Pathway to Japanese Literature

At dawn, a summons came from the battalion commander’s office. Before the footsteps climbed the stairs and knocked on the wire door, he had already awakened as if surfacing from shallow sleep, sensing boots treading the path of fallen leaves. It was Orderly Saeki’s voice. He could see a shadow shifting faintly beyond the wire door, but having replied "I’m coming right away," he closed his eyes deeply once more. The sound of military boot studs grazing the stairs faintly reverberated through his listless limbs; the footsteps seemed to fade away unchanged.

After a while, he sat up on the bed and, with slow movements, finished dressing and pulled on his long boots. The crude hut creaked with every motion—floorboards groaning when he shifted, walls rustling dryly when his arms brushed against them. Pushing open the rusted wire door on corroded hinges, he descended into a world drenched in morning dew. Looking up through gaps in the tangled jungle canopy where branches stabbed at each other, he saw the sky faintly brightening while one or two remaining stars began losing their luster, their glow paling. Unseen birds seemed to flit between treetops calling to each other, while somewhere far off a wild rooster crowed sharply again and again. The air held a crisp clarity. Small flowers resembling homeland evening primroses choked both sides of the path, their pale yellow blooms drenching the toes of his long boots as he walked until they were thoroughly soaked.

The path climbed diagonally, and the trees grew denser. That was the battalion commander’s hut, its smoke-stained bamboo gray blending into the gloom. It was a simple structure made by combining wood and bamboo and thatching the roof with nipa palm. The floor was raised about a person’s height to avoid moisture, but when stepped upon, the stairs creaked loudly of their own accord. When he pushed open the swinging door and stepped inside, the room’s interior was still dark. Leaning on his elbows against the bamboo desk placed before the window, the Battalion Commander remained seated in his chair, appearing not to notice his entrance. In the candlelight swaying from the door’s movement, the Battalion Commander’s profile appeared darker and more sunken than ever. On the desk, using an empty shell casing as a vase, two or three yellow flowers were inserted. The Battalion Commander’s fingers were aimlessly fiddling with the edges of the document binder. He stood on the floorboards for a while, absently surveying the room. An insect lurking in the ceiling’s shadows suddenly let out a sharp kiki-ki cry, but the Battalion Commander—propping up his military sword’s hilt between his knees with his palm as it had been resting against the chair until now—nevertheless kept his profile turned toward him and muttered in a low, dry voice.

“Lieutenant Uji?”

Then, raising his face toward the window while closing his eyes as if in pain, he let his shoulders slump against the back of the chair. “—Actually today I need you to make contact with Lieutenant Hanada.” “You do know where Hanada is located, don’t you?”

Without waiting for his reply, the Battalion Commander made his chair creak as he turned his entire body toward him. Then he said fiercely and tersely, “Shoot him dead and return—that’s my order.” The thin morning light fell diagonally across the Battalion Commander’s head from the window. His hair—noticeably whiter recently—and his haggard features cast shadows in the candlelight, making his expression appear even more sinister. His desperate gaze clung to Uji without release. Something faltered deep within him; he instinctively stepped back. Gravel embedded in his long boot soles scraped against hardwood floorboards with an unpleasant rasp. He kept rubbing his uniform trousers with his palm while shifting his full weight onto one heel. The flickering firelight rendered his expression unstable until a faint smile suddenly surfaced on his cheek and vanished. He brought his heels together, slightly arched his chest to speak—but before he could, the Battalion Commander blinked rapidly and addressed him in a ponderous tone that feigned concern.

“Take one non-commissioned officer skilled in marksmanship with you.”

He abruptly turned his face from the light and cast his gaze downward. “Hanada was quite the marksman, you know.”

While watching the balding crown of the Battalion Commander’s bowed head, he felt a sudden impulse to shed tears, but raising his neck as if to suppress it, he repeated each word in a steady voice. “I will meet Lieutenant Hanada and shoot him dead.” Instead of saying “Very well,” the Battalion Commander raised his right palm and gave a slight wave without looking at him. He saluted, pushed open the door, and descended the stairs step by step. As he descended, he glanced back hesitantly, but all that flickered briefly through the swinging door was the firelight on the room’s floorboards—his long boots already treading the soaked ground as they left the stairs creaking behind.

On the ground, light rays that had slipped through the latticework of branches scattered as they fell. Beyond the jungle, the sun was already beginning to rise. The trees put forth new buds while simultaneously scattering aged leaves from their branches. In this land that knew no seasons beyond rainy and dry, even the workings of plants took on an impassive mechanical regularity. The trees were mostly broad-leaved. As the path curved, faint singing from far below the mountain would intermittently reach him, then abruptly cease. While treading through the thick layer of fallen leaves, he fixed his eyes gloomily and followed the path back to his hut. The song was a woman’s voice. That monotonous, mournful melody persistently wove through the tree trunks and resounded so clearly in his ears that, depending on his position, even the ends of words could be discerned. It was one of the mysterious traits inherent to the jungle. When one voice led out, a disorderly chorus followed in disarray. That was the rice-pounding song of Ilocano women. From the San Jose basin spreading north from this mountain’s foothills—evading American planes’ surveillance—the soldiers had transported husked rice and lined it in boats; already the morning’s rice-pounding must have begun. Crossing his arms, walking along the path dappled with pale light spots while kicking yellow petals, he finally began noticing he was applying excessive force to his boot tips. When he had absently surveyed the Battalion Commander’s room earlier, what suddenly caught his attention was the medal rack skillfully crafted from bamboo on the wall beside the desk. Was that something the Battalion Commander had made himself, or had Orderly Saeki crafted it?—When the Commander turned his entire body, the wall shook, and several medals glittered as they reflected the light of the naked flame.

(When I looked down at the seemingly fragile crown of the Battalion Commander’s bowed head and nearly wept—what exactly had that emotion been?)

A bitter laugh rose coldly to his cheeks.

Nearly a month had passed since Lieutenant Hanada had deserted his original unit. The brigade to which Uji belonged was initially stationed in Aparri at the northern tip of Luzon. It was the inevitable landing site for U.S. forces in the Philippines Campaign.

Despite having constructed multiple layers of defensive positions and waited, the moment the Leyte campaign reached a lull, the U.S. forces suddenly commenced their landing at Lingayen. The Japanese defenses at Lingayen were truly feeble. The U.S. forces bore down on Manila with a force that literally swept aside dead leaves. By this point, the likelihood of a landing at Aparri had already begun to fade. Even if a prolonged war were anticipated, the Aparri area lacked the capacity to sustain the entire brigade. Isolation in Aparri meant death by starvation. At the end of May, the brigade finally abandoned Aparri. As they continued their arduous southward march through the Cagayan Valley, attempting to enter the San Jose Basin from the northern entrance, a detachment of U.S. forces that had landed at Lingayen swept northward through the same valley with gale-like speed and unleashed a ferocious artillery barrage on the brigade’s rearguard.

The battalion to which Uji belonged had entered the basin the previous day as the brigade’s vanguard. When the report came that the rearmost battalion had come under artillery fire, Uji could hardly believe it. To halt the northward-advancing U.S. forces, two battalions of officers and men had rushed to take up positions and were supposed to be entrenched at Orion Pass in the upper reaches of the Cagayan Valley. That the northern entrance had come under U.S. artillery fire meant nothing less than the complete annihilation of those two battalions at Orion Pass. It was a situation beyond what even Uji and his men could have foreseen—for the officers and men at the brigade’s rear too, this bombardment fell utterly outside their expectations. The American artillery fire proved devastatingly precise. Hampered by faulty intelligence, they couldn’t even locate the enemy gun positions. Only the shells themselves exploded with lethal accuracy, cutting down soldiers where they stood. The unit plunged into immediate disarray. Lieutenant Hanada, the military doctor, found himself caught in this maelstrom.

The shrapnel from the explosion had instantly killed Lieutenant Hanada’s orderly and, with its residual force, wounded Lieutenant Hanada in the leg. Abandoning the corpses and wounded soldiers that overflowed the road, Lieutenant Hanada gripped a local woman’s shoulder, fled the battlefield eastward through the jungle, and was said to have taken refuge in a small village near Intal. It was much later that Uji and his men came to know this fact.

Uji’s battalion crossed the basin, unpacked their field packs in the jungle near the southern entrance, dispersed into makeshift huts and limestone caves, and waited solely for guerrilla operations against Tugegarao Airfield. So they knew nothing of the situation at the rear that had been shelled at the northern entrance. Lieutenant Hanada was believed to have been killed in action. However, when they synthesized reports from wounded soldiers who had fled the northern entrance and naval units stationed near Intal, Lieutenant Hanada’s actions gradually became self-evident.

What could it mean that a military doctor of all people—even if wounded in the leg—had abandoned casualties and fled the battlefield? Despite having been kept secret, that fact seemed to spread from mouth to mouth. Even if he had withdrawn from the northern entrance, he should naturally have joined the guerrilla battalion stationed near the southern entrance. However, amidst San Jose Basin’s labyrinthine road network, he could have lost his bearings through geographical unfamiliarity. Nor was it impossible that his leg wound had worsened near Intal. Yet what first snagged their attention in this sequence was precisely this local woman who had supported Lieutenant Hanada.

A messenger was dispatched. Due to his wound not yet having healed and walking being difficult, Lieutenant Hanada had not returned. According to the messenger’s report, Lieutenant Hanada was said to be living with a woman and an Allied journalist—three people together—in one of five or six nipa hut hamlets clustered within the jungle. In the remaining huts, seven or eight Army and Navy soldiers who had deserted or fled from the battlefield or their units were apparently lodging separately. Four or five days passed, and another messenger was dispatched. Even so, Lieutenant Hanada did not return.

Amidst this situation, their food situation gradually began deteriorating. In the open expanses of the basin, unhusked rice stood piled mountain-high. Philippine farmers didn’t husk all their rice at once during harvest, milling only what was needed when required—thus they kept no reserves of white rice. For the battalion, there was no alternative but to gather unhusked rice and process it into edible grain. However, due to American planes taking off from Tugegarao Airfield, they couldn’t transport the rice during daylight hours. At night they barely managed to haul it into the jungle depths, round up villagers to pound it, and allocate this as unit provisions. When the rearguard had been attacked at the Northern Entrance—the oxcart convoy carrying salt unfortunately wiped out—Uji and his men gradually began suffering salt deficiency. It manifested not through clear symptoms but through vague mental fog at first—their heads growing misty, reactions dulling perceptibly. While puzzling over this strangeness, body parts would swell; sudden standing made knees buckle unsteadily. Only upon reaching this state did salt deficiency occur to them. When occasionally obtaining a lump of salt, they’d lick it like something precious. Strangely enough, salt tasted sweet after long deprivation—they marveled that salt could be this sweet—sweeter even than sugar. Licking it left them energized for about a day.

Even under such adverse conditions, Uji's battalion could not abandon guerrilla operations against Tugegarao Airfield. Every night raiding parties were organized; they crossed Route 5 and attacked barracks and warehouses near Tugegarao Airfield. Large raiding parties led by officers and surprise attack units primarily composed of non-commissioned officers crossed the jungle in multiple squads each night. Many who set out on raids never returned. Soldiers deserting during raiding missions finally became numerous. There were even instances where seven or eight men deserted from units numbering fewer than a dozen. Where could they possibly flee to, disappearing into the jungle? Fleeing undoubtedly carried a lower risk of death than participating in raids. Even if they risked their lives to raid, how effective the raids themselves were remained questionable. War-weariness began showing clear signs among all officers and soldiers. Deserters emerged not only from the raiding parties but also from battalion headquarters. Two or three of Uji’s subordinates had already vanished.

Uji was the weapons officer. Along with his subordinates, he had no respite from manufacturing armor-piercing bombs and other explosives for the raids. The workshop lay inside a limestone cave. They spent their days in that stalactite-draped cavern engulfed in gunpowder fumes. Occasionally, former subordinates of colleagues would come to bid farewell before departing on raids. Even then they laughed. Laughing while waving, they left the cave. As Uji saw them off to the cave's mouth—thinking this laughter humanity's final vanity—he still couldn't suppress the tears welling up. Half those who departed never returned. Exhausted on his cot in the night hut, Uji would count them one by one—the colleagues and subordinates who wouldn't return. And I'm still alive, he thought. This struck him not as sentiment but visceral certainty. In such moments he'd inevitably find himself vaguely contemplating Lieutenant Hanada. Not true contemplation—rather gazing at Hanada's dim silhouette lingering at consciousness's threshold. Hanada had been one of his few remaining comrades since this brigade's formation in Kurume.

——

The unit at the Southern Entrance was still relatively intact. The situation at the Northern Entrance was even worse. Securing this basin—referred to as the breadbasket of Northern Luzon—was absolutely necessary for continuing their protracted warfare. If this position were lost, all would be driven into the mountains with no fate but starvation. The fighting at the Southern Entrance was not particularly intense, but the US forces kept steadily advancing from the Northern Entrance. The officers and soldiers of the battalion holding the Northern Entrance hid in individual foxholes during daylight hours, hunched over pounding rice to fill their own mouths, only emerging above ground to fight when night fell. Yet mental fortitude alone proved insufficient against the US forces. Overwhelming them had become pure fantasy. There remained nothing but to sustain their defensive posture and wait for reinforcements from the homeland. The soldiers clung to rumors—half-believed, half-doubted—that over two thousand aircraft had already been amassed in Tohoku for deployment to the Philippines. Why weren’t Japanese planes flying even now? Since Lingayen’s fall, only American aircraft had ruled the skies. Surely Japan’s air forces would launch their full might once the enemy had “penetrated deep into our vitals.” While vainly awaiting that day, casualties at San Jose’s Northern Entrance mounted by the hour. Messengers came again and again from the Northern Entrance demanding Uji’s unit send a military doctor. Even these couriers bore faces turned bluish-black-and-murky, eyes bloodshot with suppressed fury. This was war’s true countenance. The battlefield’s unvarnished visage brought before them.

Even this unit holding the Southern Entrance had nothing more than one trainee military doctor and a few medics. Due to food shortages, endemic diseases, and wounded from raids, they were stretched too thin to manage even that. Moreover, should the US forces attempt invasion from the Southern Entrance, it stood plain as firelight that casualties would multiply. Though the raiding parties barely held back signs of invasion through their attacks, none could say how long this might continue. Yet the Northern Entrance situation already screamed crisis without awaiting messengers' reports. No matter the circumstances, recalling Lieutenant Hanada and sending him north remained their sole option. The final messenger was selected. Corporal Takagi received the Battalion Commander's orders and raced to Lieutenant Hanada's position. And late last night, Corporal Takagi had returned empty-handed.

I am a senior military doctor. What could possibly justify sending me—a senior military doctor—to the most perilous Northern Entrance sector? Shouldn’t they dispatch the trainee military doctor or medic non-commissioned officer stationed at the Southern Entrance instead? I will not comply with such unlawful orders.

Corporal Takagi reported Lieutenant Hanada’s response clearly in a monotone delivery. He remained young—a non-commissioned officer who retained a boyish softness somewhere in his bearing. At that moment Lieutenant Uji happened to be in the battalion commander’s office and heard the report alongside him. The raw materials for armor-piercing bombs and dynamite used in raids were already nearing depletion, and Uji had been deep in discussion at the commander’s office about contingency measures for this crisis. He found himself abruptly transfixed by the shifts in Corporal Takagi’s expression—youthful yet unnervingly cold, unmistakably suppressing all emotion.

The battalion commander asked in a low voice. “What was Lieutenant Hanada doing when you went there?” “He was sitting in the corner of the hut, eating bayabas fruit.” Bayabas refers to a yellow edible fruit. In a dark jungle’s small hut, the figure of Lieutenant Hanada—leaning against a pillar while eating bayabas—suddenly rose vivid in Uji’s imagination. The figure of Lieutenant Hanada appeared to be wearing a clean undershirt, his face glowing with something like happiness.

(That was Lieutenant Hanada’s face when I peered through that window.) Uji shuddered for no particular reason and severed that train of thought. After a moment, the Battalion Commander asked in a voice that sounded like a pained groan. “And the woman?” “The woman was with him.” The uncovered candle flame wavered, casting large trembling shadows across the wall. A brief silence followed. A night wind seemed to pass over the jungle canopy—the rustling of leaves swelled and then faded away. Deep within Lieutenant Uji’s heart, a certain thought that had long lingered vaguely now began for the first time to take on a clear form. He stiffened his cheeks slightly, yet while feigning nonchalance, shifted his vacant gaze alternately between the Battalion Commander and Corporal Takagi.

With two or three yellow petals clinging to the damp tips of his long boots, Lieutenant Uji climbed the stairs to his makeshift hut. Here, due to the forest composition, the rice-pounding songs were nearly inaudible. When he entered the room, he stepped heavily on the floorboards and took down the pistol hanging on the wall—a black Browning with solid heft. He sat on the edge of the bed, hunched over, and began inspecting it meticulously. After finishing the inspection, he carefully loaded each bullet one by one. He took out a cloth fragment and wiped repeatedly from barrel to grip. Keeping his head bowed through these motions, he began laughing in a low voice—a terribly pained laughter. He lifted the pistol and stopped laughing, straightened his back, extended his right arm to take aim. Through his pupils and across the aligned sights lay the jungle's darkness beyond the window—thick trunks and slender branches tangled with vines, small pale-red fruits dotting the creepers here and there. Lowering the pistol and engaging the safety, he emitted another short, desiccated laugh. Then he spat phlegm onto the floor. He was recalling last night's feeling when he heard Hanada's response from Takagi.

Lieutenant Hanada’s argument had been flung like a life-or-death conviction. Even if he himself were a senior military doctor—even if the orders were unjust—there was no way Hanada could have been unaware of what consequences refusing a superior’s command would bring. Though Corporal Takagi’s report from last night left unclear exactly how those words had been delivered, when Uji heard them, a cold shudder had raced sharply down his spine. An unpleasant sensation—as if his mouth were drying up from within—had mingled with it. Uji involuntarily fixed his gaze on the Battalion Commander’s face, but with firelight at his back, the commander’s countenance remained only darkly stagnant. Yet Uji clearly saw how the hand gripping the sword’s pommel trembled in minute spasms. Though unexpressed on that face, that anger—indescribably violent—shook Uji’s chest. What good does such rage serve? Lieutenant Uji reflexively thought—but before pity for this emaciated veteran officer could surface, he felt Lieutenant Hanada’s activities—seeming wholly detached from this hostile atmosphere—suddenly scrape against his heart like some raw new temptation.

——

He stood up from the bed, fastened the abbreviated sword belt, and hung the pistol at his right hip. He stood at the room’s center and spent some time surveying it. The walls were made of nipa palm leaves but had aged into splintered roughness. A crude bamboo bed. A mouse-gray blanket stained with grime. He had already spent a month living in this hut. The phlegm he had spat out earlier clung to the floor like a rotten oyster. He stared fixedly at the phlegm. A sudden sense of decay stirred Uji’s disgust—he jerked his back upright and threw his weight against the door, rushing down the stairs in one motion.

Uji stepped into the entrance of a long, narrow building that appeared to sit perched on the mountainside. This was the unit’s medical office. Inside, two or three medics were mixing what looked like quinine powder or some white substance on a central table; one glanced up at him suspiciously before immediately resuming work. The room remained relatively bright from its wide windows, but the rear section—partitioned by bamboo screens—lay dimly lit, with rows of beds apparently holding sick and wounded soldiers. The sharp stench of disinfectant mingled with a faintly drifting odor of sickness. Through the window came the undulating notes of rice-pounding songs. Outside the small right-hand entrance, suddenly,

“Got lost, my ass.” “Don’t lie.” “You were trying to run away.”

The sound of something hard striking flesh thwacked repeatedly through the air.

“No, Corporal, sir. I truly did get lost, sir.” The voice dropped to a low mumble as he went on and on with his explanation—but when it faltered, the abrupt thud of a blow resumed. “—Listen. I know that. In the current situation, if you leave your post even temporarily, you’ll be considered a deserter. Do you understand?” “If you understand, then get out.”

A stifled sob followed the sounds of interrogation. The medics kept working silently, their faces devoid of emotion. He planted his sword on the floorboards, closed his eyes, and listened intently. After some time, Corporal Takagi shouldered open the door at the right-hand entrance and shuffled into the room, his cheeks faintly flushed. He halted upon seeing Uji, then announced in a voice still bearing traces of youth: "The Acting Military Doctor hasn't arrived, sir." Uji jerked his chin in a follow-me gesture and strode out wordlessly, the sword never leaving his grip.

Within the jungle ran a naturally compacted path; descending it diagonally, the ground grew increasingly damp. Midway up the slope, massive boulders took root in great numbers, the path perilously winding between them, and from this point onward the jungle began to thin slightly. The San Jose basin spread northward from where this mountain ended, and through gaps in the treetops, three or four men could be seen moving leisurely across the distant wetlands aboard a banca pulled by water buffaloes. Because of the distance, it was impossible to tell whether they were soldiers or Filipino farmers. The water of the canal leading through central San Jose basin glinted dully in the distance like a single thread. He stopped walking and turned around with his back to a rock. He spoke while letting his gaze fall on Takagi’s face.

“I’m going to Lieutenant Hanada’s place right now. You’re coming too.” After a brief pause: “By the Battalion Commander’s order, Hanada is to be executed by firing squad. But don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.” A flicker of tension crossed Corporal Takagi’s face before settling into his usual composure. He appeared to laugh, baring white teeth. “Yes. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Get ready immediately and come to my hut.” As Corporal Takagi saluted and began to leave, Lieutenant Uji called after his retreating figure. “—Bring the pistol.” “And take your important personal belongings.” Takagi’s suspicious gaze returned to his face. Lieutenant Uji averted his eyes while waving his palm. And then, dragging his feet, he started walking in the direction opposite Takagi. A faint rustling sound suddenly swept overhead. When Uji turned his eyes skyward, there passed a flock of migratory birds—hundreds upon hundreds of them—crossing through a gap in the treetops. One flock passed, then another followed. The chirping of their calls could also be heard. They seemed to be crossing the basin one after another. That direction was Intaru. If we were to cut straight across the basin it would be shorter, but that would be dangerous—so we’d have no choice but to take a detour through the jungle path. He shook his head, grimaced, and spat phlegm. It became a pale red dot and fell down the cliff. The color of the phlegm he had seen earlier on the temporary hut’s floor suddenly resurfaced vividly in Uji’s mind.

It was clearly tinged with bright red blood. Even back in Aparri, he would grow terribly fatigued and his shoulders stiffen by evening—but during that arduous march up the Cagayan Valley, he had unexpectedly coughed up blood. Of course, given the circumstances, rest was unthinkable—they had forced their way into San Jose; but after a month of jungle life severed from sunlight, he became acutely aware of his body being steadily eroded. He knew the infirmary lacked proper medicine and that an examination would prove futile, so Uji had kept silent until now. He was thirty-three this year. He knew illness progression slowed after thirty—but only for those living peaceful civilian lives. Though expecting death by shell or bayonet soon—though cold laughter sometimes rose at why he should fret over his condition—it remained strange how invariably, upon seeing blood’s hue in his phlegm, a ferocious will to live surged violently through his chest.

When he descended the naturally trodden stone steps, there lay the cave entrance. A dry wind blew constantly from the depths of the cave, and he entered while squinting. Near the entrance formed a natural hall where his subordinates were already at work. When they saw him, they all stood up and snapped to attention with salutes. Sergeant Matsuo, who was packing containers with black powder, bared his teeth in a grin and said:

“Lieutenant.” “Your complexion doesn’t look right today.” While returning their salutes, an intense shame suddenly flooded his chest. It was beyond control. Despite having mentally prepared himself when entering the cave entrance, when faced with his familiar subordinates’ faces before him, blood rushed unbidden to his cheeks. Turning his face toward the shadows, he spoke in an irritated voice.

“I’m going on a mission today under orders.” “Sergeant Matsuo will handle the rest,” he added in a low voice. “When I’ll return—no telling when that’ll be.” The ends of his words trembled slightly. They all fell completely silent. That silence struck Uji as somehow unnatural. Moving his body little by little, he surveyed the inside of the cave. Among the white-glowing stalactites, tools were lined up in numbers, and the soldiers’ pale gazes seemed to pierce him all at once. He faltered and tried to turn back. Sergeant Matsuo’s voice came from behind. He couldn’t make out what was said, but he kept walking toward the exit without turning back. Outside, morning light was overflowing. As he ascended the stone steps, cold sweat began streaming down Lieutenant Uji’s spine for the first time.

0830: Corporal Takagi came to his temporary hut.

A little before that, Orderly Soldier Saeki had come bearing a message from the Battalion Commander urging him to stay resolute, along with a canteen as a gift. When he opened the canteen, the scent of whiskey wafted out. And Saeki, smiling slyly, took out two eggs from the storage and said, “I’ll give these to you, Lieutenant.”

“Is this also from the Battalion Commander?” “No, this is from me.” Just as Saeki was leaving, Takagi arrived. He was lightly equipped, carrying only a single pistol. While gazing at Takagi’s pistol with a look one might reserve for some strange object, he slung his own sword from a simplified sword belt, attached his pistol, and hung a canteen over it all. And he changed into military boots from long boots. When he pushed open the wire mesh door, he looked back intently once more, as if to etch the room’s appearance into his memory. The discarded long boots lay—one standing upright, the other collapsed on the floor. Blinking his eyes, he descended the creaking stairs. “Let’s go,” he said in a low voice, and started walking. Takagi’s footsteps followed.

Since the Japanese military had entered various parts of the jungle, something resembling paths had formed out of necessity for communication—but even these were unreliable. The vigorous growth of plants quickly obscured them. The clustered treetops blocked out direct sunlight, yet the stifling heat radiating from the vegetation soon caused sweat to seep down their backs as they walked. The path headed northeast. As they walked, the humidity thickened, and gnat-like insects swarmed everywhere along the path, their bodies striking against their faces until it became unbearable. As he walked, he inquired about Lieutenant Hanada’s situation.

When Lieutenant Hanada fled to Intar, he had apparently taken a large quantity of medical supplies—perhaps loaded onto water buffalo—and was now trading those supplies with natives for food to sustain himself. Until then, Lieutenant Uji had imagined Hanada physically fleeing the battlefield—but without such resourcefulness, surviving independently in the jungle for even a month would have been impossible. The place where Corporal Takagi had met Hanada yesterday was a small village in a valley where grassy slopes cut in from both sides—the hut no longer housed the Allied journalist. They had reportedly departed for the east coast in search of food and salt. The East Coast lay along a single road stretching from Intar. That area had not yet been reached by the ravages of war.

“He was leaning against a pillar with a blanket over his legs—I couldn’t tell how badly he was injured.” “So he refused the recall order.” “What tone did he use when he said it?” “—Just his usual tone.” “Was he alone in the room?”

Corporal Takagi walked in silence for a while before suddenly speaking in a voice that seemed to snap him out of his daze. “There was also a mistress.” Lieutenant Uji made a disgusted face at those words and hunched his shoulders. Until now, he hadn’t conceptualized Hanada’s woman through the vulgar lens of “mistress.” Yet through reality’s harsh prism, that base designation might have been precisely apt. Bitterness rose in his throat, but he suppressed it and kept interrogating Takagi.

“What sort of woman is she?”

Takagi glanced up at his face, started to answer something immediately, but then simply laughed sheepishly, showing white teeth. Uji thought that Takagi seemed to have interpreted the question as arising from his own curiosity. Without altering his stern expression, Uji said in a voice that seemed to press down: “A woman like this? Eyes large, brows thin—” “Yes, there’s a large mole under her right eye.”

So it was that woman after all, Uji recalled with a throbbing ache in his heart.

That was back when he was still in Aparri. By then, Aparri’s defenses had been ostensibly completed with a three-tiered system—main positions, forward bases, and coastal fortifications—but reports from Leyte Island made it clear that another round of fundamental reconstruction would be needed to withstand U.S. forces’ assault capabilities. Uji was in a village near the forward base. As a reserve officer called to active duty, he naturally possessed only makeshift knowledge of strategy and fortification—but even through his eyes, he couldn’t imagine these positions being strong enough to withstand naval artillery or aircraft attacks. The reinforcement order was issued, and soldiers worked around the clock. On one such day, Japanese anti-aircraft guns—unusually—shot down an incoming U.S. plane, and the pilot descended by parachute through the evening sky like a white blossom unfurling. It happened in mountains near the forward base. From then on, the pilot vanished completely. They conducted thorough searches to capture him for intelligence, but his whereabouts remained unknown. Some Filipino must have been hiding him. As Leyte defeats mounted, Filipino hearts too finally seemed to turn against Japanese forces. The order to search for the American pilot was given to Uji.

One night, Uji secretly entered the village near the mountain where the pilot had parachuted down. Past midnight, a twenty-third-night moon hung in the sky, but only the road cutting through the darkly gleaming wetland stood pale against the shadowed landscape. The village comprised seventy to eighty houses. Among them, only one blazed with light; the rest lay dark in slumber. By local farmers’ customs, keeping a lamp burning at this hour was inherently suspect. Uji gripped his pistol and stole toward the house, muffling his footsteps. From a bungalow-style window, he quietly peered inside. He hadn’t truly believed the American pilot would be there. Rather, it had been a passing curiosity that drove him. Through a gap in the window covering, he surveyed the house’s interior.

Lieutenant Hanada was there. In the room spread with a blue carpet where a table had been set, Lieutenant Hanada sat deep in a chair drinking sake. Across the table sat a woman. She held the sake bottle in her left hand. Dressed in simple native-style clothing while facing Hanada, she suddenly turned her gaze sharply toward the window and stood up as if sensing Uji’s presence outside. Her face bore large eyes with a prominent mole on the cheek. She resembled someone—the thought flashed through his mind—but he muffled his footsteps and swiftly retreated from beneath the window. He felt he had glimpsed something forbidden. Crouching in shadow, he waited for a face to appear at the window, but no movement came. The viscous night air clung to his skin. The clean white shirt Hanada wore lingered in his vision. Everything felt unnerving. He remained motionless in his crouch, aware of some inexplicable complex emotion rising within him.

By that time, military discipline had already begun to disintegrate. Even among officers, there were those who refused to sleep in designated barracks and instead kept mistresses they visited. Uji knew several such officers. An incident had also occurred where a captain serving as brigade adjutant was confronted by soldiers after becoming dead drunk and dancing with a woman in a civilian home. Each time Uji witnessed or heard of such incidents, he would brusquely dismiss any connection between himself and his colleagues' disgrace—what did their failures have to do with me?—yet some gritty residue remained lodged in his heart. The keeping of mistresses was an open secret. Uji was not without his preferences regarding women, nor was he particularly moral, yet he couldn't bring himself to take a mistress. It might have been due to his age. Yet at that time, what he feared most was the decay of his own heart.

Whether that house had been Hanada’s quarters was something Uji ultimately never came to know. He told no one and asked no one. Yet that momentary scene glimpsed through the curtain had seared itself into his mind with unnatural vividness. When he heard Hanada had deserted from the southern battlefield, he immediately recalled that big-eyed woman. If it was her—how had she managed to follow the unit up through Cagayan Valley? That march defied all description in its hellishness. Soldiers collapsed from overexertion; horses lost their footing and fell. Those who fell committed suicide or were shot dead. Uji walked coughing up blood while leaning on his cane. Even after entering San Jose—how much longer could the army’s lifeblood hold out? It was no longer an army but a mere mob. What barely kept everyone from scattering, it seemed to Uji, was a shared awareness that they were all exposed to the same dangers and fate.

I will live for myself. Gasping for breath as he pressed onward, it was now—for the first time—that this thought crystallized in Uji. How had she endured that hellish march on her own two feet? And how had that woman supported Hanada through the artillery barrage at the southern pass? None of it made sense. Yet these mysteries bore down on him with visceral weight—not abstract doubts, but physical pressure behind his eyes.

The path grew increasingly damp as they walked. They moved in silence for nearly two hours after their conversation trailed off. A faint trail branched into two forks. When Takagi remarked that neither path differed much in distance or difficulty, he paused briefly before choosing the mountain route. The jungle thickened gradually, colossal trees multiplying around them. Parasitic plants shrouded the trunks in bluish-black foliage while vines crept across the treetops. Ferns carpeted the ground unchecked as firefly-like luminescent forms flitted through the gloom between distant trunks. The path dried slightly here, occasionally carrying the murmur of unseen mountain streams. Its width measured roughly four to five feet. Uji led from the front with Takagi following behind.

“This is the right path, isn’t it?”

“It’s correct. In another two or three hours, we’ll reach Brigade Headquarters.”

The brigade headquarters was located at the center of the planned rear position. Lieutenant Hanada’s location was three kilometers north of that point. They would likely arrive before nightfall. He found himself occasionally glancing back at Takagi behind him. Fatigue had already settled heavily on Uji’s shoulders, but Takagi, being young, still showed no signs of weariness. Each time he glanced back, Takagi greeted him with eyes that smiled.

“You were in the medical corps, weren’t you?” “You served directly under Lieutenant Hanada.” “Yes.” “When we were on Parawi Island—wasn’t it you who acted as Lieutenant Hanada’s orderly?” “Yes.” “Then—” Uji broke off. “You’ll be killing your own superior officer.” The breathing of Takagi following behind seemed to grow slightly ragged. After a moment, in a gasping tone: “It’s orders—” Then he added hurriedly: “But it’s not my fault.”

“No one’s saying it’s your fault.” Uji said this while a cold smile hovered vaguely on his cheeks. “That doesn’t matter at all.”

And after a while: "Even if they aren't killed, everyone will die off anyway." Uji muttered these words as if to convince himself. The path narrowed, and the jungle abruptly ended. It was a cliff. A black rock face stood vertically for about ten meters, and the path precariously threaded along the cliff's upper edge. They began walking along the edge of the cliff. There spread a view of a basin so dazzling its glare seemed capable of tinting their eyes' color. The jungle began again below the cliff, thinning as the slope descended, and where it ended, fields spread out. Mounds of unhulled rice dotted the distant view like scattered toys.

While struggling forward, supporting his body with one hand grasping roots and branches, he began feeling the meaning of his earlier careless words stubbornly coiling around his heart. Most of his comrades from Aparri were already dead. To intercept the U.S. forces at Orion Pass south of Tsugegarao, two battalions had been selected and dispatched ahead. But it was too late by then. Orion Pass had already fallen to American control—the battalions suffered devastating attacks that annihilated everyone from the commanders down, leaving barely twenty soldiers who made it back to San Jose. He couldn’t deny secretly blessing himself for having escaped selection in that Orion Pass battle. Nor could he claim there wasn’t some cold satisfaction beneath his pity for dead comrades—having entered San Jose a day early to avoid bombardment, being staff officer exempt from suicide raids—all determined by trivialities deciding who lived or died. He’d known this was war’s iron law from the start, yet facing it now felt unbearable. Whether survival’s joy was pure or tainted remained unclear. Even contemplating such things seemed meaningless now. The Northern Sector’s annihilation loomed imminent. The Southern battalion’s fate too flickered like a candle in the wind—all knew this truth. Then why cling to their units? Human pride? Here, concepts like pride or self-discipline held no meaning. Only the cold binary remained—alive or killed. No good or evil existed here. Only one truth endured—the innermost voice demanding survival.

It was the desire to live. Living for oneself was the sole truth. Your actions were nothing but sentimentality.

He leaned against a rocky outcrop, his face exposed to direct sunlight, and stood still for a moment, listening to the clatter of Corporal Takagi’s approaching military boot heels striking the stone behind him. The footsteps drew gradually closer. He turned around. Takagi’s complexion was astonishingly ashen.

“Have you grown weary, Lieutenant?” “Lieutenant?” He stared fixedly at Takagi while continuing to think about that morning. When he had stood looking down at the battalion commander’s half-grayed head, a sudden sense of sorrow—momentary yet overwhelming—had filled his chest. What was that feeling? It wasn’t that he felt sorry for the battalion commander.

He spoke to Takagi in a slow tone.

“This morning, the Battalion Commander ordered me to kill Hanada. Since he said to bring a non-commissioned officer, I brought you.”

This morning, while waiting in the infirmary, Takagi had been beating a soldier outside the room. Last night his report had been strangely distant and cold—what had he been thinking inside? If that had stemmed from a naive sense of justice—but he found himself surveying Takagi’s youthful cheeks and the healthy luster of his wrists. Takagi’s clear eyes remained fixed, waiting for his words. He felt a fierce pleasure akin to ripping off a scab all at once, and with deliberate force behind each word, he spoke.

“I don’t intend to ever return to the original unit. Whether I meet Hanada or not—I can’t say.” “I’m going to the East Coast.” “Lieutenant, sir—” Takagi cut in sharply. His face flushed crimson. “Lieutenant, sir. “You mustn’t do that!”

Uji coldly ignored the shout while pressing his body harder against the rocky outcrop. “If you want to flee, come with me. If you don’t want to flee, then go back.” The color abruptly drained from Takagi’s face. He scraped his boots against the rocky outcrop and slid backward, glaring at Uji with eyes burning blue. Uji stared fixedly at the movement without so much as a flicker of expression. Silence stretched between them. The sunlight seared his back. Suddenly Takagi shouted in a gasping voice.

“I will return.”

“Alright, go back.” Uji barked as though striking air. Takagi clicked his heels together and saluted Lieutenant Uji. The raised hand trembled violently. Uji lifted a single palm in response without shifting his gaze. Takagi turned away and started along the cliff’s edge. Laughter froze solid on Uji’s cheek. His right hand slid to his waist and slowly drew the pistol. The cliff offered only one path. Takagi walked off without looking back, shoulders quivering faintly. The figure swayed—perhaps from heat haze rising. Uji braced the gun barrel against a rock outcrop and leaned into it. He shut one eye, pressed his cheek to stone, and set his finger on the hammer. Through the front sight wavered Takagi’s distant form. Thirty more seconds would take him around the bend. Pulling now meant a sure hit. His marksmanship held no doubt. “I’ll shoot,” he thought. The frozen laughter melted from his cheek as he lifted his head—a man bearing invisible weight. The pistol sagged downward in his limp grip.

At that moment, Takagi seemed to have turned the corner and abruptly vanished from view. As he turned the corner, he seemed to cast a brief glance this way. But even that remained uncertain. Uji stood frozen in place, his face contorted in an unreadable expression.

Some time passed.

He shook his head vigorously and began walking slowly. Although his complexion remained ashen, the way he pressed his lips together and sharpened his gaze made him paradoxically appear more alive. By not keeping his intention to desert hidden within himself alone—having blurted it out even though the other party was Takagi—his mood had actually lightened. When the battalion commander said that morning to bring along a skilled marksman among the non-commissioned officers, Uji had immediately thought of Takagi. He did not know whether Takagi was a good shot. But why did Takagi immediately come to mind? At that moment, Uji clearly solidified his resolution to desert. Therefore, he should have chosen the non-commissioned officer most prone to aiding desertion. Despite this, he had ended up choosing Takagi. The expression on Takagi’s face when he made his report last night had stubbornly lingered in his mind. It was a coldly emotionless face. Uji was aware. Takagi hated his superior officer Hanada. He felt a truly commonplace anger toward Hanada, who had fled with a woman and not returned. And the reason Uji had chosen Takagi was that he had wanted, so to speak, to confront the commonplace condemnation of his own desertion.

Uji walked aimlessly and recklessly, his head hanging in gloom. The path plunged back into the jungle. If he were to reveal his intent to desert, Takagi’s possible courses of action were limited to three: escape together with Uji, betray Uji and return, or shoot Uji dead. Uji had been considering this final scenario. Would I shoot Takagi then, or silently let myself be shot? When he contemplated this, he felt a prickling pleasure mingled with pain for reasons he couldn’t fathom. But in reality, Takagi had betrayed him and turned back along the path. In just three hours, he would reach his original unit. And he would report to the Battalion Commander. If that happened, that amiable Battalion Commander would fly into a rage and send pursuers after him. That immediately enraged him. That’s why he had thought about shooting Takagi dead. But in the end, he didn’t fire. Why hadn’t he fired? It wasn’t that his unsuspecting heart—never once attempting to look back—had struck Uji. Uji had wanted to gamble. More pursuers would come. The greater the external pressure against his desertion became, the more Uji could push back and confirm the righteousness of his actions. He had wanted to confirm that. He didn’t want to flee like some rat stealing away from the ship’s hold, sensing imminent wreckage yet escaping unseen by all. Whether good or bad, he wanted to push aside all obstacles and escape.

He wanted to validate his own actions by feeling resistance. As if prying open a wound with his fingers to confirm its depth. ——

For about thirty minutes, Uji walked in silence, wrestling with his thoughts. Before long, something resembling a small settlement along the road came into view. No sooner had nipa palm roofs flickered into view through the trees than Uji’s gaze caught on four or five squalid huts clustered irregularly along the road’s curve. Their derelict state made it immediately clear they’d been abandoned long ago. Uji entered the place with slumped shoulders, almost absentmindedly. Only a few rice-pounding pestles lay scattered across the floor, and the pillars had already begun to decay. A vinegar-like smell hung faintly in the air all around. Stepping onto the damp ground and circling around to the side, there stood a hut tilting amidst a chaotic tangle of ferns. Through gaps in the weathered nipa leaves that had split away from the roof, something black and indistinct appeared to be lying on the hut’s floor. Involuntarily gripping his pistol with his right hand, Uji narrowed his eyes and approached. It appeared to be a Japanese soldier.

Clad in a tattered undershirt, he lay on his back with legs stretched out long. Perhaps sensing Uji’s approach, he moved his neck listlessly, but his face showed no trace of surprise or joy. He was a dark-skinned soldier with prominent cheekbones. When noticed, the hands clasped over his chest had lost nearly all their flesh, leaving only tendons that jutted up like wire. Beside the pillow lay a canteen and a half-eaten guava, both shriveled and withered. He watched Uji’s figure with a dull gaze. His eyes held vacant dementia, yet even those eyes were rimmed with dark shadows. While bracing one foot against the floor, Uji gazed at the man for a while with cold eyes. He hauled himself fully onto the floorboards. The pillar and floor creaked with an unpleasant sound.

“Who are you?”

The man's vacant expression didn't change. Uji raised his voice further and repeated the same question once more. A low, hollow voice leaked from the man’s mouth in a sluggish tone. “I’m sick.”

Uji asked again about his military unit. The man seemed about to answer something, but without it becoming clear, he closed his eyes wearily. Keeping his eyelids closed while slightly moving his clasped hands on his chest, he said this in a relatively clear voice.

“There’s another one… In the back.”

When Uji shifted his gaze accordingly, beyond a half-wall of nipa palms there appeared to be another room—its space stained a murky blue-black hue from what might have been low-hanging tree branches. On that floor too lay a single black mass. Uji moved toward it. As he drew near, this too proved to be a soldier, but Uji recoiled and froze mid-step. Across the man’s face and head swarmed a teeming mass of flies.

(Is he dead?) As he stood staring motionless, the hand dangling toward the floor moved with excruciating slowness, drifted near the face, and made a faint gesture of brushing away flies. The flies burst into the air with a buzz before swirling about and alighting on pillars. He wasn't dead yet. His face bore cheekbones sharp as chisel marks, nearly earth-colored. The gaiters on his outstretched legs had slackened, showing ungainly dents here and there. Do flies swarm over you even while you're still alive? Uji became aware of bitter saliva pooling in his mouth as he averted his gaze. The flies seemed to be returning to settle on the man's face again. Soldiers separated from their units—particularly those gone missing—appeared to wander through the jungle like this until starvation felled them one by one. Discipline clung only near main forces; step beyond that into this boundless jungle, and soldiers who'd lost their pillars seemed to wander pallid as wrathful demons. He'd heard of such things from subordinates, but witnessing this scene firsthand now pressed upon Uji with unbearable weight, freighted with premonition. Returning to the original room, Uji leaned against a pillar and drew a deep breath. That's when he noticed—a stench akin to corpse rot had already begun rising from the back room. Fatigue lay heavy on his shoulders. The core of his spine throbbed. Though his joints felt numb, paradoxically his body burned with unnatural heat. Leaning against the pillar, Uji quietly closed his eyes.

He felt the fresh intent to desert he’d carried since morning’s departure gradually transforming into something oppressive and foul. That morning had still held an aching joy—like stomping through ice with all his might. It had felt as though something long-pent-up had found its outlet and come gushing forth. Since entering San Jose a month ago, he’d believed he’d finally grasped the desertion opportunity he’d relentlessly pursued—yet now wondered if that had been mere illusion. When hearing Takagi’s report last night, Hanada’s present circumstances had suddenly risen before his eyes with vivid clarity. At that moment, he’d felt a heavy, quiet excitement welling up within him. When had that excitement first intertwined with the word “desertion” in his heart’s depths? Last night he’d pondered countless matters, lying sleepless for hours. This morning when orderly Saeki came calling, he’d instantly intuited it must be the order to eliminate Hanada.

The tension that had gripped his heart since Takagi’s departure was now beginning to unravel.

First, he didn't know the way. If this path truly led to Intel - without even knowing that much, he had recklessly trudged along this fading trail to reach this point. And now he was in this hut. If he kept wandering lost like this, he might end up sharing the same fate as the soldiers here. He carried rations for barely a single day. As he walked he would grow hungry, and if he found no means to seek food, he would inevitably exhaust his strength and have no choice but to lie by the roadside awaiting death. Yet if this path indeed led to Intel - then his pursuers would soon catch up to Uji.

(I should have shot Takagi dead back then. What was I hesitating about?)

Uji clicked his tongue sharply and opened his eyes. The anxiety that pursuers were coming had now begun taking clearer shape and spreading through his chest. But there was no use agonizing over it now. He had to leave the hut and start walking immediately. Danger was closing in. Though part of him felt hounded, something thick and stubborn maintained its unrelenting grip on his core. Whether for good or ill, he thought vaguely while standing rooted. Like a spinning top, one must keep desperately whirling until collapsing from exhaustion!

Suddenly, footsteps sounded. Uji flinched and braced himself. Threading between the front huts, the footsteps seemed to veer toward the sodden ground flanking the structure. Uji listened intently while gripping his pistol’s grip with his right hand and disengaging the safety.

The forest composition here was particularly dense, so the light filtering through the treetops had a bluish hue like that of the seafloor.

A dark figure appeared as if parting the air. Uji let out a surprised sound.

“Takagi? Is that you?” Uji kept his pistol gripped without relaxing his guarded stance. The figure kept approaching. It was Corporal Takagi. He came right up to the edge of the floor where Uji stood and stopped. Then he looked up at Uji. Uji silently looked down at Takagi. The medic’s naturally pale face appeared bluish and translucent under the strange light. In those narrowed eyes gazing upward, Uji clearly saw tears pooling. Now that he thought of it, Takagi had been staggering as he approached earlier. An exhaustion like that of someone pushed beyond their limits saturated Takagi’s expression. He tried to speak but found no words. His cheek twitched spasmodically—a teardrop broke from his eyelid and slid down his cheek in a single streak.

Uji gradually relaxed his braced posture while feeling a sudden stinging sensation shoot up the bridge of his nose. But this too lasted only an instant; he made an oddly displeased expression and turned back to look at the man on the floor. The man had said something. The man turned his face toward them and fixed them with a hollow gaze. His lips moved slightly as if trying to say something in a parched voice. It was impossible to tell what he was saying. It was less a voice than a sound like wind blowing from the throat.

“Go listen to what he’s saying.”

Having said that to Takagi, Uji turned and jumped down from the floorboards to the ground. The words slipped out smoothly, almost without thought. Takagi hesitated for a moment but immediately climbed onto the floorboards, crouched by the man’s pillow, bent his neck, and brought his ear close to the man’s face. Uji walked briskly out toward the road. He sat down on a fallen log at the edge of the road, supported his upper body with his sword, and closed his eyes. And he considered Takagi’s state of mind—how he had started to turn back only to come chasing after him again. When he clearly saw the tears pooling in Takagi’s eyes, the first thing that rose in his chest was a kind of unbearable frustration. (This man will likely be a burden to me for some time to come.) Discovering that no pursuers were coming from his original unit left him feeling not so much relieved as oddly deflated. In truth, moments earlier, envisioning the pursuers who would likely come after him, he had mentally conjured the faces of his fellow soldiers one by one. The premonition that he himself would be thrust into a dire situation had caused all those imagined pursuers to vanish. He opened his eyes wide and looked around intently with an impassive expression. The road barely showed its traces as it disappeared into the jungle’s depths.

Takagi emerged from behind the hut. Uji also rose listlessly. He asked while standing up. “What was that soldier saying?”

Takagi approached, but sensing an unnatural stiffness in his gait and movements, Uji subtly tensed. Takagi's voice carried a somber, restrained quality. "If you're going to the East Coast," he said, "take me with you." Like pilgrims drawn to sacred ground, they all strangely yearned for that eastern shore. The East Coast meant rice in abundance, salt for their wounds, fish swelling in nets. This belief had spread through their unit like scripture—embellished perhaps, but rooted in truth. Civilians already moved in clusters toward that promise, unburdened by military chains. Hearing those words now, Uji dimly recognized the same pull working within himself.

“If you won’t take me along,” Takagi held his breath for a moment. “He said to shoot him dead with that pistol.” Uji silently returned Takagi’s gaze. Without responding, he started walking. And he muttered in a low voice, as if to himself: “Is this really the right path?”

Corporal Takagi hurried after Lieutenant Uji as he walked away.

“Shall I go kill him?” “Lieutenant Uji.” His voice was desperate. Sensing killing intent, Uji turned around. Takagi’s eyes caught Uji’s gaze and glinted sharply. “Why kill him?” “He says to kill him.”

A strangely stubborn craving seemed to have seized him now. His facial muscles had stiffened. Lieutenant Uji felt a vague yet relentless pressure emanating from Corporal Takagi’s pupils. While enduring it, Uji kept his gaze locked on those eyes. Resentment toward Uji’s actions, his own weakness in still trying to follow him, and a desperate rebellion against these feelings—all blazed in his eyes. Uji turned his back in silence and started walking down the path again.

Suddenly, laughter erupted from behind. Uji shuddered and stopped in his tracks. It had not been laughter at all. It was a stifled sob. Gradually growing more chaotic and louder, it transformed into full-blown wailing. As if pursued, Uji sped up his pace. Time had long since passed noon. The jungle stretched endlessly no matter how far he walked. Perhaps fatigue was making it seem so. He had no appetite at all. He simply walked in silence. Takagi too kept his swollen eyelids lowered and followed in silence.

The fact that he had vaguely compromised and brought Takagi along again—this seemed to be gradually becoming an unpleasant weight pressing against Uji’s chest. Why hadn’t he reprimanded him then and sent him away? As he registered the heavy footsteps of Takagi following behind him in the same rhythm, Uji felt his heart sink even deeper. (Why am I sinking into this prisoner-like gloom?)

Whether desertion was right or wrong—that was something I had already weighed in my mind since morning. There was no need to blame myself for that. Precisely because I believed surviving was right, I had resorted to such desertion. And yet—what was it that tried to block my path to the East Coast?

Suddenly, an image he had been desperately trying to keep hidden in the recesses of his consciousness rose vividly to the surface. It was the piercing gaze of those subordinate soldiers he had seen inside the limestone cave that morning. Those soldiers had been his subordinates since Apari. Having abandoned even them, Uji had come this far. Of course they couldn't have discerned his inner thoughts that morning. They had merely been paying attention as they always did when listening to their superior officer—nothing more than that. If I believed my actions were justified, why had I faltered like that back then? The pallid gazes shot toward him from between the glowing white stalactites still tormented his chest unbearably.

“Right, right.” While muttering meaningless words over and over, Uji tried to expel those thoughts from his mind. The more he tried to expel them, the more they clung to his heart. Why did they thrust their sharp blades so relentlessly, zeroing in on the tiniest chink in this heart that should have been armored solid?

The canteen slung over his shoulder was gradually becoming a burden. With each step, he could feel the dense liquid sloshing inside the canteen. Uji kept his neck rigidly straight, fixed his gaze sharply ahead, and dragged his feet as he walked. Beads of sweat dripped down from his forehead no matter how much he wiped them.

Since being conscripted three years ago, he had been transferred from one battlefield to another.

What he witnessed in those battlefield positions was the raw form of what it means to be human. Leaning on his cane as he trudged along the path toward the San Jose Basin, Uji had resolved to live solely for himself—a decision etched by the harsh realities he'd witnessed. Humans serve nothing but their own interests and pleasures; concepts like sacrifice and devotion only take root when there exists self-satisfaction profound enough to outweigh their inherent suffering. He had engraved these truths into his heart over three years. Among his comrades—both surviving and dead—there had been every sort of man. Adjuncts who drowned themselves in dance and liquor at Apari, deserters like Hanada who fled with women. Yet there were also young lieutenants who volunteered for raiding parties never to return, old captains who sacrificed themselves to save subordinates. But such battlefield heroics were things he couldn't accept with pure sincerity. Something nagged at him. If he couldn't embrace this human nobility, he had no right to despise the ethical collapse around him. In truth, both seemed equally futile in this desperate situation. He'd lost all perspective when gazing upon people. Humans without pillars were mere phantoms stripped of shadows. Hadn't they all lost their pillars? There could be neither beauty nor ugliness in phantom deeds.

When they finally entered San Jose after that grueling march, a naval unit that had fled Manila was stationed near the southern entrance. Due to his high fever, Uji slept in a civilian house arranged by an orderly. That area too was occupied by the navy, and in that house lived a man who appeared to be a naval civilian employee wearing a jumper, together with a local woman. When they learned of Uji’s illness, out of sympathy, they fetched coconuts and mangoes from somewhere and brought them to him. When Uji had taken him for a civilian employee, it turned out the man was actually a press corps member. He was a stocky man with eyes like a bear cub’s. He now appeared to be working as a navy provisions officer. Uji remembered the man’s name—he was someone who had received a literary award some time ago. Uji recalled reading that novel when he had been stationed in the provinces—a story about crossing icebergs and hunting bears.

The next morning when bidding farewell, the man suddenly turned serious and said earnestly—as if whispering into Uji’s ear—that whether this war was won or lost, he intended to remain here and live out his life with this woman (pointing to the one beside him) in this land. Uji’s eyes widened in astonishment. What a carefree notion he’s entertaining, he thought. Afterward, an incident occurred where four or five soldiers from Uji’s unit were ambushed and slaughtered by guerrillas while procuring provisions in the basin. Later came rumors that it was that press corps member who had guided the guerrillas. He didn’t know what happened after that. Nothing was as unreliable as battlefield rumors, so Uji hadn’t probed deeper—but if such talk circulated, perhaps the man had been killed. On battlefields, individual lives meant nothing. A mere whim could steal a life. Why would a man who aspired to write novels do something so self-endangering? Yet there was nothing strange about it. Everyone without exception had lost their pillars of judgment. There was only sensation responding to phenomena; everyone convinced themselves this sensation was their own reason.

(Perhaps even I, who had fled out of a desperate will to live, was of that same ilk.) He couldn't bring himself to laugh at that novelist. He was gradually beginning to lose grasp of what he was even thinking about. He had believed he was cutting through everything with his own judgment and acting accordingly, but even that now seemed uncertain. The only thing he knew for certain was the fact that he had now deserted his unit. But that too hadn't been fully carried out. If he resolved to shoot Hanada even now and returned to his unit as if nothing had happened, no one would know. Even if Takagi knew, since he had pursued Uji here, he was equally guilty of intending to desert. There was no risk of anyone finding out. But had Takagi truly pursued him here intending to flee together? Why had he been holding back tears at that time? Why had he wanted to kill that wounded soldier? He seemed to comprehend everything, yet the more he pondered, the more he found himself comprehending nothing.

(What am I even trudging through this jungle for?)

Desolate doubts surged up through his chest without any logical connection...

“I can hear a song.” Takagi called out to Uji from behind. Uji stopped and listened. Though faint, the sound reached Uji’s ears too. He turned his head toward Takagi and muttered as if to himself.

“I can hear it. That’s an Ilocano song.” “That’s the brigade headquarters.”

Takagi said in a calm, low voice. Because he was tightly pursing his lips, Takagi’s face appeared gripped by some unspoken resolve. A suspicion suddenly shadowed Uji’s thoughts. With bloodshot eyes clouded by protruding veins, Uji fixed his stare on Takagi. Without changing expression, Takagi met his gaze as naturally as breathing.

"Alright."

It never quite formed into words, but with that resolve, Uji squared his shoulders and began walking. After walking for about two minutes, the path suddenly ended. Deceptively bright sunlight fell from the sky. The jungle yawned open there as if torn away.

Uji had once seen Yabakei. The rock formations resembled those composing that famed gorge. From his vantage point, the terrain spread out like an amphitheater, slopes cutting inward from all sides like the flared rim of a mortar bowl. Terraced cliffs rose in steps, nipa huts clinging precariously to their midsections like barnacles. At the base swarmed women in loose summer smocks identical to those worn by orderlies. Their singing swelled upward from that human anthill. Soldiers crawled ant-like up the cliff face too, fingers scrabbling at mineral-streaked stone.

“That’s the headquarters.”

Corporal Takagi pointed at a hut slightly larger than the others midway up the cliff. Poles jutted from its frame into empty air, white shirts drying beneath them. Though the slope’s disorienting contours made distances deceptive, they remained close enough for voices to carry. The path traced the mortar bowl’s upper rim like a cracked lip.

In an angry tone, Uji asked.

“The path to Intaru—do we take this route?”

“That’s correct.” “That big tree.” While moving his index finger, he said: “You turn right at that tree.” “Isn’t there a path through the jungle instead of walking along this cliff edge?” “There isn’t.” “I don’t know.”

Uji’s face grew slightly stern as he gazed at Takagi. Then he said in a low voice: “You walk in front.” Takagi stiffened, his body tensing as if startled. Uji clearly perceived that reaction. The two men stared at each other like jungle beasts meeting on a trail. Takagi suddenly made a face as if about to weep and said in a shrill voice with exaggerated gestures: “I’ll follow behind.” Silence returned. Uji abruptly averted his gaze and looked at the large tree ahead. A perplexed expression spread across his face. He gazed blankly at the crown of the massive tree where sunlight fell. A giant tree with peeling bark and sparse foliage near its summit loomed with an almost symbolic presence.

(That tree will collapse naturally soon, I suppose. But if I turn at that tree, I can rest easy.) However, Uji didn’t start walking and instead turned toward Takagi to speak. His tone was somber. “I—don’t trust you. You might dash off to headquarters and end up reporting me.” Takagi’s cheeks flushed scarlet, but instantly his eyes brimmed with sorrow. Wrenching his body as if frantically refuting,

“That’s not true, sir.”

It was a moaning voice.

“I’ll follow behind.”

Uji silently drew the pistol from his waist. He released the safety catch. He gripped the heavy Browning, its weight solid in his palm.

“Alright.” He started walking ahead while saying, “I’ll go first. “Follow me.” Uji stepped onto the black rocky path while listening to Takagi’s labored breathing behind him. From far below, singing voices swelled like waves as countless small figures began moving in unison. The sight of people swarming beneath appeared almost cheerful. Each step seemed to etch itself into his flesh. He walked with every nerve focused behind him. He couldn’t tell what expression Takagi wore. If he made any noise or tried sliding down the cliff, he would shoot him dead immediately. If I kill him, I can always invent excuses afterward. While tracking each footfall behind him, the palm gripping Uji’s pistol grew slick with cold sweat.

They reached the target giant tree. Nothing had happened. The road forked there, one branch following the cliff toward headquarters, while turning right would plunge them back into the dark jungle. The bark was flayed red. The tree appeared seventy or eighty meters tall, its branches broken off as if hacked away, the few remaining leaves near its crown turned a pallid, decayed white. Uji let his shoulders slump in relief and turned around. Fatigue piled onto his back all at once. “Is this the path?”

Holstering his pistol at his waist, Uji asked in a low voice. Takagi’s face was pale, but he nodded silently. “What’s with that strange face you’re making?” Uji tried to laugh, but it didn’t become a laugh. His expression merely twisted slightly. Takagi also averted his oddly rigid face from Uji. The two men then began walking as they were. The village where Hanada was said to be located was about three kilometers from here. The path sloped gently downward, and somewhere came the sound of flowing mountain water. Step by step, they drew closer to Lieutenant Hanada’s location. Even as he thought this, it held a tenuous grasp on reality. The feeling that gripped Uji was something different entirely. While probing that feeling in his chest, he planted the tips of his boots into the undergrowth step by step. Vines tangled around their legs, making it difficult to walk.

That Takagi’s feelings had hardened because of what had happened earlier was evident from his angry expression, but it could also be perceived in his rough footsteps. It wasn’t that Uji didn’t trust him. However, there was also the possibility of contingencies. Even when I said those things to Takagi, it felt less like genuine intent and more like cynical self-display prevailing. Takagi’s attempt to draw closer through their shared guilt only felt like chains dragging him down. (Taking every bit of this farce so seriously.) While stealing glances at Takagi’s face walking beside him, Uji felt a moment of sharp hatred welling up toward him. But like spitting at heaven, it returned to his heart with a sickening sensation.…

After that, I felt as though we had walked an exceedingly long time. Sunlight filtering through the treetops grew faint while insect cries resembling cicadas drifted from deep within the forest. I found myself vaguely thinking about Hanada. What would he think when we met? I could imagine his surprised face clearly enough, but nothing beyond that surfaced in my mind. That he stayed with a woman and abandoned his unit—could this truly be dismissed as mere carnal obsession? If it were simple lust, a man of his caliber wouldn't have fallen into such straits—he should've handled things more shrewdly. He must've staked himself on something more fundamental. Yet the details eluded me. He'd joined with a woman and deserted. The incident seemed astonishingly straightforward, yet dark ambiguities clung to its edges—what Hanada had believed or intended remained utterly opaque. All I truly understood was that momentary scene witnessed through Aparri's window.

――What do I think of Hanada?

At that moment when he had crouched in the shadows holding his breath, what Uji felt was truly complex. While walking alone down a dark path searching for an American pilot, he saw that sight—not mere shock at witnessing something bizarre, but something deeper—a quiet fury simmering beneath consciousness. Perhaps there had also been antipathy because Hanada’s face looked obscenely content then—a happiness so complete it mocked Uji’s own existence—but even now he couldn’t parse those tangled emotions cleanly through memory’s haze. Every night since Hanada’s disappearance into Interal’s jungles this unresolved tension gnawed at him—not as passing thought but visceral urgency demanding resolution through action or collapse.

――Do I hate Hanada?

I couldn't definitively say I did. As he continued his train of thought，a thin membrane seemed to form，distorting his judgment. Before long，he too might end up deserting like Hanada. Had that premonition—the fear he might likewise flee—been what kept him until now from hating Hanada’s wanton acts?

The forest gradually thinned, and a grassy hill came into view. Without any conviction, Uji walked. “It’s right there.”

Takagi said abruptly with sudden resolve. Uji halted and lifted his drooping head. Before them lay a gently sloping hill blanketed by shrubs and grass, the path seemingly curving along its contour. “The village lies beyond that bend.” “Lieutenant Hanada was stationed there yesterday.”

A peculiar dryness spread through his mouth, yet sickly saliva kept welling up relentlessly. He told himself there was no need to tense up, but his body betrayed that resolve. The reality of confronting Hanada felt less tangible than events in a dream. Still, his chest pounded as the palpitations intensified. ――Had we truly come three kilometers from headquarters? The journey felt both interminable and fleeting. Though the downhill slope offered some relief, Uji walked hunched forward on his gaunt shoulders. Like during that Cagayan Valley march, exhaustion exceeding physical limits pressed dully against his spine while cold sweat seeped endlessly from his brow. What was he walking for? Biting his lip to the sound of Takagi's boots shredding vines, Uji pressed on. A dull ache throbbed between his ribs.

When they rounded the base of the grassy hill, the shabby nipa roofs of four or five houses came into Uji’s view. He thought Hanada must be in that house. While hitching up his simplified sword belt, he said to Takagi.

“You just follow me.” He saw Takagi pressing his right hand against the pistol at his waist. Takagi didn’t look toward him, gaze fixed intently on the village. His face was white as a Noh mask, an eerie luster glistening atop the oily sheen that had seeped through his pallid skin.

“It’s the farthest house.” Uji raised his hand to stop Takagi but, as if reconsidering, took a deep breath and stepped forward to lead the way toward the village. The boots clacked.

The entrance to the first hut stood wide open, and from within came a low voice. Uji stopped and peered into the entrance.

“Is Lieutenant Hanada here?”

The sunlight filtering through pruned branches cast a red glow across the earthen floor where a woman sat alone. She had spread what resembled a mat and kept muttering in a low voice. Though wearing simple Western clothes, her hairstyle and features unmistakably identified her as Japanese. Her disheveled hair hung about her cheeks as her fingers incessantly picked at the mat’s edge—she gave no indication of hearing Uji’s voice, her eyes wide open while the muttering continued unabated. When she abruptly lifted her face toward the light, its youthfulness struck him with arresting beauty.

“Is there no one outside?” Compelled by an apprehensive urge, Uji slid his back along the entrance pillar as he moved into the earthen-floored interior. From the dim recesses came a man’s hoarse voice— “Who are you? This one’s gone mad.” When he crawled out with a rustling sound, he did not look like a soldier. He was a square-jawed man around forty with a piercing gaze. Perhaps dazzled by the light, he shielded his eyes with one hand and looked at Uji.

Uji likewise braced himself and kept his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the man. “Where is Lieutenant Hanada’s hut?” The man seemed to recognize him as an officer but made no particular effort to adjust his demeanor. He said in a slow voice: “Lieutenant Hanada?” “The Lieutenant isn’t here, sir.” “He’s not here.” “Yes, he isn’t here, sir.”

The man had thick shoulders with solid flesh, his upper body bare. He listlessly lowered his legs—encased in mouse-gray Western trousers—onto the earthen floor. Uji turned around. Takagi had only his face protruding through the entrance. “Go to Lieutenant Hanada’s hut. If he’s there, tell him Lieutenant Uji came to make contact and return.”

And he turned back to face the man again. The man coldly watched Takagi leave. "He should be in this village."

“He departed earlier.” “He left?”

He felt his heart crumble with relief and took two or three steps into the earthen-floored area. The mad woman looked up at Uji with a vacant stare, then abruptly rolled onto her side and lifted her legs. The part of her thighs visible beneath the hem was a stark white that seared the eyes. Just as he involuntarily tried to avert his gaze, the woman—still lying on her back—threw back her throat and burst into song in a shrill voice. Her speech was slurred, yet it was a voice of such startling physicality it could jolt one awake.

Behold, the flag of the cross raised high Thou, Jesus, hast gone before.

Uji stared at the woman, his bloodshot eyes widening in shock—it was a hymn. Each time she swung her feet to keep rhythm, fine dust rose from the edge of the mat and swayed through the red light beams. The woman suddenly stopped singing and burst into loud laughter. If she kept making such noise they’d be discovered, Uji thought in confusion as he shifted his uneasy gaze back to the man. “So does that mean Hanada’s returned to his original unit?”

Then what had become of the woman he'd been with? Why hadn't they crossed paths with Uji's group along the way? Uji lifted his cap and pressed his palm against his forehead. The woman stopped laughing. "He hasn't gone back to the original unit." What— Uji involuntarily raised his head. The man dangled his legs over the earthen floor, propping up his torso with one hand as he stared sharply at Uji. When their eyes met, the man suddenly bared white teeth in a grin. Indignation surged through Uji's chest. Pressing harder, he demanded.

“Where did he go?”

The man kept a vulgar smile lingering at his lips but seemed to waver over whether to answer the question, his words briefly catching in his throat. He slipped into a craftily vacant expression, “Lieutenant Hanada made such an excellent military doctor.” Uji rapped the dirt floor impatiently with his saber’s tip. “I didn’t ask about that.” At that moment, the sick soldier’s words from earlier suddenly returned. The man avoided Uji’s gaze, appearing to stare vacantly at the woman lying sprawled out. It was unmistakably an act. The woman muttered something incomprehensible to herself. Uji leaned his face closer to the man, eyes glinting sharply as he spoke each word with deliberate force.

“Lieutenant Hanada must have taken the woman and gone to the east coast. I didn’t come to capture him. I have something to discuss. What did they make you say to keep quiet?”

When he heard those words, the man suddenly laughed—a low, guttural sound—while sluggishly turning his gaze back to Uji. "He left around noon." "Why didn’t you go to the east coast with them?" The man twisted his lips contemptuously again and gave a short laugh.

“Because of this woman here, you see.” “Where did you come from? Judging by your appearance, you don’t seem to be a soldier—”

The man seemed irritated at being addressed as “you.” While backing away across the floor from Uji, he suddenly adopted a rude tone. “From Manila, see. I fled here with the navy men for dear life.”

“You’ve been here a long time, have you?”

“I’ve been here forty or fifty days already.”

“What about food?” “We exchanged the medical supplies Lieutenant Hanada brought for rice in the lower village.” “There’s still some left, then.” “Like hell there is.” The man’s eyes suddenly began to gleam fiercely, and even as he stared at Uji, he repeated it once more. “Rice? Like hell there’s any left!” Uji silently gazed at the man’s thick shoulders. Then he pointed at the woman. “Does this person have any family?” “Mmm.” His tone was noncommittal. “Not what you’d call family.”

“An acquaintance?” “Well, something like that.” “Why didn’t you go to the east coast together?” Uji, irritated by something, repeated the same question.

A wind seemed to rise from deep within the jungle, the rustling of leaves swelling outside the hut until it filled the air. Patches of light flickering across the dirt floor scattered wildly in reddish confusion. Uji stood motionless, listening as the gust faded into silence. The man leaned against the wall and spoke in a low rumble. “The east coast—makes no difference where you run.” “I’m done scrambling around.” “You die when your time comes.” “I’ll live out my days right here with her.” “What about food?”

“Food doesn’t matter anymore. Even if you desert like Mr. Hanada, it’s all the same. If you want to fool around with women, you can do it right here.” A shudder of disgust crawled up Uji’s spine. Fighting it down, he retreated to the hut’s entrance. The man hauled his legs from where they’d dangled over the dirt floor and pinned Uji with glittering eyes. The hard line of his jaw thrust forward like a blade. “I don’t know what business you’ve got with Lieutenant Hanada, but quit chasing him. I might even let him go for you.”

“—I have business.” Uji answered curtly.

“You must have your reasons.” He thrust out his chin defiantly. “It won’t be long before the Japanese forces in San Jose get driven out too and end up fleeing to the east coast.” “Deserters are streaming out everywhere, you know.” “Whether you run now or run later, it’s all the same.” “You know they say headquarters is already on edge.” Uji’s face turned ashen as he remained silent. He couldn’t fathom why the man’s tone had suddenly turned reckless. He wondered if the man had approached him with contempt. The man burst into laughter with a thick, hoarse voice.

“Aren’t you a deserter too?” The man’s face smiled, but his eyes remained harsh. Uji’s cheeks burned hot, and he instinctively moved to step forward again—just as a shadow fell across the doorway and Takagi returned. The pistol glinted in Takagi’s grip. “Lieutenant Hanada is not present.” “There is no one in that hut.” “There are no belongings or anything else.”

The pistol caught the light and glinted. The deranged woman who had been lying down until now sat up abruptly as if responding to that voice. She frowned and began hurling foul abuse. “Pervert! Bastard!” “I’ll kill you.” “I’ll kill you! Just wait!”

However, those eyes were not actually looking at Uji and the others. The hollow gaze seemed to be attempting to fix upon something even farther away. Twisting down the seething turmoil in his chest with sudden force, Uji abruptly turned his back and began walking out of the hut. Takagi sharply scanned the inside of the hut, then wordlessly followed after Uji.

They were back on the path. The brief rest had only intensified their fatigue. Each time he dragged his feet, his bones creaked like unoiled hinges. Wind swept through the trees. He’d grown sick of walking—wanted only to collapse wherever he stood.

“Intaru must be this way.” Once you reached Intaru, there was a single road straight to the east coast. Though there was no need to hurry, Uji pressed forward as if pursued. Back at his original unit, they naturally had no way of knowing Uji was deserting. Yet his back prickled with gooseflesh, keenly sensing pursuers at his heels. If he returned and reported to the Battalion Commander that Hanada had already fled from there, Uji could likely rejoin his unit without raising suspicion. His mission would then be discharged, the matter handed over to the military police. But in this chaos, even if transferred, the military police’s efforts would amount to nothing. The battle would inevitably conclude somehow amidst this turmoil. And Lieutenant Hanada might yet manage to keep his life.

(What would become of me then?) Vivid images suddenly flooded his mind—the obstinate battalion commander who’d displayed medals in his room, the acrid stench of gunpowder from limestone caverns, the taste of local liquor like soapy water. He shook his head violently as if to cast off those memories. To imagine returning there meant confronting far too visceral a resistance. (That man called me a deserter too—was that just malicious talk, or had he actually detected something in my bearing?)

Uji staggered and braced himself against the tree trunk. Then he sank down into a squat right there.

“Corporal Takagi.” He called out in a pained voice. “Let’s rest here.”

He removed the canteen slung over his shoulder and took off the stopper. A strong whiskey scent spread. He put it to his mouth and tilted the canteen. The tongue-searing liquid trailed down his throat. After a while, his stomach grew hot—then that heat vanished instantly—before long, a faint warmth began spreading from deep within his body outward to his skin. For a considerable time he kept his eyes closed, his back against the tree trunk; after a while, he opened his eyes dazedly, wiped around his mouth with his arm, and passed the canteen to Takagi.

“You drink too.”

The landscape suddenly came alive before his eyes. He could see the wind sweeping through the lofty treetops. The road wound its way and disappeared into the depths of the forest. From here onward, the clusters of trees grew sparse, and long shadows from the trees fell upon the ground. He could distinctly feel his fatigue transforming into a pleasant lethargy.

(Who was that man?) Since he claimed to have fled Manila, he might have been one of the Japanese residents there. Judging by his attitude, Uji couldn't imagine him ever having lived an honest life. The man seemed resourceful enough—why wouldn't he try fleeing to the east coast? That had to mean he still kept food hidden away. There'd been something suspect about how he'd denied it. What possible reason could he have for holing up in that hut with a woman who wasn't even his wife?

The deranged woman’s pale body suddenly surged violently through Uji’s mind. At the same time, the impression of the man’s filthy canine teeth overlapped with it. What connection could that impression possibly have to who I am now? Uji had once restrained himself in that manner, yet he now began to keenly feel some murky excitement spreading through his chest, surpassing that restraint. He could feel his own face, still flushed with intoxication, gradually contorting. “Takagi.”

Takagi's cheeks had flushed red too. Uji flapped his hand toward their backtrail and spat out words like ejecting phlegm: "Go back and shoot him dead." He couldn't stomach letting it stand. That man hadn't fled east to wallow in the madwoman's flesh but stayed rooted in this abandoned village. But did I truly loathe that filth from my soul? Could I swear to that? Uji gripped his whirling thoughts and anchored them on Takagi's face. Bewilderment flickered across Takagi's features as he handed back the canteen and rose unsteadily. He stood hesitating above Uji, looking down.

“Go! Now!” Uji reiterated and emphasized his words. As if resolved, Takagi turned his back and began walking.

Until Takagi disappeared into the shadows of the trees, Uji remained as he was, watching intently. Then he clasped his knees with both hands and lowered his head. In a few more minutes, that man would be killed. That man had said something about how his fate would be the same no matter where he died—if that were true, then Uji had been his fate. When he thought that a life would soon be extinguished by his own caprice, Uji felt a pleasure akin to a shudder rising in his chest. That pleasure was clearly being sustained by temporary intoxication. Uji was clearly aware.

(I might regret this later.)

He thought bitterly that if he was headed for ruin, it would be better to meet it quickly. Feeling his mind rapidly deteriorating into ruin, Uji ground his face against his knees. His vision swirled darkly in chaos.

Some time passed.

A single dull gunshot echoed from deep within the forest. Feeling the reverberations spreading through the woods with his entire body, his face still pressed against his knees, he desperately endured—in that moment—a sensation dully welling up inside him.—

About an hour passed. The two men walked through the jungle in silence, their faces sullen. The intoxication still clung to every joint of his body, but his consciousness was growing coldly clear.

The path still sloped gently downward. His body was exhausted yet retained a piercing edge that made each step laborious, though the mechanical rhythm of his legs moving one after another felt divorced from his will. The hues of dusk had already seeped into the trees' bark. Though he thought they could bivouac here now, he kept walking. It remained unclear how far Hanada had gone. He might emerge from the shadows of those nearby trees. Uji detested this sensation. He honed his gaze to a razor's edge. Beyond the basin, the great sun now appeared to sink below the horizon, its light turning ashen blue while fading among the treetops. The path lay carpeted with fallen leaves, wind plucking them one by one from the branches to send them spiraling down. From behind Uji's hunched form, Takagi called out.

“Will we reach Lieutenant Hanada by day’s end?”

“I don’t know. “If we can catch up, we will.” After some time had passed, there came a voice from Takagi that seemed driven to desperation.

“Lieutenant Uji.”

Uji turned around. Corporal Takagi, who had been lagging five or six steps behind, quickly closed in. "If you meet Lieutenant Hanada—" He looked on the verge of tears. "Could you carry out the battalion commander's order?" "Kill him?"

“Yes.” “Why kill him?” Takagi bit his lip. “Then we can return to our unit.” There was a single simple, childlike expression there. Suddenly moved, Uji felt tears threatening to spill. Uji turned his face away from the light and began walking in silence.

Even though the urgency of desertion pressed sharply against Uji’s back, the sensation that directly reached his flesh was merely that of trudging through an endless jungle with no particular purpose. However, in his mind, he believed he understood that this alone was what would save him. So for his own sake, he had walked here. He could no longer bend that resolve for the sake of other forces or momentary sentiment. Even as he moved forward, he told himself firmly once more.

(Even if I feel tears threatening to spill over Takagi now, if that were enough to make me reconsider, then with the emotion I felt this morning looking down at the battalion commander’s thinning crown, I should have already abandoned thoughts of desertion.)

He had watched people throw away their lives for momentary surges of emotion countless times on the battlefield. He was afraid he himself would fall into that. However, this desertion of his might also have sprung from his own momentary sentiment. The feeling that he had spent every night of that month in San Jose contemplating desertion might have been nothing more than a misinterpretation of those oppressive days—wasn’t it possible that he had only conceived the idea of fleeing in a sudden impulse last night? He shook his head and tried to escape those thoughts.

The path gradually moved away from the woods. An embankment appeared to lie ahead. As he walked toward the embankment, Uji was suddenly seized by apprehension. (When I meet Hanada, Takagi might shoot Hanada.) He suddenly turned with a harsh expression to look back at Takagi. Takagi looked back at him with an angry face. If I told him not to shoot, it might only make him even more determined to do so. Takagi might think that killing Hanada would resolve everything. Uji thought this in an instant and, softening his expression, tried to ask about something else.

“Earlier—did you kill her with one shot?” “I killed her with one shot.” “Did she say anything?” “She didn’t say anything.”

His tone was unyielding. Though the situation felt somewhat unmanageable, Uji—driven by a compulsion he couldn’t ignore—pressed on with dogged persistence.

“Where did you shoot her?” “I shot her in the head.” “The woman?”

Uji stood frozen in shock and staggered two or three steps toward the slope. The path had reached the top of the embankment. A pale, faint light began spreading dimly across his retina.

It was a river.

The river seemed a tributary stretching toward Cagayan Valley—white water foaming through gravel banks before dissolving into dusk’s haze. Everywhere bore twilight’s hue. From embankment to stony shore, those yellow flowers that had bloomed near San Jose’s unit now erupted in scattered profusion. Bancas clustered along the bank; a water buffalo stood belly-deep in a gravel pool; the stench of stagnant blue water pierced his nostrils—yet wind roared relentlessly, merging with the river’s rush. Uji stood at the embankment’s edge surveying this vista when he recognized it—the impatience swelling through his chest, so sharp it made his teeth ache to grind.

(There’s a miscalculation somewhere.)

He couldn’t pinpoint where it had gone wrong. Things were tangled somewhere, but he couldn’t find the knot. He hadn’t told him to shoot the woman earlier either. Hasn’t something been wrong from the very beginning of this desertion? Nothing had gone as he’d intended. He was gradually beginning to grow confused, his facial skin exposed to the river wind. He felt he was on the verge of understanding, yet couldn’t quite push through to grasp it completely. Only a sinister premonition continued to assail him relentlessly.

(There’s something unknowable lurking somewhere!)

Only now did he acutely realize this premonition had gripped his heart relentlessly since leaving the unit that morning. “Didn’t an Army officer pass through here today?” Takagi stood atop the embankment, hands cupped around his mouth as he shouted toward the river. By the flowing water of the gravel bank, two men who appeared to be soldiers were doing laundry. Their uniforms marked them as navy men. This was naval-occupied territory. The wind scattered Takagi’s voice into indistinctness. The men seemed to stand and respond, but their words dissolved before reaching shore. Their postures suggested shared laughter. Naval soldiers, once discipline crumbled, exuded greater lawlessness than their Army counterparts. One raised his arm in a gesture that seemed to indicate the downstream embankment.

Along the embankment, scattered nipa huts were visible. “They might be telling us to go over there and ask.”

Urged by Takagi, Uji blankly took a step forward. The embankment path stretched through pale twilight as the levee curved widely. The river bent with it, spanned by a crude temporary bridge. Takagi took the lead. Chills raced endlessly down his spine; eyes powerless yet wide open, Uji walked as if dragged. The sight of navy soldiers hauling stones across the gravel bank—their purpose unclear—grazed the edge of his distant vision. After some walking, a figure appeared at a nipa hut's entrance below the embankment. Uji moved to pass by unthinkingly. It was the local woman. At that instant, Takagi whirled around with unnatural sharpness.

“That’s the woman.”

It was a voice crushed by tension. Startled, Uji fixed his gaze. Though the deepening dusk obscured the woman’s expression, that momentary impression left no doubt—it was her. For no discernible reason, tension surged through his entire body; unconsciously gripping his sword hilt, Uji slid down the slope of the embankment. Takagi followed immediately.

The woman had been leaning vacantly against a pillar gazing at the river surface, but startled by the commotion of someone scrambling down the embankment, she turned sharply. By that point, Uji had already closed to within about six feet. The woman shifted her gaze from Uji to Takagi behind him. She gasped and braced one hand against the entrance pillar. Her large eyes opened even wider, and the mole on her cheek struck Uji’s vision with vivid intensity.

Uji vehemently demanded. “Where is Lieutenant Hanada?” The woman gasped, her eyes wide open. No sound came out. Compared to that momentary glimpse of her face through the window that night, Uji’s eyes now clearly registered how she had grown somewhat thinner and more haggard. Her lusterless hair was disheveled by the wind. Staggering, the woman took a step outside from the entrance. “Where is Lieutenant Hanada?”

Uji repeated once more in a slightly calmer voice. The woman’s hand gripping the pillar trembled violently. The woman’s eyes looked past Uji’s shoulder and were wide open toward the river. Where was Lieutenant Hanada? The woman’s body was violently conveying it. When he felt this, Uji started and turned around.

From the dim gravel bank came a man who appeared to have just bathed, walking while drying himself with a towel. Though bare-chested, his lower half clad in officer’s trousers limped conspicuously enough to be discerned even in the gloom. Still unaware of their presence, he climbed up from the gravel bank, wiping his ears with a towel wrapped around his finger. Suddenly behind Uji, a woman’s scream sliced through the air like a blade. He couldn’t comprehend her words. She had cried out in Ilocano. Startled by the shriek, the man lifted his head. His overgrown hair and sunken cheeks made him briefly unrecognizable, but Uji instinctively advanced five or six paces. There stood Lieutenant Hanada beyond doubt.

Hanada jerked back from his posture of having taken a step onto the embankment. The distance between Uji and him was seven to nine meters. Whether because his hair stood on end from bathing or because the lingering glow at his back cast shadows across his features, Hanada’s expression appeared somehow menacing—but as the look of surprise faded from his cheeks, a strangely enigmatic smile suddenly drifted vaguely into view. His teeth glistened white. When he saw that, an unexpected sense of shame seared through Uji’s chest. As Takagi shifted his feet trying to circle around to Hanada’s flank—a movement Uji’s eyes suddenly caught—he found himself unable to conceal the heat rising in his ears and cheeks. In his imagined scenarios of meeting Hanada, he had not factored in this emotion.

“Lieutenant Uji,” Hanada said in a hoarse voice that scraped like rusted metal. His emaciated shoulders twitched as he moved his arms with unnatural stiffness, like a marionette ashamed of its own exposed joints. “Did you come bearing orders?” Uji’s response came through gritted teeth: “The wound—how’s your leg holding up?” The words tasted of copper and whiskey. “Can you even walk?”

Uji also took three more steps forward while saying this in a hoarse voice when—for some reason—Hanada jerked back as if startled. Hanada’s right hand slid along his body, extending toward his Western-style trousers. There was something unnatural about his movements. What was in the pocket of the Western-style trousers? Hanada abruptly wiped the smile from his cheeks and suddenly raised his right palm to his chest. In Hanada’s palm was a small pistol gleaming dully. A sensation as if all the blood in his body froze made Uji’s complexion change as he braced himself. Uji’s right hand also came to rest unconsciously on the pistol at his military belt. Hanada's face as he stared at Uji was deathly pale, his eyes blazing fiercely.

“Wait!”

Before Uji could even shout with his entire being, Hanada’s finger pulled the trigger. A shock-induced shudder ran through Uji’s body in an instant. A cold click rang out. —A misfire! Uji felt the sweat gushing from his entire body rapidly cooling as he became aware of the savage joy welling up alongside it—swiftly raising his own pistol to chest level. Hanada’s deathly pale lips parted slightly as he angled the arm gripping his pistol diagonally across his chest in a shielding motion, his body attempting to crouch in supplication. Uji saw despair flood Hanada’s eyes. At that moment, a thought accompanied by intense pain shot through the corner of Uji’s feverish mind.

(I was jealous of Hanada.) (And from way back too!) Closing his eyes for an instant, Uji yanked the trigger with all his strength. A bright flash that stained his eyelids and a violent report erupted simultaneously as fierce recoil slammed into his right arm. Hanada stiffened—arms clutching his chest, neck bent inward—stood frozen for a heartbeat before pitching forward like a falling log onto the gravel bank. The dull thud of forehead meeting earth resonated. His body fell prone once, then shifted slightly from the slope’s rebound. The acrid smell of gunpowder finally reached Uji’s nostrils. Hanada’s face pressed half into dirt—lips slightly parted, eyelids smeared with soil—twitched faintly as Uji watched before crimson blood seeped from his mouth in a thin stream, dripping thickly onto yellow petals blooming beneath his cheek. The flower bent its stem under the weight, shed half the blood in a slick slide, then swayed upright again. Watching this, Uji felt throbbing pain sear his eardrums while nausea surged from chest to throat. He let the raised pistol droop downward, unable to stop the unpleasant trembling.

(I’ve done it—I’ve actually killed him!)

The events since morning flitted through his mind—fragmented and sporadic. No matter how hard he struggled, something like fate seemed to clutch him in its iron grip. Uji was frantically trying to holster his pistol at his hip. Because his hands were trembling violently, the pistol wouldn’t go into the holster properly. As it touched the metal fittings of his military belt, the pistol emitted cold, clicking sounds. Even so, he somehow managed to push it in and fasten the retaining clasp. Corporal Takagi approached without taking his eyes off Hanada's corpse and asked in a low, steady voice.

“......Shall I finish him off?”

Uji did not answer. He crossed his arms as if suppressing a shudder and turned his face away from Takagi. His legs felt leaden, ready to give out. Even so, as he tried climbing two or three steps up the embankment, the woman standing at the hut's entrance crossed his line of sight. She must have just come running from inside. It was the same woman from before. She wore a white garment and was barefoot. Looking down at Uji, she screamed something in a shrill voice. It was a cry brimming with hatred. Staggering away from the hut, she moved toward Uji.

The woman was not crying. Her dry green eyes stared wide and unflinching at Uji. The distance between them was now barely six feet. Keeping her gaze locked on Uji’s face, she slowly began moving her left hand forward from behind her back. The instant her body tensed, a dull metallic glint flashed in her palm. It was a pistol. The black muzzle pointed straight at Uji’s chest. Feeling his pectoral muscles contract in visceral anticipation, he stood frozen rigidly.

(So this was it.) Uji kept his arms crossed, his face twisting into an expression caught between sobbing and laughter. And he remained perfectly still. The woman’s left hand gripped the pistol butt with iron firmness, her index finger curled tightly around the trigger. Eyes of dark green emitted a parched light that pierced straight through Uji’s gaze. Before that unwavering black muzzle, he once more twisted his cheeks into that same grimace resembling both tears and mirth. A semblance of stability born of utter collapse now faintly supported Uji’s body. He quietly perceived how his strength to resist reality’s ceaseless onslaught was finally beginning to ebb.

(So after all today’s torment, this is how it ends.) (That grip—doesn’t look like her first time firing a pistol.) ...She must be left-handed, he thought vaguely, sensing her left palm on the pistol grip. That night through the window—yes, she’d been cradling the sake bottle with her left hand too—the memory surfaced dimly. There Hanada had sat deep in his chair, youthful and contented; now that same figure lay cold behind him, breath stilled. More vividly than through sight, Uji felt Hanada’s corpse sprawled on the embankment slope pressing against his back. Takagi—stationed farther off—seemed to notice now, scaling the slope diagonally. Even that movement dragged with unbearable slowness. Like some high-speed photograph, woman and Takagi and jungle all swam in viscous motion. Arms still crossed, Uji kept his strange half-smile fixed on the black muzzle’s void. Takagi’s silhouette—having crested the embankment—drifted shadow-puppet-like through Uji’s fading vision, pistol rising toward the woman as he closed in. The woman’s body tensed rigid within Uji’s gaze.—

From the gun muzzle burst a sudden blinding flash, and in that instant Uji felt a searing hot impact in his left chest. He fell straight down while pressing both arms against the spot as if to protect it, then rolled violently down the embankment, parting the grasses on the slope. With his head down, he endured the pain, his eyelids slightly open. He gazed at the gravel bank and at the faint white river light flowing beyond it with powerless eyes. An excruciating tightness gripped his chest. He couldn’t tell what position he was in. The canteen had shifted and seemed to press against his abdomen. He’d ended up leaving more than half of this whiskey behind. The sound of wind rustled; yellow flower petals swayed before his eyes, doubling and tripling into blurred layers. Suddenly something foul-smelling spread from his throat to fill his entire mouth.

—Lieutenant Uji. Lieutenant Uji.

Right by his ear, Takagi was shouting loudly. The voice suddenly weakened as if receding into the distance, and abruptly, the surroundings fell deathly silent. Like peeling away layers of mica, the distant parts of the landscape tore off one after another and vanished……

Mist already enveloped the surroundings. Only the river surface retained the last light of dusk, while the wind howled over the stones of the gravel bank. About two ken away from Hanada’s corpse, his uniform’s chest soaked red with blood and his head lowered on the embankment slope, Uji gradually lost consciousness as he felt sensation deserting his limbs one after another.

Dusk settled there as well.