Pathway to Japanese Literature

He would recall in his anguish-ravaged mind—one after another—the fleshy contours of women that rose from memories lured by the deliberately painted pale-pink hues of clumsily rendered advertisement posters; though where or how he had even seen those women’s fleshy faces remained unclear, their vapor-like warmth—the kind beautiful women possess—now suffused the air around where he sat, moistening it with an oily dampness that soothed him. A sensation as if he had slipped into the entrance of a hot spring town tickled his cheeks, ears, and the base of his chest. According to his belief, it seemed less that beautifully plump women drew some special atmosphere toward them than that their skin, nostrils, and lips ceaselessly warmed the air immediately surrounding them.

Above all, in places like trains, streets, and store entrances—from the moment he saw a woman’s face so startling it stole his breath—he would mentally redraw and viscerally feel the very air he breathed as something transformed. He first agonized over why that shock arose—why his chest constricted as if pricked—and why his vision flustered itself in that instant, abandoning what it had been observing to desperately fixate on beauty; why even momentarily, as his severed gaze clawed after that loveliness, paralysis set in. With fingers itching to tear through his own hair, he drowned in these thoughts. In such states, he found the advertisement posters’ surface hues and textures most potently resurrecting within his eyes—feature by feature—the women he’d watched materialize and dissolve.

Because the outside of this room he inhabited was a thoroughfare, the rain shutters were always kept closed. Moreover, during daytime—starting with advertisement posters—all manner of items he had collected were stored in the closet: women’s magazines, movie postcards, particularly a type of paper in an ominous pink hue, as well as towels, soap, and soap dishes. He, strangely enough, would carefully store each item—even within a single sheet of thin bamboo-like paper—to preserve everything from the vivid necks of women depicted on vulgar women’s magazine covers to their shell-like hand gestures. Moreover, due to a poverty that even denied him enough to drink, he had to seek out his own pleasures within himself. For him, not only was there no dwelling of bread in all the city where he could place himself, but everything was turned against him. Therefore, he had to live a life of gradually devouring himself from within.

When dusk approached, he would wander aimlessly out into the streets and continue walking indefinitely. He would most often loiter through the geisha house alleyways near the backstreets where he lived, staggering out from the main thoroughfare like a dog lured by some scent, passing by each establishment without fail—observing the geta and zori with their pretty straps, the large full-length mirrors that invariably occupied such spaces, and the gaudy women who, with practiced regularity, tied their obi or applied makeup before those mirrors. For him, he had never approached such women, nor had there ever been an opportunity to do so. He couldn't even imagine that there existed in this world someone who could summon such passing geisha—as if they'd been cut from colored paper and pieced together—to his very side. Their plump, rounded hands and feet, every unnaturally white part of their bodies—the mere fact that such things could so readily become available, that this reality persisted even now—filled him with a throbbing ache that spread through every corner of his mind. So much so that in this glittering teahouse district, his kimono appeared shabby, and he wore geta like gutter planks. No one turned to look back at him, nor did he have any acquaintances at all.

That street was a chaotic district like those found in every city—newly built, with even the houses themselves exuding a seductive scent and luster. What with sparse stone lanterns adorned with winter bamboo, Tama River stones laid out beautifully around stepping stones, and flickering lights from golden lanterns floating coolly over the nightly water-sprinkling—each time he gazed at these, he would stomp across those stones like a beggar, unwittingly testing their solidity while feeling a flicker of concern.

“Who’s there!” came a voice he’d never heard before—round like an egg and lusciously alluring—making him panic, dash toward the gate, and catch his breath with a gasp. How extraordinarily rare that slight flutter in his chest must have been for him—how it drew out an involuntary smile through that tingling pleasure.

Above all, on the second floors that were numerous in those alleyways, there were always shadows where women and men could be glimpsed. The interiors seemed huskily enveloped in some fragrant incense, and each time he tormented himself imagining things—billowing zabuton cushions, inviting low tables, tatami mats polished smooth like single planks of wood, women sitting with knees folded as immaculately white as confectionery boxes—even the listless box peddler loitering there struck him as profoundly blessed merely through proximity to their daily rhythms.

What he found unbearable was a certain woman’s unmediated voice heard along that street—a voice whose origin he couldn’t determine. It intertwined with seductive laughter that seemed to arise from every house and second floor, clinging to him in an impulsive tone that constricted his throat. “Every time I hear that voice, some part of my body throbs.” “That voice claws through every inch of my body and chokes even my breath.”

He had always felt this sensation every time he heard the mysterious woman’s fleshy voice. The fleshy voice contained within it the shrill cry of a shrike, a sweetness as if someone had suddenly licked all over his cheeks, and a venomousness akin to gouging an already itchy spot until it burned. Within it intermingled an instinctive laughter that plunged the very depths of the mind into dead silence. In any case, all of them could be heard either from inside the sliding paper doors or dimly through the wooden shutters.

Then there was another thing: the women who passed him by would always, without fail, cast at least one glance of the sort typical of such women, and because of this, one could never know how many times he had been startled in dimly lit streets as if struck by a flower. All the women had eyes set with a shrewd intensity—pitch-black against their noses, lips, and ears—and with a single glance, they possessed both a meticulous capacity to survey from the tips of one’s toes to the crown of one’s head and a swift, dissecting vision. Some black-lacquered insect, an anomalous light that amounted to nothing—those coldly glinting things always poured into him a drop of something inscrutable. This was pleasurable to him for no reason at all. Yet the gazes cast his way were half a gleam that looked down on something contemptible, and half seemed to carry a rebuke—that this district was no place for the likes of you people. He would flush because of this and walk stealthily, muffling the clatter of his gutter plank-like geta.

These nightly wanderings of his had finally introduced a certain strange episode into his ears at some indefinite time. Even before that—and not just once but several times—he had seen that mysterious woman who couldn’t be clearly identified as either a young girl or a maid.

One pallid winter evening, when people were scurrying about in commotion, he drifted closer without purpose and saw walking away the notorious woman everyone called the "Electric Girl." She mainly roamed this district running errands and assisting with deep-cleaning tasks. Once when she had pilfered money or some such thing, they all tried to seize her—but upon laying hands on her shoulders or wrists, they felt not only an uncanny electric tremor but also an especially peculiar chill. Still they wound rope round and round her body, yet no matter how tightly they bound her, it would either slither loose or mysteriously sever midway through. At last they all grew unsettled, and none ever gave chase to her again.

The Electric Girl had been living with an old woman, but even after that incident, she continued to be hired by one busy household after another for assistance work. What proved strange was that all three children she had carried on her back ended up suffocating each time; yet when examined by doctors, there were no external signs of injury. It was explained that her body contained intense electrical properties like those found in eels and noctiluca—organisms known for their bioluminescence—and that these posed no harm as long as they remained contained within her system. However,

The doctor had merely stated, "It depends on the type of child—only those applying friction to her electrical properties appear dangerous," without offering further explanation. Since then, none had witnessed the Electric Girl carrying a child upon her back.

Every time he encountered this mysterious woman in that alleyway he would think for several days about trying to speak to her. The woman was always carrying a furoshiki bundle going out to buy rolled cigarettes or heading off to call a rickshaw. At first she watched him with uneasy suspicion but lately took to smiling as she passed by. In fact there were incidents such as when she grabbed onto some tree (he had forgotten what kind it was) and the tree was said to have shuddered all at once or when at a certain house someone tried to set the dining table and was suddenly electrocuted by it.

First and foremost, he had not overlooked her astonishingly pale skin—but he also noted that this pallor, perhaps owing to her youth, was of an extremely supple fleshiness, even carrying a faint coldness akin to that possessed by plump, fair-skinned women. In general, there were two types of coldness in skin: that in which the internal vitality of the skin had withered completely, and that in which the flesh grew cold through its own fatty composition. She belonged to the latter category, her stark pallor always carrying a considerable chill. According to his observations, the pallor of this mysterious woman’s skin harbored a dulled luster like that of gaslight or electric lamps—at times possessing a mineral-like coldness, at others a chill reminiscent of aquatic creatures, all perceived through his scrutiny.

Therefore, he preferred above all else to gaze at her under streetlights or in the gaslight of shops. His abnormal, almost inexplicable curiosity would torment him each time he glanced at her—as if his eyeballs were sealed shut by the pallor of her skin. For instance, that cold-seeming light—always faintly oil-smeared across her Western paper-like whiteness—centered around her well-shaped nose, gradually intensifying its pallor from both sides until, at the very tip of her nose, it would emit a single gleam that smoothly reflected the streetlamps. In any case, these astonishing and somewhat eerie qualities of her skin—along with her so-called electrical properties likened to a possessing spirit—were viewed by the neighborhood people as a kind of mysterious phenomenon. Her features were by no means unattractive. Yet it was precisely this—the face too vividly white, the overly vital shadowed eyes—that upon closer inspection revealed irises not truly black but rather tea-brown pupils, deep within which were set pupils like whirligig beetles skimming across water—that rendered her an unfathomable woman. Once he scrutinized her to that extent, it finally provoked increasingly peculiar suspicions in him—the excessively fine texture of her skin, the abnormally dense growth of downy hair, the overly white complexion, and the shadows here and there that sometimes resembled bruises (though when viewing her face from the side, one might momentarily mistake them for bruises, yet upon closer inspection they clearly were not). It became a question of whether she was truly Japanese—the possibility that she might carry foreign blood.

That said, she did not possess all the defining features of a mixed-race child. Her skillful Japanese; her hair’s faint blackness (though under sunlight it appeared nearly brown); and the fact that the old woman living on the second floor behind Ummichi—said to be her mother—was pure Japanese: when taken together, these details made it seem she was not a mixed-race child after all. However, what should be questioned here was her remarkably sturdy build, her tall stature, and the area around her pelvis being scarcely inferior even when compared to Westerners. Her long-legged gait, always swift and graceful, was such that had she worn high-heeled shoes and a skirt, she would have appeared every bit a Westerner, without any hint of inferiority. Her gait met all the qualifications necessary to fulfill those conditions. While gliding smoothly along, she would pivot around the greengrocer’s corner or alleyway bends with all the light-footedness of Westerners and considerable delicacy. Her curly hair indeed harmonized perfectly in those moments. If she hadn’t been holding that small furoshiki bundle and wearing a dirty Japanese-style kimono, she would have looked completely like a Westerner.

Moreover, each time he encountered her emerging abruptly from a dark alleyway, he must have felt his astonishment renewed time and again. It was unmistakably as if a single Westerner, steeped in shadow, were walking with relentless determination. Even the faintest breeze wafting from around her skirt made his nerves quiver. Moreover, the strange twelve-story brick tower in his neighborhood stood night after night alongside the Electric Girl’s mysterious figure—and another thing: before his very eyes, it would sometimes stand darkened, other times pierce through the stars. The windows were always closed, but as he gazed at the ancient tower’s spire—where, in the act of looking, strange and troubled thoughts would weave themselves together—night after night he found constellations that stirred his legendary fascination. He could not understand why he had come to associate the mysterious woman with this strange brick tower, but separated from one another, he found it impossible to conceive of her in her entirety.

That was the first night he heard this woman's voice—a voice that could only be called an uncanny shriek. He was trudging as usual from district to district through the city's stagnant alleyways clogged with refuse, walking without any particular impression as he endured the nightly fatigue of aimless wandering, when—as was customary—having separated from crowds of unknowable origin and purpose, he suddenly encountered her emerging from a dark alley.

Is this how everyone acts? When encountering someone too often, one tends to feign indifference without real intent. As was her habit, she stared intently at his face before bustling out into the street. When he gazed at her retreating figure, he took in the tower piled atop its usual dark rooftop and then her swiftly moving form. For what purpose did he walk every night? And that idle excess of time—unable to sleep unless he walked—was lured to slumber by fatigue alone. Moreover, he never once felt the urge to speak to her. The reason was that as he gazed at the lit second floors and lower rooms of houses in that quarter, he himself could draw sensory pleasure from them—his every fiber tingling with ticklish associations and the alluring tones of occasional husky voices. Thus, he stowed those detestable advertisement posters in his closet and, upon leaving his lodgings, would wander shabbily like a dog slinking through alley after alley of raucous bands, commotion, food stalls, and debauchery.

What did he hear at that moment? He couldn’t grasp the meaning of the words, but he was indeed suddenly called out to. Before him stood the strangely pale woman. One side was tenement houses, while from the other seeped eaves lights, casting her pale skin into an even more vivid pallor; sharply delineated against the darkness of night, it rather seemed to float heavily in midair.

“Was it you who called me?” “Just now—was it you who called out by saying something—” He said this while staring at her shadowed eyes. They did not blink, rather holding an uncanny gleam like a cat’s. While trying to speak, she kept clutching the furoshiki bundle in her hand, instead fixing him with a vague gaze. “I do think it was you who called me, but…”

He said this again while thinking—*But maybe I’m mistaken. There’s no reason that woman would call me.* Yet it was true—he had indeed heard a voice verging on a shriek. "No. It wasn’t I." "I was…" At that moment, she stared at him suspiciously. She likely had little experience being called out to by others in this manner. Her complexion betrayed a hint of panic. For the first time, he perceived that her pale skin contained multitudes of expression.

“I see.” “Please don’t mind me and go on your way.” “I’ve no business with you anyway.” When he said this and moved to let her pass, her eyes darted to his forehead—a motion so swift it seemed to whirl her pupils within their sockets, exuding a seductive allure. This came from those large pupils and expressions possessed by many foreign women, something Japanese women could never replicate.

“Then I beg your pardon.”

Having said that, she bent down, and as she straightened up, she glanced up at him softly from beneath her eyelids with a piercing look before walking briskly away. As he wandered aimlessly, he wondered what on earth he had heard at that moment—if it wasn't that woman's voice, then who could have called out to him?

Every time he walked through the streets lined with various filthy bars, cafés, and eateries in this district, he would gaze up at the night sky enveloping them and either doze off for a moment in the nearby park or else—without fail, night after night—catch sight of clusters of people stealing brief moments of precarious respite to sleep against the sides of taxis that had been waiting over an hour in the same spot, just short of being driven away. Or he saw nightly beggars—their lower bodies swollen with moisture from being stuck in mud—gather only to disappear, though he could not tell from where or how they vanished.

Even during the daytime, he sat on a bench placed by the pond in this clamorous park. It was around this pond that he had encountered that mysterious woman for the second time.

Almost uniformly, the people gathered on this bench were all worn out, their clothes grimy; every face bore the fatigue and weariness that ought to naturally show, followed by a poverty that grated on their nerves with its fretful persistence. Some held train transfer tickets in their hands, tearing them vertically and horizontally as if testing how finely they could rend them, all while vacantly gazing across the pond at the street; others sat with their chins resting on their knees, staring blankly at some fixed point as though in a daze. Among them were some reading traditional tales, yet despite sitting on adjacent benches, none attempted to speak to one another. They appeared to have no interest in such things. They either surreptitiously scrounged for cigarette butts or else sank into deep thought, appearing as if rooted in place.

He gazed at the carp in that pond, their scales coated in dust and soot. For some reason, these fish never seemed like living creatures to him. Were it not for the vulgar colors from movie poster paintings that must have washed in with rainwater, he found himself staring at them as if they were papercraft—particularly at those uncanny crimson carp and blue ones. They swam sluggishly through stagnant slime-thick water, their mud-weary bodies breaching the surface to gulp air in heavy gasps. The air hung ash-gray over the pond, fouled by the clamorous crowd’s grime and noise. Towering beyond this squalor rose a building that devoured countless spectators, its glass-paned windows inverted in reflection alongside women’s rounded hips peering through each pane. Some wore indigo hybrid dresses that spoke of disquiet; others pierced the bluish water’s stillness with necks whiter than their knees—all mirrored without a ripple. Sunlight glinted on rooftops along the main street behind these high-rises, casting diagonal shadows that rendered the bench’s pallid faces more melancholy yet languid still. Warm light fell upon his own body too.

Sunlight also struck the midst of the pond. Their sorrowful swimming toward the warmth—all the motes that danced in that brightness fell onto the water. Things like burst balloon fragments, rolled-up movie programs, fruit peels, or half-torn postcards of actresses—all were washed up toward the shore by lapping waves, floating on ripples so faint they might not even exist. The sorrowful postcard of Anita Steward—her pale, smiling face—appeared to float, still wet from his direction, drifting with the sunlight’s whims. As he gazed absently at it, the strange wetness of the printed paper’s pallid skin suddenly reminded him of that woman.

"Exactly that kind of pallor, and she always walks so slenderly." They resembled each other closely. "The area around those desolate cheeks could almost be said to perfectly resemble hers."

While he was filled with such thoughts, suddenly a red carp emerged from the pond’s depths, sucked in something, flipped over with a sharp motion, and vanished back into the water. At that moment he saw its crimson rounded body twist—bent and smoothly exposed. To him this was not merely a supple curved torso but an invitation into some beautiful momentary fantasy. When he looked about, the water had turned turbid and her form vanished soundlessly—yet the portion of her body floating on the surface still glimmered faintly, clinging stubbornly to his vision and refusing to fade away.

When he glanced up, on the advertisement poster for ×× Hall directly before him stood a luridly painted woman's face with disheveled hair, a sharply gleaming dagger clenched between her teeth. While sensing the redness of her lips, the pallor of her cheeks, and the irritating disarray of her hair—morbidly scattered as if fluttering near his own cheeks—he gazed at her insatiably. Amid all these visions, his tormented sexual paroxysms were gradually propelling him beyond his usual self. To him now, every fluttering banner and advertisement poster, the barely discarded Anita Steward postcard, the carp's torso, the woman in her troubling violet-blue haori, the scraping sound of wooden clogs, the stubbornly drooping willows—even the desolate red epaulets of the police officer at the nearby station—all resonated through his body and began blooming in clusters like some aberrant flower. In contrast, his face grew parched and coarse, doing nothing but deepen the sorrowful creases around his nostrils.

I have a desire to firmly grasp that carp’s torso to my heart’s content. Is that a strange, cold creature? Is it merely that? Or is it some other soft, indescribable creature—one from which I might derive some pleasure by grasping it? Whatever the case, within that body must lurk sensations of all kinds, something from this tumultuous city.

Such trivial thoughts of his spread through his body like a fever. Dust, soot, and scraps of paper. This pond that was nothing but air thick with them, a water’s surface reflecting every manner of uncanny shadow—within these, he thought there might exist something even he himself could not know. It was said that during the dredging conducted every three years, strangely enough, several diamond rings would invariably be found—along with pure gold rings, silver coins sunk into the depths, and other items: combs and hairpins of pure goldwork, coral beads, and at times mysterious paintings tightly sealed in countless bundles and submerged deep into the mud. There were even dolls of men and women, bound tightly on both sides, weighted down with sinkers and cursed, lying sunken in the sludge at the pond’s bottom. All the abhorrent workings of lust from the very depths of this city still lay submerged within these waters—some resplendently shining, dense as spring. Night after night, before fully brightening into blue, how that place must have been where all manner of things were discarded and sunk. From these thoughts, he gazed at the surface—a kind of oily expanse that could hardly be called water—as if staring at something wondrous for an even longer time.

At that moment, he felt as though the sun had faintly dimmed. But in reality, it was not so—five or six ken ahead, he saw a woman walking away. Before he could even gasp, she immediately noticed him and smiled casually, naturally. At that moment, he realized for the first time how pale and sharply outlined her skin—which he had almost exclusively seen at night on the streets—appeared, transparent in the sunlight. It had a lustrous quality like the pearly whiteness of shellfish flesh faintly tinged with orange—a pure white skin so rare among the Japanese that it was nearly unheard of. Her eyes, which at night had seemed tinged with brown, were undeniably an indigo-tinged black, veiled by long lashes on either side like reeds flourishing around a clear blue pond; with a languid light, they calmly returned his gaze.

He felt that this mysterious woman was undeniably a mixed-race child. He returned her smile almost instantaneously, and she immediately reciprocated in kind. She must have been returning from some shopping; her tall figure, clutching a furoshiki bundle and kicking up the hem of her kimono as she walked, drew people’s eyes. She hurried out into the street, but her unnaturally white neck remained etched clearly in his eyes.

At his weary ear, he heard someone whispering in a listless voice. Her figure stood so starkly in people’s gazes that she herself had grown notorious by now.

When he pricked up his ears, the whisper arose again from the bench behind him.

“They say that woman has electricity in her body.” “There’s no telling what she’ll do.” “They say she’s an unfathomable woman.” He heard someone say. It was a tired voice, like a dull horsefly. “How does she have electricity in her body?” “There’s no way such a thing could exist in a human body.”

When another voice spoke up, the previous voice answered again. "That woman—" "If she shakes a tree, it rattles violently." "They say if she carries a child on her back, it mysteriously suffocates before you know it." "That's why she avoids sitting or walking near electric lights as much as possible." "They say she only ever walks in dark places." By the time they finished speaking, her figure had already been swallowed by the crowd.

“Do you really think such a bizarre woman could exist in this day and age?”

When the astonished voices continued, “It’s that sort of illness.” “Just look at her unnaturally pale face—doesn’t that make it clear she’s diseased?” The previous listless voice continued wheezily. After a while, he left the bench. At that moment, sunlight slanted across the rooftops. Nearing winter, the yellowish evening light blatantly stained the interiors of two-story houses and the noren curtains of shops and taverns. Coming to this alleyway and seeing these rays always plunged him into unbearable desolation. When he reached the area behind Kannon Hall, he noticed a man who had followed him from behind—hovering like a shadow, furtive and seemingly wanting to say something.

When he came beneath a young ginkgo tree, the man drew near enough to brush against him and whispered in a low voice. “Do you have a train ticket?” “Actually…”

He began to say something before taking out an indigo-colored ticket. “I wanted to ask you to buy this.” “I haven’t eaten anything yet.” “Since morning...”

He took in the man’s wrinkled summer kimono, his old geta sandals, and the dusky skin characteristic of those who ceaselessly wandered this city. Yet he remained silent and stared into his own sleep-deprived eyes. He plucked a silver coin from his inner pocket and, in that same low voice, “You must be in trouble—use this since it’s all I have.”

Having said that, he placed the silver coin on the man’s palm. The man thanked him repeatedly and persistently tried to hand the ticket over to him.

“I don’t need that. Please don’t worry about that,” he said while spinning on his heel and walking away. He walked listening to the man’s voice behind him repeatedly offering servile greetings, harboring an unpleasant hatred toward what he himself had done out of disgust. From some indeterminate place to another, he would emerge at a street corner only to find himself inside some eatery bleakly taking his evening meal.

There he saw all sorts of people. That was a vulgar crowd of street musicians who played popular ballads of the time alongside violins. They kept singing from morning till night in that damp wooden tenement near Yoshiwara—a makeshift shack in the shadow of the embankment—wriggling like maggots all the while. When he happened to visit that tenement, the late afternoon sun cast a sorrowful russet light across the six-mat room's tatami floor, stained with soot and rags, now blackened and worn.

The musicians all rented violins at ten sen each per day, and on top of that, they were responsible for all string and instrument repairs themselves. The instruments, grimy from countless hands, bore a blackened luster that spoke of untold human contact, their hollow interiors choked with copious dust.

When he entered there nonchalantly as everyone else did, he was immediately introduced. Toshiro—an old friend from his hometown who had often threatened him and taken things like train fare—had ultimately been the one to introduce him there. There were four young men present, all uniformly sunburned yet bearing pale skin that hinted at malnutrition. During daylight hours, they were occasionally made to rehearse new daily ballads sent from Mannen-cho headquarters, though since they only needed to play the melodies, it hadn’t proved particularly difficult. One would sing while another played along,

“Yōtō-san, I to you, *Fell freshly in love—* Fell in love upon seeing you had a heart—

And so they sang in sorrowful, parched voices. As he listened to those three singing in the dim room—their large fish-like mouths agape—he recalled clusters of vagrants chanting hatless in Hongan-ji Temple’s shadowed precincts, park corners, and back alleys. Their voices were strangely cracked and hollow; listening too long made him feel his heart growing desolate while sinking deeper. Above all—the grimy kimonos hung on bent nails; fly-speckled ceilings; damp rotten planks adjoining toilets beyond windows; lonely sunlight creeping upward—all harmonized perfectly with his voice and lingered endlessly.

"Fell freshly in love—love—…" And so, with the violin screeching, the same melody was sung over and over again.

He borrowed the thin printed material that Toshiro was holding and read it; there were about ten types of ballads written there, with fixed prices set. Those printed materials were being "wholesaled" from the Mannen-cho headquarters and were to be sold off on those familiar streets. “I met the man who writes these ballads—he dropped out of Waseda and now specializes in this.” “It’s still treated like manuscript fees, you see.” “He’s constantly setting nothing but new works to music, you see.”

Toshiro spoke of how that man was in fact making a living solely from these manuscripts and how all the popular songs sung in Tokyo were composed by that man. And,

“He even makes special trips to Osaka and Kyoto using travel funds just for that purpose, you see.” “In other words, as long as you have the travel fare from Tokyo to Yokohama, you can carry a violin, sing and sell these prints from town to town, and make your way all the way to Osaka or even Kyoto, you see.”

Having said that, he folded a great number of printed materials in half and stacked them. A young man who appeared to be one of their comrades had been staring intently at him for some time, but

“Are you an artist?” He hurriedly denied it. But Toshiro immediately cut in,

“Since this man writes poetry, ballads are nothing to him. You should have him write something.” Having said that, “Could you compose something for him—about thirty or forty lines—” he said.

Then the man,

“When you say ‘poetry,’ do you mean new-style poetry?” “I hear the author of the Mannen-cho ballads is also skilled in poetry.”

As he said this, “I too came from the countryside with literary aspirations, but I’ve ended up stuck in a place like this. “I’ve even met Mr. T and Mr. S.” “If I had kept at it since then, I might have made something of myself by now, but…” In a Kansai accent—the violinist nearby burst out laughing and, lowering his instrument from his shoulder, remarked sarcastically—

“What could a man like this possibly accomplish?” “A man who’s good for nothing but lazing around in some flophouse.” “He’s got a knack for whining like that,” he said in a piercing, mocking tone, “though I myself flunked the music school exams three times.” “There’s that grassy spot in the schoolyard, you know.” “That’s where I entered the exam hall with my heart pounding.” “But that’s just a story to tell now.” He laughed dryly, as if belittling himself. Then the man from before stared intently,

“You’re lying! What qualifications do you have to take something like the music school exams? First of all, you haven’t even graduated middle school, and you can’t read a beer label in English!” The Violinist immediately turned red, bit his lip, and floundered as if at a loss over what to do with his flushed face. “Don’t talk nonsense! What would the likes of you know about music schools? I still have every last one of those interval theory books I studied back then!”

As he said this, slightly paling, the man from before pressed on as if chasing after him,

“Well then, let’s see them.” “If those music theory books actually worked, I wouldn’t be this damn disgusted,” he snapped, impatiently lighting a cigarette.

Toshiro spoke up from beside them.

“Stop with this nonsense and let’s practice tonight’s piece properly. The day’s grown quite short, hasn’t it?” With his leader’s authority, Toshiro grumbled, “You’ll excuse me a moment,” then opened his mouth wide again and began singing at length. The uniformly gaping mouths, those grimy teeth—they merely contracted and opened in mechanical repetition. Where passages held melancholy notes, they would deliberately narrow their eyes, furrow their brows, and produce voices like weeping.

“Sing like there are no instruments! Don’t go soft!” barked The Violinist in a hectoring shout, prompting the man from before to slam down his words with brusque vehemence. “What human throat could spew such violin-like shrieks?” “That’s precisely what you should lean into!” “The violin’s just accompaniment here—pure bloody accompaniment!” When thus cornered, the man from before—

“Accompaniment means playing a different piece altogether! It’s nothing but melody!” he snapped, chanting the words as if biting into them.

“Don’t get cocky—there, you messed up. You need to draw it out longer. Freshly smitten—like this.” The Violinist shouted tersely while glancing sideways at him, as if declaring he’d never yield to such a man. Toshiro kept silent, but the profound awkwardness of having his childhood friend witness his comrades’ petty squabbling inevitably cast him into gloomy contemplation.

“These petty squabbles happen every day.” “There’s just no helping it.” Toshiro had sung folk flutes and popular ballads skillfully since childhood, but he always looked down on himself for having fallen to such a state whenever he was before him. “It’s all the same either way. “Even someone like me can’t do work like yours and just loafs around,” he whispered in a low, somber voice. “Well, when you’ve got no other way to make a living, you become a street singer,” the young comrade said in a lightly self-important tone,

“At least we can eat,” “and we don’t have to bow our heads to anyone.” “We just sing wherever takes our fancy in this hand-to-mouth existence.” “That’s our sole redeeming feature,” Toshiro said with a relieved expression that quickly faded. “But let it rain ten days straight, and we’re finished.” “No outdoor work then.” “We’d lie about here like maggots.” “When that happens, I start remembering—our hometown where I played with you.” “Wondering what became of it all,” he added, this ne’er-do-well approaching thirty, his face so desolate it seemed to bleach the roots of his brows.

He had been stealing glances at the fair-skinned boy sitting perfectly still in the corner of the room since earlier. Though he followed along with the others fumbling his mouth awkwardly,the boy’s voice alone—youthfully discordant and shrill compared to their roughened tones—would trail off after a few bars only to burst forth again in sudden oddly leaping notes as though unable to bear silence. And so he would occasionally glance his way,but upon meeting his gaze would hurriedly avert his eyes flustering himself into stammering voice. He could not help thinking those mannerisms could only belong to someone who had recently joined this group. Moreover,the boy’s face possessed youthful luster—still smooth and unblemished by corruption compared to other members.

He whispered quietly into Toshiro’s ear,

“What’s with that boy?” “He doesn’t seem like the type to come to a place like this…”

When I asked this, Toshiro glanced briefly and said in a low voice, “That boy?” “That…” he murmured, lowering his voice further. “He came here of his own accord about a week ago. “Seems he left the countryside but couldn’t find any work, so he wound up here. “Still,” I asked him, “what do you plan to do in the future?” and he said, “I want to study during the day and work my way through. “At night I can do anything,” he claims—but everyone starts like that. In the end, they all reach a point where nothing works out. “Even watching him now, I can clearly see what kind of man he’ll become. “Right now he’s just acting shy like that.”

Even as Toshiro spoke in a tone that seemed somewhat confident, the boy was staring this way with an uneasy premonition that his own affairs were being discussed.

“So he’ll start singing in the streets now? With that voice, he’ll never amount to anything,” I said. “He’s still shy about it, but give it two weeks and he’ll be fine,” Toshiro replied. “Once he sings out there even once, there’s no turning back. You’ve got to grow shameless through and through. The constables chase us off something fierce, you know. Makes for a wretched trade when you think on it.” Toshiro finished organizing the song leaflets, then stuffed the portable stove and cider bottles filled with cooled boiled water into a small furoshiki bundle.

“What about the cider bottles?” he asked. “Our throats get dry when we’re singing.” “That’s why we prepare them and bring them along.”

Toshiro laughed forlornly, "Ha ha ha." When the others finished practicing, they all bundled the printed materials and pocket stoves into a single package. The boy stiffly stood up, arranged his own share and Toshiro’s portion to be taken along on the dirt-floor planks, then aligned everyone’s geta sandals in neat rows.

At that moment, the sun had dimmed both inside and outside as an unseasonably chilly evening air began creeping through the surroundings. The violinist placed his instrument into a cotton bag and cradled it as though he’d clean forgotten their earlier squabble,

“Let’s get going! You take your time,” he said while snapping sharply at his companion: “What are you dawdling for?” “Let’s go,” he said to the man from earlier. The man from earlier took out two-cut cigarettes from a blue cardboard box and lit them before saying something to him in lieu of a greeting; then they both slipped on old geta without socks and left. Both were of matching height, their retreating figures bearing a similar bleakness and dustiness.

“You’ll be heading out soon too, I suppose,” I said.

“I should get going soon…” Toshiro said, rising to his feet. The boy clutched the violin and printed materials, still wearing his faintly charming unfaded navy Satsuma-kasuri garment with tube-shaped sleeves. When he stepped outside, he parted ways with Toshiro and the boy.

Along the road from the Twelfth Floor to Yoshiwara, right behind the Katsudoukan and adjacent to the public toilet, there was always an automobile at rest. From around midnight until one or two in the early morning, this automobile—stationary at fixed hours like clockwork—had scarcely ever budged. None could say when it had arrived or when it might depart again, yet there it perpetually sat, curtains lowered across every window, its dull glass panes glimmering in the murk between streetlamps.

Moreover—and strangest of all—not once had anyone ever seen the driver’s figure. At all times—as if someone were making repairs or had gone off to fetch a machine part—the entire automobile, devoid of any human presence with its seal-like black luster, lay utterly still in the dry, empty wind. He had once, on a night when yellowed leaves from the row of oak trees there were scattering down, peered inside from beside the handle on the gutter side—opposite the street—driven by a sudden curiosity. At that moment, the shock was so intense he nearly cried out—he reflexively clapped his own hand over his mouth. ――Just as he stealthily approached and peered through the glass window from the lacquered flank that reflected his own figure even in night vision, the deep green window curtain inside (that night tinged with velvet-like blackness) had somehow been partially drawn aside by one corner, leaving an opening of about two inches. When he directed his gaze through that opening, he was suddenly shocked as if his throat had been constricted. This was because within the darkened interior sat a woman’s fleshy face as white as porcelain—whether due to her sitting perfectly upright or being placed there motionless, it remained utterly still.

Moreover, in that very moment, he was about to let out a second cry of surprise because he had discovered another man’s face positioned perilously close to the woman’s. For their postures—resembling two white melons placed side by side—emerged in the faint light filtering through the curtains from the street, as if there were no illumination within. The woman’s face had a starkly white and vividly defined contour. Though he hadn’t anticipated this, even merely discovering a woman’s fleshy face within this mysterious automobile left unclear how profoundly it shook his heart—already resembling something utterly decadent. Though it belonged where such things might exist, her face—pale as a flounder floating whitely in the utterly silent interior—shattered his perverted lust completely.

From the extravagance of her attire to the fur stole around her neck, the woman possessed an actress-like allure and commanding presence. Above all, her eyes appeared in the darkness with a dim, frosted-glass-like glow. The man was wearing clothes. He had pulled his black fedora down low. They remained silent. They didn’t even speak. The only conceivable reason for their behavior was that they seemed to be waiting for the driver—who appeared to have been sent out to buy cigars or the like—to return. However, not only did the driver fail to return even after ten or twenty minutes had passed, but he did not even show any sign of doing so.

At that very instant, he felt a strange nervous compulsion. "What on earth are they doing? They weren’t speaking or smoking cigarettes. It was strange how they sat there without moving, pressed together like pale gourds. Are they reading a book or something?"

Even as he thought this and checked carefully, there was nothing resembling that on their laps—but then, at that moment, he suddenly recoiled from the door in shock. As if flicked away by some unseen force, he swiftly concealed his body in a gap between houses—right by the gutter where a back entrance stood. In that instant, he sensed mysterious pale forms layered upon one another.

Two or three minutes later, on the lacquered door opposite the street—directly facing him—a pallid hand slid out smoothly before seizing the handle and twisting it counterwise. The heavy-looking thick door swung open weightlessly without a sound. A woman of considerable height leapt down from there abruptly, followed by a clothed man descending. They scanned their surroundings before hastening down the darkened street. At that moment he perceived an intense perfume’s aroma—overpowering the gutter’s stench—wafting through the air like sheer silk gauze.

He lingered there a while longer, struck in the chest by these mysterious scenes, when from nowhere a driver appeared beside the automobile and immediately climbed into the driver’s seat. Before long, this suspicious automobile lumbered into motion, made a loop toward Tawaramachi, then picked up speed and raced off. In the blink of an eye, the automobile vanished like a shadow.

He emerged from the gap between houses and idly glanced at the automobile’s tire tracks before beginning to walk dazedly again. Tormented by the myriad images surfacing before his eyes, his mind grew heavy and his heart wearied. He himself had not even considered why he had to wander these loathsome streets every night, nor how by doing so his own inner being was decaying more and more. He was merely walking the inevitable path of all the worn-out singles, the unemployed, and every incapable person.

He was soon walking through the park, almost like a ghost threading his way from one grove to another. He himself, with no purpose whatsoever, was leaning against a bench there among many idlers. From about half a block ahead of him came a singing voice he had once heard before. When he looked closely, there in the shadow of a grove—with gaslight flickering—surrounded by thirty or forty people, the usual vulgar sentimentalism was now being vigorously strummed and sung. At that moment, he immediately recalled the group of street musicians. At the same time,

“I don’t care anymore who sees my face.” “When shame sinks this low‚ it settles into place.” He recalled that same grimy‚ old-man-like face as it had uttered those words‚ then left the bench and began walking toward the crowd‚ Toshiro sang while playing‚ his usual subdued voice deliberately drawing out mournful notes at times‚ surveying each face among the onlookers as he performed‚ The boy crouched forlornly‚ pamphlets clutched in his right hand‚ restlessly shifting his gaze between Toshiro’s countenance and those of the gathered people‚

He, wedged within the human wall of the crowd, listened until it seemed to him the entire throng stood enraptured—as if entranced—by the mournfully weeping violin. Toshiro, of course, did not notice him. When he finished playing, the boy circled around the crowd in a faltering voice, “Would anyone like a copy?” “Ten sen per copy.” “The songs are all included here with their melodies,” he said, thrusting pamphlets into people’s sight only to withdraw them again. Just as someone from the dim crowd called out in an odd voice—“One here”—a mouse-like squeak from the opposite corner echoed: “One here too.”

When a customer showed up, Toshiro suddenly bellowed at the top of his voice,

“For just ten sen, you get every last song included.” “Now’s the time—before we sell out!” he urged. Peering anxiously through gaps in the crowd, he kept hastening the boy along. They worked swiftly to sell their pamphlets before park patrolmen could chase them off. Eighty-seven copies had sold when the crowd began thinning out. The dark ring of bodies peeled away one by one until only four or five remained—still Toshiro pressed his sales—then abruptly he called to the boy with a sharp wave of his hand,

“Put out the gaslight!” he shouted. The boy immediately tried to blow out the gaslight, but it wouldn’t go out. Toshiro extinguished it with a practiced motion while muttering something. “We have to get out of here fast. Fold up the gas lamp quickly.”

Toshiro briskly folded the printed materials into a furoshiki bundle. And the two of them hurried toward Kannon Hall, hiding themselves within the crowd. As he watched this, he indeed observed a single patrolling police officer approaching with muffled footsteps.

His aimless day-and-night wanderings made his figure emerge in every street and back alley. If asked why he had to roam nightly like this, he could not have answered in a single word. For him there was no rationale; his feet instinctively turned toward bustling thoroughfares. Soon winter froze solid the park trees' bark in this district, while cold fierce enough to crack shoddy buildings intensified.

One evening, he climbed the twelfth-floor spiral staircase. Though he had long intended to climb it someday, he had never done so. He found intriguing the moldering smell he had anticipated, the swelter of dust, and the stairs that creaked mournfully throughout. Something about the desolate echoes of his own footsteps that stirred his curiosity, along with the swarm of sightseeing girls who had ascended this tower just as he had, wove a bizarre illusion within him.

When he had climbed up to the ninth floor, he read the various graffiti scrawled there—some in pencil, others etched with scratches into the walls. There were inscriptions where provincial visitors had written their home provinces or recorded era names. Among them stood Hokkaido and Hyuga Province. Where claw marks remained, dust had settled in their grooves, while pencil traces had faded almost to nothing.

“I came bearing a traveler’s pack to the capital, but now I return broken and empty-handed,” or “From here, I breathe the distant air of my homeland.” “From this place, my wishes come to naught.” and similar phrases were inscribed there. Those who had fallen behind in the city—he felt them within himself as well. Those leaving the city and those tormented by trying to leave materialized vividly before his eyes. Or there were ones meaninglessly scrawled like “October 5, Meiji 45. Takejima Ten’yo.” Yet how forlornly those very era names must have echoed in one’s mind. When he had been gazing blankly at them for a while, he immediately recalled Toshiro’s grimy old face.

When he reached the summit, all surrounding windows had been tightly covered with wire mesh, preventing any jump from them. The wind raged fiercely. He looked down from there at the buildings and roads and clustered electric lights spread across the park. On the road below, black shadows of pedestrians swarming like ants stretched and shrank across whetstone-white pavement—some undulating as if floating on water, others squirming like birds. There electric lights glowed mournfully everywhere, blazing with fierce brilliance between every shadow of people and around every building’s edge. As he gazed at this scene, he came to think of hurling himself groundward now—like a crow shot through mid-flight, plummeting earthward.

At that moment, he was already on the ground, crushed flat as if by a great weight, lying prostrate on the road. People formed a dark ring around him, but he was already gasping for breath. When he had thought that far, he noticed his fingertips gripping the wire mesh had gone numb from clutching it too tightly.

"Would even the death of a good-for-nothing like me deserve to be called a death? My jump would surely draw a crowd. It might disturb—for a moment—the calm expressions of those who'd lived peacefully until now. But in the next instant, as if nothing had happened—like ripples fading—people would regain their composure, resume their interrupted thoughts, and pleasure-seekers would hurry off toward their diversions. In that, I hold nothing of value." When he thought this, the group of girls who had come up behind him peered fearfully down at the ground below while chirping like sparrows.

“I want to try jumping down from here.” “Would I die?” the girl asked the tallest girl beside her.

“Huh?” “You’d definitely die.” “Oh, that’s dangerous!” “Don’t go so close to the edge—” she said, seizing the smaller girl’s shoulders from behind. He stood there, nonchalant at first but gradually turning pale. If I were to take these two girls down to the ground, if I were to jump from this height—then perhaps, just maybe, I would… he had been tormentingly pondering such thoughts.

It was only then that the girls discovered his figure between the door and the wire mesh. Their peaceful, unblemished faces seemed to have quietly turned pale, as if transferred from his own pallid visage. At least with their anxious complexions—knowing full well he was no one of consequence—they nonetheless gradually retreated backward to protect their own gentle bodies suspended in midair.

I am being feared. To them, what a coarse appearance I must present. When he thought this, he whirled around to face the opposite direction and was bathed in every sharply gleaming light from constellations blazing across the fierce night sky. The cold bit deep. It was a cold that verged on pain.

After a while came the sound of them hurriedly descending the stairs. When he heard this, he felt peaceful for the first time. "I can do nothing," he thought. Yet he feared what writhed within him. Five or six minutes passed. Then suddenly he ran toward the wire mesh. "I'm just running like this—no, I'm absolutely not going to jump. I'm no fool. Just trying to run like this—that's all," he told himself while clawing at a torn section of mesh. The taut wire emitted an eerie metallic clangor that resonated unnervingly through the door's interior. Only then did he notice the guard stationed there. The old man emerged quietly and seized his frigid hand.

“You mustn’t act so violently.” “You mustn’t tear that,” he said in a withered voice that seemed to belong to all old men, staring him up and down. When he looked back almost mechanically, blankly, “Violence, you say…” he murmured absently. The old guard smiled with practiced familiarity and quietly approached, “You’ve been here rather long, haven’t you?” “This is a high place.” “There’s what they call the demon’s temptation too, you know.” “You’d best come down now.”

While saying this, he quietly guided him inside the door as if pressing against his back. He silently followed the old guard’s lead. The old guard escorted him all the way to the stairway entrance, “Keep going down. Keep going down without looking to the sides,” he said. He felt his lower body go limp. When his dizziness worsened, he felt for the first time that his body was instead becoming intoxicated. He was thinking as he descended many stairs. “Had I become so unhinged that the old guard felt compelled to stop me? Had there been something in my gaze that made him think so?” he wondered. Strangely, whenever someone came up to this tower—whenever anyone climbed to a high place—they would find themselves thinking suddenly and without reason, “What if I tried jumping?” Was this what they called “the demon taking hold”? Or had that old guard become conditioned to discern, through some means, why those who came up to the tower had climbed—judging by their complexions? Tormented by these thoughts, he continued descending the stairs step by step. At each staircase landing sat a guard facing a desk. Each time, he heard a lonely clock marking time in the quiet room. Whenever guards noticed his abnormally pale complexion and strangely exhausted gait, they would watch him disappear again at the next staircase entrance. Strangely, through these ceaseless comings and goings—regardless of day or night—at these few staircases’ entrances, stairways that should have had no climbers would abruptly creak, making him unable to shake the sensation that someone was walking up behind him. No sooner would he think this than faint creaking footsteps would begin ascending from the opposite staircase too. It seemed as though they were ceaselessly rotating round and round like shadows in a revolving lantern, alternating one after another. In the end, he could no longer tell how many staircases he had climbed up and descended. His vision grew dizzy.

Moreover, as he clung to the brass handrail, his hands hung down limp and cold, as if frozen stiff. At that moment, the guard panicked,

“The entrance is over there!” “Don’t even think about it!” “You’ll fall out of the window.” “Don’t be absurd!” While saying this, he pointed to the stairway entrance with hemp-like hands. The large hippopotamus-like entrance faced toward him, open and floating in the window light.

“I see. So it was over there?” he said, hurriedly starting forward. Just when he thought he’d surely descended to the seventh floor, he found himself still on the eighth. Beyond the window stretched Yoshiwara’s unbroken lights, dimly visible. Fear rising in his throat, he broke into a run down the stairs. The footsteps kept coming—ceaseless, relentless—their rhythm pounding against his back.

He finally could no longer endure it and asked the guard stationed there.

“Just what floor is this?” “I’ve been trying to figure it out since earlier…” The guard stared fixedly at his face. Those eyes did not move. He too remained still for a while but felt his face grow dry and feverish.

“This is the seventh floor. What on earth have you been doing running around here since earlier?” “You’re a creepy fellow.” “There. This is the stairway entrance.” The guard led him impatiently to the stairway entrance and, while pushing him along, said in a dull voice, “Go straight down from here without looking to the sides. “Don’t look at the windows.”

Having said that, he turned and walked away. He did as instructed. As he descended flight after flight of stairs, he glimpsed a guard about to make tea from a steaming iron kettle, the scene almost dreamlike in its remoteness. He descended that section too without pausing for breath.

Three minutes later, he felt as if the sole of his foot had been lightly prodded. When he regained awareness, he found himself standing on the road. The soles of his feet pulsed with a dull ache. As he instinctively looked up at that moment, every door of this uncanny old tower began closing.

The tower, submerged in a sea of electric lights that surrounded it on all sides, stood shadowless and breathless. Moreover, when he looked up again, such dizziness came over him that he nearly fainted, and he even felt a chill creep through him.

He then, not long after, encountered a certain ominous incident on a winter night.

It was when he was walking as usual that he noticed two things: the entire park crowd began running toward the tower, and the surge of people stained the tower’s base a deep black. He unexpectedly heard that night that the Electric Girl had jumped from the tower. By the time he rushed there, the corpse had already been taken away, and the crowd was beginning to disperse. He did not even know why she had thrown herself to her death, but merely because he had seen her three or four times, he felt both a certain chill and sorrow simultaneously. Moreover, that pure white skin neither left his sight nor ceased clinging to him endlessly.

After several more nights, he heard his impoverished street musicians singing as they played violins in the vacant lot at the tower’s base. He stood in the crowd and gazed at Toshiro’s face for a long time. Rather than questioning why Toshiro had chosen such desolate ground, that day he found himself seized by a certain lonely notion of passive inertia—so much so that he even contemplated throwing himself into the musicians’ midst. When people began to disperse, he tapped Toshiro on the shoulder. Toshiro started, and then—

“Have you been listening since earlier? To me singing—” he said, his face turning red.

“No, I wasn’t really listening—but are you stopping already?” he said. Toshiro turned off the gaslight, had the boy wrap their things in the furoshiki cloth, then chose a shadowed spot to crouch. “You can’t perform on nights like this.” “It’s just too damn gloomy.” “One person stops to listen, then two walk away—and before you know it, four or five cluster together only to scatter apart. Kills any urge to sing.” “Makes your nerves raw.” “On nights like that—no, from the moment you leave your lodgings—you can just feel it coming.”

Toshiro said that and clouded his already old-man-like face with even more gloom. He, as if trying to muster some cheer, “Let’s try again—first off, this spot’s no good. It’s dark and damp here, you know,” he said, suddenly glancing toward the tower. At its spire—sharply carved octagonally—he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was caught there.

“The location isn’t great either… but tonight’s already a lost cause. “Because everyone who stops by has such faint shadows—and tonight of all nights, it’s nothing but people who seem strangely hungry.” “It was partly that gaslight over there too—made everyone’s faces look all pale and warped somehow,” Toshiro said, giving the gaslight a brief glance. A black dog trotted briskly away beneath it. It was an emaciated, skeletal creature.

He had been hesitating until that moment, still thinking of speaking even now, but suddenly the words slipped out.

“Didn’t they say there was a suicide by jumping here yesterday?” “Do you know?” “Right around here.” He said this while looking at weeds that grew like an old man’s hair. Toshiro made a displeased face but,

“Yeah, I know.” “I’ve been thinking about that since earlier.” “When something like that happens, business never goes well, you know,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “For those of us who do business outdoors, we take omens from things like suicides by jumping, you know.” “I’d resolved not to perform here tonight when leaving my lodgings, but before I knew it, I’d started and only realized afterward,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as if cold. The boy, in the same posture as Toshiro, was crouching and rhythmically tapping stone against stone. A dry, peculiar sound kept nagging at him relentlessly. Toshiro, too, kept glancing back as if bothered, but the boy continued tapping without noticing.

Both he and Toshiro remained silent, but suddenly, Toshiro asked:

“Have you ever seen that woman? The white-faced one—” he said while glancing at him with a dark look. “I’ve seen her two or three times. Around those streets, you know.”

He recalled how she had once smiled faintly and walked away. After that, they fell silent once again.

The boy was still rhythmically tapping the stones; a dry sound rang out.

“Hey, stop making that weird noise. It’s annoying.”

When Toshiro said nervously, the sound immediately ceased. After that, their conversation never returned to the woman.

When they emerged onto the bright street, Toshiro whispered to him with a deathly pale face. The spot was right before a ball-balancing booth where a woman passed by in the opposite direction. Unmistakably the slender figure of that woman appeared before them, her neck standing out distinctly white. “That woman walks away—what an uncanny night this is! That must certainly be her,” Toshiro exclaimed. At that moment he felt a strange tremor coursing through his entire body. His eyes too had clearly seen that figure. The brisk Western-style gait showed not the slightest difference from when he’d glimpsed it in that geisha alleyway. Yet she couldn’t possibly be alive. That woman had surely thrown herself to her death. Still—the resemblance chilled him.

He cut in to interrupt Toshiro’s words, “There’s no way that woman could be walking around. At this hour, and with her being dead—how could she possibly be walking around?”

Toshiro, with his heart pounding, gasped for breath,

“But this is strange. She looks exactly like her.”

And he looked back again. The crowd moved incessantly, flowing from one place to another. No sooner would they gather in one spot than they would flow away; no sooner would they flow than they would sluggishly gather again or stagnate.

He was suddenly assailed by an obsessive thought. “What if... perhaps...” he thought, and began to speak. “Have you known that woman for a long time?” “You know her lodging near your own place, don’t you?”

At that moment, Toshiro’s face changed color as he stared at him. It had turned paler than paper and seemed to tremble. They remained silent for about two minutes, but “I’ve known her for quite some time. But...” he said, then fell silent as if tripping over his words. He, too, walked in silence, gradually beginning to feel a trembling throughout his body from a certain premonition that seemed to drain the color from his very soul. If that woman had indeed been pregnant as rumored, and if the child in her womb had truly been crushed like a frog when she leapt to the ground—then when he considered this and glanced at Toshiro, he caught sight of a pale face gripped by an uncanny chill that mingled extreme terror and unease.

At that moment, he once again casually sensed the massive twelve-story building looming heavily behind him. The figure like a shot-down crow; the form leaping from that tower; all shadows flitting across his exhausted nerves.