Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

When evening came, the Boy would stand before the gate and read aloud the peeling characters on the nameplate.
Beyond the hedge, his small darkly shadowed figure stood beneath the electric light that had yet to glow, trailing a hem-narrowing desolate shade.

The Boy always carried a red-lacquered flute in his hand.
Yet he never once played it.

Coming out before the old lattice door entwined with hedge vines, Shakugoro—master of this house—yearned for the evening hour when the Boy would visit.
Compared to former times when herons wandered through abundant marshes, the area beyond the castle walls now teemed with tiled-roof buildings crowding together.

“You’re terribly late today, aren’t you? Why are you trembling so? Did you run into a dog or something?”

“No, Father.”

The Boy shook his head. Soft corn-like red hair swayed in the faint breeze.

“Whenever I come near your house, my body trembles so strangely. It’s nothing.”

“Then that’s all right, I suppose. You mustn’t let your condition worsen again.”

Shakugoro pressed his palm against the Boy’s silk-like cheek with a fatherly gesture.

“Where is Mother?”

The Boy, having said that, peered into the house.
A small cocoa-colored bird flitted back and forth within the vermilion-lacquered cage on the pillars of the detached pavilion, its shadow already gone from where the sunlight had faded.

“Look, she’s sewing Juko in the detached pavilion.”
“Can you see? She’s right there by the bamboo veranda with the birdcage.”

“Yes, shall I call her, I wonder.”

“Why don’t you sneak over and surprise her instead?”

The Boy swiftly passed through the entrance hall and the next room, but just as he was about to step onto the stepping stones leading to the detached pavilion, he noticed a single hanging scroll of a Buddhist painting displayed in the alcove.

"Why do you keep something like that hanging there?"
"I’ve seen that painting before…"

"Well, you see…"

Shakugoro looked sorrowfully between the Boy and the Buddhist scroll, hesitated, and finally parted his heavy lips.

"That is something Father feels compelled to hang whenever loneliness strikes him peculiarly."
"If you dislike seeing that, I can put it away…"

“But that’s strange, isn’t it?”

On the old scroll was a plump face with narrow eyes.
On a lotus pedestal sat an old, lonely Buddha.
But that feeling held a brightness—pale and hazy like a moonlit night.

The Boy alighted onto the garden stone.
In the detached pavilion surrounded by blue bamboo, the creaking of the needle sewing satin—perhaps due to the thick fabric—made a sound like rubbing bamboo bark.
The Boy took in his mother’s white nape and emaciated shoulders, then—perhaps from a heart flustered with longing—caused the bamboo veranda to creak.
“Mother.”
The Boy’s hands formed a cross at Mother’s chest.
Startled by being suddenly embraced from behind, Mother took a moment to calm her wide eyes before they soon began to shine with joy.

“Oh, what brings you here?”

When Mother said this, she looked toward the window where Father stood.
They smiled at each other, but not a single one of those smiles carried a hue of satisfaction.

“I knew right away because Father was out at the gate.”

“But I was surprised—because you suddenly came flying at me like that—you’ve come all the way from such a far place.”

Mother, having said that, once looked at Father.
The father, who had apparently been gazing at the sky, showed a sad smile in the faintly diminished evening light.
“Even if I walked all day, it’s still so terribly far to reach home, you see.”
“It’s a path that just goes round and round, you see.”

Mother picked up the Boy, then furrowed her brows in a pained manner.

“How truly far it must be.”

Mother led the Boy out into the garden.
The banana plant that the Boy had loved—resembling a blue fan—now flapped in the evening wind like a tattered dragon banner, its leaves forming comb-like ripples.

“Father, why does this child look so pale?”

“Yes, it really isn’t good.”

After exchanging these words, the two of them went out to the rear garden with the Boy between them.

“Where is Kishi?”

“It must be about time for her to return.”

Mother turned to the Boy and said, “You have a sister named Kishi now. You probably haven’t seen her before, I suppose.”
“She’s a sweet child, you know.”

The Boy looked up at Mother’s eyes with clouded ones.

“I don’t know.”

“Because you can meet her soon.”

The Boy did not attempt to answer. He had just realized he was no longer alone, and a lonely expression drifted across his face.

“It might be better not to let Kishi meet this child—I somehow feel that way.”
“If we let them meet, I can’t help but feel he’ll never come to visit us again after that.”

While looking at the Boy’s unsteady footsteps, Father glanced back at Mother hovering faintly in the darkened surroundings.

“But…”

Mother cut her words short.
“They’ll end up meeting before we know it—we can’t keep hiding him completely,” she said.

“That’s true too. I say this because I imagine it must be lonely for that child…but in the end, it doesn’t matter.”

Father brushed away an insect fluttering in a spiderweb and rinsed his hands in the stone spring.

“Father, should I go back now?”

The Boy stopped and said.

“Look, it must be dinner time now—over there, a white cloth has been hung, and everyone’s preparing the feast. Can you see?”

“What is that round thing?”

“It’s fruit.”
“There are flowers too. You should be a bit more gentle.”
“Did you understand?”

“Oh.”

The Boy, after a moment, suddenly looked up at Mother.

“Is my clock still there?”
“Of course it is—the one where a pigeon pops out, right? That one’s certainly there.”

“Will you show me later?”

“Of course.”

Father and Mother exchanged glances again.
The surroundings had grown completely dark.
The faint sound of a baby carriage came from the front.

“She seems to have returned.”

“The carriage creaks a lot because it’s new.”

Mother went out to the front gate.
On top of the baby carriage lay a small girl sleeping soundly, her delicate eyes closed beneath a feathered hat.

“Since she was sleeping so peacefully, I thought it best not to disturb her.”

The Servant said while quietly flipping back the hood, explaining this was why they were late.

“Yes, you’ve had a hard time.”

When Mother lifted the warm, bird-like body, the infant woke up, looked around, and—perhaps frightened by the growing darkness—suddenly began to cry.
Mother opened her chest.
From there slid out a bead about the size of a grape, which was enclosed within the infant’s lips.

“I received these flowers from the Madam at the hospital, though they’ve wilted.”

“Put them in the water jar and leave them there—you always take such good care of things.”

Before they knew it, the Boy was standing beside Mother.
And he tried to peer at the infant while stretching up his short stature.
Father was also standing behind.

“Mother.”

“What is it?”

“Please let me see that baby just for a moment.”

“Like this?”

“Oh.”

The Boy peered at the infant.
From beside them, Father placed his hand on the Boy’s shoulder and said quietly.

“Don’t you think she resembles you? Whether it’s the nose or eyes, she greatly takes after you.”

Father touched the infant’s cheek with his finger and made the Boy look at her.
But in the Boy’s eyes appeared a distinctly clouded expression verging on displeasure.
Father felt this in his own heart before anything else.

“I don’t resemble her at all. There’s no face like mine anywhere. Mother, I don’t resemble her.”

Mother listened to those words with sorrow and exchanged glances with Father.
On Father’s face was an expression that said not to say anything.

The Boy left the infant’s side and was plucking maple ivy leaves.
Even during the meal, Mother grilled a small fish for the Boy, but he used his chopsticks on the vegetables instead.
“Mother, why do people catch fish?”

With the tip of his chopsticks, the Boy pointed at a red-skinned fish and asked.

"They’re in rivers and seas too. You put bait on a hook’s tip, lower it where fish might be, and wait quietly."
"The hungry fish come, eat the bait, and get caught on the hook…"

"The fish must be in pain, right?"

The Boy looked at Mother’s face and, with a pained expression, said, "Was this fish caught that way too?"
The Boy asked.

“Probably so.”

Father said from beside them.

“Fish apparently don’t think much about being eaten by humans while they’re alive, so they aren’t sad.”

“Aren’t they sad after being eaten?”

After saying this, the Boy looked alternately at his father and mother sitting across the dining table.—Father and Mother had both paled slightly and remained silent for a while.

“You say such difficult things, huh?
“Even fish must feel sadness, I suppose.
“But since they’re dead, I wouldn’t know.”

“Since they’re dead, you don’t know?”

The Boy repeated the same words and pretended to think with his eyes. Father’s complexion changed then, as if he had been struck by some strange realization. That made sense—because Mother had turned deathly pale.

“Father, why do I exist like this? Am I not like a fish?”

The Boy inserted the flute he carried into his waistband.
And the Boy himself showed an utterly perplexed expression.

“Since you’re Father’s child, it’s only natural for you to be by Mother’s side.”
“You’re different from fish.”
“See? You’re sitting right there properly, aren’t you?”

Having said that, Father tried to speak even more plainly.

“When you do that, just as my face becomes clearly visible to you, so too can I see your face clearly.”
“Therefore, you mustn’t say such nonsense.”

The Boy had been silently gazing at the clock for some time, but there was a rather gloomy look in his eyes—as if tracing distant memories across its white face.

“I know that clock!”

Having said that, he stood up with a look as if reading text.

“That’s right, you were always looking at the clock so curiously.”
“You remember that well, don’t you?”

Mother added more words.
“From that time, you’ve grown much older, but back then you couldn’t even walk yet.”
“Yes, I couldn’t walk back then, but now I can.”
“It’s truly so strange somehow, isn’t it?”

The Boy stood under the pillar.
And then he tilted his small ear toward the sound marking the hour.
To the clock with its white face, the egg-yellow dimmed electric light drew nearer, its glow slightly weakening.

“Right, from that time, this clock has grown old.”
“Though it was only a brief while, to me it feels as if a hundred years have passed.”

Father looked up at the clock with a sorrowful expression.

“But since this child is here like this…”

Mother stroked the Boy’s head.
“Where would I truly return you?”
As she said this and tried to take his hand, the Boy—who had been there until that very moment—had already stepped outside the entrance and begun walking briskly away in silence.

“Are you leaving already?”
“That’s terrible of you.”

Mother rushed out to the entrance.
And then Father did as well.
—However, the Boy’s figure left not even a shadow in the hedge’s shade.

“That child has already returned—”

Mother stood at the gate and looked back at Shakugoro.
Shakugoro had been staring intently at the ground where what appeared to be the Boy’s small footprints were faintly imprinted, slightly damp.

“Look, so many bugs.”

Shakugoro pointed at the squirming millipedes swarming around the footprints after saying this.
The millipedes squirmed through the damp outlines of the footprints like stitches being sewn, swarming while feeding on some foul stench.
To Mother’s mind, these skin-crawling insects licking at her gentle son’s footprints felt deeply unsettling.
“Loathsome millipedes.”

When Mother tried to trample them underfoot, Shakugoro abruptly stopped her.
According to old tales, one must not tread upon the footprints left by the departed when they come visiting.
He interjected in a tone that suggested it was something to be left as it was.

The two of them stood facing each other in silence.
And the millipedes, like boot needles tracing the Boy’s footprints, stitched layer upon layer of thread without showing any sign of weariness.

II

Shakugoro would wander around the house in that strange dark forest in the evening, as if longing for something.
Though called a forest, it was merely a house on the edge of a cliff, with only ancient hackberries and chinquapins covering its roof, where one would occasionally see herons’ white droppings on the road.

There, a child of about seven or eight would come and go, and Shakugoro would go out to see that child’s face.
Not only did Shakugoro notice how uncannily the child resembled someone, but he had also taken note that one day, the child who came visiting him had lost his shadow in that very area.

That evening as well, Shakugoro suddenly tried to conceal himself by pressing against the hedge, but was immediately discovered by the house’s rather tall master.
They often met face to face, but there were many times when they would hide their faces from each other.

"You always seem to have some business walking around my house... Do you have some matter to attend to?"
“Or is it merely that you can walk around freely?”

The master of the house—a man around Shakugoro’s age—stared intently at his face with a half-friendly yet awkwardly shy expression that blended goodwill with social reserve.

“No, I don’t have any business at your house. It’s just a peculiar habit—I’m wandering here simply because I want to walk this road.”
“It’s nothing suspicious.”

“I’m not suggesting anything suspicious, but since I see you here so very often… I couldn’t help but ask.”

The face of the man who worked in woodcarving—from his drowsy, swollen eyelids, to the wrinkles on his cheeks, to his dusky skin that suggested someone who drank too much—not a single feature failed to stir an odd feeling in Shakugoro’s heart. Especially in those eyes—whose color seemed to mock the despondent man himself with their air of utter resignation—there was no glimmer that would engage any interlocutor with familiarity.

“Your house was just a little ways from the Western-style building, wasn’t it?”
“I often have the pleasure of meeting your wife.”

“Oh, it’s the second house from the alley.”

Shakugoro was still lingering because he had seen what appeared to be a human figure inside the entrance, and judging by the size of the kimono’s pattern—which suggested it was that usual child—there was a faint expectation he might come out.
Therefore he was trying to prolong the conversation as much as possible.

Before long, the child—like a dog often does when someone talks with an unfamiliar person—approached while deliberately avoiding eye contact and tearing off leaf after leaf. Shakugoro waited for his approach, finding both his face and round head endearing.

“Is this your child? He looks quite clever.”

“Well, he’s a timid child who stays home all the time—or rather, like me, he withdraws from things as if repelled by them.”
“Won’t you say hello?”

The child gave a slight bow of his head.
As Shakugoro gazed at his face for a long while, the child too began staring back with a puzzled intensity.

“How old are you?”

“I’m seven.”

The child, with rather gloomy eyes, seemed to be growing cautious—intuitively aware that the adults’ conversation was being carried over to matters concerning himself.

“Please come visit sometime.”

To this Shakugoro, the child responded with a lonely smile.

“I’ll take my leave now.”

The master, having suddenly said that, entered the house.
Taking the child’s hand—he closed the dark door from the inside.

What a strange house there was.
Even so, thinking What a strange person he was, Shakugoro was about to turn back toward his house.

And then, from the darkness along the hedge came a sound like dog paw pads scraping, and a small shadow walked away.
As he worried that the karatachi hedge—all thorns—might snag his limbs, the small shadow began walking toward Shakugoro.
Trying not to be noticed, Shakugoro walked softly following the child along the edge of the hedge, and before he knew it, he had arrived in front of his own house.
But the small shadow was no longer there.

“Ah.”

Shakugoro, while threading through the hedge, quietly peered into the house.
The woman was sewing.
And beside her sat the usual Boy, playing with thread scraps and rolling them into balls.
The profile was the spitting image of the child from that house earlier.
However, the woman seemed not to notice the Boy’s presence at all; without even glancing at him, she sighed from time to time and gazed toward the entrance.
As though she had to occasionally find something shadow-like there…… Yet the Boy remained quiet, kneeling formally with his legs tucked beneath him, alone—so thoroughly alone—as he arranged several rolled-up colored thread balls atop the woman’s lap.
The woman was not at all distracted by it.
Under the quiet electric light, those scenes made Shakugoro hesitate to enter the house, leaving him no choice but to linger in the hedge.

The Boy appeared utterly calm and free from distraction.
He never wearied of repeating the same actions.
Mother—whether lulled by insect calls or simply overcome by prolonged fatigue—leaned her hand on the sewing box and slipped into a dazed sleep. Some distance from Mother lay a small bed where the infant too slept a tranquil slumber, low as a flute’s murmur.
Everything existed in a cloudy light; the room—where nothing stirred save the clock—stood like a meticulously arranged screen, each element casting its shadow exactly as it was.

Shakugoro stealthily entered the house, and the Boy immediately noticed him.
And he longingly drew near his father.

“I saw you walking along the edge of the hedge earlier.
And I lost sight of you in front of our house.”

“No, Father, I didn’t know anything at all.”

“If that’s how it is, then so be it...”

Shakugoro gazed at the Boy’s face.
“Do you know the child from the dark house ahead?”
“He looks exactly like you—so much that even Father can’t tell the difference.”
“When you don’t come, Father often goes to see that child’s face.”
Having said that, he stroked the Boy’s head.

The Boy, however, did not answer that and peered sadly at his father.

“Father, why do you go around searching only for things that resemble each other like that? I don’t resemble anyone. I only have a face and heart that are uniquely my own.”

The father, as if noticing for the first time then—and in a way the Boy would clearly understand—began to speak.

“That’s Father’s bad habit.”
“For Father, even such trivial resemblances are at least a pleasure.”
“You’d understand that well enough, wouldn’t you?”
“And if you could always stay here in this house, then Father wouldn’t have thought of such trivial things at all.”

The Boy silently nodded.
At that moment, Mother faintly opened her eyes.
Trying to stare at something bright—like someone freshly roused from sleep who couldn’t quite focus—she watched the Boy with hesitant pauses.

“Oh, you were there.”
“How long have you been here?”
“And Father too—I was asleep, wasn’t I.”

Having said that, she cast upturned eyes that still wandered through dream realms.

“While I was dozing off, I met you where countless flowers grew—but you deliberately pretended not to know me and walked away.”
“That person making those eerie dark carvings—you remember, the one I told you about before…”

Having said this, as if suddenly recalling something, she stirred Shakugoro’s memory.

“The sculptor at the road’s bend was standing on something like a rock, gazing my way.”
“Then instead of coming to me, this child went to that sculptor—and finally he took his hand and led him off to what looked like a paddy field with water weeds and floating flowers.”
“And now when I wake up, here this child is.”

She looked at Shakugoro’s face with a puzzled expression.
While his wife was dreaming, Shakugoro recalled how he had been around the sculptor’s house and seen the child there.
Having told her about that matter,

“That sculptor, you see—he often said to Madam when they met, during perfectly ordinary moments.”

“Yes, whenever I try to go into town and pass by that place, he always gazes at me with such a terribly lonely face.”
“Once, some time ago, I ended up greeting him on some sudden impulse—since then I’ve only been exchanging silent bows.”

Shakugoro, while looking at his wife’s face, dimly sensed within himself something similar—or rather akin to goodwill.

“That man has been in a daze like that ever since losing his wife—it seems he’s alone with that child now.”

“Oh, I am well aware of that.”
“And that child—why, he’s the very spitting image of this child.”

The woman—as though realizing it only now—gazed as if comparing the Boy’s face to the likeness etched within her own heart.
“It’s truly strange how closely they resemble each other.”

Shakugoro also said the same thing as the woman.
At that moment, Mother suddenly noticed for the first time that the flute was not hanging from the Boy’s hand.

“What happened to your flute? You’re unusually not carrying it, aren’t you?”

“I stopped carrying the flute because it’s boring.”

“I see… But you don’t have to grow up so much. You’re not yet at an age where you can abandon the flute…”

The Boy, with a smile as pale as moonlight, said to his mother in a voice tinged with sorrow—as if on purpose.

“It’s not like I ever play the flute anyway.”

“Why doesn’t it play?”

“The holes are clogged—none of the six are open.”

“Let me see it.”

When Mother took the flute in her hands, the holes inside—clogged solid with what seemed like old dust and mud—produced no sound, for there was no path for breath to escape even when blown.

“It’s terribly dusty.”
Mother brought it out to the edge of the veranda and, using something like a thin wire, tried to clean the inside of the holes while—

“I’ll make it play properly soon, so wait here.”

So saying, she threaded the wire through each hole one by one and, with deft hands, dug out the old dust.
Whether what had entered the vermilion-lacquered flute’s body had adhered over time, there was a luster polished by smooth hand rubbing.

“Mother, even if you clean that flute for me, I don’t think I can play it.”

“Why is that?”

“Why? Because I just can’t bring myself to play something like that.”

The Boy made a dark expression.
A bat-like shadow, dusky and dark, passed by.—Shakugoro and his wife both suddenly fell silent, gazing at their pitiful child as if turning his words over in their minds.

“You’re right. You don’t seem able to keep playing such a flute after all. It was my fault—I’d forgotten something important, so I ended up troubling you.”

“No.”

The Boy, trying to comfort his mother, leaned in as he often did when acting affectionately—just as she was about to stop cleaning the flute.
And he spoke in a low, almost whispering voice.

“Even so, sometimes—just occasionally—I want to try playing the flute.”

Mother teared up.
“I suppose that’s true… but where you are…”

Shakugoro sat with one knee raised, looking despondent.

“I could play it for you—when you’re not around, so it reaches wherever you might be.”

The Boy smiled.
He wore an expression that seemed to pity such a father.

“But no matter how much Father plays his flute, I don’t think its sound will ever reach where I am.”

“No.”

The father furrowed his brows—making a strained face as if striving to suppress the sorrowful expression dwelling in his own heart.

“If you have the will to listen, it will surely reach you—though of course, if you lack that will, there’s nothing to be done…”

The Boy spoke half in doubt and half as if to comfort his father.

“I do have the will to listen.”

“Then you’ll hear it.
You’ll definitely hear it for sure.”

Mother also composed her words.

“You will hear it.”

But their three shadows were as faint as if they existed or didn’t upon the tatami and walls.
As if facing something distant and ethereal, each of them no longer knew what to rely on—or even what to believe in.
They merely thought their various thoughts, as if retrieving forgotten dreams.

Shakugoro thought this was a recurring dream; Mother, in turn, became engrossed in lingering, womanly thoughts—as if this were gradually becoming reality.

But the Boy alone knew with crystalline clarity—simply by breathing into his own being—exactly where he came from.

“Mother, I have to go back now.”

Mother, as was her custom, could not prevent it.

“Yes.”
“Are you leaving already?”

She suddenly looked at the father’s face.
Shakugoro, while puffing on his cigarette, looked back at Mother’s face through the smoke.

“Then please remain quiet.”

“Yes.”

The Boy stood up.
Before long, a quiet sound of bare feet could be heard at the entrance.
The father, who had been seeing him off, immediately stood up.
“Where are you going?” Mother looked up directly at Shakugoro’s deathly pale face.

“I’ll go after him…”

Shakugoro’s voice was hoarser than usual as he spoke those words.
Moreover，even the look in his eyes changed.
Mother tried to grab hold of him.

“Going after him now won’t accomplish anything.”

“No—I’ll go after him…”

Shakugoro dashed out to the front entrance after saying this.
The white road appeared to narrow as it stretched into the distance, shrinking and quivering.
In the shadow where darkness gloomily covered the hedges on both sides, the Boy was striding along.
The electric light was clouded and dim, and the black shadow gradually receded into the distance.

III

Shakugoro, while pursuing the small shadow, emerged into a damp area resembling rice paddies.
Over endless paddies floated round green leaves, while white flowers embroidered the twilight-lit surroundings—not a single ripple stirred in that limpid stillness reaching to the depths.
When the Boy reached that bank, he stopped and abruptly turned around.
Shakugoro shrank his body to avoid being seen, yet his form was instantly mirrored in the Boy’s pupils.
Shakugoro tried to speak, but the Boy crouched wordlessly; then, raising a wisp of water mist, he dove into the paddy.
Shakugoro rushed over at once, but in the vainly clear-glowing waterfields, he saw only ripples spreading outward—the Boy’s figure had vanished.

Rather than pondering where this place was, when Shakugoro considered how he had come to this rice paddy, the path he had taken seemed far too short—and it struck him as impossible that such an expansive rice paddy could exist in such close proximity. Shakugoro was walking backwards when, before he knew it, he found himself in the town in front of the hospital—a discovery that startled him. Then, it suddenly became clear to him that he was now heading to the rice paddy beneath the iron bridge.

Shakugoro stood before his house and peered inside to see if anything ominous had occurred, but there was only the usual quietness existing alongside the glowing electric light.
And his wife was letting smoke rise from the tip of something like a single blue blade of grass.
Shakugoro was surprised that his wife’s complexion was deathly pale.

“You’ve returned properly.”
“I was so anxious about what to do.”
“Ever since you began hurrying about like this...”

“I went as far as the rice paddy, but there he vanished.”
“The moment he saw me, he plunged right in.”

Mother said at that moment, “Water lilies wouldn’t bloom in the evening, would they?”

“That’s right—they bloom from morning until around noon. What of it?”

“No, I merely inquired because that matter had been on my mind.”

While Mother was deep in thought, there came the sound of footsteps at the entrance.
There seemed to be someone standing there.
The two tilted their ears.
They were trying to discern it with their eyes.

“Who could it be?”

“It certainly seems like someone is standing there.”

“It’s just this very moment.”

“Quiet?”

Outside, the sense of someone’s presence persisted—and when the gate door banged open abruptly, Shakugoro peered with renewed surprise.

“It’s me.”

Shakugoro immediately realized that the person was the sculptor.

“Oh, it was you? Please come in.”

The sculptor deliberately stood up, peering around the entire house, and said in a hoarse, low voice, hesitantly and with deep suspicion:

“Might he perhaps have come this way? He hasn’t returned since going out to chase a dog earlier… Though it’s late, I came to inquire.”

“No.”
“He hasn’t come here, you see.”
“Where could he have gone?”

When the woman composed her answer within the sculptor’s lonely eyes, Shakugoro could not help but feel that he was implicated in the matter.
And,
“And who might that be?”

Shakugoro ventured to ask.

“It’s about the child.”

The sculptor, as if mocking the artificial question, demonstrated measuring a child’s height with his large hand.
"In short, I somehow felt that going to your house might bring clarity—and being unable to restrain myself, here I’ve come calling like this despite the late hour," he said, stepping back a pace.

“He will likely return before long.”

After saying this, the woman stepped outside to look and saw the sculptor off.

“That child of mine often lingers around here—yes, precisely this area in front of your house. I can’t fathom why—when he isn’t suddenly gone, he inevitably ends up standing right here.”

The woman turned pale and looked back at Shakugoro, but this time, pressing her hand to her chest, she ventured to ask.

“About what time…? When does your son come by?”

“Hmm, evening, I suppose.”
“I can’t help feeling there’s something uncanny about it.”

After saying this, the sculptor said, “I’ve disturbed you,” and strode briskly back down the dark road he had come from.
His hatless, diminutive figure cast a shadow that seeped like ink beneath the dim eaves light as he walked away.
Shakugoro and the woman were blankly watching him leave when Shakugoro saw that trailing behind that shadow was another, smaller one.

“Look, it’s trailing after him.”
“The little one’s crouching down.”

“Yes.”

The woman watched him leave, her body trembling.
And there, the usual millipedes had gathered darkly around the gate’s foundation stone, crawling about feeding on the dampness.

A late autumn wind blew wild and cold through an evening scene that made one instinctively want to touch some part of their own body. The Boy huddled shivering, his form seeping a murky black against the gatepost—yet for some reason, his shadow grew fainter with each passing day.

Like an old photograph, like rain-stained paper, it was a yellowish blur.

The woman did not understand why it appeared faint and blurred.
Each time she took the Boy’s hand while rubbing her eyes, she said to Shakugoro:

“Is there something wrong with my eyes?”
“I can only see this child as a blur.”
“And it’s only been getting more intense lately.”

“It’s not just you—I too somehow see this child’s form as blurred.”
“It’s as if he’s growing distant, like a shadow.”

Shakugoro, each time he saw the Boy—whose outline grew strangely more blurred day by day—sadly nodded in his heart: that this was a precursor to the Boy drifting ever further from their side, and that since the Boy had always been shadow-like, a shadow would ultimately appear to the eye as nothing but a shadow.

“How long has it been since this child passed away?”

“It has been three months.”

The woman, having answered thus, placed her bent fingers back as they were on her knees.

Shakugoro stared into the Boy’s eyes.
The Boy, too, would often blink his eyes, his gaze perpetually fixed as if peering up at something opaque.
And,

“Father, I still don’t really understand you all. The more I try to see, the cloudier my eyes become—I can’t see you properly anymore. What’s happening?”

Shakugoro and his wife met each other’s eyes.
All three of them felt as though they had been blindfolded with something like gauze.

“Can you see Father’s face?”
“From there into your eyes.”

“Uh… I can see it… dimly.”

The Boy blinked his eyes rapidly.
Mother, too, rubbed her eyes while showing signs of irritation.

“Day by day, the bond between you and us will be severed like this.
Our shadows will keep fading until neither you nor we can see each other anymore.”

After saying this, the father grasped the Boy’s hand.
The Boy let his hand be guided in accordance with his father’s movements.

“But… mightn’t we see you again before long?”

Mother brought her eyes close to the Boy’s face and said, seemingly unable to contain herself.

“No—I don’t think we’ll ever see the child again; somehow that’s how it seems.”
“We won’t be able to keep seeing the child forever.”

Mother clung to the Boy and wept, but he soon broke away and ran toward the gate.
And then that shadow vanished completely.

From the following evening onward, Shakugoro sat facing his wife at the dining table and vacantly gazed out toward the entrance, but even when the usual time arrived, there was no sign of the Boy walking over.
The ivy leaves covering the fence exposed their long stems as they withered and fell, and only a faint evening breeze passed through.

Even as their tedious and gloomy days continued, they could no longer catch even a glimpse of the Boy’s lonely figure. Shakugoro and his wife remained sitting despondently facing the lamp. The long night merely spread cold from the walls, and not a single warm thing remained in their hearts.

“Were we all dreaming?”
“Both that child’s visits and our conversations together.”

Mother lifted her haggard face and looked up at her husband, but Shakugoro sat listlessly, silent for a time, until at last he opened his gloomy mouth to speak.

“Those events were nothing more than what you and I had imagined, and now they’ve been utterly obliterated without a trace—there’s no other way to think of it.”

In his heart, Shakugoro thought that even the Boy’s visits had merely been the thoughts of the father and mother, which over time had somehow been constructed into daily occurrences as if by chance. Moreover, when he considered how those subtle workings had moved with such precision exactly when they were both thinking about their child, he felt a slight sense of dread. Shakugoro had been deep in thought about something when he suddenly raised his gloomy eyes.

“Even now as we sit here, he might still be coming—it’s just that he’s become invisible to our eyes.”

“Yes, I feel that way too, you see.”

The woman, having answered thus, hazily surveyed the area around her.
Her gaze drifted especially toward the garden.

“We have no choice but to think he’s coming.”

Shakugoro said this and looked around, but there was nothing even resembling a shadow.――The two of them stepped out under the blue-tinged night sky and crouched beside a garden stone.
The wife struck a match near the lantern stone of the stone lantern.
And then she lit a light in the moss-covered blue lantern.

“We haven’t lit this lantern in a long time, have we.”

Shakugoro gazed at the lantern’s light flickering amidst the dark thicket.
But after a while, the woman called out to Shakugoro in a hushed voice.

“What terrible bugs.”
The woman pointed at the damp ground there.
There, inky black millipedes were crawling as if stitching through the small footprints.

“So he is still coming after all.”

The woman’s voice seemed to shine with joy, yet carried a coldly raw, eerie quality in its tone.

“It seems he’s coming.”

Shakugoro, like the woman, let his eyes wander across the spacious garden, but between the bright night sky—reminiscent of a hazy moonlit scene—and the garden trees, there lingered not even a shadow resembling him. Yet somehow, strangely within his field of vision, he felt he could discern a vague shadow shrinking and trembling. In the depths of the thicket and where tree trunks stood rooted to the ground, they gazed upon their beloved child’s form—now almost like something drenched in water.

“Perhaps he too is searching,”
“Yet somehow it feels like we’re two blind souls groping through darkness.”

Shakugoro, gazing around, came to the edge of the veranda and pitied his emaciated wife, who stood there endlessly seeking a shadow.

“When I stretch out my hand like this, my palm feels warm,”
“As if a head were just about to touch it.”

The woman stretched out her right palm, floating it midair as she gazed intently—as if touching something. To Shakugoro, there was nothing to prevent him from envisioning beneath that hand the figure of someone straining upward on tiptoe, yet still failing to reach it.

“But one shouldn’t do such things—it’s uncanny.”

“Oh,”
The woman withdrew her hand.

The woman came to the veranda where her husband was. Both of them vacantly gazed at the garden. They weren’t exactly tired, but they felt as though everything existed within a dream. A second strangely felt like ten or twenty years had passed—a tedious time that seemed to circle loosely. Especially to Shakugoro, an impossibly large cartwheel appeared to turn slowly and slackly, and between its ruts he sensed someone might be trapped. It seemed like the Boy yet not quite him. Shakugoro stared fixedly.

The woman stood up and went to the small spirit-glow hall.
And then she lit a thin smoldering object resembling a single blade of grass.
They struck a small offering bell suitable for their longing toward what they had brought into being.

Shakugoro went out to the entrance.
He gazed at the hedge, then stepped outside.
He scanned far down the street but saw no trace of any figure.
In the evening air, a dog ran off hurriedly with a bean-like rustle as though drenched.
As he watched its shadow shrink into an alleyway, there remained only a uniformly white road stretching blank before night-accustomed eyes.

“Father—”

Shakugoro turned toward where the voice had come from.
The voice was behind him.
Yet when he looked ahead, it was there too—in the sky, in earth-hugging hollows.
No matter where he faced, the voice adhered to him.

Someone walked away briskly, but upon closer look, it was the same dog emerging from the alleyway back onto its original path—an inky black shadow. Shakugoro called to it, but without so much as a backward glance, it trailed off with that lonesome rustling like dried beans being shaken. He soon returned to his room and took out his usual slender flute. Quietly, he began to play it—for he felt something might be drawn by its sound.

When rain came, both inside and outside Shakugoro’s house fell silent.
He closed the storm shutters from within, securing them so thoroughly that not even a sliver of light escaped.
The quiet rain persisted, muffling all voices.
Yet strangely, near the storm shutters’ edge, a small shadow had formed imperceptibly—likely after their closure—seeping ink-black into the darkness and remaining utterly motionless.
It was the figure of the ever-present Boy, bearing his silent crimson-lacquered flute.