Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Umezaki Haruo

I

One clear evening, as the sunset clouds began to fade, I was walking along a suburban road. The season must have been late autumn or early winter. A strong wind swept across the ground and through midair, shaking the treetops and whipping up dry dust clouds.

It was a road connecting stations of one private railway and another, its central section having been given a basic paving. Buses, automobiles, and auto rickshaws passed through there. People walked along the unpaved gravel sections on both sides. The area remained undeveloped, dotted here and there only with farmhouses surrounded by trees, small-scale housing complexes, and high-voltage power towers—most of it still consisted of farmland. Yet seeing how hills and cliffs were being cut away everywhere to create flat land, there was no doubt this area too would soon develop rapidly, becoming filled with houses and apartments.

There were few people about. The woman was walking about thirty meters ahead of me in the same direction. The woman was not walking along the sidewalk at the edge of the road, but rather on a path through the fields that dipped down further from the roadway. It wasn’t that she went down into the fields out of concern for traffic accidents at dusk, but rather because she disliked the wind blowing against her.

At that moment, a truck came speeding toward me from behind. As it passed by my side, I stopped for a moment and turned my back to the roadway. The truck passed by, then apparently tried to avoid a pothole on the paved road but failed to steer properly. The edge of its body grazed the bus stop's signpost. A dull sound rang out.

The signpost had a concrete base at its foundation, a metal pipe extending straight up from it, with a disc inscribed with the bus stop name attached at the very top. Because the signpost had a heavy foundation, under normal circumstances it should have simply been knocked over, but at that moment a strange phenomenon occurred. The pipe of the support pillar had broken. The support pillar, along with its sign disc, didn't fly straight ahead but was caught by the wind and soared skyward. I hadn't witnessed the entire sequence of events. Hearing a sound, I looked toward it just as the structure went soaring through the air. After floating upward about twelve or thirteen meters with careless buoyancy, it hovered motionless for an instant before spiraling wildly down diagonally into the fields.

"…………"

Letting out something like a voiceless scream, the woman’s strength drained from her legs to her knees and from her knees to her torso before she crumpled onto the black soil. At that exact landing spot, the woman had been walking. Earlier I had said that a woman was walking thirty meters ahead, but I hadn’t noticed her when the truck passed by. Or rather, I hadn’t registered her presence at all. I had been walking with my attention fixed entirely on the sky and scenery.

So it was from the moment the broken signpost fell there that I became aware of the woman’s presence. I immediately descended the slope and hurriedly approached that direction. Before I reached the spot, a young man and woman ran up (where they had been before that moment, or where they had been walking—I didn’t know), and the man kept working his hands to turn the woman who had collapsed facedown onto her back. The young woman from the couple, with an excited gaze and voice,

“Did you see the license plate number?”

“You. Did you see the license plate number?”

I remained silent. I had been too absorbed by how the signpost flew through the air to notice the license plate. The man must have been agitated too. Stammering yet speaking in a voice oddly brimming with exhilaration,

“Th-that’s not important now! Go call an ambulance! Hurry. Hurry!”

Not even a minute had passed since the incident occurred, yet already about ten people had gathered, and figures could be seen running over sporadically from the distance. Someone from among them must have run off and gotten through on the phone. Soon, an ambulance approached straight down the paved road with its sirens blaring.

The woman, still unconscious, was carried into the ambulance. The ambulance man informed the driver in a sharp voice of the name of the designated emergency hospital. The ambulance made a U-turn, increased its speed, and drove away.

All that remained were the rubberneckers and the signpost (the "murder weapon"?).

The woman had only lost consciousness from the shock and regained awareness immediately upon arriving at the hospital. There were no wounds on her head; she had bruises on her shoulder and hand, along with a compression fracture in one section of her thoracic spine. Yet in under fifteen days, she was discharged from the hospital.

Upon hearing the rumor that Yagi Eisuke had fallen down the stairs and injured himself, I went to visit him. He was lying sprawled out on the bed in his eight-tatami room at home. At the bedside was a bedside table, and next to it sat a guest chair. When Yagi saw my face, he made an expression that seemed both dazzled and resentful.

“I hear you hurt your back,” I said while sitting down. “That’s terrible luck.”

I said while sitting down in the chair.

“I heard you fell down some bar stairs?” “Bar? Not a bar—it was a bus.”

Yagi grimaced. “Bar? That makes it sound bad. “Who said such a thing?” “If word gets around school, that wouldn’t be good, would it?” Yagi had graduated from school with me and now worked as a lecturer at a certain university. As a lecturer his income was low, but since his wife ran a beauty salon, they weren’t struggling financially. However, he was reclining so grandly not because of that but due to the pain in his back.

“It’s easier this way, you see.”

Yagi slid his back up and leaned into position against the kapok pillow. With the shifting light, Yagi’s expression appeared quite sickly and aged. It had a particular quality. He was the same age as me.

“Sorry, but could you make some tea?” “The tea set’s in the door under the table.” “Were you drunk at the time?”

I asked while placing the kettle on the electric heater.

“Falling down the bus stairs—what a careless way to get hurt.”

“I wasn’t drunk. When you’re drunk, your body goes limp—that’s why you don’t get hurt like that. When you’re sober, you can’t help but struggle.” He plucked a single grape from those at his bedside.

“It was a large bus with three steps. I slipped from the very top step and went sprawling. I was holding my briefcase, so there was nothing to do but fall. You don’t have hands on your back, do you? With nothing to grab onto, I went down three times—thud, thud, thud—and smashed my hip hard against the corner where the sidewalk met the road. Felt my hip go crunch.”

Carefully peeling the skin off the grape, he popped it into his mouth.

“Why are human backs made so defenseless?” “Hands thrust forward. Strike. Legs kick out forward. Eyes, mouths, ears—all our sensory organs are generally designed to target enemies in front. Only my back has been abandoned and left behind by everyone. I wonder why that is.” “There’s such a thing as an elbow strike.” “Yeah. That does exist. But that’s a passive move. It doesn’t have much effect on the enemy.”

With the grape still in his mouth, Yagi thought for a while. At times like this, I always grew irritated, thinking he should just swallow it quickly. There had always been something about Yagi that made him behave this way. "When we were kids, whenever our old man told us scary stories, we brothers would press our backs tight against him." "We never hugged him." "Because it made our backs creep with fear." "Do kids these days do that too?"

“They probably still do.” “So does that mean humans as animals are fundamentally designed to be aggressive? Animals that walk with their backs exposed—defensive ones at that—usually have things like shells or spines, you see. For example, turtles—”

Because the tea was ready, the conversation stopped. After drinking about half, I asked.

“That slipped off the bus—is that your excuse?”

“No. “It’s not exactly an excuse, but—”

He put down the teacup and shifted painfully. "The back is such a troublesome thing. "I can't even see it myself—it's like a blind spot. "You never know when an enemy might come flying at you. "When people grow close, they talk about opening their hearts—but they'd never show each other their backs." I found myself half agreeing with Yagi's argument yet half opposed. After drinking up his tea, Yagi twisted his body, slid down from the pillow, and returned to his original recumbent position. In a voice that seemed pained—or perhaps exaggeratedly so—he

“The bones move, you know. The logic of human relationships—where pleasing one side displeases the other—doesn’t apply to bones.”

“I once saw someone who’d hit their spine and lost consciousness—right at the scene, I tell you.”

I said while recalling the events of that day.

“Accident.” “That was an accident, through and through.”

“A car accident?”

“Yeah. It was a car accident after all.” “The car struck the bus stop signpost.” “The signpost broke off, flew some distance, and struck a woman in the back.” “The car fled the scene immediately, but I think the driver likely didn’t realize it had hit her.” “So here’s the thing—the woman is unquestionably the victim, but can we truly call the driver the perpetrator?” “Of course regarding the signpost—since he damaged it—he’s undeniably the perpetrator there, but—”

He suddenly perked up with interest, his eyes glistening. So I told him the entire incident I had witnessed. He listened, nodding appropriately and interjecting occasional responses. “So, you see,”

Finally, I said.

“I think spinal injuries might heal faster than you’d expect.”

Yagi remained silent for a while, thinking about something. Eventually, he opened his mouth.

“Did you spin that long tale just to say that?” “That’s part of it, but—”

I answered. “You never know where disaster might be lurking. That’s also what I wanted to say.”

“Hmph. You’ve been getting preachy lately. Is it your age? Come to think of it, you’re forty-four too, right?”

Yagi laughed. "So, was that woman an acquaintance of yours?" "No. "I don't know her at all. "She's just a passing stranger." "Then how do you know she regained consciousness immediately upon arriving at the hospital and where she was injured?"

“I called the hospital, you know, two days later. The hospital’s name—I made a note of what the ambulance guy said.” “Why would you do such a thing?”

“I wanted to know how what I’d seen continued and connected. Just that much.” “That’s monkey-like curiosity, isn’t it?”

“Then a woman’s voice came on the line—whether she was a nurse or doctor, I couldn’t tell. She told me about the symptoms.” Ignoring Yagi’s remark, I continued.

“After that, since you asked who I was, I answered truthfully that I was someone who happened to be at the scene.”

The voice on the receiver spoke. In a slightly flustered tone. “Would you mind coming to the hospital?” “As a hospital, we want to understand the situation, and the person involved is also looking for a witness due to various circumstances.” They had probably wanted testimony regarding the car and disaster insurance matters. “So, did you go to the hospital?”

“No. I didn’t go.”

I answered.

“I don’t remember the car’s license plate either—what remains in my memory is just the signpost moving like a crazy kite and the figure of the woman collapsed in the field. She was around thirty and quite beautiful.” “If she was beautiful, you should’ve gone to visit her.” “But I didn’t call because I wanted to be a witness. I just wanted to understand the connection.”

I turned off the electric heater’s switch.

“Then about twenty days later, I tried calling again. “It turned out she had already been discharged. “I don’t know what happened after that. “If I wanted to know, I could find out. “Because I’d also made a note of the woman’s address.”

“You really do have a karmic disposition.” “You’ll definitely turn into a spiteful old man when you get older.” “I can guarantee that.”

I did not respond. From the electric heater’s kettle, I poured a second cup of tea and drank it.

“So—”

After slowly finishing my drink, I asked.

He closed his eyes lightly, as if tired. His eyelids were a dusky dark color.

“In your case—when you took a spill—didn’t any rubberneckers gather around?” “They didn’t gather. As if they would.”

He listlessly opened his eyes.

“The situation’s different. Plus I’m no beauty—just a middle-aged man taking a spill. That’s all there is to it.” “Does your back hurt?”

Because he moved his body as if in pain, I asked. "No." "It's not my lower back." "The pain has moved elsewhere."

Indeed, Yagi Eisuke was slightly drunk at the time. After finishing his lecture, he went to a cheap bar with colleagues and drank three highballs. He parted ways with his colleagues and boarded the bus.

As evening approached, the bus gradually grew crowded. Due to the rising temperature inside the vehicle and his drunkenness, Eisuke began to feel drowsy. As he was dozing off with his head resting against something, the conductor called out the name of the bus stop. He jolted upright and, shoving through the passengers, charged toward the entrance.

Because the bus was taking longer than usual to stop, the young female conductor wore an undisguised pout. His panicking there was his undoing. Thud, thud, thud—he tripped three times, and it took less than two seconds for him to land flat on his backside at the sidewalk's edge. But no one laughed. No one laughed—but by the same token, no one offered to help either. No one could quite grasp what had triggered it. So smoothly, so naturally—Eisuke had taken a spill.

By the time Eisuke had managed to stand up by clinging to the street tree’s support pole, the bus had already departed, swaying its bulky rear. He felt miserable and tried to pick up his dirtied briefcase, but the sharp, stabbing pain around his lower back made it nearly impossible. There was no way he could walk home. He called a taxi while still clinging to the support pole.

When he returned home, he took off his shoes with difficulty and crawled to his bed. He asked the housekeeper who had brought him black tea to call a doctor. Without even asking what was wrong, she immediately picked up the phone. Yet even when Eisuke had been crawling like a cat earlier, she had watched from a distance—expressionless and silent. As he listened to her making the call from his bed, She’s just like some robotic woman, he thought. She doesn’t show any emotions at all.

he thought.

However, when he had been ignored by everyone at the bus stop, he had felt miserable about himself, but with this housekeeper, that wasn’t the case. Rather, he found that coldness refreshingly straightforward and liked it. Being subjected to persistent questioning would have been like revisiting that misery.

Eventually, his regular doctor arrived. A bald-headed, good-natured man who enjoyed his drink and who didn’t impose strict regimens even when one fell ill, Eisuke had always liked this doctor.

“What happened?”

Eisuke briefly explained what had happened. Finally, he added.

“I think it might be what’s called a sudden back strain.” The doctor showed no particular reaction to those words. He had Eisuke lie face down, pressed and manipulated various parts of his lower back, and with that concluded the examination. “When we talk about lower back pain, there are various types—in many cases we can’t determine the cause.” “But in your case, you must’ve struck your lower back. That part likely sprained, twisted, and became inflamed.” “I’ll give you a painkiller injection. If you rest properly, it should heal within that period.”

However, the pain showed no signs of abating. On the third day, at his wife Mikako’s urging, he went to see a shiatsu therapist. Mikako said, “Our customers say he’s very skilled.” “A grown man not going to work and just lounging around at home—how disgraceful.” “Hurry up and get better.” He was idly resting his bones without mustering any resolve. Mikako seemed to interpret it that way. He had no particular objection to the shiatsu—no, rather, since it was he himself who wanted relief from the pain and pressure in his lower back, he grew willing to undergo the treatment. A tall, bony-featured shiatsu therapist came. Perhaps from years of training, the tips of his fingers had flattened like a viper’s head.

“Doctors are useless.” While pressing on his back, the shiatsu therapist said mockingly. His tone resembled less an ordinary remark and more a disciplinary lecture.

“Doctors just give painkiller injections and do nothing else afterward. Compared to that, shiatsu on the other hand—” Eisuke remained face down, sensing amusement as he listened to this. However, when the shiatsu therapist’s fingers moved to his lower back, he could no longer keep laughing. The pain had arrived. “I’m lumber. Old lumber.”

That feeling gradually faded away as the fingers pressed against the pain points, and he found himself clutching his pillow and groaning, “It hurts!” he let out a scream. It hurts! As he screamed, the shiatsu therapist’s rebuke rained down from above. “Don’t you shout ‘It hurts!’” “Say ‘I felt it’!” Still, each time a pressure point was touched, Eisuke would shout “It hurts!” and be subjected to corrections from the shiatsu therapist. Gradually, Eisuke’s laughter turned into anger. What was wrong with screaming “It hurts” when it hurt? How could I possibly utter some sappy line like “I felt it”? He clutched the pillow to his chest, limiting himself to just groaning.

The shiatsu concluded with his legs being treated last. When he tried to move his body, his entire back radiated heat, and around his waist lingered a pressing sensation akin to deep bruising.

The shiatsu therapist then came every day. When he told the doctor about it, the doctor shook his head slightly. Eisuke asked. “Is it bad?”

“Yes.” “Since I’ve taken pains to calm things down through treatment—this amounts roughly to yanking awake a sleeping child by force.”

At first he couldn’t stand or walk, clinging to a tatami-room broom to make his way to the toilet, but gradually things subsided until he could walk—staggering—even without the broom. However, his recovery could not be called quick.

One such day, the doctor had Eisuke stand up and, while examining his bare back, said suspiciously. “This bone protrudes rather prominently.”

The doctor’s cold finger pressed near the twelfth thoracic vertebra. “Does it hurt when I press here?” “No. Not at all.” “That’s strange.” “Indeed, this bone is flattened.” “When you were a child, did you ever fall from a horizontal bar or get hit hard by something like that?”

“Hmm,” Eisuke tilted his head. It felt like there might have been something, yet also like there hadn’t. “In the army, you know, I fell off a cliff once—but I didn’t strike my back. If I had hit it then, would it have hurt?” “Yes. It would’ve hurt,” said the doctor. “Even pressing this firmly would be unbearable.”

The doctor's finger pressed the thoracic vertebra again. There was no pain. The finger crept slowly and deliberately across his back before coming to rest on his right flank.

“There’s a strange lump here.” “That’s odd.” “Does this hurt?” There was no sensation there either.

“Has it been there for a while?” “No.”

Eisuke moved his right hand around and touched it. There was something soft and squishy, about the size of an egg. At that sensation, Eisuke was suddenly struck by a sharp shudder. “Are you cold?”

Eisuke silently covered his back with his nightclothes and lay down on the bed. The doctor thought for a moment, then said calmly.

“Let’s take an X-ray once.” “Please come to the clinic tomorrow.” The deformation of the thoracic spine, the lipoma, and the lower back pain—what connection could there be between them? Eisuke was about to ask but stopped. Because he disliked having it determined. "When did this lump form?" He couldn't see it with his eyes. But through touch, he could roughly imagine its shape. As if trying to knead away the abhorrent mass, he rubbed that part against the sheets. Before long, the housekeeper came and announced the shiatsu therapist’s visit. He stopped moving.

“Tell him no.” “Tell him no,” he said. “Please tell him he doesn’t need to come any longer.” Two days later, the X-ray images were ready. The doctor came to his house carrying them.

“There’s no particular abnormality in your lower back, but this thoracic spine—”

Placing a black umbrella over the stand and holding up the X-ray to the light, the doctor explained. Which was up, which was the hip bone—Eisuke couldn’t quite tell. Nodding with labored breaths, he confronted the image of his own bones whose orientation remained unknowable.

“How about this? This part is flattened, don’t you think?”

With that remark, he somehow managed to begin discerning the orientation and could recognize that the area appeared deformed. However, Eisuke had never seen the normal shape of his own bones. So even when told it was deformed, he felt no real sense of it. “Why don’t you take this to a national hospital once? I’ll write you a referral letter. I can’t determine whether it’s an old issue or not, you see.”

“I see.” “Generally speaking, the shadows of your entire bones look faint—they’re weakening more than they should for your age.”

The doctor removed his glasses and gazed intently at the image. “When you were young, you probably didn’t get enough calcium.”

Eisuke nodded. Even now, he thought, the intake had indeed been insufficient. At the same time, he was thinking about Jōki.

“I have a twin—” “Sausage?”

“No. In other words, I was born as one of twins. The other one is no longer alive, though—”

“Ah, I see.”

“Twins grow by sharing nutrients and calcium from the mother’s body, don’t they? Given that, couldn’t someone be born with an inherently soft skeletal structure or weak muscles—things like that?”

“Hmm.” “That’s—”

The doctor laughed. He must have thought I was joking. “Was the other one physically weak too? When you say he died—” “No, it wasn’t an illness. The other one had thicker bones than me and was stronger too. So in a way that my share was less by that amount—” “Well, I’m not sure about that.”

The doctor said as he placed the X-ray images into a paper bag.

“Since I haven’t studied twins specifically, I can’t state this definitively—but I’ve never encountered such cases. It most likely has no connection to health.”

“But while there are twins who’ve made it into show business, you don’t hear much about them venturing into sports.”

“I’ll write you a referral letter for the National Hospital.” “Please come pick it up later.”

Without engaging with his theory, the doctor stood up.

“When you go, please take these X-ray photos with you as well.”

After the doctor left，he tried moving his body in various ways in bed. The first place that hurt was his right waist. Then his left waist became just as painful，and over these two or three days，a strange pressure had begun shifting toward his back. That worried him. Was being told to go to a major hospital because that doctor was out of his specialty，or did it mean they lacked proper treatment equipment here?

At the National Hospital’s waiting room, he was made to wait for a while. Since walking there was impossible, he had called one of his former students who owned a car to bring him there. The room was quite crowded.

“The orthopedics department isn’t as gloomy as I imagined it would be.”

The student who had accompanied him said.

“I had thought it would be more insidious.”

That was something Eisuke also felt. A woman knitting in the bright sunlight. A boy laughing boisterously as he steered his own wheelchair out. The atmosphere was, on the whole, crisp and dry.

“It’s bones, not internal organs.” In his lecturing tone, Eisuke said something that wasn’t even a play on words.

“Because it’s bones—they’re dry.”

Before long, his name was called, and he alone entered the examination room. A woman in her sixties was trying to put on a kimono with stiff, awkward movements, but her efforts made no progress. The old woman said to him with an amused laugh. “Because my right arm won’t lift up, you know.” “It’s such a hassle.”

The referral letter was addressed to the chief physician.

Only the chief physician was seated in an armchair, while the young interns, female doctors, and nurses stood or paced restlessly about. The referral letter appeared to contain detailed findings, and it took him some time to finish reading it. Then he was stripped naked and lay on the examination table like a log. Next, he was made to stand and underwent a detailed examination before being returned to the examination table. They seemed interested in the lump; interns and female doctors approached one after another to press and pinch it.

“Let’s perform a puncture.”

The Chief Physician said. A needle was inserted into the lump. Though invisible, he could tell from the pain that it must have been a rather thick needle.

(Ah. My lump was insulted)

While keeping his entire body tense to distract himself from the anxiety, Eisuke thought about unwarranted things. (It's still being insulted now!)

“Nothing’s coming out.”

While pulling out the needle, the Chief Physician said.

“This is just a lipoma.” “That’s all for now.”

He was released from the examination and, while putting on his clothes, asked.

“The part where the bone is protruding—”

“So it did break back then, after all.”

“This area has become swollen, and it’s painful—”

“Yeah. That’s—”

Returning to the armchair, the Chief Physician began writing a response to his regular doctor, carefully considering each word.

“What do you mean by ‘bones moving’?”

I asked skeptically. “When you move your hands or legs, the bones in them move along with them. Is that what you mean?” “It’s not that simple.” Eisuke gave a wry smile. “A part of the spine deforms. Then, in an instant, balance is lost. It becomes difficult to maintain an upright posture. But the deformation is an established fact. The other bones begin to change their shape in response to that deformation. For example, when ribs retract backward, or when the thoracic spine warps and the lumbar spine warps in the opposite direction. The reason my flank is swollen and feels pressured is because of that.”

“So it’s like everyone’s colluding to rationalize the irregularities, huh?” I had almost understood.

“It’s like bureaucrats all covering up corruption in government offices.” “Did the chief physician say that?”

Eisuke nodded.

“So does that lipoma have something to do with it too?”

“No. This is a coincidence.” “I think so too.” “It’s just fat that happened to accumulate under the skin.” “Hey.” “There’s brandy in there.”

Pointing at the door beneath the bedside table, Eisuke commanded with a hint of gloom. “Hand that over.”

“Is it okay to drink?”

I pulled out the brandy bottle that had been hidden at the very back for him. “Won’t it affect your bones?” “I’m okay. The inflammation in my lumbar muscles has subsided.” He poured it into the cup and drank about half.

“I wonder if lipomas are hereditary.”

“Why? Did Jōki have one too?”

“No. It’s not Jōki. "My father’s older brother."

Eisuke choked and coughed violently. His body jolted and moved on the bed. “He’s my old man’s brother, you know. Ever since he was young, he’d keep creating swellings at the base of his neck, get them operated on, and then let them swell up again. He was like that wart-removing old man from the folktales—slovenly and awkward. And yet he still hasn’t died—he’s alive. I’ve been thinking of dumping this old man into some cheap nursing home.”

“Why do you speak so bitterly?”

“Th-that’s not—”

With an odd gleam in his eyes, Eisuke looked at me.

“Did I sound that hateful?”

I remained silent. Even if Yagi Eisuke resented his uncle, it was not something that particularly concerned me. Were I to press him, Eisuke would likely continue speaking in his usual manner—as if rolling a hard candy about in his mouth—and ultimately avoid touching upon the heart of the matter. I am one of his old friends, yet it had always been this way until now. He would recount individual fragments with vividness but refused to construct any coherent narrative when speaking. Was he simply poor at conversation, inherently capricious, or did some part of him resist turning his back to view?

“Could you show me that lump?” I said frankly.

"What for?" "No." "Not that looking at it would do any good—but just for reference: its shape and how exactly it's concealed."

I had expected he would refuse outright. But he didn’t. After a moment, a faint smile surfaced on Eisuke’s cheek. Observing him then, I concluded the bone injury had made him considerably more timid. “Wanting to see something so pointless—that’s exactly like you.”

Eisuke said while pulling the cup closer again.

“It’s not particularly worth showing off, but tomorrow—no—the day after tomorrow afternoon, they’ll be making the plaster bed.”

“Where?” “At the hospital?” “No. At my place.”

He rolled the brandy in his mouth and fixed his eyes on empty space for a while.

“I don’t know how they make plaster beds, but I suppose I’ll probably end up being naked.”

“Well, I suppose that’s how it has to be. You can’t do it while wearing a kimono, I suppose.” “You can come see it then. I’ll show you. The bone protrusions and the lump too. That way you can get a full view of everything.” “I suppose so. Let’s hope so, shall we?”

I answered.

I did not find my curiosity shameful. Even if they said I was becoming a mean old man.

“Was that plaster bed the doctor’s idea?”

“Yeah. The director of the national hospital apparently instructed our doctor.” “To keep the bones from moving.” “When the protrusions become more pronounced, the other bones will shift even more.” “So to keep the protrusions contained—” “Does it also serve to crush the lump?” “As I’ve been saying, the lump isn’t related.” “You’re really fixated on that lump.”

Eisuke let out a small yawn.

“I’m a bit tired.” “I’m sleepy.” “It’s not that I’m fixated—how should I put it—I like things that stick out.” “More than liking them—it’s an interest.”

I said while beginning to prepare to leave. “So that lipoma isn’t the kind that harms the body, right?”

“That’s right. “It’s different from malignant sarcomas and such.” “It’s just fat accumulating under the skin. If it swells up more, they can just make an incision and take out the whole sac.” “It’s nothing at all.”

Eisuke closed his eyes listlessly.

II

Yagi Eisuke lay prone on his bedding, pressed his face into the pillow, and had them make the plaster bed. Keeping his face pressed straight down was to keep his spine properly aligned, and lying prone was to prevent his back from curving. When humans lie prone, they inevitably arch their backs.

However, Eisuke would occasionally shift his face or use sidelong glances to steal glimpses of the procedure’s progress. The anxiety of not knowing what would be done to him made him do so.

His back was covered with a cotton cloth.

The assistant spread out a wide bandage. They evenly coated it with a plaster-like substance. They soaked it in hot water. At a certain point, they lifted it out and pressed it onto Eisuke’s back. After going through the same process, the next one became plastered on top of it.…

Because there was a cotton cloth separating him from it, it wasn’t too hot, nor was it cold—rather, there was a pleasant sensation akin to soaking in water of just the right temperature. (This was simpler than I expected.) While stretching his limbs comfortably, Eisuke was thinking. He was probing the depths of his memory. (This feeling resembles something.) (...something.)

To make the layered bandages adhere to his back, the doctor’s hands pressed and patted them down. He could feel the soft mass on his back squelching and changing shape. They had opened the shoji of the skylight, leaving only the glass pane, so the blue sky was visible and sunlight poured through. He suddenly remembered.

“Ah. “Rice cake pounding.”

The words escaped him involuntarily. “This feeling resembles rice cake pounding.” “That it does.”

The doctor answered with a pat pat on his back.

“It’ll harden soon.”

He visualized the scene of rice cake pounding in the sunlit front garden. Back then, the days of rice cake pounding were always blessed with Indian summer. The mortar and pestle would be brought out, steam rose warmly from the steamer basket, and it would be transferred into the mortar. The pestle pounded with a lively rhythm while the partner kneaded. Occasionally spirited shouts would ring out. As a child, he waited with his mother, older brother Ryūsuke, and younger brother Jōki before the new straw mat on the veranda. Father Fukujirō was still full of vigor, switching between roles as pestle wielder and kneader with his upper body bare. As a child watching, Eisuke thought that while pounding required strength, kneading must be more difficult. For if the kneader mistimed pulling back their hand, there was a risk of being struck by the pestle. So when Fukujirō switched to being the kneader, Eisuke watched with bated breath, his clenched fists tightening. He loved his father and respected him.

(I wonder if that time wasn’t the happiest period for the old man.) (And this us too—)

The fact that they pounded rice cakes in their yard was not because Eisuke’s family was particularly wealthy. It was a local custom of that region, from an era when paid rice cake shops hardly existed. Most households kept mortars and pestles, while those lacking them borrowed the tools from relatives or neighbors. This was a leisurely age without labor shortages, when making rice cakes at home served both as a seasonal event and an exercise in frugality. The pounding, kneading, and shaping were typically handled by family members alone, eliminating any need to pay daily wages.

(When I became an adult, whenever year-end came around, I would bring out the mortar and pestle and pound our family’s rice cakes.) As a child, he had believed that without question. There had been no reason to doubt it. Since time immemorial, this role had always been reserved for adults, and he had never even dreamed that times might change. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. In the same way, at that time it had been a self-evident fact.

Ryūsuke, now a middle school student, had grown dissatisfied with shaping rice cakes and kept trying to join the pounding work but was being admonished by his father and mother. “You’re still not ready,” they said. “You need to become a bit more settled—” When Ryūsuke actually took up the pestle, he proved unsteady. The pestle would thud against the mortar’s rim or stick fast in the glutinous rice, refusing to lift free. It required unexpected finesse—arm strength alone didn’t guarantee success. Yet even now at forty-four, Eisuke had never once wielded that pestle himself. He could only imagine it now.

“How does it feel? How is your back?”

The doctor asked. “Doesn’t it feel cold?”

“No.”

He tried to shake his head, but due to the thing resting on his back, he couldn’t manage it properly. “It’s getting heavier by the minute.”

Eventually, the pounded rice cakes were brought to the veranda. On the new straw mat, they tore off pieces, coated them with powder, and shaped them into round rice cakes. They did not flatten them out like in Kanto or slice them with a knife to make square ones. All were round rice cakes, and making them had become the role of women and children. When it came to making those round rice cakes, Jōki was much faster than Eisuke. It wasn’t that Eisuke was unskilled. It was because Jōki’s way of making them was rough. Whereas Eisuke’s were uniform in shape, Jōki’s creations varied in size—some large, some small—with inconsistent thickness and shape. If anything, their mother sided with Eisuke.

“What’s this? Why don’t you make them a bit more carefully?” “Take after Eisuke.”

At this, Jōki deflated, while Eisuke, puffed up with pride, worked his hands even more meticulously. However, when Kōtarō, their father’s older brother, came, he praised Jōki.

“Hmm. Boys should make them more lively—once it’s in your mouth, it melts anyway. The shape doesn’t matter one bit.”

Even back then, Kōtarō had a swelling resembling freshly pounded millet rice cakes dangling from the nape of his neck. Fukujirō was thin and muscular, but Kōtarō was plump with a slight paunch. Even when he came to Fukujirō’s house, he absolutely never helped with the rice cake pounding. This was because Kōtarō was the head of the main family. He remained with his hands in his pockets, doing nothing but watch, give orders, and offer critiques. Yet the first rice cakes made were offered to Kōtarō, and he would taste them as if it were only natural,

“This isn’t pounded enough. “The pounding lacks backbone.” or, “Hmm. “This one’s passable, I suppose.” he would comment with such criticisms. In other words, despite not being particularly old, he had wanted to play the grand patriarch. For an eldest son to monopolize ancestral property and put on airs as the master—such things were only possible in the pre-war era or long before; in today’s world, that simply didn’t fly. Kōtarō had taken over the family business, while his younger brother Fukujirō had barely graduated from a second- or third-rate technical school and was working at the prefectural office. Though it was a rented house, they lived in one that had a gate and entrance, a narrow front yard, and a relatively spacious backyard. This was not because their income was particularly high, but rather due to the generally low cost of rented houses at the time. Even as a minor government official, maintaining appearances must have been a consideration. Eisuke and his brother were born and raised in that house. When Eisuke was in high school, Fukujirō once reminisced a bit while slightly drunk.

“When you twins were born, I really had a hard time. When you have twins, the costs double.” Even living in a house with a proper gate didn’t mean their circumstances were exactly dire, but they’d apparently been fairly strained. The backyard had been completely tilled into fields and vegetable plots. When it came to vegetables, they’d achieved an almost entirely self-sufficient system. Eisuke and his brother had made weeding and pest control part of their daily routine. And making rice cakes at home too seemed rooted not in extravagance or celebration, but in that same spirit of self-sufficiency.

In that regard, Kōtarō of the main family’s approach differed somewhat. Unlike Eisuke’s household, they prepared multiple mortars and hired young men from the neighborhood. They would pound three or four times more rice cakes than their own household could consume—donating them to community pots and elementary schools, or making zenzai to serve in lavish quantities. This was less a formal event than something resembling a festival. Even their offering rice cakes had about four times the volume of those from Eisuke’s home. Though Eisuke and the others were invited too, he felt no particular envy toward the main family’s rice cake pounding. People simply milled about noisily and chaotically, while Eisuke’s group sat relegated to a corner like an afterthought, silently watching without being permitted to help. By contrast, at his own family’s rice cake pounding—though not quite center stage—they were entrusted with the crucial supporting role of shaping the cakes. In this way, theirs proved far more enjoyable. The front-yard poundings on those warm autumn days remained etched in his memory as joyful recollections, however poor they’d been. As they fashioned his plaster bed, what rose in his heart wasn’t the main family’s grand production, but naturally his own home’s humble version.

“How are you doing? Are you getting tired?”

To Eisuke, who had his eyes closed, the doctor said.

“No. I’m feeling quite comfortable.”

He answered. Though somewhat heavy, because warmth spread across his entire back, that statement hadn’t been an exaggeration.

“Is it done already?”

“No.” “Let’s make it a bit thicker.” “If it’s too thin, there’s a risk it might bend or warp.” “If it’s thick, we can always shave it down later.” Eisuke did not know what feelings his older brother Ryūsuke and younger brother Jōki had harbored toward that Kōtarō. Both had died, so there was no way for him to know. He now felt a regret—no, a hazy sentiment—that he should have asked while he had the chance.

It could indeed be inferred that this was around that time.

One day, Kōtarō made the following proposal to Fukujirō. “Among the twins Eisuke and Jōki, I will provide tuition through university for whichever studies well. In return, should I remain childless, I would have that boy adopted as my heir to succeed me.” Kōtarō had been denied children. That was what led to such a proposal. By custom, this was not an unnatural arrangement. It was only natural to want a nephew rather than an unrelated stranger as one’s child. However, Eisuke’s parents seemed to feel some reluctance about this. Wasn’t he using the children’s tuition as a pretext to indirectly assist our household finances?

Fukujirō was relatively fastidious about such matters and also had a stubborn streak. Having monopolized the property, there must have been a feeling of “What are you trying to pull now?” Moreover, if he were paying tuition for both children, that would make sense—but investing only in the promising one to take as an adopted son seemed rather presumptuous. What would become of the remaining child with poor grades? However, the household’s lack of affluence ultimately compelled Fukujirō and his wife to yield. Fukujirō, who had graduated from a third-rate technical school and entered government service, had been made keenly aware of how much one’s alma mater influenced career advancement. He wanted to send his children to university. That desire must have been far stronger in parents of old than in those of today. Graduating from university was in itself akin to being guaranteed success. Moreover, if Kōtarō were to have a son, simply graduating from university would become pure profit.

(But did such calculations really exist in the old man and mom?) Eisuke thought. The plaster cast on Eisuke’s back retained a faint warmth as it gradually began to harden. When he shifted slightly, there was a rough, pressing sensation. “It seems to be hardening now.”

He muttered to no one in particular.

“It seems to harden faster than rice cakes.”

“Yes. Soon—” “It somehow feels like a kappa’s shell.”

Eisuke made a joke. “If I dyed this thing and carried it on my back while walking around, wouldn’t I look exactly like a kappa?” “I don’t often hear of people walking around carrying beds.” The doctor, busy moving his hands, seemed to have no time to respond to jokes. Because he had been keeping his back arched continuously, Eisuke too was beginning to feel somewhat fatigued.

It was much later, however, that Eisuke was clearly informed about the promise concerning himself and Jōki. Telling them about that promise, his parents must have reasoned, would plant unnecessary competitiveness between them—in other words, it would wound their innocent hearts. Despite this, both Eisuke and Jōki had somehow sensed that something was there. Because Kōtarō had hinted at it every time he came to visit. Kōtarō seemed to love Jōki's vivacity more than Eisuke's. Whenever an occasion arose, Kōtarō would stroke the children’s heads and say.

“Graduate from university and make something of yourself quickly. And above all, studying comes first.” Jōki had his head patted far more often than Eisuke did.

“It seems to have hardened now,” said the doctor. “You should be fine now. Let’s remove it.” With a creaking groan, the plaster cast was peeled away from his back. A relieved sense of liberation washed over him. He sat up, stiffly adjusting his posture. “Please let this dry in the shade for two or three days. Until it hardens completely.”

Eisuke looked at the removed plaster cast. The part that had pressed against his back was gouged deeper than he had imagined, sinking inward sharply. The spine’s imprint lay dotted with indentations. The moment he saw it, a faint impulse and shudder coursed through his entire body. He let out an involuntary groan.

On the promised day, I went to Yagi Eisuke’s house. The usual brusque housekeeper showed me in. I asked. “Is he undergoing treatment right now?”

She silently shook her head. Eisuke was lying in bed in the same posture as two days prior. I placed the bouquet by his pillow. “You’ve brought something odd.” Eisuke moved his neck and gave a faint smile. “Looks like artificial flowers. Are they real?” “Of course they’re real. You can tell by looking.” I answered as I sat down in the chair.

“This isn’t a funeral. I thought about bringing something to eat instead, but picking something out was too much trouble.” When Eisuke had said they looked artificial, it was meant as a joke—but not entirely without meaning. It concerned Jōki. I kept looking around the entire room.

“Aren’t they making that yet?” “Is that what you call a plaster bed?”

Eisuke stopped laughing. "They made it yesterday." “Yesterday? Weren’t they supposed to make it today?”

“Was it today, I wonder? But the doctor came yesterday.” “Oh right.” “The doctor must have mixed up the dates.”

Clearly, Eisuke was lying. I knew.

He was still reluctant to show the lump on his back.

“You stood me up again.”

I laughed. “You often stood up Jōki back then too, you know. Whenever he was stood up, he’d come to my boarding house and complain, ‘Big brother’s such a mess.’ So I ended up going as his substitute and taking him to places like Asakusa.”

“Asakusa was really interesting back then. There were all sorts of things, and everything was cheap—”

Eisuke shifted position. I was carefully watching the way he moved his back. “But I never meant to stand Jōki up, I tell you.” “His workplace was that kind of place.” “They don’t have regular days off.” “When he had free time, he’d wander over to my place.” “Because he never contacts me, I don’t wait around.” “The reason he calls me slovenly is something else entirely.”

“Yeah. I know that. I read it in the diary.”

Eisuke made a disgusted face. I was keeping Jōki’s diary. It was from around 1936 or 1937. It was a small cloth-covered one, written sometimes in pen and sometimes in pencil. At that time, I asked Jōki.

“Why are you entrusting it to me?”

“I have a feeling the maid’s been sneaking peeks at it—this has got some unflattering stuff about the master written in it, you see.” “I’d be in trouble if some strange tattling came out.”

“Why not leave it with Eisuke?”

“Eisuke was out just now. It seems he went to see a movie.” Jōki gave an ambiguous smile. “Besides, it’s got some unflattering things about big brother written in there too. I’m not feeling too well, you see.”

Jōki would sometimes speak to me like a friend, and at other times treat me as an elder. He probably didn’t quite know himself how to treat me.

“Well, I’ll take custody of it for now.”

So it was decided, and I placed it in a large envelope and sealed it. Since then, that diary has remained in my custody. The seal wasn’t broken by me; rather, after years of being carried around, it had naturally worn away.

“So, are you already using the plaster bed?”

When Eisuke didn’t respond, I pressed him. “Did it turn out well?”

“I don’t know if it’s well-made or shoddy, but at any rate it’s finished.” “It’s still damp, so I can’t use it yet.” “It’s been set out to dry in the garden.”

Eisuke jerked his chin. “Want to see it?” “Yeah.”

Eisuke slowly moved his body and sat up. He stretched out his hand and took the bamboo cane. It was a crude cane made by discarding the broom part of a traditional Japanese room broom.

“Do you still need the cane?”

“No.” “I can walk without it，but it’s easier this way.” “Besides，a patient looks better when they’re properly playing the part.”

He went out into the corridor. Outside was a narrow garden. Only five or six slender-trunked trees stood spindly and lank. Newspaper had been spread over the shoe-removal stone, and atop it, the plaster bed lay quietly drying. I somehow felt an uncanny sense of incongruity. I squatted on the engawa and gazed at it.

“You could call it a shoddy sculpture, I suppose.” “The part where the back should be must be quite dented.”

Since he couldn't squat, he leaned against the door casing and spoke in a somber voice. "But my back isn't dented, you know. "It's swollen instead. "In other words, this is a back in reverse. "Even the spinal foramina—" "I know all that. "You don't need to explain it." "I see. "If that's how it is—"

Though it was a replica rather than the real thing, having finally shown it, Eisuke seemed to have felt somewhat relieved. His tone lightened somewhat. “When it was completed, I thought, ‘Is this really my back?’ and felt so sad.”

“But isn’t this degree of hunchback something you’d find commonly everywhere around here?”

I said gently.

“Because it’s my own, I’m overreacting to it. If they took a mold of it, even I’d look like that. I guess that’s how it is.” “Don’t force yourself to comfort me like that.” Eisuke said with a bitter smile. “I was thinking about the old man’s back. When I treated his bedsores, it was curved in the same way as this and just as swollen.”

Eisuke’s father Fukujirō died in the autumn of Eisuke’s second year at university. After collapsing from a stroke, he never rose again and passed away half a year later. Having lain motionless on his back for six months, his back chafed raw around the protruding spine—areas reddening or festering in patches—making the nursing itself more agonizing than the condition. The man himself seemed less afflicted; as he lay there groaning with apparent ease while relinquishing his care to others, Eisuke thought his pain nerves must have been paralyzed.

“This is the old man. And I am this old man’s child.” Eisuke could only feed Fukujirō with a spoon and treat his bedsores during his visits home. That meant summer. During treatment, not wanting the neighbors to peek, he would close all the shoji screens. The warmth and the smell of pus stiflingly filled the entire room. In that stifling atmosphere, Eisuke silently moved his hands.—The impulse and shudder that had passed through his body yesterday when he gazed at his plaster bed were precisely that memory.

Eisuke said in a low voice. “With his back like that, the old man died soon after. His bones must have been quite weak too.” “When you get old, everyone’s bones weaken.”

I did not particularly care for Eisuke’s sentimental tone. Perhaps to hide his embarrassment at having his plaster cast seen, he had shifted the conversation to his father.

“Even Jōki was rather hunchbacked.” “When he ran, it became particularly noticeable.” “He ran with a posture like a motorcycle rider’s.” “Have you ever seen Jōki running?”

“I have.” “Where was it… at some amusement park.” “I don’t think I’ve told you yet.”

III

It was Yagi Jōki who suggested hitting. Of course I stopped him.

“Just leave them be. Hitting them won’t help.” But Jōki remained silent, glaring in their direction. His eyes glinted ferociously as they darted about. Eisuke would never move his eyes like that. I learned this was something unique to Jōki not long after I began spending time with him. Though they were twins, they were fraternal—essentially just siblings who happened to develop in the same womb simultaneously. While their facial features resembled each other, their personalities and ways of thinking differed considerably.

That amusement park was from before the war, so it wasn’t as large-scale or gaudy as present-day ones. However, in form it was nearly identical—there were hills and hollows and gardens, rental boats floated on the pond, and amusement facilities were adequately equipped. At the concession stands they displayed oden and caramels, while loudspeakers played melodies like Tokyo Rhapsody and Humoresque throughout the park. Once—I can’t recall exactly when—I went there with Jōki. He had probably gone to visit Eisuke first and found him absent, which was why he came to me.

Tokyo’s population was small back then, so even though it was Sunday, there weren’t many visitors to the park. It wasn’t exactly sparse, but there was almost no sense of commotion. But amusement parks—those places might be enjoyable for the elderly, children, or men with female companions, but for two sullen young men shuffling about, it was just exhausting and never any fun.

In the direction Jōki was looking lay a small valley. A suspension bridge spanned the valley. At its midpoint, two young women were emitting sounds that hovered between screams and coquettish cries. Three male students stood at the bridge's base - when they saw the women beginning to cross, they abruptly started shaking it. I couldn't tell which school they attended, but they clearly carried alcohol on their breath. Or rather, not exactly drunk - just three youths sharing a bottle or two of beer, working themselves into drunken bravado. They stood nearby in that direction. Likely younger than us. They'd deliberately undone their jacket's top buttons, exuding not so much affectation as a smugly lascivious air.

That the women on the bridge and those students were unacquainted had become nearly certain from how we had observed things unfold. Those young men too—having made the effort to come to the amusement park only to find nothing entertaining—must have grown utterly fed up with it all.

“Should I beat them up?”

Jōki said to me. At first, I took it as a joke. Because his tone had sounded almost joking.

“Why would you hit them?”

“Because they’re bullying the women.”

Jōki answered.

“Ah. If they shake it that much, they might fall off.”

We were sitting on a bench halfway down from the suspension bridge to the valley, smoking tobacco. From there, we were positioned to look up diagonally at the women. Because the bridge was shaking, their skirts swayed, revealing glimpses of white underwear and legs. It almost looked as if they were standing frozen and making a commotion just to delight my eyes. So at that moment, I couldn’t fathom Jōki’s feelings. “It’s fine. It won’t snap.” The suspension bridge was woven with iron wires and had planks laid on top, so even if you let go of the handrails, there was no danger of falling. The women must have known that too. The reason their screams sounded more like coquettish cries was also because of that.

“They’re just putting on a spoiled act and making a fuss.” “It has nothing to do with us.” “It does concern us.” This time, Jōki said in a stifled voice. “Those bastards—when we passed each other in front of the concession stand earlier, they spat on the ground with a ‘hmph’ like that.”

"They're just a bit drunk." “Even now, they're doing this to show you can't handle it—those good-for-nothing students!” That was Jōki's groundless suspicion, I thought. He stomped out his tobacco on the ground and lumbered to his feet. He was really going to do it. It was then that I first understood. I hurriedly stopped him.

“Just leave them be. Hitting them won’t do any good.”

He fixed his eyes on both the students and the movement of the suspension bridge for a short while. Shaking off my hand, he suddenly started climbing up the slope.

There wasn’t even time to say “Ah.”

The two were pushed into the valley (though it was only about three meters deep) and fell; one crouched down as if clutching his stomach. Until the bridge’s shaking subsided, Jōki remained braced, monitoring the movements of the three. The women, as if encouraging one another,

“Hurry! Hurry!” While calling out to each other, they returned to the bank where Jōki stood with steps like they were treading on clouds. They must have been terrified by how violently they’d been shaken. Now that I think of it, those hadn’t been coquettish cries—they might have been genuine screams after all. The two who’d fallen brushed dust from their clothes and exchanged glances, seeming to discuss whether to climb back up for another fight. But judging by their movements, all three of them had lost any will to fight.

The women approached Jōki. They bowed slightly and tried to say something.

—

Jōki delivered a stinging slap to the cheek of the older woman. The woman pressed her hand to her cheek and staggered back. The scene was so jarring that I instinctively rose to my feet. Hadn’t he lunged at those students to protect her? Slapping her—this shattered the narrative entirely. Jōki whirled toward me and barked: “Hurry! Run!”

And he hunched his back and broke into a full sprint. Like a pickpocket pursued by detectives trying to vanish into a crowd. No—like a jockey charging down the final stretch. Or a child bolting after being caught mid-mischief. It wasn’t about escaping pursuit—the sheer thrill of flight itself intoxicated him beyond restraint. He ran with that abandon.

“And then—”

While looking down at the garden, Eisuke said.

“Did you run away too?” “Yeah… No. I ran about fifty meters and then stopped. Because I didn’t do anything, I thought there was no need to run.”

Beyond the garden fence, a spotted dog could be seen plodding along as it dragged itself forward.

“If I leave the plaster here to dry, I wonder if dogs and stray cats won’t end up using it as a toilet. The shape being what it is—” “Does it look like a toilet?”

“No. To me it looks like a plaster cast, but dogs and cats probably don’t see it that way.”

Eisuke thought for a while. "Yeah. That makes sense too. Wouldn't want dogs and cats using something we went through all this trouble to make."

Eisuke moved his back away from the door casing.

“Sorry, but pull it up to the veranda.” “My back hurts.”

He returned to the bed. I did as I was told. The semi-dry plaster felt soggy and eerie, as if pressing it would leave fingerprints. It would likely take two or three more days to fully harden. With a touch of perverse satisfaction, I dragged it up to the veranda and carried it into the room. "The way he hunched his back then—it remains vividly impressed in my memory."

While sitting down on the chair, I said.

“Did he always run like that?”

“If you stopped running—”

Eisuke did not answer my question.

“What happened to Jōki?”

“He apparently kept running straight out of the amusement park.” “The next time we met, he said that.” As we spoke, the seasonal atmosphere of that day came back to me vividly.

“That’s right.” “It was a rather hot day.” “I found myself alone，no longer feeling like I was in the amusement park，so I went outside and drank draft beer.” “It must have been early summer.”

"You said earlier you were selling oden at the kiosk, but—" "They do sell oden in summer." "It’s an amusement park, after all." "But—"

I tilted my head. “Why on earth did Jōki slap that woman across the cheek?” “There was absolutely no need to slap her.” “Didn’t you ask him when you met next?” “Yeah.”

“He was just hiding his embarrassment.”

He uttered with a snorting sound. “This ‘covering his embarrassment’—what exactly was he embarrassed about?”

“Can’t you tell? A woman’s scream like tearing silk—when you rushed over to look, there was nearly a scene of scattered petals and wild disarray—”

And then Eisuke let out a short laugh.

“After he finished it off, he noticed you were there as a witness.” “So Jōki tried to cover it up.” “When you met him later and said you didn’t ask about it—that’s a lie, isn’t it?” “Yeah.”

I nodded honestly. "When I asked him about it, he laughed it off, saying it was just inertia." "But back then, we were around twenty or so." “At that age, would he really get embarrassed over something like that?”

“Then how do you interpret it?”

“I’m not really sure.” “Active,yet purposeless—”

I faltered.

“Well, it’s like when you went clattering down the bus stairs and took a tumble. For him, there must’ve been no other choice. But considering how he looked, he wasn’t actually that fast on his feet. His center of gravity kept surging forward, but his legs couldn’t keep up.” “He wasn’t fast. But he was faster than me.” Eisuke gazed into the distance. “He once messed up by running away. Long ago, back when he was in middle school. He tried to dine-and-dash at an udon shop.”

“Did he get caught?”

“No.” “He didn’t get caught.” “But that’s what warped his fate.”

Eisuke let out a small sigh.

“In my region, shops that serve noodles are called udon restaurants. They don’t call them soba restaurants. Udon was the main dish—soba was just an extra option—and hardly anyone ate soba anyway. Since it was a warm region, the soba probably didn’t turn out well. Tasted awful too.” “That’s right. It does seem like food for colder climates.” “At my middle school, students were forbidden from going to udon shops. If you had a parent with you, it was fine, but they’d raise hell if you went alone or with friends. Why were those teachers so obsessed with udon shops back then? It wasn’t like there were waitresses or anything—just eating noodles and leaving. But we went anyway. Precisely because it was forbidden. In other words, we wanted people to see us as grown-ups—and to believe it ourselves, I guess. Hey. Pour me more brandy.”

“I had a similar experience once.” I retrieved the brandy from its usual spot, poured him a drink, and took the opportunity to refill my own glass.

“I begged my mother to make me a kimono with sleeves and proudly strutted around wearing it.” “Then those neighbors had the nerve to say I looked like a wolf dressed in human clothes.” “So I stopped wearing it for some time after that.” “It was called Atariya.” “The shop stood near our school.” “They made excellent udon there.”

Eisuke rolled the brandy in his mouth and thought for a while. “In Kanto, people think udon is something horse handlers eat—they don’t know how to eat it properly.” “Tokyo’s udon is just simmered broth.” “The ones over there were handmade back then, lightly seasoned, with slender fragrant green onions served as condiments in large bowls.” “I believe they called those onions ‘Hitomoji,’ if I recall correctly.”

At that Atariya, there was an old woman who kept watch over the shop. Back then, even though she was called an old woman, she might have been just over fifty or around seventy—he no longer remembered. In any case, back then, the age range of people called "old men" and "old women" had been broad. They didn’t gradually age into old women—they became them all at once, with a heavy thud, in both demeanor and attire.

The problem was that old woman being too strong-willed. Or perhaps such things had occurred frequently, and she could no longer endure it.

It could also be said that Jōki and the others were unlucky. During lunch break, Jōki climbed over the middle school’s wall and, along with three classmates, quietly slipped into Atariya while glancing around their surroundings. On Atariya’s oil-paper sliding doors, pictures of arrows hitting targets were stained with smoke. In the back was a large pot set up, under which firewood crackled as it burned, so the water was always bubbling vigorously. When entering from outside, glasses would fog up instantly. Jōki and the others rubbed their hands together as they sat down at the table,

“Plain udon.” “Plain udon.” they ordered. When the udon was brought, they heaped on thin green onions, slurped it all down smoothly in one go, and drank every last drop of the broth. Udon was not something to chew but to savor in the throat—this was the dandyism of middle school students. Such foolish dandyism can be spotted now and then in any era or place.

However, Jōki and the others’ visit to Atariya wasn’t solely due to bravado or dandyism. The lunchboxes they had brought from home had been finished during the break after second or third period, leaving them hungry by noon. So it wasn’t such a blameworthy act after all. Jōki, partly due to his hunger, ended up having three helpings. Up to that point, things had gone well, but when it came time to pay, the four of them turned slightly pale. They had come relying on each other’s pockets, but it turned out none of them had any money.

“This is bad.” “We’re screwed.”

The four of them leaned their faces close together and whispered a consultation. Someone would stay behind while the three returned to school to get the money. Such a plan was proposed, but with afternoon classes about to start soon, climbing over the wall again to bring back money would be an extremely dangerous task. There was also the question of who would stay behind. In that regard, since the three had only eaten two bowls each, “You had three bowls—you stay behind.”

Jōki refused that. Atariya had an interesting pricing system where one bowl of udon cost five sen, two bowls eight sen, and three bowls ten sen—a sign of how fiercely competitive and penny-pinching udon shops were in those days. Udon restaurants near middle schools didn’t serve many side dishes—they had no choice but to make their profit by stuffing customers with large portions. Furthermore, this pricing system was popular with the students. Jōki’s having eaten three bowls was not solely due to hunger but also a result of that pricing system. Finally, one of them said.

“There’s no way out. Let’s make a run for it.”

The one who proposed that was not Jōki. However, that single remark pushed them over the edge. Looking back now, they should have left a jacket or hat as collateral, but it seems that bit of resourcefulness never occurred to them. Even if they had put their wits to work, running away was simpler than dealing with the aftermath. If they just never went back to Atariya, that would be the end of it.

And another thing—Jōki had refused to stay behind partly because he couldn’t fully trust the three others either. After the incident, Jōki said to Eisuke. This was Jōki’s answer to Eisuke’s criticism of “Why did you do something so stupid?”

“Those three aren’t poor people. They all live in relatively large houses.” “So you’re saying they were just being stingy with the money?”

“That’s not it. They probably didn’t actually have any money on them at the time.”

Jōki forced a pained smile. “Those guys would leave me stuck there and just waltz off to class like nothing happened.” “I’ve had them pull that crap on me before—that’s why I couldn’t stand it.” “So tell me, Big bro—don’t you think your little brother here’s getting the raw end of the deal?”

After reaching a unanimous decision, they resolved to flee. After waiting for Atariya’s owner to disappear from the cooking area while making a delivery, the four slowly stood up. They hid their faces from the shopkeeping old woman, slid open the shoji screen, quietly scoped out the road, then suddenly broke into a run. The shopkeeping old woman startled upright with a scream like a chicken being throttled. Barefoot, she leapt down to the packed-earth floor and charged out into the street after them.

She was hard of hearing, and her eyesight was likely dim. That she couldn’t possibly chase after them—this assumption proved to be Jōki and his friends’ fatal miscalculation. The old woman staggered forward while bellowing. “Hey! Stop!” “Hey! Stooop!” Jōki ran with his back hunched. He lagged behind, constantly glancing over his shoulder as he fled. “This is getting messy,” he muttered. His sluggish pace stemmed equally from anxiety about their pursuer. The group filed into an alley one by one. When Jōki turned to check on the old woman while entering himself, he saw her miss the drainage plank—one leg plunging into the ditch as she pitched forward. That explained why her screams had suddenly cut off. He halted at the alley’s corner. His conscience tore in two directions.

*Should I just keep running like this?* *Or should I go back and help?*

However, reflexively, Jōki ran back to the scene. Was he afraid to run away? Was this a sense of justice that couldn’t abandon her? The old woman lay face down, clawing at the ground and groaning. When Jōki lifted her up, the landlady of the house with the plank bridge suddenly thrust her face out with a suspicious expression. Jōki said rapidly, “It looks like this old woman’s been hurt. “I’m counting on you.”

And he returned the old woman to the ground and ran toward the school. As a result, this turned out to be the worst possible course of action. Even if Jōki hadn’t gone back, someone would have found the old woman and taken care of her. Thus, what Jōki had done was akin to having run back specifically to show his face to the landlady. It was later discovered that the old woman’s injuries from the fall were not serious. However, due to the shock alone, she developed a fever and was bedridden for a little over ten days.

The udon shop owner flew into a rage and stormed into the school administration to protest. His demand was to have all students paraded for identification. The principal appeared troubled. If this identification parade made newspaper headlines, it would spell disaster. Since it concerned the principal’s position itself, after much deliberation, "They decided to drop such extreme measures and instead watch students during their commutes to catch the culprit." Thus the matter was settled. The one left in a bind was Jōki. Jōki’s face had been seen most clearly; had he been alone, he might have slipped through the back gate or scaled the wall to attend school—but there was Eisuke, his identical twin brother. That landlady would never let that slide. Driven to desperation, Jōki sat before his father and bowed his head.

“Father.” “I’m quitting school.” “Why?”

Fukujirō asked back in surprise. "Have you grown tired of school already?" "That’s part of it, but actually—"

Eisuke learned of this not from Jōki but from Fukujirō. Eisuke blamed Jōki.

“Why didn’t you consult me? The udon dine-and-dash was wrong, but if that were all, it should’ve ended with about ten days’ suspension.” “That’s exactly why it wouldn’t work, Bro.” Jōki had been confined by his father’s order to the dimly-lit storage room where a long chest was kept. As for work, it was just weeding the backyard garden or fetching bathwater, and since he couldn’t go out, he seemed bored and restless with pent-up energy.

“I’ve always been like that. During school swimming lessons when I’d swim in off-limits areas, it was always me whose legs would cramp up and nearly drown. And during snowball fights in the schoolyard, my snowballs would always end up hitting the teacher’s head. I’ve always been terrible at handling things.”

“But this time—” “That wouldn’t have happened either if the old woman hadn’t rushed out.” “It’s less about skill and more about luck.” “Bad luck always comes my way.” “You’re just telling yourself that.”

Eisuke said that to him. But even if he said so, it was already too late to catch up.

(Did he not consult me because he was worried I would stop him?)

In later years, Eisuke would sometimes think. (If I were to stop him, his resolve to quit school would waver. Was he afraid of that?) Yet Eisuke couldn’t claim not to have understood Jōki’s desire to leave school at that time. Because Eisuke himself had grown utterly weary of the school’s stifling rigidity and stagnant air.

Fukujirō heard his son’s confession and promptly resolved to make him quit school. And then he met with the principal alone.

4

“The old man’s back had also begun to hunch around that time.”

The plaster bed was laid out on the floor. Glancing sideways at it intermittently, Eisuke said to me. He didn’t want to look, yet seemed unable to stop thinking about it—such was his demeanor.

“Back when he still pounded rice cakes himself, his back remained straight. It wasn’t because of age—perhaps it was due to emotional reasons.”

“Emotional reasons?” “Rather than emotional reasons, it might have been an occupational issue.” Eisuke pressed the area around his cheekbone with a sullen expression. Jōki had prominent cheekbones, and Eisuke did too. He had apparently lost weight recently, and this was particularly noticeable.

“The old man actually resigned from the Prefectural Office.”

“Because of that?” “No. Long before that. Did I ever tell you I have an older brother named Ryūsuke? That older brother has also passed away, though.”

Ryūsuke was eight years older than him. The photographs allowed him to remember, but almost no impression of the real Ryūsuke remained with him now. He had been a pale-faced man with hair hanging over his forehead—sullen and uncommunicative. That he hardly ever doted on his younger brothers—or even spoke with them—was likely partly due to their age difference. When dealing with his brothers, he may have been brimming with frustration. Yet Eisuke recalled one vivid scene. It dated back to when he hadn’t yet entered elementary school, during early childhood. A marital quarrel had broken out.

“I’m returning to my parents’ home.”

Mother, her entire face drenched in tears, opened the drawers of the chest in the storage room and forcefully stuffed her kimonos into an arabesque-patterned furoshiki cloth. “I’m taking Ryūsuke with me.” In the dining room, plates and bowls lay scattered. This was because Fukujirō had kicked over the box-style meal tray. In his household, only the father used a box-style meal tray, while the rest of the family were supposed to eat at the low dining table. “I will never return—”

It was unclear why father and mother had clashed. However, according to his memory, they had already finished their meal, so Fukujirō must have returned late. And that he was drunk—this Eisuke now thinks—is because he seems to recall taiyaki-like pastries (something resembling drum-shaped cakes) scattered across the tatami alongside small plates and bowls. Fukujirō had a habit of buying taiyaki-like pastries as souvenirs whenever he returned home drunk.

“Mom! Wait! Don’t leave!” The young Eisuke clung to his mother’s back while crying and screaming. Mother’s back remained rigidly still, and he felt her entire back rejecting him. Yet he clung to it desperately.

“Mom.” “If you’re going, take me with you!”

His older brother Ryūsuke stood frozen in the corner of the room, his face deathly pale. The storage room was dark. A naked light bulb hung from the ceiling. The voltage must have been low as well. The light bulbs of that time, unlike current ones, did not have smoothly rounded lower parts. A sharp thorn-like protrusion jutted out. Eisuke had once been taught by Fukujirō that these thorns formed to create a vacuum inside. For that reason, to avoid hitting one’s head, the light bulb was hung higher than necessary. The darkness was also because of that.

“Mom. Mom.” Eisuke clung there sobbing, faintly sensing through his child’s heart that he was betraying the old man. Fukujirō sat before the scattered dishes without speaking a word, gloomily tilting back his glass of sake. The memory of that scene ends there.

The cause of that quarrel was likely something trivial. Eisuke thought so. In the end, his mother had not returned to her parents' home. If she had returned, there was no way that memory wouldn't have remained. Yet that scene left a scar on his heart for a considerable time. (Mother loves Brother Ryūsuke more than me. I'm not really needed by Mother after all)

There was also the guilt of betraying his father in that moment. But for the present Eisuke, another irresolvable doubt overlapped with that scene. That Ryūsuke had graduated from middle school and failed entrance exams for higher schools once again. While drifting aimlessly, he had become ideologically radicalized. Fukujirō never touched on the subject throughout his life, and Eisuke too had hesitated to ask, so the details remained unclear. There was no means left to investigate it now.

The last memory of Ryūsuke was at the tuberculosis hospital. Ryūsuke fell ill in the detention center—or rather, his condition worsened there—and after being released, he entered the hospital and soon died. Eisuke could recall the gloomy hospital ward scene, but he had no memory of ever facing Ryūsuke’s deathly visage. He probably hadn’t been permitted to enter the hospital room.

As they entered the hospital gate, Fukujirō,

“Come on. From now on, you’re the eldest son,” Fukujirō told Eisuke. “You’ve got to keep it together.” He spoke less to Eisuke and more in a tone of convincing himself. However, for Eisuke, the reality of having become the eldest son never truly sank in.

Fukujirō had already submitted his resignation to the prefectural office at this time. Eisuke would come to know of this only later. If one’s son had become a Red, he could not remain in a bureaucratic position. He had been forced to resign. However, Fukujirō’s, “You’ve got to keep it together.”

In those lines, there was almost no sense of darkness or sorrow. Precisely because of that, those words now bore down on Eisuke with the crushing weight of a thousand jun.

“At the funeral, did your mother cry?”

“While sipping brandy, I asked Eisuke.” I thought it was a somewhat cruel question, though.

“Your mother must have been quite a beauty.” “Yeah．She was beautiful．You can tell even from photos．There’s no comparing her to my wife．”

He too had downed about three glasses, his cheeks flushed, so his words were flowing a bit more smoothly now.

“But human memory is such a strange thing. “They don’t form a continuous line. “They remain here and there in scattered bits. “Only the intense parts stay—everything else just vanishes into thin air.”

“Everyone’s like that.” “We must have held the funeral. But where we held it, how it was conducted—I don’t remember. So the matter of whether Mother cried or didn’t—”

In later years, Eisuke was at a Tokyo izakaya, exchanging drinks with Jōki, and in the flow of things brought up that marital quarrel as a topic. Then Jōki did not remember that.

“Huh. Did that really happen?”

“Huh. You don’t remember?”

Eisuke was surprised and retorted.

“Because it was nighttime, there was no way you weren’t there.” Even though I had been so shocked, could Jōki have felt nothing at all? But Jōki wasn’t the kind of man to lie or play dumb. It must have vanished between the dots of memory.

“After being forced to resign from the prefectural office, the old man seems to have had a really hard time.”

Eisuke said while adjusting the position of his pillow.

“That was a time of economic hardship. But he was finally able to join a small company run by a friend from his school days.”

“So that’s what the job problem was about?”

I asked. “That’s right. Bureaucrats—they’re still like that today, just as they were back then—always acted high and mighty toward civilians. In other words, it means they maintained a high-handed stance.”

“Did your old man also act high and mighty?”

“I don’t know about that specifically, but as a general tendency, yes. That must be why he ended up at a small company, stuck in a position where he had to bow and scrape. I think it’s only natural that his back gradually started to hunch over.”

It was a tone tinged with jest and debate. I had never met Eisuke’s father, of course. I could only vaguely imagine a gaunt, sinewy middle-aged man who seemed worn down by life. “The old man then went to meet the principal. ‘Because he did such a disgraceful thing,’ he went to request that Jōki be expelled. ‘The old man believed that was an honorable act.’”

However, that had been too hasty a move, Eisuke thought. Perhaps Fukujirō had been thinking about his deceased son Ryūsuke. If left to their own devices, there was no telling what young people might do. He had to settle matters before they could act recklessly. It was that awareness that compelled Fukujirō to take swift action.

However, the situation did not proceed so smoothly. The principal said.

“I will grant the expulsion. I grant it, but—” That principal was an overly cautious man who, having toiled his way up from the bottom ranks, seemed concerned solely with self-preservation. He was a type commonly seen among principals of local elementary and middle schools. A school with such a principal generally lacked vitality in both its teachers and students. The teachers privately referred to this principal as Principal Kigane. Because he was solely preoccupied with school inspectors and public appearances.

“Could you please backdate that expulsion request to before the incident?” True to his Kigane nature, the principal’s words were courteous but hollow in substance. Expelling Jōki predating the incident would mean the udon shop dine-and-dash’s ringleader hadn’t been their student. The school’s reputation would remain unblemished. Though seething internally, Fukujirō refused with measured calm. “I cannot do that. Since this occurred during his enrollment, we intend for him to take responsibility.”

“I understand that.” The principal removed his gold-rimmed glasses and said while wiping the lenses with a cloth. “There’s a significant difference between being expelled over that incident and voluntarily withdrawing due to family circumstances.” “For Jōki’s future.” “When you say ‘family circumstances,’ for example—” “Such as insufficient tuition funds or needing to transfer schools—”

The principal resorted to crafty deception. Fukujirō refused again. The misfortunes following Ryūsuke’s death had hardened Fukujirō’s disposition considerably. “That is impossible.”

Fukujirō’s words grew slightly harsher.

“The one who did the dine-and-dash wasn’t just my son. There should be three others. What do you intend to do about disciplining those other students?” If Fukujirō had still been a prefectural official, the principal would never have taken such an attitude. Had it been the prefectural office with its Academic Affairs and School Inspection Sections, the principal would undoubtedly have protected Jōki instead. However, Fukujirō had unfortunately been stripped of his position and now worked as a general affairs clerk at a small company. Of course, the principal knew this.

Thus, the initial meeting ended in a deadlock. Eisuke only learned of these circumstances in later years through Fukujirō’s occasional reminiscences; at the time, he had been told nothing. However, he had a rough idea of what was going on. The vice principal and several men in suits frequently came to the Yagi household at night. They whispered among themselves in the parlor and then left quietly. The fathers of the three who had done the dine-and-dash with Jōki were one a judge, one a railway executive, and one a doctor. Jōki knew it, and Eisuke knew it too. Eisuke and the others instinctively sensed that the men in suits who came visiting were either those fathers or men connected to them. When visitors came, Eisuke and the others were banished to the storeroom, so they couldn’t know how exactly the discussions were progressing—though they had their suspicions.

“They’re here to cover up the incident.” In the dimly lit storeroom, leaning back against a long chest, Jōki sneered.

"They’re trying to sacrifice just me to save their own sons." "I’m sick of it." Eisuke couldn’t offer an agreeable response to Jōki’s words. Jōki had already resigned himself to expulsion and taken on the posture of a cornered beast. Any words of comfort would have rung hollow by now, and this affair entangled not only Jōki but Eisuke too. While Jōki could simply leave through expulsion, Eisuke would have to endure several more years as classmates with those guys.

And finally, Fukujirō gave in.

“When you say he ‘gave in’—”

I asked. "So you mean he was persuaded?" "That's right."

Eisuke squinted his eyes and brought the glass to his lips again. Signs of fatigue were vividly apparent in his expression. “During that time, the school was negotiating all sorts of things with the udon shop behind the scenes. They’d cover the old woman’s treatment costs and compensation in full—basically telling them to just endure it. From the shop’s perspective, their real loss was just the dine-and-dash itself. The old woman’s injury wasn’t from anyone beating her up; she fell because they chased her clumsily.”

“And I suppose being a customer-service business also leaves them vulnerable.” “Of course that’s also part of it.”

Eisuke nodded.

“If they got into a dispute with the school, there was a risk they’d lose their delivery orders. As for the udon shop, as long as they received enough money, that was fine—if anything, they didn’t want to make any victims.” “How would you know what the udon shop was feeling?” “After graduating middle school, I once went to the udon shop. Of course, I didn’t go to complain—I went to eat udon. Then the old man came out, greeted me with an apology for causing trouble for ‘your brother,’ and treated me to a free bowl of tempura udon on the house. He must have thought Jōki was the elder brother.”

“That tempura udon—did you eat it for free? Did you refuse and try to pay?” I asked. “If it were me—no, the younger me—I would’ve done that.” “No—I took the free meal.” Eisuke twisted his mouth into a smile. “Don’t spout noble hero lines—it doesn’t suit a mean old man like you. I just went because I was hungry, not for some revenge mission. But that tempura udon was damn good. When I say ‘tempura udon,’ you’re picturing shrimp or something, right?”

“Yeah.” “The ones where the batter’s too big and the filling’s too small.”

“Where I’m from, what we call tempura udon isn’t like that.” “There’s satsuma-age sitting right on top of the udon.” “Satsuma-age?” I chuckled.

“I see. While satsuma-age is indeed a type of tempura, it does give off a somewhat cheap impression.” “No. It doesn’t come off as cheap at all.”

Eisuke declared resolutely. “In my hometown, the fish is fresh and cheap.” “Even with satsuma-age, there are no strange fillers mixed in.” “In other words—it’s not some shoddy product like Tokyo’s satsuma-age.”

"That may be true, but—"

“No. If you put shoddy satsuma-age in Tokyo-style simmered udon, no one could eat that. Not that I’m trying to badmouth Tokyo or anything.” “You can’t know without tasting it.”

“That’s right. “You have to eat it to know.”

Eisuke shifted his gaze toward the window and stared at the sky for a while. Unlike yesterday, the sky was thick with clouds, their shapes shifting moment by moment with the wind. "I was at the udon shop and was treated to two bowls of that tempura udon." "And then I came back." "That’s all there was to it." "What about the old woman?"

“The old woman wasn’t there.” “She might have retired, or perhaps she was already dead by then.” “It seems windy today.” “If I lie around all day, I don’t really feel the changes in the weather.”

He returned his gaze to me.

“A considerable sum was paid to the udon shop by the three fathers. In other words, it was settlement money, huh? Thanks to that, the three students were spared from punishment. And Jōki ended up being expelled—backdated to before the incident. There’s a rakugo called *Sanpō Ichiryōzon* where three parties each lose one gold coin—but this situation takes the damn cake!” “So Jōki-kun drew the worst lot, then.” Eisuke nodded weakly.

“But I guess there was no other way,” he said. “For Father and my brother too, you know. It’s like that traffic accident with the signpost you saw.” He paused, his voice flattening. “If Jōki was the victim, then the direct perpetrator would be that udon shop’s old woman. But even if you’d caught her red-handed, it wouldn’t have changed a damn thing.” Eisuke closed his eyes like a man weathering invisible blows. I let my thoughts drift elsewhere for a long moment.

“If you’re sending him to Tokyo for service，a funeral home’s best.” “The war will spread even wider from now on—this trade tops them all for profit.”

It was Uncle Kōtarō who suggested this. Kōtarō kept repeating it insistently while plucking at the lump protruding from his throat. Or rather, he argued vehemently. "In Tokyo, there's a funeral home run by an acquaintance of mine that's doing extremely well." "Send him there."

Why had Kōtarō become so vehemently insistent on that matter? As the war progressed, war dead would occur, and accordingly, the funeral company’s income would increase. That might be the case, but he couldn’t have insisted on it solely for that reason. Eisuke now sometimes wondered whether he had been angry at the time—that a disgraceful expulsion had occurred within the family, and that his younger brother Fukujirō had handled it arbitrarily without consulting him.

(The sons of the other influential people were spared, weren’t they? So if they had just consulted me, Jōki too—) Though he could no longer throw his weight around as master as much as before, Kōtarō remained the head of the main household for their family. When the twins were born, it was Kōtarō who rejoiced rather than others—as evident from how he took the name of the castle in his birthplace, Eijō, and split it to name them both. In other words, he was their naming parent. However, at that time,

“Between Eisuke and Jōki, I’ll pay the tuition for whichever child does better in school. In return, if I don’t have a child of my own, give that one to me as my adopted heir.”

In later years, he likely lacked the calculated restraint to make such an offer to Fukujirō. Kōtarō was still young, and he likely couldn’t have foreseen that.

Eisuke even now vaguely recalled. Even though they were close brothers and he could have simply gone around to the garden when visiting, he would always noisily clatter open the front door and come inside. He did not ask to be guided. Without hesitation, he would stomp right up and settle himself firmly in the tatami room adjoining the entrance.

“Fuku, you here?” Kōtarō called his brother either “Fuku” or “you.” Kōtarō’s voice was loud and gravelly, so it resounded throughout the house.

The main point of the story was roughly this. Once the expulsion notice had been submitted, even if he—as a prominent figure here (Kōtarō called himself such)—were to confront the principal, it would likely prove futile now. The principal would certainly refuse to entertain it for his own reputation’s sake.

“Hey，Fuku．Your approach wasn't good，but what's done can't be undone．So now we need to decide how to handle Jōki's situation—”

However, even if Kōtarō called himself an “influential figure,” he was nothing more than a seafood wholesaler in that area—it was doubtful whether he could have actually pressured the principal. To be fair, he had skillfully navigated the waves of booms and busts during the Taisho era and expanded the shop inherited from his father to twice its original size. While it was also due to good luck, Kōtarō did not consider matters of fortune and seemed to overestimate his own capabilities. That was evident in his attitude toward his honest younger brother. Honesty alone isn’t enough to get through life.

“If you leave him be and he turns out like Ryūsuke, you’ll be in trouble.” On that point, Fukujirō agreed. “That may be true, but—”

“That’s why I’m telling you to have him work at a funeral home. If he learns a trade, things will work out from there. As long as humans live, the funeral business will never disappear.”

I sometimes wonder if Kōtarō had been deeply marked as a child by the daily funeral processions of Sino-Japanese War casualties passing through his streets—those endless parades of military death that might have shaped his worldview. This childhood imprint would later intertwine with how Jōki’s fate was determined. "The funeral trade isn’t some vulgar business," he declared. "It’s exactly what lets folks like us meet our ends with dignity."

“Brother. You can’t keep forcing things like this on me.”

Fukujirō answered in a low voice.

“We need to listen to the person’s own thoughts too.”

Having his family’s course determined by others’ convenience and intentions was an affront, even for someone as timid as Fukujirō. However, just as he had with the principal, Fukujirō ultimately yielded. It was not that he had yielded to external pressure, but because Jōki had consented to it. Thus, Jōki went to Tokyo and was taken on as an apprentice at a funeral home. On the night before departing for Tokyo, a modest farewell party was held to send Jōki off. Even though he hadn’t been invited, Kōtarō showed up bearing gifts of alcohol and seafood. As was his custom, he entered without asking to be guided, leaned against the tokonoma pillar, and sat cross-legged. Jōki, who had been sitting in the seat of honor, slid down to the next position as if naturally displaced.

“What? You’d already started?” After placing the gifts in the tokonoma alcove, Kōtarō said.

“Jōki. Take care of yourself even when you’re over there, and do your best!” Perhaps because he already had alcohol in his system, Kōtarō was in a relatively good mood. He occasionally cracked jokes and let out booming laughter that reverberated through the house. His cheerfulness didn’t stem from having his opinion accepted—after all, Kōtarō’s opinions were rarely rejected in Fukujirō’s household. At Kōtarō’s demeanor, Eisuke felt a faint hatred and fear. He kept silently shoving pieces of the special sukiyaki into his mouth.

5

About twenty days after seeing that plaster cast, a postcard arrived from Eisuke. It was a simple message saying he had a favor to ask and wanted me to come. On the third day, I visited him. On the canvas reclining chair on the veranda, Eisuke was leaning back at full length, reading a book. “Is your back better now?”

As I settled into the round chair, I asked.

“Yeah. It’s almost better. After fifteen more days pass, I plan to go back to school.”

Compared to twenty days earlier, his complexion had improved; he had shaved his stubble and made himself presentable. However, his hair had grown too long, with strands at the nape of his neck sticking out unkemptly from his collar. When he noticed my gaze, he irritably ran his hand over that spot.

"I’ve been thinking of going to the barber too, but..." he said excusingly. "I still can’t bring myself to endure sitting on that barber’s chair for an hour. My back—" "You’re not asking me to cut it for you, are you?" "Don’t be ridiculous."

He laughed. “If I were to let you cut it, I’d have my wife do it. My wife’s a professional beautician, you know.”

He slowly rose from the recliner and went into the study. He was no longer using a cane, but his movements were slow - probably out of consideration for his spine. I also wondered if he was doing it on purpose. Though to be fair, he'd always been rather clumsy from way back. That was why he'd slid down those bus stairs.

“The matter I mentioned is this, you see.” He returned and reclined back into his original position as he presented an envelope. The envelope was old and worn, even stained here and there.

“I want you to track down the sender of this.” “You want me to do such a job—” I said in disbelief. “So that’s why you called me here? I’m not a private detective, you know.”

“I know.”

Eisuke said. “I’m not asking you to find them through detective methods.” “You know those newspaper columns these days—‘Please give away such-and-such’ or ‘Looking for so-and-so who lived somewhere during the war’?” “I want you to put it in one of those.” “If I could go myself, I’d visit the newspaper office, but—” “Why not use your students?” “Like when you went to the national hospital last time—” “No. This is private—”

Eisuke spoke ambiguously.

“I actually want to use your name as the one searching for them.” “Why?” “I don’t want my name appearing in newspapers much.” Selfish reasoning, I thought, but I asked anyway to confirm.

“Who’s the sender of this envelope?” “He’s called Kano—a friend of Jōki’s.” Eisuke closed his eyes for a moment. He seemed to be considering how to explain. Eventually, he spoke. It wasn’t an explanation. “How about it? Will you take this on for me?”

“Is it urgent? Can’t you wait fifteen days?” “There’s no rush. But once I recover, I’ll probably get busy too.”

Eisuke let out a sarcastic laugh.

“I want to meet that man or try writing him while I still have time,” he said. “To quickly learn how things connect and continue. Like you do.” “You’ve got too much time on your hands,” I replied.

While sipping the black tea the housekeeper had brought, I said.

“As long as I stay still, it doesn’t hurt at all. Yet I can’t move.”

He nodded. He nodded sincerely. “Because I don’t interact with the outside world, my thoughts tend to turn backward.” “You’re not old enough to be looking back yet.”

“That’s not it. I’m thinking about right now.”

Eisuke took a deep breath. “But sometimes when I look at the cast’s shape, I think about Jōki and the others. There are so many things I don’t understand. Though of course, if I didn’t have to know, it’d be something I could live without understanding—”

The only one who accompanied Jōki to the station was Eisuke. The station wasn’t in their town either; they had deliberately chosen the next one. Why they had done so. Was it their father’s intention, or Kōtarō’s idea? Or was it Jōki who had wished for that? Eisuke could no longer remember. In any case, since they were dressed for a long journey with large luggage, they must have feared attracting attention. If they met an acquaintance, "Where are you going, and for what purpose?"

they would surely be questioned—if not asked directly, they would undoubtedly be regarded with suspicion. Given its connection to the expulsion incident, that would be inconvenient.

It was a warm day. As he walked carrying the luggage, he noticed his back growing damp with sweat. Having left home slightly early, they found themselves with nearly an hour to spare upon reaching the station. After entrusting their bags to the baggage room, they left the station building feeling unencumbered.

“Bro, let’s get some udon.” Jōki said jokingly while looking up at the sky. When he had left home, his face had been tense and pale, but now it wore a bright expression. Though he’d been confined to the storeroom for some time—living in discomfort—being able to move freely under the blazing sunlight must have opened up his heart. “This’ll be our last udon for a while.”

“There’s udon in Tokyo too.” Eisuke replied. “But I suppose it’s fine to eat.”

There was a small udon shop in front of the station. They passed through the split curtain there. The waitress gazed at their faces with slightly surprised eyes. Both of them were accustomed to such gazes. To the curious gazes that seemed to say, "Twins, huh?" “Give us two tempura udon.”

And then Jōki added in a voice that put on an adult air. “And a bottle of sake.”

After the waitress went inside, Eisuke asked Jōki in a low voice.

“You.” “Do you drink sake?” “Do you like it?” “No.” “I don’t like it.” “Once there was some of the old man’s leftover sake in the kitchen—when I drank it, my face got so hot I couldn’t stand it.”

Eisuke remained silent. The silence continued until the sake and udon arrived. They divided the sake into two cups and drank it down bitterly. As he began eating the udon, Eisuke said.

“Jōki. “Aren’t you depressed?” “What about?” “About going to Tokyo alone.” “No.” Because he had udon in his mouth, Jōki’s voice was muffled. “I can’t say I’m not depressed. "But rather than serving here—” With only a middle school dropout, there were no decent jobs. After all, it was a time of recession—even graduates couldn’t get decent jobs. Therefore, when it came to work, there was no choice but to go into service somewhere. Fukujirō suggested to Jōki that he become a company errand boy during the day and attend night school, but Jōki refused.

“I’ve gotten sick of studying.”

It wasn’t that he had come to hate studying; rather, the core of his aversion lay in transferring from a regular middle school to night classes. He found no appeal in going into service in this town either, for much the same reason. While the accomplices from the incident were still attending school, he would have to work like a dog in the same town. “If I’m going to be worked like a dog anyway, I figured it’d be better to be hundreds of miles away in Tokyo.”

Because of the sake and hot udon, their faces were flushed and red. "But Uncle Kōtarō sure has some strange acquaintances—like a funeral home director, huh?"

Eisuke said. “Last night, he said that once you’d learned how things are done and came back, he’d give you the funds to open a shop.”

“He was probably just drunk when he said that.” “No. He actually sounded pretty serious.” While feeling a tingling in his head and body, Eisuke said, “He might be scheming to have us hold his own funeral.”

Jōki suddenly burst into loud laughter. "We’d have to give him a half-price discount or something then."

After stopping his laughter, Jōki said. “Big brother. “You don’t need to worry.” “What about?” “It’s about the funeral home. “I don’t know what procedures a funeral home follows, but at least it’s not manual labor.” “That’s why I like it.”

“Well, that’s true, but—”

He started to say—then Eisuke fell silent. This was the first time the topic of the funeral home had come up between them. That complex emotion flitted through Eisuke’s chest. “Well. We should get going.”

As if sensing Eisuke’s feelings, Jōki said, “We can’t exactly dine and dash.” “I’ll pay.”

“That was a joke.”

Jōki pulled out his wallet.

“I received some farewell money, so there’s plenty.”

After settling the bill, the two went outside. Having abruptly stepped out into bright light, their eyes stung from the glare, and they felt as though the ground were swaying. Eisuke became aware of his drunkenness for the first time.

They bought Tokyo-bound tickets and platform passes, then stepped out onto the platform. Beyond the platform stretched a vast wheat field where ears of wheat hung yellow and ripe. Children were playing nearby, blowing grass whistles. The air hung stagnant and unmoving, yet the landscape pressed against Eisuke’s eyes with unusual vividness. At the edge of the platform—likely cultivated by the stationmaster or a station employee—poppy flowers bloomed in clusters. The two walked over and stood before them.

“Do you know what kind of flower this is?”

Eisuke said.

“It’s a poppy flower.” “I know.” “They extract opium from this.”

With an uncertain feeling, Eisuke explained. “Opium is a narcotic. If you keep taking it, you’ll get addicted.” There must be various types of poppies, and Eisuke didn’t know which part of them was used or how to extract opium. His pompous explanation had been nothing more than a way to kill time until the train arrived. After all, waiting for the train that would take them apart made time hang heavy. “Is that so?”

Jōki did not show much interest and was gazing at the other scenery. A train whistle sounded from the distance.

“Big brother—if you get to go all the way through college—make it a Tokyo university for me. Because I’ll need someone there who’ll listen.”

“Yeah.”

Eisuke nodded.

At last, the train arrived. Because it was a small station, the stop was brief. Jōki turned his face away from him and briskly boarded. When Jōki had secured his seat, the train lurched forward with a clunk. Jōki never once looked at his face. "This might be the last time I see him."

With an aching heart, he watched the train recede into the distance. It grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared entirely. The moment it vanished from sight, he nearly pitched forward but managed to brace himself at the last moment. Sweat drenched his forehead.

“The other day you were exhausted and dozing off, so I quietly left.”

I said.

“I meant to ask this then—when Jōki caused the udon shop incident, didn’t some flicker of satisfaction stir within you?”

“Why?”

“If Jōki were expelled, you would’ve secured your university tuition.” “Mr. Kōtarō was supposed to fund one of you two—that was the arrangement, wasn’t it?” “That was the arrangement.”

Eisuke slowly sat up. "But I felt no joy whatsoever. Do you have any siblings?"

“I do.” “When siblings compete and one gets ousted, does that make you feel some kind of happiness?” “Hard to say.” I stammered. “W-well, since I’ve never been in that position, I can’t really say.” “So you did feel sorry for Jōki after all, then?”

“Or maybe not.”

Eisuke ran both hands through his tousled hair and thought for a while. “I was born a twin. Since I’ve never experienced being born alone, I can’t say for certain, but don’t twins share a special emotional connection? For instance, I have an older brother named Ryūsuke, plus one younger brother and sister. My feelings toward them are fundamentally different from what I feel for Jōki.” “Is it because of the age difference?” “Probably. We grew in the same womb and were born on the same day. We shared something—like being doubles, extensions of each other—”

“From the very beginning? “That feeling—”

“No. At first, it wasn’t like that. I thought this was natural and normal. No, I never even thought about it. ‘I’m shedding quite a lot of dandruff—because I haven’t washed my hair in ages.’”

He brushed the dandruff off his knees.

“When I entered elementary school and looked around，all my friends had different faces—there wasn’t a single pair that looked alike.” “That must have been around when it started.” “That’s when it truly began to feel real.”

I was gazing at the moss clinging to the ground in the garden. Compared to when I had last come here, it had proliferated considerably.

“When Jōki got into fights with others, I’d jump in to back him up, and when I started something, he’d come running to my side.” “We’d team up against outside threats like we were one person.” “But back home, over the pettiest things, we’d end up brawling with each other.” “Strange, isn’t it?”

“So you mean you were roughhousing with each other?” Eisuke snorted through his nose and didn’t answer. “But thinking ‘this might be our final meeting’ when the train started moving seems a bit dramatic.” "That’s sentimentality talking." “We did reunite in Tokyo after all.” “No." "Even now when parting from someone, I sometimes feel it might be our last meeting." “More often than not.” “Though that intuition usually proves wrong.” “That sensation from seeing Jōki off in Shimonoseki might still be dragging its tail somewhere in my heart.”

VI

According to Eisuke’s memory, Shimonoseki City in December 1938 (Showa 13) had been an exceedingly dark place. Of course, this darkness wasn’t atmospheric or emotional—there had genuinely been little light. "Was there a blackout that day?" he wondered.

He sometimes suspected this, but there could have been no reason for blackout measures around 1938 (Showa 13), and since shops and bars remained open, it must have been neither an actual blackout nor a drill. December was the season with the shortest days, and the two of them arrived in Shimonoseki around six in the evening. Because they were accustomed to Tokyo’s brightness, it probably felt darker than it actually was. Eisuke was carrying an empty suitcase.

A conscription notice arrived for Jōki. When word came that a telegram had arrived, Eisuke spoke. “I’ll go back with you. It’s winter break, and spending New Year’s alone at the boarding house would be too lonely.” The notice simply stated to assemble in Shimonoseki on a certain day in December; it said nothing about which regiment or unit he would be joining. The empty suitcase was for bringing back Jōki’s civilian clothes and personal belongings. Eisuke was wearing his university student uniform, and Jōki was in a business suit. It was a cloudy day, and the sky was uniformly dark.

“It’s cold.” “This place called Shimonoseki—” “Probably because it’s a port town.”

Jōki answered while flipping up his coat collar. “Oh! It’s snowing.”

Light snow fluttered down onto their shoulders, but it soon stopped.

While completing the procedures at the designated location, Eisuke entered a nearby coffee shop and ordered warm cocoa. Just as he finished drinking it, Jōki hurriedly entered the café. The moment he sat down, he said in a low voice:

“It seems I’m being sent overseas after all.”

“Where exactly is ‘overseas’?”

"I asked, but they wouldn’t tell me."

Jōki lit a cigarette. The hand holding the match trembled slightly. “I think it’s Korea or Manchuria. Tonight I’m staying here, and tomorrow I embark.” “Are you staying at the barracks?”

“No.” “A private house.” “They drew me a map.”

And Jōki ordered coffee. "I hope it's Taiwan," he said. "I can't handle the cold at all." "It might be Taiwan." "But there's no war in Taiwan. It'll have to be up north then." After finishing their coffee, they went outside. They began walking using the map. What Eisuke remembered was how dark those town streets were. Did Shimonoseki residents go to bed early, or were they just shutting their doors against the cold? Probably the latter. It took them about thirty minutes to find the house. Among rows of low-eaved dwellings, the building suddenly loomed against the night sky.

“This must be the place.”

Jōki stopped in his tracks.

“I’ll go in and ask, so wait here for me.” Jōki entered through the small gate. Eisuke stood in the middle of the road and observed the building. The smell of sake lees was faintly drifting. He had an elementary school friend whose family was in the sake brewing business, and he had visited their house two or three times. The feel of that house and its walls, though indistinct in the gloom, had something in common with this place. Ah. So it’s a sake brewery.

He thought. "Would they be put up in something like the sake brewmaster’s sleeping quarters? It must be cold there."

Before long, Jōki came out. He was still wearing the same clothes. “They said I just need to be in this lodging by ten.” “Let’s go have some fun until then.” “That’s good.”

Jōki looked up at the building and confirmed its shape. Then, in the direction that seemed to be the entertainment district, the two started walking.

First, they entered a pachinko parlor and played pachinko. He remembered it that way, but since pachinko became established postwar, it seemed postwar memories had seeped into that recollection. Or perhaps they had entered something like an amusement arcade.

“Big brother. Let’s have a drink.” It was Jōki who suggested it. He had wanted to drink because of the cold too, but out of concern for Jōki’s position, he’d been holding back. “Are you allowed to drink?” “Why?”

“You’re already a soldier, aren’t you? Won’t you get scolded if you get drunk?” “I’m not a soldier yet.” Jōki laughed.

“Even if I board the ship tomorrow, I’m still not a soldier. Once I arrive somewhere, I’ll officially become a first-year soldier.”

“Is that true?”

“It’s true. I was told that earlier—since I haven’t enlisted yet, they said not to put on airs like some full-fledged soldier. Right now, whatever I eat or drink is my own business.”

He wondered if Jōki was interpreting the instruction “Don’t act like a full-fledged soldier” in reverse, but there was no stopping him now. They entered a nearby izakaya. The interior felt pleasantly warm from steam rising off simmering pots. Jōki removed his hunting cap and ran a hand over his shorn scalp. “Getting my head shaved really lets the cold sink in,” he said.

And then they ordered sake and oden. “In front of the old man and Mom, it’s stifling—the sake doesn’t taste good. After all, it’s gotta be a place like this.” Jōki had his hair cut yesterday at noon. In the front yard of his house, Eisuke himself used the clippers. Because the Yagi family was not well-off, they could not afford to go to the barber. Since childhood, they had been cutting each other’s hair. Going to a barber cost money, but doing it for each other was free. He had not once held clippers since graduating middle school. Jōki kept wincing in pain.

“Ow.” “Ow.”

Jōki winced in pain repeatedly and let out exaggerated screams. In truth, his technique was clumsy, but his exaggerated cries of pain were also an act for their young brother and sister. Each time he let out a scream, his younger brother and sister would delight and burst into laughter. The younger siblings were seeing Jōki for the first time, “Big Brother from Tokyo” “Big Brother from Tokyo”

they had done nothing but cling to Jōki since the day he returned.

“Ah, that hurt!” When he finished cutting, Jōki had his younger sister bring a mirror.

“Big brother. You really butchered this haircut. It looks just like terraced fields!”

“It’ll grow back soon. Once it grows out, even the terraced fields will disappear.”

At that exact moment, someone from Kōtarō’s store arrived as a messenger. The message was that they wanted to host a banquet to celebrate his deployment at Kōtarō’s house that evening, so he should come. However, that banquet was supposed to be held at their house that night.

Fukujirō was at work, and Mother was in the kitchen preparing for it.

“Big brother. What should we do?”

Jōki consulted him.

“I don’t really want to go.” “Then turn it down.”

Jōki said to the messenger. "If I were to get sent home the same day, it’d be humiliating—so I’ll have to decline the farewell party." "We’ll just have something simple at home—" The remark about it being stifling and the sake not tasting good referred to that night’s modest gathering, but Jōki ate and drank heartily anyway, cheerfully declaring how much better home was after all. At this family-only affair, Kōtarō never appeared. His pride had likely been wounded. All that arrived was a single bottle of sake.

The oden broth was a bit too sweet. "We’ve both gotten better at holding our liquor." He said to Jōki.

“The first time I drank alcohol was at the udon shop in front of the station when I went to send you off to Tokyo.” “That’s right. After half a tokkuri of sake, Big Brother turned bright red.” “That’s right. My legs were unsteady. Beyond the station was a wheat field—a yellow like Van Gogh used, ripe and sweltering.” “Hmm, was that right?”

“There were beautiful flowers in bloom on the platform. “What day in June would that have been?”

He had so many things he wanted to say. Even though he felt that way, in reality, there was nothing. The two of them polished off six bottles, and he was growing somewhat intoxicated. Jōki’s complexion had hardly changed. Yet he too knew that Jōki was drunk. Because of his position in service, Jōki had become skilled in the art of drinking while suppressing his drunkenness. He said. “Maybe we should get going soon.” Jōki readily turned his cup over, and the two left the shop. As they walked along the dark road back to their lodgings, there was a rundown-looking bar with a red lantern hanging at its entrance. Jōki came to a stop and peered at his wristwatch.

“We still have about an hour left,” Jōki said. “Let’s drink another bottle or two before we go.” A barmaid in her mid-twenties—her face thickly coated in white powder—leaned against a table as she repeated the same dodoitsu verses again and again. Morning glories are such fools— clinging to rootless fences, staking their lives to entwine.

The sake here was more watery compared to the previous shop. Perhaps it was the kind of place where they had women engage in prostitution upstairs, making alcohol and snacks an afterthought. Thinking this, he tilted his cup.

Suddenly，Jōki changed the subject. “Hey.” “Big brother.” “I have a child.”

“A child?”

Jōki nodded slowly with bloodshot eyes.

Even though they were both in Tokyo and met occasionally, Jōki had never breathed a word about such a thing until now. Yet it was clear from his expression and tone that this was no lie. “How old is the child? And the child?” “It’s due in March.” “Did you promise to marry her?” Jōki shook his head. “So you left Tokyo while she was still pregnant?” “Yeah.” Jōki emptied his cup with a bitter expression.

“I can’t marry her. She’s someone else’s wife.” “A married woman? Then how can you tell whether the child is yours or her husband’s?” “That’s right. But she believes it. If she believes it, there must be some basis.”

Jōki twisted his lips. He seemed about to laugh, but no sound came out.

“But I have no proof. “It’s not that there’s absolutely none, but there’s no absolute certainty either. When you think about it, fathers are such uncertain beings.”

He remained silent. He thought in silence. "For example, even us—it's a fact we were born to our mother. "But that it's clearly the old man's seed—"

Jōki’s speech grew slurred. “I don’t think I can say for sure,” he said. “I’ve thought about that sometimes. About us two.” “In what way—” “We were born twins. But the old man didn’t name us himself. Someone else did. That same person’s paying your tuition now—” A realization came crashing through Eisuke’s chest. So Jōki had been dwelling on this all along. When had these doubts first taken root? The questions swirled violently in his addled mind. But he maintained his façade of calm, steering the conversation back with forced determination.

“So who’s this married woman? If you want, I’ll go see her myself.” “I can’t tell you who it is.”

Jōki spoke in a dismissive tone.

“I’ll settle what I’ve done myself. I won’t cause you any trouble.” “So when you say you’ll settle things, do you mean you plan to come back safely?” While feeling his mood suddenly turn cruel, he said. However, Jōki seemed to take it as a joke.

“I’m just switching from the business of burying people to the business of killing people.”

Jōki let out a short laugh. “Since I’m used to it, I won’t make any mistakes. There’s no way I’d die that easily.”

Then Jōki peered at his wristwatch and slowly stood up. “There’s only fifteen minutes left. Let’s go.” After paying the bill, the two left the shop. When they arrived at the lodgings, he too passed through the wicket gate. The earthen floor transitioned to wooden flooring, and there was a large staircase leading to the second floor. A bare light bulb was hanging. The pillars and beams were thick and solidly built, and perhaps due to their considerable age, they gleamed black as a whole.

“Big brother. Is my face red?”

“No. “It’s not red.” In his eyes, Jōki’s complexion looked rather pale.

“I see.” “Wait here for me.” “I’ll go change and come back.”

With those abrupt words, Jōki climbed the stairs. He sat down on the stair entrance and remained still for about ten minutes. Before long, Jōki came down the stairs with his clothes and overcoat bundled together. He simply could not recall what Jōki had been wearing at that moment. Since he had taken off his clothes, he must have been wearing something else, but both their color and shape had been completely wiped from his memory. Anyway, the two of them hurriedly stuffed the clothes into the suitcase. In their haste, they forgot to pack the shoes left on the earthen floor and had to repack everything midway. When the work was completely finished, Jōki said in a small voice.

“Well… Off I go… me.”

Without giving him time to respond, Jōki turned his face away and walked toward the stairs. It was exactly the same attitude he had shown when seeing off the Tokyo-bound departure. Jōki clattered up the stairs, and without stopping, his figure vanished from sight.

“Ah.” He let out a low groan.

A wave of sadness suddenly welled up inside him.

“This might be the last time I see him.”

For one minute, he stood in the earthen-floored entryway. Then he picked up the suitcase and stepped out through the wicket gate. As he walked in the direction of the station, he thought.

(He’s a sentimentalist—more sentimental and showy than I am—so he hates being seen crying.)

The suitcase filled with clothes was unexpectedly heavy. While wearing them individually they weren't heavy, but when bundled together and carried by hand, there was a substantial heft. While switching the suitcase from his right hand to his left, he walked hurriedly as if being chased. Somewhere along the way, he must have taken a wrong turn.

Suddenly the sea appeared before his eyes. He stopped walking. And he cautiously approached the stone wall. The sea was dark, and the waves lapped lazily against the shore. In the distance, many ships were anchored, and scattered lights could be seen. The smell of brine rose to his nostrils for the first time. He set the suitcase down and stared fixedly into the black sea.

(He went and left behind some outrageous last words.)

With a head numbed by drunkenness, he thought such things. The weight rested more on Kōtarō than on Jōki’s child. (Leaving his geta entrusted to me, his big brother—)

Eventually, Eisuke slowly turned his back. After walking for some time, he came upon a familiar path. In the distance, the light of the red lantern he had seen earlier came into view. Eisuke hesitated, then gently slid open the oil-paper door. There were no customers, and the same barmaid from earlier sat alone at a table, resting her chin in her hand and dozing off. She opened her eyes listlessly. “Can you put me up for the night?”

Eisuke jerked his chin toward the second floor as he spoke. “Yeah. Sure.” The woman heavily got to her feet and lowered the front shutter. He followed her up the dark stairs. She dragged the futon down from the torn storage space with loud bangs.

Eisuke had not yet "known" the woman. While observing her movements out of the corner of his eye, he slowly removed his overcoat and jacket. The woman looked at his face and laughed. "Why're you making such a stiff face?" "You see, Kano was Jōki's comrade-in-arms—they'd departed together from Shimonoseki after all."

Eisuke explained to me. “About five years after the war ended, a postcard came from Kano.” “He must have seen my name somewhere.” “The name resembled Jōki’s—it was an inquiry asking if we were brothers or something.” “I see.”

"When I sent a reply confirming that was correct, a prompt reply letter arrived." "A photo had been enclosed." "This is it."

Eisuke turned the old envelope upside down. A small photograph came out. I received it.

The colors of the photograph had faded. In the center stood a wooden grave marker. 〈Spirit of the Late Army Medical Sergeant Major Yagi Jōki〉 I could barely make out the inscription. Around the grave marker, short grass grew in patches, and the background stretched vast and empty. The boundary between earth and sky was indistinct. In a desolate landscape where no flowers bloomed and no birds flew, the grave marker stood solitary. “Where is this place?” “Outside the city of Hohhot. It was apparently called Suiyuan in the old days. It’s the Mongolian region.”

“What a bleak place.”

I said as I returned the photograph.

“Though Jōki had almost no interest in flowers or nature, in that respect he probably didn’t feel lonely.”

Once, when I was still a student, Jōki came over. He rustled through the package and took out flowers. They were not real flowers but artificial ones.

“What’s all this?” When I asked, “Yeah. Big brother’s room was so bare, see—I quietly brought these from home for him, but he wasn’t there. Could you pass these to Big Brother later?”

Jōki’s explanation had been that real flowers and artificial ones were much the same—flowers wither, but artificial ones last forever. “How about it?” Eisuke said while lighting a cigarette. “Will you consent to looking into locating Kano’s whereabouts?”

“Yeah. I’ll give it a try.”

I answered.

“When did Jōki die in battle?” “Die in battle?”

Eisuke’s expression darkened as he remained lost in thought for a while. “August 17, 1942. “I had graduated from university and was working.” “Ah. “It was that so-called research institute in Kanda, right?” “It’s a hotel now.” “Yeah. “In January 1942, I too received my conscription notice.” “But I was immediately discharged and sent home.” “My bronchial tubes were bad, you see.” “I was hospitalized for about two months, then spent the rest of that year idling around.” “That day too, I had gone out fishing.” “My house was right by the coast.”

That day, Eisuke was dangling a fishing line off the tip of the breakwater. There were only two or three anglers on the breakwater. The Pacific War had already begun, with manpower siphoned into weapons production; people who had time to fish had nearly vanished. That day, he caught a lot. Though they were small fry, he had caught fifty or sixty by around three in the afternoon. As he grew increasingly engrossed in replacing the bait, a child came running from the direction of the distant shore. Before long, the voice reached him.

“Eisuke! Come back! Mom says so!” A sense of foreboding came over him. He hurriedly folded his fishing rod, lifted the fish basket, and rushed toward the coast. He asked his younger brother. “What’s this about?”

“What’s this about?”

“I don’t know.”

He had never been called back in the middle of fishing before. His anxiety intensified. “She said to call Big Brother right away.” “Mom was crying.” “Was she crying?” A shock akin to having made an irreparable mistake struck him. He started running toward the house together with his younger brother.

"Let it not be about Jōki. Let it not be about Jōki!"

But it was indeed about Jōki. A letter had come from Captain Nakata. The content was written in a curt manner, "Just ten days before his scheduled return to the home islands, Yagi Jōki suddenly fell ill and died. "We too find this regrettable and feel deeply sorry for the bereaved families."

It was a message to that effect. The disease name was not written. However, the phrase "just ten days before" pierced Eisuke’s heart.

“What an unlucky guy.” Returning to the home islands meant coming back and being discharged from conscription. He knew that.

"You shouldn't have died yet."

When he realized those stairs at the Shimonoseki sake brewery had indeed been their final farewell, his chest filled with something akin to rage, and he began to tremble. No tears came, but the trembling showed no signs of stopping.

At the end of that year came a notice to come and receive the remains. It was from Nagoya. He couldn't understand why someone who had departed from Shimonoseki would return to Nagoya. He still cannot understand.

Father Fukujirō had died of illness about a year after Jōki had gone off to war. Now when it came to family, there was only Mother, Eisuke, his younger brother, and his younger sister. He alone could go to receive them, and it was also his responsibility. "Why on earth would his remains come back to Nagoya?"

Mother also found it strange.

"If they'd brought them straight here, we wouldn't have wasted money on travel, would we?" Having said that, he couldn’t very well not go. Eisuke departed for Nagoya.

On the vast, cold military grounds, something like a joint memorial service was conducted. In the far distance, a trumpet sounded solemnly, and what seemed to be the captain's address and a funeral oration were being read. The sky was clear, and the wind was strong. Carried on that wind, voices would occasionally reach them. Of course, he couldn't understand what they meant. In front of the platform, soldiers stood in formation while bereaved families were made to line up behind them. There were no chairs. They remained standing. He stood in the last row of the bereaved families. It took time for everyone to arrange themselves properly, and moreover, the ceremony dragged on interminably.

“What the… It’s strange—the one who buries others getting buried himself.” "The one who buries others getting buried himself—it’s strange." At first, Eisuke had thought that way too, but his irritation steadily grew. He had thought that if he presented the notification, they would hand over the remains in exchange, yet here he was forced to participate in this ostentatiously hollow ceremony. He was indignant. Moreover, having come by night train, he hadn’t slept well the previous night. “This is taking so long. Isn’t it over yet?” “Still not over?”

To the bearded old man standing next to him, he quietly spoke. The old man glared at him but did not respond. The old man’s lips turned purple from the cold. Eisuke’s earlobes went numb, and his nose kept running incessantly. Just when he had reached the point where he could endure no more, the ceremony finally ended. It was an hour and a half later that he received the remains. It was because the place was crowded, and his turn simply wouldn’t come. Even after receiving the box wrapped in white cloth, he felt no sorrow at all. He sullenly slung it from his shoulder to his front. He exited through the barracks gate and trudged toward the station.

"How utterly absurd." "What a foolish thing this is." As if to soothe his own sullenness, he walked on muttering to himself. He had planned to stay one night in Nagoya and return to his hometown the next morning, but now he no longer wanted to stay.

“I’ll take the train back right away.”

At the station cafeteria, after ordering a meal, he firmly made up his mind. He removed the remains from his shoulder and laid them out on the table. In other words, they were positioned as if facing him. He still had no tangible sense that Jōki’s remains were inside there. He recalled Jōki’s words at the red lantern shop in Shimonoseki. "You said you’d settle things yourself, but in the end you couldn’t, could you?" He spoke to Jōki’s remains in his mind.

"Once humans are born, they become entangled with and entangled by various things, making it impossible to settle matters within a single generation. They’re gradually passed down or vaguely fade away—"

The meal arrived. Facing the remains, he alone ate. He felt somehow unsettled.

“Remains are such peculiar things, you know.”

Eisuke wrapped both hands behind his head and said to me.

“It’s something that only looks proper when slung from your shoulder and held up respectfully in both hands, you see.” “When eating meals, it becomes inconvenient to manage.” “If only there were no people around—but everyone’s watching.” “Not the bones—me, you understand.” “They’re watching me as someone who’s lost a family member and is filled with grief.” “Eating under those stares feels utterly uncomfortable. But even so—when you’re hungry, you can’t just not eat—” “I see.”

I felt I could understand that confusion too. "You’d have to put on a sad face, you know." "But you can turn it around instead." He said.

“Then I boarded the train. The train wasn’t packed to capacity, but there were no empty seats. It was because I was carrying the remains that I couldn’t jostle to board first.”

Eisuke was utterly exhausted. He hadn't slept well the night before and had been standing continuously in the barracks courtyard, so it was only natural he would be exhausted. He remained standing in the aisle, even considering placing the remains on the luggage rack. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. The anger that had subsided for a while now flared up again, smoldering in his chest.

“Do they mean to keep me standing? Me?!” Thinking this, he scrutinized each seated passenger’s face in turn. About ten minutes passed. Finally, as if unable to bear it any longer, a student stood up and offered his seat. “That was a long-distance train,” he said. “That’s why nobody wanted to give up their seats. When I think about it now, I must’ve caused everyone trouble barging in like that. Charging aboard brandishing these remains like some righteous cause. Some were even pretending to be asleep.”

“So, did you thank that student?”

“I didn’t say anything—just sat right down without a word like nothing was wrong.”

Eisuke intensified his tone. “Because the student didn’t give up his seat to me—he gave up his seat to the remains.”

While thinking it was odd reasoning, I remained silent and listened. “I managed to sit down，but what came after was grueling. I couldn't doze off. Closing my eyes was manageable，but if I started dozing off，my body would lean forward and the box would almost slip from my lap.” With a start，I’d notice and straighten my posture. “I’d doze off only to jerk awake—over and over like that—and by the time I finally stepped off at my hometown station，I’d definitely lost a good thirteen pounds，you know.” He paused before adding，“Truly，retrieving those remains was an ordeal.” His voice grew distant.“Since I was still young back then，I managed，but it’s something I couldn’t possibly do now.”

On the canvas chair, Eisuke stretched.

“When I arrived home and opened the box, there was an urn. When I opened the lid, there was just a small amount of bone fragments inside, you know.” “Did you cry?” “No.”

He let out a sigh. “When you witness a family member’s death firsthand, the grief concentrates and tears flow—but with Jōki’s case, it wasn’t like that. First came the letter, then what passed for bones. Those bones were just something they cremated on-site. I never saw his death face. With no tangible reality, the grief gets scattered.”

“I suppose that’s how it is.” “And after all, I went through all that trouble to go to Nagoya. I had this overwhelming sense of ‘They made me go through all that trouble just for this worthless thing.’ Rather, there was a greater sense of reality when that man Kano sent me the photo. ‘Ah, so this is where they’re buried,’ I thought. But it’s strange. I didn’t write back to that letter from Kano. I felt like I didn’t want to write it.”

“You say they made you go through all that trouble for Jōki’s remains, but when he was alive, he was the one who caused you hardship.” “You borrowed money from the funeral home owner and never paid it back.”

“Ah.”

Groaning, Eisuke said.

“You know a lot, don’t you?”

“It’s written in Jōki’s diary, and he often complained to me about it.” “‘Big Brother’s irresponsible with money too,’ he said.”

The funeral home was located at the bottom of a long, sloping hill that descended from a private railway station. The owner was a thin man with close-cropped hair who rarely showed any change in expression. Later, when I asked Jōki about it, he told me that those in the funeral business were instructed never to let their emotions show on their faces and to conduct matters with complete impassivity. The owner’s taciturn demeanor seemed as though his professional training had carried over into his daily life. Eisuke had gone to borrow money two or three times.

After all, the amount Kōtarō sent for school expenses was too small. Since he only sent as much as one would for a rural high school student, it wasn’t nearly enough. He took on part-time jobs, but when even that wasn’t enough, he had no choice but to turn to the funeral home.

When the owner heard the amount Eisuke requested, he had his young, beautiful wife bring the money and silently handed it to him.

Because he was struggling day to day, he simply couldn’t repay the money. Eventually, he found it difficult to visit the funeral home. “Big brother. Why not just pay back what you can little by little and then borrow again when you need to?”

Sometimes Jōki would say to him.

“When I hear Father telling guests, ‘This one works hard, but the elder brother’s irresponsible,’ it stings a little.” Eisuke too found it painful. He couldn’t bring himself to make hollow promises about repaying after graduation. Then Jōki got conscripted amid it all, leaving the debt forever unpaid.

“The reason I didn’t reply to Kano was that there was certainly a part of me that didn’t want to know too much about Jōki’s hardships during his military service.”

Eisuke said.

“But then after six or seven years had passed, I suddenly wanted to know about it. So I wrote to Kano and asked to meet him to hear his story. Then it came back with a note attached.” “Why did you decide to send the letter?”

“I don’t know for sure. I suppose it’s because time has passed and it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.” “Maybe with age, you’re starting to want to wrap things up.”

I said jokingly. “Even after hearing Kano’s story, far from bringing any resolution, I think it only made things more tangled.”

“Maybe so.”

The conversation lapsed for a moment. Eisuke closed his eyes listlessly. I took the old envelope and looked inside it. There was nothing inside.

“Was there only a photo in this?”

“No.” “There was a letter too.”

“What did it say?” “It briefly described the circumstances of his death.”

“Hmm. What illness did Jōki die from?” “He killed himself.” “Suicide?”

Since this was the first time I'd heard of it, I involuntarily raised my voice. "Yeah." Eisuke opened his eyes, and after a moment, he nodded.

“It was suicide by sleeping pills.”

Seven

It was late June 1942 when Jōki's unit returned to Datong from Hong Kong. Almost all of the medics who had enlisted at the same time as Jōki had been promoted to sergeant. Sergeant Kano was also one of them. They moved again from Datong to Hohhot.

In Hohhot, their duties were completely haphazard and decadent. Having fulfilled their heavy responsibilities in Hong Kong, they felt a sense of relief upon returning to their home base, and being in the north, there were no sudden military operations. Moreover, they would soon be discharged. They were receiving special treatment as personnel scheduled for repatriation.

Of course, not the entire Hohhot unit had become disorderly. It was only the repatriation personnel. “How could we feel like working when we’re about to go home?” “What a fucking joke!” In that mindset, Jōki and his comrades barely worked—skipping daytime duties and drinking themselves senseless every night. The unit commander was a military surgeon captain named Nakata, a man with a somewhat sinister disposition,

“Even repatriation personnel must not become lax.” He would frequently lecture them, but it never got through. In the military, senior sergeants were practically gods; they wouldn’t be moved by mere lectures. “What a nasty bastard.” “That bastard.” “He’s only obsessed with getting himself promoted.” “He’s a disgrace to the military.” Captain Nakata was disliked by everyone. Jōki in particular disliked him.

That evening, Jōki took a bath. It was not a steel drum but an earthenware tub. The water from steel drums felt harsh against the skin, but they preferred the gentler touch of the earthenware tub. Then began a drinking party with five comrades. The liquor was baijiu. Jōki and his group were quartered in a requisitioned civilian house. Only five men occupied that particular building. Every last one of them loved alcohol. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say those who loved alcohol had congregated in that building. The allocation of living quarters had largely followed their own preferences.

As they grew drunker, stories came pouring out endlessly. Tales of hometowns. Recollections of Hong Kong. Accounts of women and gambling.

Amidst this, Jōki descended from the room, scooped a white powder into his palm from his duffel bag hung in the earthen-floored area, and returned to the drinking party. It was a crystalline powder resembling aspirin. Jōki put it in his mouth in front of everyone and swallowed it down with a gulp of baijiu. “What did you take?” Kano noticed this and asked. “It’s nothing.” Jōki answered. His tone was almost buoyant. “It’s a broken body anyway. This works better.”

Since the conversation quickly shifted to another topic, the matter of the powder ended there. That night, they sang songs and all got completely drunk before going to sleep.

The next morning, when Kano woke up, he immediately noticed that Jōki’s breathing sounded strange. Kano had been sleeping next to Jōki. It wasn’t quite snoring. His throat was rumbling like a cat’s. Startled, he peered at Jōki’s face—turned away from him—and saw a creamy, viscous substance flowing from his nostrils, dripping down onto the blanket beneath. He realized Jōki couldn’t breathe through his nose—that was why his throat was rattling.

“It’s an emergency! Everyone, wake up!”

The remaining three also jumped up.

“What’s wrong?” “Yagi’s acting strange. Get the soldiers to bring a stretcher now!” One of them dashed out. Kano wiped away the viscous discharge with gauze. But with his nostrils completely clogged, the gurgling in his throat wouldn’t stop. Jōki had sunk into a deep coma and wet himself.

It must have been last night's white drug.

With a feeling that made him want to grind his teeth, Kano thought. If he had made him vomit right then, things wouldn’t have turned out like this. So him taking a bath yesterday was part of that resolve. Jōki had never been fond of taking baths, claiming they were too much trouble. He had always limited himself to just wiping his body down. That he had entered the earthenware tub and washed himself thoroughly must have been part of that resolve.

Immediately, soldiers rushed in carrying a stretcher. Jōki’s body was transported to the hospital. Gastric lavage and enemas were performed, but Jōki’s consciousness did not return, and he died at noon. It was determined to be a Veronal overdose.

Due to having shared the same quarters, Kano and the others underwent a pro forma interrogation. However, Kano never disclosed the fact that he had taken the white powder during the drinking session. They fashioned a grave marker from untreated wood, negotiated with the military canteen to procure sake, poured it over the marker, and held a memorial gathering with what remained.

One week later, they departed from Kōwa and headed for the mainland.

As Eisuke had requested, I went to the newspaper company. At that company, a friend of mine was there and kindly agreed to help. The article searching for Kano was published three days later. However, a reply from Kano did not come for a long time. About two months had passed when I met Eisuke. “So you’re giving up now?”

I said. Eisuke’s spine had fused in its deformed state, and it was said he had returned to teaching at the school.

“He might already be dead. Human life is such an unreliable thing.” “There are so many traffic accidents these days.”

Eisuke answered. Compared to when he had been lying down, his tone wasn’t as earnest. After all, when he became immersed in the clutter of daily life, he must have grown cold toward the past.

“I suppose I’ll give up. There’s nothing else to be done…”

However, one month later, a letter arrived from Kano. He had been adopted into another family, and his surname had changed. The address was in Chiba, "I recently happened to read that newspaper by chance, but for what reason are you searching for me?" he had written.

Exactly the next day, as I had business in Chiba, I went around to that address in the evening. Then there was a small boat inn there. When I asked for directions, a woman who appeared to be his wife came out and said he was out at sea but should be returning soon. In fact, within less than thirty minutes, the fishing boat returned, its engine puttering. A sunburned boatman disembarked and tied up the boat. That was Kano. “Oh. It’s you.”

Kano removed his headband.

“Actually, we don’t take that newspaper at home. I was just skimming through some old papers a customer left behind when my name popped up. Gave me quite a shock.”

Kano looked much older than Eisuke. As expected, being exposed to the sea wind every day must have roughened his skin. "What business do you have looking for me?" "Actually, I have a friend named Yagi Eisuke—"

“Ah. That’s Yagi’s older brother, right? I’ve sent a letter before.” There, I briefly explained Eisuke’s feelings. It was a bit difficult to ask him to come to Tokyo and tell me all sorts of things. The boat inn owner was surely busy. “Since Yagi Eisuke also likes fishing, if I could borrow your boat once and listen to your stories while we fish—”

“That’s fine. If you call me the day before, I’ll have everything ready.”

Kano readily agreed. "If I recall correctly, that Mr. Eisuke was Yagi’s twin brother, wasn’t he?"

“Yes, that’s correct.” The river in front of the boat inn was polluted, oil glistening menacingly on its surface. Several boats were tied up. Beyond the row of houses across the river hung a red evening sun.

“The smog’s been bad again these past few days, hasn’t it?” Kano said, shading his eyes. “When I go out to sea, the sun seen through Tokyo’s smog looks just like Mongolia’s. Though in Mongolia’s case, it’s not smoke but sand dust.” “So, Jōki committed suicide there, I hear.”

Kano did not directly reply to it. After a while, he took his eyes away from the evening sun. “Even if he had returned alive from Mongolia, he would’ve been immediately re-conscripted.” “I was taken to New Guinea.” “New Guinea? The war there must have been horrific.” “It was terrible, yeah. “Out of 240,000 to 250,000 who went, only 7,200 came back.” “It wasn’t even a war.” “For a year, we ate nothing but tree roots and grass roots—”

Kano looked at my face. “Jōki would certainly be counted among those war deaths. The fact that I made it back alive was just a fluke.” I thought Kano’s aged appearance might stem from those hardships. I received a large business card from the boat inn and left. The next day, I called Eisuke and relayed the details.

“I see. So Kano was there.”

Eisuke said.

“It’s been ages since I last went fishing. I’d like to try it again.” “So what caused the suicide?”

“It was just a brief conversation, so I didn’t ask. I figured I could ask you later anyway.” I answered.

“They said they’ll arrange the fishing rods and bait on their end.” “You just need to show up yourself.” One morning I met up with Eisuke and headed to Chiba by taxi. There was no wind, and it was a fine day. “Is your back completely better now?”

I asked. “Can you sit in a boat all day?”

“I guess I’ll manage. If it gets too bad, we can just turn the boat back.” “How’s the lump?” For an instant, Eisuke looked gloomy. “I feel like it’s gotten a bit bigger than before. In terms of how it feels to the touch.” “But at least it’s your back.”

I comforted him. Eisuke nodded. “Yeah. I’d be in trouble if I ended up like Uncle Kōtarō.”

“How’s your uncle doing?”

“Yeah. He’s still the same. On top of the fixed amount, he sometimes comes pestering me for spending money. Given his age, I’d like to put him in a nursing home, but I wonder if there’s a good place somewhere.” Since Kōtarō had moved to Tokyo alone, Eisuke had been providing him with 5,000 yen each month. Kōtarō came to his house at the beginning of each month. When Eisuke was there, he would hand it over personally; when away, he would put it in an envelope and leave it with the housekeeper. Even if Eisuke offered to send it to his lodgings, Kōtarō wouldn’t agree.

“There’s no need for that,” “I’ll come collect my portion myself.” Kōtarō had always been stubborn once he set his mind to something. Born into the main family and having lived as its master, even in his reduced circumstances now, that temperament remained unchanged. He would receive it with a matter-of-fact expression, like withdrawing his own savings from the post office. “If it were mailed to him, he might hate feeling like he’s getting an allowance.” Eisuke would sometimes vaguely imagine this. His own tuition had been sent by check from Kōtarō in the past.

Upon receiving it, Kōtarō would leave through the entrance without so much as a word of thanks. His retreating figure looked lonely. Over the past six months, Kōtarō had suddenly begun to show signs of weakening in his legs.

“Can an old man really get by on five thousand yen?”

I said.

“No matter how you look at it, 5,000 yen isn’t enough.”

“Probably not.”

Eisuke said calmly. “Even just the rent alone probably costs that much.” “Then how does he manage his food expenses? Is he working?”

“No. At his age, he probably can’t work anymore. When I asked at his lodgings once, they said he goes out every day, you know.”

While gazing at the passing scenery, Eisuke said in a distant voice. “When he first came to Tokyo, there were indications Uncle Kōtarō had a considerable amount of money. I suspect he came to sort out some property or something.” “The funeral home where Jōki worked—it was an acquaintance of that uncle’s, I suppose?”

“That’s right.” “But it seems the owner of that funeral home has died.” “He died in an air raid，you know.”

At the end of the year the war ended, Eisuke once visited the funeral home. After getting off at the private railway station and looking out from atop the gradual slope, he saw that the entire area where the funeral home had stood was burned away, and in the far distance Mount Fuji appeared small beneath its crown of snow.

“Ah… So this place has burned down too, huh.”

Eisuke gazed at the scenery for a while. Eventually, he slowly began to descend the slope. A cold wind blew up from below into his overcoat.

Near where the funeral home was remembered to have been stood a small hut made of charred lumber and corrugated iron. Peering inside, he saw a middle-aged woman in work pants tending a pot that bubbled on the stove. “Excuse me—” Eisuke removed his combat cap.

“There was a funeral home up ahead, wasn’t there?” “Where did that family go—”

“Who knows?”

The woman turned her face toward Eisuke.

“This whole area burned down together, you know. “From what I’ve heard, they say the master was killed outright by an incendiary bomb.” “A direct hit, you know.” He remembered the master’s sullen expression. “What about his family?”

“Well… Maybe they went back to their hometown or something.” The woman stood up, exited the hut, approached Eisuke, and scrutinized his face intently.

“That’s right. You’re definitely the person who worked there around 1935, aren’t you? You still have the same look about you.” “No. I… That’s not me.”

Eisuke took two or three steps back. The woman said suspiciously. "You don’t have to hide it. I do remember."

Explaining that it was his brother would have been too much trouble, so he hastily bowed and put on his hat. “Thank you very much.” Feeling the woman’s scorching gaze on his back, Eisuke quickened his pace up the gradual slope.

"That being the case, I don't think Uncle Kōtarō has any dealings with you." "How did you know he apparently had money when he first came to Tokyo?" "He didn’t come straight to Tokyo but stayed over in places like Kyoto, Nara, and Nagoya on his way. Well, whether he visited old friends or got off with the intention of sightseeing—I don’t know that part, though. In any case, financially he must have had some leeway." "The fact that he demands money beyond the fixed amount—that money was about to run out—"

“That’s unclear.”

It was about half a year ago that Kōtarō started coming to pester for money. Even if you call it pestering, Kōtarō doesn’t come groveling. He borrows it openly. “Lend me the money” He doesn’t put it that way. “Lend me such-and-such amount.” When it was convenient for Eisuke, he would provide the requested amount; when inconvenient, he would refuse. Even if refused, Kōtarō didn’t complain or ask why it couldn’t be lent. He would leave without a word. In another week or so, he would come to borrow the same amount again. In the end, he would inevitably borrow it.

"I guess I'm just weak-willed."

Eisuke gave a wry smile. "I’m finally going to hand it over." "In Tokyo, you’re Uncle’s only relative, aren’t you?"

“My brother and sister are also in Tokyo. But as the representative, I suppose it’s just me.”

“Is your sister married?” “Yeah. “Her husband works at a tax office.”

The taxi was now driving along Keiyo National Highway. To the right, the sea appeared to glisten in the sunlight. “So Uncle is alone now, I suppose. “So that’s why he wants to establish connections with you, isn’t it?”

“Why?” “By not letting you send money—making you come collect it yourself—and then also coming to beg for it.”

I said. “By causing trouble and harassment—trying to establish some kind of connection through that—” “Connections?”

Eisuke laughed. “That’s some sophisticated tactics there.”

Yet deep in Eisuke’s chest, a shadow of gloomy melancholy faintly quivered. When Jōki had said at that Shimonoseki bar that he couldn’t definitively claim to be the old man’s child—whether he had been making a joke using his own child as pretext or speaking in earnest—with Jōki never returning, there remained no way to know. Now it had been left solely to the surviving Eisuke and Kōtarō. A silence fell. Along the seaside road here and there stood shops selling seashells.

(Perhaps that woman might have been it.)

Gazing at the scenery outside the window, Eisuke found himself thinking such things again. But that was impossible. (I'm just making things up) When Jōki had said he had a child of his own, it hadn't been a joke. There'd been a heartbreaking sincerity in how he'd revealed the secret. Who had that married woman been? Eisuke would sometimes remember the woman from that dugout shelter after the war ended. When he'd gone there that time, it hadn't been to investigate that. But if he met the funeral director, he'd planned to ask about it casually. Yet since such affairs were conducted in secret, even if the director had still been alive, he probably couldn't have discovered anything.

(If she had been that woman, people wouldn't have referred to her as someone who worked at the funeral home—she would have come up to me using her real name from the start.)

Every time he thought about Jōki's child, Eisuke would recall that woman. Of course, this was nothing more than a delusion. The woman from that lone dugout shelter in the burnt field must have left a strong impression indeed. After that, Eisuke never turned his steps in that direction again. He had no particular business there, nor did he feel any interest strong enough to go see how the burnt field was being reconstructed.

“Ah… At the base of that bridge—”

I pointed ahead.

“Please stop on the other side after crossing the bridge.” The taxi stopped. I got out first, and Eisuke followed. To the left of the road was a steep slope, and at the bottom of it stood a boat inn. When I asked for directions, Kano came out. “You took your sweet time.”

Kano said. "I was just thinking maybe you weren’t coming after all, you know."

“We’re not exactly early risers, you see.”

And then I introduced Eisuke. Kano stared at Eisuke’s face for a time.

“Ah.” “You really do look like him.”

Kano groaned. “I see. If Sergeant Yagi were alive, he’d have a face like yours now. The eyes and nose are identical.”

“It’s not that they’re indistinguishable, but—” I explained. “When you were young, you two looked so much alike.” “I was young once too, y’know.” Kano blurted out something meaningless. From Eisuke’s face, he must have recalled Jōki’s younger days and then remembered his own youth. Seeming to realize this at once, Kano hastily tacked on.

“No, everyone was young once, y’know.”

The boat had already been prepared, and the fishing gear and bait had been loaded aboard. We took off our shoes and changed into straw sandals. We descended the stone steps and boarded the fishing boat. Though it was a small fishing boat, with only three of us, it was spacious.

“There’s no wind—a perfect day for fishing.” As Kano adjusted the engine’s condition, I spoke to him. “Though of course today’s purpose isn’t fishing.”

“Well, let’s head out to sea and talk things over properly.” The engine roared, and the boat began to move. Eisuke looked up at the sky with apparent fascination and gazed at the spray of the waves. The boat passed under two bridges and emerged into a wide bay.

VIII “Huh? Pabiatto?”

Eisuke retorted.

“Yes. “That’s what we used to call it.”

Stopping the engine and moving the bait box from the stern to amidships, Kano said. Inside the bait box, ragworms covered in mud were twitching nervously. “We abbreviated Pabinal Atropine and called it that.” “When you say ‘Pabinal’—” Eisuke gazed out at the sea for a time before speaking.

“It was a narcotic, wasn’t it?”

Since it was a weekday, there were few fishing boats. When we reached the open sea, there was indeed a faint breeze, and small waves lapped rhythmically against the hull. “Opium derived from poppies—” “All narcotics belong to that category. Pabinal and morphine too.” Kano attached a ragworm to the hook. Eisuke also deliberately followed suit. The ragworm wriggled its body as it sank into the sea. “Why did Jōki become addicted to Pabinal?”

“I don’t really know either, but he did have a tendency toward asthma. I think he started injecting it to suppress those attacks. After all, over there the temperature swings were extreme, and the air was so dry—”

Eisuke did not know about the illness called asthma. He knew of it but had never suffered from it himself. He seemed to recall being told that it was indeed a hereditary condition. However, neither his father nor mother had shown such tendencies, and while he couldn't speak for his older brother Ryūsuke, those currently alive—he himself, his younger brothers, and sisters—showed no signs of it either. Could such an illness really manifest due to temperature and dryness? "Was it really such a cold place?" Eisuke said.

“The day I went to see him off in Shimonoseki was cold too.” “Jōki stayed on the second floor of a sake brewery.” “Were you staying there too?”

“No. “I was elsewhere.” “I stayed at a temple.” Kano flipped up a fluttering flounder and deftly slipped it off the hook with practiced motions. “That was cold too, but the cold was of a different order. "I never imagined I’d get hauled off to such a place out of nowhere. “Anyway, the next day they issued us winter gear and herded us onto a ship without telling us where we were headed. “Now that I think back—how many tons do you reckon that ship was? “Can’t rightly remember. “But I know for certain we made it out to Genkai-nada.”

“Why?”

“Because someone said that—their voice still clings to my ears.” “It didn’t rock much, you know.” “We were packed tight in the ship’s hold and forbidden from going up to the upper deck, but when I peeked out from the entrance and looked up, it was a moonlit night.” “I could faintly make out the smokestack and mast swaying by the moon’s position.” “That smokestack was spewing thick black smoke.” “I thought we were heading to Korea, you know.” “No.” “Not just me—everyone who got conscripted—”

“You must have been disappointed. Not Taiwan after all.” “Disappointed doesn’t even begin to cover it. We’d been issued cold-weather gear, so we knew it wasn’t Taiwan. It was a mix of anxiety and grim resolve. Heading north—I felt like none of us would cross this sea alive again.”

The ship had not been heading to Korea. If it had been Korea, they should have arrived by now; yet the ship kept steaming ahead, still belching smoke. Where were they being taken? Since they were confined in the ship’s hold, visually, they couldn’t tell night from day. They would look at their watches and could only wonder what time it was now. At the daybreak indicated by their watches, a strange sound began echoing through the ship’s hold. At first faint, it gradually grew louder, clanging and causing the air in the hold to tremble.

“What is that?”

“What kind of sound is that?”

Kano and the others whispered to each other. They knew it wasn’t the sound of war, but not knowing what it actually was filled them with unease.

Eventually, the ship came to a stop. They crawled out onto the upper deck like heavily bundled-up cockroaches trailing in a line. And they all gasped. The sea had frozen over completely. “So that’s what it was.” Kano spoke to the man next to him.

“That was the sound of ice breaking. Where on earth are we?”

“Who knows?”

The man tilted his head.

“It’s a damn cold place.” Since even a requisitioned passenger ship could break through it, the ice wasn’t that thick. However, for Kano—seeing the frozen sea for the first time—the impact felt immense. On the distant shore lay a foreign-looking town. He felt a cold unlike any he had known in mainland Japan—a sharp, needle-pricking chill.

Waiting their turn, they disembarked one after another via barges. It was a flat area with military buildings standing. They were not barracks. Long, narrow makeshift structures resembling temporary rest areas stood lined up by the dozens. They were put into them, underwent a military uniform inspection, and once that was completed, pork soup and rice were distributed. “That pork soup was delicious, you know.”

Kano said while adjusting the boat’s movement with a scull.

“It was brutally cold, but that pork soup was scalding hot. Stuffed full of meat too. Everyone kept going back for more.” “Where was that port?” “They wouldn’t tell us squat. Not out of spite—they just refused to treat us as proper soldiers. Like we were livestock.” “But someone finally wheedled it out of them—Dagu.”

“So the ship crossed the Yellow Sea, then?” “Well, you could say that. But even when they said it was Dagu, it didn’t mean anything to us. Just when we thought we’d be enlisting here, they put us on a train again. Now that I think about it, that place called Dagu must have been a gathering and dispersal point for soldiers. Those makeshift buildings must have been functioning as a relay station.”

They were put on a train. Though it was a passenger car rather than a freight car, they were packed even more tightly than in the ship’s hold. They weren’t part of homeland military units but wore cold-weather gear that sat awkwardly on their bodies—stiff and puffed out from being brand new. They hadn’t yet been issued weapons but carried government-issued packs and canteens. Even when keeping within the passenger car’s official capacity limit, their bulky equipment alone made them spill over.

The train rumbled on for two days and two nights. Their destination was Datong. The train had steam heating. The non-commissioned officers and seasoned soldiers who had come from Datong to meet them, half in mischief, “We’ve got intel about Eighth Route Army forces up ahead,” or, “There’s a plan to derail this train,” taunted them with such remarks. The window shades were pulled down, blocking any view outside. The dim carriage lights cast gloomy shadows, and the air hung stiflingly thick. By chance, Yagi Jōki found himself seated next to Kano. They introduced themselves to each other. Jōki said, “This is brutal. Feels like we’re cattle headed for slaughter.” “Yeah. I wonder when we’ll actually reach Datong.”

“This is brutal,” Kano said. “Like being herded to slaughter.” “True enough,” Jōki replied. “When do you suppose we’ll reach Datong?”

Sleeping proved arduous. The veteran soldiers sent to meet them—likely acclimated to the cold—wore standard uniforms with only winter caps, while the conscripts remained immobilized in their seats under heavy gear. They ultimately slept sprawled across the floor, contorting themselves into makeshift arrangements. On the third morning, they reached Datong through Zhangjiakou.

They disembarked at the station and lined up on the platform. Brick station buildings and warehouses stood around them, with utility poles dotting the landscape. There, the unit commander conducted his inspection. "The cold here operates on a completely different order of magnitude, like I told you earlier," Kano said. "This was where I first truly felt it."

Kano said while lighting a cigarette. “When I got off that steam-heated train，my face went stiff like frozen leather. Northern China—the very northern edge，and January at that. We had winter gear on，gloves too，but standing there lined up，our hands and feet went beyond numb—felt like they were being ripped right off. Could barely keep upright. Shimonoseki’s chill? Wouldn’t even register here. That cold—that’s what sticks when I remember joining up.”

“That must have been freezing cold, ah.”

Eisuke recalled that Jōki had been sensitive to the cold.

“So Datong was a big town, huh?” “No. “It’s nothing much. “But there, you see, there’s an open-pit mine called the Datong Coal Mine. “Because it produced high-quality coal, there were quite a few laborers there, you see. “The laborers were coolies, and as for Japanese civilians, you could say they were pretty much just those connected to that work and Mantetsu-related personnel. “Anyway, once the inspection was over—thank goodness—we thought we’d finally get into warm barracks, but that turned out to be a huge mistake.” You’ve come a long way. After being bestowed with a characteristically military greeting—something along the lines of “We are truly delighted to welcome you who have come all this way, embracing you like benevolent fathers”—the solemn march began.

“Then, in the far distance, a city wall came into view.” “That’s the Datong city wall.” “As we walked along thinking, ‘So the regiment’s inside that city wall,’ we came upon a square just before it where a crowd of men dressed like us were waiting.” “The ones who’d arrived on the earlier train were there taking a breather.” “Ah, since you all made it, they’d brought pork soup in buckets—” “They served pork soup often, didn’t they?” “Yes. That was breakfast when they formed the 12th Independent Infantry Regiment here—they assigned me to the Second Battalion with Yagi.” “The First Battalion stayed in Datong, but we got orders to Zuoyun County. They packed us boxed lunches and loaded us onto trucks.” “When we left Datong, nothing but desert stretched out—dunes after dunes.” “And then this Mongolian storm started raging—howling like mad.” “Whenever we passed mountain-like areas, there’d be detachment units.” “About twenty or thirty men stationed at each.” “They’d greet us with ‘You made it! Good work!’ and serve hot tea.” “Took seven or eight hours from Datong to Zuoyun.” “By distance, we’d plunged deep into massive mountains.”

“It must have been lonely.” “Of course it was. Yagi said that too—‘If we got surrounded and attacked here, we wouldn’t make it back alive.’ Since it was an eight-hour drive by truck, we couldn’t exactly run away.” “So there was a unit stationed in that Zuoyun?” “That’s right. That whole area had become the Second Battalion’s security zone with the battalion headquarters located in Zuoyun.” Eisuke gazed at the sea’s surface while imagining truck convoys advancing through vast deserts in formation, raging storms whipping through them，and Zuoyun City’s conditions．However，he couldn’t visualize them clearly．Considering the timeline，he had still been at home then，undoubtedly fishing every day—catching crucian carp in a nearby marsh．The school’s winter break hadn’t ended yet．

“Did he receive his first-year soldier training in that unit’s barracks?”

Eisuke said.

“He must’ve wanted to come back, ah.”

When he went to the funeral home, it was the same. Jōki sent Eisuke frequent letters pleading, "Just one week is enough—please get me leave to return home. Try asking Father for me." He also wrote about wanting to swim in the sea back home and go fishing. I once relayed that to Fukujirō, but of course, it was no good.

“Once we’ve sent him into service, his person is entrusted to them.”

Fukujirō said, his temples twitching. “Tell him to discard his selfish wishes and put his all into his work.”

Eisuke wrote back accordingly and decided to suppress any subsequent letters. He thought that writing a reply would only make Jōki’s homesickness intensify. However, Jōki’s homesickness was not simply a desire to experience his hometown’s familiar sights. It was a matter of language. When Eisuke entered high school, a congratulatory letter arrived from Jōki—he wrote that he had finally settled into his life and grown accustomed to it, adding that his earlier longing to return home stemmed from people mocking his country dialect, which had pained him deeply.

“The mistress here is especially terrible—whenever the master’s away and a call comes from outside, she always makes me answer it.” “And whenever I give some awkward reply, she claps her hands and bursts into laughter.” “Tokyo people are full of heartless folks.” “But I’ve gotten used to it now.”

When the environment changes, adapting quickly isn't possible. One flounders. That such a trait existed in me—and surely in Jōki as well—was what Eisuke realized when he read that passage. (In other words, we shared this clumsy nature.)

“Mr. Yagi. You’ve got a bite!” Kano alerted Eisuke. Eisuke hurriedly reeled in the line. The goby came up with it but had already swallowed the hook deep into its belly.

“The unit doesn’t have barracks.” Kano took Eisuke’s goby and, skillfully using a spatula to make it spit out the hook, replied.

“They’d commandeer private homes and live there. In TV shows about the military, you often see scenes of barracks life. Our barracks life wasn’t anything like that. So even when you watch those shows, it just doesn’t click.” “When you say ‘private homes,’ are you talking about detached houses—” “Detached? No, not detached either. More like a large-family system, clan-based system—I guess you could call it that. Anyway, each compound spanned about three thousand tsubo.”

The compound was encircled by an earthen wall. Dozens of houses stood within it, clustered together in irregular disorder. A single large building rose among them where the main family of this enclave had apparently resided. The Japanese military converted this structure into a combined assembly hall and mess facility. Kano and the new recruits were distributed among smaller buildings—"you three here," "you five there"—like wartime ration parcels being doled out across the grounds. Each dwelling came equipped with ondol heating that kept the interiors comfortably warm. Some color finally returned to the first-year soldiers' pallid faces.

“After all, they’d been driven over that long stretch in uncovered trucks,” “completely worn out and chilled to the bone—then that evening’s dinner came with red rice and a whole sea bream with head and tail still on.” “Other sweets too—what they called kasumaki, these castella rolls stuffed with bean paste, plus rock sugar and such.” “So they were stunned—even deep in the mountains, would the army really serve us such a feast?—and wolfed it all down.” “Yagi—no, Jōki too—”

“So the provisions were plentiful?” “Yes. They were plentiful.” “There were times when heaps of prawns would be transported in, and even the new recruits got to fry and eat three each.” “Nowadays prawns are absurdly expensive—completely beyond our means, you know.”

"Exhausted, I suppose. Let them sleep tonight," the captain said, and with those words, the first-year soldiers returned to their respective buildings and went to bed. They spread straw mats over the ondol heating and slept wrapped in blankets on top. It was pleasantly warm. Such favorable treatment continued for two days. The veteran soldiers brought their meals and even cleaned up afterward. On the third day, when they expected more of the same—they were abruptly ordered to line up in the courtyard at dawn. “How long you bastards gonna keep playing guests?” “Insolent shits!”

And with that, the slapping of every last one of them began. Letting them feel a brief sense of security before tightening the screws—it was a tactic characteristic of the military. No one knew who had invented it, but it had a considerable psychological effect. Thus began the first-year soldiers’ training. Unlike the training back home, that in Zuoyun was a battle against cold and sand.

“Was Jōki fairly well-built?”

“Yeah.” “He was weak.”

Kano grinned and answered clearly. “Both Jōki and I were town-bred, you see. Compared to farm boys who could effortlessly shoulder rice bales while running or miners who’d worked the pits, our bones and muscles were simply too frail. We had a hard time.” “Was it the cold?” “No. The cold? Everyone was cold. Even coal miners were cold. In my opinion, they held winter conscription to make us taste the very limits of cold—well, as cold resistance training of sorts, I suppose. After a year passed and winter came again, we’d grown accustomed to the cold and didn’t find it so harsh anymore. Strange thing, isn’t it?”

The training was conducted outside Zuoyun’s city walls. Outside the city walls lay a desert, its sand grains as fine as soybean flour. Military boots sank into it. Unlike hard soil, it provided no traction for kicking, so even when attempting to run at a stride of one meter, they could only manage about fifty centimeters. Jōki was poor at double-time marching. Another round of crawling advances while holding their rifles. This was because their elbows sank into the sand, making progress difficult. Kano was poor at it, but Jōki was even worse. After performing crawling advances, the yellow sand would seep in from nowhere, turning the skin on their chests and stomachs yellow.

When the drills ended, they would form lines again and return within the city walls. Inside the walls, dusk was falling as vendors and customers crowded the streets. They laid planks along the main thoroughfare to sell vegetables, meat, and daily goods. Though Kano and the others couldn’t understand the clamor’s meaning, its resonance with life’s rhythms stirred profound nostalgia in them. “During that training period, I was beaten quite a lot myself—but Jōki was beaten terribly.” “A superior soldier named Niki especially targeted him, bullying him at every turn.” “He was slow on his feet and not particularly dexterous to begin with.”

“It must have been so depressing for him, I imagine.”

“No. Jōki himself didn’t seem all that depressed,” Kano answered clearly. “He’d laugh and say, ‘Being slow’s just how I was born—can’t be helped.’ I don’t know what was going on inside him, but outwardly he was a cheerful man—well-liked by his fellow soldiers. Whenever something happened, they’d come calling ‘Yagi! Yagi!’ That’s true virtue.” “Was he gentle by nature?” “You could say that, but when he acted, he went all out—did such fearless things nobody else could imitate. Like climbing over earthen walls to buy baijiu—what we called smuggling—or getting civilians to mail uncensored letters for us. If we’d been caught, it would’ve meant serious trouble.”

“Ah. Come to think of it, I’d sometimes get ones without the censor’s mark too. I have three or four stored at home, but—”

Eisuke let his gaze float in midair. "There was also that bizarre story about corpses' nails growing an inch and a half."

“Ah.” “I remember that too.”

Kano slapped his knee lightly. “That was during the final exercise of basic training. “It wasn’t a corpse—it was an arm. “And a woman’s—”

Jōki and the others walked along the moonlit riverbed path as scouts. Since traversing the desert proved arduous, they used the riverbed path whenever possible during marches or scouting missions. Though called a path, it held no special distinction. The water had long since dried up, exposing the riverbed—unlike the surrounding quicksand-like sands, its compact surface allowed easier footing. There on the riverbed lay something resembling a white stick.

“What could it be?”

Kano approached it suspiciously. Jōki shouted. "Ah! It's a human arm." An arm from the elbow down lay sprawled out. The cut end was irregular; it didn't look sliced by a blade but rather torn off by brute force. Jōki shuddered and whispered to Kano. "It's a woman's." "What could've happened?"

The nails had grown long and ragged. Each fingernail had reached an unnervingly uniform length. "It might sound crude to phrase it this way, but that sight left such an indelible mark that we kept recalling it for years afterward—it became something we'd discuss repeatedly." "Especially Jōki—"

“Why was a woman’s arm lying there?” “At the time we didn’t understand—just felt horror—but later we figured it out.” “They don’t cremate bodies over there; they bury them.” “What they called wolves there were really just wild dogs.” “They dug it up, clamped it in their jaws, and carried it to the riverbed.” “Some circumstance made those dogs abandon that arm there.” “But with the cold and dry air, even dead, the arm didn’t rot—kept its original shape.” “Only the nails stayed alive—that’s why they kept growing.”

“So the nails were alive?”

“When we became medics ourselves, we asked the military doctors and such, but they said there’s no way that could happen.” “But we saw it with our own eyes.” “The nails had definitely grown.” “I’ve heard that upper-class women there intentionally grow their nails long, but—”

“If it’s an upper-class woman, they’d properly bury her in a coffin. Wild dogs wouldn’t dig it up.” Kano said emphatically.

“Every time I recall that, I feel my body sinking deeper and deeper into some unknown abyss. “Humans are, ultimately, something utterly alone—”

9

Around that time, Eisuke’s father, Fukujirō, collapsed at home from a cerebral hemorrhage. After emerging from his evening bath and while reading the evening paper, “I’m feeling dizzy—lay out my futon.”

The moment he stood up, he staggered and collapsed onto the tatami. They immediately called a doctor, but half of his body had already gone numb. Eisuke was summoned back from Tokyo by telegram. Fukujirō remained in a comatose state.

According to the doctor, it was not an illness that would suddenly improve, nor were there any signs of worsening. It was simply a matter of maintaining patience and rest, so after staying only four or five days, he returned to Tokyo. During that time, Eisuke and Kōtarō clashed over whether to inform Jōki. To Eisuke, who argued they should tell him the truth, Kōtarō retorted: “If we tell him, it will weaken Jōki’s morale. Since it’s not an incurable illness, there’s no need to inform him.” Kōtarō insisted. Eisuke seethed inwardly. He believed Kōtarō was opposing him merely for opposition’s sake. Moreover, while Kōtarō was indeed Fukujirō’s elder brother, that alone shouldn’t have granted him authority to interfere like this. The young Eisuke thought this but yielded on the spot due to his financial dependence on them for school expenses. His mother’s plea—that provoking the main family’s displeasure would cause problems—further eroded Eisuke’s resolve.

The argument took place beside the sickbed. Fukujirō lay there snoring, unrelated to the debate. Finally, Eisuke said. “Then we’ll stop informing him immediately.”

“Yeah. That’s for the best.” Kōtarō nodded arrogantly.

“You’re still young, so you ought to follow the opinions of your elders.”

Eisuke became aware that the fear he had felt toward Kōtarō since childhood was now transforming into rebellion. He returned to Tokyo and, after about a month had passed, wrote to Jōki about Fukujirō’s condition.

Fukujirō remained bedridden, unable to move his body. Even when Eisuke returned home during summer vacation, his brain function had not recovered. Lying on his back, sporting a scruffy beard, having grown somewhat thinner, his eyes alone glared intensely. Mistaking Eisuke for his brother,

“Oh, Jōki.” “Have you been discharged from the military?” His pronunciation was unclear, so he had to ask him to repeat it three or four times before finally understanding. He felt sorry for his father. The very fact that he felt pity was painful for him. “That’s right.” “That’s right.” “Father.” Eisuke nodded in response.

“I came back in good health.”

The hospital room overlooked the front garden. That spot had been the most well-ventilated. Yet when evening calm descended, the wind ceased abruptly. As Fukujirō remained bedridden, his back had developed bedsores. The hot season made sweat form readily, worsening their condition. Eisuke resolved to handle the treatment himself. Fukujirō’s back curved sharply, each vertebra protruding distinctly. Not wanting unexpected visitors to witness this, Eisuke shut all the shoji screens before wiping away pus and replacing gauze. Humid warmth mingled with the stench of suppuration until it saturated the room.

“This is the old man’s smell.”

He moved his hands carefully as he thought. When Eisuke and the others were young, they would press their faces against Fukujirō’s kimono and overcoat hanging on the wall,

“Oh! I can smell Dad!” At that time, the father’s body odor was the smell of tobacco ingrained in clothes. That smell had now changed to one of pus and sweat.

It happened one evening during the lull. Eisuke was sitting in the hospital room. Then Fukujirō began muttering something. He couldn't quite make out what it meant. After having him repeat it several times, he finally understood. "Where's the woman? Bring her up from downstairs right now!" "Where do you think this is?" Eisuke retorted. Then Fukujirō uttered the name of a brothel district in a neighboring prefecture's city. He seemed convinced he was on the second floor of one of those houses. He must have been reliving experiences from business trips during his prefectural office days or corporate employment. Eisuke responded.

“This isn’t that kind of place. It’s home.” However, Fukujirō remained unconvinced. Growing impatient at being told to hurry up and bring the woman, he suddenly extended his functional leg when he saw Eisuke wasn’t moving, clamping Eisuke’s calf with crab-like force using his toes. The terrifying strength made Eisuke let out an involuntary scream. How could a patient possess such power? “I give up! I give up! Father.”

Struggling to free his father’s clamped toes that refused to release, Eisuke apologized. When he rushed out of the room and returned thirty minutes later, Fukujirō had already forgotten about the incident. Naturally, he told neither his mother nor Kōtarō about this. Only a purple bruise remained on Eisuke’s shin for some time afterward——

“That first-year soldier training was the toughest part, huh?”

Kano said. “When three months ended, we were transferred to Datong. Even if you call it Northern China Mongolia, it’s not constantly cold there. From late April to May, spring arrives all at once.”

Spring arrived as if surging forth all at once. The trees budded, flowers bloomed, and it became a time when the world was filled with color and vitality. Eisuke had some difficulty picturing it.

“Do flowers bloom even in the desert?”

He had been imagining nothing but a barren, desolate region, but when the image of blooming flowers suddenly superimposed itself, he felt bewildered. “It’s not just desert, you know.”

Kano gave a wry smile.

“There are mountains and rivers. Around towns and villages, trees grow and fields spread out too. On windless days, the sky turns this piercing blue—if not for the war, you could call it paradise. Apricots, apples, jujubes—all sorts of fruits grow there.”

“What about summer?” “Summer is brutally hot—the bone-dry air lets that sun scorch right through you. Marching under its direct blaze feels like being fried alive on some cosmic skillet. Your sweat pours out soaking your uniform through... then you duck under shade for ten minutes? Poof! Evaporates clean away leaving nothing but salt crusted white across your backside.” Kano rubbed his neck remembering. “That continental climate they talk about—you don’t get it till you’ve lived through those extremes. Nothing gentle like Japan’s seasons there—summer and winter both come at you full force.”

In Datong, there was a recruitment drive for various army corps. Jōki consulted Kano. After all, both of them were so-called town-bred, so they weren't suited for physical labor. Those that didn't require much physical strength were medical soldiers or seamster soldiers. Seamster soldiers were those whose job involved mending torn military uniforms and repairing shoes. No particular experience was required. They would provide proper training on-site.

“I was born clumsy, you see. I’m not suited for seamster soldiers.”

Jōki said.

“Being a medical soldier would be better.” “Kano.” “You should volunteer for that too.”

And Jōki and Kano volunteered, took the exam, and passed. Because others came from different regiments as well, around two hundred men had gathered. They were all soldiers of the same enlistment year. They were to undergo six months of training at the Datong hospital. The training curriculum consisted mostly of classroom studies, with physical exercise for calisthenics being virtually the only movement required. “Perhaps the one who was most relieved was Jōki.” “For him, that first-year soldier training had been unbearably harsh.”

Kano laughed. But he immediately stopped laughing.

“But in the end, that decided Jōki’s fate. If he’d become a seamster soldier instead, he could’ve come back alive.”

Life became significantly easier. Every day, they went to the hospital and attended lectures. In the evening, they returned to their lodgings. The fifteen men from the 12th Regiment borrowed two buildings from other companies’ lodgings and lived there. The lodgings were private houses, just as in Zuoyun. Therefore, there was no direct supervisor. Within the same earthen walls, there were those of higher rank, but they were fully occupied with their own companies and had no time to concern themselves with outsider medical trainees.

“The majority of a first-year soldier’s hardships involved doing laundry for NCOs and veterans, bowing subserviently to them, or getting beaten.” “All of that vanished at once.” “Even when going to the hospital, we’d take turns acting as the leader, call out commands, and march out through the gate.”

“What was the coursework like?” Eisuke asked.

“For example, how to wrap bandages—”

“No. From human morphology to anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology—all the basics were crammed into six months. Jōki was quick to grasp things. He was sharp-minded—or rather, he had that quality about him. But if you called him a slacker, he was a slacker though. He was a slacker but efficient.”

They received lectures from medical officers of various departments. There were occasional exams. Jōki was skilled at guessing exam questions. Therefore, the soldiers in the same room, having learned exam tips from Jōki, always achieved good scores. “Is that so?” While feeling a pang of heartache, Eisuke answered. “I’d convinced myself that I was inept and always messing things up.”

“That’s not really true. Even though he would climb over the earthen walls at night to smuggle in baijiu, he was never caught once.”

He might handle trivial matters skillfully, but when it comes to crucial moments, he fails—Eisuke started to say but stopped. “There were times when his efficiency backfired.” “Jōki had this special skill of dozing off with his eyes wide open.” “During a lecture, he was found out—even when called on, he’d stay silent like a mummy with his eyes open, so they realized he’d been dozing off.” “It happened during a urology lecture.” “He was immediately made into an experimental subject for urethral irrigation as punishment and spent the whole day grumbling about how much it hurt.”

October, the training ended. Upon becoming independent medical soldiers, they were simultaneously promoted to Superior Privates. They were promoted earlier than regular soldiers. The reason medical soldiers alone received special treatment was to grant them authority over tasks like administering medication. Jōki was to remain in Datong as a Superior Private in medical service. Every day he worked in the medical office. From morning onward, those who appeared to be patients from each company would come for diagnosis, escorted by training Superior Privates. Diagnoses were made by military doctors; the medical soldiers wrote patient charts, prepared medications, changed bandages, and handled paperwork for reports to the division headquarters’ medical department. They did not perform internal duties.

“It was around November, I think. It was when we’d just become independent medics. When that letter came about your father passing away.”

“That’s right—that’s when it was.”

Eisuke answered.

“I was the one who wrote that letter. What was Jōki doing?” “He took time off duty and went home. When we returned, he was wrapped in a blanket and sleeping. Looked like he’d been crying hard—his eyelids were all swollen and puffy.” “Father’s condition critical. Return immediately.” Eisuke received that telegram at his Tokyo boarding house. He had watched a movie, drunk sake on his way back, and returned around 1 a.m. The telegram lay on his desk.

Eisuke still remembers that movie. It was a film called Life Begins at Forty-Two directed by Leo McCarey, starring Charles Laughton. Eisuke was quite drunk that night.

“Return immediately, they say—in the middle of the night like this...” Eisuke thought with his dazed mind. He was terribly sleepy.

“There’s no way there are any trains at this hour. Moreover,‘critical condition’ must mean news that he had already died.”

He thought for about five minutes, then crawled into bed.

The next morning, when he woke up, he read the telegram by his pillow once again. His head throbbed from a hangover. He remembered the movie from last night.

“They say life begins at forty-two, but the old man—”

At that thought, he suddenly felt tears about to gush out and, panicking, rushed to the bathroom where he scrubbed his face vigorously. He had no appetite. He skipped breakfast, rushed out of his boarding house, and headed for Tokyo Station.

As the train approached Shimonoseki, a strange man sat down in the seat next to him. He spoke in an arrogant tone. “Where do you think you’re going at this hour, huh?”

From that tone, he immediately recognized him as a plainclothes Special Higher Police officer. Because he had been questioned multiple times before.

“I’m returning to my hometown.” He carried no luggage, and the timing was unusual for a homecoming. The Special Higher Police seemed suspicious of this. Even when he explained his father’s critical condition, they refused to believe him. “How did you know he was critically ill?” the officer pressed. “I received a telegram.” “Show me that telegram.” “I left it at my boarding house.” “You’re lying.”

According to this plainclothes officer’s theory, when people received news like critical conditions or deaths, they would unconsciously(?) slip those telegrams into their pockets and return home—or so he claimed. “But if I don’t have it, there’s nothing I can do about it, right?”

Eisuke said impatiently. "The fact that my father died is true, so if you think I'm lying, go ahead and contact my home or boarding house."

“Dead?”

The plainclothes officer glared at Eisuke. "You said he was critical earlier!" Eisuke stiffened. Then, for about an hour until they reached Shimonoseki, the plainclothes officer grilled him relentlessly about everything—his friendships, personal history, and more. In Shimonoseki, he was finally released from the unpleasant interrogation.

"He had such a nasty look on his face. That bastard."

From the ferry, while gazing at the receding city of Shimonoseki, Eisuke shifted his gaze restlessly here and there. After parting with Jōki, where was that dark coast he had ended up at after taking a wrong turn? He could hardly get his bearings. Informing Jōki about the old man was going to be tough. He suddenly thought of such things, turned his eyes away from Shimonoseki, and entered the cabin. Fatigue pressed down heavily on his shoulders.

The critical condition telegram was indeed real. At that time, Fukujirō had still been in critical condition. Ten hours before Eisuke arrived home, Fukujirō had drawn his last breath.

“Why are you so late?!”

As he was trying to take off his shoes in the entryway, Kōtarō emerged from the interior and bellowed. “I sent that telegram two days ago!” The moment he arrived home, he was yelled at, and Eisuke felt somewhat irritated. But there was no room for excuses, so he remained silent.

In the room facing the front garden, Fukujirō’s body had been laid on his back, with a white cloth covering his face. From his mother, whose eyes were swollen from crying, he heard all the details.

Under the white cloth lay Fukujirō's deathly visage. His beard had been shaved, his skin tone somewhat adjusted to make him appear as if sleeping. Will I cry? Eisuke had often wondered this during the train ride, but when faced with the actual moment, no tears came. He replaced the white cloth. "Eisuke." "You couldn't even make it for your own father's final moments—"

Kōtarō said. “You’re an ungrateful son!” Kōtarō must have been agitated and grieving as well.

By lashing out, he might have been covering it up—Eisuke later came to think.

There was all sorts of work to do. When one person dies, the people around them suddenly become busy. When one is born, hardly anyone makes a fuss. Was this bustling activity human wisdom to distract themselves? Even after Eisuke returned, Kōtarō remained in complete control of all arrangements. Under Kōtarō’s instructions, Eisuke went to the government office, received the necessary form, and visited the doctor. To have the death certificate prepared.

“It’s sepsis.” “The cause of death—”

The young town doctor explained to him. The pus-forming bacteria had entered through the bedsore. “Due to arteriosclerosis，the heart weakens and nutrients don’t reach the skin. “That’s how bedsores develop.” “It wasn’t due to inadequate nursing care.”

“Was he conscious?” “No. He’d been in a coma the entire time.”

After receiving the death certificate and stepping outside, Eisuke walked hurriedly. He felt more relief than sorrow. That it wasn’t due to negligence in nursing care, and that his father’s death had apparently been painless—these facts relieved Eisuke’s heart. “To miss a parent’s final moments—”

He spitefully kicked the pebbles.

“Since he was in a coma, there was nothing to be done. Even if I had met him, the old man wouldn’t have been able to see me.” To change his mood, Eisuke went out to the coast. On the white sandy beach, fishing boats lined up with nets spread out to dry. At the water’s edge, nameless seaweed lay washed up while children played by throwing stones. It was a calm inland sea. Fukujirō had loved fishing. That both Eisuke and Jōki shared this fondness too stemmed from their father’s influence. Eisuke walked to where waves met sand, collected five or six shells, and slipped them into his pocket.

“Let’s have none of your meddling comments.” Eisuke said with anger. He was drunk. Though exhausted to the bone, his frayed nerves had twisted the intoxication into something jagged. “This is our house. We’ll take care of our own house.” Looking back now, Eisuke thinks he too had gone too far—spoken too harshly, acted too rashly. Yet Kōtarō had been unbearably overbearing. Or rather, meddlesome. For Kōtarō must have found it intolerable watching this bereaved family fumble through funeral formalities—and as head of the main household, he’d likely considered such interference his birthright. Still, airing their incompetence at the wake while invoking Jōki’s name had been ill-advised. Raised as he was, Kōtarō possessed scant regard for others’ sensitivities.

“To begin with, bringing up Jōki’s name like that—isn’t that improper?”

“What’s wrong with mentioning Jōki’s name?”

With a look of surprise, Kōtarō retorted. "I merely said that given his line of work, Jōki would have handled this well." Kōtarō had recently gained weight again, his skin growing greasy. Partly due to the alcohol, not only his forehead and cheeks but even the lump at his neck's base glistened. Fukujirō's deathly visage—with its sunken cheeks—stood in stark contrast. "You all can't do anything anyway." Since returning home and being labeled an unfilial son, Eisuke's sorrow had gradually been transforming into a subtle anger. It swelled suddenly with the alcohol. Swelled and burst.

“Get out!”

Eisuke shouted and stood up. "I don’t want you here, Uncle. Human death is supposed to be something more solemn."

In later years, whenever Eisuke recalled these lines and realized how pretentious he had sounded, he would be overcome with a cringing sense of disgust. "You! How can you say something like that?"

Kōtarō also raised one knee. The room fell into an icy silence. No one stepped forward to mediate. His mother was in the kitchen preparing sake, and his younger brother and sister were huddled in the corner of the room. The people gathered there were Fukujirō’s company colleagues and friends from his days at the prefectural office. They had little acquaintance with Kōtarō, or perhaps they found his grandstanding inwardly disagreeable. Kōtarō surveyed the gathering. He had an expression that was clearly seeking a mediator. However, no one moved.

“Fine.”

“Then I’ll leave.”

Kōtarō left indignantly, went out to the entrance, and called toward the kitchen.

“O-Fude-san. “I’m leaving.”

When his mother hurried over, Kōtarō’s figure had already vanished into the darkness outside. After all the guests had finally left, Eisuke was severely scolded by his mother. His mother raged, her voice trembling with fury, that nearly all the labor and expenses for this funeral had come from Kōtarō, and yet what a terrible way he had treated him. He stubbornly withdrew into himself or maintained a sulky demeanor, letting her words wash over him in silence.

Eventually left alone, he burrowed deep under the futon. Dark spots swirled chaotically behind his eyelids. At that moment, Fukujirō’s death suddenly came rushing into his chest as a visceral reality. He groaned. The old man was already dead. Eisuke curled his body like a shrimp and wept in suppressed sobs.

The next morning, he went to Kōtarō’s shop to apologize. The smell of seafood wafted through the storefront, wooden crates and ropes lay scattered about, and shop workers bustled busily here and there. Due to the war, orders and shipments had increased. Eisuke entered through the side wicket gate of the shop, stood at the main house entrance, and asked to be announced.

Eventually, Kōtarō came out. He appeared to have been drinking in the morning; his complexion shone with a glossy redness. Without saying "Come up," he remained planted on the entrance step, looking down at Eisuke with sharp eyes. "What. What business?" "I think I was in the wrong about last night."

Eisuke took off his hat and bowed his head.

“On top of being exhausted, I was drunk and said rude things. I apologize.” Kōtarō did not respond for a while. Eventually, he opened his mouth. “Did you come to apologize of your own will, or was it O-Fude-san’s order?”

Kōtarō had never before called Eisuke "you"—this was the first time. Eisuke arched his back. “Both.”

The two men stared intently at each other's faces, as if probing. “Understood. If it was because you were drunk, let’s forget it.”

After a short while, Kōtarō said, “The farewell ceremony was at two o’clock.” Past three o’clock, the coffin holding Fukujirō and the shell passed through the front garden and was placed into the hearse.

After resting at home for about a week, Eisuke returned to Tokyo again.

From the following month onward, the remittances from Kōtarō ceased. Eisuke ended up having to obtain his tuition through part-time work.

10

In the earthen-floored kitchen, Kano's homemade tempura began frying. The cork was removed from the whiskey Eisuke had brought and poured into teacups. The tempura was delicious. The taste differed from what you get in restaurants. The smell of oil dispersed in the sea breeze, likely why it didn't linger. "The people over there cook everything with just one pot. No, not this flimsy little thing." Kano tapped the frying pot rhythmically with long chopsticks.

“The large ones were about the size of a tub，with a thickness like this—over an inch.” “In those，they made rice porridge and boiled meat and vegetables.” “Though rather than boiling，they’d stir-fry everything，you see.” “Seasoned with rock salt.” “When it came to kitchenware，there was only this iron pot.” “For them，it was their only valuable item，you know.”

“Did you use it too?”

“Yes.” “We used it sometimes.” “It’s convenient.” Kano sipped from his teacup.

“When we went out on field operations, you know,” Kano said. “Back home during spring and autumn, they’d hold grand maneuvers around Mount Fuji’s foothills under that name. Over there instead, we conducted sweep operations during those seasons.” The sweep operations were large-scale affairs lasting about a month. Since injuries and illnesses inevitably occurred, medical soldiers had to accompany them. There were no vehicles—they marched on foot. Unlike infantrymen who carried rifles, we were issued pistols instead. We had to walk while carrying Red Cross-marked first-aid kits too—no easy march by any means. But this hardship only lasted during our first year as soldiers; once we’d gained some experience, we’d procure a donkey from somewhere, load its back with divided sacks, and make it carry the medical supplies.

“In that regard, Jōki-kun was bold.”

Not only medicine but also his favorite things—sake, yōkan sweet bean jelly, and canned pies—he would pack them inside and transport under the guise of medical supplies. Though spring and autumn brought favorable weather, it remained a struggle for Jōki with his weak legs. His remarkable efficiency in procuring donkeys stemmed from this fervent desire to escape the agony of carrying loads on foot.

During sweep operations, they stayed in villages. Meat and vegetables were mostly requisitioned locally and cooked in that giant iron pot mentioned before. They didn’t have much trouble with food, but water posed problems. The untreated water there wasn’t drinkable. Wells were scarce too. Those wells stretched dozens of meters deep, requiring significant time to draw up a single bucketful. If they fumbled about, securing their own water could take one or two hours, delaying meals by that same margin.

“If it weren’t for these damn sweep ops, army life wouldn’t be half bad...”

Jōki often complained to Kano. “Anyway, I just wanna finish my duty and go home.”

Two years passed like this. During that time, some remained at headquarters, some were dispatched to squadrons, and they became scattered. As junior medical soldiers kept pouring in, the experienced veterans inevitably ended up being transferred to forward bases.

In January 1939, an order came down for all medical soldiers enlisted that year to assemble in Datong.

At that time, Jōki was near Zuoyun, and Kano belonged to a small village detachment unit on the front lines.

“Even though it’s called a detachment, it was small—the commander was a sergeant major, totaling twenty-four or twenty-five men.” “One medical soldier and one communications soldier.”

They would dig a horizontal tunnel into the mid-slope of a hill near the village and create entrances on both sides. In other words, it was a tunnel. They set up machine guns at the entrances and exits. The surrounding mountains had the Eighth Route Army lurking within them. It could be called the front lines, but there were no significant battles. "I was there for about three months, but I hardly ever saw any enemy soldiers."

Kano's cheeks were faintly stained with whiskey. “At dusk, they’d fire about ten rounds from the mountains over there—rat-a-tat-tat.” “A Czech machine gun.” “We’d return ten thunderous bursts in that direction.” “This was our ‘goodnight’ greeting, you might say.” “Quite the stylish routine.” “That was the full measure of a day’s combat.”

“Why don’t the enemies attack?”

Eisuke asked quizzically. “If they’re such a small group, it should be easy enough.”

“But you see, the Eighth Route Army’s real enemy was the Nationalist Army.” “It wasn’t worth their while to engage with Japanese soldiers.” “They wanted to preserve their personnel and weapons, you see.” “So combat only broke out when we went on subjugation operations—they never actively attacked us from their side.”

“So the detachment unit was pretty carefree too.” “Exactly. Other than eating meals, there was no work. They’d play hanafuda cards, move shogi pieces, take naps, or drink sake while lounging about.” “Right.” “The shogi sets were handmade. When I asked the man who carved the pieces, he said their boxwood had growth rings three times denser than Japanese boxwood—three times harder too.” “Harsh nature makes things that way, I suppose.”

“Then the medical soldiers must have been idle too.”

“Yeah. There was one patient. A Sergeant Kawabe, but—”

Being cooped up in that tunnel all day left them increasingly stifled. They began craving female company. Sergeant Kawabe—whether one might call him impulsive or reckless—had a temperament where once an idea struck him, he couldn’t restrain himself. Even in broad daylight, he’d ride bareback across the desert to rear villages seeking prostitutes. The daylight made him ripe for enemy snipers—indeed, he’d been targeted before. The bullets missed their mark, but he contracted a venereal disease from one of those women. They called their prostitutes Shōtorupī.

“Tch! That Shōtorupī bastard!” But no matter how much he fumed, it was already too late. Sergeant Kawabe became the detachment’s sole patient. Kano’s daily work now consisted entirely of treating this Kawabe.

“At first glance he seemed like a gentle, kind man, but his temperament was fierce. The kind you often see among yakuza.”

That disease was slow to heal. It was a time when penicillin and such did not yet exist. Kawabe grew impatient. He had heard from somewhere that drinking powdered human bones was remarkably effective and tried to put it into practice. About half a year earlier, they had captured an enemy spy, shot him dead, and buried him in the ground.

“That’s what Sergeant Kawabe remembered.”

Kano said.

"He dug up that skull and brought it back." "Even if you told him that wouldn't work, he wasn't the type to listen to a mere medical soldier."

Since he had only just dug it up, the skull was still hard. Kawabe put it into the Daruma stove and spent seven days and seven nights roasting it until it glowed red-hot. Bones are sturdy things—even stove-level heat would only reduce them to fragments, not powder.

“Kawabe put those fragments into the mess tin’s lid and kept hitting them with a hammer.” “No matter how much he hit them, they only turned granular.” “They absolutely never turned into powder.” “Maybe because the bones were fresh?”

Kawabe gave up on turning it into powder and ingested the granular human bones. That night he suddenly developed a fever, and the mercury column rose to forty degrees. "What a reckless thing to do."

Eisuke said. Given that it was a story about bones, something within him jolted in response.

“So what happened to that man?” “What happened to him, I wonder?” Kano’s gaze turned distant. “The next morning, relief medical soldiers arrived, and I was ordered to Datong. I still didn’t know why we were being gathered there, but I was glad to see my same-year comrades again after so long. I even thought—maybe our conscription would be lifted and we could return to Japan—” Two hundred same-year medical soldiers assembled in Datong. What they believed to be their discharge notice turned out to be a recommendation urging them to volunteer as non-commissioned officers. The war was expanding—or rather, sinking into a quagmire. This came from the higher-ups’ policy to strengthen the NCO ranks. Everyone leaned toward refusal. Remaining soldiers could hope for repatriation, but becoming an NCO meant becoming career military—no going home for the foreseeable future.

Sensing this atmosphere, the Surgeon General delivered an unusual address. "Gentlemen, your thinking is mistaken. The non-commissioned officer training is for your own benefit—volunteer and complete it, and you will be placed in the reserves and sent home immediately. ...and so on." "The Surgeon General’s lecture reeks of something fishy." It was Jōki who had spoken up. After not seeing him for a year, Jōki had grown slightly plump and looked healthy. That something was off about the story was something Kano had intuitively sensed as well. Not only Kano—most of the same-year soldiers had sensed it.

In the end, rather than a recommendation, they were semi-forced to take the exam. Since none of them had any intention of complying, they wrote nonsense on their answer sheets, jotted down lies, or simply turned them in blank. They thereby expressed their lack of intention to volunteer. It was not collective resistance; rather, their individual acts simply coincided.

However, they all ended up passing.

“As soon as the exams ended, they all had corporal insignia pinned on them.”

Kano said with a laugh.

“And we became reserve corporals and got immediately recalled to active duty right there.” “Going home was completely out of the question.” “They’d played us for fools.”

As a result, Jōki and Kano were reunited and ordered to transfer to the First Field Hospital. The hospital was located in Kouwa. Thus began their military life in Mongolia.

“Was Jōki already suffering from asthma at that time?” Eisuke asked while pouring his second glass of whiskey. “What was the treatment for that?” “Yes. He was having attacks occasionally, you know.” Skillfully deboning the dried goby, Kano answered.

“For treatment, it was subcutaneous adrenaline injections and oral ephedrine—that’s about all we had.”

“What about Pavinal?” “I don’t think he was using it yet. I think it was around the time of the Ordos Campaign. But he didn’t like to talk much about himself, you know.” Kano threw the dried goby into the pot with a sizzle.

“Even though I was so close with Jōki, I hardly heard any personal stories from him.” “He talked about you.” “He had two older brothers.” “He laughed and said, ‘Even though I was born first, ending up as the younger brother—it’s a strange story.’”

“Is that all?”

“Hmm... Well, he did mention another older brother too.” “Joined the Communist Party and killed himself at the hospital—that’s what I heard.”

“Suicide?”

Eisuke involuntarily retorted in a loud voice. “He killed himself?” “You didn’t know?” “I guess I shouldn’t have said that.”

What Jōki had told Kano was the method of that suicide. Around that time, a soldier had hanged himself in the latrine, and the conversation turned to that topic.

“My eldest brother also hanged himself—but not by suspending himself from above.”

He tied a necktie to the iron bed frame, thrust his neck into it, and let his body drop beneath the floor. It was the same method as execution by hanging. That method was less unsightly, offered the possibility of shattering the neck bone, and resulted in less pain—or so Jōki had theorized.

“Is that really true?”

Eisuke tilted his head. He wondered whether Jōki had improvised a fabricated story on the spot. The memories of Ryūsuke’s death were nothing but gloomy recollections of the tuberculosis ward. Jōki’s was probably nothing more than that as well. Both in their hometown and in Tokyo, Eisuke and Jōki had hardly ever spoken about their eldest brother. If there were any— “If Brother Ryūsuke were alive now, how old would he be?” To that extent—in other words, for the two of them, Ryūsuke had already become a figure from an unfamiliar past.

(But at that time—)

Eisuke briefly thought.

(We were not shown Ryūsuke’s death face. They didn’t want to shock us young ones, or perhaps—)

If it had been suicide, who had informed Jōki of that fact? Moreover, down to the detailed circumstances of the hanging. And why hadn’t Jōki told Eisuke about it? Eisuke said while feeling a momentary daze.

“That’s definitely Jōki’s made-up story. He used to enjoy pulling people’s legs now and then.” “Is that so?”

Kano answered nonchalantly. While transferring the fried goby to a plate, he changed the subject.

“But Jōki-kun was angry.” “Even though they promised to send us back once training ended, dragging us all the way out to the backwaters of Mongolia—he said it was a damn scam.” "He was also in the blank exam group, you see." “Passing with a blank exam—I think that’s absurd too.” “Jōki-kun also wanted to return home early because of his asthma, you see.” “Was life in Kouwa difficult?”

“No. “It was easy. “After all, we weren’t first-year soldiers anymore—we were non-commissioned officers. “We boarded a train from Datong and passed beyond the Great Wall. “Just because we passed beyond the Great Wall didn’t mean the scenery transformed all at once. “There were yurts of nomadic people and such—that was about the only novelty.”

Their duties were light. Rather than being idle, they pushed most of their work onto junior medical soldiers and focused mainly on resting. Sometimes they would visit the yurts of nomadic people. The nomads would settle in earthen-reinforced yurts during winter, but when the weather improved, they traveled light through marshlands and grasslands with their sheep flocks. They neither cultivated vegetables nor ate them. “How did they get their vitamin C?”

Both Kano and Jōki, being medical non-commissioned officers, had once raised such a question. In the end, they concluded that it must come from sheep’s milk (since milk is a complete food). They also carried compressed Chinese tea shaped into discs, and when they brought Japanese tea as gifts, they were delighted and would give them dried meat in return. They were, by and large, a simple and pure-hearted people. “That kind of life isn’t so bad.” Jōki occasionally voiced his thoughts to Kano.

“A man as clumsy as me is suited to that kind of idle life. I hate survival competition.”

Eleven

“I see. Did Jōki not talk much about himself?”

Eisuke muttered as if to himself while gazing at the waves. In the afternoon, a slight wind began to rise.

“Didn’t he talk about the child?”

“Child?” “Yeah. The child Jōki had with a married woman.”

Kano remained silent for a while. He moved the oar and set the bow to windward.

“He did. That was when we departed for the Ordos Campaign. Jōki-kun told me, ‘If anything happens to me, go to such-and-such house and pass on my final words.’ Then he wrote down a map and name and handed it to me, saying, ‘See if the child’s face resembles mine.’”

Kano lowered his gaze but immediately turned his head away.

“But I burned it.”

“When?”

“When Jōki-kun committed suicide.” “I burned them together with him.” “Even though he’d taken his own life, I saw no reason for an outsider like me to verify anything.” “What was that married woman’s name?” “I’ve forgotten.” “I can’t remember.” “Though I do recall she was called the mistress of the house where he worked...” “Where he worked?”

“Yes. Apparently she came onto him. That’s what he said.”

Eisuke remained motionless and silent. When Kano mentioned "where he worked," it could only mean that funeral director's wife. When Eisuke went to borrow money during his university days, the funeral director had expressionlessly summoned his wife and made her bring the money. Young—though she must have been around thirty at the time—she was a beautiful woman with clear skin and dimples that appeared when she smiled, too lovely for a funeral director's spouse. He remembered feeling surprised when he first saw her face. Based on Jōki's early letters, he had imagined her as a mean-spirited woman who mocked his country accent, yet she turned out to be unexpectedly kind.

“I see...” “So that’s how it was.”

Eisuke said to no one in particular.

“I had always thought Jōki disliked that woman. “Mr. Kano. “Did he mention what kind of business it was?”

Kano shook his head.

After bringing Jōki’s remains back from Nagoya and completing the interment, about ten days later, the funeral home owner’s wife came to visit the grave, bringing the child with her. It was less a grave visit than a delivery of condolence money that included a retirement allowance. That money was apparently a much larger amount than expected. The mother said: “As you said, brother-in-law, funeral homes really are profitable, aren’t they?” “I brought a lot.” “Is that right?”

Eisuke did not ask about the amount.

He took the funeral home owner's wife to the Yagi family grave. The temple was located in the countryside four stations away by train. The head priest had been Fukujirō’s middle school classmate, and because of that connection, he had designated it as the family temple. Inside the grave already rested the bones of Fukujirō, Ryūsuke, and Jōki. The funeral home owner's wife prayed with her hands together in front of it for about ten minutes. The graveyard was halfway up the hill. Sitting on the withered grass in a sunlit spot, Eisuke said to the girl: “What do you think? It’s a beautiful sea, isn’t it? You can’t see this in Tokyo.”

Beyond the pine grove, the winter sea came into view. The sea reflected the sunlight, sparkling brilliantly. The girl did not respond. Seeming bored, she was climbing up and running back down the path. (So that was Jōki’s daughter.)

Eisuke wasn't very fond of children. So he didn't remember the child's face well. He hadn't even checked whether she resembled Jōki. That was the last time Eisuke met the funeral home owner's wife. The funeral home owner's wife and her daughter were going to visit relatives in Beppu, so they parted at the station.

“I’ve been having neuralgia lately.” The funeral home owner’s wife said. “I’m planning to recuperate in Beppu for about two weeks.” “A daughter? Was it a girl, huh?”

Kano said in surprise. He counted on his fingers.

“If that’s the case—if she were alive now—she’d be about twenty-five or twenty-six.” “Same age we were back then, huh?” “That’s how it works out.” “Might already be married with kids by now. Then Jōki’d be a grandfather?”

With that, Kano turned his vacant gaze toward the sun beyond the smog. Eisuke also remained silent for a while. The emptiness of time’s passage welled up deeply within his chest. “Did that girl resemble Jōki?”

“No. I remember she was wearing a red sweater, but I’d forgotten her face.” Eisuke answered. “He’d said she was a married woman, but I hadn’t known she was the funeral home owner’s wife. I only realized it through your explanation. He said he’d settle his own affairs, so he never told me her name.” “A funeral home? Was he working at a funeral home?”

Eisuke nodded.

“Huh. I thought he was working at some small company or something.”

“When he wrote that map and name, Jōki was already using Pavinal—”

“Probably right.”

Kano answered while putting away his tools.

“Adrenaline and ephedrine—they don’t work very well, you see. They only alleviate the symptoms to some extent—the attack won’t subside unless time passes. But when you inject Pavinal, the pain stops dead in its tracks, you know. Since we were medical non-commissioned officers, we were entrusted with managing the pharmaceuticals. As for the quantities of Pavinal—if you wanted to falsify them, you could.”

“Was that a pleasant experience?” “No. When I was a medical soldier, I once injected half a CC as a joke—broke out in cold sweat, had violent nausea, felt downright awful. “I learned my lesson from that and never injected it again.”

Kano said as if spitting it out.

“Then came the Ordos Campaign, you know. This wasn’t the usual mopping-up operation—it was a large-scale mopping-up campaign. I don’t know why they launched such a large-scale campaign, but the target was a place called Wuyuan.”

“Is Ordos a place name?” “Ordos is part of Inner Mongolia—the region between the Great Wall and the Yellow River with its rectangular course.” “Most of it is desert or steppe.” “A steppe is what they call a grassland area—when rain falls, it becomes grassland, but in the dry season, how should I put it, the land turns barren.” “They passed through there to attack Wuyuan, you see.” “Wuyuan was an arms distribution hub, and it was said that the Eighth Route Army was procuring weapons from there to strengthen their forces.” “So they were told to attack that place, and they’d overextended themselves, I suppose.” “We had many casualties on our side too.”

The Ordos Campaign was conducted during the winter spanning from Showa 15 (1940) to Showa 16 (1941). The troops boarded trains heading toward Baotou Town. The enemy already knew their operational objectives and troop strength. Guerrillas would emerge to destroy rails or pull out iron spikes. Since they had to clear these obstacles while advancing, their progress became agonizingly slow. Beyond Baotou Town they continued on foot. They marched through desolate deserts and steppes of withered grass.

“The most common were frostbite cases.” “Unlike the spring and autumn mopping-up operations, it was winter, you see.” “In combat, you couldn’t fire rifles with thick fur gloves on.” “Even if you wear ill-fitting boots, you can’t walk in the desert either.” “Strangely enough—or maybe it’s not so strange—only the face never gets frostbite, even when exposed to the cold.” “It’s always the hands and feet.”

Frostbite had three stages: first, where the blood drained away leaving white skin; second, marked by purple cyanosis; and third, where it carbonized and turned pitch black. It progressed exactly like burns. The carbonized parts could only be cut away. For the pain before and after amputation, Pavinal and similar drugs were used. “I suspect Jōki became a regular Pavinal user during this Ordos Campaign, you know.”

Kano explained.

“The field hospitals were extremely busy,” Kano said. “And since we kept advancing relentlessly, anyone who had an asthma attack couldn’t keep up. They ended up getting addicted while using Pavinal as a quick fix to suppress it.” Then epidemics broke out too—lice-borne typhus, waterborne diseases, and others. What troubled us most in this campaign was water. Not only was it scarce, but the quality was terrible. We resupplied using water tankers and trucks loaded with drum cans, but there were too few to reach everyone. Once, Jōki and his unit melted snow for water and cooked rice in their mess tins. When the rice finished cooking, Jōki gasped in shock.

“What the...” “This ain’t millet rice at all!” The snow carried yellow dust from the skies, fell to earth, and thereby dyed the rice yellow.

There is such a thing as earth fissures. If we were to liken the Earth to a human body, you could think of those fissures as something like chapped skin. They could be found throughout the marching route—ranging from small ones the size of trenches to large ones several hundred meters wide and about a hundred meters deep—with sheer cliffs and steep slopes carved into both banks. “There’s a place called the Grand Canyon in America, you know,” he said. “I’ve never been there myself, but I imagine they might resemble that.”

Kano said.

“They zigzagged down the steep slope. “In most valley bottoms, there was moisture, and it was frozen. “They would melt it, boil it to drink, and then climb back up the cliffs. “Some of them would slip and fall.”

Sergeant Niki slipped and fell, broke his spine and legs, and eventually died. Niki was a man who had tormented Jōki terribly during his basic training. He was taken to a field hospital, where Jōki happened to be assigned as his caretaker.

“I didn’t know Niki had died,” Kano said, “but Jōki told me this: ‘Niki glared at me and said, “You must be happy I’m dying.”’” Kano sighed heavily. “They truly were incompatible.” Eisuke wondered what Jōki had felt in that moment.

“War is detestable.” “He kept saying how utterly detestable it was.” “They’d been living an easy life in Kouwa until then.” “Then they were suddenly dragged into fierce combat.” “It’s more than anyone could bear.”

Eisuke imagined the vast steppe and tried to conjure up the sudden appearance of a giant earth fissure before his eyes, but he still couldn’t manage it. “So did they end up going all the way to Wuyuan after all?”

“We didn’t go. The frontline units charged in, captured Wuyuan, and immediately turned back. All of that—walking through deserts, descending into earth fissures and climbing back out—they did just for that. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers, you know.”

Kano clicked his tongue.

“Since they did capture Wuyuan once, as an operation you could call it successful.” “But there were too many casualties.” “There were platoons that got surrounded along the way and were nearly wiped out.” “If they were going to sacrifice that many lives, wouldn’t it have been simpler to build an airfield around Kouwa and bomb them by plane? That’s what I think now.”

Kano cupped his hand to shade his eyes and looked at the sun. The sun hung in the sky like a red basin, less shining than simply suspended.

“Shall we head back now?” Kano lowered his hand and said. “Why don’t we have a drink at my place? I also have an album from that time.” “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

Eisuke agreed. He had been feeling the urge to urinate for a while now, and since he’d remained sitting cross-legged between the boat’s ribs, his spine began to ache deeply. The fishing rods were folded, and the fish basket was pulled up. The engine puttered with a steady rhythm, and the boat began moving toward shore.

“It would’ve been nice to put up celebratory fishing banners for good luck, but today we got so absorbed in talking that we barely caught anything.”

Kano tightened his headband and said.

“You can see the nori beds over there. “Those will only last until this year, you know. They’ll be gone starting next year.” “The operators are getting compensation and switching to other lines of work.”

“How’s your business these days?” “Well...”

The voice was torn to shreds by the sea breeze.

“As long as there are goby in Tokyo Bay, I think I’ll manage somehow.” “After the war, the sardines completely stopped being caught.” “If the goby disappear like that, I’ll be done for.” “Well, when that time comes, things will work out somehow.”

“You’re awfully quick to brush things off.”

“After all, this too is thanks to the war, you know.”

Kano laughed.

“After that came New Guinea, right? Of the 200 medical soldiers from our year, how many do you think are still alive now? About ten or so. At first, I kept thinking, ‘Why did you all die without even a word to me? It’s so unfair,’ but now I’ve given up. Or rather than giving up—since I was lucky enough to survive—I’ll live as much as I want in their place. I’m in the mood to live a long life, you know.”

The phrase "died without notice" had visceral reality.

That pierced sharply into Eisuke's chest.

They reached the shore.

Eisuke exited the boat and climbed the stone steps. The toilet was merely an enclosure with a mechanism that let urine fall directly into the river. When he finished voiding his bladder, fatigue came crashing down on his shoulders like a physical weight. (After all, in just this single day I'd heard nearly everything about Jōki's military life.) Emerging from the toilet and scrubbing his hands reeking of bait worms with soap, Eisuke thought.

(It was only natural to be exhausted.)

Carrying the tools and fishing rods, Kano climbed up the stone steps. He called out loudly toward the store. “Hey! I’ll have a drink with the guests in the back room, so prepare it.” “Would you mind letting me lie down here for a bit?” Eisuke asked while patting his own shoulder. “I’m exhausted.”

“Did all that talking make your shoulders stiff?” “No. “The other day I slipped off a bus and hurt my spine. “When I sit cross-legged, that spot just stays bent.”

In the back room, after folding a zabuton cushion in half, Eisuke lay on his back. His spine creaked—or so it felt. When he closed his eyes, he could detect faint tears welling beneath his eyelids. Unlike in the boat, inside the house lingered various smells—the odors of daily life—drifting and swaying. There was a hollow loneliness like that felt after finishing a long picture scroll. "I see." "So she was the funeral home owner’s wife?"

He muttered with his eyes still closed. Doubts still lingered, but to him, it no longer mattered.

“Even if that’s true, that girl probably grew up as the funeral home’s child.” “And then she has a child.” “That child would likely never know their grandfather had marched across geological fissures, nor would they know he killed himself with Veronal.” “What humans do gets forgotten one by one as time passes.”

Footsteps approached. Eisuke opened his eyes. Kano was there.

“This here’s an album, you know—this is me.”

On the first page of the album was a photograph of a young man wearing a superior private’s shoulder insignia. Eisuke raised his head and let out an involuntary groan.

“I see. “So this is you in this photo?” Eisuke looked at Kano’s face, then shifted his gaze back to the photograph. The figure in the photograph looked youthful and composed, with a tinge of hope seeping into his countenance. “I see. “You look so young.”

“It was already twenty years ago. Of course I was young back then.” Kano answered.

“Until everything’s ready, take a look at this for a while. Look, this here’s the Datong Shanxi Bank building. We got our non-commissioned officer training inside here.”

With that building as the background, three soldiers stood in the photograph. It was immediately clear that the soldier on the right was Jōki. Eisuke strained his eyes and gazed at it for a while.

12

The back room of the boat inn was an eight-tatami-mat space, with several fish rubbings hanging on the walls. All were about a foot long, with the location and date of the catch recorded. On the engawa, cheap fishing rods meant for anglers were bundled together. The closet was spaciously built, and it seemed lodging facilities were available. The tokonoma pillar was smooth, yet its edge felt rough with the wood grain showing through. It had likely been added using parts from a dismantled boat.

“How are you doing?” “Are you tired?”

I asked Eisuke. “How’s your back?” “Ah. It’s eased up a bit.”

Eisuke sat up. "As expected, sitting upright remains beyond me."

At that moment, Kano entered the room from the shop area, carrying a black ceramic bottle. He sat cross-legged in front of the table. “This is baijiu.”

He poured it into teacups. “The other day, there was this customer—they’d been to Manchuria during the war—and when we got talking about this stuff, they brought it as a souvenir for me the next time they came.”

I took a sip. It had a slight peculiarity, but the taste wasn’t bad. I asked.

“What’s this made from?”

“Sorghum, I think.”

Kano clicked his tongue. "This one seems to be domestically produced after all. The stuff over there felt much stronger—though maybe that’s just because my tolerance improved." "When you say smuggling—buying it by the bottle—"

“No. They carried large sake bottles and beer bottles to buy it by weight, you know.” “Well…” “About how much was it per large bottle, I wonder…” “Well, it was twenty years ago after all.”

Mrs. Naigi brought simple side dishes. Eisuke scuffled closer to the table, crawling across the floor. Though it was still bright outside, the north-facing room had begun accumulating dusk under its eaves in gradual increments. After returning from the Ordos Campaign to Kouwa, they were scattered and reassigned to various garrison units. Kano and Jōki parted ways there.

Kano was sent to Lingqiu County, Shanxi Province. Kano was in the Eighth Company of the Second Battalion—the rearmost company—so they assigned him to a mountain detachment unit. Since he’d already made sergeant, his duties weren’t too harsh. In November 1941, orders came transferring Kano to the First Field Hospital. But deep in the mountains, they couldn’t move out immediately. The squad leader didn’t want to lose a competent medical NCO. While they lounged about thinking a slight delay wouldn’t matter, December arrived. The squad’s Radio Unit No.6 intercepted the declaration of war against Britain and America. It was the night of the eighth. Around midnight, the squad leader called a full assembly. Kano got shaken awake and learned about the proclamation.

“That night was clear, with a beautiful moon hanging in the sky. It was bone-chilling cold, and you could hear animals wailing through the night in the nearby mountains. We all listened tensely to the squad leader’s address.” “How did you feel?”

I asked. “When you say ‘tension,’ do you mean a mood pulled taut like—” “Yes, that’s part of it,” he said. “But you see, we’d been stuck up in the mountains of Lingqiu County for ages—no newspapers, no radio. We might as well have been sitting in the deaf gallery up there.” “It’s different from being back in the homeland.” “In that sense, the squad leader was in much the same position.” “In any case, since a great war had begun, it was a simple address telling us to devote ourselves to our duties.”

However, Kano intuited that his transfer was related to that major war. It was directly connected to the conscription being prolonged. He promptly organized his personal belongings and waited for pickup. Because the detachment unit was located deep in the mountains beyond mountains, he couldn’t just walk there alone. At last, the pickup arrived.

“And it wasn’t even a truck—a single passenger car came all the way just for me, taking three whole days.” “I was surprised.” “When I asked, they said it was an order from regimental headquarters.” “A passenger car—that’s officer treatment, huh?” “Well, that’s right.” “At the time, I was certain I’d been selected for southern deployment.” “When a big war breaks out, this isn’t just about defense—the medical side gets busier, you see.”

After bidding farewell to his bearded squad leader and comrades, the passenger car set off straight for Kouwa. There, Sergeant Yagi Jōki—a medical non-commissioned officer attached to the 12th Independent Infantry Regiment—and others had already been ordered to transfer en masse and had assembled.

“Oh. We’re together again.” Jōki raised his palm and said to Kano. “You’re the last to arrive. Stay at my place tonight.” “Is that right? Do you wish for that?”

The lodgings were private houses, and once you became a non-commissioned officer, the assignments were at your discretion. Because Kano had arrived late, he ended up taking off his straw sandals at Jōki’s building. He negotiated with the canteen, but they refused to provide any alcohol. It was known that Jōki and the others would soon be transferred south, so the canteen balked. “Tch.” “They’re all stingy bastards.”

Jōki grumbled, but to welcome him, climbed over the earthen wall to buy baijiu. While drinking baijiu, Kano asked. “How’s the war situation going?”

At Radio Unit No. 6 deep in the mountains of Lingqiu County, newspaper communications were hardly received. They knew about the declaration of war, but they had almost no knowledge of the subsequent war situation.

“Yeah. It seems to be going well.”

Jōki said. “Looks like we’ll be busy again. It’s different from here—we’re getting assigned somewhere warm, though.”

Jōki and his group’s transfer destination was Hong Kong. There was already an army hospital in Hong Kong, but that alone proved insufficient, necessitating the establishment of a Second Army Hospital. “In other words, we’re the setup crew for the Second Hospital.”

“Then it doesn’t look like we’ll be going back anytime soon.” “Return? To the homeland?” Jōki tilted his baijiu bottle and retorted. “Or to the interior?” “What about Jōki’s complexion at that time—”

I asked.

“How was his condition?” “He had a serious face,” Kano replied. “I thought he was worried the same as me.” “No—not his expression. Don’t addicts usually have changes in their complexion? Like turning sallow or something?” “Hmm, I suppose so.” Kano tugged at the sleeve of his workman’s jacket and thought for a while.

“His complexion hadn’t changed. If you looked closely there might have been some slight changes, but his demeanor was lively and he seemed well. I remember him drinking baijiu and saying nothing but amusing things.” Kano took a sip of baijiu. “But he seemed to be drinking more baijiu than before—no matter how much he drank, he never got drunk. His body was unsteady yet his mind remained sharp—that’s the impression I got—though I don’t know if that had anything to do with Pavinal.”

Two days later, the two hundred members of the setup crew boarded a train and headed south. They passed through Beijing and approached Tianjin. This was the same railway line that Jōki and his group had traveled north to Datong on about three years prior as new recruits. At that time they had lowered the window shades with no way to look outside, but this time they could observe everything in detail. Though still monotonous, the terrain and scenery began showing subtle changes as they moved south. They soon arrived at Tianjin Station. A branch line ran from there to Dagu.

“Dagu must be in that direction.” Jōki said to Kano with deep emotion. “Compared to those days, we’ve really become quite seasoned by the army, haven’t we?” “Yeah.”

Kano responded as well.

“I wonder if that temporary barracks is still standing—it was just a ramshackle hut we threw together back then.”

On the platform, members of the women's association waved flags and distributed comfort packages. The secrecy around troop movements likely hadn't been strictly maintained due to victories in the opening battles.

The train was not headed to Dagu. It would pass through Nanjing and arrive in Shanghai. At major stations, they would stop to load provisions and coal, during which time they did calisthenics on the platform; otherwise crammed inside the train, their lives became one of eat and sleep, eat and sleep. Everyone grew bored and, from lack of exercise, gained a little weight. Rather than having gotten fat, their muscles slackened. The changes in scenery ceased to interest them much. Upon reaching Shanghai, they were finally released from the train.

“During our time as new recruits, the train journey was so tense that boredom wasn’t even an issue—but this time, there was no tension at all. And on top of that, it was a marathon haul from Kouwa to Shanghai. We were thoroughly sick of it by the end.”

Kano explained to me. "After arriving in Shanghai, Jōki and I went over to the locomotive." "Jōki turned to it and joked, 'You must be worn out too—though we're truly exhausted ourselves,' making everyone laugh." "Truth be told, that locomotive did look completely spent—huffing out smoke and panting like it could barely keep going."

They boarded a ship from Shanghai. They loaded medical supplies and other items. Jōki and the others oversaw the loading. There was no time for sightseeing in Shanghai or anything like that. The establishment of the hospital was urgent. The military ship departed alone. There was no escort. Enemy submarines had not yet appeared in these waters.

Thus, the ship safely arrived at Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Unlike northern regions like Kouwa, the subtropical scenery appeared splendid, as though ablaze. The air hung appropriately moist with the tide's scent. Between ships in the harbor, sampans steered by boatmen in bamboo hats darted erratically. This left a striking impression.

“A commotion occurred there in Kaohsiung, you know.”

Kano said with a laugh. “The women’s association—what they called the Patriotic Women’s Association—came bringing comfort items.” “What they brought were sweets like yōkan and black sugar.” On southbound trains and military ships, various topics about southern regions came up. One of their hopes was to eat bananas and fresh pineapples until they were full. They were starving for rich fruits.

They disembarked here for the time being. They were to stay overnight in Kaohsiung to transfer to another ship. Their lodgings were at an elementary school, and when they arrived there, the members of the women’s association came. They went around each classroom and distributed sweet items. A woman in her fifties who appeared to be the head of the women’s association spoke in a patronizing, almost harassing manner, so Kano and the others grew somewhat irritated. They too were seasoned to military ways, treating officers with care but having an air of condescension toward non-commissioned officers and soldiers, as if handling children. Jōki stood up and made a statement to the following effect.

“We’re sick to death of stuff like yōkan,” “Bring us bananas or pineapples—proper tropical fruit.”

They seemed stung. “Bananas are what rickshaw pullers and stablehands eat here—not something the Imperial Army should be gobbling up,” they retorted. A brief but sharp exchange followed, leaving the room deathly quiet. “Jōki’s temper must’ve snapped,” Kano said. “His eyes glinted like—” As I listened, I remembered those eyes from Tokyo’s amusement park—that intense, almost violent gaze of his, as if gripped by some obsession.

“Hey. Everyone”

Jōki turned around and called out. “Don’t you dare lay a hand on that yōkan stuff.” “I’ll go call the banana vendor.”

Jōki jumped out of the classroom window and returned from town with a banana vendor in tow. While moving from the pier to the lodgings, he had noticed many banana vendors. Everyone happily bought and ate them.

“Over there, bananas are called kinchō and were cheap. A bunch was about fifteen or twenty sen. The locals could get them cheaply and easily—they’d long since grown tired of eating them. In prewar Japan, they’d be like roasted sweet potatoes—not considered refined food at all. That’s where the mismatch was.”

In the end, they did not touch the sweet items and returned them entirely to the women’s association. The women’s association president must have been seething. She proceeded to report this fact to the upper echelons.

“Those who refused the comfort items must report.” The summons came from the officers’ room. Jōki held everyone back. “I’ll handle this alone. “A mob trailing behind would be undignified.” Jōki went as sole representative and returned an hour later. Kano inquired. “How was it?” “Nothing serious. “They just warned me against making spectacles.”

Jōki explained with a laugh. “After that, I was treated to Scotch whisky. It’s better than Pai Chu after all.”

The unit stayed overnight at that elementary school, and the next day, they embarked again from Kaohsiung. Bananas and such were also brought in by their own hands.

“Were the bananas good, I wonder?” I asked.

“I’ve heard bananas are no good when freshly picked—they won’t taste right unless you let them ripen—” “No. They were delicious.”

Kano answered. “But the pineapples turned out surprisingly bad. They were all dry and gritty, you know. When it comes to that, I thought only the canned ones would do.”

They ate too many bananas, resulting in some cases of diarrhea. Since they could eat as much as they wanted once they reached their destination, they were ordered to dispose of them. Having patients emerge from the medical unit would damage their prestige.

And then they arrived in Hong Kong. The Second Army Hospital was established. The First Army Hospital was located on Hong Kong’s main island, while the Second stood in Kowloon District. Though termed an establishment, they weren’t building new structures—they appropriated requisitioned houses instead. Central British School became the First Branch Hospital through requisitioning, where Kano, Jōki, and others were stationed. The First Branch Hospital sat atop a modest hill. Looking out, unlike mainland cities back home, the vibrant colors harmonized perfectly with the navy-blue sea. Ships dotted the water—some moving, others anchored. They looked almost like toys.

“Jōki-kun wasn’t one to show much interest in scenery,” Kano said. “When everyone was marveling at it all, he’d just say something scornful like ‘What’s this? Looks like a damn postcard.’” “Jōki’s always been like that,” Eisuke interjected from beside us. Eisuke seemed quite drunk on Pai Chu, his speech growing slurred. I warned him.

“Yagi. Don’t drink too much. You won’t be able to get home.”

The work at the branch hospital was hectic. The wounded from the Malay Peninsula, along with tuberculosis and malaria patients, were being continuously evacuated. Hong Kong had effectively become a transit hub for these casualties. Yet compared to garrison duty along northern borders, conditions felt almost comfortable—the climate agreeable, supplies abundant, liquor decent. Their string of battlefield victories no doubt contributed significantly to this atmosphere.

The Malay Campaign had reached a temporary pause, and the unit was to return north once again. It was just before the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign. When departing Hong Kong, an incident occurred where a considerable amount of Pavinal went missing from the field hospital's medical supplies. It was unclear whether the medicine supply bags had been packed beforehand or were in the process of being packed. Someone had taken them.

“It couldn’t have come from outside. There must be an addict within the unit.”

A discreet internal investigation within the unit began. “I did notice something odd myself a few times.”

While gazing at the dusk-colored waters of Tokyo Bay, Kano said. “There was a time in Hong Kong when we took a shower together.” Unlike in the north, even Jōki—who normally hated baths—had to wash his body at least once a day there, or else the clammy dampness would leave him feeling wretched. While making small talk, Kano suddenly noticed Jōki’s arm. There were clearly numerous injection marks. “What’s that injection you’re giving yourself?”

His asthma attacks also seemed to have hardly occurred since coming to Hong Kong. Because the environment had changed, they had probably subsided somewhat. “Adrenaline?” “No. That’s part of it, but—” Jōki evaded the question and deliberately turned up the shower.

“Lately my body’s been so damn sluggish I can’t stand it.” “That’s why I’m injecting vitamins.” “You’re eating decent food every day—no way you’re lacking vitamins.”

Kano laughed. Jōki’s complexion was healthy, and by no means did he look vitamin-deficient. His young skin repelled the moisture and glistened with a healthy sheen. Jōki changed the subject while wiping himself with a towel.

“Do you know Tokyo was bombed?” It was the Doolittle Raid.

“To seize that airfield, an operation will apparently be launched soon.” “So another field hospital relocation?” “I suppose that’s how it’ll be.” “Depressing.”

They must have had that conversation around April. However, contrary to expectations, they were to return to Datong. During the preparations for their return, the Pavinal had been completely stolen.

“Surely not Yagi...?” For a moment, Kano doubted. He knew that around the time of the Ordos Campaign, Jōki had occasionally used Pavinal. However, that was only for temporary sedation—as a medical soldier, he couldn’t have been unaware of what prolonged use would lead to. Kano dismissed that thought once. However, as the management of medicines—especially narcotics—had become particularly strict, it was unthinkable that they had been stolen from outside the unit. A wisp of doubt remained with Kano.

They departed for Datong along the same route they had taken south.

On the deck, Jōki said to Kano: “Feels like someone’s tugging at my hair from behind.” His tone was joking yet tinged with melancholy. “If I had to say,” Kano told us afterward, “Jōki seemed to prefer the sea over the mountains.”

Kano explained to me. “People can apparently be divided into two types—mountain people and sea people.” “It must be innate, I suppose.”

During the journey from the military vessel to Datong by train, Kano found himself watching Jōki’s movements intermittently—not so much unconsciously as out of some lingering concern. Yet he could neither catch Jōki in the act of using Pavinal nor detect any trace of it.

“But Mr. Yagi was doing it after all, wasn’t he?”

Kano gulped down some baijiu.

“Within the unit, those who weren’t injecting at all. Those without any signs or motives. Let’s categorize these as negative candidates. When you eliminate those negative candidates from the roster one by one, a few likely positives remain. Among those positives, the one who most met those conditions—the prime suspect—was Jōki. They narrowed it down to Sergeant Yagi. The higher-ups apparently already had their sights on Jōki.”

The train arrived in Datong. Kano and Jōki's group returned once again to the Kouwa Field Hospital. They were designated as repatriation personnel.

One day, medical soldiers discovered a considerable number of empty ampoules discarded inside the ondol firebox. Upon inspection, they were all Pavinal. They promptly reported it to the unit captain. Kano learned of this in the medical office. He went searching for Jōki. Jōki was lying back in the barracks reading a novel from the comfort items. Since he was on the repatriation list, there was no one to reprimand him even if he slacked off.

“Yagi.” “So it was you after all who were injecting Pavinal.”

Kano said with a slightly rough tone. "The empty ampoules have been found."

“I see. In the ondol?” “In the ondol?”

Jōki threw the book down and slowly sat up. He had already steeled himself; there was an air of self-abandonment about him.

“The one who discarded them was indeed me.”

“Why didn’t you consult me before it came to this!”

Kano said, pressing closer.

“If you’d told me beforehand, I could’ve handled it.”

Jōki remained silent for a while. At length, he wearily opened his mouth. “Has the report already gone to the captain?”

Kano nodded. "I see." Jōki picked up the book he had thrown down and carefully aligned its pages. He spoke without looking up. "There was no point in consulting you." "You wouldn't understand." "I'll handle this myself." "There's no way you can handle this yourself!" "Get yourself hospitalized."

Before long, a summons came from the unit captain. The unit captain was a military doctor named Nakata, who had returned from Hong Kong and been promoted to major. A man of negative disposition who thought of nothing but promotion, he was ill-reputed and detested as an egotist devoid of compassion for his subordinates. What conversation transpired there, Kano did not know. He had undoubtedly been ordered to undergo hospitalization and treatment, but Jōki refused. "Is refusing even possible?"

I asked Kano, slightly surprised. "The orders of a superior officer should be absolute." "In principle, yes—" Kano clenched his back teeth and paused to think. "There are two possibilities to consider." "The first is Major Nakata’s personality." "If it were established that an addict had emerged from the unit, the captain would be held responsible." "He couldn’t report having left it unattended until then to the divisional medical department." "The captain was timid and a coward—" "Since Jōki was repatriation personnel anyway, I think he probably withdrew the hospitalization order on the condition that the Pavinal dosage be gradually reduced." "And Jōki was relieved of his duty to handle pharmaceuticals."

“So he could no longer obtain Pavinal, I take it?” “No. It wasn’t that simple,” Kano replied. “Jōki was terrible with superiors but good to those below him—the junior medics looked up to him like an older brother. He had their loyalty, you see. If he asked them, they’d procure whatever he needed.” His voice lowered. “In fact, you could say that’s what did him in.”

Perhaps Eisuke was drunk—he propped his cheek on the table, covered his face with his palm, and closed his eyes.

“What about the other case?” “I think he might have threatened the captain,” Kano said. “Given Jōki’s personality, that’s what I think now. He’s the type to take bold actions, you see.”

While looking at Eisuke out of the corner of his eye, Kano said in a low voice. "When he responded to the summons and went to the captain’s office, Jōki had a pistol with him, didn’t he?" When Jōki returned to the barracks from the summons, he removed the pistol belt from his shoulder and hung it on the wall. In one hand, he was carrying a bottle of British whiskey. He lumbered up onto the ondol. "I scored something good." "Let’s all drink tonight." Jōki’s voice was bright, but his face was slightly pale.

“He wouldn’t need a pistol just to meet Major Nakata, would he? Moreover, the fact that he took a pistol along—”

Kano hesitated momentarily. "I speculate Mr. Yagi went there intending to confront the military doctor—and that Major Nakata, frightened by this prospect while knowing this troublemaker would soon be gone anyway—withdrew the forced hospitalization order." "That’s what Captain Nakata was like." "So did Jōki have no intention of seeking treatment?" "No. He did." "He had a sufficiently strong desire to recover." "So he tried restraining himself—vowing not to increase the dosage even slightly but to gradually reduce it—which must’ve required tremendous effort." "But he couldn’t manage it." "When I asked whether he’d started regular use the next day or later, he laughed it off—but I estimate it was around the Ordos Campaign." "Despite our deep mutual trust, he hardly ever revealed his own suffering or sorrow." "Was he always like that?"

Kano’s question had been directed at Eisuke. Eisuke opened his eyes vacantly.

"That’s right." "Being brothers—I might not know—"

Eisuke reached out for the glass. “Maybe there was.” I pictured the scene of Jōki pointing a pistol at Major Nakata in the captain’s office. Perhaps it was also because I had seen similar scenes in movies and on television. It could be imagined with a certain degree of vividness.

“He wanted to recover and return home. But he hated being forced into hospitalization by that captain. That stubborn pride—or maybe just obstinacy—must have been what drove him, don’t you think?”

Kano shifted his gaze from Eisuke to me. "He didn’t want to be forced."

“Jōki—no, everyone—probably wanted to return home quickly, don’t you think?” “Not exactly.” “It was a more... unstable state of mind.”

Kano answered.

“The prospect of returning home had ceased to feel joyful ever since being designated for repatriation.” “The sense of having to part with comrades we’d survived life and death with for years—and the anxiety about returning to homes that had forgotten us.” “Oh, letters do come from home.” “Just formulaic ones.” “All saying things like ‘We’re managing fine here, so focus on serving the nation without worries’—never anything concrete about how things really were back home, what daily life looked like, whether we could readjust after returning, or if we’d be treated as outsiders.” “That anxiety—or maybe emptiness—stayed lodged deep inside us even while packing our things. We couldn’t face it without drinking.” “So every night—”

“On the night Jōki took Veronal, was there any change in his demeanor or complexion?”

“Demeanor?” “His demeanor was unchanged.” “Though his complexion had looked pale and swollen since two or three days prior.” “The area under his eyes was puffy, and his cheeks seemed to sag.” “The moment he tossed the powder into his mouth—‘This ruined body anyway’—” Kano began speaking but then fell silent. He rattled the black ceramic bottle. From how it shook, there seemed little left inside. Kano poured it into his own teacup. I spoke while vaguely imagining that scene.

“But was that really something worth killing yourself over?”

“That’s right. Once he left the unit for repatriation, he could no longer obtain the drug. If withdrawal symptoms appeared en route, he alone would have to get off midway and be forcibly hospitalized. Even if he made it back home, he couldn’t get the drug freely in Japan, you see. No—there are aspects of how people thought at that age that I can’t quite understand now that I’m older.” “Did he just get fed up with it all?” “Well, I suppose such things do happen.”

Kano nodded slowly. "When we cremated Yagi's body, it burned quickly." "The bones crumbled to pieces." "After the war, I read in some magazine that Hiropon addicts' bones become brittle and shatter easily." "In his case, it was probably the same." "The drug must have eaten all the way into his bones."

Thirteen Regarding the bones in the urn he had received from Nagoya, Eisuke could barely remember anything. It contained only a small amount of somewhat dusky fragments, and he did not touch them to see whether they were brittle or not. His mother however pressed it to her cheek, bowed her head, and wept silently for a while. Finding it painful to watch, he went to the backyard, squatted in the vegetable garden, and spent some time meaninglessly plucking weeds. Due to the labor shortage, the vegetable garden had become overgrown and neglected.

“You still shouldn’t have died.”

He said aloud. Of course, he still didn't know about the suicide.

“Until she saw your bones, Mother wouldn’t believe it.”

After about ten minutes had passed, he washed his grassy-smelling hands in the kitchen and returned to the sitting room. Kōtarō had come.

Kōtarō was still fat. General supplies were gradually becoming scarce, but marine products, being military-essential goods, faced no risk of being discontinued. The composure of a government-contracted merchant had settled into his bearing. "You've had quite the ordeal."

Kōtarō said to Eisuke. Ever since then, Kōtarō had maintained toward Eisuke what one might call a curt—or perhaps distant—attitude. And then Kōtarō shifted his gaze toward Mother.

“Mrs. Ofude.” “May I see the remains?”

“Please ask Eisuke about that.” Mother said. Kōtarō looked at Eisuke with an attitude that suggested he felt some resistance. “Fine. If you want to see it, then.”

With the sensation of his eyes growing parched, Eisuke answered.

“Mom. I’m going to sleep. I barely slept on the train.”

He entered the storage room, roughly spread out the bedding with noisy flapping, and crawled inside the futon. Indeed, from exhaustion, not only were his eyes dry, but his skin too, and when he lay down, he could feel the blood throbbing through his body. Soon, sleep came.

In the evening, Eisuke awoke to clamorous voices and the sound of nails being hammered. When he got up and went out into the garden, three or four young men from Kōtarō’s shop were moving about near the gate. They were stretching a crossbeam between the gateposts and nailing to it a board inscribed with “Home of the War Hero.” Not only that—at the entrance leading from the gate to the front garden, they had set up a wooden post bearing the inscription “Spirit of Late Army Medical Sergeant Yagi Jōki.” What a pointless thing to do.

Thinking this, Eisuke stood with his hands tucked into his coat sleeves, watching the workers move about. He knew the characters on that wooden post were in Kōtarō’s handwriting. After the official notice of death in battle had arrived, it was Kōtarō who had fashioned it and brought it over. But back then, his mother had refused. “Even if we receive formal notification,” she had said, “we cannot erect such a thing without having seen actual bones.” Now that the remains had returned, his mother must have relented. She sat on the veranda with her hair still tightly pulled back, gazing vacantly up at the evening sky.

Compared to that wooden post, the "Home of the War Hero" signboard on the gate had a thinner framework and was far too shoddy. Admittedly, this wasn't Kōtarō's responsibility—since he had merely acted on behalf of the town association, there was no helping it. Having it displayed on the gate felt utterly contrived.

“Home of the War Hero? Dead men don’t need houses! What’s the point of putting up this worthless thing!” Yet in reality, that sign became remarkably useful. After Eisuke received his draft notice and the war situation worsened, their household—with only women and children—was frequently excused from neighborhood duties like communal labor, fire drills, and watch rotations. But this reprieve proved short-lived. Soon “Home of Deployed Soldiers” and “Home of War Heroes” signs lined every other house, rendering such placards utterly meaningless as their symbolic power steadily eroded.

“Hey. Mom,”

Sitting alongside his mother on the veranda, Eisuke said. “Let’s stop with the funeral—since it was already handled through that joint memorial service.”

"I suppose so." Mother nodded with swollen eyes. "Do as you see fit. I'll leave it up to you." A turning point had come within Mother since receiving Jōki's death notice. Had she grown stronger or weaker? Stronger toward Kōtarō, weaker toward Eisuke - that was what it meant. Mother went on: "If we're stopping it, I'll settle things with Uncle Kōta."

Eisuke also knew that Kōtarō wanted to hold a funeral. Why was he so eager to hold a funeral? Eisuke wondered. Was it because he wanted to display the main family's prestige? Or was he simply interested in funerals themselves? Eisuke didn’t know how they had settled it, but in any case, the funeral was called off. A week later, he boarded a train with his mother, carrying the remains, and went to the family temple. The remains received sutra readings in the main hall and were given a posthumous name.

“It must be so hard for you, Madam. To lose not just Fukujirō but two sons—” The priest with thick eyebrows said this while offering tea. Then, to Eisuke: “If you have any matters to discuss, please come and tell me anytime. Though consulting a temple isn’t exactly an auspicious thing to do.”

Having said that, the priest laughed.

The grave on the hillside had been thoroughly cleaned by the old temple caretaker. The bone urn was placed in the burial niche, and the priest recited the Four Vows before the grave. The worldly rituals concerning Jōki were settled for the time being.

About three months passed, and Eisuke went to Tokyo. Due to his workplace circumstances, he couldn’t afford to idle around indefinitely. After returning to work for a little over a year, this time a draft notice came to Eisuke. It was from the navy. However, Eisuke felt no particular shock. This was because there had been a prior instance, and he had sensed he would be sent home that very day.

“What? Did you plan to return home that very day?”

I said with slight exasperation. “You fret endlessly over others’ affairs, yet at your core you’re an optimist.”

Because Eisuke said he had something to discuss, we met at the museum café. That was when the subject came up.

“I’m not optimistic. The army sent me back, right? And the navy’s an even tougher place—”

Eisuke wiped the beer foam from around his mouth with his hand.

"I simply assumed that's how it would be." "Here you'd get hauled off by the navy and end up dead in the southern theater. I thought this might be my last sight of you."

I said.

“We went through hell to scrape together that farewell party sake, you know.”

“I also submitted some.” Eisuke puffed out his cheeks.

“I submitted the entire one-shō bottle of rationed sake exactly as it was.”

“At the farewell party, we made you bare your back and everyone wrote messages in ink, remember? The grease repelled it, and the ink just wouldn’t take. Did you end up returning to your hometown like that?”

“Ah.” “Such things did happen.” “Back then, I was young and in my twenties.”

Eisuke's gaze grew distant. At that time, supplies were tight, and obtaining alcohol or beer had become an extremely difficult task. However, there were special rations for those departing for the front. At that time, he was lodging near Benten Pond in Ōmori. After receiving that one-shō bottle from the station-front shop and approaching the entrance to Kurayamizaka, a group of three middle-aged women in monpe work pants turned to look back at him,

“Could that be oil?” “No, it looks like sake.” “There must have been a ration somewhere.”

Eisuke still vividly remembers them whispering to each other like that. It was a desolate and meager scene, and a state of mind.

The next day, he took a train, got off four stations early, and visited the temple. Fortunately, the priest was there. Eisuke talked about the draft notice.

“If air raids were to occur, could you please evacuate my mother and younger brothers here?” Eisuke requested. He was optimistic about his own circumstances but rather pessimistic about the outlook of the war. The priest answered. “Ah. I’ll take care of it. Go off with peace of mind.”

Though barely a year had passed, the house's visage already bore an oddly weathered appearance. As he passed through the gate, Eisuke felt that way. Both houses and humans manage to maintain their vitality for a span of years, but once they begin to decline, they seem to decline rapidly. They don’t decay gradually—they deteriorate all at once.

“There’s no need for any farewell party.”

Eisuke said to his mother. "If I get this grand send-off only to come back home the same day, it'll look pretty bad, don't you think?" "I see..." Mother said apprehensively. "But you should at least visit the graves before going."

“I’ve already taken care of that too.”

Eisuke explained the details of his meeting with the priest to his mother. Since it seemed likely enemy planes would eventually come, he kept stressing she should consult the temple rather than rely on Kōtarō when that time arrived. Mother listened in silence. She neither affirmed nor denied it. “It’s not that I hate Uncle Kōta. I neither like nor dislike him.”

Even as he sensed he was telling a partial lie, Eisuke said, "Uncle Kōta's the sort who only looks out for himself when things get desperate. That's why you can't trust him." "You're not planning to die out there, are you?" His mother said this with a desperate expression, changing the subject entirely. Eisuke stiffened. "If you don't come back alive, I won't allow it!" "Mom," he countered, bewildered by her harsh tone. "Why say something like that? It's a bad omen."

While bewildered by his mother's harsh tone, Eisuke retorted.

“Surely—no, most likely—it’ll be a same-day return home. Same as last time, you know?” “Well, if that’s how it is—”

Mother let out a sigh.

“You should still go greet Mr. Kōta.” “Go there right now and come back.”

Eisuke visited Kōtarō’s shop as ordered. The shop’s shutters were half-closed. It was probably because there were no more goods to allocate to civilian use. Kōtarō was absent. Without mentioning his conscription, he returned home. The following day, he departed for the designated naval corps.

“So that’s why you didn’t get sent home the same day, are you telling me?” “Yeah.”

To my question, Eisuke responded with a faint smile. “Because they told us anyone with preexisting conditions should report them—so when I did, they beat me. That settled that.” “Then half the men who’d enlisted went to Saipan the next day.” “Not some chosen half. An arbitrary half.” “They’d just call up everyone from service number such-and-such to such-and-such, then ship them all off to Saipan.”

“That’s a rough way to put it.” “Yeah. That’s one hell of a story.”

Eisuke lowered his voice.

“Either we’d get sunk by submarines along the way, or even if we made it ashore, it’d mean a glorious death.” “The Americans landed on Saipan in June—by July seventh, the Japanese forces had been wiped out completely.”

Eisuke fell silent for a while. “I was lucky enough to avoid annihilation and saw out the end of the war in Southern Kyushu. Two months after it ended, I returned home—no, to the temple. They’d evacuated there after all, you see. My mother scolded me—‘Why didn’t you come back sooner?’ she said.”

Eisuke turned his face toward the ceiling.

“This coffee room feels so dark and oppressive somehow. Let’s go outside.” “What’s this about consulting me?”

“Actually, it’s about Uncle Kōtarō—he says he’s fine with entering a nursing home.”

Eisuke stood up with the bill in hand.

“Let’s talk while we walk.”

Fourteen

One day over a decade later, Kōtarō suddenly came to Eisuke’s house. No, since there had been prior notice, it was odd to call it sudden. However, Eisuke had absolutely no intention of welcoming Kōtarō into his home. Even though Eisuke had only gone to meet him at the station, Kōtarō had forcibly tagged along with him.

As soon as they entered the gate, Kōtarō said in a scornful whisper, “What. “What kind of tiny entrance is this?”

Passing through the simple gateposts led directly into the entrance. As Kōtarō had remarked, the entrance was indeed tiny. Not just the entrance—the entire house was small. Being a fifteen-tsubo spec-built home, they could hardly have made only the entrance disproportionately large. Compared to the entryway of the rented house where Eisuke had grown up in his hometown, this one measured roughly a third in size. Moreover, postwar Tokyo architecture tended toward smaller gate fronts and entrances due to shifting lifestyles. Having lived rurally all his life, Kōtarō likely remained unaware of this trend. Pretending not to hear, Eisuke opened the door.

“There’s a whole bunch of shoes and clogs lined up here.”

Kōtarō frowned exaggeratedly. “This way there’s no space left for my shoes to squeeze in.” Since the entrance shoe cabinet was small too, footwear that couldn’t fit naturally ended up lined up on the entryway floor. “No space left to squeeze into?” Feeling a cold laugh in his chest, Eisuke said this. He had no desire to tidy the footwear for Kōtarō, nor any obligation to do so. He spoke expressionlessly.

“Then let’s go around to the engawa.” “To the engawa?” Kōtarō spoke in an accusatory tone. Before the war, when Kōtarō visited Eisuke’s house, he would open the entrance himself, not ask to be guided, and abruptly proceed straight to the tatami room. Because he was the head of the main family. “That’s right.” “It’s the engawa.” He understood Kōtarō’s feelings, but with a posture that seemed to crush something, he turned his back on Kōtarō and stepped into the garden. In the narrow garden, only azaleas bore meager flowers, and five or six slender-trunked trees stood. In the sunless patches, coin moss clung thickly and spread. Kōtarō followed him, took off his worn-out shoes on the stone step, and came up with a reluctant attitude. Mikako was out, and a housekeeper with a mask-like, expressionless face brought in the tea.

While drinking tea, the two of them remained silent. When he finished sipping, Kōtarō slowly opened his mouth. “I’ll be imposing on you here for a while.”

It wasn’t his customary arrogance, but rather an affected pushiness that seemed deliberately assumed.

The autumn of the year before that, a letter arrived from Kōtarō. It was unclear where he had looked up Eisuke's address. Written in brushstrokes on a scroll, the calligraphy was so skilled that parts remained illegible. After signing off with "Yagi Kōtarō, Respectfully," it included both a second postscript and an additional triple bow. It stated he had quit his business to live secluded in a country town, that he had aged, and that loneliness drove him to seek Eisuke's help when coming to Tokyo—such was the letter's content. The substance proved meager against the scroll's length, interspersed with tedious musings about bygone days and present sentiments. As people grow old, they tend to write lengthy letters. Or rather, once begun, they feel something forgotten and lose all stopping points. Eisuke counted on his fingers to calculate Kōtarō's age but botched the arithmetic. The letter mentioned growing old yet omitted any specific number.

"He must have turned seventy-something by now."

Thinking this, Eisuke tossed the letter into his desk drawer. A faint anxiety and threat swayed in his chest, but no motivation to write a reply welled up at all. Even if he had wanted to write, there had been nothing to write. And so, he did not send a reply.

Then the New Year came, and a New Year’s card arrived. "This year I plan to come to Tokyo, so I’m looking forward to meeting you and your siblings," he had added. He decided to ignore that as well. Eisuke had thought it odd to send a New Year’s greeting in return when he hadn’t replied to the previous letter, but he simultaneously realized his own reasoning was flawed. It was like being served zaru soba when already full—in short, he couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger.

On January 3rd, my younger brother Shirō and my sister and her husband came for the New Year's visit. As they exchanged drinks, Eisuke brought up Kōtarō. I had been conflicted about whether to mention it or not, but I also felt reluctant to shoulder it alone.

“The other day, a letter came from Uncle Kōta.” “Huh.” Shirō leaned forward.

“What did it say?”

Eisuke stood up, went to the study, and opened the desk drawer. He rummaged noisily. "Oh. I definitely put it here."

He checked the letter holder and other places but couldn't find it. So he took just the New Year's card and returned to the gathering. "The letter's nowhere to be found." He circulated only the New Year's card and verbally explained the letter's contents. Shirō listened with apparent interest while picking at the sashimi. His younger sister Yasuko asked: "Did you send a reply?" "No." "I didn't send one." "The New Year's card too?" Eisuke nodded. "When do you think he'll come to Tokyo?" "He's an old man—probably can't come during the cold months." "Maybe April or May." "But I won't meet him."

Shirō said in an unpleasantly clear tone.

He had always loved painting and, after the war, enrolled in an art school; now he made his living that way. Shirō could hold his liquor better than Eisuke. Though he’d been drinking heavily since earlier, there wasn’t the slightest slur in his voice or unsteadiness in his bearing. “That won’t do—you’ve got to send a reply.”

Yasuko's husband Kawazu turned to face him and said. This man's speech was slightly slurred.

“Why?” “What do you mean ‘why’? There’s no reason needed. “You’re supposed to reply to letters.”

Kawazu drained his cup in one gulp to psych himself up. Kawazu worked at a tax office and was as hairy as a hairy crab. He was three years younger than Eisuke. “Suppose you were in your seventies and sent a letter to a child you once doted on.” “If you don’t get a reply, you’d feel lonely—no, not just lonely—it’s downright sad, isn’t it?”

“I see. But you’re not even seventy. How can you possibly understand an old man’s feelings?”

“That guy made off with our pomegranate tree.” “He even brought a gardener with him, you know.”

Shirō interjected. "He forcibly took it away and planted it in his own garden." "Was that how it was? Now that you mention it, there was a pomegranate tree next to the shed." "It was after you were conscripted, Brother." According to Shirō’s account, since it was wartime and pomegranate trees were unnecessary, Kōtarō had insisted that the front garden should be turned into a vegetable patch for self-sufficiency, forcibly uprooting it to take away. Since this pomegranate tree was one Fukujirō had cherished, when his mother objected,

“Your garden is small.” “My garden is spacious.” “I’ll keep this pomegranate tree until we win the war.” “That way Fuku would be happy too, don’t you think?”

Kōtarō brushed it off. “He was just so forceful and tyrannical—when geta were scattered in the entranceway, he’d get angry and make us tidy them up.” Then Shirō put on Kōtarō’s voice.

“What’s this mess at the entrance? The entrance—in human terms—is like the face! Ever since Fuku died, this house has gone completely to ruin!”

The imitation was so uncannily accurate that both Eisuke and Yasuko laughed. Kawazu kept drinking alone without joining the laughter, tilting back his cup.

“So after the war ended—did the pomegranate tree come back?” Stopping his laughter, Eisuke said.

“Ah,” I said. “So Uncle Kōta’s house was burned in the air raids too.” “Even if it hadn’t burned down, it wouldn’t have come back.”

Shirō said nonchalantly. Then he brought the sake bottle to his ear and shook it with a clinking sound. This stingy habit had also been present in his father, Fukujirō. "Because it was a promise until we won the war. But we actually lost. Though even if we got the pomegranate tree back, it wouldn't matter much. There are plenty of other things we'd want returned."

The conversation about Kōtarō concluded there, shifted to discussing the taste of pomegranates, then transitioned to talk about how it was permissible to dig up and eat bamboo shoots from the neighbor's property if they grew onto their land—but forbidden to pick citrus or persimmon fruits even if their branches crossed the boundary. When the conversation turned to such topics, Kawazu became quite talkative. It was partly due to drunkenness, but apparently working at a tax office familiarizes one with such circumstances and backstories.

The New Year’s banquet on January 3rd came to an end somehow in that manner.

A long winter continued, and Eisuke had temporarily forgotten about Kōtarō. It was less that he had forgotten than that he had never recalled it at all. As it gradually grew warmer, one spring day, a postcard arrived from Kōtarō. From the fountain pen handwriting, he immediately knew who the sender was without needing to check the name. Feeling a sense of weariness, he turned the postcard over.

"I am presently in Osaka." Written in his distinctive calligraphy, it began with these words. The letter described how he had stayed at an old school friend's house and toured Osaka and Nara under their guidance. There was no reference whatsoever to Eisuke's failure to respond to previous letters or New Year's cards. Eisuke felt a measure of relief mingled with something resembling bewilderment.

The next day, a postcard arrived from Kyoto. Two days later, a picture postcard came from Nagoya. They were drawing nearer. "Why is that old man fixating on me alone now of all times?" As he muttered this, his bewilderment abruptly curdled into irritation, and he clicked his tongue. The fact that Kōtarō had once funded his education still festered as an inferiority complex deep within him. "Doesn't refusing to reply constitute a clear declaration of disregard? Why can't that Kōtarō grasp something so simple?"

For Eisuke, his father Fukujirō had become something far distant. Not only had he died in reality over twenty years prior, but he had nearly perished within Eisuke’s memory. When he thought about how the brother of that extinguished existence still lived—breathing and emitting body odor—and imagined that presence leaning toward him, he felt the distress and revulsion of waking from a nightmare. This sensation overlapped with his own repulsive desire to keep living and the foolish acts he had committed in the meantime. At dinner, Eisuke showed the postcard to his wife Mikako.

“Perhaps he’s gotten old and wants to see people from his past.” As she returned the postcard, Mikako said. I don’t want to see him, and neither do Shirō or Yasuko. However, Kawazu insisted on sending a reply, and now Mikako’s way of speaking was fairly favorable. On the night of January 3rd, that tax official, completely drunk, confronted Eisuke like this: “You’re a cold-hearted man—it’s not that you turned cold along the way. You’ve been cold since the day you were born.”

"Then I should've become a tax collector too," he retorted jokingly, but whether it was this tax official or Mikako, they were ultimately just unrelated third parties. There was no way they could grasp the complex circumstances. Kōtarō shouldn't be alive. To Eisuke, he was someone who should have already been dead. How could they possibly comprehend that?

"There was an old film called *The Ball Notebook*, wasn't there? Maybe that's what this feeling is like." "*The Ball Notebook*? So you're saying I'm—"

Eisuke answered with a wry smile. “So it’s my role to be the one visited? “I’ve fallen into ruin—” He started to say that much but then wordlessly shoveled down his food and hurried back to his study. After sitting at his desk and rereading the picture postcard once more, the moment he tried to tear it up, he abruptly remembered Kōtarō’s first letter. He had tried to tear up that letter too. That was at a year-end party with his school colleagues where he had gotten terribly drunk. He returned by taxi inebriated. When he opened his desk drawer to put away his wallet, Kōtarō’s thick letter had been the first thing to catch his eye. The upward-slanting characters with their peculiar quirks suddenly grated on his nerves. He pulled it out and tried tearing it in two. However, it was too thick—the paper merely twisted without ripping. Impatiently pulling out the scroll paper, he rolled it up, threw it into the hibachi, and lit it with a lighter. Perhaps because the air was dry, it caught fire readily—flames roaring up fiercely as it burned nearly to ashes in moments. He poured water from the pitcher onto the few remaining embers that crawled with sizzling sounds, then crawled straight into bed. Why had he forgotten about that incident until now? Why hadn’t he remembered it on January 3rd?

"Am I starting to go senile too?"

While tearing the picture postcard into pieces, he thought. But he was not yet at the age to go senile. Just as his consciousness had tried to expel Kōtarō, it must have purged the memory of burning the letter too. He opened the window and flung the torn postcard outside.

A telegram arrived.

Eisuke called the Kanda gallery from a red public telephone. Shirō came out.

“He says he’ll arrive at Tokyo Station on tomorrow’s 1 PM train.”

“Who?” “What do you mean ‘who’? “Uncle Kōta.” “It says ‘Mukaetanomu.’” “Are you going?” “No way.” “I’m not going.” “I’m busy.”

Shirō was holding a one-week solo exhibition at that gallery. His being busy wasn’t necessarily an excuse. Faint music could be heard from far away over the phone. Shirō’s voice cut through it.

“What about you, Brother?”

“I don’t want to go either.”

Eisuke answered. "He can come on his own whim—it’s not like we need to roll out any welcoming committee."

“That’s true too. But Uncle Kōta knows your address, right?” “Well, yeah—he did send a postcard after all. But if we don’t go meet him, he might give up on seeing us. Unwelcome—” “You really think it’ll go that smoothly?” Shirō’s laughter came through. “He’ll definitely barge into your house.” “That risk certainly exists.”

Eisuke said in a serious voice. When he considered that possibility, he felt overwhelmed by a sense of futility. “Anyway, you should at least give the tax office guy a heads-up—just a call will do. Do that for me.” “Please.”

And with that, he hung up.

He woke up around nine-thirty the next day.

Since there were no lectures that day, Eisuke stayed in bed reading newspapers and magazines until nearly eleven o'clock. Then he reluctantly got up, finished a simple meal, and prepared to go out. But whether to go meet him or not—he still couldn't decide.

He exited the small entrance and descended the slope toward the private railway station. At the bottom of the slope crouched a large black cow with a crowd gathered around. As he approached for a closer look, he saw the animal had collapsed sideways still hitched to its cart, its entire body heaving as bloody drool dribbled from its mouth. Large flies swarmed busily about the scene. The viscous red fluid dripped continuously, staining the ground.

"It wouldn’t last much longer." This made Eisuke feel 〈death〉 more viscerally than any human passing ever had. He observed the cow’s movements intently for about five minutes before slowly walking away. Checking his watch, he realized it was now precisely the time when it would be a close call whether he could reach Tokyo Station. As he waited for the train and paced the platform, Eisuke kept weighing the awkwardness of Kōtarō suddenly appearing at his home against the oppressive weight of going to meet him at the station.

Before long, the train arrived. Some time after boarding, he finally resolved to go meet him.

Rather than cowering in fear of some unforeseen calamity, it was still better to take his seat at the appointed time and place. He thought this with a bitter smile.

He climbed the stairs and emerged onto Tokyo Station's walkway. The train seemed to have just arrived, with the area teeming with travelers carrying luggage and people there to meet them. Eisuke angled his body, pushing against the human current as he crept forward slowly. When he had walked about a third of the corridor, Eisuke spotted someone who seemed to match. That person was surrounded by two elderly men and a woman in a kimono around thirty. The man was talking with the two old men, his expression slightly agitated.

"Is that Kōtarō?" The image of Kōtarō preserved in Eisuke's mind showed a slightly portly man who wore kimono with relaxed dignity, his spine held straight as a rod. The elderly figure now encircled by three people wore Western clothing, his back curved in a stoop. Though the suit followed an outdated cut, its well-preserved condition maintained sharp, old-fashioned creases. The hunting cap crowning his head looked freshly bought. This stood in stark contrast to his shoes—terribly worn down, as if he'd worn nothing else for years, their soles and heels slanted from uneven wear, the black leather surface faded. He took this in at a glance. Seemingly proper yet fundamentally mismatched—the very embodiment of a country bumpkin's appearance.

"This must be Uncle Kōta after all." Having approached to within about two blocks' distance and hiding half his body behind a pillar, Eisuke observed the group. Kōtarō's body appeared to have shrunk an entire size compared to twenty years earlier. Was it his clothing, or had he diminished with age? Yet what convinced him this was Kōtarō remained the lump at the base of his neck. Though his face showed prominent wrinkles, the lump—while somewhat reduced—still swelled glossy and taut. A wiry vigor yet lingered about him.

In contrast, the two old men, though more neatly dressed than Kōtarō, looked terribly frail and devoid of vitality. The only one raising his voice was Kōtarō; the other two men spoke in hushed tones or with slurred speech. The fact that terms like "you" and "I" mixed in their conversation must indeed mean they were classmates from their school days. The woman in a kimono must have accompanied one of the two men here. She took a step back and was looking down.

〈For a dance card〉, it’s rather dingy. Watching sidelong, Eisuke strained to hear their conversation. Though part of him wanted to postpone going out to greet them, he sensed this wasn’t yet his turn to step forward. If they were classmates, they must be contemporaries. Did those who lived in the countryside’s clean air retain their vigor while city dwellers withered rapidly? Yet the two old men appeared visibly irritated and embarrassed by Kōtarō’s loud voice that ignored their surroundings—clearly discomfited by his rustic coarseness, they were making obvious efforts to mind their environment.

“That’s good to hear. You all managed to stay alive, huh.” Kōtarō wiped his nose with the back of his hand and let out a loud voice.

In the corridor, a fairly strong wind was blowing, creating small dust devils here and there.

“What happened to Endō? I went to all the trouble of sending a telegram—why didn’t he come meet us?” “He’s gone senile.” One of the two men answered in a mumbling voice that seeped through his dentures. “He’s been bedridden. His mind’s completely gone.” “Senile? That’s no good. Did you all go visit him?”

The platform gradually grew sparse with people. As it grew sparse, a melancholy gloom began to drift over the station. The voice from the loudspeaker echoed both near and far. “Yeah. We don’t have much freedom ourselves, ah.”

At that moment, Kōtarō’s gaze caught him in the shadow of the pillar. As people’s figures moved about and dwindled rapidly, Kōtarō seemed to suddenly grow suspicious of the man standing idly in the shadow of a pillar. Kōtarō’s gaze and Eisuke’s gaze met perfectly. Eisuke peeled his body away from the pillar and approached Kōtarō with a sulky gait.

“Oh. Oh.”

Kōtarō let out a groaning voice. “Eisuke...? Eisuke-kun...? You’ve changed.”

“Well, we’ll be—”

The two old men spoke in unison, as if relieved.

“We’ll take our leave here. “Take care.” One shuffled unsteadily, while the other walked away from there with the woman’s support. Only Kōtarō and Eisuke remained behind.

Fifteen

I strolled along the path in the park with Eisuke, heading toward Hirokoji. "So you refused to let him stay?"

While envisioning the old man's appearance, I remarked, "That's rather cold-hearted of you." "Cold-hearted? Me?"

“No—it’s about how time flows.”

I tried to cover it up. However, Eisuke was not deceived.

“Well, maybe I am cold-hearted. But I hate having outsiders intrude into my household!”

Eisuke raised his voice. “I did have my tuition paid.” “It was half-hearted though.” “So I decided to chip in money too.” “Five thousand yen a month.”

“That wouldn’t be enough to live on.” “So I already told you before, didn’t I? Uncle Kōta came from the countryside with quite a bit of money.” “How do you know that?” I asked.

“After the war ended, what kind of life had your uncle been leading?” “That’s what I don’t know.”

Eisuke tore a leaf from the street tree, rolled it between his fingers, and crushed it. For a while, they walked without saying a word. Eventually, in a low voice, “At first I listened seriously, but each time his answer was different.” “He’d claim he ran a shop in Kumamoto, then say he was taking hot spring therapy in Beppu during the same period. Sometimes he’d say my aunt died right after the war ended, other times around 1955. His story changes every time he opens his mouth.” “When I asked a friend who’s a doctor, he mentioned Korsakoff—”

Eisuke said the word with difficulty. "He said you can’t know without a thorough examination, but it might be senile dementia accompanied by Korsakoff’s syndrome." "So it’s just senile dementia, then."

We left the park. The city had its own smell.

“But the money’s starting to run out. So now he’s started coming to pester me for more than the fixed amount.”

I said. "So that's how it is."

“Yeah. Seems that’s how it is.”

Eisuke nodded. "The other day when he came, Uncle Kōta left his newspaper in the entranceway. What do you think it was? A bicycle racing newspaper." "Is he into bicycle racing?" "That's right."

In the bustle of the sidewalk, we were too busy weaving through to maintain our conversation; it kept breaking off. We walked in silence to the intersection. The signal was red, and we stopped. “Did you use that as leverage to get him to agree to going to the nursing home?” “Hmph.”

Eisuke snorted and laughed. "I wouldn't do something that cruel. When I suggested it indirectly, he readily agreed. His body's been weakening too—probably came around to the idea himself." Contrary to what Eisuke's words conveyed, their tone still struck me as merciless. Even if Kōtarō's nursing home admission were a path to happiness—

“So I have a favor to ask—Uncle Kōta says he wants to visit the Tama graves before entering the nursing home.” “Tama?”

“Yes.” The light turned green, so we started walking.

“I was thinking of taking him there by car, but I probably can’t manage on my own.” “Would you come along?” “Have you ever been to Tama Cemetery?” “No.”

“After the war, I won the lottery for a plot at Tama Cemetery and moved the bones from Kyushu.” “It’s a nice place.” “Trees growing thick everywhere—just like a park.” “Will you come?” “I don’t mind going.” I said. “You have no interest in Uncle Kōta’s past?” “None.”

Eisuke answered curtly. “I just think it’d be nice if he could die peacefully. That’s all there is to it.” “But here’s the thing—I suspect that once Uncle Kōta dies, you’ll suddenly take a keen interest in his life. Using his belongings or something as clues—” I slightly emphasized my tone.

“When someone dies, you abruptly start taking an interest in them—that’s what I think. From their deaths, you begin to devour spiritual nourishment. Like crows scavenging on a corpse.” “Crow?” Eisuke let out a hoarse laugh. “So I’m a crow feeding on carcasses? Me?”

A little late for the appointed time, I visited Eisuke’s house. The Kōtarō I met for the first time was strikingly different from what I had imagined—small and shriveled, his eyes darting about anxiously. Though I had envisioned the growth as enormous, it sat merely as a compact lump at the base of his neck. When I greeted him, he worked his mouth soundlessly before producing an indistinct noise resembling a cat’s mewl. The driver was a young man who addressed Eisuke as “sensei,” suggesting he might have been one of his former students.

“Uncle.”

Eisuke called out to Kōtarō.

“Uncle, you take the front seat. That way you can see the scenery better.”

Eisuke likely disliked sitting in physical contact with Kōtarō. Rather than opening the door himself and assisting the old man, he pushed him inside to make him board. Kōtarō complied expressionlessly. In the back seat, Eisuke and I sat down side by side. The car started moving. Kōtarō's occiput and shoulders were before my eyes. The fabric of the jacket covering his shoulders had perhaps been over-ironed; the nap was worn away, leaving a glossy sheen. It truly gave the impression of being his threadbare everyday suit.

"What must it feel like for someone so old to visit the grave of a family member who died young?"

I thought this, but of course didn't voice it. I whispered something else to Eisuke.

“How’s your spine been doing since then?”

“Yeah. “I’ve been getting weekly salivary gland hormone injections, though.” Eisuke answered with a gloomy expression. “When I push myself too hard, it still hurts. “It’s less about pain and more this oppressive heaviness that comes over me. “But apparently I’ll have to carry this oppressive heaviness with me for the rest of my life.”

“Did the doctor tell you that?” Eisuke nodded. “What about that sarcoma-like—”

Eisuke cleared his throat gruffly with a displeased expression. It was clearly a deterrent. "That's enough about that." "You don't need to worry about me."

Eisuke said rapidly. So I changed the subject.

“Where are we?”

When the car stopped in front of Tama Cemetery's gate, Kōtarō said while gazing quizzically out the window. Eisuke opened the door and answered.

“This is Tama Cemetery.” “Tama Cemetery? Then this is a graveyard, isn’t it?” Kōtarō abruptly twisted his upper body backward. His eyes, which had been moving restlessly with anxiety, suddenly fixed and glinted sharply.

“Who told you to bring me to such a place?” “I told you, didn’t I?” “Uncle.” Eisuke answered exasperatedly.

“You said you wanted to visit the graves the other day—” “When you say ‘grave,’ whose grave the hell are you talking about, you?”

“Of course it’s our family grave—Father’s and Jōki’s and the rest.”

“What? Is Fuku’s grave here?”

Kōtarō retorted in a shrill voice, sounding surprised.

“I never said I wanted to visit Fuku’s grave!” “Then whose grave do you want to visit?” “The grave of His Majesty Emperor Taishō. I’m certain I clearly stated that.” There was no lie in his expression. In other words, Eisuke had misunderstood something. Eisuke left the door hanging open, crossed his arms sullenly, and leaned back against the seat. “So you’re saying you won’t visit our family’s grave then.” “That and this are entirely separate matters.”

Kōtarō grew impatient and tapped the front seat’s shoulder. “The place I want to pay my respects is the Tama Imperial Mausoleum.”

Eisuke did not respond. Even if there had been a misunderstanding between their words, since they had come all this way, why couldn't he feel any inclination to visit the gravesite containing his brother and sister-in-law and nephews' remains? After a moment, Eisuke reached out and violently slammed the door shut with a bang. Ignoring Kōtarō, he addressed the young man driving. "You. Do you know where the Tama Imperial Mausoleum is?" "I'll check."

The young man took out a map.

“Oh. This is quite a ways out. Professor. It’s beyond Hachiōji.” “I’m sorry, but could you take me there?”

“Yes.”

With the sound of the engine, the car started moving and changed direction. And it continued driving through wind-swept streets for nearly an hour. Throughout that time, Eisuke kept his arms crossed and didn't utter a single word. Before long, the car was driving along a ginkgo-lined avenue. When it turned right along the way, the avenue of trees changed to zelkova. The giant zelkova trees spread their treetops into the sky like nerve diagrams from medical textbooks.

The young man said. “This dead end is the Imperial Mausoleum.” “I see. Slow down a bit.” The car reduced its speed. The name on the decrepit bridge spanning the drainage ditch could be read as Minami-Asakawa Bridge. To the left, lower down, was a sports ground, and the movements of people playing baseball could be seen. The sports ground was divided by a sparse grove, beyond which hills and mountains loomed hazily. The young man pointed at that particularly tall mountain. “That is Mount Takao.” At the end of the zelkova-lined avenue, there was a white main gate. The car stopped beside it.

Each of us opened our doors and alighted. Only the young man remained in his seat. “I’m a bit tired, so I’ll wait here.” The young man laughed, showing his white, clean teeth.

“And I’m not very interested in things like imperial mausoleums.”

Kōtarō entered through the main gate first. To deliberately lag behind, Eisuke stood in front of the entrance office and gazed up at the tree growing before it. I too followed Eisuke. “This is a plum tree, isn’t it? That’s rare.”

Eisuke said to me. The plum tree had not yet borne flowers.

“As Jōki mentioned in his letter, there seem to be many of these trees over there. In fact, they’re smaller than peaches and said to be sour.”

From about ten ken inside, Kōtarō turned around. When he noticed Eisuke dawdling, he turned his face back sharply and started walking alone. The shape of his back and the way he moved his legs were exactly like Eisuke's. The old man’s back seemed to reject everything, his entire spine seething with anger. Both sides of the wide approach were densely lined with rows of cedar trees. The slanting sunlight cast a faint haze at the tops of the cedars. Each time a strong wind gusted through, the cedar treetops swayed gently. In early spring, the Kantō region was prone to this kind of wind.

“Shall we get moving?”

We slowly began to walk. The gravel crunched underfoot. The cedar rows had untrimmed lower branches arranged in conical shapes, protruding low over the approach like the stray neck hairs of a slovenly man, swelling thickly. However, upon closer inspection, the lower branches on the approach side had not been trimmed, while those at the back had been completely cut away, with bamboo, miscellaneous trees, and weeds growing thickly. They must have adopted this irregular pruning method out of fear that poor airflow would result. There was something vaguely comical about this, so I laughed.

“This is shoddy work, isn’t it.” There was a pond with several koi swimming in it. Eisuke stopped there. Kōtarō, walking ahead, seemed to struggle with both the gravel and wind, his pace slow. If we didn’t kill time by gazing at the pond, the distance between us would close too quickly. The koi scattered when we moved, then swam in two or three orderly rows. Whether from poor sunlight or other causes, both the black and scarlet koi looked faded, their forms neither plump nor robust but rather emaciated. We wandered along the pond’s edge for a while, observing the fish’s movements.

The mausoleum stood atop a small hill. There was a fence, and we couldn't climb the hill. Around there grew many red pine trees bearing pine cones. The front formed a gravel plaza where a pale wind blew incessantly. The circular mausoleum was covered with numerous round, darkish stones. Like the speckled pattern of traditional confectionery, uniformly shaped stones had likely been fixed to a concrete base. Since we were looking up from the hill's base, its full form remained beyond our view.

A new torii stood.

Kōtarō had already purified his hands at the water pavilion, knelt at the fence entrance, and pressed his palms together in prayer. I pressed my nose to the crack in the torii pillar, attempting to identify its wood type. But no woody fragrance emerged—only the chemical tang of preservative lingered.

Eisuke called out to Kōtarō’s stiffened back.

“Uncle. We’ll be waiting at the front.” Kōtarō maintained his posture and did not respond.

We hurriedly walked back along the path we had just taken toward the main gate. All the while, Eisuke remained silent and didn’t say a word.

In the car by the main gate, the young man rested his head against the seat and was dozing off.

There, out of consideration, we entered a side path and sat down on a crude wooden bench.

“Ah… A kite!” As soon as he stretched up, he saw five or six kites flying in the blue sky. Judging from their positions, they appeared to have been launched near the banks of a drainage ditch. The wind was strong—air currents swirling through the area made all the kites tremble unsteadily. Even those maintaining normal midair positions would suddenly sway sideways when buffeted, spinning wildly as they spiraled downward. Against the blue expanse, they seemed both playful and desperately struggling at once. The smoke from our cigarettes scattered chaotically in turn.

“……” Trying to say something, I shifted my gaze from the sky to Eisuke. Eisuke’s profile as he looked up at the kites was rigid like stone, not moving a muscle. His eyes were as parched as a mummy’s. I fell silent.

What Eisuke was thinking or feeling at that moment, I do not know.