Pathway to Japanese Literature

The wind had also grown cold. Circling the base of a low mountain and passing Hodogaya, the twilight deepened. The U.S. military truck began to pick up even more speed.

Parallel to them, lights glowed in the windows of a southbound Tokaido Line train running along the opposite embankment. Kobata Shinji watched the scenery retreat endlessly backward from inside the truck's dim canvas-covered bed. Darkness-tinged pine branches along the roadside swayed like rolling waves as they rapidly diminished. The rows of houses on both sides grew sparse—thatched roofs and ancient cockscombs resembling clotted blood fled backward as if recoiling from the vehicle, while the bus they'd overtaken dwindled rapidly into the distance.

Inside the truck lingered a greasy, smoldering stench. The odor clung to the stiff canvas cover's coarse waterproof lining—foreigner's stench—and Shinji faintly wrinkled his brow. He remembered the humiliation of enduring people's stares at bustling Sakuragicho Station before being herded into the truck's rear one after another like detainees. The U.S. soldier who'd hoisted him up laughed loudly while circling around, then jabbed a finger into the cleft of his buttocks. When everyone was finally inside, a sharp whistle pierced the air before a twenty-pack cigarette box flew to strike Shinji's forehead. "Thank you! Thank you!" Manager Adachi immediately scooped it up and shouted while leaning out from the canvas cover.

Shinji snapped his fingers. He remained silent. Even if I had said something, it probably would have been futile; in the end, I was just confused, I thought. The people packed like sardines inside the canvas cover continued their cheerful chatter. Shinji felt slightly ridiculous. They were nothing but a pond sending up ceaseless ripples of shallow cheer, and that pond was sealing itself into an arc before him. They were nothing more than members of the band where Shinji’s brother played trumpet—people who had agreed to pay him 250 yen per session starting that day as a band boy. Shinji was not one of them, nor did he wish to become one. Shinji threw the dented beer can wedged in the instrument case behind the canvas cover.

When Older Brother stood up from the seat with its horizontal board folded in half, he wrapped his own silk muffler around Shinji’s neck amid the jolting vibrations. “Don’t go getting curious,” Older Brother said in a low voice.

That day marked his first time heading out to the Chigasaki U.S. military camp. When leaving Yokohama, the city was awash in a profusion of red light. The evening glow had broadly dyed the western sky ahead of them, and from beneath gold-edged cloud peaks, straight shafts of lingering sunlight rose radially into the heavens like spokes of a wheel in countless streaks.

The U.S. military truck with its dingy green canvas cover, having finished loading them, started toward the fierce grand sunset. The station square flooded with peach-colored light like wildfire quickly vanished behind buildings, and the town, glowing in the western sun, receded rapidly along both sides of the road.

The setting sun was giving Shinji a strange taste of yearning and loss. The blazing sunset seemed like a gate welcoming him into the next season, while also appearing to signal a parting from something. But he was not thinking about the past. There was only the present hurrying toward the future. In that year when four full years of peace had passed, each day rushed past seventeen-year-old Shinji faster than he could keep up. Older Brother's small hand-me-down student uniform gleamed black at the elbows and back; he was always hungry, but he wasn't weary from that wretchedness. He was hurrying. Every day brought only things that had to be overcome, and he never once considered what lay beyond them. Shinji was merely hurrying.

“Keep looking ahead. There’s something interesting up there,” Older Brother said. He could no longer make out his brother’s expression. The faintly pale asphalt road with gentle undulations endlessly unspooled behind the canvas cover like a rolling belt, while night pressed in as if to swallow the road whole.

He pressed his eye to a gap in the canvas cover and gazed at the truck advancing through the darkness, its headlights casting beams of light ahead. In the darkness, there was nothing to see. Though a sea sending salty gusts lay to their left, even its shoreline remained invisible. Before long, the engine's roar slackened. Wheels kicked up gravel as the truck blared its horn and veered right, headlights illuminating nearby pine woods. There crouched a massive shape in the darkness.

“It’s a tank,” he said. A large tank painted a muddy color extended its long barrel diagonally toward the sea from between the pines.

“Did you see it?” said Older Brother. “But that’s just a dummy—a model.”

Older Brother laughed. At the front stood a camp gate adorned with red neon lights. That was their destination unit. Until then, Shinji had not known the Chigasaki camp belonged to the tank corps. "The tank unit's nothing but white Yankees," Older Brother said while pulling the instrument case closer. "That's surely just there for show."

Shinji thought he wanted to once thoroughly touch the real thing with his own hands. For some reason, like warships and airplanes, tanks had something that tickled his childish dreams. Much later, Shinji learned they had been modeled after Sherman tanks. However, Shinji ultimately never even got to gaze at tanks up close. At times he could see a couple placed in distant pine groves' shadows, but they were always stationary and never occupied the same position twice.

The "sound check" to begin the performance was scheduled for 7 PM. The band’s job there was to perform multiple sets until late at night for the U.S. soldiers at the camp on a weekly basis. On the flat, expansive sand dotted with quonset huts, blazing lights of hundreds of candlepower illuminated Japanese women wearing gaudy turbans and such on their heads as they laughed and interacted with soldiers through exaggerated gestures. The women had sharp eyes but never cast lingering glances toward the band members.

In one corner, oil drums were piled in a pyramid shape.

At the end of the winding road before it, set against the night, stood a rather large yellow circular hall, which was called Tankers Inn. “Hey, go get us some food. I’m starving.”

When they finally carried the luggage into the green room, Kobayashi, the bassist, said. The band members got off the truck, had their faces illuminated one by one with flashlights and were formally counted, then suddenly fell silent and wore displeased expressions. Whether it was to endure the gazes of U.S. soldiers and women or a sense of duty toward their work, he didn’t know. Part-time Japanese boys in student uniforms hurried past along the corridor in front of the broken-lock door, carrying metal trays. For meals, one simply had to request them from the Japanese girls—those wearing matching pure white aprons. “Eight people, huh?” The short, thick-legged girl said wearily in a sluggish tone, “Alright,” and told them to follow her. When he entered the kitchen filled with the stifling smell of boiling potatoes, he was looking out through the screen door. It was not the women who had made him feel ashamed. He was ashamed of his own hunger. The girls of similar appearance said nothing, all uniformly expressionless. The coffee one of them poured seeped into his stomach like pain. Shinji’s stomach growled. The girl burst out laughing. She was a girl with sparse eyebrows, terribly thin.

“You hate jazz?” In the green room, Adachi—who had somehow sidled up beside him—spoke while gnawing at a hamburger patty sandwich topped with egg. “If you don’t hate it, I’ve got a proposition.”

“Dachie, cut it out.” Older Brother said while staring into the mirror.

“C’mon, what’s the harm?” Adachi laughed with a sly glint in his eyes. He was called Dachie by everyone, just like the U.S. soldiers did. “I’d been prepping to sit in myself, but I’ve got other business to handle. Just having the kid sit there could work as a substitute, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?” Shinji asked. “The drummer quit suddenly.” “There were... circumstances involved.” “This all started with your complaints,” said one of the band members. Adachi didn’t answer, stroking his long jaw with his left hand as he peered at Shinji through his glasses with smiling eyes. “But here’s the thing—without drums up there, the whole setup looks wrong.” “This ain’t some fancy cabaret or club. Keep the stage looking proper and nobody’ll bitch.” “So how ’bout it, kid? You don’t gotta play a note. Just sit behind the drum set looking like you belong there—whaddya say?”

There stood Older Brother, his hair meticulously combed. “Cut it out.” The voice was angry. “I don’t want this kid on stage.” “Just sitting there?”

Shinji ignored his older brother and went on. Older Brother’s forceful tone was provoking backlash. He did not belong to his older brother. “Yeah, it’s fine. We can get away with that.”

“Cut it out. You think this is a joke?” said Older Brother. “I don’t care. I’ll do it.”

Shinji said without looking at his older brother. Adachi clapped his hands. “Alright, it’s settled then. I’ll bump your pay by fifty yen.” Adachi nodded exaggeratedly and curved his lips into a smile. He kept staring at Shinji with his narrow eyes. Older Brother remained silent.

“Move it!” said Adachi.

Adachi’s clothes were too big.

On this side of the stage curtain, the members had already taken their positions, and Older Brother was tightening his trumpet’s mouthpiece. Master Ogimura on piano cautioned Shinji once more. "Hey, just follow the bass, alright?"

Ogimura returned to the piano. The clamor beyond the thick crimson curtain grew distant, and the stage lights cast a perfect circle upon it. Intently, he was staring at Ogimura. Ogimura remained facing the piano and tapped the floor with his right shoe tip. Click, click, click-click, click-click. Older Brother tensed his trumpet-bearing shoulder and began playing the theme’s first measure. The curtain rose. Applause welled up. The audience roared as if to swallow him whole—nothing but a gaping maw of a dark red whale. He was absorbed in using the wire brush.

Suddenly, he realized his entire body had fully synced with the rhythm. Finally raising his head, he turned his face toward the crowd of people dancing across the entire floor. Shinji was taking a large breath.

The women’s dresses writhed and glistened like exposed intestines—ugly, multicolored entrails laid bare. A dusty heat rose as the soldiers, their hats discarded, danced while groping every exposed part of the women with their large palms. Among the women were several bare feet in sandals or straw sandals. The women were terribly lively. A woman with exposed knees and bulging calves, her face contorted as if in a frown, was spun round and round as she moved past the front of the stage.

“This band’s really damn good!”

“Yeah, I like it too.” One of them answered while turning her back. “I do like the first song they play.” Another pair of red, large lips bellowed. “No singing though, but... well, ain’t half bad.”

“Hey!”

When the song ended, the women scrambled toward the stage and repeatedly requested the same one. The Jitterbug was good.

This scene wasn’t something he hadn’t expected, Shinji thought. The band was invited on days when the soldiers were given twelve-hour leave, and it was known that this deadline would be at six o’clock the following morning. “It’s all decided what they’ll do—dance in the hall instead of a cabaret, drink, take their sweet time enjoying what they came for. Usually only one or two groups stick around till last,” said Older Brother.

Revelry coalesced into a single massive sound that saturated the space. Feverish noise, body odor, and stifling heat. The people seemed to be fully enjoying themselves. Nowhere was there gloom or misery; a pulsating mass of flesh kept being bathed in music. The rhythm was within him. But Shinji couldn't let pleasure permeate his entire body. With deliberate coldness, he focused solely on not falling out of the rhythm.

I hate this, Shinji thought as he wiped sweat dripping from his eyelids while gazing at the drum pedal's dull glint. He gasped and realized he wanted to hurl his mud-caked fury at something, as though violated himself. Ugly, he thought. A soldier dancing past gripped a woman's breast with a sweaty red-haired palm. She rolled narrow white eyes upward, laughing endlessly through saliva-slick lips. Shinji noticed his disgust and anger never focused on American soldiers. Amidst swirling chaos, he awakened to an unexpected self - one directing shameful hatred solely at Japanese women themselves. Their vulgar vitality choked him. The raw obscenity overwhelmed him. They were women; they were genitals. Defeat pressed down his spine. Drop dead - every last one of those bitches. Suffocating humiliation clogged his throat like phlegm.

“Yeah, nasty business,” Adachi said when they returned to the green room, tapping Shinji’s shoulder. “We’re Japanese too, y’know. Ain’t a man alive who wouldn’t get pissed seeing our women get played like toys.” Shinji offered a thin smile. His cheeks had stiffened like parchment, too weary to bother correcting Adachi’s misread of his anger. “You’ll get used to it quick enough,” Adachi continued. “Before long, that kinda shit stops happening—overthink it and you’ll just feel like a damn fool.”

“Like us, huh,” Ogimura interjected. “Yeah,” Adachi promptly agreed. “Yeah, indifference is our sanitation method—our morals.” One might dismiss the band members’ flippant banter—like a comedy duo’s routine—as nothing more, yet those words etched themselves deep into Shinji’s chest. But Shinji hadn’t imagined he’d later repeat those words like an incantation. At that moment, he fully believed himself indifferent to others.

“There wasn’t a single beauty among them.” Shinji said in a deliberately calm voice.

Adachi burst into laughter. “Well,bold move. “He’s already sizing them up!”

The high-ceilinged hall—once a hospital—began rapidly losing customers around its third performance, suddenly turning dreary. Neither blue nor red lights were lit; resembling an indoor arena with steel beams crisscrossing the ceiling, tiered seats rose like lecture hall steps on three sides overlooking the stage's circular floor. Along the border between the uniformly lit floor and seating area, tables clustered in a ring where soldiers drank primarily in their shadows. There sat a woman in a black suit.

The Woman in Black Suit hardly ever left her table. With a faint smile lingering on her cheeks, she cast weary glances at people moving across the floor. Adorned with what appeared to be a pearl necklace at her black suit’s breastline—her fair skin and long neck framing features of striking beauty—she seemed carved from different stone than those around her. Shinji abruptly felt himself being pulled toward that shadowed corner. Amidst the chaotic whirlpool of shrill giggles and stomping feet and clashing cymbals—there alone—as if silence itself had bored a hole through reality—an island of quiet clarity enveloped her. Yet it wasn’t beauty that drew him. Her face wore exhaustion’s slack mask. Where other women blazed with garish hues—all crimson lips and cobalt dresses screaming for attention—this one exuded muted composure; someone who’d made boredom both armor and sanctuary. She pressed pale knuckles to her mouth—a stifled yawn. Reaching across the tabletop’s cigarette burns and whiskey rings, she plucked something from the soldier’s chest pocket—a medal? A lighter?—and let it fall with a shoulder shrug that spoke volumes. For endless minutes she studied its resting place on stained floorboards. Never once did her smile waver.

At that table, there was hardly any sign of conversation. Even if she wasn’t upper class, the Woman in Black Suit seemed like someone who had acquired the history and habits of a middle-class household. Within her all-black attire that suggested a young widow, her pale, smooth skin radiated a luminous clarity.

The last stage had only three groups of guests. Two groups left the floor during the performance. Only the group with the Woman in Black Suit remained.

Her partner was a tall corporal with blond hair and rimless glasses who had the quiet air of a shy boy. Shinji had noticed that the woman never danced with any man besides her partner the entire time. The two moved across the floor in silence. Their steps remained formal and elegant. The waitresses and busboys began cleaning up around them with expressionless faces. The band played their final number, “Goodnight Sweetheart.” The woman had small red lips. Her hair—tied at the nape of her neck—fell long and straight like a black waterfall, swaying slowly side to side against her back.

The song was ending. Yet with hands clasped and eyes locked, their legs showed no sign of stopping. Ogimura gave an eye signal. The band repeated the motif once more. Shinji held his breath and stared at the woman.

The two had reached the center of the floor. The alto saxophone played the coda to its conclusion, and they stopped dancing. The band members stood up.

At that moment, as she took hold of the Corporal’s elbow while he moved toward the exit, the woman turned toward the stage and applauded softly before her chest. She gently nudged his shoulder as if prompting him. The Corporal too began clapping. In the deserted hall, only their sparse applause echoed. The curtain began descending. The band members bowed their heads deeply in unison.

“Damn, it’s cold,” Ogimura’s voice was blown away into the darkness inside the homeward-bound truck.

The wind was cold and fierce. To avoid the wind, one had to stay low. Shinji sat down on a former Japanese military ammunition box containing his drumsticks, crossed his hands over his shoulders with nowhere else to go, and hunched his neck.

“Winter’s coming soon, Dachie. If you don’t step up and start ordering a bus or something next time, I’m gonna lose it.” Kobayashi said. Adachi appeared to be asleep.

Suddenly, a shrill sound echoed from behind, and something crashed onto the road. The truck slammed on its brakes and came to a halt, flinging everyone forward as if shoved until they collapsed onto the floor. "...Ah, looks like the back panel came loose," Adachi said, squirming through the darkness as he crawled across the floor.

The soldier who had gotten down attached the panel and said, “Hah, you think it’s too late now, you lot?” The Japanese laughed listlessly. “Try not to toss people out, will you?” Adachi said with feigned cheerfulness. “Got a problem with that?” “Then walk.” The soldier said in a sharp, displeased voice.

The truck bed was quiet. No one coughed, and someone let out a short, servile laugh. The soldier puffed out his chest.

Lighting a lighter, the soldier gazed at his wristwatch. “Hmph. One o’clock.”

When the sound of military boots moving around to the front stopped, a familiar sound suddenly reached their ears. The soldier was making urine gush toward the wheel. "He’s mocking us," Shinji muttered. "It’s an insult." "Nah, that ain’t no insult," Adachi cut in. From his voice’s location, it became clear he’d been the one laughing earlier. "It’s just different customs," he said leisurely. "They always use the vehicle—pissing on it doesn’t dirty anything or show disrespect." "Unlike us who head for bushes and trees, what matters to them is doing it without showing anything." "That’s how it is. So they’d never do it roadside like us."

“Hmm,” said Shinji.

“Don’t get so worked up so easily, kid.” Adachi was leaning his shoulder in. “Those bastards got the short end of the stick too—they’re all on edge. “They have to take us back but still gotta be back at the barracks by six. That’s why the soldiers on duty are always bellyaching.” “You’ll get used to that kind of thing soon enough.” In a tone tinged with sarcasm, his older brother said. The truck departed. It quickly picked up speed, and in the darkness, the engine began emitting a monotonous roar.

“Kid, will you keep sitting there next time too?” Adachi said. “I’ll bump your pay up to four hundred yen in one go.”

“Thank you,” he said. “By the way, don’t you want to learn the drums?” Shinji remained silent.

“You’ve got real potential, kid.” Adachi snorted a laugh. Shinji closed his eyes, remaining silent. A new habit was about to begin for him. To endure it, he imagined the postures the Japanese women must be displaying around now. They hunched timidly, swaying their hips in exaggerated thrusts. The women moaned, sweating as they kept time. But what did that matter? In the end, they were just a faucet through which their saved money gushed out ceaselessly every week. None of it mattered, none of it at all. Thinking this, Shinji closed his eyes as if clenching his back teeth tight.

The band’s main job was at a Yokohama cabaret, but there Shinji only had to carry luggage and hand out sheet music. They made the trip to Chigasaki every Wednesday. On the stage of Tankers Inn before their work began, instigated by Adachi, Shinji struck the drums a few times. The feel of the sticks transmitting a dull reverberation was pleasant.

“Dam beat!”

When he finished arranging the drums and abruptly gripped the sticks, Adachi called out to him.

“Give it a good whack, kid. Don’t hold back.”

Boyya had unwittingly become Shinji's nickname. Shinji struck. Pulling both elbows tight against his torso and keeping time with his toes, he unleashed a furious barrage on the side drum reflecting the bright electric lights, finishing with a single cymbal crash. The sound still trembled by his ear.

“Alright,” Adachi walked across the red floor. “The first strike on the drum—that’s called a *dam beat*. How about it—feels good, doesn’t it?”

“I feel good,” Shinji answered.

“You’ve got strength—quite impressive.”

Adachi said as he touched the sticks. “Want me to teach you? I will.” “Mr. Adachi?” he said. The story of a drummer whose right hand tendons had been severed by a U.S. soldier—a tale he’d heard long ago—suddenly brushed through his mind. He hadn’t heard the man’s name. He thought that might be Adachi.

But Adachi wore his usual sly-looking smile. “Kid, from now on, call me Dachie—Dachie the friend,” he said.

“But I don’t intend to go pro.” “What’s wrong with it? I’m teaching you ’cause I want to. The kid learns—that’s all there is to it.”

That’s all there was to it, Shinji thought. Asking about Adachi’s past had undoubtedly been unnecessary. Others’ stories and personal histories had nothing to do with me.

What had been entrusted to him was nothing more than himself alone. The commotion beyond the curtain grew louder. The curtain rise was imminent.

“That’s unusual—the woman in black is already here today,” said Ogimura as he climbed onto the stage. “Yeah, I saw her too—with the usual Yank again,” Adachi said.

“She’s always with the same partner, huh?” “The woman in the black suit? She always stays until the end,” Shinji called out to Ogimura.

“Yes, that beauty there.” Ogimura answered and opened the piano lid. No one said anything more about “the Woman in Black Suit.” And for Shinji, that became both the first and last time people exchanged words about her in his presence.

Shinji stiffened his shoulders as if recoiling. That woman—he found himself abruptly thinking. Around that time, he had noticed she never danced anything but slow numbers—and that she absolutely refused to dance with anyone except the blond corporal. The woman always wore black clothes resembling mourning attire. A woman whose very presence suddenly felt implausible—there in that vulgar vortex of primary colors, amidst those women who were undoubtedly symbols of our subjugation. A woman verging on a figment of imagination... Wasn't my eagerness to take the stage—using Adachi's offer as an excuse—precisely because being there allowed me to see her clearly?

The Woman in Black Suit sat at a table in the far corner opposite the old woman. Wearing a black dress and, as always, she only stepped onto the floor when the band played a slow number, being led by the arm by the Corporal. During trots and rumbas, she would return to her seat early. When jitterbugs and boogies began, she tilted her head, drew back her shoulders, and laughed. The Corporal obediently followed her back to their seats. Every stage was the same. However, that night, she styled her hair up. Perhaps what they called an evening updo—she had bundled her hair high, and when she turned her back, two stunning collar lines that took one’s breath away lined up.

The brush hand moved almost mechanically. Shinji was conscious of his tilting mind. He fixed his gaze as if trying to ascertain something. She must be a city woman, he thought. Would she be twenty-five or twenty-six? Or perhaps she looked slightly older. The Corporal and she, now that he considered it, gave a strong impression of being like sister and brother. The woman carried herself with a gentle, mature demeanor reminiscent of an older married woman showing kindness to a young lover. With her distinctive almond-shaped eyes upturned at the corners, she sat at the table, chin slightly tucked in, those eyes gazing somewhere at a distant height. The woman seemed like one who never laughed aloud.

The Woman in Black Suit crossed the floor and approached the stage directly—it must have been past ten by then, as the crowd had thinned considerably. Startled, Shinji looked at the woman. However, she stood near the piano opposite the right wing where he was.

“Please play Deep Purple.” She said in a crisp, clear voice. Her pronunciation was clean. Ogimura nodded and signaled to the band members. "Deep Purple" was a slow number. “What’s with you? What’d you go requestin’?” said the Yellow-clad Woman. “Deep Purple”—perhaps out of habit—she tilted her head slightly as the Corporal took her arm and she looked at the Yellow-clad Woman. “What’s that like? Do I know that one?”

“It’s a slow one. Deep Purple,” she replied gently, beginning to turn her face away. At that moment, her eyes locked with Shinji’s. He refused to look away. The Woman in Black Suit stared at him with widened eyes for several heartbeats. In those fleeting moments before the music began, she studied him with a puzzled frown, her fierce gaze burning as if affronted. His chest tingled with electric tension. Yet Shinji held firm, determined not to break contact. As the first notes sounded and the Corporal moved to take her hand, he could have sworn she smiled at him—a fleeting curve of lips that vanished as the rimless-glassed soldier, every inch the model student, began leading her in a dance that maintained polite inches between their bodies.

Shinji thought with a buoyant heart. She was probably his only one. But perhaps this wasn't a transactional relationship after all. Perhaps, just as in my dreams, she—a well-bred young woman from the evacuee class—and this young Corporal were in a relationship with formal promises that should lead to true love and marriage. He saw them as something to be celebrated instead. The Corporal might be of Nordic descent. He indeed appeared as one would expect of a properly educated upper-class youth.

Just as he flipped through the sheet music while waiting for Ogimura's baton signal, he reasoned that none of the band members could have noticed his intense gaze. He employed the same tactic again. When all the standing members bowed at the finale—his face still turned toward her as she applauded—Shinji did not lower his head.

Happiness resembled a sharp pain. The thought that she might have remembered him made his heart pound. The excitement persisted even during the truck ride back.

It was a bitterly cold night at the end of November. Whether through Adachi's arrangements or standard procedure, on their return a large bus glistening with mist particles stood waiting at Eimon Gate. It had bench seats. Shinji took the frontmost seat.

With his older brother and others sitting hunched over on seats behind him—their coat collars turned up against cold—Shinji nevertheless forgot about his own chill. That night too，the Woman in Black Suit had stayed until after their final set. Instruments and sheet music bundles occupied most of its rear; inside what was otherwise an almost-full bus sat just one young soldier，apparently bound for town.

The bus shuddered in quick jolts as it headed straight toward the sea, while women walked scattered like dots along the roadside—whether they’d been left behind or already finished their work. The women were mostly not alone; there were even pairs wrapped together in a single coat.

The women knew full well the powerlessness of the Japanese. Clutching at both sides of the bus as if in desperate pursuit, they swarmed around it, repeatedly pleading only with the U.S. soldiers to give them a ride into town. But the bus showed no sign of slowing down. The soldier who had stood up tapped the shoulder of the gum-chewing driver. "She's mine, I'm asking you." "Don't lie—yours is waiting in some town bed." "But that one's also one of mine."

“Just one? Those P-W girls make too much noise—one’s fine.” The ruddy-faced Private First Class driver answered arrogantly to what appeared to be a Private Second Class and finally stopped the bus. He leaped outside. “Just one—only one who’ll warm me up.”

A thin mist laced with the scent of the sea drifted coolly inward. Making the Japanese girls—who clamored with coy whines and whistles—line up sideways, the driver spat out his gum and, grinning slyly, lifted each of their chins to inspect them. There were five or six women. There was no sign of the Black-clad Woman. The fog drifted through the brightness of the headlights. The driver chose the tallest woman. “Your seat is here.” The woman perched lightly on the soldier’s lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Hah!” The driver turned around and grinned at Shinji. “Watch your life.” The bus began to move. The Private Second Class remained silent in the back seat.

The woman wearing a blanket-like coat squinted drunkenly. She had buttocks like a mortar. From beneath her coat protruded the U.S. soldier’s large red palm sprouting golden hairs, pressing against her chest. Swaying her head unsteadily, the woman said in Japanese, “I’ll fall off. If you’re gonna hold me, do it right.”

The road ran straight, parallel to the coast. “Quit it! What’re you doing?” the woman said angrily. The driver kissed her lips voraciously. His right arm, clenched with force, gripped the steering wheel.

The pressed-together cheeks were right before Shinji's eyes. The driver didn't stop sucking forcefully. Her face twisted, and when forcibly separated, a white trail of saliva stretched between them. "You filthy monkey!" Japanese would do, but the woman forced a smile. "Good." The soldier let go of his hand. On the bus floor, the woman fell over clumsily onto her back. The soldier burst into loud laughter.

Instinctively, Shinji averted his eyes. He gazed at the band members in the rear. The band members were sleeping. Like corpses, everyone kept their eyes tightly shut and slept. The Private Second Class was vacantly staring out the window. While continuing to drive, the soldier let out a siren-like roar of laughter. Shinji turned his face away. Do nothing, say nothing, just keep pretending not to notice—I can keep my eyes shut too. He tightly grasped the seat armrest, kept his lips slightly parted as if gasping, and continued waiting for something to go down his throat.

“Like this?” Ordered, the woman obediently hung from behind the soldier’s neck this time and pressed her cheek tightly against his. “That’s right. Keep at it like that.” “I can’t go to heaven with you.” “Right?” The soldier continued to laugh while glaring ahead, and the woman calmly began humming a pop song as she swayed her hips.

The fact that the woman utterly ignored him and all the Japanese people in the vehicle—not even attempting to seek salvation through her gaze—pierced Shinji even more deeply. Indifference was mutual. Indeed, the band members, the occupation force employees, and the prostitutes had built a wall of complete indifference between one another. As if it were only natural, each was trying to live solely within their own enclaves. ……Shinji felt suffocated. He too had to grow accustomed to it.

It was a night when the air felt taut. There was still some distance to the town. Pressing his forehead against the glass pane, Shinji gazed out the window. Illuminated by the headlights, a woman moving to the side of the road came into view. Shinji held his breath. It was the Woman in Black. Shielding her eyes as if dazzled, the woman’s upturned gaze glinted. The woman’s coat was gray. The bus was about to stop, and she would get on and stand beside him. She sits next to me. In an instant, Shinji imagined just that. But the bus didn’t change speed. Bearing the drunken woman’s lewd humming and the soldier’s foolish laughter, the bus passed by. Twisting his neck, he looked out the back window. The woman’s standing figure was soon swallowed by the darkness. “Ah…” he said. The low voice made no sound.

Shinji had never before been so acutely aware of such a searing void. The void existed in the seat beside him. The brown leather seat left vacant for one person quietly reflected the swaying bus’s light. He felt he saw there his own unfulfilled, fervent hope. I wanted her to come there. I wanted to fill that space with her supple touch. He leaned back against the seat back as if in a daze.

A void like the ceaseless ringing of a silver bell filled him. That she was all alone, making her way along that bleak midnight road—this filled him with something both happy and sad.

Shinji suddenly realized. The hidden skin of his body was exposed to a biting cold wind. At seventeen, he was a child. He had not shed a single trace of the boy within him. He wanted to walk hand in hand with the sister-like Woman in Black Suit along that dark coastal road, just the two of them, forever. He wanted to disappear into the winter darkness.

That night, a lieutenant who declared they were going to Kamakura boarded the bus, and attempting to take a shortcut, it swerved into a narrow side road. Because the desperate driver sped recklessly, a tree branch shattered the window glass, and Aoki the alto saxophonist sustained a head wound. The bus couldn't reach Yokohama until past three o'clock.

Shinji thought that life was nothing but repetition. More or less, people live by repetition. A life as a drum-playing band boy had taken root within him. He could feel himself gradually growing accustomed. The garish revelry dyed in gaudy primary colors, the sweat and blood, the soldiers' crude clamor and rowdy slapping—he tried to turn his back on this powerless, impoverished reality that he hated and that tormented him. These were merely stimuli to the outer shell encasing his solitary chamber—seasonal storms that tempered that shell. His only task was to harden this outer shell. He strove to eliminate his resentment by erasing his own awareness of harboring it. This half-conscious numbness led him to grow accustomed to the external world—and to his own powerlessness against it. Yet whether he had created a solitary room to get accustomed, or whether it was the other way around—he couldn't quite grasp. None of it mattered anymore. Like a shellfish retreating into its shell, he began learning to avoid things.

The fact that cigarettes were being pushed on him by bellboys and prostitutes had given Shinji the idea to become that broker. Dealing directly with the soldiers would yield greater profits. He teamed up with Adachi and shifted to selling them instead. Three hundred yen profit per carton—transporting three cartons a night was no trouble at all.

“You’re making quite a profit off those cigarettes, aren’t you?” One day, his older brother said. He remained silent. The cigarettes, transferred to a Boston bag, had been placed in the corner of the alcove alongside textbooks and other items.

"What do you plan to use it for?" said Older Brother.

“Who knows?” “A woman?” “Nothing that clever about it.”

“...Don’t you dare become some black-market broker.”

Shinji remained silent. He had no intention of arguing with his older brother. If he were to say anything, his older brother would invariably start cursing their father—who since Japan’s defeat had become like an empty shell of a man, refusing to work at all— and would mutter that their bedridden mother was no mother at all. He knew that quarreling with his older brother would ultimately only lead to a troublesome circular argument—that it would inevitably devolve into his brother’s insults and complaints about their parents. Shinji deliberately yawned. “Get out, I have studying to do.”

“Hmph… How much are you giving Dachie?” “A hundred and fifty yen.” “Splitting it fifty-fifty?”

“That’s how it’s arranged.” “This is about you. You must be moving them with an even higher margin than that. Are you selling them at cabarets?”

“There are all sorts of ways. You lose money when cabarets get raided. There are companies and shops where I used to work part-time. You can even sell them for a surprisingly high price at school.” “Crafty little hustler,” Older brother said cheerfully. “I’ve got a new respect for you—seems you’re a man who’d never make a losing deal.”

Shinji grabbed the dictionary without answering. His older brother’s way of speaking sometimes took on a superior officer’s tone. He hated that.

Downstairs, with a sudden, piercingly high-pitched cry that split the morning air, the tenant’s baby began wailing with all its might. “What an awful voice.” “That’s a monkey’s voice.” Still leaning against the railing, older brother grimaced. “I’m going crazy here.” While answering, Shinji wanted to know what his older brother was trying to say to him.

Older brother brightened his tone. “Student bands are already passé ventures. But me—I feel good just blowing my pet, those high notes no score from any era or country in the world has ever written down. Right?” “Armstrong again?” He sneered. Older brother would sometimes bellow those words when terribly drunk.

“How’s your drumming coming along?” asked Older Brother with the same feigned brightness. “You’re practicing every week, right?”

“That stuff?” he said. “None of it’s serious—just keeping Dachie happy.” “Can’t have that guy turning his back on me now.” So this is what older brother’s been worried about, he realized. As expected, older brother whistled in relief and went downstairs.

As he reached for his textbook, Shinji noticed and opened the Boston bag. There were two extra cartons of Pell Mell inside.

“...Damn it,” he said. A strange anger toward his older brother—who must have shown such kindness—was assailing him. “Alright, I’ll pay back every last yen of this money.” He muttered. “Tomorrow, I’ll pay it back.” I want to handle this myself—alone. I didn’t want anyone’s help with the burden of being myself. What I want are things that would cement my solitude—mere transactional partners or enemies, he thought.

At the university on the hill, the son of a restaurant-owning classmate made for a good business partner. Then there was the son of an executive from a certain conservative political party. He always kept about thirty thousand yen in hundred-yen bills crammed into his overcoat's inner pocket.

Shinji succeeded in selling them cigarettes at a profit of five hundred yen per carton. He felt terribly like a calculating man. The feeling that he could fully believe in his own coldness was gratifying. Shinji earnestly hoped for cold-bloodedness.

“That’s right, we need to expand our organization even more.” “Yeah, those bastards’ll officially ban campus cells any day now. We all know that.” When he took the empty Boston bag and went up to the rooftop, students foaming at the mouth were engaged in heated debates. Shinji felt disconnected from them. What did any of that matter? Were people really granted any capacity for responsibility beyond their efforts—each individual striving solely for their own happiness?

……Yet Shinji still retained a childish impulse—the kind that made him voice this resistance aloud to a middle school classmate who happened to be there.

“What a strange guy,” answered that pale student. “You’re an unfortunate child. “You’re an idiot.”

“It can’t be helped—I can only be myself.”

From the rooftop of the university building, the garden of the neighboring foreign embassy—separated by a red brick wall—could be seen. Amidst the trees, now mostly bare with their mottled bone-like withered hues, there was a pond gleaming leadenly. A bird took flight from there.

Pressing his chest against the stone edge of the rooftop, Shinji suddenly spoke out. "If you fell from here, would you die?" "If you knew judo, you might survive." "Looks like a quarry down there." "In that case, you'll die for sure."

Having answered, the friend peered at him. “Hey Kobata, did some girl dump you or something?”

Startled, he burst out laughing. "That's ridiculous—I don't love anyone!"

The sunlight was bright. That winter—dubbed an unseasonable aberration—continued with days of spring-like warmth. The end of that year’s classes was drawing near.

There were also figures with their glasses gleaming as they sunbathed, utterly absorbed in copying notes. Thinking about his meticulously organized notebook and that his tuition was nearly paid off, Shinji felt a refreshing clarity. Bathed in the mild winter sunlight, five or six people stood lined up on the rooftop's concrete surface, dragging their feet to create scraping sounds while practicing dance steps. One of the instructors clapped his hands and approached. A man walked toward him with elbows held horizontal and back hunched, swaying unsteadily as he called out.

“Hey, you wanna learn too? You can’t dance, can you?” “How much?”

"Twenty yen per person per session," said the teaching student as he turned around. "How about it?" "Teach me the slow," he said. "Just the slow is fine. I don't want to learn anything else."

The steps were simple. But no matter how much his friend urged him, he refused to learn any other steps. He felt practicing only during that lunch break was sufficient. "You're already good enough. Now all that's left is leading—actually doing it and riding the music."

“Thanks—that’s enough.”

He hadn’t told anyone about his part-time job with his older brother’s band. Shinji cheerfully paid twenty yen. He was satisfied that the cost of learning the steps had amounted to just that much.

The U.S. military tank unit in Chigasaki, surrounded by pine forests, had high barbed-wire fences wound around its perimeter. At times, it gave the impression of being a field encampment or an internment camp. By no means was there any stylish wire mesh of the kind found in cities.

Exiting the back entrance of Tankers Inn, beyond the fence tangled with barbed wire, a field of young pine needles shone layered like black clouds, while on the left shoulder of a tall iron pole—its purpose unclear—the North Star rested sharp and still. The residential area on the outskirts of town beyond the gently swelling hill could only be seen as two or three distant lights.

Passing by the kitchen’s screen door where tepid smells of sour ketchup sauce and savory bread lingered, he walked along the parched sandy path and past a mountainous stack of drum cans. The restrooms stood near the pine grove, distanced far from the hall.

As soon as they arrived at the camp—whether due to the cold or not—the band members would head to the restroom. Shinji would always leave the hall just as they were returning. There was work to be done beforehand preparing music stands and scores, but he liked wandering alone through those bone-chilling nights like this. Sometimes the waitresses would open the screen door to give him freshly baked bread or roast beef. On Christmas night, they gave him a small turkey thigh.

“Mr. Boy,” the waitresses called him. “Thank you,” he would say each time, expressing his gratitude. Shinji believed the girls’ goodwill toward him was nothing more than age-based affection directed at him as the youngest.

The camp’s scenery was always the same. Brightly, several lights from all directions illuminated him, making it seem less like night and more like an eternal midday bearing the same low, cramped dark sky. A constant soft brightness always blanketed the grounds, and for him, the camp’s scenery remained nothing but that of a single night. There were days when rain fell through that hazy space of light, casting shimmering white threads, and clear days when it revealed stardust’s lofty height at the zenith.

On days when the wind from the sea blew strong, the cool night air—rustling through daytime brightness—shook his cheeks like continual washing water. While eyeing the crowd swarming at the gate, he kept his slow-moving feet in motion. The women could only pass through the checkpoint under pretense of being invited by soldier friends. Amid those jostling outside the gate—women shouting soldiers' names or waving signals—Shinji always sought the black-suited woman among them. Among soldiers dashing toward the entrance, he tried spotting the blond corporal with rimless glasses. On days he failed to see her beforehand, he'd slip away during set breaks under restroom pretexts to search again. For Shinji, mere observation sufficed. The woman stood partitioned by American troops now—confirming this separation became his sole remaining duty now that she'd been taken from him completely yet again by occupation forces beyond any hope of approach or contact whatsoever except through distant surveillance alone conducted via stolen glances across barbed wire barriers under flickering camp lights reflecting off polished boots and weaponry carried everywhere by armed guards patrolling perimeter fences surrounding military installations where jazz music played nightly while cigarette smoke curled upwards into starless skies above Chigasaki's pine forests where young men like himself bartered dignity for survival daily without end until death might finally release them all from this endless cycle of humiliation endured silently behind forced smiles during musical performances serving foreign overlords who'd conquered their nation utterly just one year prior... He watched her still—captured by blankness as sharp as winter moonlight piercing cloud cover—standing motionless while being absorbed into nothingness through her image alone which paradoxically felt essential to sustaining his existence somehow despite its annihilating power over him; what he truly craved was that very force which could dissolve him into transparency entirely.

Ogimura said. “Kid, studying for exams must be tough, huh?” On a hectic Wednesday after the traditional New Year holidays had passed, Shinji had come to his house in Yokohama as usual, carrying music scores.

“It’s nothing serious—I hardly ever skip classes,” answered Shinji as he shouldered the furoshiki-wrapped bundle. It remained an era when acquiring new jazz scores proved difficult. Even the Hit Kits bought from soldiers never contained complete new songs, leading to more handwritten copies that made the score bundles grow heavier and bulkier day by day. Carrying them counted among Shinji’s routine duties.

“You okay?” They went out front together, and Ogimura asked. “How’s your body holding up?”

“Huh?” “Your brother was worried—said you’re not looking well.” “There’s nothing wrong with my body.” Angered by his brother’s meddling, Shinji answered sharply. “I’m perfectly healthy.” Ogimura laughed in relief. “Oh? Really fine? “Your brother says he wants to pull you out.” “……So kid, you still planning to keep at it?” “I do,” Shinji replied with feigned surprise. It wasn’t a lie. He’d calculated that he needed to earn more for tuition. After all, this gig paid better than anything else.

“I see.” Ogimura appeared deep in thought. “Then kid, are you really planning to become a drummer?” “Well, that’s...” He faltered. “Drumming feels good, but...” “Hmm.” “This doesn’t match what Dachie said.” As they emerged onto the streetcar avenue, Ogimura in his white muffler tilted his head. “Dachie’s version’s different.” “He says he wants to mold you into our drummer. That’s why he’s not bringing in anyone else.”

“I’m a band boy,” Shinji said. “With Dachie, I’ve fudged it by saying I need time to think.” “I see.” “But that’s a problem—we absolutely need a drummer.” Ogimura muttered as if to himself and stopped the car.

Through the dusk-filled streets, the taxi began heading toward Sakuragicho Station.

“But let’s not tell Dachie clearly yet—that’d be more convenient, right? That guy’s got a strange tendency to flare up when provoked.”

Ogimura said. “Bands everywhere are swamped right now—it’s not like I’ll find a drummer that quickly anyway. “In any case, I’d be grateful if you could keep going a little longer.” He repeated. “Right? Just a bit longer.” “Yes—please let me do that.”

From the shadow of the furoshiki-wrapped bundle clutched to his chest, Shinji watched the bustling streets pass the window with fierce eyes. This could only be a dismissal notice, he thought. Just a bit longer. He silently mouthed Ogimura's words.

Suddenly, something hot flooded his chest. "Just a bit longer." There were only a few chances. In that time, I would embrace her skin. I would inhale her skin. I would absolutely sleep with her once.

A U.S. soldier walked through the city with a woman in a flashy coat.

General MacArthur’s New Year’s declaration praised the stability of governance as Japan marked its fifth New Year since the war’s end, while the sight of occupation soldiers moving through towns had already become more familiar than leashed guard dogs. Shooing away shoe-shine children clinging to his long legs and laughing, the U.S. soldier wrapped his arm around the woman’s shoulders, and together they gazed into the display window with exaggerated gestures. Dirtied pine-decorated pillars bearing town names passed by the window one after another. The woman in a red coat who had darted into the roadway looked back at the sidewalk, laughed, and shook her head as if to refuse. The taxi passed right by the woman’s back. On the sidewalk was the face of a U.S. soldier, his mouth agape and eyes gleaming with shameless lewdness.

Shinji now understood. He clearly hated that blond corporal. A scene he had been trying not to recall floated into his mind. After that, he had once again seen the Woman in Black Suit walking along the coastal road from inside the returning bus. She wore a gray coat, laughing while the blond corporal in a hat held her shoulders firmly... Was I still only capable of thinking of the Woman in Black Suit as a prostitute? Shinji was acutely aware of that white skin offered up to the U.S. soldiers. His sadness was his own powerlessness; his pain was undoubtedly jealousy.

“What on earth are we celebrating today?” Kobayashi said. He sounded slightly angry. “Suddenly telling us to stay overnight… That’s downright unreasonable.” “Ain’t got no choice,” Adachi answered, thrusting out his long chin. “Client’s askin’ real polite-like—best we play along. Scared they’ll cancel future gigs on us if we don’t.” He turned to Ogimura. “Right, Master?” “Can’t be helped.”

Ogimura was a quiet man. “Everyone okay with this?”

“There’s an exam,” Shinji said. “But I have an English exam during third period tomorrow.” “Third period?” “Then it’s in the afternoon, right?” “It’s fine—I can take the morning train back.” Adachi hurriedly threw his coat back on. “Right—gotta go sort out lodging.”

"The same place as last time?" said Kobayashi. He continued: "There? The Christmas one? What a dump!" "But there's nowhere else to stay—that's the only place we've got," said Adachi. "The soldiers ain't gonna provide transport either—if we get turned down at that inn, you're gonna be sleeping outdoors, y'know."

It was the first Wednesday after February began.

He later learned that this was the day when repatriation orders had been issued to some senior officers. The soldiers were probably rejoicing, thinking their own repatriation was imminent. That coincided precisely with that Wednesday.

But the officers were not Shinji and the others’ clients. The band had been invited for the soldiers’ sake. It seemed only some officers were being repatriated, but the soldiers’ excitement reached feverish heights—so much so that the whistles and shouts of “Open the stage already!” became deafening even in the greenroom. "This is one hell of a night." Older Brother grinned slyly. “Basically, the more customers pour in, the better jazz goes over.”

His older brother’s trumpet began energetically playing “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly”. That song was their theme. Before the curtain had fully risen, the soldiers were already roaring in unison.

“……Naturally!” “Naturally!”

Shinji was getting worked up. While wielding two sticks yet out of habit, his eyes searched beyond the seething mass of soldiers and women dancing with apparent joy for the figure of the Woman in Black Suit. He still hadn't found any opportunity to approach her. Yet every time he came to Chigasaki, he never forgot to bring the nearly 10,000 yen bundle he'd saved up tucked into his inner pocket. If push came to shove, he thought. He believed he knew what reality stripped from those without money.

In the poorly ventilated hall, pale white cigarette smoke hung thick, and despite it being midwinter, a sweltering heat—mingling with the distinctive odor of Americans and breath reeking of alcohol—steadily intensified. The Woman in Black Suit arrived midway through the second set. She took a seat at the frontmost table—stage right, that is—a mere five or six meters from Shinji, who drummed with his right sleeve. Shinji's heart raced. It was probably due to the unusually early influx of customers filling the hall quickly, but she had never taken a seat so close before. Unusually, she directed a bright smile at the dancing crowd and, as if keeping time with both hands, clapped along with everyone. Next to her sat the usual Corporal.

Shinji lowered his face. The usual despair that constrained him whenever he saw her had seized him once again. To imagine her skin, she could not be seen. Rather than women as breasts, buttocks, skin, or genitals—toward this Woman in Black Suit who stood visible yet separated—he felt himself coming to understand that he could direct something more precious, something more fervent, a love more devoted. It might be cowardice—immaturity—escapism—an unhealthy fixation on dreams. Yet Shinji couldn't abandon the pleasure of being fossilized within a single sharp blankness when he saw her, nor relinquish the delight of transforming into that fulfilled emptiness itself. He wanted to lose. Not to himself—he wanted to lose to her. To his powerless self before reality—to become perfectly suited to it, to evaporate, to be completely occupied by her—this alone was his wish; his desire lay not in possessing her.

That was the understanding he arrived at each time she appeared before him—this endlessly recurring figure. Shinji bit his lip. In the end, I probably won't be able to lay a finger on her. To lay even a single finger on her would be to strip her of her very self. See? I’m afraid of that right now. Switching his drumsticks, he crouched as if hammering down his rage and struck the drum with all his might. His toes pressed down on the drum pedal as he frantically beat out one chorus. “Hoh,” Turning around, Kobayashi pursed his lips. Shinji shrugged his shoulders and stuck out his tongue.

“You’ve gotten good, kid.”

When the curtain fell, Kobayashi said. "I was reminded of Dachie's old days—he used to play just like that, all killing intent and fury."

“Kobayashi,” Ogimura said in a low voice. It was a voice sharp and deep, unlike anything one would expect from him. Kobayashi promptly said, “My apologies.”

Shinji sensed the band members' unspoken rule. They never spoke of Adachi's past, and Adachi himself said nothing. During every lesson, Shinji understood that Adachi—who never gripped the sticks—was the drummer who had severed his tendons, as his brother had said. Shinji had also refrained from mentioning it. But Shinji's restraint was nothing more than a conscious rejection of anything beyond himself and adherence to habit. For the band members, not touching upon each other's pasts or private lives in that manner was both a unifying force and a method. Now even Shinji didn't find it entirely unpleasant.

In the greenroom, Adachi sat in a chair with a sullen expression. "Bashing the drums ain't your only job," he muttered low. "Kid, these days when you hit hard, you always end up playing like some hysteric woman." "It looks like tonight might get rough," Ogimura said in his usual relaxed voice. Shinji thought he meant the customers.

The air of impending chaos hung thick when, midway through the next set, an officer who never normally entered the hall arrived. Shinji saw soldiers near the entrance murmur and part in two. A single U.S. soldier entered clutching a transparent liquor bottle in one hand, his face flushed crimson as he bared white teeth in a grin. He was an officer with tightly curled hair and a prominent hooked nose. When Shinji later reflected on it, the man had likely been among those officers being sent back stateside. But at that moment, hearing soldiers’ whispers interspersed with cries of “States! States!”, he remained unaware of such circumstances.

He was a stocky man with a neck like a Mexican’s and chestnut-colored curly hair. From the very beginning, Shinji had disliked that vigorous impression of his. Responding to the soldiers’ cheers and whistles, the officer waved one hand and pushed through the dancing crowd toward the stage. On closer inspection, the man was a lieutenant.

Just then, the hall was filled with the fast rhythm of ragtime. His older brother flushed his face crimson and continued earnestly blowing B-flat high notes. His older brother’s forehead was glistening with sweat. Holding a gin-like bottle limply in one hand, the Lieutenant stared intently at soldiers and women dancing their way around him. Those eyes came to rest on the table in the right corner.

Shinji was distracted. He had forgotten how to move his hands. The lieutenant walked straight to the table where the Woman in Black Suit sat. He slammed the gin bottle down on the table. Through her motions—tilting her head, smiling upward through lowered lashes, shaking it side to side—it became clear she was refusing the lieutenant’s dance invitation. The corporal interjected something from beside them, making the lieutenant shrug his shoulders theatrically. But the lieutenant hadn’t surrendered. Shaking his head like a petulant child, he closed in on the Woman in Black Suit and abruptly seized her wrist to pull her toward him. A chair crashed to the floor.

The drumsticks had come to a complete stop. Pulling back his chair, the Corporal stood up and crossed his arms. His face was pale with anger. Yet the tall Corporal kept his rimless glasses on. He meant not to challenge his superior officer physically. When it involved other women, this was routine—people would typically watch smiling without comment. But Shinji seethed at the soldiers who surely knew the Woman in Black Suit danced only with the Corporal, now silently observing how things unfolded. Most troops kept dancing or drinking with studied nonchalance.

The woman wore a troubled, strained smile. The Lieutenant forcibly brought her out onto the floor and pulled her into an embrace. He bent his knees and shrugged his shoulders as if keeping rhythm. He began to dance. ……However, her legs came to a stop by the second step. Staggering, she shook her head. “No, I can’t do fast songs.” Shinji almost felt he had heard her voice.

The woman laughed with brows furrowed in strained apology. Drawing back her small white chin yet rooted like stonework ironwork resisting leverage itself she fixed her gaze upon the lieutenant. The lieutenant shook his head and made to resume dancing. Her hips staggered. Still wearing that same smile she spoke words lost beneath music and shook her head once more.

The two of them had come right before his eyes. Shinji had lost all sense of his surroundings. Poised on his hips, he was ready to kick over the drums and lunge if the Lieutenant tried to start dancing again. But the Lieutenant released his grip. “Sorry.” He said just a single word and released the woman. In an instant, the Lieutenant’s figure could be seen dancing with a plump woman in a red dress.

The woman who had returned to the table was pressing the area around her left elbow with her right hand. Her face showed no anger. When the Corporal leaned in and said something, she gently shook her head. Her usual weary smile spread across her cheeks. The Corporal supported the woman as if holding her up and made his way through the crowd toward the exit. On the table sat a transparent gin bottle alongside a single beer and the woman’s handkerchief. Shinji felt his heart suddenly emptying like a receding tide. He readjusted his grip on the brushes. His hands lacked strength as they struck the snare drum. The woman had gone out for a walk with the Corporal to avoid the Lieutenant—she would surely return. He tried to convince himself of that.

However, the woman did not show herself during that performance. Would she return? Or wouldn’t she appear again tonight? Shinji could think of nothing else. Today, that woman had her hair hanging long. She had not worn a pearl necklace. When she was dragged across the floor by the Lieutenant and brought close to him, he could scrutinize her face intently. In the woman’s eyes were faint shadows, and when she moved her pupils, her eyelids seemed to form fine wrinkles. There was a long, smooth, white throat like porcelain.

...In the greenroom，Shinji found it painful to sit motionless with his head bowed. Climbing onto the stage，he quietly peeked into the hall from behind the thick curtain. The soldiers had begun to thin out，and a busboy was wiping down several vacated tables. The handkerchief was still there on the table from earlier.

He turned the greenroom corner and emerged from the back door to the front. The night was cold as if slapped by ice. Changing his mind, Shinji went back into the greenroom to get his coat. If he said he was going to the bathroom, that would be fine. Adachi called out. “Hey, you’ve only got about ten minutes left of your break.” Shinji answered as planned. As he passed before the kitchen, the screen door’s back entrance opened. “Mr. Boy,” a voice called out. “Here.” The thin girl in the white apron handed him an aluminum cup. It contained hot chocolate.

“It’s hot.” He laughed. The sweet, hot, viscous liquid warmed his body and tasted good, but his mind was racing. “Where are you going? The bathroom?” The girl asked. She was a girl with thin eyebrows and a small-featured face.

“A walk,” he answered.

“Okay, then how about walking me to the bathroom instead?” said the girl. “But...” he trailed off. Shinji hesitated in his reply. He couldn’t say he was concerned about the Woman in Black and wanted to find her. The girl, however, easily misunderstood. “It’s fine—if you’re worried about the time, we can walk together while drinking that.”

The girl quickly threw on a shabby woolen overcoat and came out. Shinji reluctantly walked shoulder to shoulder past the oil drums.

“That overcoat’s awfully small on you, isn’t it?” The girl laughed deep in her throat. She stood about chest-high to him.

"But it's still as good as new, you know. I bought it from my old man." "Oh, you bought it from your father?" "Yeah, haggled him down and got it on installments." "Oh, on installments?…"

At first glance she was a flat-chested girl with a small nose, but upon closer inspection her features were lovely. She wore a white cloth tied behind her ears that left only her bangs exposed. The girl turned her white-clad head away and laughed out. “Really. That’s a riot.” “The old man’s strapped for cash too.” “Yeah…”

The girl suddenly stopped laughing. She said in a low, aged voice, "So your place must be having it pretty rough too, huh?" Shinji brought the cup to his lips.

The cup was empty before they reached the bathroom. While waiting for the girl to finish her business, Shinji gazed at Emon. The night was a familiar presence. Soldiers accompanied by women exited through the gate in several pairs. The Corporal and the "Black-clad Woman" were nowhere to be seen. Had they gone back after all? He walked around the back of the bathroom while rotating the cup with his fingers. Because in the darkness of the coarse gravel behind that standalone building, he had sometimes seen men and women kissing there. But there was no sign of anyone there either.

It was right after that that he heard a strange noise. The sharp, growl-like sound ceased abruptly, and Shinji couldn’t grasp what it was. Then, this time, a clear scream tore through the air. Shinji ran into the bathroom. “No!” A thick, tear-choked voice screamed as Shinji deliberately stomped his feet and threw open the door. “No, no!” The voice was crushed as if a hand had covered her mouth, and the sound of something slamming against the wall rang out. Before his eyes was the hunched back of a broad military uniform, and on either side of it, he could see the thick edges of the girl’s faded red skirt.

“What are you doing?” He shouted at the top of his voice. The man had curly chestnut-colored hair. A face ugly and glistening with greasy sweat turned around. It was that lieutenant. “Stop it! What are you doing?” Shinji shouted, his voice cracking. When he clung to his waist, the lieutenant finally released his grip. The girl, now deathly pale, had legs like sticks that were too thin. In a thick voice ill-suited to her frame, she shouted “No!” once more.

“Mr. Boy,” the girl began crying in a strained voice. The white cloth she had worn had fallen to the floor and been soiled with mud, her hair looking clawed-at. Sobbing, she sat collapsed in the corner she’d been forced into. A white scrap of cloth fluttered down onto Shinji’s shoe. He immediately knew it was the girl’s torn-off bloomers. “……Goddam.” Gasping for breath, the hook-nosed Lieutenant gripped his trousers. A glaring feverish gaze fixed on Shinji. He remained silent, glaring back from close enough that their chests almost touched.

Twisting his thick rubber-like lips into a grin, the Lieutenant sneered. "It's a joke," he said. "Get out." English would do. Shinji pointed to the exit. Shrugging his thick shoulders, the Lieutenant left. The Lieutenant was still panting.

The girl did not stop sobbing. He adjusted her hiked-up top and helped her stand. “Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?” The girl nodded between sobs. “...Let’s go,” he said.

The girl was trembling in small rapid shivers. Supporting her, he stepped out to the bathroom’s front entrance. “Boy.” A voice rang through the darkness. Shinji felt her trembling intensify into something larger. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Boy.” The voice called again. “I have something to discuss.” “What happened back there—that was my fault.” The voice was persistent. “Come here. Come here for a second.”

“Can you get back alone?” Shinji asked. “No, no.” The girl looked up with trembling eyes. “Then wait here.”

Shinji went around to the back of the toilet. The cigarette’s glow—like distant fishing boat lanterns—intensified, and the Lieutenant’s face emerged from the darkness. The cigarette's glow was cast into the darkness.

In that instant, a ferocious punch landed on Shinji’s chin. Shinji fell backward onto the sand. From his left jaw down to his lips, the pain was heavy—as though something scalding had been plastered there—a dull yet searing agony. Stars danced before his eyes, and Shinji couldn’t get up for some time. Something slick touched the palm he pressed. His lip was split.

Blood was in his mouth too. When he stood up, he spat. His body swayed unsteadily. He could barely stay standing.

“Hey.” The voice said. The Lieutenant was gripping Shinji’s arm. “Is that girl your sweetheart?”

“No.” He said vehemently.

“Wrong? “Hmph. Then why’d you follow the girl? “Why’d you stop me? “Don’t you think you’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”

“She’s not my lover.” A stinging pain shot through his bones when his shoulder was shaken. Groaning, Shinji clutched his chin.

The Lieutenant raised his voice. “Hey, Waitress, come here.”

“Why are you calling her?” Shinji gasped. “She doesn’t need to come.”

“I don’t care,” the Lieutenant said. He bellowed again. The girl who had emerged into the light hugged her chest with both arms, shivering. She ran over and clamped onto Shinji. “Blood!” The girl didn’t ask why. Trembling, she gripped Shinji fiercely as they braced against each other through their legs.

“Is this boy your sweetheart?” The Lieutenant slowly repeated to the girl.

“Huh?” “S-sweetheart? L-lover?” “…Y-yes.” Trembling, the girl said.

“Look at this coward,” The Lieutenant sneeringly extended his finger and poked Shinji’s forehead. “Did you hear what the girl said?”

“No. We’re not lovers,” Shinji said lowly, suppressing his humiliation. A throbbing pain pulsed through his head. “It’s not… We’re just…”

“What’s this?” The Lieutenant took out an aluminum cup and struck Shinji’s head with it. “You’d been sneaking something on the side, eh?”

The Lieutenant snickered. “It was lying over there.” He jerked his chin. Shinji remained silent.

“Go,” the Lieutenant said. “I’ll keep my mouth shut. So you keep quiet too. You got that?”

“Let’s go,” Shinji told the girl. He tried to walk away.

“Wait a second,” called the voice again. The voice sounded cheerful. “What now? What the hell else could there be?” “I’ll teach you lovers’ habits.” With a high-pitched laugh, the Lieutenant cheerfully approached and grabbed both their necks. The girl screamed again.

“Stop it! What are you doing?” Shinji frantically tried to resist. He had once been forced to drink alcohol by soldiers in the greenroom, but this humiliation was of a different nature. Not understanding what was happening, the girl arched her flat chest and struggled with a voice that broke into fragments. Shinji’s nape was grabbed and pinned down; he couldn’t shake free. The Lieutenant’s strength was overwhelming. The girl’s cheek, still wet with tears, brushed against Shinji’s lips. It drew closer to his mouth. “Stop it!” With one hand desperately pushing against the force restraining him, he dug his nails into the Lieutenant’s arm. When he tried to shout again, his lips were pressed against another’s. Their necks tilted as if drawn together by invisible strings, her cold lips meeting his own. Teeth clashed against teeth with a sharp click. The Lieutenant finally released them. Staggering backward, Shinji fell again.

“Bastard.” Shinji got up. A hand clutched a fist-sized stone. He didn’t care if he died—the thought flashed through his mind in an instant. He bellowed an unintelligible cry, flung up his hand, and charged at the Lieutenant.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

The stocky Lieutenant nimbly dodged sideways. Staggering, Shinji felt something red violently explode across the center of his face. The dark sky spun violently, then crumbled away.

Bright, soft sunlight streamed through the large glass windows of the classroom. The term exams had arrived. Shinji took them. To cover slight shortfalls with cigarette funds, Shinji had managed to obtain identification papers. He could no longer work as a cigarette broker. He was let go. Yokohama and Chigasaki saw their last of him that day.

The buzzer rang. Two or three students who had been hunched over their desks raised their faces and looked toward the supervising teacher. Shinji slowly straightened up and, with his exam papers, walked to the podium. It was the final exam of the school year.

Carrying his bag and coat, he wandered aimlessly over the hilltop as noon drew near.

Indeed, his heart felt light yet hollow. When he finished descending the winding stone slope, he tried walking along the tram line in the direction opposite the station. There stood a small, weather-beaten torii. Turning there, he veered into the quiet residential district. In a broad gravel-covered driveway, a small foreign car was parked. He found himself before the gate of the foreign embassy next to the university.

It was nothing more than an aimless stroll. The stillness of the pond’s dull-glowing surface—a pool like sunken lead he’d once seen from a rooftop—lured him onward.

Perhaps due to the war damage, the main entrance was a small red brick ruin. When he called out to the Japanese man washing a jeep, the man said, “Just a moment,” and went inside. “Very well, go ahead,” said the man as he emerged, then smiled at Shinji’s student cap. “Your boat club is quite strong, isn’t it? “We donated one boat here, so I came by the other day to express my thanks.” He appeared good-natured and talkative.

"I see." Shinji bowed. He made his way around the garden alone. Withered grass spread beneath creeping pines that lined the ground, and beyond them lay a pond. The sunlight glared. He felt himself growing tired.

On the gentle slope of grass leading down to the pond, Shinji remained dazed for a long time. Before he knew it, he had fallen asleep. As he felt the brilliant warm light streaming down, he had a brief dream. He was in what seemed to be Yokohama’s Yamate district. On the green lawn stretching between neat Western-style houses, he lay on his side. His head rested on a woman’s lap—the Woman in Black Suit. “Oh no,” she said. “What a terrible injury.” Pressing a handkerchief to his nose, she watched it rapidly stain bright red with blood. “There’s nothing to worry about,” she added with a gentle laugh. “Are you okay?” Shinji asked. “You fool,” she chided, rocking him comfortingly as he gazed at the blue sky. “Why did you do such a thing? For someone so weak.” “—It was humiliating,” he murmured. “I was frustrated…”

Mid-scream, Shinji returned to reality. He noticed himself almost about to burst into tears. Across the pond trailed two silver wakes, the ducks moving while holding themselves as stiff as ornaments.

It was already over, he thought. He would probably never see that woman again.

What I saw in the Woman in Black Suit was a sisterly tenderness—a kindness that would wholly embrace me—a quiet light that turned me transparent and hollow. I had been seeking from her my own loss, that very power of loss itself.

Shinji recalled Adachi's misunderstanding. That night, it had been Adachi who lifted the unconscious Shinji and promptly taken him to their lodging to nurse him back. Yet Adachi had known Shinji was drawn to the Woman in Black Suit. "What exactly do you think I'm doing during my performances?" he said with his usual smile. Adachi had apparently heard from the girl that the man was a chubby, curly-haired lieutenant; he understood Shinji had gone outside to confront the lieutenant after growing enraged at his brutish attempt to force the Woman in Black Suit to dance with him in the hall.

“No,” Shinji said. “That’s not it.”

“Then why’d you tell me you were going to the bathroom?” “I heard from the girl you never went.” “The girl—y’know, that Cinderella-type before she got pretty.” Adachi snorted a sardonic laugh. “Fighting for that bastard’s sake—what a dumbass move.”

“Not for anyone else—I fought for myself.” While cooling his nose with a wet handkerchief, Shinji said. “Hmph, you logic-chopper. Surprising you didn’t try to punch that Corporal too.” He couldn’t say he’d never pictured that. Shinji fell silent. “I saw your inner pocket,” Adachi said. “Huh? Kid. Why the hell are you carrying around so many?” Shinji’s complexion had changed. “Hmph, were you planning to pay for that prostitute too? Or that ‘Woman in Black Suit’?”

He couldn't answer. Adachi's voice lowered. "How come... Did I hit a nerve?" After a pause, Adachi spoke again. "Do you like her that much?" "That woman?"

By the third day, his nose had healed. In the evening, Shinji went to Ogimura’s house. Adachi was there. In the parlor, Adachi was wearing an overcoat.

“You don’t have to anymore, kid.” As Shinji tried to heave up a large furoshiki-wrapped bundle, Adachi called out to him. “I’ll take it to the cabaret.” “Why?” Shinji looked alternately at the two of them.

"We've decided to have you quit," said Ogimura. "It was settled just now." “...I still have circumstances,” Shinji said. Ogimura made a troubled face. “Your older brother says he absolutely demands we let you go.”

“But I still… a little…”

“You say it’s inconvenient, but Kobata thinks that ‘inconvenience’ means money—isn’t that right?”

Adachi went to the piano in that parlor and sat down. "I also want you to quit, kid."

“Why?” Shinji repeated.

“Why? Because no matter the circumstances, if they make trouble with us soldiers, we can’t handle it. Just think of it as bad luck.”

“Luckily,” Adachi continued, swinging his leather-slippered feet, “since that guy last time didn’t give his name—that’s one thing—but I can’t be taking you along anymore.” “I was just hit—it was all one-sided from them,” said Shinji.

“Did you forget that you charged at them?” “…I won’t do anything that stupid again. “I absolutely won’t.” Biting his lip, Shinji repeated in a low voice. “I won’t do anything anymore.” Adachi ignored him. Ogimura was changing into a black outdoor suit. He said nothing. He stood up from the sofa and left the room. “...We’ll have you quit drum practice too.” “Right?” Adachi said kindly. “We realized you’re not all that fond of the drums either, kid.”

Shinji stared rigid-faced at the vase atop the piano filled with large yellow and white chrysanthemums. "...This." Ogimura, having returned, handed him an envelope sealed with white cellophane tape. "Severance Pay - Mr.Kobata Shinji" was written on its front in Adachi's clumsy pen strokes.

“I thought they might get mixed up, so I left them with my mother,” said Ogimura.

A wind swept across the pond, rippling its surface with fine wrinkles. Looking closely, beneath the water lily leaves in the stagnant water, a single scarlet carp lay submerged. The scarlet carp was still. I wonder if that girl didn't tell Adachi about my angry, forced kiss. Shinji tried thinking about such things. I didn't want to talk about it either, so I stayed silent. But it was already too late, and none of that mattered anymore. That was nothing more than a forced pressing of lips. As for the girl's feelings too, he only vaguely thought there was nothing to be done.

On the veranda, a young girl and boy were playing with dolls. Letting out a high-pitched voice, the boy of about five stepped down into the well-trimmed lawn garden. A girl of about eight who appeared to be his sister raised her arm and beckoned him. Her arm was startlingly white. The foreign children all had golden hair. Excitedly, the boy ran back and forth across the ground.

The boy wore a navy striped shirt and shorts, and the girl had on a white dress with a bright red shawl. A foreign gentleman in a suit came out of the room. After giving Shinji a nod with a smile, the gentleman descended into the garden, helped up from behind the boy who was about to fall in the bamboo shade, and picked him up in his arms. The girl said something and pointed toward the ginkgo tree shaking its bare branches. The girl started running in that direction. A shadow fell. The gentleman holding the boy bent down to pick up that shadow and held it in his right arm. What had appeared to be a shadow was the red shawl. The gentleman ran after the girl to the other side of the pond.

Shinji stood up. The sunlight was softly fading. Turning his feet toward the gate, he realized he now had absolutely nothing to do. He thought he had to find a new part-time job. Passing in front of shrubs adorned with glossy red berries, he walked on.

My brother’s band had stopped going to Chigasaki and continued using Yokohama cabarets as their base while touring places like Tachikawa, Asaka, and the Azabu Cavalry Brigade. Older Brother rarely came home anymore. One night well into summer, he returned at dawn and announced Adachi’s death. At the Zama Officers’ Club, Adachi had been beaten down by one of the soldiers—his head struck against a thick steam pipe—and momentarily lost consciousness. “He kept saying he was fine,” Older Brother explained, “so they kept driving toward Tokyo in the truck. But he lost consciousness along the way, and by the time they reached the hospital, he was already gone.” “We’ll say he fell from the truck,” Older Brother said. “That way his sister might at least find some peace.”

The night Shinji reunited with the band members after several months was Adachi's wake. Late into the night, the band members arrived at Adachi's house in Kawasaki in two taxis. They had been working until then. "Hey kid, long time no see." Kobayashi said as he sat down on the zabuton provided by Adachi's still-unmarried sister. "You haven't been back since that Chigasaki gig, right?"

“We haven’t been going to Chigasaki lately either,”

Kobayashi came over beside Shinji in a friendly manner and spoke. His breath carried a faint trace of alcohol. “Apparently these days they’re doing landing craft drills until evening along the coast near Tsujido.”

“An enemy beach landing?” Shinji asked. The war in Korea had begun, and nearly a month was about to pass. “Loaded with tanks?” he said.

“Well, I haven’t heard that far.” “But they say it’s just like a movie.” “These landing craft with square fronts and flat plates—sea-colored with something like ‘A3’ written clearly in white—charge toward shore or swerve away at ferocious speeds, churning up pure white waves that swirl endlessly in Enoshima-view waters during drills.” “Nice.” “That plate’s designed to drop forward the moment they dock.”

“Mr. Kobayashi, were you in the war?” Shinji said. “Give me a break—I’m the same age as Ogimura and your brother, even if I don’t look it.” Kobayashi twisted his mouth sourly. “It’s no joke—the only one among us who knows war is Dachie.”

“Dachie?” “Yeah, with that mug of his—he was a Potsdam lieutenant.” Shinji hadn’t known. Kobayashi’s face stiffened as he veered back to safer ground. “Airplanes dancing across the sky. Destroyers lined up offshore. Kinda nice—I’ve always had a soft spot for war. Stings how much I miss those days. Every damn moment felt charged with meaning.”

Suddenly, Shinji felt that he—like Kobayashi—was longing for war somewhere within himself. In imagining crimson blood scattering vividly across his own chest, there was a strangely vivid emotion. Since June 25th, Shinji had been waiting in dread.

He felt one season had already clearly turned its back. Bazookas, F86Fs, MiG-15s. America's weakness came as a surprise. Something extraordinary was about to happen. He perceived the coming upheaval like an impossibly dense cloud suddenly materializing from around a street corner. War would inevitably break out—this became his conviction. Within his emotions lingered undeniable anticipation. He dreamed exclusively of war. This extraordinary circumstance—a reality where one could act solely through the fact of being an utterly isolated entity—terrified him yet bore resemblance to his dreamscape. It was a pure world, a primordial realm—clean, blindingly bright, precise—as if azure sky had descended to earth, where people could exist only as solitary beings.

“But…” Aoki said. “They say Chigasaki camp’s full of black soldiers and Korean troops these days—night after night you hear homesick Negro spirituals and those mournful Korean folk songs drifting over. War don’t matter none to me, but I miss that cheerful old camp. Damn thing was lively, had decent quality to it.” “Then what about the U.S. military there?” asked Ogimura.

Kobayashi answered. "They’ve all been shipped out—every last one." "Now only the white instructors remain." "From what a friend says."

Accompanied by his older brother, who had been silently maintaining the incense to prevent it from extinguishing, Shinji returned home to Omori on the first train. The train's lights were still illuminated.

“I wonder how the women are doing now.” “Well… Seems plenty are following them too—they say room rents in Kokura and Fukuoka have shot straight up.” Older Brother was watching the sky lighten into watery blue. A waning moon hung at mid-sky, while at the paling edge of the eastern horizon, beautiful washes of faint crimson and blue were receding from the smokestack-studded earth.

“I’ve been thinking about quitting the band,” Older Brother said. “I just don’t think I’m cut out for that line of work.” “...Maybe so.” But Shinji had not been thinking about his older brother or Adachi. The Woman in Black Suit had by no means been separated from within him.

At that time, the part-time jobs he had found were tutoring and working once a week as a messenger boy. He transported company prototypes and important documents to branch offices in Osaka and Kyoto, and to headquarters directly by train. The work required climbing to the fourth floor of a narrow building that stretched vertically in Ginza's backstreets, where he needed only to receive them from a sallow-faced middle-aged man. The Woman in Black Suit was surely in Kyushu. Shinji believed that. Every time he asked about the job's destination, disappointment followed. The destinations on the receipts were limited to Nagoya or, at best, Kansai. His eighteenth birthday came and went. Older Brother never quit the band. A Nagoya-bound assignment arrived. In Nagoya, Shinji was instructed to send the reply to Yokohama headquarters. The fee came to a thousand yen—something he should have kept quiet about to the building man.

He stayed overnight in the trading company's night-duty room. The next day, he arrived in Yokohama in the afternoon.

As he was about to exit the ticket gate at Sakuragicho Station, Shinji unexpectedly saw the Woman in Black Suit for the first time in six months. It was the end of a month made excessively lively by overlapping events—the national census, various festivals, and several commemorative weeks. Smelling Yokohama’s air for the first time in ages while gazing at autumn’s clear sky through the train window, he could perceive within himself both that day—which had been nothing more than his departure toward the Woman in Black Suit—and then the long year that had raced away since. One year, he thought. Exactly one year. He felt the weight of that year on his shoulders, as though he were sinking endlessly beneath the earth. The Woman in Black Suit, like a decayed pit within a fruit, had grown hard and black inside him, solidifying while burrowing into the flesh. Shrugging his shoulders and turning his eyes away from the window, he returned to himself within the monotonous work like a mail chute. The train pulled into the platform. Shinji passed through the ticket gate, jostled by the crowd.

The high-ceilinged dome was dimly lit. Ahead, several vaulted entrances to the station framed a bright blue sky that glowed as though about to spill over. Passengers entered bearing that dazzling light on their backs. Among them clustered like flower beds, women in gaudy colors mingled. They walked forward shouting loudly and laughing about something. Women whose profession was obvious at first glance each clutched large trunks and suitcases in their hands. Shinji's casually wandering gaze halted. It was a woman walking along the right edge.

Shinji strained his eyes. His chest went hollow. That was her—the Woman in Black Suit.

The woman carried a gaudy checkered suitcase, a yellow shoulder bag with fine-pored texture slung over the shoulder of her bright green dress as she strode forward. She chewed gum. With an untroubled expression, she never glanced around her. Shinji stood rooted to the spot. The woman appeared even taller now, more beautiful, radiating vitality. He couldn't believe it.

But no—it was unmistakably her after all. A familiar pearl necklace was wrapped around her long neck. There were upturned eyes and a small white chin.

“Kid, you… ain’t you the kid?” The short woman with poisonous-looking lips called out. She was the one who had tried pushing cigarettes on him once or twice back in Chigasaki. He remembered the other women’s faces too. There could be no doubt now.

“Well I’ll be—it really is you, Kid! Look at you, all grown up now… What kinda work you doin’ these days? You workin’ at one of the cabarets around here?”

“...I quit the band,” Shinji blurted out. The woman was the only one who stopped, chewing gum as she smiled with presumptuous familiarity.

“What’re you doin’ now, kid?”

“You’re the ones—what are you doing?”

While affecting a casual air of standing conversation, he realized he had finally regained his composure. Shinji returned the smile. “Where are you headed? Some fancy trip?” “What’s with you, spoutin’ such carefree nonsense—‘fancy trip’ my foot!” The woman in the yellow dress with bared shoulders was cheerful yet strikingly ugly. “Korea’s kicked off, ain’t it? Chigasaki went bad for us—we’d been workin’ here, see, but it’s bone dry now—so we’re all headin’ to Kyushu. Soldiers thick as fleas over there, they say—men tossin’ cash around like water.” She set down her trunk and hitched up the neckerchief-print furoshiki. Her Sagami dialect rolled out unvarnished.

“Migrant work, huh? Well, make sure you rake it in.”

It occurred to Shinji that he had never spoken to women this familiarly before. But apparently, the woman had forgotten that too.

“With your lot?” Shinji said, casting his eyes at the other women walking away without concern. The Woman in Black Suit threw back her head, laughed brazenly, and was talking loudly with someone. “The one at the end there—the tall one?” said Shinji while turning his flushed face away. “That one too?” “Oh, Yuri y’mean?” the woman said. “She’s one of us.” “She always wore black clothes, didn’t she?” Watching the woman nod as if remembering something out of the corner of his eye, he said, “She was always with someone, wasn’t she? The Corporal.”

The woman tilted her head. “Oh, Henderson y’mean? Tall fella, wore glasses, blond,” she continued without pause. “He’s dead, y’know. Over in Korea. Right at the start, y’know.” She maintained her cheerful expression. Seeing her companions gathered past the ticket gate, she jerked her chin. “That Yuri, y’know—she ain’t really one of us, see? With her looks, she made a killing here. She sucked Henderson dry too, y’know.” Suddenly lowering her voice with an earnest, country-bred expression, she added: “Well now, can’t say this too loud—but don’t let that act fool ya, she’s a real greedy one. Wherever the money’s good, that’s where she’ll fly off to. It’s true.”

“Take care of yourself, okay?” Shinji said. Waving her hand, the woman swung her balloon-like buttocks and dashed toward the ticket gate. The crowd cast nothing but glances of curiosity or scorn at the woman who had joined her boisterous companions and at the women. Shinji considered what lay behind the woman’s friendly chatter. She must have seen me as a kind of kindred spirit. In Shinji’s unguarded smile, she might have been savoring a precious sense of ease—as if she’d encountered one of her few comrades.

But Shinji had already come to feel that his own eyes were no different from those of the crowd. He no longer had any connection to those women.

But as he was jostled by the clamorous streetcar, he realized. The black-clad woman was full of life. She was young, and her taut smooth skin was beautiful. Not a single wrinkle marred her eyelids; she was thoroughly healthy and brimming with vitality. One could even say her face was far more beautiful than he had imagined. But wasn’t that very thing the true reason for my disillusionment? The fact that Yuri was at most twenty-one or twenty-two years old, and that she was so radiantly vibrant.

If Yuri had been as I'd imagined, that yellow-dressed woman's chatter would have killed the Black-clad Woman, leaving me only with the aftertaste of sorrow and futility. But Yuri was not my Black-clad Woman. She was, so to speak, nothing but a different person altogether. The Black-clad Woman was a flaw. "Was I really that fond of her? That woman." Suddenly, he recalled Adachi's cunning smile in Chigasaki. The only person who had known about Shinji's obsession with the Black-clad Woman—and even that one was dead now. He was alone. Toward that Black-clad Woman, he now had neither allies nor adversaries left. Shinji thought he might stop by later at the cabaret in front of Yokohama Station where his brother and former band members were.

He wanted to remember Adachi more…… With angry, intense eyes, he stared at the dirty streetcar floor.

After finishing his business at a trading company near the sea, he headed to Yokohama Station by streetcar. As he descended the stairs, a white-uniformed boy was scrubbing a black carpet with a cleaner. Shinji headed up to the inner stage.

“Well, this is a surprise.” Ogimura, who seemed to have been working on an arrangement, turned around. “What brings you here?”

“Is everyone still here?” he said. “Yeah, your brother’s probably still around—but two or three must’ve shown up by now.”

“Hmm, the drum’s already set up.”

He approached. “What’s this – the screws are loose. With this, the sound’s too muffled.”

"They're newcomers, you see," said Ogimura. "The members are mostly newcomers—it's tough." The fact that the only original members remaining were his older brother and Nakamizo on clarinet was something his older brother had mentioned. "That must be tough," he said. "If Dachie were still here, things would've stayed tight." Ogimura said the same thing as the older brother. "Is that right?" Shinji felt no interest in their version of Dachie. He said, "Maybe I'll give it a try—it's been a while. Is that all right?"

The opaque amber leather's feel stimulated him. "Sure, go ahead," Ogimura said indifferently. "Dam beat!" he shouted. He slammed the drumsticks down with full force. The rhythm wouldn't come. He removed his jacket and tried again. "Dam beat!"

Dam beat. While tilting his upper body and striking, Shinji thought of Adachi who had shouted that. The first strike of the drum. He entrusted himself to the drum. I still have not finished playing my Dam beat.

Shinji hurled the drumsticks at the snare drum. The drumsticks produced nothing but a grating clamor. He laughed bitterly. “It’s no good,” he said. “I’ve gotten worse than before. “You think that too, don’t you?”

Ogimura laughed. He gave no answer. Shinji stood up. The drum too was rejecting me. "It’s abandoning me," he thought. He walked out front just like that. During the brief time he’d been underground, he realized the light had rapidly weakened. The light was indeed the transparent, weightless sort characteristic of autumn, but it had already lost both its brilliance and its buoyancy. Unnoticed, the town was turning to dusk. Shinji climbed up to the station platform. On the distant platform, U.S. soldiers—clad in green combat uniforms and shouldering rifles and duffel bags, immediately recognizable as Korea-bound—overflowed the space. The soldiers smoked cigarettes, sloppily squatted on the platform, and whistled at the young girls on the neighboring platform. The girls were not prostitutes.

However much the war situation might be improving, they didn’t look like a group of people heading to the battlefield. The well-polished rifles emitted a dull luster. They’re off to go slaughter people. Shinji tried thinking that. Like shooting rabbits or ducks, those guns would go on killing the flat-faced Korean soldiers. And some of them would vanish forever in that battle against the North Korean army. Being commanded by others and slaughtering people like hunting—that might not be so bad. He laughed and kicked the platform with his shoe. When it came to attitudes toward others, there was ultimately no choice but to obey or fight.... Far off on the tracks, a freight train could be seen racing past at express speed. It was a long freight train. The shapes—covered with camouflage-patterned sheets and continuing in a row like crouching elephants—were tanks with long barrels. Every fifth vehicle had a soldier in a steel helmet standing, and there were also red-cheeked soldiers waving their hands as they passed by. Planes with silver wings folded like cicadas continued on. Shinji thought the day when those silver wings would glitter and shine in Japan’s skies was also drawing near. War was bound to happen.

"It doesn't matter," he told himself inwardly. Either way, I don't care.

In Korea, the U.S. military was regaining its momentum. MacArthur boasted of annihilating the enemy forces in one stroke, but Shinji found himself unable to prepare mentally for a day when the war wouldn't spread to Japan. Shinji aimlessly paced back and forth along the platform, watching the columns of U.S. soldiers deploying to war. Laughter erupted; chewing gum all the while, they chatted among themselves and laughed again. The cause of their laughter seemed to lie in an old woman crawling along this side of the platform—a beggar-like, disheveled figure making her way forward. “Hey!” Across the tracks, one of the soldiers hurled a piece of chocolate. It fell in front of the old woman. The old woman looked at the soldiers’ platform with clouded eyes, picked it up, and tossed it into the bag slung over her shoulder. She started to move again. “Hey!” “Hey!” The soldiers, competing with each other, hurled candies and even cigarettes at the old woman. Some wound-up and threw with such speed it seemed their aim was to hit her. Close-cropped, sunburned barefoot boys began swarming like ants and picking things up.

Shinji simply felt that the lives and ways of those alien creatures—the crowd with peach-colored skin thickly speckled with freckles, those with large palms, long legs, and eyes like translucent glass marbles—could never breach his skin. He no longer held any further interest in them.

He turned his back to the soldiers and stared at the western sky where light had begun to thicken like stagnant water. He was trying to find the setting sun there. He wanted to see that crimson glow - reflecting red as it fell through the sky - as if peering into the very essence of his yearning.