Pathway to Japanese Literature

The midday sun had been dazzling, but before I knew it, the light had softened into a tepid early summer evening. A faint breeze began to blow, and as I walked along the street, looking up, I could still see a pale blue clear sky lingering above the buildings. “Today was lovely.” When I stopped walking, the woman I was with released my arm and said. “Especially your appetite was splendid.” “That veal cutlet’s sauce was exquisite.”

The woman with plump cheeks remarked leisurely, laughing with gleaming eyes through lips she'd just freshly painted. "And then... and then I went back for seconds." The woman's speech carried a Tohoku accent. In her affected attempt to speak proper Japanese, her sentence endings rose unnaturally. Due to the nature of my work, I'm particular about accents. But I said nothing. That woman was no longer needed. I had been with her for nearly twenty hours.

In front of the broadcasting station building, I parted ways with the woman. The tall woman walked five or six steps along the stone-paved path in the same direction, then pivoted sharply on her heel and walked back past me toward the station with studied indifference. She worked at a coffee shop across from the station. In the young woman walking away - head held high, hips swaying in pale blue tight slacks - there remained no visible trace of having spent hours alone with me. I walked to the elevator in an intensely agreeable mood.

When it came to women, lately I found myself thinking only about their skin. When I thought about what lay beyond the skin—the parts I couldn't see—I would always find myself at a loss, ultimately left paralyzed. I had been striving earnestly to adhere to that precept with women—wanting to sever our relationships cleanly, like snapping a thread—precisely because I wished to make decisive breaks.

The reading room on the seventh floor at the hallway's end had no windows; there was no distinction between night and day there. The square room enclosed by yellow soundproof walls resembled the inside of a cardboard box, the clock embedded in the wall pointed to around six o'clock—whether AM or PM was unclear—and the room's perpetually lit fluorescent lights glared harshly.

Opening the door, I felt how the people had abruptly fallen silent. When I leaned my elbows on the long narrow crude-plank table at the center, its uneven legs trembled and clattered against the floor. The sound still hadn't faded.

As if representing the people whose murmuring had been interrupted, Saeki spoke, deliberately enunciating each word.

“Mari... Mari apparently took two boxes of sleeping pills this morning at her house in Nakano.” That was how I first learned of Mariko’s suicide. The actors preserved an unnervingly condensed silence while arranging metal chairs haphazardly along the walls. Two or three people were gazing absently at me. Yasui Mariko had been an old acquaintance of mine. She had been one of the talents scheduled to appear on my program that night.

“Earlier, Mr. Sato, the producer, apparently received a call from Mari’s husband. We only found out about it ourselves just now.”

“Did she die?” I said. I nearly collapsed.

“No, not yet,” the character actress said hurriedly, adding, “so she may yet survive.” I arched my chest back and slowly crossed my legs while wrapping one arm around the chair’s back—in truth, I had done that instead of attempting to rise. I lit a cigarette. Even if I rushed there—I reconsidered.

“They’ve discovered her way too late, haven’t they?” “It’s definitely too late now.”

The young men and women from the same theater troupe started talking. “It was past noon when the housemaid noticed because the snoring was so loud, they say.”

“It’s been completely absorbed into the stomach.” “Then it’s hopeless, of course.”

“But what possible reason could there be for her to absolutely have to die?” “Mari—even last night she was exactly like always.”

“Does anyone have any idea what could have caused this?” “What about you, Mr. Kubo?”

Someone called out to me. I shook my head. I didn't want to say anything. The reasons for suicide people were discussing didn't matter at all. I wasn't thinking about whether Mariko would survive or not. At that moment, I wasn't really thinking about Mariko at all.

I was trying to recall the scene of the city at dusk where neon lights had already begun glowing and a cool breeze stirred through the treetops of roadside trees with faint rustling, along with today's hours that I'd let graze my senses unknowingly. That day had never known morning for me. The yellow-and-black striped bamboo pole at the railroad crossing visible from the hotel window, a single large black ant crawling across red ornamental tiles, the afternoon sky steeped in pure blue clarity. Yet these weren't special things, nor did they carry meanings that converged around me. They bore no witness to Mariko's presence or absence. They were nothing but hollowed remnants of some distant form, and to me Mariko too could only be grasped as a faintly glimpsed landscape feature on the horizon. I couldn't even properly summon the image of that woman who'd walked clacking her hard heels against the pavement earlier. As if separated by a membrane, I couldn't feel others' lives or deaths with any immediacy—abandoned in my solitude. This might be the room's doing, I thought irritably. Indeed the room stood isolated from wind, from seasonal skies, from sunlight, from urban clamor, from the everyday world—a vacuum-sealed box floating midair, breathlessly enclosed in aerial suspension.

The door opened. Sato entered with a stopwatch hanging from his wristband, guiding a petite young woman holding a script by the shoulder. Keeping his eyes downcast to avoid the others' gazes, he closed the door behind them—this large man—then let his rugged hand rest on the girl's shoulder. “This one will take Mari’s place.” “Takano Yukari from the troupe—Takano Yukari.”

He bent his neck as if examining his rugged hand. His customary deep voice spoke. “Mari’s dead, I hear.” “The call just came through.” “I can’t believe it…” Saeki said after a pause, his voice feigning innocence. The staff stayed silent. “Last night—I was drinking with her—in Shinjuku.” “Heiyama was there too.” “Right, Heiyama?” Saeki added. “Well, time I headed out.” “She kept going on about how pitiful her husband was.” “We all split up after that.” “Doesn’t strike me as planned.”

“But even if it was impulsive, what possible reason could Mari have? She had to die?” “She had to die?”

The actress playing Mariko's mother said in a strangely confrontational tone. “Poor thing.” Her stifled sobs sounded like suppressed laughter. “That person was always lonely when alone. When someone was there—whoever it was—she’d suddenly brighten up and grow strong. When I think about why we had to let her die…” “Just stop trying to find reasons.” Heiyama spoke up for the first time. “There was no suicide note, right? Even Mari might not have wanted to be understood.”

“That’s horrible.” The actress glared at Heiyama with indignant eyes. Heiyama sullenly fiddled with his black beret. The actress said nothing.

“...Somehow, this pisses me off,” I said. “This makes five or six friends who’ve killed themselves now, but I always end up getting angry.”

Sato grinned wordlessly. I smiled and lowered my eyes. I had been thinking. Shouldn't we have been enduring life together? The laid-bare mutual helplessness, and the void permitting no resistance. I had to wait motionless for it all to pass.

“Aren’t Kubo and I the oldest friends here among us?” Sato shrugged his broad nylon jumper-clad shoulders. “Ah, back when Mari was still an English literature student… when I think about it.”

Back then, Sato and I were in French literature, while Mariko married Yasui Shin, who was in the same year in economics. They were all members of the same university drama club.

There had been a summer when we energetically carried puppet theater props from the Izu Peninsula to tour Tokyo's islands. "Well now," Sato said, "looks like we're back to just the two of us still doing anything connected to theater." Mariko had stayed away from acting for nearly a full year after graduation before pleading with Sato two years ago to resume performing with her current troupe. "What a fool." Sato spoke with a grave expression. If anything, I realized, I had liked Mari. She was petite with that pale, clean nape of hers. Her flat nose and slightly wide-set eyes made her no beauty, but gave her an innocent, wholesome air—the type that kept getting rejected for those same ingenue roles she kept auditioning for. Her acting had been terrible. That tendency to lose herself completely in things might have been endearing had I truly loved her, but I'd found her girlish romantic self-indulgence exasperating. Those drunken habits—scaling any available height to bellow every song she knew with dramatic flair, putting on airs to perform nursery rhyme dances. I remembered once joking spitefully that she seemed more enamored with the theater lifestyle than actual acting. Then there was her single-mindedness—that pushy kindness and love of debate. Mari possessed something disconcertingly sensible yet combative about her, like a headstrong high school girl—which made her marriage to Yasui while still in school not entirely mismatched. Their romance supposedly blossomed from the May Day incident, though I hadn't attended the demonstration.

The young girl from the network’s in-house theater troupe that Sato had brought along was hunched over her script in a corner, kept moving her hands busily. Upon closer inspection, she gripped a stubby red pencil in her palm, drawing a doll with long eyelashes on the back of the script, putting strength into her slender white fingers as she intently colored in its lips. “Let’s roll with that, scribbler.” Sato signaled me with his eyes. “She’s surprisingly sharp for a kid—can even carry a tune if needed.”

“I can sing too.” The actress playing the mother role said without concealing her displeasure. “Is it really impossible for me to take Mari’s role?”

I was slightly taken aback by the actress who was making her jealousy plain as she glared at the young girl. Mariko's role was the lead.

“Shall we head to rehearsal soon?” Sato stubbed out his cigarette and dismissed the actress’s complaints with practiced ease. “Yuka, you ready? Is the studio free?” “I’ll go check.” The girl from the in-house theater troupe stood up, and with that motion, the table rattled, causing the red pencil to roll off the script. The girl hurried into the corridor, seemingly unaware.

Nobody said anything. The room was silent. In the corner of the hard, pale ashen cement floor, two empty Chinese soba bowls were stacked. The short red pencil came to rest before the stacked bowls. I was watching it. Such meaningless trivial facts are just like an old caramel box tumbling down station stairs—they often catch one’s attention at various moments, yet never remain in memory at all. I thought of the existence of so many things I had seen in that manner and forgotten in that manner. I have forgotten various things.

Before long, I would forget this pencil too. I would undoubtedly forget it. As I thought this, I stared fixedly at that red pencil for some time, as if measuring the ominous weight of all the forgotten things I’d let accumulate.

Regarding the Yasui couple, I had never thought of them except as being happy. I never wanted to see in others any happiness that might push me out. I detested feeling unhappiness. My interest sought only a wall of smiles from all others, never delving beyond that surface. And until then, the Yasui couple had sufficiently satisfied such wishes of mine. There had never been even a whisper of infidelity in either regard, and as the only son of a regional bank president, Shin's life with his wife had lacked for nothing.

That night, I received my fee from Sato and, entrusting the live broadcast to him, headed to the Yasui house in Nakano a step ahead of others. As I was about to transfer to the Chuo Line, I felt a slight reluctance. I was recalling a certain day when I had glared at Mariko in that adzuki-colored train car. I was looking at Mariko's face, her eyelids faintly flushed. At that time, I had been forcibly dragged along by Mariko. It had been two winters prior—in a packed national train car, Mariko had loudly called out "Tonko! Tonko!" using Oda Tomiko's nickname, then began shouting excitedly about love this and affection that and sincerity something-or-other. Oda Tomiko had been a fellow member of the theater club and had worked at a textbook publishing company after graduating. I had clearly broken up with Oda Tomiko—with whom I’d had a four-year relationship—the day before.

That day, we went completely off the rails in the train car—in a way that now seems almost unthinkable. On our way back from the studio—right at the height of evening rush hour, with the crowd packed tight between Mariko and me—I had been regretting my confession and anxiously awaiting the transfer station’s arrival, but gradually grew combative. Bathing in people's half-annoyed, half-amused gazes and growing flushed, I ended up shouting in the same shrill, raised voice: “Quit making such a racket! I’m not consulting you—just giving a damn report!”

Mariko persisted even more vehemently. I retaliated. “Shut up! Basically, I hate people.” “Hah,” Mariko retorted from about six feet away. “You hate people? And yet you can kiss on a platform like that, right in front of everyone watching. I found out properly by asking Tonko herself, you know.” “That’s why—that’s exactly why I hate people even more!” I shouted desperately.

Struggling frantically to look at me, Mariko shouted back. "I don't get it—why would you break up with such a good person? You're an idiot too, seriously." I completely lost my temper. "Anyway, I'm not Rikou. But even a fool, in their foolish way, seriously considered it before reaching this point. I haven't slept properly these past two or three days either."

“Oh? So now you can sleep soundly?” “You’re awful.” Mariko’s stage-honed shrill voice carried clearly. “Don’t you feel sorry for Tonko?”

“When you get down to it, aren’t both parties to blame? Something like this can’t be done by a lone culprit.” Laughter erupted around us. I kept talking until my vision blurred at the edges. “The responsibility’s split fifty-fifty! If you still say I’m the villain here, that’s only about me being the one who ended things first.” “But last night—when I said we wouldn’t meet anymore—for the first time ever, I actually felt like I was doing something decent for Tonko.” “Letting it drag on while thinking ‘I should stop’ over and over—that’s way worse.” By then I’d fully embraced my victim act anyway. If Tonko had never existed, I wouldn’t have been saddled with this miserable role to begin with. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten how good Tonko’s body felt.

“You’re so selfish—not caring at all about the other person’s feelings…” Petite Mariko continued shrilly, her voice rising high as she remained buried beneath people’s shoulders. “What’s wrong with that person?”

I too twisted myself on the strap as I retorted. “Everything. It’s suffocating.” “Scoundrel! Liar! Fool!”

Mariko's face was not visible. I shouted loudly toward what seemed to be her general direction. "I'm small-minded, give me a break already—anyway, I'm the one who matters most to me!"

When we spilled out of the train at Nakano Station，Mariko，her face crimson and gasping for breath，suddenly seized my arm． She demanded answers． “Four years！We’ve been together four years—what？What exactly have you suddenly figured out now？” “You coward！” “And there’s not even a proper reason to begin with．” “What even are you？”

“That person is too compliant.” “That’s four years—everything went exactly how I said.”

“What’s wrong with that?” “It weighs on me.” I recognized my own voice as something like a scream. “In the end, it feels like I’m bending to her every whim—I can’t take it anymore, I just can’t.” “I feel like I’m drowning.” I hadn’t said anything that sounded like blame to her. “It’s my problem—the problem is—” Mariko suddenly looked at me with probing eyes.

“Did you find someone else? That’s how it really is, isn’t it?”

“You idiot!”

I wanted to slap her. How satisfying it would feel to kick that perfectly round buttocks—like some model child’s—as hard as I wanted, send her tumbling down the stairs. “Do I look like some smooth operator to you?”

Mariko walked with her lower lip thrust out spitefully. At the ticket gate when asked to pay the fare adjustment, I realized for the first time we were at Nakano Station. Passing through the gate, I muttered, "...I'm going home." I genuinely meant to return. "Why did I even follow her this far?"

The surroundings had completely turned to night. Dragged along by Mariko’s bluster, I—who was supposed to return to my lodging in Gotanda—had forgotten to transfer trains. I felt utterly absurd. With my earlobes still burning, I approached the ticket window, and as I went to buy a ticket, Mariko clung to my arm. “I won’t let go. If you think this is embarrassing, then come with me. Go tell Yasui if you’ve got any conviction.”

“No.”

“What’s with the arrogance? I’ll make a scene!” “No.” “You haven’t said anything proper yet! I want your actual explanation. I know you’re a damn serious person.” Only now do I find “damn serious” humiliating, but back then, those words never displeased me. As her vigor faded, Mariko dragged my silent form past the bus stop and into the station-front market. “Come now—my treat. Pick whatever you like.” Leaning against my sullen face, she paraded through the arcade-roofed market with performative delight. Before I knew it, she’d decided on tonkatsu for me, then kept piling goods against my chest—using my new coat as excuse. “My salads are far superior anyway—no point buying them here.” After leaving the market, she combed through four greengrocers before exactingly procuring absurd quantities of cheap mandarins that looked decent.

I couldn't even shrug my shoulders. Even taking a slightly deeper breath would send mandarins and potatoes spilling from the paper bag. Each time, Mariko cried out as though facing a national crisis. Beyond her handbag, she carried only a single white rose haggled down at the florist. Petite yet well-proportioned, the new navy princess-line coat suited her perfectly. Fluttering the hothouse-grown white rose near her cheek, Mariko gripped my coat sleeve like she was apprehending a criminal.

As I stepped down onto Nakano Station's platform, I recalled myself from a winter midnight a year and a half earlier—waiting for the last train, sitting alone on that deserted station bench. A long freight train kept rumbling endlessly past before my eyes as I sat shivering with my coat collar turned up against the cold, mired in confused wretchedness. The Yasui couple's shared happiness had molded their faces into matching expressions, and I'd returned as though fleeing their exclusion. There on that bench, I kept thinking—just this one thing remained certain. That I wanted to break up with Oda Tomiko—however inarticulable my reasons—this alone stood as certain as some pungent odor.

I disliked how Tomiko always seemed to forget her loneliness when she was with me. She was always kind, forgiving everything I said and did as I pleased, never resisting or asserting herself. Tomiko had no flaws whatsoever, yet contrary to that thought, I found myself unable to recover any freshness in the repetition of our affair, which had ossified into an immovable habit. My love had gone missing, and for me, enduring it meant nothing but continuing to lose to Tomiko’s obedience without a shred of joy.

I grew impatient and began to think there must be something fundamentally wrong with this relationship. It was not a relationship between humans and humans, between individuals and individuals—not an equal, one-on-one relationship—but rather something one-sided, resembling a person and a dense cloud, a person and a room. I sank as if falling into a swamp captured within her eyes, with the water’s surface above my head and myself becoming invisible, until she seemed like a dead-end alley I had to break through. I felt suffocated; what I wanted wasn’t this love like a daytime nap, I thought. I longed for a different kind of love—a pure relationship where we’d clash our naked bodies against each other like beasts in battle. I had failed in my repeated attempts at persuasion. I resolved to break up with Tomiko. I wished to regain a self with sharp definition.

Tomiko, at first, did not take my proposal seriously.

“Wait a month. “Let me think about it too.” I thought that was natural. Wait a month, I repeated. “Oh, you were serious? I thought you’d forgotten.” “Why don’t you take me seriously for once and face me head-on? I can’t stand swinging at air anymore,” I said. “I haven’t thought about anything. Even if I did, it’d be the same.” Tomiko answered with a laugh. “Up until now, I’ve done everything as you said, but this alone I can’t do. “I don’t want to break up.” I felt like I had finally made contact with her and could stand opposed to her. We began walking along the National Railway tracks and talked our way through from Shibuya to Shinagawa. The convictions of hers and mine that had become clear for the first time were far too different. She was obedient, chaste, kind-hearted, harmless—in other words, perfect—and unfortunately, she believed it. For me, conversely, not believing in that about myself was supposed to be justice. ……It’s true that I, for whom Tomiko was the first woman, had never so much as laid a finger on another woman up to that point. But that does not mean I believe in my own goodness. Our words failed to mesh and couldn’t even clash. I reaffirmed my desire to break up. “If that’s how you need to phrase it to convince yourself.”

I grew sullen. “I’m sick of you.” “There’s not a single thing I like about you anymore.” “I’m sorry, but I want to escape from you.” “I never want to see you again.” “Even if I were to die?” Tomiko said after a brief silence. I started. “Die?” “Enough with the jokes already.” “Because if I can’t see you, there’s no meaning in me staying alive.” Tomiko began crying. I was cornered.

“Stop making your living or dying someone else’s fault—I can’t handle that kind of thinking itself. …This is impossible.” Standing on the Yatsuyama overpass as a train passed beneath the road, its white tepid smoke reeking of oil billowing up, I recoiled from the coarse stone railing. Tomiko kept following. I’d been avoiding physical contact. I feared the treacherous softness of her flesh—that subtle texture which could always consume me. I said: “For me, any woman would do—it doesn’t matter who. With anyone, I flare up instantly. Like having something flat pressed against my forehead—my mind goes blank. There’s no moment when I forget their personality more completely. Yet this continuous sequence of acts ignoring their very personality becomes love’s history. At least, that’s what they claim. I don’t get it. That’s why words like ‘love’ become dead weight for me.” This too felt like one more humiliation. “It doesn’t have to be you—lately I’ve only treated you as a stopgap substitute lover. I hate that.”

The truck’s headlights repeatedly illuminated us.

“If you’re not here, I don’t want to go on living.”

“Stop it,” I said with an angry face. While trembling with inner dread, I nevertheless persisted. “I want to live only as I see fit. To stop that would be to kill myself by my own hand. I don’t want to let you die at all, but in the end, I can’t become your substitute or anyone else’s. It’s the same as how no one can become my substitute. This is only natural, right?”

“Oh? You’re such a yakuza—I’m shocked.” When I repeated the circumstances, Mariko said while lifting the whiskey bottle. “In other words—so basically—that means you still have no intention of building a home with anyone.”

“I don’t get married—hardly ever. “There are economic circumstances too, but—” I couldn’t fully digest Mariko’s words, but I answered. “This might sound rude, but it’s kinda obscene—I’ve never once truly felt envious seeing married men.”

“Isn’t that because you’re a coward, Kubo?” Yasui Shin said calmly. Mariko adopted a big-sister tone: “As a carefree bachelor, you must still want to play the field plenty more, right?” “So that’s how it is?” I said to them both. “This won’t do anymore.” “Meaning you’ve never truly loved anyone,” Shin appended.

“What a hopeless man,” Mariko said in an unexpectedly cheerful voice, laughing with a sigh. She was already quite drunk, and the singing began immediately afterward. Shin joined in, and the two of them seemed in good spirits as they sang Russian folk songs one after another in chorus.

Recalling the events of that night, feeling an angry, sullen expression on my own cheeks, I finally managed to vividly picture Mariko with the face she had worn then.

The old-fashioned small bus heading toward the Yasui household was shaking violently. "I should buy white roses and bring them—enough to overflow from my arms," I thought. Then, for the first time, I became aware—in a way as strange yet undeniable as when the neighboring passenger who had been pressing against my skin abruptly vanished—of both the futility of those flowers and the fact that Mariko no longer existed in this world: a realization at once strangely unconvincing yet strangely authentic. I grew vacant, as though I’d witnessed some bizarre trick. No tears welled up. Others are things we cannot help but acknowledge, I said in my heart. Especially that death—no matter how unexpected and incomprehensible it may be—we have no choice but to permanently acknowledge it as it is.…

And I immediately realized those words were what Yasui Shin, our former leader, had muttered during our student days when one of our comrades committed suicide. I got off the bus at the next stop and retraced my steps to the station-front flower shop where Mariko had haggled over white roses.

Mariko lay in the coffin, buried beneath flowers. Her death face showed no spots or traces of anguish. When placing her inside, I cradled both legs. The rigid corpse made breathing impossible without inhaling death's stench - whether laid supine or turned sideways. Under makeup applied by her hurriedly arrived mother, the young cadaver's wax-doll skin had submerged into chalk-like whiteness. I discovered Mariko had been an only child. Her nostrils - scrubbed to pale perfection - seemed abnormally distended, their depths unnervingly visible. Lips stubbornly parted, ceramic-smooth front teeth mirrored ceiling light. The teeth were parched. She'd always had that short space beneath her nose.

Her mother placed a handbag filled with Mariko's perfume and makeup tools into the coffin. Until they closed the coffin lid, Sato remained outside the room. "Is it over? Have you closed the lid?" he asked me in a low voice as I hurriedly moved in and out of the room with the funeral workers. He leaned against a pillar and gazed from the corridor—its storm shutters left wide open—into the dark garden's depths where trees and intricately arranged stones stood. "You can't see her face anymore, though the lid isn't fastened yet," I replied. "I see. Sorry," Sato said. "Ghosts and thieves don't faze me—it's corpses I can't handle. They terrify me." "It feels eerie... Almost disrespectful to Mari somehow." "Don't worry," I answered with a laugh. "The thing in that coffin isn't Mari anymore. It's a counterfeit Mari."

Yasui Shin walked past me sideways with downcast eyes. Thinking he had addressed me, I grew momentarily confused. Counterfeit—that word struck me first when I pulled back the white cloth and stared at dead Mariko. Even if he as her husband found this offensive, there was no alternative—any retraction or excuse would ring false now. Shin kept avoiding eye contact with me.

Shin, still wearing his going-out suit, briskly directed the funeral workers as they lifted the coffin onto the unpainted wooden shelf with coordinated shouts. His brand-new high-quality socks—worn with the thin navy suit befitting a banker—made him seem profoundly out of place within that house. Together with Saeki and the actresses, he meticulously arranged the surplus flowers atop the coffin. Flower baskets from the theater troupe were brought in.

“Sato,” Shin called. “About the notification letters—could you go get them from the printer?” “It’s on Honmachi-dori.” “Even if we write them now, we probably won’t make today’s final post.”

“Oh, that’s nothing. Then I’ll just take them straight to the post office.” Sato answered energetically.

In the annex where the two had lived, we three wrote the addresses, but Tonko’s name was not among those assigned. Having sent the theater troupe members home, Sato and I decided to keep vigil through the night. The theater troupe's young leader persistently questioned Shin about the cause of the suicide until the very end. “I don’t have a damn clue,” Sato snapped. “What’s the point of agonizing over it now? It’s too late for that.”

Even past twelve o'clock, Mariko's mother remained in the room where the coffin was placed, her head bowed and shoulders trembling. She wasn't crying aloud; her tears no longer soaked the handkerchief. "Kanzeonnamubutsuyobutsu, ui..." I chanted the Heart Sutra from half-remembered memory, straining with all my might—the same sutra my monk uncle had forced me to memorize as a child. It didn't last thirty seconds before I instead became aware of my own hunger.

I am by nature someone who condones deliberately selfish behavior, yet I'm oddly susceptible when it comes to others, prone to drowning in meticulous caretaking and meddlesome interference. Having sat in that room tending incense for nearly an hour, I still ultimately couldn't bring myself to speak a word to Mariko's mother. I try considering something to say that might ease her mind, that might offer comfort. But each time, I end up feeling it would be better to leave her undisturbed. I abandoned attempts at speech. Rather than risk causing harm, I make it my policy to aim for mere harmlessness at the very least.

"I must ask you to take over tending the incense," I said as I stood up. Mariko's mother nodded with her face buried in a crumpled handkerchief and edged closer to the altar. Throughout, she said nothing and ate nothing.

In the detached room, Yasui Shin sat facing Sato in chairs. On the table was a half-empty whiskey bottle, and the two sat with their arms crossed. I sensed that some significant conversation had occurred between the two. Sato had a reddish-dark angry-looking face. Shin, whose face showed no signs of drunkenness, was staring at the whiskey glass filled to the brim on the table.

“I’m exhausted. My legs went numb.” Though my legs weren’t actually numb, I sat down in the chair between them, massaging my calves while exaggeratedly knitting my brows. I didn’t want to know anything. That was inevitably the most troublesome and complicated sort of thing. Yet at the same time, I found myself unwilling to share that strangely oppressive silence with them either.

Shin poured whiskey for me. I used my usual evasive tactic. “Ah, I’ve gotten sleepy now.” The silence still continued. I flexed my arms and then rubbed my eyes.

“...I used to chat with Mari now and then,” Eventually Sato said while staring at the desk. “‘There’s no way I could be unhappy—right?’ Mari would always say.” “Just two or three days back, I seem to remember hearing her say that too.”

I realized my speculation had been correct. Sato's voice had changed. His tone was clouded with suppressed resentment. Yasui Shin smiled faintly. It was a smile that seemed both ironic and utterly at a loss.

“Do you know the cause?” Sato asked me; I shook my head. “This one claims to have no clues,” Sato said in a low voice, “Yasui.”

Reaching out his hand, Shin took Mariko's photo from atop the radio and silently gazed at it. His face showed bewilderment. I thought of his bewilderment, his sorrow. I deliberately stifled a yawn. I too had to wait for something to pass.

“Yasui,” Sato said in a slightly louder voice. “Say something, damn it. Just having no idea isn’t gonna cut it, is it? Say something!” “But—” Yasui Shin laughed. He returned the stage-face photo to the top of the radio. “What a piece of work you are. At this point, what exactly am I supposed to say?”

“At this point, huh?” Sato muttered. “That’s true—I really am being rude here. My bad.” Sato stood up. “Let’s go to the main house. Staying here makes me feel like I’ll end up acting even more unreasonable.”

“I’m hungry,” I said.

The main house had its sliding doors removed here and there like during a major cleaning, and electric lights brightly illuminated the tatami mats. At this hour when most houses had fallen silent in sleep, receiving the night breeze from the pitch-black expanse of the garden while drinking sake and eating food with the others, we somehow felt liberated from the atmosphere and constraints of the house and came to imagine ourselves as carefree travelers camping under the open sky. We came to be thought of as nothing more than disjointed toy dolls, rootless beings at ease.

Shin's father in his stern-faced kimono, relatives, and a maid wearing an ill-fitting new apron were talking with Sato. What I saw there was less a scene of mourning the deceased and more an exhibition of people’s self-serving curiosity. I had become aware that I wasn’t even trying to consider the cause of the suicide. It wasn’t that I bore any ill will toward the others, but discussing the dead Mariko felt like discussing some counterfeit version of her—something that left me utterly disengaged. That sensation never left me all through the night. For her, there was no exit left... Whether living people have exits at all, I couldn’t say. But the living at least possess that illusion—no, the will to keep moving in search of an exit. To dig through this Mariko who’d lost even that—desperately mining words and seeking explanations that suited only ourselves—felt profoundly tragic, unspeakably cruel, savagely barbaric, akin to slicing her defenseless body into thin shreds. To protest “That’s not true,” to assert herself, to resist the one-sided accusations being hurled—these were things she could no longer do. To me, people’s efforts—those funeral customs—had come to seem utterly hollow, even profoundly distasteful. The dead are a darkness we must leave undisturbed. The only person I felt any kinship with was Mariko’s mother, still silently hunched over. It struck me that perhaps what I truly wanted was to be like that mother—to press my forehead against the tatami before Mariko’s coffin and remain perfectly still.

But I didn't want to leave the wake. I found myself wanting to hear Mariko's voice one more time. Her usual elder-sisterly teasing remarks or silly banter would do. I want to hear that laugh.

The time I tried thinking about Mariko in the same way as everyone else was when I entered the Yasuis' toilet. The stench made me recall the smell of a corpse. But it wasn’t from then that I began thinking of her. On the wall in front of the toilet was a detailed map of France fastened with tacks. Two years ago a map of Brazil had been pasted there. Mariko laughed in a high-pitched voice while explaining that it was her idea for her and Yasui to enjoy imaginary trips together and that everyone in the household found it amusing.

“Mariko! Where are you traveling now?” “Where are you going all by yourself?” “Well... I grew tired of Paris too,” he said through imagined lips still moist with play-pretend wine. “From Toulouse I came south – Montpellier now.” “This stretch feels almost Shonan-like.” “The green here... so vivid it hurts.”

“Mariko! Oh, I’m in Southern France too,” “I just came from Cannes to Marseille again recently—completely bored out of my mind.” “Oh?” “Then let’s meet in Avignon.” “Now that the weather’s turned nice, why don’t we head north and travel through Switzerland together?”

“Mariko! Wow, I'm so happy! When we went to Italy last time, we saved Switzerland for later, remember? You promised not to go to Switzerland without my permission. But let's keep it a secret from the daddies—it'll be such a hassle again if they catch on and tag along. How wonderful! We can finally enjoy Lake Léman together, and let’s climb the Matterhorn too. Hey, what kind of outfit do you think I should wear?”

...How absurd. With my knees bent and eyes fixed on the wall, I smiled bitterly, acutely aware that I was nothing but a shallow radio drama hack. But pushing out from their cheerful life together that resembled playing house, such conversations were entirely possible.

To them, those names were never those of bars or cafés around Ginza or Shinjuku, nor was the map merely printed colors and lines. The map had grown thoroughly aged, its corners curled into the color of withered gardenia petals. I suddenly stroked the map with my fingertip. For the first time, I found myself harboring something akin to doubt in my chest. For Mariko, had this map become nothing more than a dead scrap of paper? Had the wings of fantasy run dry, had she lost all joy in this dream journey? I examined it closely. As I had noticed, large, deep claw marks crossed diagonally across the map.

The sharp line marks made me recall Mariko's long-nailed fingers. I tried imagining Mariko - fallen from her world of fantasy, stripped of all delusions and illusions, staring fixedly at this bathroom wall like a lonely bird that had lost its wings......Not my problem. I repeated to myself in despair.

On my way back, I didn't see Mariko's mother before the altar. The smoke had ceased. Entering to place incense sticks, I stood within the intensified stench of death. The thick stench of death hung heavy and viscous, and a single fly had alighted on the white cloth. In the adjacent room were only Yasui and Sato; Yasui had had the family members go to sleep, and he informed us that everyone had said they'd entrust things to us until morning.

“A grateful nuisance, really. Because everyone says such selfish things.” He laughed.

“What about her mother?” “We forced them to sleep—took everyone along.”

“There’s always tomorrow.” Sato brought the glass to his mouth. His movements showed he was quite drunk. The new whiskey bottle was also nearly empty. In the distance, a wall clock chimed, and when I looked at my wristwatch, it was two-thirty. “Hey, Kubo,” Sato said with slight exaggeration, slurring his tongue. “What is it?” I answered reluctantly. “Yasui says he’s never fought with Mari.” “What do you think?”

I became wary. Sato wanted to say something, I thought. He was onto something. About Mari's suicide - he held information I didn't know.

By his tone, I saw through that Sato wasn't that drunk. But regarding Mari, I didn't want to say anything, nor did I want to hear anything.

“Hey, Kubo, what do you think?” In Sato’s repetition, I sensed his attempt to pull me in; I resisted it.

“It’s fine either way. If he says so, then let him have it his way.” “Idiot, I’m a married man. I’m not like some single guy like you. Where in the world is there a married couple that doesn’t fight?”

“You can’t say they don’t exist.” “No… I don’t really know.”

Sato was watching Yasui Shin out of the corner of his eye. "I won't take sides with either," I thought. I won't side with anyone. That's because I'm not like anyone else.

Sato looked down. "I mean, fundamentally... This couple here—no, scratch that—this guy's approach never sat right with me. “Acting all lovey-dovey like newlyweds—what’s that about? How many years have you been married now?” “We weren’t some special couple—just your average happy pair you’d find anywhere.”

But Sato wouldn't engage with my flippant tone.

“In this world, there’s no such thing as pure—seems this guy doesn’t know that.”

“That’s not true at all.” Shin answered with a sneer. But for some reason, Sato didn’t turn toward him and instead raised his face to me. “This guy,” he said to me. “This guy says it like this: ‘We loved each other; I loved Mari, and Mari loved me; we had built a happy life together. And yet suddenly Mari died, and I have absolutely no understanding of why.’”

“That’s exactly right,” Yasui Shin said quietly. “That’s exactly how it was. It’s not a lie.” “You said you never got angry at Mari, didn’t you?” Sato turned to face Shin.

“No,” Shin answered. “I dislike becoming domineering.” “But even you must have emotions.”

“I’ve made every effort to avoid anything harmful to our life together,” Shin answered calmly. “Confronting someone with raw emotions is a form of violence. I have no memory of ever committing violence.” “You processed everything with reason,” Sato countered. “So you’re saying you completely understood each other?”

“It’s for the sake of peace. “Because I’m a pacifist, you see—always have been.” Shin stiffened his smile. “Every person has parts like a locked room—aspects that remain unknowable. “I consider interfering to that extent to be crossing a line into harmful behavior. “What on earth are you trying to say?” “……Cut it out already,” I interjected. But next, it was Shin who spoke. Shin wore a serious expression.

“We’ve always cooperated to implement the most rational solutions.” “We’re only human—there were times when we rubbed each other the wrong way.” “During those moments, I’d wait quietly until her mood shifted.” “I let her do whatever she wanted—acting or otherwise.” “But I never once abandoned her.” “So you’re saying there’s no chance she was miserable?” “But does that automatically mean she was happy?” Sato retorted with biting sarcasm.

I remained silent. I saw Yasui Shin's cheeks flush slightly. He said rapidly: “If she was happy, who would commit suicide—is what you want to say. But there was nothing I could do.” “Don’t you feel even a bit sorry?”

“There was nothing more I could do. In that sense, I don’t think I was wrong.”

“You know—in the end, I want to say you killed Mari.”

Shin burst out laughing. “How convenient—the dead. Here I am forced to keep living, and now I’m even being branded a murderer.” Shin turned to me and laughed. “Hey Kubo,”

I said nothing. The idea of not taking sides with either—I hadn't yet abandoned that. Yet before I knew it, I found myself listening to Sato's words. Sato said.

“Yasui—are you truly blind to your own hypocrisy? Why don’t you say you’re sorry just once?”

Shin's eyes gleamed. He answered in a sharp voice. "To tell you the truth, I can only see her suicide as that woman stubbornly sticking to her own principles in her own way."

“There!” As Sato began to speak, Shin talked over him and continued: “That’s the only way I can see it. “I don’t know the reason. “I no longer even consider trying to understand—or being capable of understanding. “Everything had been supposed to work out. “Suicide was—so to speak—the result of that woman’s own...that woman’s personal selfishness. “I don’t know any kindness beyond silently accepting her.”

“What I’m criticizing, you know—” As if deep in thought, Sato tilted his thick neck like a guard dog’s. “How should I put it... That self-centeredness of yours—I guess that’s what it is—the kind you’ve always had,” he said. “...Yasui Shin is a man who never does wrong. “Wildly responsible, considerate to a fault. “That hasn’t changed since our stage-directing days.” Sato flicked a glance at me and pressed on. “You’ve done nothing but good deeds your way, Yasui. “But none of it helped Mari one bit.” “Maybe—no, definitely—while thinking you acted for her sake, you only ever made her suffer.” “You haven’t noticed any of it.” “That’s precisely why I’m calling you a hypocrite.” “I think I get how Mari felt.” “She couldn’t get one damn thing she truly wanted from you.” “Every word, every act—all missed the mark.” “Because you were too busy patching up your own twisted logic to ever step outside yourself.”

“None of us can step outside our own skin. Is that my responsibility?” “That’s right—that very thinking is the mistake you made, the root of your sin.”

Shin fell silent. I was looking at the weave of the tatami.

I realized I was already being drawn into the circle. For some reason, I felt terrified at the thought of leaving the room. At that moment, I could no longer leave without becoming aware of my own cowardice. I couldn’t move from my seat.

“I’m furious—at your stupidity,” Sato said. His tone carried a fire even he couldn’t control. “What you were doing—you know—was nothing but handling yourself. Trying to kill your emotions—in other words, it was nothing but an effort to erase yourself. Admittedly, you must have endured all sorts of things—but what was it all for? Wasn’t it all for your own sake? How can such inhuman endurance and businesslike arrangements between two people be considered a virtue? Virtue is a matter of effect. It’s giving the other person what they want from you. You probably thought you loved Mari—listen—but yours was a father’s love, a guardian’s love, a love for your own toy. Not a husband’s. To Mari, you never had real love—real tenderness. At first, that might have been fine. But Mari had gradually reached her limit. But you could think of nothing but stubbornly maintaining that kind of relationship with Mari—nothing but cherishing it. The one you loved wasn’t Mari—it was that kind of relationship with Mari, that plaything of yours, that self-satisfaction of yours—it was only yourself, wasn’t it?”

“……It’s almost like you’re describing me as if I were her entire life,” Shin finally said in a low voice.

“Take responsibility—at least a shred of it,” Sato said.

Responsibility... In that moment, I conceived something monstrous. I remembered that Oda Tomiko hadn't been a virgin. This was knowledge I'd gained through later experience. ...Yet this couldn't serve as my justification. I sprawled across the tatami.

“Hey.” I let out a pleading voice. “Does a wake really have to be an all-nighter?”

“Huh?” Shin looked at me. “Ah... If you want to sleep, go ahead. I’ll stay awake.” It was a tone straining to maintain his usual composure. Sato too lay down on his back.

“Love is a god who is all-powerful,” Sato said again. “I feel responsible too. As a friend, I should have said it sooner. I’m sorry. It just now finally clicked for me.”

He crossed his legs high, his ankle swaying loosely in the corner of my eye.

“I said some pretty cruel things too.” “If you’re angry, just slap me.” “I won’t ask for forgiveness.”

Suddenly it occurred to me.

“Hey, Yasui—the bathroom map. The one with the X marked by a nail. Was that Mari?” “Ah.” Shin forced a smile. “That’s the map we put up when we first got married. It’s worn-out, isn’t it?” “About a month ago, she dug it out again.” “Who made those nail marks?” I repeated.

“Mari.” Shin gazed into the distance. “It was about a week after we put it up. “She apparently went to the doctor alone. “So she was told her retroverted uterus meant she couldn’t have children, and upset, she said she marked the map with an X that night. “But even then, she didn’t try to peel it off.” “...If it’s just a retroverted uterus, couldn’t you fix it with surgery?” “Mari had a weak heart. Surgery wasn’t an option,” Sato answered in a throaty voice, tilting his head back. “Mari... But it’s better now, right?”

“...Yeah,” Shin replied in a somewhat distracted tone. He appeared to be thinking about something. The garden’s darkness ran deep, and the dim light from the room fell upon the small green leaves of a maple that had stretched its branches near the open corridor. In the tatami room, time had stopped some time ago. I connected three zabuton cushions, folded one into a pillow, shielded my eyes from the bright lamp light with my arm, and closed them. I was trying to sleep. The depth of my fatigue and drunkenness came into focus. I couldn’t fall asleep.

Could it be that I too had made a mistake? That thought shook me like a rough-hewn boat in a storm, threatening to drag me down into the bottomless black sea. Shin and I were terribly alike. As if listening to myself speak, I understood his rules perfectly. I could fully agree with the limits of this self I had drawn for myself. Humans are nothing but individual vessels sealed within their own skin—incapable of stepping outside themselves, unable to become another no matter how deeply they love, powerless to serve as substitutes for one another. ...I too had believed in that faith, and to stubbornly preserve it, I rejected the meddlesome existence of Tonko who kept ignoring it. More than her, I loved that faith. I feared the collapse of that faith.

But then I wondered: Had I ever found even a single precept that wouldn't betray me? It was always myself doing the betraying. Yet I had stubbornly clung to it all this time. Could it be that I was wrong? That rule of mine about only ever considering women's skin was indeed nothing but self-indulgent delusion. Merely out of some stifling, cowardly obstinacy that refused to acknowledge this truth, I had always tried to blind myself to reality. Had I too, like Yasui Shin, brought death upon a woman for that reason? —I was sinking to the seafloor. There was a blade inside me, and I couldn't crawl up from the pitch-black depths. I was drowning in darkness. I was being driven to share a coffin with the guilt rotting within me. No matter how desperately I struggled to climb out, I couldn't find anywhere to grasp—no connection left anywhere.

When I woke up, the light had been turned off. Outside the veranda, a whitish morning like an overcast sky had arrived. Sato’s restless snoring that came and went could be heard right beside me. The cold, damp air washed over me directly from the garden.

A hard, head-ringing sound echoed intermittently from the garden. I went out into the hallway. Yasui Shin kept grabbing stones at his feet and desperately hurling fastball strikes at the trunk of a pine tree near the distant stone wall. He had apparently been throwing stones like this for some time now, his face flushed.

I descended into the garden and approached Shin. He was short of breath. “Hey,” he said in a flushed voice. His face was sweaty, and his bloodshot eyes were immediately apparent. “Somehow I feel like getting swept up in sumo or something.”

Without answering, I picked up a fist-sized stone. Swinging my arm in a wide arc and puffing out my chest, I threw it with all my strength. The stone grazed a nearby cherry branch, and two or three green leaves slowly fluttered down. A satisfying sound rang out as my stone struck dead center of the pine trunk. “Alright,” Shin said.

We continued throwing stones alternately for about five minutes. The old woman in a white cooking apron stood in the corridor of the room where the coffin was placed, staring at it with her mouth open. Sato still hadn't gotten up. We returned to the room.

When the sun set, the rain began to fall. I didn't have an umbrella.

It was a gloomy, mist-like drizzle.

When I passed through a street glittering with multicolored neon lights and turned into a narrow alley lined with similar-looking bars, the pavement gave way to a warped dirt path. I entered a house near the edge. The middle-aged woman welcomed me in a high-pitched voice. "There's no debt," I reflexively thought. I watched through the glass door as two men carrying instruments walked past outside, then saw them push open the door of a bar-like establishment with a red light across the street, bowing slightly as they disappeared inside. One man wore a bright red shirt, while the other had buck teeth and a face so uncannily resembling the prime minister’s that it made you want to burst out laughing. When the two vanished, the scenery froze. My eyes slid to the drizzling road as if searching for movement.

“What are you spacing out for?” A leisurely, innocent voice said. “Mr. Kubo, Mama’s asking what you’ll have.”

It was a narrow bar where even packed in a row, only four or five people could sit. In a corner bent at a right angle, a pair of men were watching me.

“Oh, you two were here too?” The men were Heiyama and Saeki—comrades who had been helping with the reception at Yasui’s house until just moments before. “I didn’t know you two knew this place,” I said. That bar belonged to a different theater circle, one where I’d never crossed paths with Mariko. I would rather have dissolved into a crowd with no ties to Mariko whatsoever.

“I was brought by Heiyama,” Saeki answered amiably.

“What were you thinking about?” said Heiyama.

“Well, I can’t remember.” I answered that way and laughed. But I had been thinking about Sato’s words. I left Yasui’s house after finishing dinner and came straight to this Shinjuku bar. At last finding myself alone, like a clam retreating into its shell, I had finally gained the time to calmly re-examine the texture of my own carapace. Sato’s words had pierced me like an arrow that lodged itself as though my flesh had exploded around it. When I found myself alone, the pain revived anew with raw vividness. I had to do something about it. Otherwise, my peace of mind would never be restored.

I realized something had begun within me. Like a swollen nucleus, Oda Tomiko's presence filled my head. I feared having my mistaken, foolish rules destroyed and fled from her. She said, “I’ll die.” But I closed my eyes and kept stubbornly running away. To protect my naive delusion of sincerity, I sacrificed a woman. I had killed a living human being—a daughter to some father or mother, perhaps a sister, a grandchild, a niece; a classmate to someone; a female office worker; a healthy young woman who should have become a wife and mother.... This thought now bore down on me. Sato’s criticism of Yasui Shin wasn’t just someone else’s affair—I too lived within the same narrative.

“You know, the day before Mari died, I had a drink with her here for the last time,” said Heiyama, leaning on the whitewood counter as he looked at me. “Oh? After we parted ways?” Saeki said in a bright voice. “I didn’t know that.” “I was comforting her.” Heiyama spoke while casting furtive sidelong glances up at the middle-aged woman. “Suno yelled at Mari too harshly, don’t you think? That’s why…”

“Suno?” I didn’t know that.

“Oh.” Saeki made a slightly troubled face and looked back at me. “You didn’t know? You know, that day when we had Mr. Kubo’s script reading?” “Mari was in good spirits that day, right? The day before her suicide?” “So Mari didn’t say anything about it then.”

Heiyama pondered with a dark expression and said, "Well, it's really nothing serious, you know. That day, we finalized the cast internally for next month's production, but Suno removed Mari from the cast." "Huh, I didn't know about that." Suddenly, I visualized Suno's face—the face that had been persistently questioning Yasui for reasons.

"Then Mr. Sato might not know about this yet either," said Heiyama. "Mari was dissatisfied and kept grumbling about it, but..." "...Please keep this quiet, okay? Then Suno got a bit angry, and......" Admittedly, even if that was a minor reason or one of the triggers, it wasn't anything significant—fundamentally, nothing substantial enough to shake Mariko's very life—or so I thought. Mari had always been a woman whose nature made her capable of persevering against such harshness. She wasn't the type of woman who tried to live solely for herself. If it had been solely about herself, then she would never have fallen into such decisive despair... Thinking that way might have been a habit of mine. But I had this feeling that there was no way to truly know the cause. I'm small-spirited and not particularly broad-minded.

“Anyway, it’s not a big deal,” I said as I drained my beer. At that time, I could still taste the bitterness of beer. “It’s too late to do anything now—just tell Suno that worrying about it will only ruin his health.” I quickly forgot about Mariko. I had been thinking about nothing but myself. With excruciating anguish, I was thinking about Tonko. No matter what I did, no matter what I said, no matter what I looked at, I immediately returned to that thought.

The drunkenness came on quickly. No one forgives me. And I will never be forgiven. Even while drinking with two members from Mariko's theater troupe, I couldn't distract myself. I might have looked slightly ridiculous. The soft flesh of another theater troupe girl's buttocks—she who had just entered the bar—kept brushing against and pulling away from my waist through her thin slacks. I turned around and blurted out a marriage proposal. I found myself drawn to her dusky skin, to that soft down glowing whitely against her flesh. We were acquaintances, but I'd never once been attracted to that horse-faced woman before. Yet believing love should demand its proper price, I spoke. "I feel like right now—with any woman—I could build a proper home." Shaking out her long hair with a derisive snort, she dismissed me outright alongside her companion. The man with her appeared more physically formidable than I was. Regrettably, I retracted my offer.

That was what made me leave that bar with Saeki and the others, I think. Through rain fine as silk threads—laughing too loud, talking, singing, stroking passersby's bald heads only to get scolded, delightedly running around all the while—I couldn't shake off the clinging memory of my own sins. Mariko had completely vanished from my thoughts. Heiyama and Saeki trailing behind me said nothing about her either. I must've struck some theatrical pose about picking up their tab. They followed me with astonishing persistence, and we drank ourselves senseless.

A long time passed, and we were sitting side by side at the counter of a bar behind the department store. A highball glass came sliding before my eyes, and I suddenly noticed. “Come on, let’s drink. This time it’s my treat, Kubo-san.” Heiyama's voice reached me. Saeki was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Saeki? Did he run away?”

I shouted. Apparently I had been singing pop songs up until then.

“...Ugh, hasn’t he ditched us? Now it’s just the two of us.”

Heiyama laughed heartily, then suddenly lowered his voice. "I said I wanted only you to hear this, didn't I?"

With bloodshot eyes, Heiyama peered at me. “Mari—she killed herself at a hotel in Fujisawa.” “Did you know?”

I was stunned.

“Is it true?”

“It’s true. “I got it out of some old woman they call a nanny or something. “As if Yasui’s trying to cover it up—that’s why she didn’t die in the evening. Mari died in Fujisawa in the early afternoon.” “—I see. Sato knew about that, did he?” The drunkenness began to fade away. I readjusted my slipping buttocks on the chair. “He knew about it, didn’t he? “He’d been pulling all sorts of strings too, you know.”

Heiyama emptied his glass, flicked his wrist, and ordered again. Suddenly, something flashed through my mind, and I said in a low voice: "Why did Mari go to Fujisawa?"

“That I don’t know.” Heiyama smiled thinly. “Did Mari know about that place?” “You knew, didn’t you?” He brought the glass close to his eyes, shook it, and said while keeping his smile intact.

“There was a man, wasn’t there? With Mari,” I said. “There was.”

“Who?” “It was me.”

He hadn't been laughing after all. When he bit down hard on his lips, tears slid down his cheeks. I was doubly shocked - that Heiyama had been Mari's lover, and that a man could weep like this.

“……For a moment, I thought it might’ve been Sato or Suno,” I said, lowering my eyes to the black thick wooden panel. I felt no special emotions toward Heiyama. “As for that matter... Yasui...” “Yes. He knew. Mari told him.” Heiyama answered, pinching his nose in a futile attempt to stop crying. “What happened between us... it was just once.” “It was practically rape, but midway through Mari stopped resisting.” Sniffling, he spoke rapidly. “The other night, I quietly went to that same bar with Mari, and after we left, I begged her again.” “Mari absolutely refused, so I told her, ‘I’ll never forget those moans of yours—I’ll tell your husband!’”

“Were you actually serious?” I was appalled by this unexpected confession. I had never imagined Mariko had been with a man other than Shin. “Well, I’d like to say I was serious, but…” Heiyama hesitated, putting on a rogue’s air. “...But then, after a while, Mari suddenly started laughing loudly right in the middle of the road.” “‘That person already knows everything! If I were to talk—what difference would it make? That’s all?’” “...she said,” and Mari started laughing.”

With a pained look, Heiyama emptied his glass and ordered another round for both of us.

“You don’t need to mention the other person’s name—that’s what the husband told her, apparently.” “So now, no one knows it was me…”

“I,” he said. “But I felt like I couldn’t keep myself from telling someone.” "I thought talking about it would make me feel better." "...Mari told me that even though her husband didn’t scold her, he said that letting me do what I wanted was best for him too." “I’m terribly free,” she said. "But Mari didn’t look happy at all.… At that time, she had sleeping pills with her." "Since they said both boxes had worn corners, Mari must’ve been carrying them around for some time now."

“Did you also go to Fujisawa?” “No. I got off the taxi midway and went home. She started screaming ‘No! No!’ like a madman so loudly that I had no choice but to go back. Mari probably dashed straight to Fujisawa.” “...I just can’t make sense of it.” I muttered something about the role this man had played in Mari’s suicide.

“When was it that you and Mari went to that hotel in Fujisawa?”

“It was when we filmed for the TV program.” “We went on location.” “Last month.” “Exactly one month ago.”

One month ago... Around when I pulled out that old map and stuck it on the wall again. It occurred to me. Was that nail's mark truly because of the setback?

“There was nothing in the newspaper.” “The bank president has considerable influence, I hear.” Heiyama was trying to regain his usual sarcastic expression.

“Yasui didn’t tell me anything. “...Guess he didn’t want to say anything.” Yet to me, behind Shin’s intention to handle matters discreetly—apart from any concern that exposing their shared wound now would prove pointless—I sensed there lay his own particular judgment.

He had stated that everything was supposed to go smoothly. Of course, even if he didn't consider it fully resolved, hadn't he believed this incident with Mari was—for both himself and her—a wound that had already been treated? ——Anyway, that was a settled matter. It should have been put to rest. "Everything was supposed to work out perfectly." "The suicide was—so to speak—the result of that woman's own selfishness, hers alone..." He had simply been waiting quietly for Mariko to recover from her wounds. He had dealt with it. "What else could I possibly do?" After that, there had been nothing left for him but to wait with folded hands as something within her—beyond his reach—disappeared and something else passed away.

Sato’s words resurfaced. “You never had any real kindness.” Kindness… But there my thoughts reversed. But what other attitude could Shin have possibly taken? I was consciously aware of sympathy toward Shin for the first time. In that case, he and I were not different people.

Hypocrite. I muttered deep within. Once again, Oda Tomiko’s face surfaced in my mind—Tomiko wept, insisting she couldn’t understand why I wanted to break up no matter what, and even when I turned my back to flee, she refused to walk away. At night, I gradually quickened my pace until I was practically running down the station platform, eventually leaving Tomiko behind there as I exited. I couldn't even bear to ride the train heading in the same direction while separated from her. I walked home. ……I thought. Indeed, I too had become obsessed with maintaining my own internal consistency and rejected the reality that threatened it—Tomiko. I had to face it squarely. But what did I protect through that? Despicable, foolish—this shameless apathy of wanting to be alone, this inhuman delusion of believing I could exist in isolation, this ludicrous cowardice that deems companionship evil—and I lack even more courage than Yasui Shin, am more despicable than he. I had fled without even stepping into the ring.

“I killed Mari,” Heiyama said through clenched molars, his voice low and anguished. “I’d been screaming these words in my heart ever since leaving that old woman’s shop.” “That old woman’s the only one who ever vaguely noticed anything between Mari and me.” “…I killed Mari.”

The soliloquy had shifted to an almost cheerful tone. With his black beret tilted askew, he gazed with an ecstatic look past the row of whiskey bottles. He stiffened his pinky finger and brought the glass to his mouth. Theatricality—I sensed it. His playboyish intoxication, that hollow self-satisfaction, suddenly made my forehead swell from within.

My tongue cramped up, and I realized my chest had begun to tremble. "Heiyama," I said in a subdued voice. "Why did you assume I'd keep quiet?"

“Why?...” Heiyama retorted sharply, twisting his gaping mouth as he stared at me. His drunken eyes swept scornfully across my shoulders and chest. “You planning to talk?”

This man might actually be hoping to have rumors spread about him. But I continued to stare at him without breaking my gaze.

“I can’t promise to keep quiet.” “When it comes to these matters, I have a policy against making promises with anyone.” “...Be my guest.” Heiyama smiled thinly. He spun around to show his back, then abruptly grabbed his glass and hurled it against the heavy wooden door.

I remained silent.

The large bartender stood in front of the counter, fiddling with his black bow tie with his left hand.

“...It’s all over now.” “No more violence from me.” Heaving a deep breath, Heiyama pressed his face against the counter as if clinging to it.

“Nothing’s ended at all.” I said with every ounce of contempt and malice I could muster. “You killed Mari. “Not a single thing about this will ever be over for you.”

Leaving Heiyama, who was set on drinking through the night, to his own devices, I went outside. I froze.

The rain was intense.

In the town past 2 AM where neon lights were fading, muddy roads wound through the darkness, and two or three small cars with their lights off tilted at angles in the rain. I turned up my suit lapels and stood under the bar's eaves with a cigarette still clamped in my mouth. The chilly air washed through me. My knees kept giving way alternately, legs swaying unsteadily on the gutter planks. I was no longer thinking about Heiyama or the Yasui couple.

I hadn't noticed my cigarette had gone out. I tilted my body sideways, intermittently feeling raindrops splash against my cheek as I stared at the mud beneath the streetlight, splattering under the pounding rain. I was irritated and unbearably furious. I endured it. Violent blades clashed within my body, tearing me apart and tormenting me, which I endured. I said aloud. "I'm a villain," I said. "A barren, idiotic, inhuman wretch." I have always tried to be sincere and precise. I have deluded myself into thinking that trying to be at least harmless to others was the sole possible good. But I abandoned a woman. I trampled her utmost sincerity. I will never again think of myself as a serious man. I will absolutely never again be able to feel any affection for myself.

“Tonko,” I called out. I couldn't stand this—I couldn't bear thinking of myself as a villain... After we broke up two years ago, every time I looked at the newspaper's society pages, I trembled with fear. Women's suicides kept catching my eye, and the anxiety persisted for over half a year. Even after a full year had passed, I would sometimes get ominous premonitions and, my face flushed with tension, repeatedly scrutinized the newspaper with meticulous care. In the end, I even began feeling as though I were longing for her death—wishing she would just die naturally from an illness or something. Her death—until then, it had felt like the expiration date of a prison sentence that forbade both new life and death. Even at today's farewell ceremony, I hadn't seen Tomiko. Could Tomiko be dead? Even if she were alive, that wouldn't absolve me from being called a murderer. I was a murderer. I had to bear that and keep living.

I don't want to write much about what happened after that. I had completely lost my bearings. Cowardice and drunkenness had driven me completely mad.

A taxi tout held out a rain umbrella and asked where I was headed. I answered reflexively. “Meguro. Kamimeguro.” Oda Tomiko's house was located somewhere in that two-thousand block. I had never been to that area. In my memory, the address of Tomiko’s house remained vague and indistinct—was it 2300, 800, or perhaps jumping from 2000 to some unknown number? Having been yelled at by the driver and flying into a rage, I set out walking through the pouring rain with only an Oda nameplate as my guide. I struck a match, cupped my hand around it, and with great effort examined the nameplate to read the address. The matches quickly ran out. I persisted in wandering through the deserted late-night residential area. If anyone passed by, I would ask them; if there were any lit houses, I intended to inquire there. I continued searching like a drowned corpse, dripping from head to toe. In the rain, the sound of cars occasionally running on distant roads echoed.

My pockets contained nothing but 200 yen and some loose change. I didn't know why I kept walking soaked through. Nothing made sense—no, it was better not to make sense of it. What did reasons matter? That's what I kept thinking.

Anyway, I wanted to see Tonko.

I wanted Tonko to gaze at me. I wasn't hoping to restore our relationship. I'd despaired of both forgiveness and persuasion. If pressed, I wanted to confess, weep uncontrollably, confirm something. To confirm Tonko's existence—to confirm my own sin. I wanted Tonko to condemn me. I wanted to beg forgiveness. Yet it was true—visions of pale female flesh flickered before my eyes like guiding lights. I wanted to inhale Tonko. With near-carnal intensity, I craved her standing before me—eyes stabbing me like she saw filth, lips cursing me. I knelt; I was struck. No—what I truly wanted was those white hands killing me. Rain hammered the sloped asphalt as I kept walking through it—seeking people, seeking light. A black figure rounded the streetlamp's glow. I sprinted toward it. The figure spread its chest wide and grabbed my arm.

“You’re the one who’s been loitering around here.” I couldn’t speak. The man in the raincoat wore a police officer’s hat with a vinyl cover. “The people around here,” said the officer, glancing about. “They got frightened and came to report it just now.”

I was questioned at a small police box with a red light. The other younger officer stood with hands clasped behind his back, gazing aimlessly into the rain-lashed night. I finally regained my senses and told a small lie, insisting I wanted to meet a woman named Oda Tomiko. “A friend has died—I’m going to inform them about it. “I don’t know the address.” I painstakingly molded my face into a sincere expression.

“So I’ve already spent three hours going around checking each house one by one.”

The middle-aged police officer who had apprehended my drenched self suddenly appeared moved, produced a large, thick ledger with a faded cover, and began questioning. "Is that woman at her own house? In other words, is she at the Oda household?"

"Yes. It's her father's house." Pursing his lips, the middle-aged police officer in a black rubber raincoat began flipping through the family register, licking his fingers. "...Hmm, this one's another Oda—the Diet member's mistress's place," he muttered under his breath. "Hey old-timer, you're from Hiroshima, right?" I let my usual habit slip out and immediately regretted it. Both the overly familiar language and cheerful tone were hardly appropriate for the situation.

Indeed, it had backfired. It was probably the result of that.

“Oh! You’re from Hiroshima too, aren’t you?” the middle-aged officer said with apparent delight, and I then had to spend over an hour with this man who had grown even more solicitous. There were four Oda households scattered throughout that 2000 block, and he began insisting on taking me around to each one. Leaving the police box and reluctantly sharing half of his raincoat, I had to talk about my work documenting atomic bomb aftereffects and how good the whiskey was there.

"But still, there was no woman named Tomiko there, eh?" he said, tilting his head. I repeated that there could absolutely be no mistake. Among the several men and women who came out with sleepy, displeased faces to respond, I had indeed found features bearing resemblance to Tomiko's. People always emerged in groups. But Oda Tomiko's face was nowhere to be seen.

When we exited the gate of the fourth Oda household, the police officer let out a long sigh and spoke. "So she'd already moved out after all, eh? That must be it." "That might be the case." I answered weakly. By now I had almost sobered up, feeling something like grateful relief toward whatever cosmic force had kept Tomiko beyond my reach. The police officer took my demeanor for pitiful dejection. The one who'd muttered "Should've brought a bat" with an apologetic air was actually that old man himself.

“What a waste—all that walking around in the rain for nothing, eh?” He shook out his raincoat and walked on. I couldn't answer. Keeping my eyes downcast, I lowered my head and parted ways with the police officer giving a salute. I felt like I had done something terribly wrong, and walking with him had become unbearably painful. Stumbling repeatedly, jolting and staggering, I walked along the stone-strewn path. Suddenly, I felt that this was exactly like my own reality.

The rain had stopped, and the night was fading. The sky was beginning to whiten across its entire expanse. The black madness had vanished, and I was about to be reborn into the quiet morning of the mansion district. The darkly swaying trees were beginning to regain their wet green color. With soft sounds, the trees shed the rain, and my footsteps traveled along the surface of a long stone wall that had escaped getting wet. I thought of nothing. There was a deep fog of fatigue. I was drowsy.

“Mr. Kuboooo, Mr. Kubo!” a deep male voice called out. I turned around. The middle-aged police officer removed his raincoat, raised one hand, and came running after me. He took deep breaths with his shoulders heaving and said with an earnest face, panting as he spoke: “H-here you go. “Your business card holder. “You left it on the desk. “You were walkin’ way too fast there, that’s why.” I expressed my thanks and put the business card holder in my pocket. Perhaps even my underwear had gotten soaked—the fabric clinging to my joints felt heavy. The police officer suddenly peered into my face.

“What’s this? You crying?”

I hurriedly shook my head. I had certainly not been crying. Where had the kind police officer found tears on my face? But to me, the morning light was blinding. The bus turned left just before the overpass and entered a wide road. Inside the bus, faint diagonal light rays shifted, and each time the center-divided doors opened, a dusty breeze tepidly flowed in. It was nearing evening, a full two days after Yasui Mariko's funeral. The weather had been muggy and overcast all day long.

On the knees of my winter trousers lay a paper bag containing manuscripts.

I had to go to the broadcasting station again. On the day of the funeral, a certain producer had requested it of me. I was a jack-of-all-trades—a skilled defensive player, so to speak. I don't get any hits, but I don't make any errors either.

I was sitting in the seat right behind the driver. I looked at the dirty black wooden floor. Remembering the night I went to meet Tomiko and wandered through the rain, I thought to myself that it had been an act of madness. Because of that, the landlady had forcibly taken my clothes to the laundry, leaving me in a hastily chosen polo shirt and heavy trousers... Oda Tomiko hadn't moved out after all. I learned this that morning.

A letter had come from Tomiko.

Upon seeing the address, I felt disgusted with myself for a while. Why am I always out of sync like this? Her address was Nakameguro.

The familiar schoolgirl-like handwriting raced across the familiar white envelope and plain white stationery. In matters of taste, she remained just as thoroughly stubborn as she had been two years before. Tomiko had, after all, attended Mariko’s funeral.

“I’ve recently made it a rule not to dwell on why you refuse to meet me. On the contrary, I have come to respect your stubbornness. (To me, it can only be seen as stubbornness and false pride— this is nothing but a kind of obstinacy on your part.)” Reading the opening, I was rather astonished that she didn’t even slightly consider the possibility that she might be disliked by me. Why on earth are women made so damn tough? Tomiko still seemed not to doubt her own perfection. But what had caught my attention was not those words.

“For the past year and a half, I had absolutely no knowledge of your whereabouts. I didn’t even try to listen to the radio on purpose. I love you. I can confidently say I still continue to love you. That goes without saying. But yesterday, when I saw you at Mari’s funeral—what I thought in that moment was, ‘Ah, Mr. Kubo—you were still alive after all.’…”

I read that part over and over. "Ah, Mr. Kubo—you were still alive after all," she had thought. ......Had Tomiko too been waiting for my death? —I had never even considered that someone might be waiting for my death. Even were I to die, I had regarded it as something concerning only myself—never connecting it to Tomiko's awareness. All I had done was fret endlessly over her death.

“To me, you remain at exactly the same distance. It is infuriating. As long as this remains unresolved, I find that I can neither truly live anew nor die. When I caught a glimpse of you—why, I wonder—I reflexively hid myself. Absolutely, I must not meet that person. Meeting each other is simply not possible... That’s what I felt. I was clinging to the wall outside the gate as if stuck fast.

"I entered through the back entrance and met Yasui-san's father. Through casual conversation, I discovered you were still living alone in that same lodging house, drifting aimlessly. But don't misunderstand me—I haven't written this letter out of complacency or some giddy happiness. I simply wonder why you refuse to change." A correspondence had occurred to me. Could she too be desperately wishing for her former partner's complete transformation—no, his utter obliteration? Had we both sustained our lives solely through this mutual expectation of death?... I envisioned a lone rainbow spanning the dark night sky. There we were—Tomiko and I—anchored at either end of that blackened arc. And the rainbow itself? Nothing but our gloomy forecasts of each other's demise.

I had been thinking. What I wanted was never her forgiveness. (I had never once counted on being forgiven.) What I now desired to obtain regarding her was assuredly nothing other than complete separation. However, this complete separation was nothing but the complete disappearance of the other. We were waiting. We were enduring. We could no longer connect except through such mutual expectations of 'death'. I felt for the first time that our relationship had stabilized and achieved equilibrium. Finally attained, finally made clear—the one certain relationship between her and me: it was our mutual expectation of each other’s death. And at the same time, it was each of their expectations for their own extinction.

Tomiko’s letter continued. “But do you truly intend to keep clinging to your stubbornness? Women are weak creatures—you shouldn’t be so spiteful. I want to meet you. Casually—if possible, I’d like us to meet as though it were a single imaginary day unrelated to the other three hundred sixty-four days of our year. Somehow, I can’t help feeling that if left alone, you’d be in precarious danger (I suppose I’m still terribly stingy after all. Not the kind that wants to reach out and hoard things, but the kind that once I’ve grabbed hold of something, I don’t want to let go—like a stingy old woman.)”

Even if you don't come, I will stand there blankly for about an hour to convince myself of your absence. Because I'll be standing there. ……Though I'm a little worried about my selfishness, I believe you will come. Making it seem like there's deliberately no time to reply, I'll say today. "I'll be waiting at 6 PM in front of Shibuya Station."

I left my lodging exactly at six, browsed through new books at the bookstore as usual for a while, then boarded a bus heading in the direction of the radio studio.

Suddenly, I found myself thinking. Had I ever once truly sought love from Tomiko? I had always desperately chased after things like the clarity of our positions, the outlines of our relationship, its distances and equilibrium—that personal satisfaction of my own understanding—and ultimately could never free myself from preoccupation with them. ……At that moment, a sudden thought raced through my chest. Had I not rather been in love with Mariko?

—Doesn't matter either way. With that thought, I gave a wry smile. That too was probably nothing but nonsense I'd conceived—born from Mariko's death and the outline taking shape within my emotions toward her.

The bus ran along the wide asphalt road in early June, fading into a pale dusk. It pulled up to the sidewalk as though docking, then started off again. The short bus conductor girl had a large, comfortably rounded backside. I couldn't direct my thoughts toward work.

The sun was sinking. I looked up at the cloudy sky through the glass window and thought, Ah, the rainy season is about to begin.