Pathway to Japanese Literature

A faint wind came up; walking along the street and looking up, I saw a pale blue clear sky still lingering above the buildings.

“Today was lovely.” When I stopped walking, the woman with me released my arm and said. “Especially your appetite was lovely.”

“That calf cutlet—the sauce was really well-made, wasn’t it?” The woman with plump cheeks spoke leisurely, her eyes gleaming as she smiled with lips she’d just freshly reapplied. “And then—and then I went back for seconds, you know.” There was a Tohoku-style accent in the woman’s speech. She tried to speak standard Japanese while putting on airs of refinement, so the ends of her sentences rose. Due to my profession, I was particular about accents. But I said nothing. I no longer needed that woman. 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 spun sharply around and retraced her steps past me toward the station with an air of feigned nonchalance. She worked at a café across from the station. In the young woman walking away—swaying her pale blue tight-clad hips, holding her head up straight—there remained no visible trace of having spent so much time alone with me. I walked to the elevator in a remarkably pleasant mood.

When it came to women, these days I only thought about their skin. When I thought about what lay beyond skin—the parts I couldn’t see—I always found myself at a loss and ended up completely stuck. I had been conscientiously striving to implement that precept toward women—to sever relationships cleanly like a snapped thread—precisely because I wanted to end things that way. The reading room at the end of the seventh-floor corridor had no windows, making 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—impossible to tell whether AM or PM—and the fluorescent lights left blazing made the space painfully bright.

Opening the door, I sensed that the people had suddenly fallen silent. When I leaned my elbows on the long narrow crude wooden table at the center, its uneven legs clattered against the floor with a trembling noise. The noise hadn't faded yet. As if speaking on behalf of the people whose murmuring had been interrupted, Saeki said, pausing distinctly between each word.

"Mari... Mari apparently drank two boxes of sleeping pills this morning at the Nakano house." That was how I first learned of Mari's suicide. The actors maintained an unnervingly dense silence while haphazardly arranging metal chairs along the wall. Two or three people stared vacantly at me. Mari Susumu had been an old acquaintance of mine. She was one of the talents scheduled to appear on my program that night.

“Earlier, Mari’s husband called Producer Sato, apparently.” “We only found out about it then.”

“Is she dead?” I said. I was nearly knocked off my feet. “No, not yet.” The older actress answered, then hurriedly added, “So there’s still a chance she might survive.”

I arched my chest back and slowly crossed my legs while wrapping one arm around the chair back. In truth, I had done that instead of attempting to stand up. I lit up a cigarette. Even if I rushed there now—I told myself. "They say they found her way too late, don't they?" "It's definitely too late."

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

“They’ve been completely absorbed in the stomach.” “Then it’s definitely too late.” “But what reason could she possibly have had to die?” “Mari, she was exactly the same as always even last night.”

“Does anyone have any clue?”

“What about you, Kubo-san?” A person called out to me. I shook my head. I didn’t want to say anything.

The reasons people were speculating about for the suicide didn't matter in the least. I hadn't been thinking about whether Mari would survive or not survive. At that moment, I hadn't really been thinking about Mari at all.

I tried to recall the scene—the city at dusk where neon lights already flickered awake, where a crisp wind made treetops whisper as it passed through—and the day's hours I'd let graze my senses unknowingly. That day held no morning for me. The railroad crossing's yellow-and-black striped poles seen from the hotel window, a lone black ant traversing red roof tiles, the afternoon sky steeped in flawless blue. Yet these weren't special things; they never gathered meaning for me. They testified neither to Mari's presence nor absence. Mere husks of distant irrelevance now—and Mari herself became just another faint landmark on my horizon, a scenic element viewed through haze. Even the woman who'd walked clacking hard heels earlier—her too I couldn't properly summon. Divided by some membrane, I couldn't feel others' lives or deaths raw—abandoned in solitude.—Maybe this room's fault, I thought irritably. True enough—the room stood severed from wind, seasonal skies, sun, city bustle, daily world—suffocatingly sealed like a vacuum box floating in airless void.

The door swung open. Sato entered, a stopwatch dangling from his wristband, guiding a petite young woman holding a script by the shoulder. Avoiding people's gazes by keeping his eyes downcast, he closed the door, and the large man placed his palm on the young woman's shoulder.

“We’ll have this person take over Mari’s role.” “This is Takano from the troupe—Ms. Yukari Takano.” He bent his neck as if examining his own rugged hands. His trademark gruff voice continued. “Mari’s dead.” “We just got the call.” “I can’t believe it...” Saeki said after a beat, his voice artificially bright. The staff kept silent. “I drank with her last night in Shinjuku.” “Heiyama was there too.” “Right, Heiyama?” Saeki pressed. “Anyway, I should head back now.” “She kept saying ‘Poor husband,’ you know?” “We all went our separate ways after that.” “Doesn’t seem premeditated to me.”

"But even assuming it was impulsive, what reason could Mari have had that she absolutely had to die?" The actress who had been playing Mari's mother earlier said in an oddly confrontational tone. "Poor thing." Her stifled sobs sounded like suppressed laughter. "That person was always someone who felt lonely when alone." "When someone was there—anyone at all—she'd suddenly become bright and strong." "When I think about why we ended up letting her die..."

“Just quit trying to figure out reasons.”

Heiyama spoke up for the first time. "There was no suicide note, right?" “Even Mari might not have wanted anyone to understand her.” “That’s cruel.” The actress stared 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—it always pisses me off."

Sato smiled wordlessly. I smiled back and lowered my eyes. I thought: Hadn't we all been enduring life together? This mutual helplessness laid bare—this void offering no resistance. I had to wait motionless for it to pass.

“Aren’t Kubo and I the oldest friends here among us?”

Sato shrugged his wide nylon-jacketed shoulders. “It’s because Mari was still an English literature student back then, when you think about it.”

Back then，Sato and I were in French literature，and Mari married Susumu Yasui，who was in the same year in economics．They were all members of the same university drama club．There was also a summer when they carried puppet theater props and energetically toured islands stretching from Izu Peninsula through Tokyo Bay．“Well，looks like it’s just us two left still clinging to theater work，”Sato said．After graduating，Mari was away from acting for about a full year，and two years ago she begged Sato to let her start performing again with their current troupe．

“What a fool,” Sato said with a serious face. If anything, I thought, I had liked Mari. She was a petite woman with a pale, clean nape. With her flat nose and slightly wide-set eyes, she wasn’t a beauty but had an innocent, wholesome air—the roles she’d been given in the one or two stage productions she’d been cast in were all those kinds of girl-next-door parts. Her acting wasn’t good. She had a tendency to become completely absorbed in things—though if you’d truly loved her, that might have been endearing—but I found that girlishly romantic self-indulgence exasperating. That habit of hers—when drunk, fearlessly climbing any high place whether tree or utility pole to belt out every song she knew with full emotion, and that other habit of putting on airs to break into children’s song-and-dance routines. I recalled once having spitefully joked that Mari seemed to prefer living a theatrical life over actual acting—how troublesome. And then there was that single-mindedness, that overbearing kindness and love of debate. Mari had a certain prudishly strong-willed high school girl-like aspect to her, and her marrying Susumu while still in school hadn’t been entirely out of character. Their romance was said to have blossomed from the May Day Incident, though I hadn’t attended the demonstration.

The young girl from the broadcasting company’s affiliated theater troupe that Sato had brought was hunched over her script in the corner, continuing to move her hands fervently. Upon closer inspection, she gripped a stubby red pencil in her palm, drawing a cartoon of a doll with long eyelashes on the back of her script, her slender white fingers tensing as she obsessively scribbled over its lips. “Let’s go with that, Writer.” Sato signaled to me with his eyes. “Turns out she’s a surprisingly hip kid. Can even carry a tune if pressed.”

“If it’s singing, I can do that too.” The actress playing the mother said without concealing her displeasure. “Is taking Mari’s role an impossible request?”

I was slightly surprised by the actress who openly displayed jealousy and glared at the young girl. Mari’s role had been the lead.

“Shall we head to rehearsal now?” Sato discarded his cigarette and with practiced ease brushed aside the actress’s complaints.

“Yuka, you there? “Is the studio free?”

“I’ll go check.”

The girl from the affiliated theater troupe stood up, and with that motion, the table rattled, causing the red pencil to roll off the script. The girl hurried out into the hallway, seemingly unaware.

No one said anything. The room was quiet. In the corner of the hard, pale cement floor lay two empty Chinese soba bowls stacked together. The short red pencil had come to rest before them. I gazed at it. Such meaningless details were like an old caramel box tumbled on station stairs—things that would catch my eye momentarily yet leave no trace in memory. I contemplated all I'd seen this way and forgotten this way. I have forgotten countless things.

I would probably forget this pencil too before long. I would forget it without a doubt. As I thought this, I stared fixedly at the red pencil for a while, as if measuring the weight of that eerie accumulation of all I'd forgotten.

Regarding the Susumus, I had never thought of them as anything but happy. I didn't want to witness any happiness from others except the kind that would repel me outward. I hated sensing unhappiness. My interest demanded walls of smiles from all people; I never ventured beyond that surface. And until then, the Susumus had perfectly satisfied this desire of mine. There hadn't been even a whisper of infidelity regarding them in any matter, and as the only son of a regional bank president, Susumu and his wife's life had lacked for nothing.

That night, I received my fee from Sato, entrusted the performance to him, and headed ahead of the others to the Susumu household in Nakano. When I was about to transfer to the Chuo Line, I felt a slight sense of reluctance. In that adzuki-red train car, I was recalling a day when Mari and I had glared at each other. I was looking at Mari’s face, her eyelids faintly flushed.

At that time, I was forcibly dragged along by Mari. Two winters ago, on a packed commuter train, Mari had shouted "Tonko—Tonko!" at the top of her voice—Oda Tonko’s nickname—and raised her voice excitedly about love this and that, sincerity that and this. Oda Tonko was a fellow member of the same theater club and, after graduation, had been employed at a textbook publisher. I had clearly broken up with that Oda Tonko, with whom I’d had a four-year relationship, the previous day.

That day, we had gone unthinkably wild on the train. On our way back from the studio at peak evening rush hour—with commuters packed tight between me and Mari—I should have been counting down stops until my transfer station exit, regretting my confession, but gradually grew combative. Exposed to passengers’ half-annoyed, half-amused stares, flushing crimson, I finally shouted in that same shrill voice: “Quit your damn nagging! I’m not asking permission—just giving you a heads-up!”

Mari pressed on. I retaliated. “Shut up! Basically, I just hate people.” “Hmph,” Mari retorted from about six feet away. “Hate people? How can you kiss someone on a platform then? Right in front of everyone. I heard it straight from Tonko herself, you know.” “That’s why—that’s exactly why I hate people even more.” I shouted desperately.

While frantically struggling to look at me, Mari shouted back. "I don’t get it—why would you break up with someone that good? You’re such an idiot, really." I completely lost my temper. "Anyway, I’m not smart." "But even an idiot—in his own idiotic way—seriously thought it through in the end." "Even I haven’t slept properly these past two or three days." "Oh? So now you can finally sleep soundly?" "You're awful." Mari’s shrill voice, honed on stage, carried clearly. "Don’t you feel bad about Tonko?"

"When you get down to it, isn't the fault with both of us? Something like this can't be done alone." Laughter erupted around us. My vision went dark from excitement as I kept shouting: "Even responsibility's split fifty-fifty! If you still want to call me the villain here, that's about me—about me being the one who ended things." "But y'know, 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." "Thinking 'I should quit, I should quit' while still dragging it out—that's way worse."

For my part, I had fully settled into playing the victim. If only Tonko hadn’t existed, I wouldn’t have been forced into this damn role. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten the comfort of Tonko’s body.

“How selfish—acting like the other person’s feelings don’t matter at all,……” The petite Mari, wedged beneath people’s shoulders, kept shouting in that shrill voice. “What’s wrong with her?”

Not to be outdone, I twisted my body against the hanging strap and retorted. “Everything. It’s suffocating!”

“Villain, liar, idiot.”

Mari’s face was not visible. I shouted loudly toward where I guessed she might be. "I’m petty! Cut it out already! Anyway, I’m what matters to me!"

When we were disgorged from the train at Nakano Station, Mari—her face crimson and breath coming in gasps—abruptly seized my arm. She grilled me. "For four whole years—four years you've been together—what? What could you possibly have realized now that escaped you before?" "You're cowardly." "And there's no proper reason to begin with, is there?" "What's wrong with you?"

“She’s too compliant. “That’s four years of everything going exactly my way.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s too heavy for me.” I realized my voice sounded like a scream. “In the end, it feels like I’m just bending to her will—it’s unbearable for me.” I felt like I was drowning. I hadn’t said anything accusatory to her. “It’s my problem—the problem is—”

Mari suddenly looked at me with a probing gaze.

“Did you find someone else you like?” “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“You bastard.”

I wanted to slap her. How good would it feel to kick this health paragon’s firm round ass as hard as I could and send her tumbling down the stairs? “Do I look like some smooth operator who could pull that off?” Mari walked with a detestable pout, her lower lip thrust out. When they demanded fare adjustment at the ticket gate, I realized for the first time we were at Nakano Station. Passing through the barrier, I said, “...I’m going home.” I had truly intended to go home. “Wait—why did I even follow her all the way here?”

Night had fallen completely. Dragged along by Mari’s forceful demeanor, I—who was supposed to return to my Gotanda boarding house—had forgotten to transfer trains. It was an utterly absurd feeling.

With my earlobes still burning, I approached the ticket window, and as I tried to buy a ticket, Mari clung to that arm.

“I won’t let go. If you think this is embarrassing, come with me. Go talk to Susumu—if you’ve got any conviction, that is.” “I don’t want to.” “What’s with the attitude? Putting on airs and raising your voice like that!”

“No.” “You haven’t said a thing yet! I want to hear your side—I know you’re the type who takes everything damn seriously.” It was only now that I found being called ‘damn serious’ humiliating, but back then, hearing it had never felt unpleasant. Losing momentum yet dragging along the silent me, Mari walked past the bus stop and entered the station-front food market. “Come on, I’ll treat you. Pick whatever you like.” Leaning against me with a pouting face, Mari walked all around the market with its arcade-style roof, looking thoroughly pleased. Before I knew it, I had been made to choose tonkatsu, and on the pretext that my coat was new, Mari kept piling item after item onto my chest. “When it comes to salads, mine are way better—so I’m not buying any from a place like this.” After leaving the market, she meticulously searched four or five greengrocers and insistently bought out the most affordable and delicious-looking mandarins.

I couldn't even shrug my shoulders. Even if I took a slightly deeper breath, mandarins and potatoes would spill from the paper bag. Each time, Mari would let out a cry as if it were a national emergency. Apart from her handbag, she carried nothing but a single white rose she'd haggled down at the florist. Despite her petite frame, she was well-proportioned, and the new navy-blue princess-line coat suited her perfectly. Fluttering the greenhouse-grown white rose near her cheek all the while, Mari gripped the sleeve of my coat tightly with one hand as though abducting a criminal.

Stepping down onto Nakano Station’s platform,I recalled myself from a year and a half prior—late on a winter night waiting for the last train,sitting solitary on that deserted station bench.A long freight train rumbled endlessly before my eyes,and with my coat collar turned up against the cold,I trembled consumed by confused wretchedness.The Susumus' happiness had molded their features into matching contours,and I found myself expelled from their orbit,fleeing homeward.On that bench,I persisted in affirming one certainty through mental repetition.That wanting to break with Tonko Oda—inexplicable yet undeniable—hung thick as acrid smoke in my consciousness.

I disliked how Tonko seemed to forget the loneliness whenever she was before me. She remained perpetually gentle, forgiving everything I did according to my every whim, never once rebelling or asserting herself. Tonko had no flaws whatsoever; yet running counter to this awareness, I found myself unable to restore any freshness to our lovemaking—a repetition that had congealed into an unshakable routine. My love had gone missing, and for me, enduring this meant nothing but persisting in defeat to Tonko's obedience without a shred of joy.

I grew impatient and began to think there must be something wrong with this relationship. It wasn't a connection between humans, between individuals—not an equal one-to-one relationship—but rather something unilateral, akin to that between a person and a dense cloud, or a person and a room. Trapped within her gaze, I sank as if plunging into a swamp—the water's surface looming overhead, my own form vanishing—until she appeared as an impasse she herself needed to breach. I felt suffocated; this wasn't the love I wanted—not some drowsy afternoon nap of affection. I craved a different love—a pristine collision where we'd clash entire naked bodies like beasts in combat. My repeated attempts at persuasion had failed. I resolved to break up with Tonko. I wanted to reclaim myself with sharp-edged contours.

Tonko, at first, did not take my proposal seriously. “Wait one month. Let me think about it too.” I thought that was natural. “Wait one month,” I repeated. “Oh, you were serious? I thought you’d forgotten about it.” “Why don’t you take me seriously for once—face me head-on? I can’t keep swinging at air anymore,” I said. “I haven’t thought about anything at all—thinking about it wouldn’t change a thing.” Tonko answered laughingly. “Up until now, I’ve done everything as you said—but this alone I can’t accept. I don’t want to break up.”

I felt as though, for the first time, I touched her and could oppose her.

We started walking along the National Railway line and talked our way from Shibuya to Shinagawa. The convictions that had first become clear between her and me differed too profoundly. She was obedient, chaste, kind, harmless—in other words, perfect—and the trouble was she believed it. For me, conversely, not believing in my own was the righteous path—and yet. ...Indeed, I—for whom Tonko had been the first woman—had never before touched another woman. But that didn't mean I believed in my own goodness. Our conversations kept missing each other, unable to even collide. I reaffirmed my desire to break up. "If putting it that way helps you accept it," I grew sullen. "I've grown tired of you." "I don't like a single thing about you anymore." "I'm sorry, but I want to run from you." "I never want to see you again."

“What if I were to die?” Tonko said after a brief silence. I was startled. “Die? Cut it out—quit joking around.” “Because if I can’t meet you, there’s no meaning in being alive.” Tonko began crying. I was completely flustered. “Stop talking about living or dying because of others—that whole mindset’s poison to me... This is impossible.” As I stood on Yatsuyama Overpass, a train passed beneath, exhaling white tepid smoke that stank of oil through the roadway, and in my panic I released the coarse stone railing. Tonko kept following. I’d been avoiding contact with her. I feared that delicate sensation of her impossibly soft flesh—the kind that would send me into raptures every time.

“For me, any woman would do—anyone at all,” I said. “With anyone, I’d immediately flare up. It’s like having something flat pressed against my forehead—I can’t think of anything at all. I never forget the other person’s personality as much as at that moment. And yet this continuous series of acts that ignore their personality becomes what people call love’s history. At least that’s how the other person puts it. I don’t get it. That’s why a word like ‘love’ becomes dead weight to me.” To me, that too was another form of humiliation. “It doesn’t have to be you—lately I’ve only been treating you as a stopgap substitute lover. I hate that.” The truck’s glare kept illuminating us.

“If you’re not here, I don’t want to live.” “Stop it,” I said angrily. Though trembling with inner dread, I held my ground. “I only want to live my own way.” “To stop that would be killing myself.” “I don’t want you dead at all, but I can’t become your substitute—anyone’s substitute.” “It’s the same as nobody becoming mine.” “That’s only natural, right?”

“Oh! You’re yakuza. How shocking.” When I repeated what had happened earlier that day，Mari said while lifting a 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." "Economic conditions play a part too, but—" I couldn’t fully comprehend Mari’s words, but I answered. "This might be rude to say, but there's something almost obscene about it—I've never once genuinely envied anyone who's married." “Isn’t that just because you’re cowardly, Kubo?” Susumu Yasui said calmly. Mari adopted a big-sister tone: “A carefree bachelor like you still wants to play the field to your heart’s content, I suppose.” “So that’s how it is,” I said to the two of them. “This is no good anymore." “In other words, you’ve still never truly loved someone,” Susumu added.

“You’re impossible,” Mari said, then laughed with a sigh in an unexpectedly cheerful voice. She was already quite drunk, and the singing began right afterward. Susumu joined in harmony, and the two of them sang Russian folk songs one after another in good spirits.

Recalling the events of that night, feeling an angry, petulant expression on my own cheeks, I was finally able to vividly picture Mari with the face she'd had at the time.

The old-model small bus bound for the Yasui household vibrated violently. I thought of buying white roses—so many they’d spill from my chest. Then, for the first time, I became aware—with a strangeness both difficult to accept yet undeniably real, like a passenger who’d been pressed against me abruptly vanishing—of the flowers’ futility and the fact that Mari was no longer in this world. I stared blankly, as though I’d witnessed some cheap magic trick. Tears did not well up. Others are something one must always acknowledge, I told myself inwardly. Especially that death—no matter how unexpected and inexplicable—one has no choice but to acknowledge it as it is, forever.……

And I immediately recalled that those words were ones Susumu Yasui—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 Mari had haggled over white roses.

Mari lay in the coffin, buried in flowers. The dead face bore no spots or traces of agony. When placing her in the coffin, I grasped both legs. The corpse was rigid; whether laid face up or turned on its side, he couldn’t breathe without inhaling the stench of death.

Under the makeup applied by her mother from the family home who had rushed over, the young skin of the deceased—resembling a wax doll—sank into depths of chalk-like whiteness that covered every surface. I learned that Mari was an only daughter. The nasal cavity had been cleaned to a pale white, appearing more spacious than usual, making its depths clearly visible. The lips refused to stay closed, and smooth porcelain-like front teeth reflected the light from the ceiling. The teeth were dry. She had always had a short philtrum.

Her mother placed a handbag filled with Mari’s perfume and cosmetics into the coffin. Until they closed the coffin lid, Sato remained outside the room. “Is it done? Have you closed the lid?” he asked me in a low voice as I busily moved in and out of the room with the funeral workers. He leaned against a pillar, gazing from the corridor—its storm shutters left wide open—into the depths of the dark garden with its trees and elaborately arranged stones. “You can’t see her face anymore, though they haven’t fastened the lid yet,” I replied. “I see. Sorry. I’m not scared of ghosts or burglars, but corpses—I can’t handle them. They terrify me,” Sato said. “It’s eerie... Somehow I feel bad toward Mari.” “Don’t worry,” I answered with a laugh. “What’s in the coffin isn’t Mari anymore. It’s a counterfeit Mari.”

Susumu Yasui passed by with downcast eyes. Thinking he had spoken to me, I felt slightly perplexed. Counterfeit—that was the first word that came to me when I removed the white cloth and gazed at dead Mari. Even if this was unpleasant for him as a husband—there was no helping it; I thought any retraction or explanation would only become lies. Susumu kept avoiding my eyes. Still wearing his going-out suit, Susumu briskly directed the funeral workers. With a coordinated shout from them all, they lifted the coffin onto the pale wooden shelf. The brand-new quality socks beneath Susumu’s banker-style navy suit—lightweight fabric appropriate to his profession—made him seem profoundly alien within that house. Together with Saeki and the actresses, he carefully arranged leftover flowers atop the coffin. Flower baskets from the theater troupe were carried in.

“Sato,” Susumu called out. “Could you fetch the notification letters from the printer’s?” “It’s on Honmachi-dori.” “Even if we wrote them now, we likely wouldn’t make today’s final post anyway.”

“Oh, in that case I’ll just take ’em straight to the post office.” Sato answered with forced vigor.

In the annex where they had lived, we three wrote addresses, but Tonko’s name wasn’t among those assigned. After seeing off the theater troupe members, Sato and I resolved to keep vigil through the night. The troupe’s young leader had persisted until the end in badgering Susumu about why she’d killed herself. “Makes no damn sense! What’s there to mull over now?” Sato barked reproachfully. Past midnight in the coffin room, Mari’s mother still sat hunched over, shoulders quivering. No sobs escaped her—even her tears had stopped dampening the handkerchief. “Kanzeonnabutsuyobutsuui...” Chanting through clenched guts what little I recalled of the Heart Sutra—that thing my monk uncle had drilled into me as a kid. Thirty seconds in, my empty stomach announced itself instead.

I'm someone who deliberately embraces self-serving behavior, yet I'm strangely vulnerable to others—prone to drowning in attentive helpfulness and meddlesome tendencies. For nearly an hour until then, I had been sitting in that room tending the incense, yet in the end, I couldn't bring myself to speak to Mari's mother. I wanted to say something to ease her mind, tried to think of ways to comfort her. However, each time, I ended up feeling that it would be better to leave her undisturbed. I gave up on speaking. Rather than risk being harmful, I make it my policy to aim for at least being harmless.

“I’ll take over the incense duty,” I said as I stood up. Mari’s mother nodded with her face buried in a wrinkled handkerchief and shuffled closer to the altar. Throughout, she said nothing and ate nothing.

In the detached room, Susumu Yasui sat facing Sato in chairs. A whiskey bottle about half empty stood on the table as they both sat with folded arms. I sensed something weighty had passed between them. Sato wore a face flushed dark with anger. Susumu—showing no drunkenness in his features—stared at the whiskey glass filled nearly to its brim on the table. "I'm beat... My legs've gone numb," I said. Though my legs weren't actually numb, I sat down in the chair between them anyway, massaging my calves while exaggerating a pained frown. I wanted no part of whatever they knew—it was sure to be some tedious, troublesome business. Yet neither could I bear sharing that strangely oppressive silence with them.

Susumu poured whiskey. I used my usual avoidance tactic. “Ah, I’ve gotten sleepy.” The silence was still continuing. I flexed my arms and then rubbed my eyes.

“...I’d chat with Mari every now and then,” Eventually Sato said while staring at the desk. “Mari often said, ‘How could I possibly be unhappy?’” “I feel like I heard her say that just two or three days ago.”

I realized my conjecture had been correct. Sato's voice had changed. In its tone lay stagnant, suppressed resentment. Susumu Yasui smiled faintly. It was a smile that seemed both ironic and utterly at a loss.

“You – got any clue what caused it?” Sato asked me; I shook my head. “This guy says he’s got no leads,” Sato muttered, jerking his chin toward Susumu. When he reached out, Susumu took Mari’s photo from the radio top and stared at it wordlessly. His face floated with bewilderment. I thought about his confusion, his grief. I made a show of biting back a yawn. I too had to wait for something to pass.

“Yasui,” Sato said in a slightly louder voice. “Say something. “Just saying you’ve got no clue ain’t gonna cut it? “Say something.”

“But...” Susumu Yasui laughed. He returned the photo of her stage face to the top of the radio. “What a troublesome guy. What exactly am I supposed to say now?” “At this point, huh?” Sato muttered. “You’re right. I really am rude. My bad.” Sato stood up. “Let’s head over to Omo-ya. If we stay here, I feel like I’ll end up acting even more out of line.”

“I’m hungry,” I said.

The main house had 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 lay deep in sleep, receiving the night wind from the vast black garden as they drank and ate with others, they began to feel somehow liberated from home's atmosphere and constraints—like carefree travelers bivouacking under open skies. We became unable to think of ourselves as anything but scattered toy dolls, carefree rootless beings.

Susumu’s stern-faced father in a kimono, relatives, and an elderly maid wearing a new kappogi apron that didn’t suit her were talking with Sato. I saw there less a scene of mourning the deceased and more of people’s self-serving curiosity.

I realized I wasn't even trying to think about what had caused the suicide. It wasn't that I resented the people, but speaking of the dead Mari felt like speaking of a counterfeit Mari to me—it held no appeal. That night, that sensation remained unshaken until the very end. She had no way out left... Whether the living have any way out remains unknown. But for the living, there is at least that illusion—no, rather, the will to move in search of an exit exists. To probe Mari who had lost even that, desperately seeking words and pursuing explanations convenient only to ourselves—this was something terribly sad, terribly cruel, terribly barbaric, no different than shredding her defenseless form. If only it weren't so—to assert herself, to resist the one-sided words being hurled at her—she could no longer manage. To me, people's efforts—such funeral methods—had come to seem terribly futile, even terribly unpleasant. The dead are a darkness that must be left undisturbed. Only toward Mari's mother, who remained silently crouched, could I feel any sense of friendship. I thought that perhaps I truly wanted to press my forehead against the tatami before Mari's coffin like that mother did.

Yet, I did not want to leave the wake. I wanted to hear Mari’s voice one more time, I thought. The usual big-sister style teasing or silly banter would have sufficed. I wanted to hear that laughter.

It was when I entered the Yasui household’s bathroom that I tried thinking about Mari like everyone else. The stench reminded me of the smell of a corpse. But my thoughts of her didn’t begin then. 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. Mari laughed in her high-pitched voice as she explained that it was her idea for the two of them to enjoy imaginary journeys together with Yasui, and that the whole family found it amusing.

Mariko: “Where are you traveling now? Where are you going alone?”

“Yeah, I got tired of Paris too,” Susumu said. “So I headed down to the South of France to see the Pyrenees mountains. From Toulouse—now I’ve come to Montpellier. This area has a bit of a Shonan region vibe to it. The greenery’s so beautiful.”

“Oh, I’m in the South of France too.” “I just came from Cannes to Marseille again the other day, and I’ve gotten completely bored.” “Oh?” “Then let’s meet in Avignon.” “The weather’s just right now—let’s head north and travel through Switzerland together.”

“Wow， I'm so happy!” “When we went to Italy last time， we saved Switzerland for later， right? And you promised not to go there without my permission either.” “But let’s keep it secret from the fathers—it’d be such trouble if they tagged along.” “Wonderful! We can finally play at Lake Léman together—let’s climb the Matterhorn too.” “Hey—what clothes should I wear?”

……How absurd. With my knee bent and staring at the wall, I forced a wry smile as I was struck by how I was nothing but a shallow radio drama writer. Yet considering their cheerful life together that resembled playing house, such conversations could very well have existed. To them, those names were never merely designations for bars or coffee shops around Ginza or Shinjuku—the map was not just printed colors and lines. The map had grown quite worn, its corners curled into a color like withered gardenia petals. I suddenly stroked the map with my fingertip. For the first time, something resembling doubt surfaced in his chest. To Mari—had this map become nothing more than a dead sheet of paper? Had fantasy’s wings run dry of oil—had she lost all joy in this dream journey? I examined it closely. As I had noticed, the map bore large diagonal claw marks that crossed deeply.

The sharp traces of those lines reminded him of Mari’s long-nailed fingers. I imagined Mari—who had tumbled from her world of fantasy, stripped of all delusions and illusions—staring fixedly at this toilet wall like a wingless, solitary bird. ...Not my problem. While feeling despair, I repeated to myself.

Upon leaving, Mari’s mother’s figure was not seen before the altar. The smoke had ceased.

I entered to light incense and stood amid the intensifying corpse odor. The thick stench of death clung heavily through the air as a lone fly settled on the white burial cloth. In the adjacent room only Susumu and Sato remained. Susumu informed them he'd had his family retire to bed, adding they'd all asked to entrust matters until morning.

“They’re quite the grateful nuisance, really. “Because everyone says such selfish things.” He laughed.

“Where’s her mother?” “We took her with everyone else—said she should try to sleep.” “There’s always tomorrow.” Sato brought the glass to his lips. His movements betrayed heavy drunkenness. The new whiskey bottle too was nearly empty.

A pillar clock chimed in the distance, and when he checked his wristwatch, it was half past two. “Hey, Kubo,” Sato said with deliberate affectation, slurring his words slightly. “What the hell?” I reluctantly answered. “Susumu says he’s never had a fight with Mari. You—what do you think?”

I grew wary. I thought Sato wanted to say something. The bastard had something. He knew something about Mari's suicide that I didn't. Through his tone, I'd seen through how Sato wasn't nearly as drunk as he appeared. But when it came to Mari—I didn't want to say anything about her. Didn't want to hear anything either.

“Hey, Kubo,” he repeated. “What do you think?” In Sato’s repetition, I sensed his attempt to draw me in; I rebelled against it.

“Who cares? If he says so, let him have it his way.” “If he says so, let him have it his way.”

“Idiot, I’m a married man.” “I ain’t like some single guy like you.” “Where the hell do you find married couples who never fight?”

“Can’t say they don’t exist. Well, I don’t really know.” Sato was watching Susumu Yasui out of the corner of his eye. “I won’t take sides with either,” I thought. “I won’t side with anyone. Because I’m not the same as anyone.”

Sato looked down.

“I mean, generally speaking, the couple here… no—this guy’s methods didn’t sit right with me.” “Acting all lovey-dovey like some couple of lovers. What’s that about? How many years has it been since they got married?” “We weren’t some special couple—just your average loving pair you’d find anywhere.”

But Sato did not engage with my flippant tone. “There’s no such thing as purity in this world—seems he doesn’t know that.”

“That’s not true.” Susumu answered with a sneer. But for some reason, Sato didn’t turn his face toward him and instead lifted it toward me. “This guy,” he said to me.

“This guy says this: ‘We loved each other—I loved Mari and she loved me—we had built up a happy life together; then suddenly she died… I can’t make any sense of it at all,’”

“That’s exactly right,” Susumu Yasui said in a low voice. “That’s the truth. It’s not a lie.” “You said you never got angry at Mari, didn’t you?” Sato turned back toward Susumu. “No,” Susumu answered. “I dislike becoming overbearing in my feelings.” “But even you have emotions, don’t you?” “I have always strived to avoid anything harmful for our life together,” Susumu answered calmly. “Expressing raw emotions is a form of violence. “I have no memory of committing violence.”

“You handled everything with reason.” “So you’re saying there was supposed to be complete mutual understanding?”

“For the sake of peace.” “I’ve been a pacifist since the old days.” Susumu stiffened his smile. “Every person has their own locked room within—an unknowable aspect.” “I consider that level of interference an overstep—a harmful one at that.” “What exactly are you trying to say?”

“...Just stop it already,” I interjected. But the next to speak was Susumu. Susumu wore a serious expression. “We have always cooperated and found the most rational solutions.” “We’re both human—there are times when we’re out of sorts.” “In those moments, I would wait quietly until her mood changed.” “Whether it was theater work or anything else, I let her do what she wanted.” “However, I never once abandoned her.”

“There’s no way she was actually unhappy. “But did that make her happy?” Sato said in an ironic voice.

I remained silent. I saw Susumu Yasui's cheeks flush slightly. In a rapid voice, he said. "If she was happy, who would commit suicide?—that's what you want to say." "But there was nothing I could do about it." "Don't you feel even a bit sorry?"

“I couldn’t do anything more than that. In that sense, I don’t believe I was wrong.” “What I’m trying to say is—ultimately—you killed Mari.”

Susumu burst out laughing. “How absurd—the dead get to rest while I’m left alive to be branded a murderer.” He turned to me and laughed. “Hey Kubo.”

I didn't say anything. I hadn't yet abandoned the stance of not taking sides with either. And yet before I knew it, I had shifted to listening to Sato's words.

“Sato said.”

“Susumu, are you really not aware of your own hypocrisy?” “Why don’t you try apologizing just once?”

Susumu's eyes glinted. He answered in a sharp voice. "Truth be told, I can only see her suicide as her staying true to her own path—her own way." "Right there." As Sato started to speak, Susumu cut him off and continued. "That's the only way I can see it." "I don't know the reason." "I no longer think of trying to understand—or even being able to understand." "Everything was supposed to go smoothly." "The suicide was nothing but the result of her own selfish whim—hers alone." "I can't comprehend any kindness beyond silently accepting her."

“What I’m criticizing is—” As if deep in thought, Sato tilted his thick, guard dog-like neck. “How should I put it… That self-centeredness of yours—that kind of thing, from way back,” he said. “...Susumu Yasui is a man who never does a single wrong thing.” “He’s got an overwhelming sense of responsibility and is a considerate, kind man.” “That hasn’t changed since the days we handled direction among our group.” Sato glanced at me and continued. “You know, Susumu—you’ve done nothing but good things in your own way.” “But for Mari, that didn’t help one bit.” “In other words—maybe all you’ve done is hurt Mari while convincing yourself it was for her sake.” “You haven’t noticed a single thing about that.” “That’s exactly why I want to call you a hypocrite.” “I feel like I can understand Mari’s feelings.” “Mari couldn’t receive a single thing she truly wanted from you.” “No matter what you said or did, all of it missed the mark.” “And that’s because you were too obsessed with bizarrely making everything fit inside yourself—you never came out of your own shell.”

“All humans are trapped within their own skin. Is that my responsibility?” “That’s right—that way of thinking is the mistake you made, the source of your sin.”

Susumu fell silent.

I was looking at the tatami's weave.

I realized I was already caught in the maelstrom. For some reason, I felt terrified of leaving the room. By then, I could no longer slip out without facing my own cowardice. I remained rooted to my seat.

“I’m furious at your stupidity,” Sato said, his tone burning with a fire even he couldn’t contain. “What you were doing was nothing but processing yourself. Just trying to kill your emotions—to erase yourself. Sure, you endured all sorts of things—but for whose sake? Your own, wasn’t it? Since when do we call this inhuman endurance and mechanical compromise between two people a virtue? Virtue’s about effectiveness. Giving what the other wants from yourself. You probably thought you loved Mari too—listen—but yours was a father’s love, a guardian’s love—the kind you’d give a toy. Not a husband’s. You never showed Mari real love or real kindness. Maybe that worked at first. But Mari gradually reached her limit. Yet you kept stubbornly clinging to that relationship with her—kept treasuring it above all else. What you loved wasn’t Mari—it was that relationship itself—your own toy—your own satisfaction—wasn’t it all just you?”

“……As if I were everything in that woman’s life,” Susumu finally said in a low voice.

“Take some responsibility, for once,” Sato said.

Responsibility... In that moment, I conceived a monstrous thought. I remembered that Tonko Oda hadn't been a virgin. This I'd learned 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 require staying up all night?”

“Huh?” Susumu looked at me. “Ah… If you want to sleep, go ahead. I’ll stay awake.” His tone strained to maintain its usual composure. Sato too lay down on his back.

“Love is the almighty God,” Sato said once more. “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, and at the corner of my eye, his ankle swayed loosely.

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

Suddenly it occurred to me.

“Hey Susumu—that bathroom map with the fingernail cross marks—was that Mari?” “Ah.” Susumu fabricated a smile. “That’s the first map we put up after marrying. See how worn it is?” “About a month back, she dragged it out again.” “Who made those nail marks?” I pressed. “Mari did.” Susumu’s gaze turned distant. “A week after we’d hung it up. She’d gone to the doctor alone, apparently.” “They said her retroverted uterus meant no children—that night she clawed crosses into the map, she claimed.” “Yet still she left it hanging.”

“...Couldn’t you just get surgery for a retroverted uterus?” “Mari had a weak heart—surgery wasn’t an option,” Sato rasped throatily, tilting his head back. “Mari... but it was already too late anyway, wasn’t it?” “...Yeah.” Susumu’s reply came with distracted emptiness. He seemed lost in thought.

The garden’s darkness hung heavy, its depth accentuated by the dull room light falling on small blue maple leaves clinging to branches that reached toward the open corridor. Time had long since ceased flowing in the tatami room. I lined up three zabuton cushions, folded one into a pillow, blocked the harsh electric light with my elbow, and shut my eyes. I’d meant to sleep. My exhaustion and drunkenness weighed thick upon me. Sleep wouldn’t come. Had I too committed some fundamental error? The thought pitched me about like a dugout canoe in stormy seas, threatening to drag me down into lightless depths. Susumu and I resembled each other terribly. Listening to his rules felt like hearing my own voice echo back at me—every self-imposed limitation made perfect sense. Of course we accept the boundaries we ourselves draw. Humans are nothing more than skin-sealed sacks; we can’t escape ourselves; love however deeply you like—others stay others; substitution proves impossible... I’d believed that too. To protect that belief unto death, I’d rejected Tonko Oda—that meddlesome woman who kept disregarding it all. More than her, I cherished that faith. More than her, I feared its collapse.

But then I thought—had I ever found even a single principle that wouldn't betray me? It was always myself who did the betraying. Yet I had stubbornly persisted in clinging to it all the same. Could it be that I was wrong? That rule of only considering women's skin was indeed nothing but careless self-deception. It was merely due to a stifling, cowardly stubbornness that I refused to acknowledge this—I had always tried to blind myself to reality. Could it be that I too, like Susumu Yasui, had driven a woman to her death because of that?—I was sinking to the bottom of the sea. There was a blade within me, and I couldn't crawl out from the pitch-black abyss. I was drowning in darkness. I was being forced into a double suicide with the guilt inside me. No matter how much I struggled to crawl up, I couldn't find any connection anywhere.

When I woke up, the light had been turned off. Outside the veranda, a pale morning like a cloudy sky had arrived. Sato’s restless back-and-forth snoring could be heard right beside me. The cold, damp air washed over me directly from the garden.

A hard, skull-vibrating sound occasionally reverberated from the direction of the garden. I stepped out into the corridor. Susumu Yasui was desperately grabbing stones at his feet and hurling them with all his might toward the trunk of a pine tree near the distant stone wall, as if pitching strikes. He had seemingly been throwing stones like this for some time now, his face flushed. I descended into the garden and approached Susumu. He was gasping for breath. "Hey," he said in a flushed voice. His face was sweaty, and I could immediately tell his eyes were bloodshot.

“Somehow I feel like getting completely absorbed in sumo wrestling or something.”

I didn’t respond and picked up a fist-sized stone. I swung my arm wide, puffed out my chest, and threw it with all my strength. The stone grazed a nearby cherry branch, and a few green leaves slowly fluttered down. A satisfying thud rang out as my stone struck the exact center of the pine trunk. “Alright,” said Susumu. We continued throwing stones alternately for about five minutes. The old woman in the white cooking apron stood in the corridor of the room where the coffin was placed, her mouth hanging open as she stared at it. 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, fog-like drizzle. Passing through a street aglow with colorful neon lights and turning into a narrow alley lined with similar-looking bars, the pavement gave way to a warped dirt path. I entered a house near the outskirts. The middle-aged woman greeted me with a high-pitched voice. "There’s no debt," I reflexively thought.

I watched through the glass door as two men carrying instruments walked by outside, then saw them push open the door of a bar-like establishment across the way with a red light, bow, and disappear inside. One of the men was wearing a bright red shirt, while the other had a face so bucktoothed and resembling the Prime Minister that it made you want to laugh. When the two disappeared, the scenery froze. My eyes slid along the drizzling road as if searching for moving things. "What are you spacing out for?" A relaxed, innocent voice said. "Kubo-san, Mom’s asking what you’ll have."

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

“Oh, you two came here too?”

The men were Heiyama and Saeki, comrades who had been helping with the reception at the Yasui house until just moments before. "I didn't know you guys knew about this place," I said. That place was a haunt for a different theater troupe, and I'd never been there with Mari either. I rather wanted to disappear into a crowd of people who had no ties to Mari.

“I was brought here by Heiyama,” Saeki answered amiably. “What were you thinking about?” asked Heiyama.

“Well, I can’t remember.”

I answered thus 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. Finally alone—like a clam retreating into its shell—I had at last obtained the time to calmly re-examine the texture of my own carapace. Sato's words pierced me like an arrow, and like flesh that had burst open, they wouldn't come out. As I became alone, the pain revived anew, vivid and raw. I had to do something about it. Otherwise, my mental stability would never recover.

I realized something was beginning within me. Like an expanding nucleus, Tonko Oda filled my head. I feared having my own mistaken, foolish rules destroyed and fled from her. She said she would 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 parents, a sister to someone, a grandchild, a niece, a classmate to others, a female office worker, a healthy young woman who should have become someone’s wife and mother...... This thought now came crushing down upon me. Sato’s remarks about Susumu Yasui weren’t someone else’s affair—I too shared the same story.

“You know, the day before Mari died, I had a final drink with her here,” said Heiyama, leaning on the white wooden counter as he looked at me. “Oh? After you left us?” Saeki said in a bright voice. “I had no idea about that.” “I was comforting her.”

Heiyama said while casting sidelong glances up at the middle-aged woman.

“Suno really laid into Mari too harshly, right? So—” “Suno?” I didn’t know that.

“Ah.” Saeki made a slightly troubled face and looked back at me. “Didn’t you know?” “You know—the day of Kubo-san’s script reading?”

“That day, Mari was full of life—the day before she killed herself, right?”

“So Mari didn’t talk about it after all.” Heiyama pondered with a dark expression and said, “Oh, it’s nothing—really not such a big deal. That day we’d finalized next month’s cast internally, but Suno dropped Mari from the production.” “Huh, I didn’t know that.” I suddenly visualized Suno’s face—the one who had persistently questioned Yasui about reasons. “Then Mr. Sato might not know yet either,” said Heiyama. “Mari was dissatisfied and grumbled about it... ...Please keep this quiet—then Suno got a bit angry...”

Certainly, while that might be one small reason or trigger, it was nothing significant—essentially not something that could shake Mari’s very life—I thought. Mari had always been the type of woman who could withstand such harshness. She was not the sort who tried to live solely for herself. If it had been only about herself, she would never have fallen into such decisive despair... That way of thinking might have been a habit of mine. But I felt the cause could never be understood. I am small-minded and lack intellectual breadth.

“Anyway, it’s nothing worth fussing over,” I said while draining my beer. At that time I still understood beer’s bitterness. “It’s too late now—just tell Suno stewing over it’ll wreck his health.”

I immediately forgot about Mari. I was only thinking about myself. With agonizing distress, I kept dwelling on Tonko. No matter what I did, what I said, or what I saw - I snapped back to that thought.

The intoxication came on fast. No one forgives me. And I will never be forgiven. Even while drinking with two members of Mari’s theater troupe, I couldn’t distract myself. I might have been a bit ridiculous. The soft flesh of another theater troupe girl’s buttocks brushed against my waist through her thin slacks as she entered the bar—contacting then retreating—contacting then retreating. I turned around and blurted out that we should get married. It was her dusk-toned skin—the downy white hairs glistening across it—that I found alluring. Though she was an acquaintance, I’d never before felt drawn to that horse-faced woman. But convinced love required paying its proper due, I spoke nonetheless: “Right now, I feel like I could build a decent home with any woman.” Shaking out her long hair with a derisive snort, the woman who’d arrived with her companion dismissed it outright. The man accompanying her clearly outweighed me in brute strength. Regrettably, I retracted the proposal.

That must have been why I left the bar with Saeki and the others. Through the silken threads of fine rain—laughing with reckless volume, talking, singing, stroking a passerby's bald head only to be scolded, delightedly darting about in escape—I couldn't shake off the clinging memories of my own sins. Mari hadn't crossed my mind once. Heiyama and Saeki trailing behind me likewise said nothing about Mari. I must have struck some grand pose about settling their tab. They followed me around with astonishing congeniality, and we drank ourselves ragged.

A long time passed, and we were lined up 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 I'll pay, Kubo-san." Heiyama’s voice reached me. Saeki’s figure was nowhere to be seen.

“What happened to Saeki—did he run off?” I shouted. Apparently, I had been singing pop songs up until then.

“Oh dear... Haven’t we been left behind?” “Just the two of us.” Heiyama laughed heartily, then suddenly lowered his voice. “She said she wanted only you to hear it, didn’t she?”

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

I was stunned.

“For real?”

“It’s true! I found out from some old crone they call ‘Nanny.’ Like Mr.Yasui was trying to cover something up—that’s why everyone thought she died at dusk? No—Mari had already been dead since noon down there at Fujisawa.”

“...I see.” “Sato knew about that, didn’t he?”

The intoxication began to fade. I readjusted my slipping buttocks onto the chair.

“You knew, didn’t you? He was pulling all sorts of strings, 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 faintly. “Did Mari know about the place?” “You knew.” Shaking the glass near his eyes, Heiyama continued with a smile. “There was a man involved with Mari,” I said. “There was.”

“Who?” “It was me.”

He was not laughing. When he bit his lips tightly，tears slid down his cheeks. I was doubly surprised. Heiyama being Mari’s man，and a man crying like this. “……For a second there，I thought the other man might’ve been Sato or Suno，” I said，lowering my eyes to the black horizontal plank of thick wood. Toward Heiyama，no particular emotions welled up within me. “As for that matter—Yasui…” “Yeah. He knew. Mari told him.” Heiyama answered while pinching his nose in a forced attempt to stop crying. “The thing with me—it was only once. It was practically rape，but Mari stopped resisting partway through.” Sniffling，he spoke rapidly. “The other night，I quietly took Mari to that same bar again，just the two of us，and after we left，I begged her again. Mari absolutely refused，so I said—‘I’ll never forget that moan of yours，’ I told her—‘I’ll tell your husband!’”

“Were you actually serious about it, I wonder?”

I was stunned by the unexpected confession. I had never imagined Mariko had been with any man besides Susumu. "Well, I want to say I was serious, but..." Heiyama stumbled through his villainous act. "...But then Mari suddenly started laughing right in the middle of the road. 'He already knows everything—what difference would telling him make? That's all?' she said through her laughter."

With a pained expression, Heiyama emptied his glass and ordered another round, including mine.

“Mr. Yasui said that—‘You don’t need to say the other person’s name.’” “So now, no one knows that I was the other person…”

“I,” he said. “But I felt like I had to tell someone.” “I thought if I talked about it, I’d feel better.” “…Mari told me that even though Mr. Yasui didn’t scold her, he said letting you do what you wanted was what suited me best too.” “‘I’m terribly free,’ she said.” “But Mari didn’t look happy at all… Back then, she had sleeping pills.” “Since both boxes had corners worn down with age, she 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 too loudly—‘No, no!’ like a madman—so I had no choice but to go home. Mari probably rushed straight to Fujisawa.”

"I just can't make sense of it," I muttered about this man's role in Mari's suicide. "When did you and Mari go to that hotel in Fujisawa?"

“It was when we recorded the TV show.” “We went on a location shoot.” “Last month.” “Exactly one month ago.”

One month ago... Around the time I pulled out the old map and stuck it on the wall again. It occurred to me. Was the split in the nail really from being bent back?

“There was nothing in the paper, huh?”

“The bank president is said to be very well-connected.” Heiyama was trying to resume his usual sarcastic expression.

“Susumu didn’t say anything to me. "...Guess he didn't want to say anything." Yet behind Susumu’s intention to handle matters discreetly—separate from any concern about needlessly exposing a shared wound now—I sensed there lay a judgment particular to Susumu himself. He had stated that everything was supposed to go smoothly. Even if he didn’t consider it fully resolved, might he not have believed this incident with Mari had become, for both himself and her, a wound already tended to? Anyway, that was settled. It was supposed to have been settled. “Everything was supposed to go smoothly. "Suicide was—in a way—the result of that woman’s own selfishness..." He had simply been waiting quietly for Mari to recover from her wounds. The matter was settled. What else could I have done? After that, all he could do was stand by with folded hands and wait as something vanished and something else passed within her—a realm beyond his reach.

Sato’s words came back. “You never had any real kindness in you.” Kindness… But there my thoughts reversed course. What other attitude could Susumu have possibly taken? For the first time, I became aware of feeling sympathy toward him. In that light, he and I weren’t different kinds of people at all. Hypocrite. I spat the word deep within my heart. Tonko’s face floated up again—Tonko weeping, insisting she couldn’t comprehend why I wanted to leave, refusing to take a single step even when I turned my back to flee. At nightfall, my pace quickened until I was nearly sprinting down the station platform, abandoning her there as I exited the station gates. I couldn’t bear sharing the same national railway train headed in the same direction while being separated from her. I walked home alone. ……I’d thought— Yes, I too had fixated on reconciling my own contradictions, rejecting the reality called Tonko that threatened them. I needed to confront that head-on. But what exactly had I protected through all that? Vile, pathetic—the shameless lethargy of wanting solitude; the inhuman delusion that I could sustain isolation; the idiotic cowardice branding companionship as evil—and lacking even Susumu Yasui’s measure of courage, I stood more contemptible than him still. I’d fled without ever setting foot in the ring.

“I killed Mari,” Heiyama said in a low voice, gritting his molars with solemn intensity. “I’ve been screaming these words inside my heart ever since leaving that old lady’s shop. That old lady seems to be the only one who’s vaguely picked up on things between me and Mari.” “…I killed Mari.”

The monologue had shifted to an almost cheerful tone. With his black beret tilted back at a rakish angle and eyes glazed in near-ecstasy, he was staring through the rows of whiskey bottles ahead. He stiffly cocked his pinky as he raised the glass to his lips. I detected the performance. That playboy posturing of his—that vacuous self-satisfaction—suddenly made my forehead throb from within.

My tongue twitched as I became aware of the trembling in my chest. “Heiyama-kun,” I said, keeping my voice restrained. “Why did you assume I’d stay silent?” “Why...?” He retorted sharply, contorting his gaping mouth as he looked at me. His drunken eyes roamed scornfully across my shoulder and chest. “You actually mean to talk?” This man might have been perversely hoping for rumors to spread. But I kept staring fixedly at him.

“I can’t make any promise not to talk. When it comes to these matters, it’s my policy not to make any promises with anyone.” “...Feel free.” Heiyama smiled thinly. He turned his back sharply, grabbed his glass, and hurled it at the heavy wooden door. I remained silent. The large bartender stood in front of the counter, fidgeting with his black bow tie with his left hand.

“……It’s over.” “I won’t get violent anymore.” Heiyama exhaled deeply, clinging to the counter as he lowered his face.

“Nothing’s over.” I loaded each word with all the contempt and malice I could dredge up. “You killed Mari. Not one part of this will ever finish eating away at you.”

Leaving Heiyama—who said he’d drink through the night—exactly as he was, I stepped outside. I froze. The rain was fierce.

In the town past 2 AM with its neon lights fading, the muddy road undulated, and two or three small cars with their lights off were tilted and stalled in the rain. I turned up my suit lapels and stood under the bar's eaves with a cigarette in my mouth. The chilly air washed through me. My kneecaps alternately gave way, legs wobbling unsteadily on the gutter plank. I was no longer thinking about Heiyama or the Yasui couple.

I hadn’t noticed the cigarette had gone out. Angling my body diagonally, I intermittently felt raindrops splash against my cheek while staring at the mud beneath the streetlight—rain pounding down to splatter it anew. Irritation swelled into overwhelming fury. I suppressed it. Fierce blades clashed inside me—ripping me apart, tormenting me without mercy—yet still I endured. The words burst forth. “I’m a villain.” A barren imbecile. Less than human. I’ve always been honest. Always strived for precision. Deluded myself that staying harmless to others was the only possible good. But I abandoned a woman. Trampled her utmost sincerity. Never again will I think myself serious. Never again feel goodwill toward this self.

“Tonko,” I called. I couldn’t stand it—couldn’t endure considering myself a villain. [...] Ever since we broke up two years ago, every day when I checked the newspaper’s society section, I trembled with fear. Women’s suicides kept catching my eye, and the anxiety lasted over half a year. Even after a full year had passed, at times I would be seized by ominous premonitions, my face flushing crimson with tension as I repeatedly and meticulously scrutinized the newspaper. In the end, I even began feeling like I was yearning for her death—wishing she might just die naturally from illness or something. Her death—until then—had felt like the term of a sentence that permitted neither living anew nor dying. Even at today’s farewell ceremony, I hadn’t seen Tonko. Could Tonko be dead? Even if she were alive—that wouldn’t absolve me from being called a murderer. I am a murderer. I must carry that burden and go on living.

I didn’t want to write much about what happened after that. I had deviated from all reason. Timidity and drunkenness drove me into a frenzy. A taxi tout held an umbrella over me and asked where I was headed. I instinctively answered. “Meguro, Kamimeguro.” Tonko Oda’s house was located at that two-thousand-something address.

I had never been to that area before. In my memory, Tonko's address remained vague—was it 2300 or 800, or perhaps some number skipping from 2000? After being yelled at by the driver and flying into a rage, I began walking through the pouring rain with only Oda nameplates as my guide. I struck matches, cupping my hands around them as I strained to read the addresses. The matches quickly ran out. Still I wandered through the deserted late-night residential district of old estates. If anyone passed by I would ask them; if any house showed lights I meant to inquire there. I kept searching while dripping water from head to toe like a drowned corpse. Through the rain echoed occasional sounds of cars speeding along distant roads.

In my pocket were only 200 yen and some coins. I didn't know why I kept walking through the rain, soaked to the bone. What did any of it matter? Reasons be damned—I'd been thinking that way anyway. I just wanted to see Tonko. I wanted her eyes on me. This wasn't about reconciliation. I'd given up hope of forgiveness or persuasion. If anything, I wanted to confess—to weep—to verify something concrete. To confirm Tonko's existence and my own sin. To have her judge me. To apologize. Yet flickering behind my eyelids hung that phantom—pale female flesh guiding me forward. I wanted to inhale Tonko's scent. With near-carnal urgency, I craved her standing before me: eyes stabbing me like something vile, lips cursing me out. I knelt. I took the blows. No—more than that. I'd wanted those white hands to kill me.

The rain lashed against the sloped asphalt road, and I kept walking through it, searching for people, searching for light. A black figure rounded the streetlight's base. I broke into a run toward it. The figure threw open its chest and grabbed my arm.

“It’s you—the one who’s been loitering around here.” I couldn’t make a sound. The man in the raincoat wore a vinyl-covered police cap. “The people around here,” the policeman said, glancing around. “They got scared and came to report it just now.”

I was questioned at a small police box with a red light. The other, younger policeman stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing aimlessly into the rain-lashed night. I finally regained my senses and, insisting I wanted to meet the woman named Tonko Oda, told a slight lie. “A friend died, and I’m on my way to inform them about it. I don’t know the address.”

I desperately put on a sincere face.

“And so, I’ve already spent three hours going around checking house by house.” The middle-aged policeman who had apprehended my drenched self suddenly took on a moved expression, produced a thick, large-format ledger with a faded cover, and began questioning. “Is that woman at her own home, I mean, at the Oda household?”

“That’s right. “It’s the father’s house.” Pursing his lips, the middle-aged policeman in the black rubber raincoat began flipping through the family register, licking his fingers. “...This here’s another Oda-san, ain’t it? The Diet member’s mistress’s place,” he muttered under his breath. “Hey, old-timer—you’re from Hiroshima, right?” Inadvertently slipping into my usual manner, I immediately regretted it. Both the overly familiar language and the cheerful tone could hardly be called appropriate for the situation.

As expected, it struck true. That was probably the result.

“Oh ho! You’re from Hiroshima too?” said the middle-aged officer with obvious delight, and I then had to endure over an hour with this increasingly attentive man. There were four Oda households scattered throughout the 2000 block, and he began insisting he’d take me around to each one. Exiting the police box and reluctantly sharing half of his raincoat, I had to talk about how I’d gone there for work on a recording project about A-bomb aftereffects and how the sake had been good.

“Even so, there wasn’t any woman named Tonko there, I tell ya,” he said, tilting his head. I kept insisting there could be no mistake. I—and among the men and women who had come out with displeased, sleep-dulled faces—had indeed found features reminiscent of Tonko’s lineage. People always emerged in groups. But Tonko Oda’s face remained absent.

When we stepped out from the gate of the fourth Oda household, the police officer let out a long sigh and spoke. "After all, she'd already moved out, I tell ya—ain't that right?"

"That might be the case," I answered feebly. By now I had nearly sobered up, and I even felt something like grateful relief toward heaven's design that had ultimately kept me from meeting Tonko. The police officer took my demeanor as pitiful disappointment. The one who handed me a bat and looked apologetic was none other than that very "old man" himself.

“After all that walkin’ around in the rain we did, I tell ya.” He shook his raincoat up and walked on. I couldn't respond. With my eyes still downcast, I lowered my head and parted with the police officer who saluted. I felt like I had done something terribly wrong, and walking with him became unbearably painful. Stumbling repeatedly, lurching and staggering, I walked along the stone-strewn path. Suddenly, it felt like that was my very reality.

The rain had stopped, and the night was fading. The sky was beginning to pale across its entire expanse. The black madness had vanished, and I was emerging into the quiet morning of the mansion district. The darkly swaying trees were beginning to regain their wet green color. The trees shed their rain with soft sounds, and my footsteps traveled along the skin of a long stone wall that had escaped getting wet. I wasn’t thinking anything. A fog of deep fatigue hung heavy. I was sleepy.

“Kubo-san, Kubo-san,” a deep male voice called out. I turned around. The middle-aged policeman had taken off his raincoat and, raising one hand, came running after me. He took deep breaths with his shoulders and panted out with an earnest face: “H-here’s... “Your business card holder. “Left it on the desk. “You were walkin’ too damn fast, I tell ya.” I thanked him and slipped the card holder into my pocket. Whether my underwear had gotten soaked through too, the fabric clung heavily to my joints. The policeman suddenly leaned in to peer at my face.

“What’s this? You crying?”

I hurriedly shook my head. I was definitely not crying. Where in my face had the kind police officer found tears? But for me, the morning light was dazzling.

The bus turned left just before the overpass and emerged onto a wide road. Inside the bus, weakened diagonal rays of light shifted, and each time the center-split doors opened, a dusty wind flowed in tepidly. It was nearing evening, exactly two days after Yasui Mari’s farewell ceremony. That day was muggy and overcast from morning till night. On the knees of the winter trousers was a paper bag containing manuscripts. I had to go to the broadcasting station again. On the day of the farewell ceremony, a certain producer had requested that of me. I was a jack-of-all-trades—a skilled defensive player, so to speak. I never hit home runs, but I never let anything through.

I sat in the seat directly behind the driver. I stared at the grimy black plank floor. Remembering that night I went to meet Tonko and wandered through the rain, I thought it had been sheer madness. Because of this, my landlady had forcibly sent my clothes to the laundry, leaving me in a hastily chosen polo shirt and heavy trousers... Tonko Oda had moved out after all. I learned this that morning. A letter from Tonko had arrived.

Upon seeing the address, I felt sick of myself for a while. Why do I always end up misaligned like this? Her address had been Nakameguro.

The familiar schoolgirlish handwriting raced across the familiar white envelope and unpatterned white stationery. When it came to matters of taste, she remained just as thoroughly stubborn as she had been two years earlier. Tonko had indeed attended Mari’s funeral after all. "Why you refuse to meet me—I’ve resolved to stop dwelling on that these days. If anything, I must express respect for your obstinacy. (To me, it can only seem like stubbornness and false pride. This must simply be a sort of willfulness particular to you.)"

Reading the opening lines, I was rather astonished that she hadn’t even considered for a moment whether she might have been disliked by me. Why the hell are women made so tough? Tonko still did not seem to doubt her own perfection. But what caught my attention was not those words.

"For this past year and a half, I had no knowledge of your whereabouts." "I didn’t even try to listen to the radio on purpose either." "I love you." "I can confidently say that I still love you." "That was not something I needed to realize anew." "But yesterday, when I caught sight of you at Mari’s farewell ceremony—what did I think? In that moment, I thought: 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," I thought. ……Had Tonko also been waiting for my death? ——I had never even considered that my death might be awaited by someone. Even if I were to die, I considered that solely my own affair with no relation to anyone else, and had never connected it to Tonko's awareness. Exclusively, I had been fretting over nothing but her death.

"To me, you remain at exactly the same distance." "It is utterly infuriating." "As long as this remains unresolved, I can neither truly live anew nor die." "Catching a glimpse of you—but why, I wonder—I reflexively hid myself." "Absolutely, I must not meet that person." "Meeting was never a possibility... That’s how it felt to me." "I pressed myself against the wall outside the gate as if clinging to it."

I entered through the back door and met Mari's father. Then I discreetly ascertained that you were still living alone, drifting about in that lodging. ——But please don't misunderstand. I'm not writing this letter out of self-satisfaction or excessive joy. "I wonder why you refuse to change." I sensed a correspondence. Wasn't she too, from the depths of her heart, wishing for her former partner's complete transformation—that is to say, his obliteration? Had we not sustained our respective lives using nothing but this mutual expectation of death as our strength?......I imagined a single rainbow spanning the dark night sky. On either side of that black rainbow stood Tonko and I. And the rainbow itself was our gloomy anticipation of each other's deaths.

I had been thinking. What I wanted was never her forgiveness. (I had never once counted on being forgiven.) What I desired to obtain concerning her was now unquestionably nothing other than complete separation. But that complete separation amounted to nothing more than the other's total disappearance.

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 obtained, finally made clear—the one certain relationship between her and me was our mutual expectation of each other’s death. And at the same time, it was each person’s own expectation of their own eradication.

Tonko’s letter went on. "But do you truly intend to maintain this obstinacy?" "Women are fragile beings—you mustn’t be so spiteful." "I wish to see you." "Casually, if possible—as though it were an imaginary day detached from the other three hundred sixty-four in our year—I want us to meet." "Somehow I can’t shake this feeling that leaving you alone would be perilous (I really am terribly miserly, you see." "(Not that I want to stretch out my hands and hoard things, but once I’ve grabbed hold of something, I hate letting go—like some stingy old woman.)"

Even if you don’t come, I will stand here vacantly 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’ll come. As if intentionally leaving no room for a reply, I say "today." “I’ll be waiting at Shibuya Station at 6 PM.”

When I left my lodging at exactly six o'clock, I stood reading new releases at the bookstore as usual, then boarded a bus heading in the direction of the radio studio.

Suddenly, I found myself thinking. Had I ever truly sought love from Tomiko? I had always desperately chased after my own understanding through things like the clarity of our positions, our boundaries, the distances and equilibriums between us—and ultimately never managed to free myself from obsessing over them. ……At that moment, an absurd thought raced through me. Had I actually been in love with Mari all along?

——Either way was fine. With that thought, I gave a wry smile. That too was nothing but drivel I’d concocted—likely because Mari had died and some outline of feeling toward her was beginning to form.

The bus ran along the wide asphalt road at June's beginning, its surface paling under approaching dusk. It sidled up to the sidewalk like a ship docking, then pushed off again. The short-statured bus conductress had a pleasantly ample rear that seemed to mock her uniform's austerity. I found myself unable to steer my thoughts toward work.

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