Pathway to Japanese Literature

That night I was drunk, and I think that man was drunk too.

I was riding a National Railway train.
Given how unbearably cold I was, my drunkenness must have been starting to wear off.
A bitter wind blew sharply through the broken windowpane into my collar.
Because I wasn’t wearing an overcoat, my neck was exposed.
Leaning my back against the seat's backboard, I cupped my hands between my knees and kept my eyes tightly shut.
And in the distant reaches of my consciousness, I was vaguely counting how the train kept stopping and starting.
Suddenly, the neighboring arm pressed into my side.

“What are you trembling like that for?”

said the voice.
It was a broad, rusted voice.
Along with it, I thought I caught a pungent whiff of alcohol.

“I’m trembling,” I retorted without opening my eyes.
“I can’t help trembling because it’s cold.
Is that so bad?”

Then we fell silent for some time.
The wind struck the sides of my face too, making the depths of my ear canals cold and itchy.
Through my arm’s vague sensation, it seemed the man next to me wore a soft-furred overcoat, but with my eyes closed tight, I couldn’t be certain.
To get warm, I scooted my body closer to him.
Then a voice sounded again.

“Don’t you have an overcoat?”

“I sold it for drinking money.”

“So that’s why you’re drunk.”
“What did you drink?”

“It’s really none of your business, but if you want to know, I’ll tell you.
Sake lees shochu - that ersatz liquor.
You on that stuff too?”

A contemptuous snort sounded.

"The mindset of enduring with substitute shōchū instead of drinking proper sake is a corrupt one. You ought to quit that."

"You ought to quit that."

It was an utterly arrogant remark, but his tone remained matter-of-fact.
Now that I thought of it, there was indeed a faint scent of proper sake in the breath coming from beside me.

“Even if what you drink is fake, the drunkenness is real.
You’ve got the wrong idea.”

While saying that, I opened my eyes and looked at the man next to me.
He was a full size larger than I.
His face was handsome with thick eyebrows and a straight nose.
He might have been thirty-four or thirty-five.
Though he had turned up the collar of a black overcoat that looked warm enough, his red-tinged clouded eyes stared back at me.
Pulling my hands from between my knees, I reached out and touched the man’s overcoat.

“You’re wearing a nice overcoat, aren’t you? With this coat, you shouldn’t need to keep shivering.”

The man’s eyes crinkled with a faint smile.
But it vanished instantly, replaced by a look of something being forcibly held back.

“You can have this coat if you want it.”

“Why would you give it to me?”

“Because you’re cold, aren’t you?”

“Is that so? Then give it here.”

To my slight surprise, the man stood up and promptly began taking off his overcoat. Underneath, he wore a dark suit but hadn’t put on a tie. The man rolled up the overcoat and dropped it onto my knees with a thud.

“Go on, warm yourself up.”

“Then I’ll take it. But really—” While slipping my arms into the overcoat and fastening the buttons, I said, “You’re one of those Star-and-Violet types too, huh?”

The man suddenly looked up with an accusatory expression, but by then I had already finished putting it on and was sitting down.
The nostalgic scent of the fur overcoat settled softly on my shoulders and back.
The raised collar tickled my cheek softly.
My chilled body gradually began to glow with warmth.
I said.

“This fits me perfectly.
I might think it was tailored for me.
But why’d you give this to me?
You’ll regret it tomorrow morning.
You’re already pulling that gloomy face.”

“Not gloomy yet.
But Christ it’s cold without the coat.
Don’t know about tomorrow, but yeah—already feel that regret coming.”

“Then shouldn’t have given it.”

“I’d rather be giving than taking.
Keep telling myself that.
What’d you feel when you took it?”

“Me?”
I answered, fumbling with the buttons with my fingers.
“I took it because I thought this would get me through the cold.”
“Should I return it when we get off?”
“This button’s got an interesting shape.”

“You don’t need to return it.”

However, the man hunched his shoulders as if cold and knit his brows darkly.
The man’s bare neck stood pale with gooseflesh.
He sidled closer to me.
This time, the man’s body trembled in small movements.
I asked.

“Where did you drink today?”

“Where? That place.”
The man’s eyes grew distant. “Today was the company dissolution ceremony. We went under.”
“Felt liberating.”
“From tomorrow onward, I’ll be alone.”
“So why’d you drink sake lees shochu?”

“I drink when I’m bored,” I answered.

“You drink when you’re bored?” the man countered.

“That’s right.”

“Why do you get bored?”

“Because the world’s full of fakes,” I answered. “I’m bored of seeing fakes. That’s why I want to get drunk. Because getting drunk’s the only honest thing. I don’t get bored as long as I’m drunk. I don’t know what your angle was giving me this coat, but you’re one hell of a fake yourself, I tell you.”

After that, my memory grows hazy, but I have a feeling we got off at the station and parted ways. When I woke up the next morning, the overcoat was properly by my pillow. It was a bitterly cold morning, and the socks I’d tossed aside last night had frozen stiff. When I started wondering what had become of the man from last night, the image of his goosebumped neck—like chicken skin—immediately came to mind. I tried on the overcoat in my room. It was an overcoat that fit remarkably well. It seemed to be quite a vintage piece, but the fur was still luxuriously fluffy. Six large hexagonal buttons were attached to its chest. The buttons were yellow.

Two or three days passed.
I joined the queue on the street and waited for the bus.
As I thought the back of the man ahead looked vaguely familiar, he abruptly turned around.
It was that man from the government railway.
When he saw me and grinned confusedly, I grinned back in kind.
Of course I was wearing that overcoat.
Then the man suddenly scowled and turned away, but moments later turned back once more.

“That’s quite an impressive overcoat you have there, sir.”

He said in a sarcastic tone.

“You’re welcome. A shabby thing like this?” I shot back.
He made a slightly dazzled face and looked my overcoat up and down.
It was then that I noticed his suit was frayed in places, and today he wasn’t even wearing a collar.
His eyes had been bloodshot before, but today they were clear and blue.
His skin was dark, and I thought he looked like a Turk.

“Is your house nearby?”
I seemed to recall him saying something like that too.

When the bus arrived, we got on.
We managed to get seats side by side, but since he gave up his seat to an old woman, he naturally ended up standing right in front of me.
As the bus started moving, he reached out one hand and began fiddling with the buttons on my overcoat.

“These buttons are made from the bone of a deer my grandfather shot.”
“Kyushu’s Seburiyama.”
“They’re hexagonal, right?”
“He was one hell of a craftsman.”
“They’re nothing like those cheap buttons you see everywhere.”

“I didn’t know your grandfather was a hunter.”

I said.
But he pretended not to hear and instead began loudly lecturing about the overcoat’s origins and history.
His voice was so loud that everyone turned to look.
Even if it had been his own overcoat, lecturing about someone else’s coat that they were actually wearing made me, the one wearing it, feel uncomfortable.
Everyone seemed to be staring at my face and laughing.
It was only then that I realized he begrudged having given up the overcoat.

When the bus reached the terminal, I told him.

“Stop resenting it. If you want it that badly, I’ll give it back.”

“I won’t accept others’ charity,” he answered in an indignant tone.
“I’m no beggar.”
“Then this overcoat’s mine forever, huh?”

“It won’t be that simple. If I decide I want it, I don’t want to take it from you—I’ll strip it off you by force.”

“Heh,” I said, slightly surprised. “That’s quite the ideological about-face from your tone the other day.”

“That’s right. I’m not some Star-and-Violet school romantic like you say.”

Ah, so he’d been fixated on that all along, I realized.
However, one night about a week later, I was truly robbed.

That night I drank a bit too much sake lees shochu.
I had no idea where or how I'd walked.
When I came to, I was lying on something hard, someone trying to strip off my overcoat.
"What an odd duck," I thought vaguely at the edge of consciousness, nearly slipping back under—but then came the insistent jabbing at my ribs to remove the coat, jolting me fully awake.

"What're you doing?"

I said this while bracing my elbow to push upright.
Through my flickering vision swam that man's face.

“You trying to take my overcoat?”

Steadying my dizzy head, I shouted.
I meant to shout, but my words came out slurred.

“That’s right.”
He said this with a nonchalant expression.
“I have business in Funabashi tomorrow.”
“It’d be inconvenient without the overcoat.”

“Then you’re a robber, huh?”

“Robber.”
He paused his hands for a moment. “Robber’s fine. I am a robber.”

From my vantage point looking up, I couldn’t see clearly, but at that moment he made an expression of terrible sorrow.
I even thought that voice might be crying too.
All the strength drained from me, and I felt like it didn’t matter anymore.
I naturally stretched both hands behind me and assumed a posture that made it easier to remove the overcoat.

“Where is this place?”
In that state, I asked.

“It’s Shibuya. It’s the subway terminal.”

The man’s voice still sounded pained like a wounded beast’s, yet he didn’t stop working to strip it off me. Come to think of it, I could see the canopy of the walkway above. I seemed to be lying on a bench along the walkway wall.

After stripping off the overcoat, the man briefly pressed his palm against my forehead and muttered what sounded like, “Get home safely.”
The clatter of hobnailed boots crossing the walkway grew distant.
I sank back into fathomless sleep exactly as I lay.

When I awoke at dawn the next morning, the cold was beyond unbearable—there was no denying it.
My body had turned stiff as a washboard, so much so that I couldn’t get up for some time.
I must have come within a step of freezing to death.
The only thing gone was the overcoat; everything else remained.
I left the station stiffly, had hot cocoa made for me at a café, and regained my human composure.
I didn’t particularly mind losing the overcoat itself, but it galled me that I’d nearly frozen to death because of it.
It was precisely because I thought I had the overcoat that I got drunk and ended up sleeping in a place like that.

However, my vexation lasted only that morning; by noon I’d already forgotten all about it.
When turning cold street corners, I’d occasionally recall the texture of that overcoat or its yellow buttons, but instead found myself feeling an unburdened, refreshing clarity.
While thinking I might meet that man again at least once, we unexpectedly ran into each other in the station square one evening a couple of days later.
I was in a corner of that square, buying triangular raffle tickets and such to pass the time.
With the weak winter sun at his back, that man was crossing the square in large strides, wearing the overcoat and carrying an empty backpack.
I called out and stopped him.

He approached today wearing a stylish ski cap and swinging a backpack, but when I looked closer, one of the overcoat’s buttons had been torn off while another dangled precariously.
He unfastened his coat at the chest and gazed down at me with condescending eyes.
He seemed utterly composed.

“What happened to the buttons?”

I asked.
He too looked down and briefly glanced at where the buttons were.

“Yeah. They got torn off.”

“Did you get into a fight or something?”

“A fight… no. There’s a better story. Want me to tell you?”

“I don’t particularly want to hear it, but that overcoat was once mine after all. I suppose it’s my duty to at least hear the whole story.”

When the man suggested going, I accompanied him into a corner café. I asked while ordering coffee:

“You said you’d go to Funabashi tomorrow—did you go?”

“I went.”
“That’s where the story begins,” he answered.
What follows is the story he told while sipping coffee.
——
“Though it was my first time in Funabashi, that’s one bleak town.”
“Daytime feels like twilight there.”
“Call it quiet? No—it’s plenty lively.”
“Roadside vendors spread out fish and clams while people shuffle past.”
“But why do they all have those harsh, wretched eyes—like dogs dragged from a river?”
“Or was it just my own gloom coloring things?”

“Let me make it clear—I didn’t go all the way to Funabashi just for sightseeing. I went to consult a friend in Funabashi about finding work. If I don’t get a job, my wife and kids will starve. That was his sword-sharp dismissal. He says, ‘You think there are jobs to be had these days?’”
I got angry and immediately stormed out of that house.
I was slightly agitated.
I walked along the dusty road to the station, glaring at the shops lining the street.
My mind kept darting about, unable to settle.
The flashy hoodlums traipsing past all seemed to be defying me somehow.
While hurrying along with frayed nerves, I inadvertently muttered aloud, “Might as well become a black-market dealer then.”
And I was appalled.

I wasn’t surprised by the content of the words I’d muttered. When excited, humans will spout off anything. What appalled me was realizing something savage—something that gave those words real substance—had been stirring distinctly within my heart at that moment. You might laugh, but until then I’d vaguely flattered myself that I possessed too much common sense and education to sink to black-market dealing. I thrust both hands into the overcoat’s pockets and stopped. This was right before the station. What was this savagery? What could it be? Groping through my bodily sensations, I suddenly understood. You know what it was? This overcoat. This overcoat was it.

I put it on that morning thinking it was my old overcoat again and came here.
As I walked, it just didn't sit right.
I'd been sensing something misaligned beyond a veil of opacity—something that didn't belong.
The collar brushing my neck, my hands thrust into pockets—all familiar yet rebuffing me with unexpected force.
Like shoes left unworn for years suddenly digging into flesh.
Similar, yet fundamentally different.
Not because you'd stretched it out from wearing.
Not about how the cloth hung on my frame.
Something deeper.
That was my mental stance.
This is my overcoat.
But not mine.
Stripped from some man last night.
—This one.
Now I saw clear—this thing crouching in my chest's pit had been warping everything.
Feeling that jagged courage rise like bile, I remembered muttering:

——I'm wearing stolen goods, I thought.

At that moment, this overcoat felt thick and sturdy like armor.
I headed straight for the ticket booth, filled with a noxious joy.

The train I bought a ticket for and boarded was packed.
Luggage and people piled upon each other until the steel carriage looked swollen from outside.
I was gradually pushed toward the door on the opposite side.
But when I looked, there was no door at that doorway.
It stood wide open.
There, predictably, was a young woman who looked like a black-market dealer—whether she’d finally snapped, she screamed: “Stop shoving! You’ll make me fall!”

In such moments, some fool overflowing with chivalry always emerges in this world—and sure enough, this time too a burly man around forty appeared.
By trade he was a black-market dealer, but he had the face of a true good man.

“I’ll take your place.”
“It’s gonna get even more crowded.”
“With your strength, missy, you’ll get pushed right off.”
“Go on, switch places already.”
“I’ll be the doorstop here.”

In the crush of bodies, they jostled and swapped places until the middle-aged man ended up wedged as the human doorstop. The young woman had finally managed to get inside the car. Me? I was pushed and ended up pressed against the middle-aged man. The middle-aged man was gripping the car body’s brass rod with one hand and gripping the large backpack’s strap with the other. The backpack was between the middle-aged man’s legs and my legs. And so the train started moving.

As I was jostled by the motion, I found myself recalling that earlier feeling as if ruminating on it. Wasn’t that feeling I had in front of the station merely a momentary surge of exhibitionistic agitation? I also considered that possibility. However, that savage feeling had still persisted even then. The noxious joy from earlier had already vanished, but in its place, something like a quiet anger had spread throughout my chest. I was thinking about my own past.

When I worked at the company, I was a model employee.
I worked hard.
I never did anything wrong.
Nobody ever pointed fingers at me.
I got promoted appropriately and was well-liked by everyone.
Then the company suddenly dissolved.
I took my severance pay and that was that.
But I still hadn’t given up hope.
That night was the dissolution party.
In the chaos of the shutdown—who stole what, who embezzled how much—as the liquor flowed, they started turning on each other with exposes, until by the end they were brawling all over the banquet hall.
Disgraceful.
Since everyone knew I was hopelessly honest, nobody said a word to me.
Midway through the party, I ended up hauling the elderly accountant—who’d been beaten after getting caught embezzling huge sums—all the way to the station.
This old man had always been a sly fox.
I’d known that from the start.
Yet there I was, carrying his drunk ass to the station.
No obligation to do it whatsoever.
As I struggled with his floppy body, I suddenly wondered what compulsion drove me to this.
But with a lip-biting feeling, I told myself right then:
Do only good deeds.

Avert your eyes from wrongdoing.
If you see someone in trouble, save them.
Do not beg others.
Do not take from others.
Give everything to others—repeating this like a mantra through clenched teeth, I carried the old man’s body without an ounce of joy.
Not a shred of joy!

When I arrived at the station and pushed the old man into the train car—just before the doors closed—he bared his yellow teeth and whispered to me.
"You're a good man," he said.

Leaving me on the platform, the train departed. For some reason caught in an ugly frenzy, I kept spitting compulsively across the railroad tracks. I was desperately fighting down nausea—maybe from the liquor. Then I boarded the next train and met you. When I gave you that overcoat back then, it wasn’t just because you looked cold. I needed to verify something again. To make that murky feeling concrete. That old man’s jeering smile when he whispered—it still clung stubbornly to my mind even then.

“Do you think I regretted the matter of the overcoat the next morning?”

But rather than that, I'll tell you about Shibuya Station.
"At that time, I happened to find you collapsed drunk."
"Or rather, the overcoat."
"When you called me a robber back then, I actually felt a cowering thrill race through my body."
"But even in that moment, I knew it was a sham thrill."
"After all, it was originally my overcoat."
"And this matters—even though that thrill was counterfeit, it felt disgustingly good to me."
"That sensation was something utterly novel."
"My legs hadn't felt so light in recent memory as when I walked away from your sleeping form."
"Why does stripping someone else's overcoat feel this satisfying?"
Why was that?
Thinking this through the pressure from behind, I pressed my shoulder firmly against the chest of the man serving as a plug at the doorway.
That's when I noticed—the fingers gripping the brass rod had gone white, drained of blood.
He was clutching it that desperately.
No wonder.
The middle-aged man's body hung halfway out of the train car. Each lurch drove my shoulder harder against his chest with the crowd's weight behind it.
But human pride is a terrifying thing.
Even then, the middle-aged man kept laughing.
If you could call it laughter.
I saw clearly how he contorted his face trying to maintain that smile.

People were gradually filling the car.
There was no way to move.
That young woman who'd been at the door earlier was now beside me - from my hunched-over position, I could see part of her lower body.
She too seemed immobilized by the crowd, but somehow her skirt had ridden up and stayed pressed that way, exposing her white thigh to my view.
Despite the cold, she wore no stockings.
A stark white thigh.
Each time the train hit a curve, the muscle tensed.
A hard shove from behind forced my shoulder into the middle-aged man's chest.
He gasped.

“Bro... w-wait.”
“D-don’t push—don’t push...”
“This backpack…”

And then came another forceful shove.
The middle-aged man had already turned deathly pale by then.
There was nothing I could do either.
When I leaned to the opposite side, it was the very moment he tried to regain his grip on the rod and steady himself.
A sudden violent recoil surged through the car, and as I barely clung to the doorframe, the excess force from my shoulder sent his body hurtling outward.
It was over in an instant.
A blood-freezing moment of terror.
His fingers slipped weakly from the rod, desperately slapping at my overcoat's chest.
I instinctively batted his hand away.
With a sharp bestial cry trailing behind him, he tumbled out of the speeding train car.
I clung burning-hot to the doorframe, legs jammed tight around the backpack.

“He fell!”
“Someone fell!”

Voices shouted from somewhere around there.
However, because the middle-aged man had fallen, the area around the door became somewhat more bearable.
I still couldn’t stop trembling.

“Fell? What fell?”

From the rear of the car came a leisurely voice.

“A person.”

Someone answered.
“Who? Who fell?” rose from the murmuring crowd,

“Who cares who it was? You’ll know by tomorrow’s paper.”

It was that relaxed voice.
A burst of laughter erupted.
Everyone near me laughed too.
Especially that woman—the young woman the middle-aged man had taken the place for—let out a metallic screech of a laugh and doubled over.
I clearly saw that white thigh quiver alluringly with laughter.

“Do you think that was humorous?”

“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t think so—but I was laughing too.”
“I wasn’t amused.”
“But the laughter kept welling up convulsively, like hiccups.”
I clung to the doorframe, my whole body trembling as I laughed hysterically.
Tears streamed down my face while I kept up that shrill, wheezing laugh.
Until we reached the terminal, I laughed until my stomach skin burned with pain.
There was a button missing from my overcoat.
That middle-aged man must have torn it off.
When I pictured that good-natured Samaritan—overflowing with chivalry—clutching one of those yellow buttons after all his efforts, tumbling down like a grub and lying cold by the trackside, I found myself powerless against this laughter that kept surging up endlessly from somewhere deep inside.

When we reached the terminal, people disembarked like a receding tide.
With faces that had completely forgotten about the middle-aged man, they jostled to exit the car first.
I stayed until the very end.
Then I heaved that backpack the middle-aged man had left behind onto my shoulders.
The backpack felt unbearably cumbersome to carry.
I shouldered it, transferred to the Yamanote Line, and eventually reached home.
I couldn't say how many times I'd thought of ditching this backpack before getting home.
That's how heavy it was.
Walking with my back bent low, my mood sank deeper into gloom with each step.

When I arrived home, my wife came out.
My wife was an utterly unemotional woman who had never shown surprise at anything.
She opened the backpack I had carried in and said in a calm voice, “Oh, hijimi.”

“They’re freshwater clams!” I bellowed.
Indeed, I thought—if they were freshwater clams, they should be heavy.

My wife continued scooping up the freshwater clams with both palms, acting as though my shouting hadn’t registered at all,

"They're saltwater ones."

I heard her say.
I remained sprawled on the entrance threshold and barked back: "Tide-harvested! Just lay out my futon already."
My body hung limp like soaked cotton batting while my nerves bristled like split kindling.

And then I got into bed.
The day was already dark, but I had no appetite.
My wife seemed to begin her needlework by the bedside.
The backpack remained as it was in the alcove.
I buried myself up to my chin in the futon and closed my eyes.
And I thought about what had happened today.

Strange as it may sound, about carrying off that middle-aged man’s backpack—I hadn’t felt any guilt whatsoever.
There was no resistance in my heart at all.
I’d taken the backpack as easily as if it were my own.
What was this?
Thinking that, I grew slightly agitated.
When that middle-aged man’s hand desperately tried to grab my overcoat again, I roughly knocked it away.
Had I done that consciously?
I felt like I’d done it deliberately, yet also like it had been unconscious.
But I remember this:
When I pressed down with my leg on the backpack that tried to fall with him then—that was absolutely something I did on purpose.

What kind of family did that middle-aged man have? What sort of wife and children did he possess, what manner of house did he inhabit? The reward for his capricious chivalry had been a single overcoat button and an unnatural death. He hadn't even managed to secure others' pity. Now within my skull—that middle-aged man, the battered accountant, the shrilly giggling girl, you, then all those people encircling me—they formed a single sequence, a two-dimensional composition bearing down on me. I lay rigid beneath the futon's weight, eyes clenched tight, tracking the phosphenes blooming riotously behind my eyelids.

A faint popping sound reached my ears.
It was a sound like something licking—persistently clinging to my ears and refusing to fade.
I pulled my face out of the futon and shouted.

“What are you licking?”

“I’m not licking anything at all.”

My wife’s voice answered.
The sound didn’t stop.
I finally sat up abruptly on the floor.

“What is that sound?”

My wife set aside her needlework and listened intently with me.
The sound seemed to be coming from the alcove.
While carefully tracing the sound, I shifted my body toward it.

The freshwater clams were whimpering.

“Do you know that freshwater clams whimper?”
I didn’t know.
I was surprised.
Thousands of freshwater clams were pushing and jostling each other inside the backpack while whimpering faintly with soft clicks.
I pressed my ear to the backpack and listened intently to that whimpering sound.
It was a lonely voice.
It was an oppressive, soul-crushing sound.
My shoulders grew cold and trembling began, but I didn’t remove my ear.
And I was thinking.
What was it that I had always been telling myself until now?
Wish for good things.
Give generously to others.
Have I truly believed that all along?

Dimly, I was beginning to grasp it now. That all the goodness I had striven to pursue until now had been false. Goodness unaccompanied by joy does not exist. It is camouflage. It is evil. Japan was defeated. In this cramped land, this multitude of people must survive. The backpack’s freshwater clams. A crowded train. The total amount of happiness for Japanese people has been maximized. If one person becomes happy, by that exact amount someone else becomes unhappy. It was as if the middle-aged man’s fall had created space for those of us who remained. We should desire others’ misfortune rather than wish for our own happiness. Rather than seeking happiness that doesn’t even exist, we must first push those close to us into misfortune. As long as we are living beings, surviving is the highest purpose; all other thoughts are mere sentimentality. The corpse clutching a button, the whimpering clams, my inarticulate wife, and me—it was an ugly composition. Ugly though it may be, I'll keep living there. Squeezing out shallow goodwill and chivalry from my chest, I resolved at that moment to keep living.—

When he cut off his story here, The Man gulped down the cold coffee on the table.
Outside, evening dusk had settled in unnoticed.

“So?” I urged.

“The next day,” said The Man, wiping his lips with his sleeve, “I took the backpack out and spread it open at a street corner. In less than an hour, I sold them all off and made a considerable amount of money. The amount was far greater than I’d expected. I then went out to Funabashi again and bought freshwater clams. I’ve already sold them off today. This empty backpack is proof.—That’s the end of the story.”

When he finished speaking, The Man raised his face and plastered a shadow-laden smile across his cheeks.

“It wasn’t as interesting as you made it out to be,” I said. “But well—I didn’t get bored.”
“To your new departure, I think I’ll toast with this cold coffee.”

“Wait,” The Man said, raising his hand.
“The equinox isn’t far off now, and I don’t need this armor anymore.
“I intend to sell off this overcoat now.”
“And tonight I’ll drink with you.”
“Postpone the toast until then.”

“That’s fine too,” I answered.
“You really do notice what matters.
“But before selling—let me wear that overcoat one last time.”

I slipped into the coat he’d removed.
The familiar soft weight settled across my shoulders.
I shoved my hand into its pocket.
Several small hard objects grazed my fingertips.

“Freshwater clams.”

I took them out and arranged them on the table—there were about ten.
Then noticing this, The Man checked his suit pocket, and they came out from there too.
Two more emerged from the trouser creases.

“Weird. Where did so many of them creep in from?”

The Man said this while making a slightly displeased face.

After that, we left the café and sold off the overcoat at a small secondhand shop facing the square.
That loose button—I tore it off right there in the shop and put it in my suit pocket.

That night, we took out the freshwater clams from earlier at a bar, had them make miso soup, and used it as a snack to down copious amounts of sake lees shochu.
Completely plastered, I waved goodbye to him in front of the station.

After that, I did not meet him again.
I think he probably became an ordinary black-market dealer after that.
I don’t feel any particular desire to see him again.

The yellow hexagonal button I’d put in my pocket that night had no particular use, so I left it on the desk. Then the other day a child from the boarding house came and asked for it as a toy, so I gave it away.
I caught sight of them playing with it a few times, but these days I didn’t seem to see that anymore.
I supposed they had grown tired of it.