thinking such thoughts—that this single day wedged between others was a trifling matter both to himself and to everyone else—he slipped through the side door, preoccupied solely with Miura. Without exchanging more than a few words with Aunt, he immediately returned to his room on the second floor… then suddenly slammed his wallet onto the tatami with all his strength.

“What’s this—am I crying?” Even as he thought this with a hollow heart, he blew a light breath—puff, puff, puff—on each of the two or three teardrops that had rolled onto the woolen cloth covering his desk.

It was the same night.

From around dusk, the sky cleared crisply, and a multitude of frozen stardust shone like inlaid work.
“It’s gotten so bitterly cold…” said Aunt, adding a sake flask to Ryūzō’s late supper tray before draining two or three cups herself.
“On the way back from the hospital… I was certain you’d be late today, so I thought…”
“Far from needing medicine, I was the one who needed it.” Since Ryūzō had returned without taking any detours, Aunt seemed to feel an even deeper reliance on this commendable version of him.
“I thought I’d make a fresh start and came back for now, but it’s just too cold as it is.”
Ryūzō muttered with the forced elderly composure that young people affect, all for some semblance of self-respect.
And he clicked his back teeth softly and rhythmically.

While Aunt was in the kitchen, he quietly flipped back the cover of the mirror stand behind him and absentmindedly gazed at his own reflected face.
And somehow, that face felt as if it wasn’t his own.
It had a strange expression that looked as though it might burst into laughter at any moment.

"Is this really my face?" he wondered.
Then, as he watched that face gradually cloud over with a menacing hue drifting across it, this time it was his real self—the one gazing into the mirror—that felt on the verge of laughter.

“Facial expressions and feelings don’t always align,” Ryūzō thought, yet even so, the mirrored face felt too separate from himself to dismiss.
(He noticed he might be slightly drunk, but the delusions pressed on.) …Being sneered at or glared at by some clamorous stranger… he felt perpetually intimidated while vividly seeing “that person’s” face—only to realize he himself was that clamorous being, the mirror’s face merely his timid, utterly pure self….

Having dwelled on such an outlandish notion, Ryūzō grew melancholically agitated within a nebulous haze.

"Ah... Right. Hmm."

A sense of shame at not understanding why he had muttered this made him hurriedly turn back toward the brazier.
“Lately my beard’s grown so stiff—unbearable.”
Biting his lower lip and roughly rubbing his chin area, he looked up at Aunt as she started to sit down and said, “Must’ve worked like a charm—hunger sharpens the senses.”

“When a beard grows out, it does change one’s appearance a bit, you know.”

“I wonder if that’s true,” Ryūzō said, looking at the mirror again.
But this time, he felt no emotion whatsoever.
Thinking it was foolish, he immediately stopped.

“That’s not necessarily the case.”
Even in this casually uttered remark, he sensed a stirring in his heart—as though seeking some greater reassurance beyond it.

“Don’t worry, there’s no need to fret.” When Aunt showered him with that icy sneer, the peculiar emotion he’d felt just a minute earlier—now embarrassingly trivial—vanished without a trace, and suddenly, in a plausibly upbeat tone,

“Ha ha… ha,” he laughed brightly.

As it neared eleven o’clock and Aunt began to look drowsy, Ryūzō—thinking, If she can just sleep well and tomorrow comes quickly…—returned to his room on the second floor.
But since he couldn’t possibly sleep, he sat down at his desk and pondered how to occupy himself until drowsiness set in.
And then, about twenty minutes passed.
Breaking the desolate silence,

“Ryūzō.” He started at Aunt’s voice—muffled yet terrifyingly fierce—that seemed clenched between her teeth.
“Just a…”
“Huh? What?” When Ryūzō looked at Aunt’s face, it had gone deathly pale—

When Ryūzō entered the tearoom, Uncle was sitting properly in front of the brazier.
“It’s fine,” Ryūzō quietly reassured Aunt behind him with a glance, then addressed Uncle with a composure that surprised even himself.
Aunt was trembling uncontrollably in the corner of the kitchen.

While attentively keeping an eye on things, Ryūzō felt this was still better than spending another sleepless, weary night alone.—Seizing an opportune moment, he dashed to the public telephone and contacted the hospital.
Of course Uncle had escaped from the hospital, and upon receiving a reply that said, “In any case, since it’s fortunate he returned home, please keep him confined until tomorrow morning,” he felt a surge of cheerful vigor—as if to declare how simple this would be—welling up inside him.
“Now’s the time to show what I can do…”
He also thought of such things.

No sooner had tears welled up than Uncle immediately laughed, then began spouting all sorts of madman-like things.

Uncle abruptly said something like this.

“Ryūzō, I’m truly sorry for always burdening you with worry—you’re my only lifeline.”
“But listen here—that Miura woman’s gone and gotten herself pregnant with my child. Poor thing—you’d better treat her right.”

Though these words were new to his ears, coming from his deranged Uncle they hardly stood out among the usual torrent of absurdities—Ryūzō felt no particular stab of guilt.
For just an instant—*What if it were true…*—the thought surfaced before being swiftly crushed.
He offered perfunctory reassurances and poured all his energy into coaxing Uncle toward sleep.
Aunt’s muffled weeping seeped intermittently through the kitchen’s paper screens.
—Uncle refused point-blank to sleep.

Finally, Uncle began to announce that he was going out.
At this, even Ryūzō could not help but be at a loss.
It wasn’t just for Uncle’s sake—being dragged out into this freezing late hour was more than he could bear, he thought.
However, Uncle absolutely would not agree.

Ryūzō and Uncle changed clothes.

“Just where are you planning to go?” Ryūzō asked in a slightly exasperated tone, to which Aunt replied in a flustered, appeasing manner, “How awful for you.”

“Oh, Aunt, please rest assured. I’ll just take him around the area a bit and somehow talk him into coming back.”
When Ryūzō calmly said this, Aunt—like a child—swallowed her tears and simply nodded repeatedly.
“Ryūzō, if you’re coming then hurry up already,” called Uncle from the entranceway.

“Well, Aunt—is that alright? It’s fine, really. Please rest assured.”

“I’m counting on you,” Aunt said as she leaned on Ryūzō’s arm.
“If you had been out…”

“This isn’t the time to be saying such things.”
“Since I was here, isn’t that alright?”

It was exactly like a play, he thought.

“It was fortunate, wasn’t it?”

“Now, now—well, just about an hour.”

“I’m already quite at ease.”

Ryūzō turned up his coat collar and walked alongside his uncle down Takahashi-dori toward Kuroecho.
When they crossed the bridge, they turned left onto a dark path along the Onagigawa.

“It’s a shortcut, you know,” said Uncle, laughing meaningfully in a tone that sounded almost sane.
Having immediately anticipated his uncle’s intentions, Ryūzō thought, If he were to drag us into Suzaki…—he absolutely had to devise a way to bring him back quickly.

“Huh? What?”
As Ryūzō kept pondering, his ear attuned to the clattering of geta clogs, he inadvertently muttered something—and at those words, Uncle suddenly burst into laughter.

“Quit moping around, eh! Acting all gloomy for a youngster like you,” he boomed with hollow cheerfulness, then lightly slapped Ryūzō’s back as though they were comrades at play.
Uncle then hooked Ryūzō’s arm under his own and strode forward with vigorous steps.

……This is getting too damn complicated to manage, Ryūzō thought as he was dragged along.
Every shopfront along the street stood shuttered.
The frigid, silent thoroughfare resembled a painted theater backdrop.
Despite Ryūzō’s churning anxiety, Uncle roared an unintelligible tune at full volume.
The instant it struck him as a madman’s cry, Ryūzō genuinely felt a terror straight from a ghost story.

“Damn them all, gone to sleep! What spineless cowards!”
Uncle tried to pick up a small stone.

“There, there,” said Ryūzō, managing to restrain just the violent outburst.
When he thought about the responsibility, his mind grew frantic.

Ryūzō employed every trick he could muster and devised all manner of schemes, but on that night alone, he found himself utterly unable to bring Uncle back.
Instead, Uncle began spouting carefree banter as if luring him along.

“Uncle, did something happen with Miura?”
Abruptly, Ryūzō posed this question.

“Nah… No, there’s nothing wrong with me.”

Uncle’s tone carried an oddly deflated quality, so Ryūzō found himself without any urge to press further.
“After all, it’s just Uncle’s talk…” he thought, but grew disgusted at his own attempt to placate the faint suspicion stirring within him.

“What does any of that matter? You’re such a fool.”
Though he had never once considered accepting his uncle’s words until now, Ryūzō shocked himself by thinking *It’s true* when told this.
“To think I’d find comfort from a mad uncle…”

He had thought an even greater loneliness would come over him, yet not even a shadow of such emotion welled up within.

“I’m getting a bit tired.”
Ryūzō spoke these words, aware that a sentiment completely opposite to his previous feelings—one that felt like clinging to his uncle—had welled up within him.
This even gave him a sense of joy.

“Tired already?
That’s a problem—if we don’t go a bit further, there won’t be any cars either.”

“This is troubling… It’s so cold,” said Ryūzō timidly.

“Ah, you’re not wearing a scarf. Alright, I’ll lend you mine.”
“There. How’s that?”
Uncle was meticulously wrapping the scarf around Ryūzō’s neck, and Ryūzō, making no move to resist, watched the kind face of his uncle.
“There, that’s good. Just walk a bit more—endure it,” urged Uncle, prodding Ryūzō onward.

Before they knew it, the two of them had found themselves on the embankment of Suzaki Avenue.
—The star-filled sky was pale and clear.
Only the sky over the red-light district across the river appeared dimly—like a great snow lantern, its brightness exhaling a breath toward heaven—standing out starkly.

“There, it’s almost there.”

“Are we going…? This is really a problem,” said Ryūzō, looking up at the sky and faltering.

“What else are you gonna do if you don’t go now? Wait—no, I’d forgotten… Do you have any money on you?” said Uncle with unexpected rationality.

“……Money?”
“Ah, if it’s money… Well, I do have a fair amount on me today, but…”
Having carelessly uttered this, Ryūzō jolted to awareness—but even so, *what on earth had I been thinking just now…?*—and he remained standing there in a daze.

“Well then, show it to me.”

Ryūzō felt a terror as though a dagger had been pressed against him and, coward that he was, handed over his entire wallet to Uncle.
The light of an anchored ship glowed along the blackened shore.
Ryūzō felt regret, but there was nothing he could do except look that way.

“Alright…” The Uncle clapped his hands and suddenly dashed off, flailing his arms.
Ryūzō, feeling as if his soul had vanished, was seized by urgency for a brief moment and kept his eyes fixed on his uncle’s figure.
On the embankment, Uncle’s retreating figure ran lightly bouncing like a shadow puppet as it danced along.

“How can I let that bastard Uncle have all the fun by himself?”
“…But damn it all—this is getting interesting,” Ryūzō thought as he felt a joy akin to a faint light kindling deep within him and chased after his uncle along the dim embankment with single-minded determination.