Pathway to Japanese Literature

That child dislikes me.
No—he certainly hates me.

I called him a child just now, but he might no longer be one. Since the war, children’s statures have been sprouting upward, and it seems we’ve increasingly lost any clear point at which to distinguish adults from children. Even when their speech remains childish, there are cases where their stature reaches 180 centimeters; conversely, even when their demeanor remains childlike, their words alone become glibly shrewd—such ambiguous cases frequently defy categorization. Since I’ve now turned thirty-seven and have no involvement with their world, it shouldn’t matter to me—but still, this lack of clear boundaries isn’t a good thing.

A few years ago, I accompanied a senior colleague on a sketching trip to Kyushu.
I saw various things, heard various things, and drew various things there, but what surprised me was the sheer size of Kyushu’s edible plants.
When I asked for a Kyushu cucumber to go with my beer, a nearly foot-long specimen thumped down onto the plate.
When, startled, I requested a slightly thinner one,

“This one’s better.
“The skinny ones with flowers still attached—they’re lacking nutrients!”

The eggplants were the same way.
The long eggplants used in Tokyo stews would alter their shape and form to appear on plates.
When I found this strange and asked why, I was told that over there, when they say *nasubi* [eggplant], this is what they mean, and the round ones are specially called “kinchaku eggplants.”
In Kanto, round ones are standard, and they call the long ones “long eggplants.”
In other words, it’s the exact opposite.
The fundamental approach to thinking was different.

Children these days—or semi-adults—struck me as resembling these Kyushu cucumbers and eggplants.
They indeed possessed something that stubbornly rejected one’s appetite and understanding.
Where it came from, I didn’t really know.
Nor did I particularly want to understand.

That child’s name is Heiwa.
Given that his name is Heiwa, he must have been born after the war ended.
In an era when people were determined to win at all costs, there’s no way anyone would name their child Heiwa—Peace—you see.

I had been hearing Heiwa-kun’s voice for some time.
Diagonally behind my house stood the Kameda household.
To that house, about once every two or three days, the boy’s voice would come visiting to play.

“Kameda-kun!”

“Kameda-kūn!”

In the alley leading to the Kameda house stood my studio right alongside a ditch.
However，the side facing that alley consisted entirely of a wooden wall，with only a small skylight positioned high up—from my side，I couldn’t see anything at all.
Just by hearing his voice—what sort of face he had，what sort of appearance he presented—I never actually saw the boy.
But there was a certain quality to his intonation and vocal mannerisms when calling out to his friend，I must say.

“Kameda-kūn!”

He put an accent on the “kūn.” When I heard rod sellers calling out on spring afternoons or caught the shrill of a street flute late at night—though their atmospheres differed—there was a peculiar melancholy tinged with nostalgia.

The boy’s voice had been gradually changing these past few days. Of course, his way of calling out and his intonation remained the same, but the quality of his voice had undergone a transformation. What had once been a clear, penetrating voice had grown oddly hoarse and dry.

"Ah.
That fellow.
He’s caught a cold.
If only he’d take some medicine soon."

While continuing my painting work or lying on my makeshift bed, I would think such thoughts.

"If it gets worse, it’ll be serious.
Doesn’t the school give them vaccines or something?"

However，that wasn't a cold after all．
It was his voice changing．
For what was supposed to be hoarseness from illness，I thought it sounded unnaturally thick．
Colds eventually pass，but this roughness not only lingered－it showed every sign of hardening into permanence．

"So he's finally hit puberty？"

When this realization came，I felt both urgency and melancholy．
Did this urgency mean his vocal maturation marked my own accumulation of wasted years？
Yet these desiccated human bonds－I cherish them．
Beyond that wooden wall，a boy whose face I'd never seen had ripened unnoticed．
Through nothing but his friend-calling voice had I secretly tracked this growth．
Neither trespassing nor being trespassed against，we maintained this vague one-way tether．
Such parched connections between people－this is what I prize．
Consider aquarium glass．
Fish swim or float inert beyond its surface．
Spectators stare blankly from their dry world．
That relationship suits me perfectly．
Hence my daily mantras：
Don't initiate．
Don't engage．
Don't lean out．

This was what I'd acquired over thirty-some years—a hobby you might call it, or a survival strategy—well, something along those lines.
But reality never complies so neatly, I must say.
It's like dragging silk across a shorn scalp—catching on stray bristles, snagging on uneven patches, tangling in wayward flakes.
An exercise in futility.

With this way of talking, the story doesn't seem to be getting anywhere, does it?
Let me change my way of telling.

You,

“Chi! Ke! Ta!”

Do you know the phrase "Chi! Ke! Ta!"?
Well, let’s put the Chi! Ke! Ta! matter aside for now.

As you know，my studio had been a remodeled annex of a certain house，and I had lived there for nearly five years by then．The landlady was an elderly distant relative of mine who tended toward willfulness yet maintained an easygoing nature，so I found myself putting down roots there，so to speak．

Since it was a detached single-person residence，I maintained neither an independent household nor exact freeloader status．In that suspended state of being，the very ambiguity brought me comfort．My neighborhood interactions were limited strictly to necessities—public baths，the tobacco shop，prepared food vendors，greengrocers，liquor stores，and other transactions within my narrow sphere of daily life．Everything else could safely be ignored．When I spoke of “ignoring，” this didn’t mean deliberately shutting my eyes—being flesh and blood，I still saw what lay plainly visible．I simply refrained from peering deeper．In other words，it resembled observing through aquarium glass，I must say．

However, society didn't seem to accept a lifestyle like mine as anything proper.
It appeared there were those who called me an eccentric behind my back.
As for myself, I consider myself the most proper one here.
This manifested in both overt and covert forms.
In overt cases:

“It must be inconvenient living all alone.”

“things like,” or perhaps even more—

“Cooking for yourself must be such a hassle.”

and then pushily threw in extra greens or meat.
I didn’t particularly want the extras, but neither did I feel strongly enough to refuse what they gave.
I ended up taking them with a smile.
Perhaps to them, I appeared not as fish in an aquarium, but as fish in a basket—or so I couldn’t help but wonder.
They weren’t satisfied with merely watching—they poked and peered, even cracked open the gills for a look—it was exactly that kind of behavior.
First and foremost, it should have been called meddling.
Since I, the one on the receiving end, thought so, there could be no mistake about it.
Whether it was goodwill, kindness, or unnecessary meddling—that wasn’t for the one acting to decide, but rather for the one on the receiving end to determine.

“Why don’t you settle down soon? You.”

I just laughed and, as a rule, didn’t respond.
I didn’t need to respond, and if I had, it would only have complicated matters.
The mere fact that I didn’t respond seemed to have me pegged as an eccentric.
Rather than just an eccentric, there were hints that something worse was being spread covertly.
People didn’t seem to say it to my face clearly, though.

“It’s because you’re living alone in that coffin-like house like some bloated toad that you’ve gotten sick.”

My studio appeared somewhat square-shaped at first glance, having been remodeled from an old detached house with the ceiling raised.
However, it wasn’t as long and narrow as a coffin.

“When I go fishing, I’ll take you along—you should come.
You need more exposure to sunlight.
Don’t get all cooped up.
No need to prepare a fishing rod.
I’ll lend you the one I have at home.”

The one who says this for me is Dr.Akagi, a physician living in the neighborhood.
Dr.Akagi was already over sixty—a portly physician who had apparently crossed over to America, endured hardships through diligent study, and learned medical arts.
According to the man himself, though there were rumors in parts of the neighborhood that his claims were rather dubious.
He was from a cold northern village, and his likening my studio to a coffin wasn’t entirely far-fetched—perhaps he was recalling the seated coffins he had seen as a child.
I don’t really understand why this old doctor thought I was ill—why he’d become so convinced of it.
He must have had his own reasons.

Dr.Akagi, despite his appearance, had a prickly temperament—snapping irritably at what displeased him or refusing to examine patients—and thus his reputation in the neighborhood seemed rather poor.
Thus, while his patient count remained extremely small, the old doctor—

“What do they know? What do those neighborhood idiots know about my skills?”

He didn’t give it a second thought.
At least, he was putting on the pose of not giving it a second thought.
Moreover, given his advanced age, he likely had no desire to toil away, and with his sons each independently employed at major hospitals, he was presumably free from any pressing concerns about his future.
If he saw three or five patients a day, that was when he closed up shop for the day.
However, old Dr.Akagi’s clinic was a pioneering establishment in the neighborhood, with an old gate structure that gave it an air of inaccessibility.
Even if the gateposts were leaning, their form remained imposing, and passing through them to navigate the plantings and step up onto the dark genkan step—surely the locals must have felt some resistance to this process.
Thus, the neighborhood people avoided this place and headed to the recently built, stylish new clinic-like hospitals instead, slipping on dry slippers and waiting patiently for their turn in sunlit waiting rooms while watching television.

Thus, with time on his hands, old Dr.Akagi would go fishing, take walks with his thick cane, and drop by my studio while out and about. Was it to relieve his boredom, or did he have some interest in me?

The first time I passed through the gate of Akagi Clinic was about two years ago. One day, I suddenly craved grated daikon. After buying a daikon from the greengrocer and generously sprinkling dried baby sardines over it, I was about to enthusiastically dig in when my chopsticks flicked oddly—sending one sardine, accompanied by a clump of grated daikon, flying straight into my eye. Oh, I was so startled. More than startling, my eyeballs burned with a piercing, acrid saltiness, and I instinctively leapt to my feet.

I hurriedly washed my eye, but the salty sensation lingered with a persistent gritty feeling like something rolling around inside.
Judging I should show it to a doctor, I promptly rushed off to Akagi Clinic.
Dr.Akagi wasn’t an ophthalmologist, but I didn’t have the luxury to dwell on that.
At other clinics you’d be kept waiting, you see.
Having a dried baby sardine swimming in my eye might seem poetic at first glance, but personally I was frantic with worry about going blind.
Fortunately Dr.Akagi was home.
He flipped my eyelids inside out and searched with a flashlight before declaring no sardine remained.

“It’s fine.
Human eyes don’t go blind that easily.”

When I tried to leave after receiving the eye drops, the old doctor stopped me and said he’d give me a free checkup while I was there.
The old doctor must have been terribly bored.
Had it been my usual self, I would have refused such meddling, but at that moment I found myself agreeing.
The appeal of getting something for free likely played some role too.
The examination results showed normal blood pressure and a slightly enlarged liver,

“You shouldn’t overdo the drinking and smoking.”

That day I went home after that, and when about half a month had passed—as I was drinking alone in my studio—my face grew strangely feverish. Just as I thought this odd, my heart began pounding like a rapid bell: thud-thud-thud.
I asked the people from the main house to call Akagi Clinic, and during that time, I lay on the bed, panting hoarsely.
Before long, Dr.Akagi appeared carrying a large bag.

“You’ll be fine. There’s not a single case of anyone dying from palpitations.”

After a brief examination, he said this and gave me some kind of injection. While waiting for the palpitations to subside, the old doctor paced around the studio, gazed at the half-finished paintings, then said in a dubious tone:

“You call this a painting? To me, this doesn’t seem like a painting at all.”

It was from that time that Dr.Akagi began occasionally dropping by my house during his walks.
At times he would sit on the veranda for an hour or two, becoming engrossed in conversation.
The topics were generally idle chatter and tales of olden days.
The story about washing dishes in America was something I heard five or six times.
The old doctor did most of the talking, while I remained perpetually in the listener's role.
Whenever he left, he would invariably offer me a piece of advice.

“If you keep painting like this in such a peculiar building, you’ll turn out like Jingoro.”
“I’m not saying this to be cruel.”
“Take up fishing.”
“Fishing!”

I didn't particularly welcome the old doctor's visits, but neither did I find them particularly bothersome.
After all, all I had to do was listen.
When it came to his advice, staying silent and laughing it off sufficed.

Now regarding Jingoro—the old doctor didn't think well of him.
Or rather, it might've been more accurate to say he disapproved of Jingoro's entire family.
The reason being that Jingoro had entered a different hospital instead of the one Dr.Akagi recommended.
In such matters, doctors turn out to be surprisingly sensitive creatures.
And given Dr.Akagi's particular temperament, he seemed to have taken this as a severe blow to his pride.

“Entering a hospital like that—he’s truly an idiot. You. The one funding that hospital is a certain ward councilman, but his real job’s being a yakuza boss, I tell you. Trying to profit off mental patients—it’s unconscionable.”

The hospital Dr.Akagi recommended was Tokyo Metropolitan M Hospital. The truth is, Dr.Akagi himself has his episodes about once a year. Being a doctor, he quickly notices any changes in his own condition. Then he promptly heads off to M Hospital and checks himself in. The townspeople generally know about this. One reason Akagi Clinic isn’t thriving is because of that.

“Dr.Akagi’s checked into Matsuzawa again, I hear.”

“Oh my.”
“That doctor’s such a handful too.”

I had heard such conversations at the market.
But voluntarily checking oneself into a hospital—wasn’t that actually proof of soundness?
The townspeople’s way of thinking seemed completely backward to me.
In that I hit it off with Dr.Akagi—and given that the old doctor’s visits to my studio were already common knowledge—there seemed to me a hint that they had judged me to be adjacent to that category.
Rather than an eccentric, they phrased it as something like an odd duck.
Even if they thought that way, it didn’t particularly bother me.
After all, every human has that element within them.

However, let’s set aside Dr.Akagi’s story for later.
The problem was Jingoro.

To be precise, his name was Mori Jingoro—though Dr.Akagi would simply call out,

“Jingoro.
Jingoro.”

Since the doctor addressed him that way, I followed suit—he being the owner of the tobacco shop near my studio.
A small-framed man in his fifties with sallow skin, he carried himself with a perpetually nervous air.
This same Jingoro who now seemed so timid had apparently once swaggered about with great arrogance—something I found difficult to imagine.
This was during postwar tobacco shortages, around the time Peace and Corona cigarettes first appeared on the market.
He would fix a daily sales quota.
Six o’clock sharp each morning,
when crowds had already formed lines, he’d rattle open the wooden shutters just before the hour and settle grandly behind the counter.
Just as you expected him to start selling, he wouldn’t.
Instead he’d fetch the kettle from the electric heater, brew tea at his leisure, leave customers waiting indefinitely, then sip his drink with evident satisfaction.
Sometimes he’d click his tongue sharply and, once properly warmed up, brew not just one pot but a second.
The customers fumed silently—any complaint meant no sale—until he finally drained his cup.
Only then would he announce in a vexed tone,

“I won’t sell to anyone who needs change.”
“You got that?”

He already knew from the start how many he would sell that day, and with exactly that number of people lined up, he could have just started selling right away—but no.
He would deliberately do such spiteful things.
He wanted to flaunt his power.

Eventually, the money gripped by customers would be placed on the glass counter of the sales area, one after another, in exchange for cigarettes. On winter mornings, steam would apparently rise waveringly from the piled-up money. The customers' resentment and obsession must have been quite intense.

However, it was only natural that this high-handed attitude would suddenly lose its effectiveness once tobacco became widely available. As for Jingoro, he had expected that situation to continue indefinitely, yet the recovery progressed surprisingly quickly. Having lost his "divine power," Jingoro was disappointed; moreover, those he had mistreated until now were glaring at him as if to say serves you right, and since no customers would come to buy anything if he remained at the counter, he finally relinquished the sales area to his wife Fuku. And he began working in outside sales. Around the time I moved here, I would often see him walking down the road, clutching his briefcase, head often bowed, with hurried steps. He was probably either a moneylender or doing work akin to a clerk for one. Probably the latter. From the way he walked, I got that impression. It was as if he were trailing some dark shadow.

That Jingoro had started behaving strangely about a year ago.
According to Dr.Akagi—though he himself wasn’t a specialist and hadn’t conducted an official examination—it seemed there were signs of alcoholism and a depressive state had become clearly apparent.
He was fundamentally a timid and weak-willed man.
Combined with midlife changes compounding this disposition while masking his frustrations with alcohol, he had finally become alcohol’s prisoner.
When I asked Fuku-san,

“It’s strange, you see.”
“He’ll leave like he’s going out, then suddenly come back after a short while and start peering around the house or opening up closets.”
“He’s asking if any men have come by.”
“He suspects I’m having an affair or something.”

Fuku-san showed a sodden-like smile.
She was plump unlike her husband—or rather, not so much plump as swollen like a sweet bun.
That she isn’t a particularly attractive woman is something I can guarantee with full confidence.

“When he suspects me that much, it’s mortifying in front of my child.”

Mori Tobacco Shop sold tobacco alongside cheap candies and such, but recently they partitioned off part of the store and began offering prepared-food oden for sale. At about ten yen per skewer for cheap oden, the soy sauce flavor seemed a bit too strong, but being convenient, it apparently sold fairly well. I also used it sometimes when making side dishes became too bothersome. And although it wasn't something they could do openly, they always had second-grade sake and shochu ready, secretly pouring them into cups and serving them. In other words, they used the oden as a pretext to serve it chilled. Ever since Jingoro lost his sanity, their income had drastically decreased, so they had apparently conceived this black-market business as a last resort. After all, being so convenient, they even built up regular clientele.

The alcoholic beverages were stored inside the cupboard and kept under lock.
When there was an order, they would take them out, pour them, and lock it again.
I had thought it was a precaution against inspections, but that wasn’t the case.
Among the regulars was a bachelor named Okubo, around thirty years old, who worked at some government office—and this man was a goggle-eyed busybody with an insatiable curiosity.
He had heard.

“Madam. Why do you lock it every single time? What a hassle.”

“I think so too, but…”

Fuku-san’s face took on a troubled look.

“So you’re saying it’s under the pretense of being your husband’s personal liquor?”

“It’s actually the opposite.”

Fuku-san used to be a sullen, unfriendly woman who managed the tobacco business with that demeanor, but when it came to selling alcohol and oden, she had to make appropriate responses.
She was a relatively honest woman, constitutionally incapable of lying.

“If I don’t keep it locked, my husband will drink it all before I know it.”

“Hmm.”
“If he drinks up the stock meant for customers, you’d have no excuse left.”
“What a predicament.”

Okubo let out an exaggerated sigh while clenching an oden skewer sideways in his mouth.

“Why don’t you have him see a psychiatrist sooner rather than later? As things are now, there’s no end in sight.”

“I think so too, but if I bring that up, he just flares up in anger. It’s just so frustrating.”

If it were me, I’d dismiss it as unwanted meddling and ignore it, but around here we’re bound by neighborly obligations, so I couldn’t just outright refuse. Okubo should have left it at that, but instead he got carried away and made a proposal.

“If you want, I’ll persuade him for you.”
“I’m a bureaucrat—my word’ll carry more weight than yours, Madam.”

He truly went and said something completely unnecessary.

In the tobacco sales area, her son Heiwa sat studying.
Seeing how his ears occasionally twitched, there was no doubt he was hearing our conversation.
Heiwa’s build took after his mother’s—quite large-framed—while his face resembled his father’s, a sullen expression casting shadows across his brow.
When this generation comes of age, I suppose even this town’s neighborly character might vanish altogether.

It was not long after that when an incident occurred in which Jingoro lashed out at Okubo precisely because of his unnecessary meddling. In the fact that he scratched instead of throwing a punch lies the vivid manifestation of Jingoro’s true character. However, I did not witness the scene myself.

To be fair, Okubo had recommended a medical examination, but that wasn’t why he got scratched. Well, that may have been an indirect cause, but the direct reason lay elsewhere. One day, a postcard addressed to Jingoro was mistakenly delivered to Okubo. It was a postcard from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office. If it was a mistake, he could have just put it back in the postbox, but Okubo took that postcard and sauntered off to deliver it to Mori Tobacco Shop. The content was a disposition notice,

“We hereby notify you that the suspected perjury case regarding so-and-so, which you had reported, was disposed of on [date] as indicated below.”

Disposition:
Non-prosecution”

The prosecutor’s seal was stamped firmly.
Even though Jingoro had accused someone of perjury, a judgment of non-prosecution was handed down, I supposed.
A man as nosy as Okubo would never let something like that slip by.

“What kind of case was it? What witnesses were called? What testimony was given?”
“You can’t figure out anything from just this postcard!”
“Right?”
“You think so too, don’t you?”

Okubo pursed his lips and reported to me.

“So I went to ask about the circumstances.”

“Do you have that right?”

“Of course there’s that! I’ve gone out of my way to deliver the postcard, after all.”

This kind of worldly logic—if you could call it that—was something I simply couldn’t comprehend, but the man himself remained convinced of it, apparently stemming from what might charitably be termed goodwill—the sort that made him want to offer advice if given half a chance. There was no way I could intervene.

“So then that guy—right in the middle of our conversation—goes and scratches my face.”
“Just like a damn cat.”
“We’ve got to get him into a hospital or this’ll turn dangerous—there’ll be no controlling it.”

There were scratch marks running from his temple down to his cheek.
As I gazed blankly at this, Okubo harshly raised his voice.

“Why are you smirking?”
“This isn’t a laughing matter, I’m telling you!”

Even though it was just a scratch, since he had injured someone, Fuku-san couldn’t ignore it.
Since Okubo, her counterpart in this matter, was not only nosy but also quite the noisy type, Fuku-san finally went to consult Dr.Akagi’s clinic.
The reasons she chose Dr.Akagi’s clinic were that the doctor himself was inclined to take a personal interest, and that the clinic had few patients and its waiting room was always empty, making it less likely for rumors to spread.
Then Dr.Akagi answered immediately.

“I’m no specialist—can’t tell.”
“Go to M Hospital.”
“To M Hospital!”

Later, Fuku-san confided in me.

“But M Hospital? That’s going too far!”
“Doesn’t it make him look like an actual lunatic?”
“It’s so shameful I can’t even tell anyone.”

Why was being admitted to M Hospital considered shameful? If it was an illness, wasn’t that simply unavoidable? I found this reliance on conventional wisdom absurd, but I refrained from saying so. It stemmed from my principle of not overstepping boundaries. Were I to carelessly speak up, people might start suspecting that eccentric painter of having some vested interest in M Hospital. Before long, they could easily begin eyeing me with suspicion too. Not that I particularly minded rumors—living quietly beneath others’ notice simply suited my nature better.

Due to these circumstances, Jingoro was finally hospitalized. Of course, they deceived him and took him there. The one who went to great lengths during the hospitalization process—handling paperwork like registering him as a publicly funded patient—was Okubo; being a government employee, he likely had numerous connections in that field. But even if he did have connections, where on earth did that passion come from—meddling in the affairs of complete strangers who weren't even family? There's nothing wrong with being kind to others, but devoting oneself entirely to it struck me as a misguided way to live. Though if he claimed that's precisely what made his life worth living, then I supposed there was nothing to be done.

Let us tentatively call that hospital Q.
According to Dr. Akagi, it was one of those fraudulent hospitals—psychiatric institutions that could turn quite a profit depending on management, apparently.
Since the patients were lunatics, they didn’t complain no matter what you fed them, and you could cram them into communal wards without issue.
The guardians, concerned about social appearances, didn’t protest.
Tuberculosis patients would band together and resist poor treatment, but lunatics lacked that solidarity.
In other words, it meant they could treat them however they liked.
You couldn’t even accidentally develop neurosis these days.
For publicly funded patients, the hospitalization fee came to 15,000 yen per month with medication costs of 3,000 yen—18,000 yen total.
Cramming them into communal wards while feeding them slop yet charging 18,000 yen—the management must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
Poor Jingoro finally became one of those 18,000-yen patients.

When Jingoro realized he’d been tricked into coming there, he reportedly put up a bit of a fight. However, when burly nurses suddenly appeared, he immediately quieted down, underwent examination, and obediently entered the communal ward. Those who accompanied him were Fuku-san and Okubo. That Okubo had joined them despite it not being a Sunday was likely due to his procedural responsibilities, though it made his government office workplace appear thoroughly idle. We’re even paying the salaries of these sorts of people. No wonder taxes are so high.

Four or five days later, Jingoro came trotting back to the Mori Tobacco Shop one night. He suddenly flung open the glass door, surveyed the entire house with dead-fish eyes, shoved Fuku-san aside to rummage through closets, and even inspected dresser drawers in the end—or so I heard. And he said.

“Hey.”
“Where did you hide him?”

“What man? There’s no one here.”
“That’s absurd.”

Fuku-san felt a chill but retorted sharply.

“What happened with the hospital?”

“I hate that place.”
“The food’s awful, and it’s full of lunatics.”
“Doesn’t suit me.”
“Now hand him over!”

“Him? Who are you even talking about?”

“Yeah.”
“Don’t know his name but I know what’s what.”
“Don’t keep trampling your husband like this.”
“Stop mocking me!”
“Heiwa.”
“Hey.”
“Go buy sake.”
“I’ll sort you out while I drink.”

Heiwa remained seated at the sales counter, his face stiffening like stone, and did not respond.

“Go call Okubo while you’re at it—that bastard deceived me, locked me up in that hospital! He’s an outrageous piece of work.”

Since Jingoro was shouting at the top of his voice, the neighborhood woman hurried off to call Okubo.
When Okubo rushed over, strangely enough, Jingoro immediately deflated and became docile.
Could he have associated it with the sight of the nursing staff?
After all, since even the workings of sane people’s minds are beyond our understanding, there’s no way we could possibly comprehend the actions of those who’d lost their bearings.

So that day, they called the hospital, and an older woman who seemed to be a nurse came over.
After being variously admonished, Jingoro obediently let himself be taken away by the woman and returned to the hospital, or so I heard.
At that moment, the woman said.

“Please do not allow patients to keep any pocket money.”
“We will keep custody of the money and distribute it as needed.”

After that, the monitoring at the hospital also seemed to have become somewhat stricter.
According to Okubo, those like Jingoro weren’t in a pathological state where they’d commit violence or cause trouble for others, so they were being housed in open communal wards.
So he didn’t come back for about a month.
Because his pocket money had been taken away, he couldn’t ride the train even if he wanted to.
Walking home was far too distant.

However, Jingoro’s delusional jealousy had not subsided with this.
It seemed to flare up sporadically and recur in cycles.
There might be individual differences, but such was Jingoro’s case.
Suddenly preparing himself,

“I’m going home now.”

Having declared this, he tried to leave. Since they couldn’t have him leaving and causing problems for the hospital, they restrained Jingoro and administered electric shock therapy. I hadn’t seen it myself, but it was said to be a rather violent form of therapy. When they ran electricity through both temples, he went into violent, epileptic-like convulsions before collapsing limp. He lost consciousness.

“It’s rather unusual to find someone so resistant to electric shocks, I must say.”

That’s what the doctor had been saying, I heard. Typically, undergoing that harsh treatment once would leave a patient comatose for several hours, and even after regaining consciousness, their memories would remain unclear—but Jingoro was different. After receiving the shock, he would snap awake in about five minutes and try to go out again. Again, they restrained him and administered the electric current. This time he regained consciousness in about ten minutes and staggered toward the entrance. The doctors, now stubbornly determined, administered a third round. When they administered it three times, even Jingoro finally went limp,

“Hmm, where am I? Why am I here?” In this manner, he returned to the communal ward, wrapped himself in a cracker-thin futon, and began snoring loudly. How did that fidgety Jingoro develop such fierce resistance to electricity? This likely wasn’t a matter of obsession or any such mental fortitude—it must have been a constitutional peculiarity. There could be no other explanation.

As for how the focus of Jingoro’s jealous delusions became warped in his mind and fixed upon me—that I couldn’t begin to fathom. I had no memory of any transgression, and as I’d mentioned before, since Fuku-san—who resembled nothing so much as an anpan bun—was a woman utterly devoid of charm, she had apparently rebuffed him with exasperation when he pressed the matter. I learned this from Okubo.

“I haven’t sunk so low that I’d fool around with some crab of a man. Quit your deluded nonsense already.”

I asked Okubo.

“So, this ‘crab-like man’—are you referring to me?”

“That’s right.”
“But I wasn’t the one who said it—it was Fuku-san.”
“You shouldn’t dwell on it too much.”

“It’s not that I mind, but why is it that you aren’t suspected while I am? You’re the one who’s been meddling so much, but I haven’t done anything.”
“It’s precisely because you’re not doing anything that you’re suspected.”

Okubo glared up at me, his eyes bulging.
In those eyes, there seemed to linger a faint tinge of hatred.
I muttered, feeling a sudden wave of fatigue weigh down my back.

“I see. I don’t understand what it means, but I suppose that’s how it is.”

Jingoro had once again fled the hospital and come home. He had begged the head nurse for bath money under the pretense of wanting to visit the public bathhouse, used that cash to play pachinko, exchanged his winnings of Peace cigarettes for money, and then used that as train fare to return home. After causing a commotion by shouting my name but failing to return from the bathhouse for some time, the hospital had dispatched a nurse to wait at the Mori Tobacco Shop—so Jingoro was promptly taken back. According to the nurse’s account, they had grown suspicious because he always returned to the hospital still unwashed despite claiming to visit the baths. Earning through pachinko doesn’t seem easy either.

Okubo added.

“Since he shouted so loudly that the neighbors heard, Fuku-san asked me to tell you not to come drink here anymore.”
“Don’t come around anymore.”

“If you tell me not to come, I won’t go.”

While replying absently, I thought about Jingoro.
He sat still in a corner of the communal ward, thinking about his wife every single day.
There had to be a man somewhere.
At that moment, my face suddenly floated up.
Clinging to it like grasping at straws, twisting that delusion through convolutions until it hardened into conviction.
The effort required for that—and the fatigue accompanying it—must have been tremendous.
It couldn’t compare to my own artistic endeavors—or so I mused—but ultimately, even Jingoro remained just a person beyond the glass to me.
However much he twisted it, that was his own affair.

“Kameda-koon!”

“Kameda-koon!”

You can hear the voice now.
That is Mori Heiwa’s voice.
I happened to learn that recently.
As I drank beer while idly gazing at the garden one evening, I heard that voice.
It seemed Kameda-kun wouldn’t be coming out anytime soon, yet the voice kept calling intermittently yet persistently.
I had always heard this voice—but what sort of boy was he?
Suddenly gripped by curiosity, I moved a chair to the wall, climbed onto it, stretched up on tiptoe, and peered out through the skylight.
And there was Heiwa.
Not that it mattered either way—but our gazes met perfectly: his darting eyes locking with mine.
Heiwa stiffened as if electrocuted, stopped calling for Kameda-kun, hunched his lanky 170-centimeter frame, and bolted away.
Perhaps my face suddenly popping out from that odd window had startled him.

"Ah.
So that was Heiwa?"

While stepping down from the chair, I couldn’t stop laughing for a while.

"I see. Of course it's about time his voice started changing."

That Heiwa seemed to harbor some kind of feeling toward me. When had he begun nurturing that emotion, or what had caused it to take root?

It happened recently.
An old woman had asked me to take the dog kept in the main house out for a walk, and as I was walking past the middle school, a sharp whizzing sound came from the direction of the schoolyard before a baseball came flying over.
It grazed my knee and struck Baku's nose.
Baku was the name of that dog.
Baku let out a sharp yelp and fell flat on his back.
When I looked, blood was gushing from his nose.
I thought nosebleeds were something only humans had, but it turns out dogs get them too.
Baku finally managed to get up, looked up at me resentfully, and began licking all over the area with his tongue until his face, jaw, and forelegs turned bright red.
If it were a human, they would look up and tap their neck with their hand, but a dog can't perform that trick.
Even if you tried to tap, a dog has no hands.

The one who climbed over the schoolyard fence and lumbered over to retrieve the ball was none other than Heiwa. He must be a student at this middle school. Without looking in my direction, he picked up the ball with complete impassivity, then clumsily straddled the fence again and went back. He must have seen Baku covered in blood, but there was no word about it.

"Hmph. A raw Kyushu cucumber."

And I thought.

"What was he thinking with that? It seems like he’s stubbornly rejecting me as a person."

He had been playing catch with Kameda-kun in the schoolyard. To think the ball had simply veered off course and struck Baku’s face seemed too coincidental—the force behind it felt excessive for an errant throw. Had he deliberately hurled it when my guard was down? Perhaps he’d aimed for me but lost control, hitting Baku instead. Of course, this was just a hypothesis I’d concocted on the spot—and given that the other party was a giant Kyushu cucumber, there was no telling what went through his mind. If I’d made a scene based on that theory, I’d have been no better than Jingoro—so I kept pacifying the sulking Baku and took him to the vet to stop the bleeding. All because I agreed to walk Baku, I ended up with this unexpected expense.

“Kameda-koon!”

“Whoa!”

It seems Kameda-kun has come out.
At the gate, the two face each other and raise their fists.

“Chit! Ket! Tat!”

“Chit! Ket! Tat!”

These days, children use such chants when playing rock-paper-scissors.
Until around the year before last,

“Rock-paper-scissors, hocus pocus!”

It seems they used to present their fists with that drawn-out “sho,” but since it was too long-winded, it eventually fell into disuse, and now it’s done concisely with—

“Chit! Ket! Tat!”

I didn’t know what it meant.
It had no meaning—just a chant of spirit, I supposed.

What happened after this "Chit! Ket! Tat!"? I thought it must have been a volleyball or basketball they were using—though in any case, they started thudding it against the wooden wall of my studio again and again, beginning this game where they traded points back and forth though I couldn't fathom how the scoring worked. While it might have been a game over there, this side of the wooden wall shook unsteadily each time it bore the impact of their ball. Things placed on shelves occasionally rolled off. Therefore, every time Sunday came around, I moved all items on the shelves down to the floor and strove to take defensive measures. The fact that this game wasn't an everyday occurrence but limited only to Sundays made it still manageable.

There's something about Sunday afternoons around this time in spring—they're oddly stifling and leave you feeling rather gloomy.
Old Dr.Akagi would often remark unprompted that this season's climate was most harmful to both body and mind.
That old Dr.Akagi hasn't shown his face here at all for about two weeks now.
He's probably been stifled by the same mugginess too.

But it's a strange thing, isn't it.
What does it mean that I strive to remain transparent, never acting on my own accord, avoiding all fuss—and yet am hated, envied, relied upon, scorned, and subjected to officious meddling, almost without reason?
It's not me who's floundering—it's the reality beyond the glass.
Yet they threaten me from afar.
If only I could just laugh at whatever they're floundering about and be done with it—but alas.
The world refuses to bend to one's will.