Pathway to Japanese Literature

For me—since there was nothing else certain—this became my personal justice. I defined myself endlessly: explaining my nature while chasing its mysteries; chuckling contemptuously at my own contradictions; yet ultimately resigning myself to keeping company solely with this enigma. Only with myself. Whether such isolation proved sustainable mattered little. The compulsion alone drove me. Perhaps this explains why— Why I remained my own most detested stranger. Why I knew with absolute certainty: love lay beyond my capacity.

Once a week, I went to the boarding house—to my three-tatami room, mine alone. From Friday until Sunday night. In the life I shared with my family members, from waking until sleeping—even sometimes while asleep—I could never be alone. My mother, who had quit her business due to cholecystitis and still alternated between bedrest and being up, along with my thirty-three-year-old unmarried elder sister and twenty-five-year-old younger sister. I always had to listen to someone’s complaints. The house did have considerable floor space, but with few rooms, there was none into which I could escape.

Perhaps because her illness dragged on without improvement, during that time Mother would spill complaints whenever she saw our faces, and once she began spilling endless complaints, she would start to rage. Time paid no heed. She raged at her own illness, raged at the doctors, felt guilty about—and consequently grew furious over—the increased burden on me, raged at Grandfather's selfishness in carrying out their separation, raged at me for permitting it, raged at Father's early death... In short, Mother raged that not a single family member was the same kind of human as herself, growing indignant over what she deemed their lack of consideration toward her. We believed that showing consideration for Mother meant nothing more than obediently and kindly listening to her complaints. But that pent-up frustration spread and exploded. That continued endlessly. Trivial matters became major issues there; ultimately, the understanding that the past would not return to the present and that no one else was the same as oneself would be reiterated and reinforced, which in turn became the ignition point for dissatisfactions and complaints. I was terribly exhausted by this.

So on Fridays, upon arriving at the boarding house, I would immediately collapse into sleep like a felled dead tree. I would wake the following late afternoon, sleeping straight through an average of twenty hours, sometimes even twenty-four. I woke up and noticed my hunger. Perhaps I woke up because I was hungry. Then I would go to a nearby soba shop whose walls were lined with framed Okame masks and eat two portions. Then I would watch movies or go out into town to distract myself, and usually, once Sunday arrived, I would start on a week’s worth of work.

At that time, my job was a radio serial drama commissioned by a production company. It was what they called a daily serial drama—six fifteen-minute episodes broadcast every day except Sundays. Since it was an adaptation of a novel serialized in the newspaper, all I had to do was keep up with however many installments came out each week—no real hardship involved. On Sunday nights, I would return to the house where my family members’ emotions—along with their eyes—were fixed on the TV screen, then on Monday mornings hand over the manuscript to the woman from the production company and receive payment for six episodes. This covered the family’s living expenses.

I had almost no contact with friends. I didn’t attend gatherings, nor did I drink with others. To others, I must have appeared as nothing but an idler who continued to neglect my obligations. I do not value myself. I do not consider the future. I have no common sense. Why can’t I resolutely tidy up my surroundings? A listless yet impudent fool. ...The most troubling thing was that I had absolutely no desire to protest against it. I thought that assessment was accurate. The criticisms all hit the mark, and others—every last one of them—were justified. As far as I was concerned, there was no "something" that I particularly wanted to do. Even if just barely, the mere fact that I was managing to support several family members in this way made me feel as though I were accomplishing an incredible feat. There was no other work I could do, and I believed I had no spare capacity in my abilities. I had no woman I loved, nor any particular hobbies.

My world was gray, like dried-out, aged rubber devoid of any elasticity. But since I had always believed there was no other world for me, it didn't become a hardship. But if I could earn money this way, I thought I would do anything. The only way I could take responsibility toward Mother, Sisters, and Grandfather was by earning money. No matter what I did or didn't do, avoiding that responsibility was the one thing I didn't want to do. It was more than an obligation—because in living, there was nothing else for me to do. Only there existed both the cause and reason for me being myself. To leave that place signified ceasing to be oneself and departing from oneself. I thought so.

Only the friend who had arranged the boarding house for me would frequently call, conveying updates about other friends and their critical words toward me. His words were appreciated, but to me, he and all my friends were great men. They were either heroes or wealthy people. I felt not even contempt or respect toward them, nor jealousy or envy. I simply had no interest. The friend’s calls too eventually grew sparse, and perhaps exasperated by my lack of response, he finally stopped contacting me altogether after one drunken scolding—leaving me feeling rather unburdened... To reiterate, I had neither the courage nor the wit to “cleanly” process or sever those heavy, repulsive blood ties and entanglements with my relatives as they suggested, nor the energy nor financial means to do so—and above all, there was simply no reason to undertake such a thing. Including myself, I was convinced that I loved no one and nothing.

So, no matter how foolish, listless, or strange it may have seemed to others, it could be said that my life maintained its own balance. I was neither bewildered nor self-abandoned. I didn’t want to commit suicide either. For me, there remained only fantasies about myself and interest in myself—yet I was sufficiently sustained by that alone. So to speak: in a world devoid of any joy or illusions, how would I go on living without deceiving myself in even a single particular? ...In other words, during those days, I believed that what allowed me to endure without consciously enduring was the existence within me of some dead part—a portion that had become utterly numb. That part would likely continue to expand. Yet humans are creatures that do not die. They do not perish as one would when burns exceed sixty percent of their skin’s surface area. They can live. Insensitive to politics, love, power dynamics—even fantasies—yet humans can live and indeed are living.

In a mood akin to gambling on terror—a kind of animal experiment—I focused my interest solely on that "self." It also seemed to mean fully becoming a solid yet warped notion—one where I might grow weary but would never bleed—and fully becoming responsibility itself. Moreover, in my view, an ordinary person’s life was just like that—and in that regard, this could very well be called my perfectly natural form of adaptation to society.

I lived unconcernedly. I lived unconcernedly—cheerfully, quietly and peacefully—to the point of astonishing that phone friend. Looking back now, I think my interest then lay in uncovering the true nature of my own singular fanaticism. I may have secretly delighted in becoming this increasingly inhuman, non-living existence. For I considered life itself the murderous weapon spawning all complications—chaos and pain and illusions—and thus feared it while striving solely to escape.

The boarding house stood in a corner of a residential area not far from a private railway station—an old shop selling groceries and sundries that looked every bit like a rural general store reminiscent of the days when this was still the outskirts surrounded by farmland, and our tenants' rooms were located on its second floor.

Entering the gate next to the store and climbing the steep stairs that continued straight from the entrance, my three-tatami room was immediately to the left. Along the dimly lit right side of the corridor—that is, the hallway before my room—two wooden doors of rooms stood in a row; making a sharp left turn at the corner, on the right was the shared washroom and kitchen area, while on the left were two more rooms, with the toilet located at the far end of that hallway. The toilet was Japanese-style, its black hole leading directly down to the cesspool below. Relieving myself there was quite pleasant. As if an airplane were dropping a bomb, after a moment, the nostalgic sound of impact would reach my ears. That was one of my pleasures at that boarding house. Once, it seemed a drunkard had urinated while standing, leaving alcohol-reeking urine splattered on the wall. Indignant, I took a magic marker and wrote in large letters on paper: "WHEN UNDER ALCOHOLIC INFLUENCE, REGARDLESS OF GENDER, ONE SHALL ALWAYS SIT TO RELIEVE ONESELF," then pasted it on the front wall. I didn't want my cherished spot to be soiled.

Because I slept when everyone was waking up and was awake when they were sleeping, I hardly ever encountered my fellow lodgers. According to the landlord’s explanation, of the four other sets of lodgers besides myself, two were young working couples, then there were sisters working at a beauty salon, and a theology student distantly related to the landlord who had a room to himself. Eventually, I ended up encountering all of them in hallways and such (or so I think), but everyone would either silently avert their eyes or give a slight nod, never exchanging words beyond commonplace greetings. The boarding house I knew was always hushed and dimly lit, with no interaction between fellow lodgers—they never seemed to properly face each other directly. At least where I was concerned, even during that time, I think if we had passed each other on the street, we wouldn't have been able to recognize one another. Since encounters occurred within the boarding house, I would merely think “Ah, they’re fellow second-floor residents,” but of course, I could no longer recall anyone’s face.

The one exception was the working couple in the room immediately to the left of the toilet. A short, solidly built wife of twenty-five or twenty-six with a rugged, ruddy face like an American Indian's, and her fair-skinned husband—a cheerful, well-balanced securities company employee who appeared thoroughly calculating. One night, without intending to look, I found myself peering through the keyhole at their activities.

It was late at night, still early in their encounters. I think it was a Saturday. I had returned late and, with the intention of completing one preparatory step before starting work, went to the toilet and was cheerfully dropping a bomb. At that moment, a woman’s stifled scream and violent intermittent thuds of tatami being kicked rang out.

It wasn't that I didn't know a woman's moans of pleasure could resemble those of pain or anguish. But that scream seemed a more urgent, unmistakable cry of terror. When it repeated two or three times—trailing off with a brief residue of agony before cutting out completely—a heavy thud echoed through the tatami, followed by a dragging sound like weight being pulled. No human voices remained. In my curiosity, I forgot the chill on my buttocks. However irresponsible it might seem, I imagined a murder had just occurred in the room next to the toilet, and my heart began pounding. Within the hushed stillness of night, the intermittent yet persistent noise wasn't something multiple people would make. That was the sound of a single person handling an "object." Surely the husband had strangled his wife and was now disposing of the body... The muted yet distinct thuds carried an eeriness that made me genuinely believe this. My heart raced, anticipation flushing my face red.

Exiting the toilet, I quietly pressed my eye to the keyhole and peered inside. Somewhere in my heart, I might have even envisioned a crimson sea of blood. But within my narrow, blurred field of vision, what gradually clarified was the nude form of the wife—trussed like a sack of potatoes with her buttocks facing me. A man's bare leg deftly rolled that naked body over, shifting its position. At an angle above, I glimpsed the flushed face of the young husband gazing down at his wife with grave intensity.

Startled, I pulled my face away from the keyhole, then peered in again with a feeling of doubting my own eyes. In the bright electric light of the eight-tatami room before the chest of drawers, the wife lay trussed up with thin white string, her body slightly arched and completely naked on the tatami. Her flushed face lay upturned; eyes lightly closed, belly undulating, lips parted as though gasping. Finally, even someone as oblivious as I was came to understand this was the couple's amorous play. I had seen such photos in erotic-grotesque magazines before, but this was my first real encounter. The white string binding her entire body like carefully packed luggage displayed a hobbyist's fastidiousness—half-amused and beyond any intent to restrict freedom. Suddenly the husband's ankle extended toward her face. Expressionlessly opening her lips while keeping eyes closed, she took his big toe into her mouth with practiced ease.

I returned to my room. I felt something intensely repulsive—a nauseating sensation. I might have been feeling the strangeness, eeriness, and gruesomeness inherent in human beings. But along with a nauseating disgust, I suddenly found the sheer absurdity and unpredictability of humans comical, and burst into laughter. With a bitter smile, I muttered "...Madmen. A mad couple," noticing for the first time that I had an erection, and used tissue paper to masturbate.

The next afternoon, I went to pay rent to the landlord and there encountered the Indian-like wife who was complaining about her husband. “He keeps calling me stingy, stingy, but when I try to buy even a single lipstick, he makes this ‘Oh what a waste’ face.” “Even though he blows through his own allowance in no time, he claims it’s because you’re bad at managing money—says you’re stingy yet can’t handle finances properly.” “He’s the one who should clean up his act, that’s what I tell him.” “After all, men and women operate on completely different scales when it comes to spending money, you know.”

I had vaguely thought that perverse couples were either intensely close or coldly hateful—bound together in any case by some special affection. Yet the wife I saw there was nothing more than an ordinary, commonplace woman—utterly average in her feelings toward her husband, in short, a perfectly commonplace, wholesome wife one might find anywhere. The fact that I couldn't reconcile the her from last night with the her before me now was evidence that various youthful illusions still clung stubbornly within me—and yet, I felt another layer of them peel away just then.

In the backyard's sunny spot, I remembered the landlord's carefully tended yellow and purple pansies beginning to bloom. White plum petals lay scattered. I thought it was that season on the cusp of March.

But from then on, I held no curiosity or interest in them, the couple. I lacked the capacity to cultivate and nurture interest in others. It might have been because it was a season when I was half-consciously striving to discard my interest in others. In any case, at some unmarked point I had forgotten about them and completely forgotten the stimulus of that strange scene I had peeked at.

The reason I can still recall their faces now is that just the other day, I encountered the two of them emerging from a movie theater in Shibuya. I couldn't recall them for a while. They too only directed at me the gaze one would give a mere passerby. I finally noticed them, but there I stood at the bus stop watching the two pass by without even their surname coming to mind. Neither holding hands nor walking apart, they moved as a single couple. Neither looking particularly interesting nor boring, that vague expressionlessness was something the two of them shared. At that moment, I suddenly felt as though the grimness of their boredom pierced through to my very core. For those two, life was nothing but the act of endlessly filling their respective boredom.

――But perhaps this too was nothing but evidence that I still clung to several self-serving "illusions," treasuring them like precious heirlooms. In any case, whether that impression was right or wrong didn't matter. I didn't know about such things. Their marital affairs were their own business. Such matters were beyond the likes of me. In the end, Saturday nights became my only time to roam about. I'd go listen to up-and-coming girl singers perform, attend Western music recitals, spend nights at modern jazz cafés before they became trendy. I was always alone. When waitresses began smiling my way or regulars I'd somehow grown familiar with started talking to me, I'd find another haunt. To me, the humans made far more noise. There I'd sit amidst deafening music and screaming vocals, fists clenched, eyes shut tight, knees keeping time while shouting along to the rhythm—utterly alone. Sometimes I'd think: I'm a madman.

"You're a madman. You're a complete madman. But whenever I thought that, I felt strangely refreshed and happy. It's a strange way to put it, but I felt as though I'd finally come to stand on the same ground as the 'normal' people around me. Like dynamite containing such danger—a wish to destroy and slaughter anything within reach, bloody and vicious, ready to explode at any moment—I was among them yet apart from them. To put it grandly, that pleasure might have been akin to the thrill—a mingling of affection and terror toward the surrounding people—experienced by rootless gangs of delinquents wandering through crowds while searching for someone to kill with a dagger. ――Perhaps I'd come to relish that very thrill. Brimming with buoyancy as I tried making my 'madman' feel more tangible, I got carried away and amplified my shouts. There was even a night when I shouted too loudly and got beaten up by some youths."

That was during one of the jam sessions in the city center—it might have been the first one—and heat had already built up in the not-very-spacious hall from the very beginning. Late at night in front of that hall, on the asphalt road flooded with light, young men in colored shirts and slim pants formed a whirl of feverish clamor, while towering black men stood scattered like bluish-black totem poles in the shadows of buildings—strangely subdued—watching the Japanese youths' boisterousness with only their eyes shifting.

The event was scheduled from midnight until five in the morning. In the hall's corridor, papers were posted with items like highballs, beer, yakitori, rice balls, sandwiches, and so on written on them, and tickets for these were selling like hotcakes. I also bought four or five highball tickets and immediately used one. When the performance began, on the contrary, standing conversations in that corridor surged. They were probably mainly those of the jazzmen. The hall was packed tight with young people.

About two hours had passed, I suppose. I gradually grew bored and noticed myself becoming falsely, yet palpably, angry. In my own terms, what made it uninteresting was that not a single one of the Japanese jazzmen was mad. They were skillfully mimicking only the outer form of black people's madness. I thought—I hadn’t come here merely to experience subtle techniques of the tongue, strength of attack, or great lung capacity. I had come to go mad together. It’s not like just because it’s jazz, I care about black people’s moans or madness. As long as there was Japanese madness there, that would suffice. But those on stage were all amiable, normal—so absurdly normal they seemed practically foolish—nothing but fetishists of technique. Regardless of what they themselves might have thought, to me they appeared as performers who had grown fanatical about imitating "enthusiasm," and nothing more.

But upon reflection, I thought that regardless of them, it would suffice if I were the one to go mad. So, regardless of the performance on stage, I closed my eyes and began shouting loudly. And it was when I went to the corridor to exchange my last highball ticket for the actual drink. When several youths surrounded me and began spouting some incomprehensible complaints, one of them suddenly punched my cheek with his fist. I was so startled that I couldn’t move, frozen in bewilderment. Suddenly finding my dumbfounded self utterly ridiculous, I burst into laughter. The youths seemed thrown off as they stared at my laughing face. "Is this guy crazy?" one of them muttered under his breath. Despite it being the middle of the night, he was a young man wearing sunglasses and a shirt with a red-striped collar fastened with shell buttons. I took a liking to those words and suddenly made a serious face, nodding emphatically. They warily opened a path for me.

Since I had already lost interest in the performance and there was no point in listening anymore, I took a taxi back to the boarding house. At any rate, I had this reckless urge to shout at the top of my lungs. I merely acted on that impulse; therefore, they weren’t the issue. But having the desire to walk naked through Ginza doesn’t make one a madman; however, they say anyone who actually does walk around naked is a madman. Thinking this, the youths’ flustered reaction of "Is he a madman?" toward me—the me who had acted on my desires—began to feel utterly justified, and in an intensely blissful mood, I kept chuckling quietly to myself alone... What exactly is funny? This must surely be neurosis. Yes—when I thought others would surely label this version of me as neurotic—small explosions of laughter continued erupting incessantly in my chest. It was a strange night. Now, I would consider that self of mine as a hysterical symptom. In other words, it was "a biologically purposive regulation," but merely "an excessive production of purposeless motion." I think this was a term referring to the hysteria of Kurokanabun beetles—but might it not fit me perfectly at that time?

I think it was around April that one of my old female friends began occasionally visiting the boarding house. I had encountered her by chance while riding the private railway toward the boarding house—merely answering when she asked where I was going—but she ended up visiting. I remember her wearing a white dress scattered with navy polka dots and a pale blue cardigan at the time. The woman sat with knees neatly aligned and maintained her posture until the very end. Perhaps because the youthful roundness had vanished from her thighs, the slope from knees to torso as she sat in seiza became flattened and diminished—this gave her, despite her naturally petite frame, what seemed in its own way a strikingly mature and stable air.

The woman was an old friend with whom I had been involved several times in the past—so old a friend that I had forgotten why we ended that relationship. I was aware she had been a former voice actress and later became the wife of my university friend. When I remarked that my friend’s surname didn’t quite suit her, she formed a stiff smile and replied, "Then just call me by my given name." She kept her eyes downcast, her gaze fixed around my chest area, and whenever she looked up, she would bare her strikingly white teeth in an obligatory smile. Her cheeks were perhaps slightly flushed. But as I brought the cake she had brought to my mouth, I thought this woman held no more meaning for me than an old calendar. Ah yes—that had happened. That was right. Right, right—but that was ancient history. She likely thought the same. ...It simply hadn’t occurred to me that an old calendar might hold sentimental value, but perhaps she had placed importance on it. In any case, when that petite woman with large lips came to visit a second time, we became involved.

It was a Saturday afternoon with a dark sky，and my still being asleep had been a mistake． She entered the three-tatami room where the futon remained spread out and sat down on it． (The futon’s headside—beneath the always-shut glass window—housed my work desk；there was nowhere else to sit．) She presented a confectionery box from the same shop as last week．When I returned from washing my face，she remained frozen in place—shoulders rigidly set as though cast in ice． For an instant，reflexively，I averted my eyes． I had realized．

It wasn't because the thought had come to me that she was my friend's wife. I had simply—or perhaps more accurately，purely—found it bothersome and troublesome to increase my interactions with people，so I thought I'd escape if possible. I invited her for a walk to a nearby small park with a pond. Then the woman said， “Why don't you eat the cake first?” “You're hungry，aren't you?” she said.

I picked up the cake with my fingers and ate it. Cream remained on the fingers. When I reached for the dishcloth to wipe them, the woman suddenly snatched my hand and sucked my fingers. Her face turned fire-red in an instant. ...she looked up at me with eyes so bloodshot they seemed almost ferocious.

I have no desire to shift responsibility for this development onto her. I am speaking of the fact within me. From then on, there was no helping it. As I wordlessly folded over her, touching the woman’s already spread heated mucous part from beside the panties firmly pressing against her skin, and brushed my finger against the small protrusion above that cleft, she moaned like a virgin and arched her back dramatically. Gasping, she buried her face in my chest, and when my hand lowered the zipper, she frantically writhed, bent her knees, and kicked her skirt to the corner of the room. “Lock the door... Please lock it,” she said in a low voice, her eyes closed.

I entered the woman effortlessly. In the past she had cried out in pain at this same place where during our second hotel visit I had finally forced my way in while making her bleed. At the moment of climax however, the woman let out the same animalistic cry as she had in the past. It was only then that I first noticed a faint smell of rain on the woman's clothes. When I opened the window, a fine mist-like rain was soundlessly making the roof tiles glisten. An hour later, the woman left alone. The white vinyl umbrella moved unwavering along the road toward the private railway station as I watched from my window.

Prior to that, for nearly three years, I had gone without any dealings with women.

I simply hadn't felt like it. Affairs were enjoyable because they involved—so to speak—the collision of each participant's self-absorbed illusions overlapping with the form of a passionate double suicide, but the act itself had never been particularly interesting to me. I never for a moment thought that human truth existed solely there, and far from any tangible sense of life, I almost invariably experienced a kind of "death" in those moments. Moreover, this "death" was not something erotic, but rather an identification with "objects"—something so sentimental it bordered on comical, akin to the hollow melancholy of absence—or else mere despondency. At that time, I found all emotional excitement bothersome, and didn't feel like going through such complicated things to seek acts with that sort of woman. By myself, I could reach even the most inaccessible itches. Even if the act itself wasn’t physically unpleasant, the anticipation of all the procedures before and after always made me think it wasn’t worth going that far. That kept me from those opportunities, made me let them pass, and so I distanced myself, continuing to let them pass by.

Just as I had held no regrets about that matter, I likewise harbored no regrets about what had occurred. There had been no alternative. That alone sufficed; coloring it or assigning meaning lay outside my interest. The long-interval act had let me taste the tangible reality of those black wall-like years between the woman and myself, yet ultimately proved neither particularly pleasurable nor anything I could deem necessary. The woman's scream—which I took for performance—struck me as utterly absurd. The near seven-year span had, while somewhat enlarging her breasts, flattened the woman overall, diminished her once-taut skin's tension, replacing its former rounded firmness with the supple strength of an experienced female form. Yet I felt neither disillusionment nor any newfound appreciation for her matured charms. That said, this wasn't a different woman from before I'd embraced. In the feel of those hipbones that seven years prior had been thick with resilient flesh, I merely sensed dimly—ah, so many years had passed. Back then, the woman must have been twenty or twenty-one.

The week after next, the woman came again. Again, it was a Saturday. We felt there was nothing else to do and had relations again. The woman cried out again. After that, the woman brewed tea, prepared a simple meal, and left. On the following Saturday as well, the woman came.

But there was no change in my life. I continued circling methodically along the same rails, and the woman’s visits did nothing to disrupt that timetable. However, through my conversations with the woman, I came to realize that my university student self had loved—had been enthralled by—the validation of my loneliness more than the woman herself, but now it meant nothing at all. It seems my former self believed in the existence of something called “loneliness”—and that alone makes it nothing more than one of the illusions I had long since cast off. As for my present self, I had come to think that what existed was only myself and those others who would absolutely not let me be “lonely”. I was preoccupied solely with managing myself within that framework.

The woman never penetrated my inner being. It seemed the only ones who refused to leave me alone were my blood relatives... All others merely orbited my exterior, brushing against nothing but my outer husk—toward them I bore no essential responsibility. Precisely because I dwelled within, those others' presence weighed heavily, becoming my burden—thus I believed there existed no means to assume responsibility for those outside. To me, the woman remained strictly one such outsider.

The woman came to visit every Saturday. The act became a habit, and afterward, I would go out to Shibuya with her and have meals as well. We also saw movies. After parting ways, there were times when I went to listen to jazz, and the jam session I attended—since that was early summer—must have been around that same time, I think. The time when we parted with the woman grew gradually later.

One night, when I said, “Go home already,” the woman began to cry. Exasperated, I walked to the register and paid for our meal at the restaurant. I didn’t have small change, so it took a little time. When I left the restaurant, the woman was nowhere to be found. This might be the end, I thought, and headed straight for the modern-style café in Shinjuku as planned.

It was past 2 AM when I returned to the boarding house. When I entered the dark room and fumbled to turn on the light, I found that the futon I should have left in disarray that day was gone. The used tea bowls had also been washed and placed upside down, and the electric water kettle was filled to the brim. The cords had also been neatly bundled, the work desk wiped clean, and opening the closet revealed the futon properly folded and stacked. It must have been the woman who had stopped by this room on her way back, borrowed the key from the landlord despite the late hour, and cleaned up.

For some reason, I was furious. “...Don’t meddle,” I said aloud. Keep your hands off my life—I won’t tolerate interference—I refuse to allow this. Seized by a frenzied black flash of extreme rage, I shouted every curse I could conjure, then impulsively grabbed a teacup and slammed it onto the tatami. Perhaps because it was cheap, the teacup didn’t break.

——But by the following week, I had completely forgotten that anger. Impassively, I embraced the woman, feeling my manhood move autonomously to fulfill its function. That my hand slowly stroked along her spine was merely a habitual gesture to provoke her most sensitive response there. Yet even after completion, she kept clinging to me with feigned anguish, murmuring against my chest: “...You’ve been relieved. You weren’t angry after all... You’re kind after all,” her nose wrinkling in performative delight. She bared her incisors in a calculated smile.

I let out a derisive laugh. This woman was mistaking my apathy for kindness. ...Then suddenly last week's memory revived—I thought perhaps at that time I might have been on the verge of loving this woman. But now, clearly, definitely, I did not love this woman at all. That something which had once rapidly drawn near to entering myself during that black anger had now fled far away and vanished somewhere, I thought with a hollowed-out heart.

That judgment was undoubtedly correct. About once a month, there would be weeks when the woman didn’t appear, but I paid them no mind. When she came, it was fine that she came; when she didn’t come, it was fine that she didn’t. To me, she by no means became more than that existence, nor did I feel inclined to consider her as anything beyond it. And I continued scrupulously allocating every week precisely from Friday to Sunday to days at the boarding house, unfailingly handing over six manuscripts each Monday morning. I had never once delayed them.

I didn't know how it was received publicly, but the production company had relayed favorable responses. More than anything, it was likely best that I "kept my promises and didn't interfere." Though the serial hadn't even concluded yet, they came asking me to keep adapting other works continuously afterward. I replied that I couldn't promise anything until that time arrived—there were other avenues with better terms available. Still, my life maintained a semblance of stability overall. Whenever my pocket money ran mysteriously low, thirty-minute or one-hour script jobs would come rushing in, and I made sure to complete every manuscript at the boarding house without exception. At times with a thirst-like ferocity, I'd fill notebooks with minuscule writing. Not meant for anyone's eyes but my own—a kind of physiological compulsion—so I considered this too a manifestation of "neurosis." This writing continued at home as well.

A family consisting only of women was like a boneless lump of raw flesh, I thought. Throw it anywhere—even against a wall—and it would flatten itself against the surface, beginning to carry on its own existence without incident.

I had certainly fulfilled the responsibilities of family life demanded of me, but as one of the children, I only held a child's right to speak. The household's "head" had been none but Mother, who had stoically supported our family alone for over a decade since Father's death. Though Mother had clearly begun showing signs of recovery, she still refused to abandon her attitude of passive resignation, leaving my proposal ultimately lost. I had thought myself advocating reasonable measures—marrying off my younger sister promptly; should my elder sister remain unmarried, making her acquire income-generating means (tobacco shop rights would suffice); tackling each family concern through proactive collective effort—yet this had been grotesquely misconstrued by my family, particularly Mother. All my utterances dissolved into ambiguous small talk, Mother's eruptive litanies, and old tales. Within our home, today imperceptibly became yesterday, while tomorrow's yesterday continued flat and endless—my efforts proving as effective as slashing a wooden sword against a mountain of cotton fluff. Rather, before I knew it, the wooden sword had vanished from my grasp; amidst scattering cotton fluff raining down, I found myself nearly suffocating.

I thought. ...Women cannot understand what men think or what sustains them. Just as men cannot comprehend what women think or what sustains them. Women remain convinced they sit anchored upon reality—that fixed, stable, immutable plane (as they believe)—while men drift through invisible spaces, dwelling on delusional unrealities, never grasping that those very fantasies sustain their existence. Thus they stand ever "realistic," ever strong, their lives consisting solely of daily existence—an endless serial drama born of mundane routine. No other dramas gain credence there. They either get laughed off as nonsense or at best remembered through dismissive snorts—"Hmph... That's all it amounts to."

I didn't particularly have any complaints about that. That in itself was correct. Even if it wasn't correct, it didn't matter either way. At the very least, my family members seemed to be living more "certainly" than I was, and I didn't detest them. ...As for them too, they surely showed more than enough consideration and care toward me, the sole male. But for me, those things were fundamentally misplaced; more often than not, they only served to throw me into confusion, irritate me, become a troublesome burden, and wear me out. As ever, I continued being tired, and I had no intention of stopping my weekly boarding house visits. It had nothing to do with the woman's visits or our affair; it was a hygienic necessity for me.

But now that I think about it, I myself may have been greatly influenced—unconsciously—by that family environment consisting only of women and their feminine way of handling reality. I had always continued to think it futile to brood over imaginary things—matters that remained beyond actual reach. I had come to think that neither a self I could believe in nor any counterpart existed except in the present dealings I was constantly burdened with and forced to confront—including knowing such dealings were impossible.

Even when summer came, my relationship with the woman continued. For appearances' sake, I spared no effort in indulging her demands—whether adopting abnormal positions, performing ardent caresses, or supplying the obligatory chorus of "I love you." True enough, I possessed an innate tendency to fixate on whoever stood before me—hence why I lavished time on hospitality and maintained cloying attentiveness that invariably excited her into flaring nostrils and oxygen demands. Sometimes her eyes would whiten rollback pale while her tongue protruded motionless. I observed this through chilled pupils.

What the woman particularly enjoyed were caresses on her back and strong bites to the small raisin-like mole beneath her right nipple, which made her moan and groan madly. At such moments, I would always freshly experience my inability to recall our shared past as a kind of astonishment. Her wearing slacks. My university-student self. The woman following me endlessly as I passed hotels in silence. Though I could finally recall such scenes, all emotional truths—my love, sorrow, anger, pain, passion toward her then—had vanished cleanly, leaving nothing resurrectable in my present self. Everything lay stored like sealed boxes in distant reaches behind me, their narratives concluded. However much I looked back or strained to revive them, not one thread connected that old heart of mine to the present. Time and again I confirmed this.

The woman never spoke of her husband or their domestic life with any particular strangeness. And I said nothing either. In that respect, I may have been stubborn, but the woman was stubborn to excess. Since our spring reunion she had grown slightly plump, her skin developing a dewy vitality and luster that seemed thoroughly conditioned by male contact—the moistness clinging to that flesh likely not attributable solely to seasonal humidity. From this I concluded that her husband—my friend—might be impotent or something approaching it. Since even I could discern this much, I reasoned she couldn't have remained unaware. But whatever was transpiring between them constituted no involvement of mine. When this "transpired matter" became my problem, then for me an event would hap— would occur. Until then, thinking amounted to nothing but wasted time and energy. In essence, all I required was possession of a "policy" when that moment arrived.

I had intended to answer that if my friend were to come, I would marry this woman. With that done, breaking up would settle everything. ...After all, I have no such thing as love for others anyway. If the woman learned this, grew dissatisfied, and made a scene, I would leave her. That would likely resolve it—I wasn’t taking it lightly, nor was I exactly staking my life on it. "Marriage" was naturally no act of moral duty toward the woman or her husband, but rather a technique for sidestepping responsibility on my part. I had no qualifications to become anyone’s spouse, after all.

Probably I had foreseen that I myself couldn't deal with anything else. Whatever misfortune it might bring to others—the woman or her husband—regrettably that was none of my concern. After all there was nothing I could do. The weak die after all. That was the law governing all living things. When even I thought about myself—no hero or strongman—all I heard were two voices: the brazen cry of "Even so this is me giving my all" and the vicious curse of "What a repulsive man you are." Yet I was not unhappy. Even if abnormal or cowardly I was not unhappy. I left others' affairs to themselves. That had been my "policy"... That's what I had thought.

One evening, we strolled through a small park with a gourd-shaped pond. A child wearing only a tank top was playing by catching crayfish. As I leaned forward watching, the woman suddenly said, “I’m a pig.”

Instantly, I couldn’t respond. I didn’t understand what she meant. The woman placed her hand on the pine trunk; when I turned around, her cheeks were flushed. She glared at me with shining eyes, staring intently as if to bore into me. “I’m a pig.”

I understood and burst out laughing. Asking why would have been meaningless. Indeed, I held the hot naked woman who snorted and clung to me as if embracing a pig.

“You’re Cloud,” the woman said.

“Cloud? Stop it. That... I hate that.”

I had been thinking of a spider.

“That’s not it. The cloud in the sky,” the woman answered. “You’re always off in the clouds, then suddenly flare up fiercely like lightning before disappearing somewhere again.” “Huh, a thundercloud? Not bad at all.”

I had answered absentmindedly, my head in the clouds, but from then on the woman began calling me "Cloud" or "Cloudy," saying things like "Cloud. I love you," so I called her "Boo." When I called her that, the woman would grow even more frenzied, laughing with eyes twitching as she began imitating a pig herself. We gradually began exchanging more words—irresponsible declarations of love (at least on my part) and cloyingly affectionate conversations. To me, all my utterances were identical to ritual shouts. Of course, directed at myself.—I understood that those exchanges were nothing more than a game of counterfeit catch with trivial words. I threw my ball, and the woman threw hers. Each time, what came back was a different ball, and we would invariably throw only our own balls while the other’s ball would slip past our skin, yet we pretended to enjoy a game of catch where we threw a single ball back and forth. ……Probably, she was aware of that too, I thought.

Since my mid-teens—as my late father’s substitute, thanks to being constantly dragged into family and relatives’ consultations—I had become skilled at putting on solemn faces, sincere-looking, earnest expressions. But in truth, those were merely the expressions I wore when least invested. Because I didn’t believe in words, I could use any of them. I was convinced that with those women who weren’t bound by blood, I knew exactly how to make my escape, and so I felt utterly free in her presence……And it seemed the woman liked that fakeness of mine. “When we first met, you were still a fourth-year university student, weren’t you?” “It’s been exactly ten years since then.” “You’ve become an adult.” “Back then, you were always so serious and nervous—almost intimidating—but,” the woman said. “Honestly, I could never have imagined you sticking your tongue out after a mistake.”

I did not correct her. But I had essentially been a fraud from the start, and in that sense, I had always been an "adult." However, back then, being young, I was somewhat sensitive and merely hid my audacious aspects more skillfully, I thought. But the woman often repeated that phrase. The woman might have found "sentimental value" even in those changes of mine within her perception.

One Saturday in August, I suddenly had to attend a thirty-minute script reading I’d been commissioned for and left the boarding house early without seeing the woman. It was all because the director had cast some so-called glamorous movie star. Having to accommodate that actress—who was so terrible I ended up revising the script—meant I didn’t return home until three in the morning. When I did, the woman was there. "...Is this okay?" I called to the woman reentering the room as I reheated food in the kitchen. She laughed. “Hurry up and eat,” she said in an unnervingly calm voice. “It’ll get cold.” It was spaghetti with meat scraps. While I ate, she stripped to her chemise and lay on my futon. She draped a towel over her chest and stared fixedly at the ceiling.

I had already steeled myself that "something would transpire" soon, and since my "policy" was fixed, I said nothing. The woman too kept silent. Being exhausted, I fell asleep at once without the woman making any demands.

The next day was when I first saw her in the morning. I was first seized by an eerie feeling. It wasn't that she was ugly. Rather, in the bright morning light, the woman with lowered eyelids and small face sleeping soundly appeared unexpectedly youthful, her skin pale and smooth, even cute-looking. ——But that was, so to speak, not the woman I knew. It was not the woman who came as that regular Saturday visitor—arriving in the afternoon and leaving at night.

Even though it had been merely a single overnight stay, I intuited that my relationship with the woman had already begun living within a viscous everyday existence—something surpassing our previous domain of purely transactional contact—an incomprehensible substance like translucent viscous fluid. Rather than a human being or another person, I saw there a single strange creature. It had settled itself firmly in my domain like one of those invasion-type creatures from SF stories—before I knew it, there it was sleeping peacefully in my room like it owned the place, beginning to take up permanent residence...

I hurriedly woke the woman. The reason was fear. The invasion toward me had begun. But the woman did not open her eyes; she grinned and reached out her arms to embrace my neck.

The woman then initiated. Her body was already fully awake...... Amidst the act's absurdity, I finally regained my composure. The other party remained after all that known entity—the woman as a regularly scheduled, utterly separate other. She had reverted to that state. I found my earlier panic ridiculous. Wasn't it merely that her stay had extended slightly? Do I love her? No—I don't. Is this thing existing outside me? It exists outside. ......I verified this within myself, verified it repeatedly, and finally at ease expelled the spent man from her body. The woman returned home that morning. To me watching from the window, she waved her hand and smiled—blindingly bright, feigning happiness.

……The following week, I supposed it was around one o'clock in the afternoon when the woman came. At the knocking, I woke and removed the sliding door lock with sleep-swollen features. She slid open the wooden panel and entered—face drained of color, caught in full-blown hysteria. Her pronounced cheekbones accentuated eyes already slanted upward at the corners; pale lips quivered like a child mid-seizure. I started in alarm. The prospect of tears unsettled me—I'd never handled weeping well. Yet she slammed the door shut with a clack, turned the key, then sat rigidly facing the wooden panel. Though wearing that familiar mustard-strap dress, her shoulders showed no tremor of grief. Her sole possession being a white leather handbag—clearly no runaway's bundle.

“What’s wrong?” I said as I returned to the futon. “Did he get angry?”

“……It’s fine. I’ve got leverage.”

The woman answered while still facing the wooden door. Her tone was strong.

“Huh.” “Were you okay with it?” “Even staying over?”

“I’m fine. He didn’t say anything. That’s why it’s fine.” The woman turned back and forced a smile with stiffened cheeks.

“He’s just someone I live with.” “So I do what I want.” “It’s allowed.” “Because he has a weakness.” I was seeing a stranger’s face within the woman. The woman’s pallid face looked severe, and for the first time I understood. She had never before shown me a countenance that asserted her own selfhood.

“He’s rich, right? “Him.” “A comfortable and easy life holds appeal for a woman. “For some reason, I thought that since I’d gone through the trouble of getting married, it would be a waste to throw that away. “That’s why I just stayed with him,” the woman said. “Ah,” I replied meaninglessly.

Although my friend and I had been in the same department at university，he was young president of a subsidiary company under an expansive heavy industry conglomerate where his father served as president. The wedding with Woman had apparently been extravagantly lavish；I hadn't attended，but remembered how Mother had marveled at the invitation delivered to our house． “Hey，”Woman said while shuffling closer to my pillow． “From now on，I'll stay over once every week． Today too，I'll stay over．．．Is that okay？”

“I came here to work, you know,” I answered. “If even that doesn’t interfere, then I couldn’t care less.”

The woman nodded like a child, then suddenly her eyes moistened and glistened. “I’ve been caught with kiss marks so many times.” “Today, I didn’t come here by making up excuses like going to Sato or visiting a female friend.” “I didn’t mention your name, but I clearly told him I was going to a man’s place, that I’d go and stay over.” “Even so, that’s O.K.?”

The woman nodded. Tears spilled. “You’re a strange one, really.” I laughed. “But every couple has their own special circumstances. It can’t be helped that others don’t understand.”

I stopped the woman with my hand as she tried to say something. “Enough already. I got it. Let’s just drop him. It’s irrelevant.” I closed my eyes. The situation had changed. I thought that maybe even my friend wanted to separate and was silently gathering evidence advantageous for divorce—rich people are stingy, after all. Also, perhaps due to this “weakness,” he disliked having it exposed and might intend not to separate, tolerating it if it was just about once a week... But in any case, I should stop thinking about this now. If I collided with something eventually, I could think about it then. That was my way of life. Because I couldn’t sleep, I ended up sleeping again before I knew it.

“Well, well… Such incredible dust bunnies.” “This much accumulates in just a week, huh?”

When I noticed, the Woman was muttering cheerfully to herself as she quietly cleaned around my futon, careful not to make a sound. For a while, I watched her small ankles moving busily. I grabbed her ankles. I pulled hard.

I let out a low, voiceless scream, but the woman skillfully fell against my chest as if nestling her shoulder into it. Her eyes containing a surprised laugh stared at my face, and gradually I came to realize they were settling into that usual vacant gaze—something sad yet fearful, neither anxious nor uncomfortable—that stared fixedly at expectation. The woman closed her eyes. Her panting breath became shallow and rapid, her face flushing crimson as if straining, and when I sucked her lips, that scent had already begun thickening intensely.

――Probably, at this moment, this Woman was happy. Whipped up by jealousy-tinged emotions, with a savage anger or vengeful feeling toward some incomprehensible target, I plunged into action with rough abandon. "Aren't you ashamed? Even though you're working so hard to deceive the other person, that person is happier than you." Those words I'd read somewhere flickered persistently in my head.

After that, the woman never mentioned her husband again. I didn’t ask either. The woman would invariably appear on Saturday evenings and return near evening on Sundays. I stayed at the boarding house from Friday afternoon until Sunday night. Our lives continued in strictly regular patterns, repeating themselves.

I had not changed my belief that I was someone who loved no one and therefore had no right to be loved by anyone. I had never forced anything upon the woman beyond the occasional uncontrollable passion—and even that passion itself was largely being compelled by an excessive sociability toward her; a weakness toward whoever happened to be before me—in what amounted to a so-called compulsion. Even if she were to vanish—therefore—I would experience no hardship—

I did not doubt that fact. If I set my mind to it, I could likely maintain isolation for a lifetime without issue. I believed in concentrating my interest solely on myself and in that stoicism. ...It might have been foolish. No—or rather, this was clearly foolish self-deception. But for me, it remained the one "right thing"—I believed that thoroughly enforcing the anxiety of caring only for myself constituted precisely the sole support and strength I had chosen.

Among humans, there are those who can impose themselves on others and those who cannot. From my self-awareness of disqualification—that I could not love others—I had believed I belonged to the latter category. Depending on the other person, I could improvise lies on the spot, go along with them, flatter them—do whatever it took—and none of it ever caused me the slightest distress. Others were others—I could not believe in them, love them, or cherish them more than I did myself, and there existed no one I would abandon myself to devote myself to. I had only myself, and this self was always an incomprehensible anger, a humiliation, a shame, a voiceless scream of terror—yet all I possessed was this squalid, guilty passion that sought to burrow into nothing but that very self. There was no other passion I could believe in—no self either.

With the monotony of my acts with the Woman, I started to grow somewhat bored. For me, the bombing in the toilet there was always far more pleasant. However, once she started staying over, the Woman would persistently demand it multiple times, and if I stopped her midway out of growing annoyance, she would become nearly hysterical and weep. At such moments, the Woman—originally fox-like in build, with a pointed chin, narrow upturned eyes, and large lips—would become like some ghost with crimson lips split open to her ears, transforming into what seemed like a living genital organ itself that I could only perceive as greedily sucking me in to swallow me whole.

So when Saturday night ended and the clock passed one o'clock, I resolved to sit at my desk like a machine. From the futon right behind me, the woman would try to engage me by tickling or occasionally kicking. She'd brew unnecessary tea or wrestle my neck between her thighs pro-style to drag me down.

One night, when the woman became too noisy and disruptive, I pinned her down, straddled her mount-style, and bound her limbs quite tightly with whatever shirts and ties were at hand. The Woman reacted with abnormal excitement. Shaking her shoulders violently while panting with fixed eyes, rolling across the futon like a log, she left astonishing stains on the sheets. ……After that, she would say things like “...Robber... Robber...” as if deliberately inviting such treatment, twisting her hands behind her back and leaning against me. I too developed a routine—binding her wrists tightly behind her back so they wouldn’t loosen, then laying her down on the futon as if cradling her. And I would return to work.

However, the Woman would wait without sleeping until I fell asleep. Still bound, she tilted her head back and cooed coquettishly, begging me to tell her some story. While continuing my scriptwriting work, I spun improvised nonsense off the top of my head. Affairs with other women. My ex-wife. That time I tried emigrating to Brazil and failed. A bank robbery planned with three friends that ended in botched failure. Terrorism fantasies. A woman devoured by Amazonian fish. My corpse fetish. ……All were products of whatever mood struck me—ideas I'd never considered before opening my mouth. That's why mid-explanation they'd careen into absurd tangents. But the Woman listened rapturously. She'd laugh in disbelief, nod at every word, erupt in exaggerated gasps of horror or admiration. "You take me seriously." "I love that earnestness," she said. There was no trace of mockery or jest.

“Cloud… Do you love me?”

“Of course I love you.” “Hey, do you really love Boo?” “I do love you.”

“Do you really love me?” At times the Woman would persistently ask this question—a signal. Growing annoyed, I turned around and lifted her twisted upper body, pressing my lips to hers. Her breathing turned rough through flared nostrils as she coiled her tongue like a miniature tornado, trying with all her might to suck mine. She kept breathing rapidly through her nose—short, convulsive gasps—while endlessly tangling her tongue with mine without pause. During these moments, staring at her trembling closed eyelids, I felt myself transforming into a complete stranger—a nonexistent person I’d never known. The one playing this woman’s “love” partner was a man I didn’t recognize—a man who existed nowhere. ……It feels good. Thrilling too. I’m nothing more than a doll. In truth, I’m merely a fictional entity masquerading as an utterly unqualified, impossible human being. This “I” is an “other.”

――In the end,I might have liked that sensation. By flexibly employing my own duality,I might have enjoyed―from within my dark interior―irresponsibly observing and savoring how arousal manifested solely against my surface layer. And suddenly,I would pin down The Woman―eyes closed,burning body―stroke dark folds between thighs,and violate The Woman while she stayed bound like rape. I stuffed handkerchiefs into mouths crying through headshakes,tied scarves over them,and finished while listening through muffled moans.

At that time, I think I was treating the Woman solely as an "object." While feeling my dark passions erupting—disqualifying her as human while myself becoming likewise disqualified from humanity, transforming into violent madness itself—had I been feeling ecstasy? In any case, those were the moments I burned most intensely. As I entered her—hands bound, cloth biting into her cheeks—I thought: Yes, this is it. This is me. The real me. I don't love you at all. I was simply committing assault as a lone hoodlum, a lone madman. It's not because of who you are. Because you're a single soft "object"—I'm just using you as an "object." This is me.

At times, I would leave her as she was and return to work. And then I forgot the woman's existence. When I finished a section and suddenly noticed, the woman was still staring at me with imploring eyes. With those eyes, she smiled at me.

By the end of September I renewed my contract with the production company. The newspaper novel adaptation had been completed. Yet the production company wouldn't release me, immediately requesting adaptation of the next newspaper novel. When I stayed silent, they raised the script fee by twenty-five percent. I agreed. But this meant continuing work without even a week's respite. I kept repeating my weekend boarding house routine, and the Woman too maintained her Saturday-to-Sunday overnight stays. Though I'd largely stopped going out for jazz, no matter how much she muttered complaints, I steadfastly refused meetings on other days or shared meals at the dining table beyond those playacted instant suppers. Whatever she said, I enforced this. I'd been fearing the emergence of some husband-and-wife-like "daily life" between us that might take root unnoticed. The Woman too seemed to resign herself and fell silent.

It was a night near the end of autumn. The wind and rain raged as if it were a typhoon, and from midnight onward, it grew even more violent. But I was completely insensitive to such external noise, so I continued working without issue. And then, suddenly, the light went out.

It was a blackout.

The wind howled near and far, and the storm shutters clattered noisily without cease. After two or three minutes, the light came on, but when I turned to my desk, it went out again, plunging us into darkness. After these brief blackouts recurred several times, I grew sick of working, lit a cigarette, and turned to look at the Woman behind me. That night too, she lay curled on the futon with knees bent, rolling restlessly. Her wrists and mouth bound with towels and a scarf, only her eyes gleamed like black stones as they watched me.

"Shall I untie you?" I asked. But the Woman smiled with her eyes and slowly shook her head. And she returned her head to the same position on the futon, once more becoming eyes like polished black stones that gazed at me. They might have continued staring fixedly even in the darkness.

Under the flickering light, at that moment, I thought: I just want to be alone among others. If I am not alone, I cannot relax. But if I’m truly alone, I become unbearably anxious and utterly exhausted. I become unbearably terrified that I might endlessly veer off somewhere along this grotesque path of madness.

Unable to bear it, I headed out into the city seeking others. There, amidst them, I would surreptitiously confirm my "madness," verify and restore my balance with others, then breathe a sigh of relief. I might always need others. To be with others while existing in a different world from them. Apparently, that was my "stability." And to interact with others outwardly normally while deepening my interest in myself alone with complete irresponsibility toward it. ...So then, being here with these others who don't interfere with me at all—who have been reduced to mere 'objects'—when I think about it, this might just be what they call my ideal.

While puffing on a cigarette, I laughed in the darkness. Then the light came on, and I casually smiled at the Woman's eyes. The Woman too looked at me and laughed, and in that utterly natural, blissful connection between our eyes, I suddenly saw that I was now sharing a madman's happiness with her. Along with a numbing joy came sudden recollection of that lewd scene I'd once witnessed - the young couple by this boarding house toilet engaged in their depravity. Back then, I'd surely sneered "Madmen!" Now I found myself in that same ghastly, repulsive act. ...Here in the madman's pleasure, within this grim madman's happiness, I now laid bare my utterly naked self. Exposing my true nature to this Woman, this acquaintance... Panicking, I discarded my cigarette and hurriedly untied the scarves and towels. I pulled the handkerchief from her mouth.

“Water, please.” the Woman said. I took water directly from the pot into my mouth and transferred it to the Woman’s mouth. That was because it was the method the Woman preferred. Then, the Woman relaxed her cheeks into a look of pure delight, wrapped both hands around my neck, and sang out, “I love you... I love you... I love you.” Like a voracious baby, she sought my lips. A strange shudder ran through me, and I somehow pushed the Woman away. The petite Woman fell onto her back, her belly exposed like a frog’s. But without getting angry, she began slipping her arms into my pajamas. “……Shall I make some tea or something?” she asked in an ordinary voice.

I did not answer. What I felt was not disgust but rather despairing terror. I felt that the precious time when I had sensed a thread of madness had vanished, and there the raw immediacy of my usual time with the Woman had resumed once more. No—what I had believed to be "madness" was, for the Woman, nothing more than her own version of daily continuity with me—and recognizing this truth—that my thrilling instant of happiness had been mere childish delusion and self-indulgence—I reflexively understood it all.

To the Woman, was I not abnormal? Could even these perverse acts—which manifest my so-called "madness" through abnormal desires for isolation, destruction, and morbid fascination with corpses—be perceived by her as nothing more than intensity of affection? …Once again, I thought of S.F.’s strange creature—that which swallows all conflicting things, converts them into energy, and endlessly expands—just like on that morning long ago.

The sound of boiling water came from the pot. Ironically, the light no longer went out. As she dropped powdered milk into her tea, the Woman said,“Oh my．Hasn’t it spread quite a bit? “The stain on the wall,” she said loudly． “It’s cheaply built，isn’t it? “For a storm this mild to leave such map-like stains on the walls… Three thousand yen is too much for this.”

I drank the tea without a word. It was scalding. I reflexively yelped, “Hot!” The Woman burst into laughter.

“Hey, what are you thinking about?” “You’re all red in the face.” “...Silly you. That’s why you get burned.”

“……Do you want to know what I’m thinking?” I asked seriously. The Woman looked up diagonally above.

“Well… I gave up long ago on trying to completely understand what you’re thinking.” “I just want you to keep me, even a little, in your heart—that’s all I need.”

“Aren’t you afraid of me?”

“I’m scared.” Immediately, the Woman answered. “But that’s all right.” “I don’t like people who aren’t scary.”

“Hmm.”

“Oh my. What’s that exasperated look for?” The Woman widened her eyes and kept laughing like a child.

—That was the following day. The clear sky stretched high, a briskly shining fine day. We had gone to a soba restaurant on our way back and were sitting on a bench in a small park near a pond amidst pine trees. In truth, I had hardly touched the work I needed to complete that week. I couldn't bring myself to start work. I had been thinking continuously about it ever since. I would live alone. My interest lay nowhere but in myself, and my conviction that I could love no one remained unchanged. I still believed I lacked the qualifications to live communally with anyone. ...Indeed, there was no "love." There were no "qualifications" either. But what on earth did that matter? Was that not, so to speak, a childish obsession with my own part—with the subtle, secret part that everyone concealed within themselves? The morning after the Woman first stayed over, and last night—a certain daily existence where I had no choice but to feel myself together with her within that space, even against my will. The Woman who calmly digested my abnormalities, my madness, even the terror that was me—showing no more disturbance than a swamp into which a stone had been thrown. Perhaps I could manage to coexist with this woman after all. Perhaps we could become an utterly ordinary couple. No—if women as a whole believed only in this daily existence and lived nowhere else... then perhaps I could actually manage to get along with any woman.

“What’s wrong? You’re making such a serious face,” the Woman said, pressing her cheek against my shoulder. “When you’re thinking about something, you make a face just like a child playing marbles. Your lips are all pursed...”

“Is that so?”

“Yes… You’re such a strange person.”

The Woman laughed, and while similarly gazing at the dark surface of the pond, I also began to laugh. “A strange person, I am. In short, I’m just a lazy coward—too timid to move in either direction—still a child at heart.”

“The lazy one is me,” said the Woman. “My dream is to ride one of those fishing boats that go putt-putt-putt across the water, you know?” “Ride that boat out to sea, bask in the sunlight there, and sleep on the ocean.” “That sounds wonderful.” I wholeheartedly agreed. “That really is the best.” “Let’s sleep together out at sea.” “Together?” As if surprised, the Woman said, releasing her neck from my shoulder. “But you know, I’m hysterical.”

The Woman picked up a stone and threw it not into the pond, but at the trunk of a pine tree diagonally behind her. It missed.

“All women are hysterical. And all men are madmen. I only trust hysterical women and madmen.” I said. At that moment, I think I felt something akin to friendship toward the Woman. She too was a 'woman' like my family members, and I hadn't forgotten that—but still, the daily life flowing between us there wasn't so heavy or unpleasant.

The Woman was wearing a bright gray high-waisted two-piece suit. But she looked less like a married woman and more like a college student somehow. It might have been due to her petite stature and her simply styled hair.

On that clear day, we parted upon leaving the park. “Will you come next week?” I asked the Woman for the first time. But showing no look of surprise, she answered “Yeah, see you next week then” and started walking toward the private railway. Just like that, I returned to the boarding house and sat at my desk, but somehow couldn’t bring myself to start work, becoming engrossed in filling a notebook with tiny characters. Of course I hadn’t completed six scripts, and for the first time I stayed at the boarding house that Sunday night to meet the deadline.

The following week, the Woman did not appear.

It was mid-October.—I had previously written that my thoughts were being misinterpreted by my family—particularly Mother—but from the beginning of that month, this began manifesting as reality. To avoid worrying me during my weekend absence, Mother had maneuvered behind the scenes and sold the house. The proposal to move to a smaller residence had indeed existed for some time. But Mother sold both house and land rights at rock-bottom prices, contracting my late father's old friend to build a rent-free cottage in a corner of the same property—hers to occupy until death. I learned this only afterward.

If Mother were to die suddenly, we would immediately have to start looking for a new place to live. “It’s a gentleman’s agreement, so there’s nothing to worry about,” Mother would say—but if that president were to die or have a change of heart, legally we would be evicted, and Mother and we would end up wandering around clutching a small sum of money, searching for somewhere to go. Even so, we would no longer be able to voice any complaints. I was appalled, but it was all water under the bridge. “The phrase ‘rent-free for life as long as she resides there’ must have held the greatest appeal for Mother’s own peace of mind.” “All this marriage talk—we need funds secured for two girls,” Mother said, completely missing the point. But the stamped documents had already been exchanged, making it impossible to change Mother’s resolve. We—though in truth it was primarily I who spoke, while the others merely tried to convince me—would exchange words about the dangers of that contract nearly every night. Finally, my elder sister said. “After all, in any case, both the house and the land were all left by Father and Mother, and hasn’t Mother been holding onto them alone all this time?” “So I think Mother should be allowed to do as Mother pleases.”

I fell silent and resigned myself to the inevitable. But even if I ultimately had to obey mother, it was far too unsettling. Mother had no income left, and I, being her only son, would likely end up having to live in that house after all. And if mother—still not fully recovered from her illness—were to die suddenly... No—I wouldn’t think about that anymore. Whatever will be will be, I thought.

Contrary to the weather, oppressive days followed one after another, and I had no capacity to dwell on my boarding house self or direct my attention toward last week's cancellation of the Woman's regular service. I also felt that she was bound to come again anyway.

It was Friday. In the afternoon—again for work—I had intended to go to the boarding house. That morning I learned why she hadn't come last Saturday. For a while I remained dazed staring at that postcard. I couldn't believe it. She was dead.

It was too abrupt. It felt like such an absurd lie—like some trivial prank by nobody in particular. Yet among that day's letters and direct mail addressed to me lay a printed black-bordered notice from that friend announcing his wife's sudden passing. The wife's name matched the Woman's. She had reportedly "passed away suddenly" two days prior, with tomorrow being her funeral service.

Mother entered the tearoom. I read through the notification again and displayed my customary reaction there in that space. That is to say, I treated it as the death of a remote stranger—an old female companion who had become my university friend's wife, a former voice actress acquaintance I hadn't met these past seven years. I promptly tore it up and tossed it in the wastebasket, then reached for the several layout plans in Mother's hand—she was bustling to consult me about the new house's floorplan. I determined the toilet's placement, Mother's room position, even the wall colors down to their hues. Naturally, exactly as Mother directed.

The first time I felt the Woman's death as a violent shock in my chest—my cheeks abruptly beginning to burn—was at the boarding house on a Saturday after I had fallen into a deep sleep. A heavy void spread through my chest's depths, and I grew frantic despite there being no clues whatsoever there. By now she should have arrived. But likely that woman would never appear again. It felt like a lie—I wanted to laugh, wanted to say something—yet my heart had nothing to say. That clue lacked any foundation. I smelled her scent lingering thick on the futon, imagined her form, and saw it was nowhere to be found. Staring into my numb heart's heavy depths, I tried to fixate on something squirming within that void. Yet there too her figure remained absent.

I later heard through others that the Woman had been hit by a car—it had apparently been briefly reported in the newspaper too. She was taken to a nearby hospital and passed away a week later without regaining consciousness. Whether it was an accident, suicide, or intentional manslaughter remained unclear; such details—like whether her husband had kept constant vigil at her bedside or not—were of no interest to me, I think. All that mattered was that the Woman had died; at that time, regarding her death, I possessed no "facts" beyond a torn death notice postcard.

An inexplicable anger came over me. Partly to calm myself, I went to the toilet and pulled down my pants. I dropped a bomb. Suddenly, the words on the notice I had written caught my eye. At the time I had written it in all seriousness, but now I thought—"Regardless of gender, all must squat..." What nonsense was this? Wasn’t it only natural for the Woman to squat? It’s stupid. Why did I leave this as it was? The Woman too. The second-floor residents too. The anger grew even stronger, and I tore the already yellowed paper, crumpled it, and dropped it into the toilet bowl. “...Idiot!” I shouted loudly.

Suddenly, my chest trembled. When I took a deep breath, tears suddenly overflowed. It was unthinkable, but the tears showed no sign of stopping. I hurried back to my room and started crying face down on the futon. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and as I sobbed aloud, I realized this was the first time I had cried like this since gaining self-awareness. At any moment, the sound of a knock might be heard, and the Woman might come. I didn’t mind being seen. No—or rather, I thought, I wanted the Woman to see me. Why was I crying? There was no reason. It didn’t matter. I cried simply because I wanted to cry. Not for anyone’s sake. Probably, I was just crying because I was sad.

While crying, I took out the notebook and read the words I had written earlier while still resisting the Woman's reality. It was pointless.

"—I had been certain of my own abnormality since childhood. Regarding others, regarding the self I showed to others, I had always tried to be conventional. I hated standing out. I was scared. I was scared of being found out. I was scared of psychiatric hospitals. I was scared of my sexuality too. Because I knew I could only love 'things.' And as my madness became clear, I was afraid my family would be inconvenienced. I hated that I was the cause. Therefore, I wanted to kill myself as a murder weapon."

Therefore, my justice was my own annihilation. To be concerned only with oneself is the same as being able to devote oneself solely to one's own erasure. But now, I feel I can be certain that all others are also abnormal. "In other words, I am 'the same as everyone else.'" My belief in my own abnormality became deranged and chaotic. A ridiculous twenty-nine-year-old child. I panicked and tried to reconcile this act of preserving my own agency with my former self—the self that had always regarded others as normal and authoritative. And then, I discovered a certain daily existence. I do not love that Woman. "But in my own way, I think I can substitute it with love for daily life.…"

"...Nonsense. Stop lying," I thought again. This was nothing but empty words claiming one could coexist with others without love. And yet—back then—I had truly loved that Woman. ...Idiot. But I could no longer sustain this existence fixated solely on "myself." None of it held any certainty anymore. What remained certain now dwelled within relationships and daily life—I could no longer believe that clinging only to my 'anxiety' held any validity. The season of childhood had ended.

Before I knew it, the tears had stopped. It suddenly occurred to me—Ah, today was that Woman’s funeral. It must already be over by now, I thought. And I also thought that the house my mother was planning to build wouldn’t be completed until next early summer at the earliest. There was still half a year left. The radio serial drama I was currently working on would likely continue for another half a year. In any case, I had to keep working at this boarding house for another half a year—while staring at the stains from past rainstorms still lingering on the wall, I felt that commuting here on weekends without the Woman had become a form of torture. But even if I left this room, would the torture ever end?

The window was bright red, as if splattered with fresh blood. I slowly got up and opened the window. The sunset was intense.

The sprawling western sky—both clouds and expanse—burned in a deep madder red, and I realized that crimson was striking my face as well.