Pathway to Japanese Literature

By: Sato Haruo

I dwelt alone In a world of moan, And my soul was a stagnant tide, Edgar Allan Poe I dwelt alone in a world of moan, I dwelt alone. My soul was a stagnant tide. Edgar Allan Poe The house now appeared before his eyes. It was around the time when his two dogs—who had initially bounded about with wild energy, kicking up sandy dust as they darted around their master, sometimes ahead and sometimes behind—gradually grew docile and began walking side by side in orderly formation behind him. As the road curved sharply beneath the tall trees,

“Ah, we’ve finally arrived.” As she spoke, their guide—a stout woman with reddish hair—wiped the sweat dripping from her sunburned forehead with a soiled hand towel in one hand while pointing ahead with the other. Following the thick, mannish tip of her finger to where their gaze fell, there lay buried within dark-hued verdure—amidst the dazzling shimmer of a summer morning’s light—a modest thatched roof glowing with dull-toned solidity and an air of composure.

That was the first time he saw this house. He and his wife, at that moment, directed their gazes—which had been wandering over this thatched roof—toward each other’s eyes, conversing through pupil to pupil—— “It seems like a good house.” “Yes, I think so too.”

He walked while gazing at the thatched roof. As for this house—whether in some distant past through a dream, an illusion, or perhaps glimpsed from the window of a speeding train—he felt he might have seen it before. The vista centered on that thatched roof was in truth an ordinary rural profile that could likely be found anywhere. Yet precisely this quality now captivated his heart. For his present yearning dwelt in such places. And it was none other than this reason that had led him to choose this region as his dwelling.

Where the vast Musashino Plain reached its southern extremity and began its gradual transformation into mountainous terrain—these small hills that might be called an epilogue still tinged with faint afterglow from the highlands, or perhaps a rippling prologue to great plains—undulated here as far as the eye could see. Through the unremarkable scenery they shaped ran one flat highway east to west and another stretching north to south. Along these roads lay a deeply rural village with several modest thatched roofs. It sat adjacent to the great cities of T, Y, and H—a mere six or seven ri away—like a vacuum formed where three violent whirlwinds met: abandoned by the century, forgotten by the world, swept aside by civilization, left desolately in place.

Now, it was on a certain day in late spring of that same year that he first discovered himself on such a road—experiencing boundless joy and an unexpectedly relaxed state of mind. When he learned that such a remote village existed in this place, he was first astonished. Moreover, the serene scenery surrounding him felt utterly novel. Born at the tip of a certain southern peninsula where rough seas and jagged mountains clashed violently—a place where humans lived diminutive yet prudent lives in a small town beside a great rapids-strewn river that sent rafts swarming toward the turbulent sea as they jostled upon its currents—he found this village of rolling hills, skies, coppices, rice fields, vegetable plots, and skylarks, when compared to his hometown's dramatic landscapes brimming with climactic intensity, to be truly a modest prose poem. If the former nature was his stern father, then the latter was his mother who doted on her child. Having likened himself to "the prodigal son who could return," he had harbored for quite some time a fervent wish—while trapped in the suffocating heart of the city—to dissolve into that gently kind, and therefore ordinary, nature. Oh! There, a classical tranquility of happiness and joy must surely be waiting for people. Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!「空の空、空の空なる哉　すべては空なり」 Or perhaps not... No—there had been no logic to any of it. In the very heart of the city, he could not breathe. He felt crushed by the weight of humanity. He was too sensitive a mechanism to be placed there; that very place rendered him all the more sensitive. Not only that—the clamorous spring surrounding him rendered him all the more solitary. This feeling would frequently surge painfully into his heart as he walked with the gait of an exhausted wanderer beneath garish incandescent lights along stone-paved streets—"Ah, on nights like this, anywhere would do—inside some damp thatched-roof country house, under the shadow of a dim red lamp, stretching out arms and legs to their full extent, wanting to sink into deep sleep that erases past and future." “Oh! Deep sleep—how many years has it been since I last knew it?” Deep sleep! It was, so to speak, a religious ecstasy. That is what I now desire most.

"It is the ecstasy of deep sleep. That is to say, the ecstasy of one whose flesh is truly alive. I seek that first and foremost. Let us go to where that exists. 'Come, let's go quickly!' He muttered such things within his own heart. Or perhaps he even muttered it aloud. And so this unbearable, nameless feeling akin to nostalgia implored him to take himself away to that unknowable place……. (He was a young man who possessed the reason of an elder, the emotions of youth, and the will of a child.)"

The house now appeared before his eyes.

Along the right side of the road ran a small irrigation channel. When the road curved sharply, the channel followed in an equally grand arc. Through it flowed water in endless motion. It passed below coppiced hillsides, by persimmon trees and stable yards, beneath thickets and through paulownia groves, past farmhouse gardens where clusters of lilies and hollyhocks bloomed unexpectedly in corners. Though this six-foot-wide channel served to irrigate fields, its waters drawn straight from distant mountain streams made one wish to call it a brook. Sunlight filtering through young leaves deepened this impression. The shallow current washed over ochre clay without clouding it—here flashing unexpectedly where obstructions made metallic glints, there shimmering with crepe-like wrinkles or flickering like spasmodic tremors of light. In places these gleams layered like fish scales. When cool winds skimmed low across the surface, stretches became momentary ribbons of silver foil. Where silver grass and briar thickets—long bereft of those sentimental white blossoms that once whispered to lovers—mingled with nameless flowering shrubs along both banks, the water slipped through green tunnels. Casting cool black shadows upon itself, it swayed onward. At times it pooled languidly, like a traveler pausing to glance back. Then it mirrored the summer-morning sky—turquoise as the gemstone, or rather like light through bevelled glass. Vibrant dragonflies darted against current and breeze, skimming water surfaces to dip their tails in egg-laying. One such insect rode the wind awhile alongside them at matching speed, then abruptly veered skyward. He gazed at water and sky alike. Recognizing in himself a childlike urge to call blessings after that dragonfly, he rejoiced imagining this merry stream must flow before their house.

The fierce heat—striving to express itself as both agony and ecstasy—had each leaf glittering like a gemstone facet, while cicadas beneath them groaned as if burning. The blazing sun hung near the sky's zenith. Yet his wife hardly felt the heat. What shielded her wasn't the hydrangea-hued parasol above her head—embroidered with hydrangeas, a poor woman's shelter—but rather her brooding. She walked now, so absorbed in thought that she had no leisure to notice the heat upon her skin. She thought—if they moved, they could escape that temple rental room where the western sun came blazing in. More crucially—escape proximity to that vulgar, crassly greedy priest's wife. Then quietly, coolly, they could live as themselves—speaking only desired words, swallowing all others. Perhaps then this person's mercurial moods—elusive as wind, oversensitive as sea—might find some calm. Despite his fervent rural longing, he neither considered using their specially purchased field (though she'd naturally assumed he would), nor attempted serious writing—apparently grasping nothing tangible. Were she to mention this, he'd surely snap—already deemed hopeless anyway. Particularly since their rash early marriage, he'd shown no regard for her parents' likely opinion—denying carelessness yet drifting through dream-filled days. One moment he'd draft dozens of impractical house blueprints—never meant for building—then suddenly dash outside to play dog with the dogs, rolling through sweltering meadows before bursting into fractured laughter. This person must harbor profound loneliness. He never confided anything—how could she understand? Was he hiding something...? She recalled finishing Toson's Spring five days prior. In her simple mind—untrained in doubting her husband's genius—she fancied him as if a character from that novel had stepped into her reality... Does he truly mean to abandon that artistic work he once believed in—to rot here forever? What strange dreams does this person chase... Yet why remains he so harsh with me alone, while kind to all others?

Could it be that before that person's former love for a certain woman had fully faded, I slipped into his heart—making him forget her temporarily—only for that stubborn affection to sprout again unnoticed, pushing me aside? And he treats me so harshly... In this state, he himself must surely be suffering, but above all, it's unbearable for the one by his side. When my responses displeased him, he would shove me until I stumbled or strike me, then go two or three days without uttering a word... That person must certainly regret marrying me. He must sometimes think how happy he would have been had he lived with that woman instead of me. It wasn't mere speculation—he had actually told me: "If only I'd been with her back then, that pure honest girl—had she properly guided me—I'd be living a far more beautiful, far better life in every way by now..." Truly, I know that woman is more beautiful and kinder than someone like me. I know well how deeply he thinks of her... No—no, that's not it. He was still himself contemplating something entirely different... That's right—the husband had said: 'Just leave me alone...'

Suddenly, “It’s not that I lack tender feelings. “I’m simply ashamed to give voice to it. “I was born with such a disposition.”

As she walked, she recalled the words her husband had spoken to her the previous night when he had been unusually candid—ruminating on them as she went. And she pondered the layout of a house she had never seen. Even though they had long since awoken from their newlywed dreams, even beneath such scorching heat, the mere prospect of moving had made her spirits far more animated than usual—this capacity to dwell on such matters, grieving and rejoicing and consoling herself in turn, remained the privilege of a young wife who still knew nothing of the world. And this too was why she seemed to hold no interest whatsoever in the house’s history that the guidewoman kept expounding upon—merely offering brusque, empty replies in return. —This guidewoman had prattled ceaselessly throughout the entire length of that long, sweltering path. For she was one of those simple folk who believed anything she found interesting must naturally enthrall everyone else.

They had walked nearly four kilometers along this sweltering path.

And now the house came before them all. In front of the house, indeed a stream flowed. A small earthen bridge left a narrow trail through rampant weeds, allowing those who walked across it to traverse the nearly two-meter-wide stream and guiding people to the house’s entrance.

To the left of the entrance stood a large persimmon tree. And there was another in the rear. The thick branches of those trees—freely twisting and bending—seemed to declare their history to those who looked upward: "I have stood here for ages. I bear little fruit now." On the aged trunk, a parasitic plant had taken root beneath a large branch. To the right of that tree lay a narrow ditch demarcating the mansion grounds from its adjacent paulownia field. What water was this? Dried and narrowed—flowing even more thinly through part of that narrow ditch, slimmer than a man's obi—the water trickled weakly as it passed by. In damp areas, sky-blue dayflowers grew thickly across the ground. Mingling with those dayflowers spread pale red-and-white blossoms shaped like konpetō sweets that children named thus, along with wildflowers they called "red rice." This was a thicket that awakened nostalgic childhood memories. From among small plants that would shelter fireflies by day emerged reeds—fifteen or sixteen slender stalks clustered together—their long, refreshingly broad leaves marked by crisp white vertical stripes rustling noisily in the wind. Water flowing from the mansion's depths wound through small plant stems, cleansing reed nodes as it meandered—glossy and supple like untangled silk threads swaying while flowing. Those modest waters that had washed down slender grass blades still rooted in place—their flow momentarily obstructed by those very plants—now traversed grassy leaves to splash plink-plunk like clepsydra droplets into the larger roadside ditch. To him, it seemed there must be a small fresh spring bubbling behind this house—for such was the lay of the land.

Behind the house, where the mountain continued its reach, lay a bamboo thicket. Within this bamboo stood an astonishingly large camellia tree—towering like some heretical presence amidst the pristine grove—its oppressive bulk weighing heavily on the surroundings. The mansion's garden was encircled by a tall sakaki hedge that surpassed human height. The entire structure, just as it had appeared when glimpsed from afar through parted fingers, remained even at close range buried beneath wildly overgrown tree branches and set upon grass left to run rampant.

The dogs descended one by one from the earthen bridge and alternately sampled the irrigation water.

He did not attempt to cross that earthen bridge, instead gazing thoughtfully for a while at this house about which he wanted to recite “Three paths have become overgrown.”

“Hey, isn’t the entrance atmosphere nice?” After extracting several sentiments from the house’s surroundings that matched notions of secluded dwelling or hermit-like retirement, he addressed his wife thus. “I suppose so. But it’s terribly overgrown. We won’t know until we go inside…” His wife answered with slight unease yet shrewdness, in that tone all wives use when reproving whimsical husbands. However, she immediately reconsidered,

"But considering where we’re living now—at the temple—anywhere would do." The two dogs, suddenly revitalized by the water they had just drunk, leapt into the garden a step ahead of their owners. The two dogs that had chosen the deep shade at the base of a pine tree stretched their bodies out at length upon the earth as if they owned the place. They thrust their faces forward, pressed their chins to throats flush against the ground, and aligned their muzzles in mirrored symmetry. And with their bodies bent in exactly the same manner and their hind legs splayed out, they formed a truly adorable symmetry. They hung their red tongues out, exhaling labored breaths as they gazed up innocently at their owners who had entered the garden, calmly wagging their tails in apparent contentment. Their composed appearance seemed to him as if they had fully anticipated, even before their owners did, that this place was now their home. If at this moment his wife had been by his side, he would have said to her—

“Hey, Frate and Leo (both dogs’ names) approve too.” But his wife, together with the guide woman, was trying to open the long-sealed veranda door, rattling the keyhole with a key. Every tree grew lush upon lush, layers of green piled high. The tangled branches became net-like patterns, became walls, became eaves—the garden had almost no sunlight filtering through. The smell of earth welled up coolly from the black ground. He savored the earthy scent rising beneath his feet with senses honed like a connoisseur savoring rare incense—until the clinking keys that had been ringing coolly fell silent, and the veranda door opened.

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“Finally, it’s started to feel like a home.”

Yesterday, his wife had put up the shoji screens she had washed and cleaned at the entrance, her hands moving with unpracticed motions. When she had finished putting up the last panel, she watched the figure of her husband standing there trying to fit it into the threshold between the tearoom and middle chamber, her face radiating satisfaction as she spoke. “Finally, it’s started to feel like a home.” His wife repeated the same words. “And they say the tatami mats will arrive soon...” “But I was truly disgusted, you know, when I first saw this house two days ago. I thought humans couldn’t live in such a place.”

“But it can’t possibly be a foxes’ den.” “But it’s exactly like *Asaji ga Yado*.” “Otherwise, it’s a house of crickets!” “And what about those crickets that went hopping all over the tatami mats back then?” “It was dreadful!”

“Asaji ga Yado... Asaji ga Yado was good, wasn’t it?” “...Hey, shall we call this house Ugetsu Sōsha from now on?” (The two of them—his wife, under her husband’s influence, had come to admire Ueda Akinari.) His wife was happy to see her husband’s cheerful smiling face after so long. “Now it’s time to replace the well. This will be quite a task.” “Since they say it hasn’t been drawn from for a whole year, the water must have gone quite bad.” “Rot? If you don’t draw it up every day, it’ll rot just like my head.”

At these words, his wife thought “Again?” and timidly looked up at her husband’s face, forgetting her earlier playful tone. However, her husband’s words today seemed mere lip service, for his gaunt face still bore its usual smile. He was in such high spirits. Reassured by this, the wife added in a coquettish manner. “And you simply must do something about the garden. I hate this gloom!”

On the lap of his wife, who was leaning tiredly against the wall, their beloved cat had supplely and stealthily crept up and settled itself. “Ao.” “You’re sweltering, aren’t you?” Even as she said this, his wife was cradling the cat.

In his household, there were dogs. There was a cat. Once he loved something, he couldn’t help but dote on it excessively—this trait of his eventually became a household custom, so that both he and his wife would regularly address the dogs and the cat as if speaking to people…….

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Several years prior to the day they came to live in this house—

The old master of the N family, said to be the wealthiest in this village, had grown old and begun to feel a profound desolation in life. For ordinary people at such times—whether aged or youthful—what they needed most was companionship of the opposite sex. And so this old man brought back a young woman from the city. Though this affluent household had lost half its rice fields during this aesthete's stewardship, true to form for a wealthy man's considerations—he did not fetch some merely comely woman devoid of practical skills. Even were she somewhat homely, provided she remained youthful he could endure it—selecting one who might benefit both village interests and, more crucially, serve his own economic designs. To state it plainly: he had acquired a mistress who moonlighted as a midwife—a role whose absence had long inconvenienced the village. He then dismantled his estate's detached guest quarters and rebuilt them upon land directly below his manor. Considering solar orientation for winter days that would bask from dawn till dusk, he installed a veranda stretching four ken in length. Beyond the three-tatami entryway lay a six-tatami tearoom where he'd ordered an irori hearth cut into the floor. The villagers marveled at details—the black persimmon tokonoma pillar, shoji screens set into transoms with hemp-leaf latticework whose meticulous craftsmanship commanded attention. "Truly a pillar handpicked from our mountains," praised the carpenter while stropping the weathered column as if it were his own masterpiece, "not one unsightly knot to be seen." Unlike farmhouse kitchens with their numinously vast earthen floors beneath soot-blackened beams, this dwelling now boasted plank-floored workspaces where women in white tabi shuffled about, kimono hems trailing behind them as they labored. The old man transferred household headship to his eldest son—a man now in his forties. Thus contented became this elder. Villagers whispered about the retiree who'd taken a tea-companion scarcely half their age. Yet such gossip scarce diminished the gentleman's felicity.

Yet all peace and happiness prove the briefest within life's fleeting span. It was just like the shadow of a bird suddenly cast upon the sunlit shoji screen of an autumn day. It suddenly appears and abruptly vanishes. And at the very moment one sees the bird’s shadow, a strange loneliness wells up. The old man's days of peace were fleeting. The young mistress soon lured a young man from the city to come with her. The villagers called this young man “the clerk” or “the midwife’s clerk.” The villagers did not know whether a midwife truly required a "clerk." And this retired gentleman was displeased that his young mistress had hired a young “clerk” without consulting him. He was extremely dissatisfied. First, the lifestyle of this young couple appeared far too extravagant to the country people. It differed too much from the retired gentleman's budget. The retired gentleman began to think that they could be more modest. He repeatedly told his mistress about this matter. At first he spoke obliquely and with restraint, but gradually he began to voice his thoughts resolutely. One night, there came a time when he vehemently pressed his point in the middle of the night. The clerk had probably heard these exchanges through nothing but a thin wall. On a day following one such night—about a year after she had first come to the village, and roughly half a year after the young mistress had “employed” the young “clerk”—one evening, the figures of those two man and woman suddenly vanished from this village. The horse handler who had returned from the village in the evening noticed a distinctly visible white round cheek in the mountain path’s twilight; upon closer inspection, it turned out to be “N-san’s midwife,” he reported to the villagers the following morning. However, this was likely not something the man had actually witnessed; it may have been a lie he concocted upon hearing of their disappearance.

Otherwise he should have returned and immediately recounted the matter with an air of triumphant novelty. In such moments, everyone possesses to some degree an artistic instinct that makes them want to utter such things. Be that as it may, this story delighted the country folk starved for conversation topics—for a time. And thus it became the village consensus that a twenty-four- or twenty-five-year-old youth would have better suited a twenty-eight-year-old woman than that retired gentleman nearing seventy.

What was pitiable was that this retired gentleman, abandoned by his young mistress, thereafter immersed himself in gardening as a hobby. He began gathering flowering trees in the garden. Today he transplanted that tree over here; yesterday he moved this tree from another garden into his own. And so, day after day, he found no respite from working the soil, driven by the thought that tomorrow he must seek out some fine tree. In spring, there were peonies. In summer, there were morning glories. In autumn, there were chrysanthemums. In winter, there were narcissus. And in the bed where he had laid his two granddaughters—aged ten and seven—on either side of him as replacements for the mistress who had fled, this old gardener found sleep elusive. He began to indulge in conventional haikai poetry.

The retired gentleman died exactly one year later. He had barely managed to enjoy each blossom of the flowering trees he'd collected. Thus the house passed into possession of the village school principal along with his youngest daughter. For this school principal was the retired gentleman's adopted son. Then emerged a cunning gardener—adept at arithmetic's four operations and their practical application through abacus calculations yet wholly indifferent to beauty in any form—who deceived the household head/School Principal and uprooted all notable garden ornaments. Giant white magnolias, camellias, Chinese black pines, flowering crabapples, black bamboo, weeping cherries, large pomegranate trees, plums, oleanders, potted orchids of every variety. These unfortunate trees found themselves perpetually relocated. They lacked time to acquaint themselves with new soil. Thus some likely perished from these upheavals.

The School Principal moved into part of the newly constructed school building. The house he had received was left vacant. While things remained this way, he began considering renting out the house should tenants be found. If there were no inhabitants, a house would only fall into ruin. Even two yen or one yen fifty sen—collecting rent couldn’t result in loss; such was the School Principal’s perfectly clear reasoning. Yet in the countryside, most people already owned their own houses. Even those with crumbling eaves, even those inhabiting dilapidated homes where moss grew thick on rotting thatch roofs—they still owned dwellings passed down from parent to child and grandchild. However splendid the house might be, farmers reduced to renting were invariably the poorest souls who had ultimately lost their own estates to foreclosure. Thus did this house—built by that retired gentleman both for his beloved woman and his own twilight-year pleasures—transform into a home for wretchedly poor farmers. In the tearoom hearth where the retired gentleman had once placed his iron kettle, large smoky pine logs now lay scattered haphazardly, their fumes—blocked by the farmhouse’s needlessly high ceiling—finding no escape route outside. Walls, shoji screens, ceiling, and tatami mats forming the room soon grew sooty. The pitiful farming family couldn’t afford to mind the smoke filling their quarters. Rather, grateful for its warmth, they spent autumn and winter’s long nights twisting rope and weaving straw sandals until late hours. Rent payments began lapsing around the fourth or fifth month. Tatami mats wore through. Upon pillars were carved traces of various occasions in sundry shapes.

Despite the School Principal’s thought that “At least the night soil should have accumulated,” whenever his laborer went to collect it in the morning, the place was always empty. For the poor farmers renting the house had already carried it off to their own leased fields. The School Principal began to think very ill of these tenants. To every person he encountered, he would rail against the cunning of the poor farmers and denounce them. And with that he concluded: “Those poor enough to be destitute are cunning scoundrels utterly devoid of moral obligation!” The other villagers immediately expressed their agreement with the School Principal’s opinion. Thus the School Principal came to feel his logic had been established as truth. Next he realized that leaving the house to decay might be far better than continuing to rent it to such men. The reason was that renting the house to this man would actively hasten its decay. On the contrary, leaving it abandoned as a vacant house was the passive method. And so these tenants were driven out. The villagers thought the School Principal’s attitude was reasonable.

During this period—after that retired gentleman had passed away—there was not a single person who gave thought to the garden's grasses and trees. The house and garden became utterly overgrown and dilapidated. Only that poor farmer's little girl would find—among chrysanthemum beds where yellow and white blooms grew small and wild amidst grasses, their leaves withering year after year, stems twisting crooked—these flowers planted during the retired gentleman's lifetime, and each autumn morning pick them as ornaments for tangled hair...

...He stood on the veranda gazing at the garden, blending his own brand of fantasies into the stories that stout guidewoman had ceaselessly told along the way—vaguely contemplating without truly thinking, pondering without conscious intent.

“Frate, Frate”

From the back veranda, his wife's voice could be heard calling the dogs. “There there, Leo’s here too? “Oh, you’re so cute.” “I didn’t give you anything at all, you know.” “Frate, you mustn’t play in such weedy places like you’ve been doing.” “There’s a pit viper here!” “Look, if you get bitten on the nose again like last time and your throat swells up until your face becomes as big as a temple priest’s, wouldn’t I really worry?” “Okay?” “Frate’s already learned his lesson from last time, right?” “Leo, you need to be careful.” “And you’re quiet, so you’ll be fine, right?...” His wife was speaking to her two adopted dogs in a voice and with the heart of a girl singing a pastoral song. And the cool wind from the bamboo grove passed through from there toward where he stood.

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The midsummer abandoned garden remained overgrown.

Every tree drove its roots deep into the soil, drawing up earth's strength from below while clothing their entire forms in leaves to drink sunlight without restraint—pines lived as pines, cherries as cherries, podocarps as podocarps. To bathe in more sunlight and grow larger still, they thrust out their branches. As each pursued its own will, their limbs piled upon one another—clashing, tangling, swarming together. To secure solar favor for themselves alone, they could spare no consideration for others. Thus branches denied sunlight grew thinner daily. A small pine reddened and withered beneath a cedar. The sakaki hedge grew uneven in height, its row of crowns undulating awkwardly. For only sunlit sections flourished tall while shaded areas under great trees sank low. Moreover where leaves could no longer thrive, gaps yawned like castle-wall arrow slits. Some zones bore thick leaf-clusters growing dense in rounded masses. Other stretches lay completely severed. The cause stood along this hedge—great planted pines now smothered their own kind; worse yet from the hedge's heart burst a wild wisteria vine thicker than a man's thumb that split the barrier and coiled round a pine trunk like bondage ropes on a captive—climbing until it crowned the highest bough yet still unsatisfied—the twisted vine now writhed skyward like deranged fingers clawing madly at void. One such vine crawled to a cherry surpassing neighboring pines in height then stretched upward beyond all companions. Elsewhere a plum's new branch stood straight—long and tall as heaven-piercing spear. In soil once soft chrysanthemum beds crept tenacious weeds with bamboo-like toughness. Their rigid stems and leaves wove mesh across earth's surface while roots from each joint secured territory eight ways. When experimentally uprooting a portion—those tufted countless roots lifted clumps of black sandy soil like handfuls grasped by human hands. This was their will to live—this Summer's blazing form commanding all creation. The garden's motley plants with dense overgrowth appeared altogether as gloomy as wild locks draping a madman's leaden brow.

Those plants seemed to press down from above upon the not-so-spacious garden with a certain invisible weight, encircling and bearing in on the building at its center from all sides.

However, what gave him such an intensely terrifying feeling was not this violent will inherent in nature. Rather, it was a thread of artificial elegance that remained tenuously within this chaos. It was the ghost of a certain will. Though that shrewd gardener had stripped nearly everything from this abandoned garden, even among what remained now there were indeed not a few things that vividly evoked the late flower-cultivating old man's horticultural pastime. Even nature's power had not yet managed to wholly conceal it. There was the variegated hiba arborvitae that had likely once been densely pruned into a jujube-shaped topiary. It stood on the path from the gate to the entrance. Then came the camellia that concealed the toilet from the guest room. Under its shade grew a daphne. There were several Kirishima azaleas shaped like overturned pots. An aged hydrangea bore large leaves wilted by the heat, their shade sheltering great blossoms now shriveled and parched. These remnants lay scattered through the disordered garden like debris hurled by a raging giant—white magnolias, daphnes, camellias, begonias, plum trees, hibiscus, ancient Koya pines, sasanquas, bush clovers, orchid pots, massive natural stones, moss swelling in bulbous mounds, weeping cherries, black bamboo, dianthus, great pomegranate trees, with irises near water—all once harmoniously arranged. Now abandoned to nature's trampling—more violent than any northern barbarian—in this present where none remained to tend them, they still seemed to cling to their unfulfilled dream of being cherished by human hands. Even had no single specimen of such cultivated plants survived anywhere in the garden, anyone would have readily acknowledged—from the very posture of that solitary pine overhanging the gateway, which today wore nothing but densely packed stiff needles—how human hands had once tenderly tended its branches, aligned its leaves, and stroked its trunk. In truth, the School Principal—its current owner—already contemplated selling that pine next time. For this particular tree alone, he intended to have both root pruning done and undesirable branches removed when the current tenants called a gardener.

Behold how nature and fate—forces sometimes cruel in their very greatness—had relentlessly destroyed the late gardener's noble will. The remaining trees and garden were neither nature's vibrant barbaric force nor artificial human formality. Rather, they formed a haphazard, discordant mixture of both. And within this lay something not so much ugly as eerily uncanny without discernible cause. The house's new master stood beneath a tree's shade, gazing into the abandoned garden's summer. Now he felt frightened by something. A momentary terror seemed to flash through him. What it was—even he himself did not know. For it had passed too swiftly to grasp. Yet he sensed it was—strangely—a terror more visceral than spiritual, akin to what an animal might experience.

He walked through the desolate garden of their new dwelling that day for some time, tracing paths beneath the trees' shadows. Beneath the white oak flanking the house, ants marched in an obsidian column. Some bore provisions like treasured heirlooms. Slightly larger ants stood stationed about, seeming to issue commands. When meeting, they halted from both directions to press heads together—exchanging courtesies, sharing whispers, entrusting messages. This was but an ordinary ant migration. He crouched, transfixed by the miniature procession. For a while, they granted him childlike delight. He realized for the first time how through long years he'd seen nothing of this sort—how even had such sights crossed his vision, he likely wouldn't have bothered to look. Come to think of it, since boyhood days—though he'd once reveled in such things more than other children, yet even those memories lay forgotten—he'd never calmly gazed at the moon nor properly observed birds. This awareness filled him with peculiar sorrow and joy. Rising to continue his walk while nursing these thoughts, his eye caught a cicada exuviae clinging to the oak trunk in grotesque pose—fang-like forelegs thrust into the bark. It resembled a tiny crimson-glinting cuirass split cleanly open down its back. Scrutinizing the trunk revealed a cicada frozen three or four sun-lengths above its shed skin. Little wonder it showed no alarm at human presence. That this cicada had newly emerged was plain at glance. Its body remained pliant, unhardened still. The insect stayed motionless thus, now quietly encountering air's mysteries. The wings—soft, unfinished—shone milky throughout, indescribably fragile, achingly delicate, diminutive and crumpled. Only their green veins stood vivid.

It was a refreshing, vibrant green that vividly conjured in his mind the image of a bean's cotyledon sprout emerging from a split white seed. This resemblance extended beyond mere color—the entire wing evoked a plant's nascent growth. In all born things—insect and plant alike despite their differences—he perceived a certain shared form revealed within them. Nature itself might harbor no laws whatsoever. Yet from this very absence, people could discern their own laws as they chose. Upon closer scrutiny, precisely at the center of the insect's flattened head lay something minuscule—crimson like ruby yet more radiant—exquisitely embedded. What this gem-like feature represented scientifically—perhaps an ocellus—remained beyond his understanding. But concerning its beauty, he believed none comprehended better than himself. That beauty proved particularly potent in rendering this insignificant insect's birth sacred, compelling him toward reverence.

He recalled some half-remembered scrap of knowledge—that cicadas take around twenty years to finally become adults—something he must have picked up days ago from an agricultural student or someone. Oh, that this small insect—whose entire existence seems so meaningless to humans that it’s only celebrated in the clamor of frogs and cicadas—should have spent nearly as many years as his own age! And their lives would last a mere few days—two days, three days, perhaps a week! What on earth could nature have had in mind by creating such things? No—no, when we speak of such things, it’s not just cicadas—humans too. Himself? This nature said to have been created by God—might it not perhaps be haphazard? And there is no moment when randomness appears more mysterious than when one tries to comprehend it without recognizing it as randomness. No—no, I understand nothing. Yes, this much I understand—a cicada’s life is fleeting, and who would dare claim that even an eloquent diet member’s existence isn’t the same?

As he watched, the cicada’s wings visibly stretched out their shriveled form. At the same time, their semi-translucent milky white changed moment by moment—bit by bit yet steadily—into something colorless and transparent. And that green—refreshing yet fragile like a sprout—correspondingly darkened bit by bit, as a certain realistic strength became clearly apparent there, much like how young grass’s green transforms into that of evergreen trees. As he gazed at these things for over twenty minutes—with a pathological meticulousness—he began to feel a breath-catching solemnity welling up within him.

Suddenly, he said to his own heart in disgust.

"Behold the anguish of those being born. Even for this small thing to be born, there is such patience here!" Then he added.

"This small insect is me! O cicada, please fly away quickly!"

His strange prayer was conducted in this manner. This was not only conducted at this time but always done in this manner.

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Now, here in a corner of this garden stood several rose bushes. They were planted along the wellside drainage, arranged like a hedge. Had they grown sufficiently, they would have displayed "a long trellis of myriad spring blossoms," forming an impressive floral hedge spanning two or three ken. However, they were extremely unfortunate. Blocking the morning sun stood a grove of cedar trees. The evening sun was obstructed by the house’s large shadow looming over them. And around noon, the persimmon trees and plum branches stole the sunlight from these rose bushes. And the freely growing branches of those cedars, plums, and persimmons spread out over the rose bushes like a roof. Thus, these rose bushes had stems pitifully thin like vines, standing unsteadily amidst weeds over a foot tall.

Yet despite being past mid-August, not only were there no flowers—there was not a single green leaf upon them, indeed literally not a single one. To confirm whether those stems still lived, he had to break one and see. Sunlight and warmth were wholly stolen by all external things, while even the nutrients stored within the soil were entirely plundered by nameless weeds spreading around their roots. They seemed to receive no benefits whatsoever from nature. Having become mere footholds for spiderwebs that most favored such places—having been reduced to usefulness solely for that purpose—the roses still had to persist in surviving even like this.

Roses were one of the things he had deeply loved. And at times he even called them "his own flowers." For regarding this flower, hadn’t Goethe left him an unforgettable verse brimming with consolation—"If it be a rose, it shall bloom"? Moreover, it was not merely such reason-bound connections—he truly believed he loved this flower from the heart. That abundant beauty—overflowing like a chalice—especially in its crimson blossoms, captivated his heart. The dizzyingly heavy fragrance recalled for him the sweetness of a first kiss. And for him to perceive it thus, countless poets since antiquity had dedicated countless beautiful poems to this flower. Western letters had since ancient times woven crowns to bestow upon this flower. Chinese poets too had not neglected to extol its radiance with their pictographic characters. They too had prized the Arab lands' "rosewater" and lamented "Alas, the overseas roses remain beyond our reach in the Central Waters!" in their quest for this "Huan Gu Xiang." The words of those poetic verses had forged within poetry's realm a vein of tradition like precious metal ore—so firmly established it had now hardened into mere convention. Once one entered poetry's domain, one heard whispers of roses everywhere—such was their pervasiveness. And so the roses' hues and fragrance—nay, even their leaves and thorns—drew up each exquisite verse as nourishment within themselves. With those beautiful characters' phantoms glowing behind them, their branches grew so heavy-laden one might think it their very purpose. This imparted to him a fragment of beauty from those flowers. Was this fortune? Or rather profound misfortune? Within his character such general artistic conventions had taken deepest root. That he had chosen art as his vocation must have sprung from this soil. His artistic gifts—born of these conventions—had awakened remarkably early.... All these things must have unconsciously led him to love roses so utterly. From when he could not yet pluck fresh beauty and joy directly from nature itself, through these artistic conventions alone had he come to dedicate such profound love to this flower.

Though it may have seemed foolish, he had come to feel love even for the very characters that spelled "rose."

And yet, the wretchedness of this rose bush now before his eyes! He had once seen roses in his childhood home's garden that budded in winter due to an unusually warm sunny spot—pale pink blooms lured into budding by unnatural warmth. Yet without proper daylight during those hours, even this southern region's midwinter must have been too harsh for roses. He had watched buds remain stubbornly closed day after day, their outermost petals—still white with faint red edges—developing strange green veins daily until they hardened into something halfway between petal and leaf. But these rose bushes before him now surpassed even those pitiful buds in wretchedness. As he gazed at them, an impulsive thought took hold: he must let sunlight bless these shade-bound roses, these enduring martyrs of the garden. Make them bloom too. This was the wish that surged within him then—yet he knew this desire brimmed with affected posturing, that self-conscious poetic attitude he now deemed fitting for himself. So aware was he of this tendency—(this heart that perpetually betrayed his sincerity)—that he resolved to test himself through these very roses: "If it be a rose, it shall bloom!"

He himself went to a nearby farmhouse. The two dogs keenly noticed their master’s swiftly departing figure and gave chase. Hoisting a rusty saw and mulberry pruning shears, he reappeared in the garden accompanied by two dogs wearing a somewhat triumphant air—all within no more than five minutes. He stood beside the roses smiling. Estimating how to make sunlight hit that spot most effectively while looking upward around him, he then removed his outer garment. First with a saw he began cutting through the thickest most overgrown persimmon branch. White powder scattered down from the branch like falling snow as the saw bit more than halfway through. The remaining uncut portion now too fragile to bear its own weight snapped off with a crisp crack. The large heavy branch struck the ground with its smaller branches teetering toward collapse. Then through that gap sunlight immediately cascaded down upon those rose branches resembling deadwood—as if hurled surged and seeped through. The sunlit area embracing the roses gradually expanded. For the overhanging branches and leaves of plum cedar and persimmon trees had been gradually pruned away. He brushed off the spiderwebs on the rose bushes with mulberry pruning shears. There lurked various spiders. Flycatcher spiders—small short-legged ones—had built nests resembling paper bags at the base of the branches. A large female spider with long legs of tortoiseshell-like hue had spread an elaborate web. When the shears disturbed its web the spider fled while skillfully reeling in its thread like an acrobat. The large shears gave chase. They dangled from the shears’ tips while spinning threads then descended to escape onto the soil into the grass and across puddles. The shears snipped through them.

Such labor drenched his body in sweat. It stirred his heart anew. When the crash of the largest branch falling drew his wife—who had come to observe his uncharacteristic work—she seemed to call out to her husband, but he gave no answer at all. Once the dogs understood their master would pay them no mind today, they chased each other about the garden, two companions stirring up chaos. He felt a pleasure so intense it verged on delirium. Then came a reckless urge to cut down everything within reach.

With his mulberry pruning shears, he severed in one stroke that thick wisteria vine entwined around the pine tree—cutting clean through from its base. He was surprised to discover he actually possessed strength. As he twirled the vine round and round like untwisting rope and pulled it away from the pine trunk, he felt as though the tree had let out a deep sigh of relief at that moment. He gripped the severed end with both hands and pulled with all his might. Yet this proved utterly futile. The wisteria vine that had climbed from pine twig to treetop and onward to the neighboring cherry tree merely bent both trees' branches—shaking them violently enough to strip leaves that rained earthward, dislodging even a caterpillar from cherry bough to straw hat—while itself remaining taut as a bowstring. “I’m not impressed by your puny strength! Go on—give it another tug if you dare!” mocked the wisteria vine spitefully, its tone dripping with scorn. At his wit's end with this stubborn creeper, he finally abandoned it altogether. Then he turned his attention to trimming the hedge.

By evening, his midday pastime transformed the hedge—its top now aligned in a crisp straight line—while its flattened wall-like surface caught the parallel rays of the setting sun. The light reflected off the sakaki’s black, stiff leaves and sparkled beautifully. Now that it had come to this, that large hole appeared all the more unsightly and conspicuous.

“Well now, you’ve cleared this up properly!” There were farmers returning from the fields who peered through the hole into the house while offering such flattery. Then, while he was at it, he attempted to adjust the branches of the cat willow arching over that ditch. That evening, he ate an unusually large meal. When night came, he managed to enjoy a deep, satisfying sleep. Yet upon waking the next morning, he was forced to recognize with a bitter smile how his body had stiffened like wood, every joint aching.

Several days later, when a real gardener—though in truth a part-time farmer—entered his house's garden, the wisteria vines that had once clung so tenaciously to the pine and cherry trees now bore leaves withered like centipede legs, some sections having already completely lost their verdure. And those frenzied, finger-like coiled vines had all sagged into limp collapse. With the satisfaction of someone watching a villain’s final downfall on stage, he crouched beneath the eaves gazing upward at the thick wisteria vines that the gardener was mercilessly severing from atop the pine tree.

“This here—leave it dried four or five days more, and you’ll have fine kindling,” the gardener suddenly called down from atop the pine tree. “That one’s quite thick, isn’t it?” He gave such a reply and then thought to himself, “That’s right.” “That stubborn wisteria withered so swiftly and grotesquely through the same sun’s force that had once so thickly nourished it,” he recalled being told through an ancient parable from the vine itself. He again considered how his will—human will—might have swayed nature’s forces. Rather, he prided himself on having executed nature’s will in its stead—he, a mere human. That wisteria’s presence had likely inconvenienced nature not at all. Yet any garden first shaped by human hands would demand human tending until its end. He absently turned these thoughts in his mind.

Even so, how would those roses transform? Would flowers bloom? With a heart eager in anticipation of this outcome, he stood up and walked. It was to see the roses. Above them shone nothing but the sun's bright encouraging light—no change at all from what he had clearly observed that very morning.

Thus several days passed. The roses were forgotten. And thus several more days passed.

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The natural scenery quietly transformed from summer to autumn. He could clearly perceive it. Night had already turned to autumn unusually early. Bell crickets, katydids, and various other harbingers of autumn began singing—some in grasslands, some before his desk, some beneath his bed. The joyous anticipation of early autumn in the countryside lifted the villagers' spirits. The village youths walked six or seven miles with sturdy strides through cool night breezes while searching for girls. Others practiced drums in preparation for the village festival. The earnest reverberations of those simple instruments traveled across fields until late at night, reaching his window.

The female student who had been visiting this village—a student at Y City’s Normal School and the only female student in the village—had become friends with his wife at summer’s end, but soon departed happily for the city where her school was located, leaving his wife behind.

His violent and irritable state of mind gradually left him after moving to this house. And now, with autumn approaching, his mood naturally became calm. He felt a kind of pleasure and even pride in knowing he could perceive nature’s influences upon himself as sensitively as grass, trees, wind, or clouds. The lamplight around this time of night was one of those dear things. To eyes like his—exhausted both physically and mentally—the lamplight provided a soft, cherished glow. He had bought the lamp from a peddler who came to this area for around twenty-odd sen. The paper shade cost one sen. Yet the lamp’s glass reservoir, suffused with kerosene, was as beautiful as a chunk of amber. At times it turned pale purple, reminiscent of amethyst. Under that lamplight, he first tried to find enjoyment in reading the biography of Saint Francis. But he quickly grew bored. Not a shred of perseverance remained in his body now. And no matter which book he started reading, every single volume felt uniformly dull to him. Moreover, when he considered that such tedious books were held in high regard by the world, he found it utterly perplexing. Something—something tremendous and marvelous that might somehow exist somewhere—whether it dragged humanity up into another world made of entirely different substances; whether it transformed this ancient world carelessly spread before his eyes into something wholly other; whether it shattered everything from its very foundations—it didn’t matter what form it took. He would often vaguely ponder such things. Was it truly that “there is nothing new under the sun”? And then—what could ordinary people possibly be living for as their reason to exist? Were they not merely building hollow dreams upon their respective foolishness with such fervor that they failed to notice these dreams amounted to nothing—be they sages or fools, philosophers or merchants? Was life truly something worth living?

And is death truly something worth dying? He pondered such things every night. And as long as this oppressive, exhausted boredom lurked deep within his heart, it stood to reason that all things in the world perceived through that heart's eyes must inevitably remain tedious—always, entirely, endlessly tedious. When he came to understand that living anew in this ancient world required nothing but transforming his own state of mind—then how? By what means could he refresh this self mired in such conditions? What exactly was this "Great Valorous Heart" his father had called out in that wrathful letter? From where could he obtain it, and how implant it into his heart? How stir it into motion within him? All these matters lay utterly beyond his knowing. And so—countryside or city—nowhere upon this earth existed any paradise to grant him peace. There was nothing.

"Just as the Creator God of all things wills…"

"And should I try saying such a thing?" Yet his heart was by no means crushed. It was merely withered... He listened to the drumbeats and enviously visualized the vigorous young men who must be gathered around their source. On his desk lay pages from books he neither read nor could read, sometimes exposed before his eyes. He mechanically picked out characters without meaning. He would periodically retrieve a large dictionary. This was to search out as many unusual-looking characters as possible from within it. Though his exhausted mind and body could no longer read sentences where words coalesced into organic wholes, each isolated word now sparked various fantasies instead. There were moments when he felt he could almost see their essence—the so-called kotodama (spirit of words). At such times, language seemed to him an unfathomably mysterious thing. He sensed within it a profound divine nature. Each of those words was itself already a fragment of human existence. Could their collective whole constitute an entire world? Might the very states of mind felt by those who first devised each word linger within them—both nostalgically and mysteriously? When someone creates even a single new word destined for eternal daily use by all people, does that person not live on universally within that word? "Yes, yes—I must become more clearly aware of this..." He had only dimly perceived such truths. And he had come to vaguely contemplate humanity's mysterious ethereal desire—the urge and mechanism through which one seeks to clearly convey certain feelings to others in their group. When words wearied him, he found pleasure through the dictionary's minute illustrations—discovering fish and beasts never seen nor imagined; grasses, trees and insects; fish species; various household implements; weapons; execution devices used on criminals since antiquity; ships with ingeniously rigged sails; and architectural components.

In the trivial forms of those utensils and the like, and within animals and plants, there existed various intimations. Above all, among humanity's own devised creations, he felt thoughts, lives, and fantasies brimming forth—just as they did within the kotodama (spirit of words)—though in the most fragmentary manner. And so at that time, his inner life retained only precisely enough capacity to contemplate those fragments.

He would sometimes write things resembling poems late at night following these moments of inspiration. In those midnight hours, he himself became convinced they were truly excellent verses. Yet when he awoke the next day and first looked at that paper, it proved nothing more than a string of utterly meaningless characters. This was rather astonishing—for a fine idea had suddenly come right to his very side. But when he tried to grasp it, there was already nothing there. When he thought he’d caught it, it was merely empty space. Exactly like someone embracing their lover in a dream. Along with that frustration, each time he tasted an anxiety akin to when he’d suddenly thought his name was called and turned around to find no speaker of those words present.

He resumed drawing house plans. He would sometimes imagine labyrinthine structures. At other times, he would envision houses like those in Corsica—single vast rooms that served as both parlor and kitchen. Their outlines, layouts, and design details of elements like windows were sketched freely across his notebook pages nearly every night. Eventually, when no blank pages remained, even margins of about an inch square became precious territories—all densely filled with countless straight lines arranged in various combinations. For each of those meaningless lines, he could conjure infinite fantasies. At such times, his mental state closely resembled those deranged painters who, when confined alone, would obsessively draw arabesque patterns in single-minded absorption.

Thus, once again, the lifeless ennui finally came. And so it continued for many days.

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One night, something came flying with a rustling sound onto the paper shade of his lamp.

When he looked, it was a single horse-fly. The sleek blue insect alighted upon the lamp's shade—its edge dyed in crimson gradient—where the contrast of red and blue first drew his eyes, but it was the creature's form and deliberate movements that gradually kindled his interest. The insect, while slowly moving its antennae—each nearly half the length of its own body—above itself, spiraled along the lamp's round shade in blue-tinted motion across the red area. To him, it even seemed to resemble the affected gait of someone strolling along the perimeter of a circular garden. This elegant blue elongated insect had only the crest of its ornate back tinged reddish-brown. He came to know for the first time about the red hue of a firefly's neck and could now sense the sentiments of Matsuo Tōsei who had composed verses about it. This insect spiraled around the circular area for a while. And at times, it would suddenly dart lightly over to places like the wall rails, shoji frames, scattered bookshelves, or somewhere atop the mosquito net of his wife—who had gone to sleep first, leaving her husband staying up so late that it was unclear when he would ever retire—and chirp demonstratively. "Being born human isn't necessarily the only path to happiness," a certain poet once remarked regarding katydids. "Next time I'm reborn, becoming a bug like this might not be so bad." At one point, while contemplating similar thoughts and observing the insect, he suddenly envisioned a miniature world—a pale-winged antlion alighting upon a silk hat. The small insect—fluttering like the breath of a blue maiden bearing those transparent large wings—alighted precariously yet distinctly upon the perfectly angular crown of a jet-black glossy hat of somewhat grotesque shape, then began crawling slowly along the edge's contour... The bright electric light silently illuminated it from above.... He suddenly raised his eyes and peered at the light. That was not an electric light. It was lamplight. He had confused the lamplight with his own fantasy, which made him feel as though he were now under an electric light.

Why he had suddenly recalled such a juxtaposition as a silk hat and a pale-winged mayfly was something even he himself couldn't understand. Yet somehow, this world of beauty—so strange, delicate, and wastefully tiny in form—felt profoundly familiar to his current nerves. The horse-fly visited his lamp every night. At first, he didn't comprehend why this insect yearned for the lamplight or what drove its ceaseless circling of the shade. But through observation came immediate understanding: this was no leisurely pursuit of the insect's own fancy. It had come leaping there to devour smaller creatures perched upon its surface—insects so minuscule they might have been summer's very essence pulverized into dust, mere blue motes of existence. With its tiny legs, the horse-fly raked in these specks like harvesters gathering grain, bearing them toward its mouth—a steel-trap mechanism snapping open then clamping shut from all sides at once. The smaller insects submitted mutely to their consumption by this superior force, their devolution into bluish-brown smears beneath a fingertip too insignificant to stir emotion.

One night, the horse-fly came flying, having somehow lost one of its long leaping legs. One of its long antennae had also been snapped short. Finally one night, the cat—disregarding his attempts to stop it—caught this unfortunate creature, his nightly companion, atop the bookshelf. After tormenting it relentlessly, the cat devoured the horse-fly. Remembering how he'd thought becoming such an insect in his next rebirth might be preferable, he now pondered that even this tiny creature's existence might not be so carefree after all.

While he indulged in such fairy tale-like fantasies, becoming intoxicated and playing with them, his wife lay absorbed in a different reverie beneath their bedding, deeply listening to the chirping cricket beneath their bed—from its song her thoughts turned to preparing winter clothing, then to her now-empty dresser that would sway when the cat leaped upon it, and finally to the various fine garments no longer at hand. Each stripe, pattern, and hue of those garments came back to her mind one by one in vivid detail. With them came recollections of the individual histories held within each folded layer. A deep sigh mingled with these thoughts before dissolving into tears. Through that uniquely feminine self-absorption, she could transform life's trivial sorrows into its greatest ordeal. Yet this grief remained wordless. Even were she to voice these matters now, he would likely offer nothing beyond reciting phrases like "Though appearing to possess nothing, one holds all things"—this husband who lived self-indulgently in his ivory tower, dreaming while imagining he surveyed life's invisible depths—leaving her no choice but to find such a husband hopelessly unreliable. At times she would contemplate herself—now come to this mountain village—her brief past and fate as though they were some half-remembered dream. There were moments when she compared her present self to those artistic rivals still treading the boards (she had once been an actress), envisioning their glamour with covetous clarity. ...From N Station in the mountains—two ri to reach it, another ri and half to where carriages waited—whichever route taken still required an hour on the Railway Ministry's streetcar after that. Even measured straight across as six or seven ri, Tokyo remained half a day's journey... Be that as it may, regardless of what grand ideals might exist, she could not help condemning most of all her husband for proposing life in such backcountry—and herself for heedlessly agreeing. Distant Tokyo... near Tokyo... near Tokyo... distant Tokyo... Those Tokyo streets transformed into theater corridors and greenrooms filled with Arc Lights and Show Windows and oh-so-fashionable Seasons, all drifting slowly past her eyes struggling against sleep.

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The evening glow lingered in the sky day after day. However, it was no longer the scorched, blazing crimson sky of just two or three weeks prior. At its base lay concealed a pleasantly vivid yellow, while only its surface was crimson. It was not an evening glow that threatened tomorrow’s heat, but one that promised clear skies instead. In the northwestern sky, from a depression in a nearby hill, Mount Fuji emerged—revealing only its snow-white crown—which stood out vividly aglow in the evening light. This mountain—infamous to the point of vulgarity—had managed to preserve its essential beauty precisely because only an insignificant fraction of it remained visible. Until recently, what had been cast in the shadow of overlapping evening clouds—that gray-black line stretching along the western horizon which observers might have mistaken for either part of those clouds or a mountain—now revealed itself clearly as some distant mountain range when properly seen. The ordinary regret of having wasted yet another day would surge up violently and instantaneously within him each time he beheld this evening glow. Perhaps the emotional allure of colors stimulated his morbidly sensitive heart in such a manner. When he looked down at his feet on the ground, the ditch water beneath his earthen bridge flowed, reflecting the evening-glowing sky as a thick vermilion line that shimmered.

Over the surface of the fields, the wind advanced with slow undulation, sketching its form in shoreline-like curves. That was a cool evening breeze. The rice fields had not yet yellowed, but their blossoms had already formed grains. And grasshoppers were beginning to emerge little by little among those slightly drooping ears. Along the paddy ridges where red round snake strawberries lay scattered, grasshoppers occasionally leaped from his feet. Then the two dogs accompanying his walk would no sooner discover one than press it down with their front paws and devour with relish the half-dead grasshopper lying there. One showed greater agility in spotting them. Yet when it came to pinning them with forepaws, the other proved swifter. While one readily abandoned escaped prey, the other tenaciously pursued them deep into rice fields, miring paws in mud. Observing their distinct temperaments amused him and deepened his affection. As rice ears increasingly bowed their heads, grasshoppers multiplied explosively. Daily the dogs lured him toward fields, positioning themselves ahead as guides. Sighting a grasshopper before him, he sometimes wished to catch it for his dogs. He would spread fingers to seize the insect. The dogs seemed to comprehend their master's intent when he poised himself—halting mid-pounce to track his hand movements while awaiting his offering. Yet he succeeded perhaps once in five attempts. Often clutching only torn-off legs. At grasshopper-catching he proved far clumsier than even the less adept dog. Still they appeared to trust their master's superiority in this too. When he displayed empty palms after failed attempts, they looked quizzically between hand and face, uniformly tilting heads before curling mouth corners to gaze up through adorably shining eyes.

They appeared both astonished and disappointed by their master's failure, yet somehow kept fawning over him nonetheless. Those dogs truly possessed such expressive faces! Though having experienced this fruitless expectation countless times, they never seemed to relinquish their conviction that their master must surely surpass them in catching insects. Every time they observed his preparatory stance and hand movements to capture a grasshopper, they would abandon prey they'd nearly secured themselves and fixate on his gestures, waiting endlessly for his benefaction. With his empty outstretched palm, he gently stroked the heads of the disappointed dogs. The dogs wagged their tails even at this meager consolation. To him—this combination of their naive trust and his inability to requite it—felt peculiarly poignant. The guilt he felt toward these pure devotees of his, rather than his betrayals of human trusts, struck him as being exponentially more acute. Overwhelmed by the pathos of being gazed up at through those characteristically limpid eyes, he finally resolved to carefully avoid even attempting those reflexive motions to catch the insect before him.

Before long, the shaded rose bush he had personally tended—after pruning away the overhanging branches and leaves from surrounding trees so sunlight could reach it—began to show faintly red buds emerging here and there along its branches, which were no longer those of a shaded rose, when about a week had passed. And furthermore, within those next two or three days, the sun’s astonishing power had already fashioned those buds into youthful leaves. However, though he came to the wellside every morning to wash his face, he had completely forgotten about those rose bushes without even realizing it.

Unexpectedly, one morning—less than twenty days after he had tended to it— he discovered by chance a flower blooming on a new branch of a vivid green stem among those trees. Red, tall, only one. "After a year that felt like endless imprisonment—has May finally come again?!" The out-of-season flower of that once-withered tree, exhaling a deep sigh of delight as if to say just that, now gazed about its surroundings. The light of the nearing autumn day converged upon it. Oh, rose flower—his very own rose. "If it be a rose, then bloom it shall!"

He found himself suddenly recalling with vivid intensity the emotions he had felt on the day he tended to it. He reached up high and grasped the branch. There were carnation-pink thorns as soft as an infant’s nails that gently pricked his hand where it held the branch. It gave him an itchiness akin to when his affectionate cat softly nibbled his fingers. He bent the branch and drew it close to himself. That single flower—ah! It was precisely as large as an anemone blossom. And its double-flowered petals were smaller even than those of mountain cherries. It resembled a wayside bloom more than one worthy of a garden’s forecourt. Yet when he realized this small, pitiful, malformed flower—redder than a youth’s lips yet still bearing the rose’s peculiar delicate grace, which carried fragrance when brought near—he was struck by an ineffable sensation. An emotion akin to sorrow yet resembling joy—an indistinguishable mingling of both—ached its way upward within him. It resembled—no, surpassed in intensity—the feeling of being gazed upon by those utterly guileless eyes of the trusting dogs who believed absolutely in their master. It was akin to having once shown kindness on a passing whim to some young girl long forgotten, only to meet her by chance later and hear her say: “From that moment on, I’ve thought of nothing but you.” He trembled with a sort of inexplicable rapture, and when he involuntarily blinked, the small red rose before him blurred abruptly—tears began seeping unbidden from the corners of both eyes.

Once the tears had come forth, the emotion swiftly passed. But he still stood motionless in a daze, the flowering branch still in his hand. The cheeks were stiff where the tears had dried. He steadily directed his eyes toward his own heart. And he listened to the conversations between his various selves within his heart as if they were someone else's—.

"Ridiculous—I’m crying like some sentimental poet. Over a flower? Or my own delusion?"

“Hmph.” “Could it be that this young retired gentleman is starving for human connection in such a backwater?”

"Good grief, I'm such a wretched hypochondriac!"

＊　　　　　＊　　　　　＊

One night, the stand of trees in the garden rustled, and when he looked, a quiet rain was falling over them—hazing the open fields, the hill, and the trees in a faint white pallor. The early autumn rain fell steadily, yet beneath the thatched roof, neither its footfall-like patter nor droplets could be heard. It made the indoor air hushed and transformed the lamplight into something subtle. And there, sitting upright enveloped in these elements, he felt a faint emotion—something akin to wanderlust's melancholy. And that autumn rain itself passed over the village like a lonely traveler bound for distant lands. While sliding open the night's storm shutters, he gazed at the white rain's retreating form.

After such rains had passed through the village two or three times, chilled by the evening wind, the cat pressed close to its master. Having nothing but unlined summer garments about him, he too shivered.

The rain that began one evening showed no sign of letting up even after a full night had passed, then two days, then three days. At first indeed, he who had directed a certain feeling toward those rains and found enjoyment in them had by now grown sick and tired of this gloomy weather. Even so, the rain still did not cease. Fleas infested the dogs’ bodies. The two dogs, piteously enough, were picking fleas off each other's backs and tail tips. He gazed at their actions with tender sentiment. However, before he knew it, those dogs' fleas had transferred to him as well. And so he began to be tormented by fleas every night. The fleas crawled sluggishly across his entire body in countless thin trails.

Moreover, due to lack of exercise, the chronic stomach ailment he had temporarily forgotten now first made him gloomy in body. In time, that cast gloom over his mind. Day after day of the very same meals made his appetite dwindle. He could not help feeling that this identical daily fare was rotting his blood. Even the dogs had grown tired of that. Merely pressing the tips of their noses against their plates, even they did not look at them again. But concerning this matter, he should not have said anything to his wife. For in this village, the available food was limited to just this.

His unlined summer kimono hung limply against his body, clinging to his skin. The soles of his feet grew sticky with greasy sweat, and when seated, the sweat's dampness and peculiar warmth crept up to his buttocks—fleas gathered there with relish. He felt as if there were fleas in his hair too. When he tried to comb it, his cold, stiff hair—left to grow as it pleased—became tightly tangled in the comb, and the comb snapped. Even if he wanted to wash his body—which felt like a nest of fleas—and freshen up by taking a bath, there was no bathtub in his house. In the neighboring farmhouses, they would heat baths daily on fair weather days, but during these rainy days when there was no fieldwork, they claimed there was no need to go through the trouble of drawing water for bathing. And there were families among the farmers who did nothing from morning, neither eating nor simply lying abed.

The cat went out day after day, roaming freely throughout the house with its soaked body and mud-caked paws. Not only that, but ever since one day when this cat had carried a frog into the house in its mouth, it began bringing frogs—their movements slowed by the cold—day after day, one after another. The wife screamed theatrically and ran about in panic. No matter how much she scolded it, the cat did not stop bringing them. The wife also continued to scream. Showing their unnaturally pale bellies, the frogs often lay dead in the tatami room. The cat regarded the house’s interior as no different from a wilderness. And the house’s interior was no different from a wilderness.

One day. His two dogs had been caught by a servant of that household in the act of seizing and devouring a chicken from the neighboring house, and after being thoroughly beaten, came limping home. When his wife went to apologize at the neighboring house, the old mistress of the rural mansion—unpracticed in diplomatic language—revealed unexpected displeasure. “We demand your dogs remain chained at all times henceforth. If exercise is necessary—since you idlers have nothing better to do—you may walk them yourselves. They invade our garden to defecate. They ravage fields. They bark through the nights. Our children wake screaming. And now they devour my finest hens—hens that only began laying eggs this past week! Those wolves you keep! Should they trespass again, we’ll beat them senseless—we’ve chickens enough to spare!” Thus she redirected what seemed like rage over some unrelated matter toward his dogs, shrieking hysterically. Her voice carried through walls to where he sat inside his own home. This middle-aged matron had long resented how the dogs’ master failed to show her the deference other villagers did. Most peculiarly, from her crude interpretation of their fieldwork-free existence, she’d apparently concluded her new neighbors lived in decadent luxury. Thus the two vigorous young dogs had to endure daily chains. For those first days, he personally took them exercising. Managing two large dogs alone proved arduous. He also had to juggle an umbrella.

The road was extremely muddy. Recalling the words—"You're all just idle layabouts anyway; if you want exercise, take them out yourselves"—he let out a sorrowful bitter smile as he walked. The young large dogs could not possibly be satisfied with mere five or six chō of exercise. Moreover, they detested ordinary roads and, with overflowing vigor toward the ridge paths—where stepping into them would soak one’s thighs with dew—pulled fiercely on their leashes, dragging along the stumbling him. Especially the one possessing fighting dog traits had tremendous strength. He thought the old mistress of the neighboring house was likely watching these scenes from inside her home. In reality, there were indeed such times. The dogs, agitated from lack of exercise and still chained, when evening came would take just a bite of the food given to them before turning away, fearful of something, and bark in long, lonely tones as if pleading for something. Their howls would travel through the rain-veiled space faintly whitened by the downpour, reaching the hill across from the house—and from that hill, the echoes would return as oppressive reverberations. The dogs, unaware that it was their own voices, barked back at it even more fiercely. It resounded once more toward the mountains. Thus, the dogs' ceaseless howling showed no sign of abating. When he tried to calm the dogs by calling their names, the already terrified dogs even cowered in fear of their own master. When he resignedly let the dogs bark as they were, their shrill, futile voices seeped into the depths of his heart, vibrating it and pressing against his chest like a heart seized by foreboding. Every evening like this, the dogs would let out one ferociously prolonged howl. At times, upon hearing those canine cries, a child would shout in a loud voice from the neighboring mansion: "What truly insufferable dogs these must be!" He realized that the old mistress was making her own daughter say such things, and he lost all patience with this insufferable woman. The cat, for its part, continued bringing frogs into the house as usual, lumbering on its mud-caked paws to prowl through the evening-darkened tatami room. At times, he would kick those cats with great force. The smoke from the firewood—rendered unable to burn properly by days of rain—would, depending on the wind’s whims, spitefully drift into the tatami room each day, spreading heavily across the entire ceiling.

During daytime hours when the dogs were quiet, numerous hens from that wealthy neighbor's house—having laid their eggs—would cluck in voices designed to fray every last nerve: cluck, cluck, cluck, cluckcluckcluck, continuing their racket for an hour or longer. One day, one of them strayed into his house, but upon seeing the dogs were tied up, they boldly swarmed into his garden in successive groups. And then they serenely began picking up the rice grains the dogs had scattered. The dogs angrily gave chase. The chickens drew back slightly. Though the angered dogs barked fiercely, the flock of chickens remained utterly unperturbed. For the dogs that ran out trying to chase away the swarm of intruders, their collars were firmly restrained by the chain. The more he panicked, the tighter his own throat became constricted. Eventually, their two chains became so entangled that neither could move. And they barked their grievances about it. He went down into the rain and tried to fix the hopelessly tangled chain. The dogs joyfully pressed their mud-caked paws against his chest area. Because the dogs wouldn't keep still, the chains became even more intricately entangled. Frustratingly, it simply wouldn't come undone. Finally, the dogs let out shrieks. Once chased away, during that time the chickens would nonchalantly climb up even onto the veranda again and leave sewage-like droppings there. When he spread his hands to chase them, they raised an exaggerated clamor. They seemed to have come precisely under orders from that malicious mistress, as if solely to mock him. The mistress, while watching these scenes from beyond the wall, deliberately pretended not to notice. When his wife saw this and seemed about to rebuke the chickens in some pointed manner, he stopped her.

It was less that he thought such actions were improper and more that his own cowardice and servility rendered him incapable of even that. And inwardly, he seethed with greater indignation than his wife herself. From another neighboring house came two grimy girls—one bearing an infant on her back—who, deprived of play space by the rain, forced their way into his home with feet and garments filthier than any cat's. The infant strapped to her back wailed. All three coveted every object their eyes fell upon. Osamu, the eldest at thirteen already displaying girlish affectations, chattered incessantly to his wife about malicious gossip concerning the neighboring mansion and other trivial matters. "They're from the household where we borrow baths," his wife said. "We can hardly drive them away." In truth, his wife craved even such children as conversational partners. Yet even she seemed to find them tiresome at times. When she urged, "You should go home now," the children chorused, "No! Everyone's asleep at our place—doors shut tight! It's pitch black! They probably told us to come play at the lower house." This "lower house" meant his own dwelling. Not just dogs and cats—these children undoubtedly brought fleas in greater numbers, he thought. Though irritated, when dealing with others—particularly such children—he shriveled into timidity, incapable of uttering even mild reproof. Yet when he witnessed his wife—so insensate as to be indifferent—repeatedly dispatching these children through the rain on errands for tofu or sugar, he grew agitated himself and harshly rebuked her.

When he went to the children’s house to borrow their bath, a nearly seventy-year-old blind and hard-of-hearing old woman—while tending the fire beneath the bath kettle—wanted to hear all sorts of stories about Tokyo. It wasn’t about Tokyo—it was about Edo. This old woman—who had served in the mansion of a certain lord during her girlhood in what she herself called "the smoke-like past" (using Turgenev-esque phrasing)—began recounting in fragments: how the Meiji Restoration turmoil had thwarted her lord's appointment as magistrate of Kofu town; how that year proved truly ill-fated, preventing proper observance of the Sanno Festival; and then proceeded to question him about Edo as she had seen it in those bygone days when her eyes still functioned. While claiming she had returned to the countryside because of the Restoration, she had no understanding of what the Restoration actually was. “I thought the world would transform completely then, yet nothing has changed from the old days.” “If it was going to turn out like this, there was no need for us to make such a commotion after all...” she muttered. And she had no concept whatsoever of this "Tokyo" with its running streetcars and public parks. She persistently asked him those Edo-related questions that he had no way to answer. When he realized his unfamiliarity with Edo matters, she made him listen at great length to utterly mundane topics—the glory days of her maidenhood household; the foolishness of her son who now served as master; their inability to manage finances despite being miserly toward neighborhood relations; recollections of children constantly coming over to play and cause nuisance; inquiries about his occupation—then demanded equally lengthy responses to each. Even without that, he who was already inarticulate didn’t know how to respond. Moreover, this old woman was so hard of hearing that even if he answered, she likely wouldn’t have heard a thing. “I don’t care about these stories!” “I don’t give a damn about other people’s affairs!” He wanted to shout those words aloud. Although he never did grasp what the old woman’s tedious stories were ultimately about, they were more than sufficient to dampen his spirits. Moreover, with an expression that pleaded for him to engage with her stories—a look half-dead, lacking even half the vitality of a dog’s—the old woman gazed up at him through those very eyes that had just moments before recounted how she had gone completely blind at fifty-six. She stared. The bath kettle’s fire flickered intensely for a moment, and when its light suddenly fell upon this completely hunched old woman, she—holding a long piece of firewood in one hand—jutted out starkly against the dark backdrop of the farmhouse’s large storage area, appearing like some witch muttering incantations.

When he emerged from that bathhouse, the night breeze indeed caressed his freshly bathed skin with refreshing coolness.

However, when he returned home, his wife was reading what appeared to be a letter from her mother in the countryside under the dim light of a sooty glass-chimneyed hanging lamp. She seemed unwilling to show it to him, hurriedly rolling it up at length. With an expression of utmost displeasure, she looked directly at him as if to blow her sigh upon him, then gazed up once more with eyes glistening from tears. It looked both threatening and pleading at once. That letter—he knew its contents without having read it. To him, it was trivial, but to the women, it must have been something of grave importance.

The women were likely lamenting their bitter hardships to each other... There was yet another woman who came crying to his house. It was a woman nearing forty named Okinu. She was the one who had guided them to this house and helped with their move when they first came here. Through that connection, she became someone who would occasionally visit their household afterward. She often wept when first telling her life story. Okinu was a woman who had drifted to this village after various lives. The fact that he had listened just once out of curiosity became the reason Okinu thereafter endlessly repeated the same tale. In time, he grew irritated whenever he saw Okinu's face. Most mysteriously, even the mere sight of her face had begun to cause a dull ache in his stomach...

Beneath the floorboards, the dogs shook themselves to fend off fleas, their chains clanking each time they moved. He felt more sympathy for these flea-tormented dogs than for Okinu's tales of woe. Then he sensed countless fleas swarming across his back, along his sides, around his collar, and through his hair... Each evening he looked skyward, willing the rain to cease. For reasons unknown even to himself, he kept scanning those leaden clouds - not for stars, but for any break in the oppressive haze that smothered the fields beneath an infinitely heavy sky.

Combinations and permutations of trivial, monotonous events repeated themselves day after day with numbing regularity. Once these became entangled with his physical and mental condition, they all turned into melancholic, misanthropic matters. The rain refused to let up. How many days had it persisted by now—five? Ten? Two weeks? Or perhaps just one? He couldn't tell. Each day dissolved into the next—indistinguishable, monotonous, oppressive days stretching endlessly onward. Do prisoners endure such interminable days? Ah! Exactly so—the existence of that rosebush by the wellside came to mind again, its stems writhing like creeping vines through perpetual shade, never bearing a single green leaf whether in May or mid-August's height. He thought of roses once more—no, more than thought—now he contemplated that shaded rose's anguish through lived experience itself, remaining rooted at his desk day after sodden day.

Speaking of roses—those very roses had once bloomed a tearfully deformed flower (indeed, one that made him shed tears), then daily produced finer blossoms until they flourished splendidly—yet now under these days of prolonged rain, every petal had become limp and tattered like scraps of paper, drenched through and crumbling away. Shattered, they bloomed.

＊　　　　　＊　　　　　＊

During these days, only the late nights provided him with solace and composure. The thought that their dogs—released from chains only on nights when no chickens were present—might now be leaping vigorously along rice paddy banks filled him with expansive ease as he lay in his bedding.

However, it was one night. From outside the house, someone called out. Still seated at his desk, crushed beneath his thoughts, he slid open the veranda door to find a black-clad man standing on the path beyond the hedge and ditch. The figure then barked imperiously at him. "It might be a policeman," he thought. "This must be your dog." "That's right." "Why?" "'Tis too fearsome to pass through here!"

He thought there was likely no village in the entire world that feared dogs as much as this one. One of the villagers had explained it was because there were so many rabid dogs in the area. Moreover, one of his dogs was a purebred Japanese dog. "They're harmless. They might look fierce, but they're gentle dogs." "What do you mean 'harmless'?" "'Tis too terrifying to even pass through here!" "They're not rabid. They don't even bark." "They don't even bark." "Those who keep 'em might think so, but to those who don't, they're terrifying." "Why don't you come out here and tie 'em up?"

The extreme arrogance of this unknown man’s tone—thinking it stemmed from that fellow being masked by darkness—made him seethe with indignation. He suddenly grabbed the cane that lay there and rushed out toward the path without even opening an umbrella. The rain fell no more heavily than scattered rice bran. The stranger kept muttering something. He stubbornly insisted that unless this dog were tied up, he absolutely could not pass. He feared the dogs to an absurd degree yet swaggered about alone with equal absurdity. “This is a gentle dog. It’s still a puppy, so it approaches passersby out of friendliness,” he defended. To him, the dogs were now innocent people. The man was a tyrant. He himself was a righteous citizen. Finding every word from the man utterly unreasonable, he finally shouted abuses at him. His wife came out to the veranda wondering what was happening, but upon seeing this situation, she kept apologizing to the passerby in the darkness. To him, this proved infuriating anew.

“Be quiet. You don’t need to apologize to such a servile wretch. It’s not the dog’s fault! This man’s just a coward. He’s neither a child nor a thief...” “What? A thief?!” “I never called you a thief. I merely said anyone who fears a silent tail-wagging dog must look like one.” He finally resolved to strike the man. They stood five or six ken apart arguing when a lantern appeared behind the unknown figure. Though its bearer seemed to address the drunkard first, the light began moving toward him instead. They’re conspiring together, he instantly concluded. If they tried speaking to him now—he adjusted his grip on the cane and tensed.

“Please show him some mercy.” “The old man’s been drinking, you see.” The lantern-bearing man was instead apologizing to him. When he realized the man was drunk, he suddenly felt like a fool. Yet he couldn’t muster a laugh. At that moment, driven by some inexplicable impulse, he raised the cane he’d been gripping in readiness and struck his own dog—which had been obliviously wagging its tail before him—with brutal force. The dog yelped in surprise and fled into the house. The unharmed dog followed suit. He stood there dumbstruck for a moment before clicking his tongue, hurling the cane into the ditch, and striding into the house. Both dogs had hidden themselves deep beneath the floorboards. When they saw him enter the garden, they raised thin, mournful cries and barked their grievance.

Even after discarding the cane, his palm—still clenched—was clammy with sweat. “Just you wait! I’ll gather the whole village and beat those dogs to death!” The drunk man continued making such remarks as he was led away by the young man carrying a lantern.

From that evening onward, the drunk man’s threats became a source of great worry for him.

When he began considering whether the villagers might actually kill his dogs, he recalled words that plump woman—the one who had wept while recounting her life story—had once told him: “In this village, they kill and eat dogs come winter. Be careful—they were saying things like ‘Yours are young and plump, just right for it,’ though it was probably a joke.” The cane he had discarded grew increasingly regrettable to him the more he dwelled on it. It was a cane with a silver handle carved with arabesque floral patterns. Though not particularly worth such regret, he found himself mourning its loss with inexplicable intensity. The next day, under the pretense of exercising the dogs, he walked over a kilometer along the irrigation channel’s path searching for that cane. The once-clear water of the channel had become pointlessly turbid from the daily rains. The cane was nowhere to be found. He had kept secret from his wife how he had lost it in such a manner. It was utterly shameful.

Both the cane and the drunkard's threats weighed on him so heavily that even he found it absurd at times. "If only I'd beaten that man then—" he would think in bed, burning with impotent rage... His anxiety about the dogs being abused made keeping them unchained at night torture itself. Irritably straining his ears, he'd hear canine whimpers. He'd rush to the veranda, fling open the door while whistling—the dogs would come scampering back from somewhere. Yet those barks always belonged to other dogs. But sometimes even whistles and name-calling couldn't make them return. Then their barking would grow shriller still. In those moments he couldn't sit or stand still. His wife would say "That's not our dog" or "No dogs are barking anywhere," initially dismissing him—but as he persisted obsessively, this delusion gradually infected her too. They lived trembling like accursed souls. To compound matters, the lamp's flame developed a maddening nightly flicker that defied all adjustments. He'd stare at its quivering wick as if gazing at his own anxious heart, nerves fraying endlessly. One night came unusually desperate barks—rushing outside, he found Leo barking urgent warnings at him. From afar came—Frate? —a heartrending yelp. Following Leo while shouting "Frate! Frate!" he tracked the cries. When Frate finally returned, half his face and body were caked in mud. The dog must have been pinned down and beaten in some ditch.

From somewhere came laughter resembling a triumphant chorus... Since that night, they decided to let the dogs roam free only for an hour or two around midnight before chaining them again. Moreover, they moved the chains to the dirt-floored entryway—for even tied in the garden corner where people could pass through freely, it remained unsafe. But once the dogs understood they were being called only to be restrained, they stopped coming readily when summoned. Even when they returned, watching their owners' faces warily, they would dart about the garden and evade capture. When tempted with food by their chains, they still refused to draw near. Frate—descended from fighting dogs with powerful legs and thick fangs—one night gnawed through his chain's midpoint, burrowed a great hole beneath the floorboards to escape the surrounding walls, squeezed his bulk through it, then dragged half the chain through muddy earth with its remnant dangling from his neck as he roamed joyously through the night. To alert his master and win his own freedom too, Leo barked fiercely.

He would sometimes reconsider his nighttime anxieties about the dogs in the light of day, but he couldn’t help realizing this was a form of obsessive compulsion. Even dogs must know how to protect themselves by their own power... And yet, I felt ashamed and pathetic, obsessing over such trivial matters as the dogs. But come nightfall, once again: "My dogs will be stolen. Killed! For sure!" By now, the dogs were no longer merely dogs to him—they had become some sort of symbol. To love was indeed to suffer thereby. He simply could not forget about the cane either. During moments free from worry about the dogs, he would often lie in bed fantasizing about this scene: the cane with its silver-mounted grip—its metal weight causing just the head end to sink slightly—floating and sinking through the muddy irrigation channel at the current’s mercy, being carried away toward some indeterminate place, then onward to endless distant reaches.

＊　　　　　＊　　　　　＊

The rain would let up for a day, only to pour down even harder than before the following day. Then, on the next day, it would become a light rain again. But on the day after next, it would pour down relentlessly... This intermittent rain would continue falling forever... For days and days it would fall... It fell seeking to fester his very being... It fell seeking to rot the world itself.

Everything rot...,

Rot if you must rot…,

Rot as you please…, Rot rot…,

Your head..., Rot first...,

……………………,

……………………,

……………………,

………………,

…………………,

………………………, The voiceless chorus drifted in from outside the house, from all directions, filling his home with a chill, dim gloom—and when observed, the rain fell precisely to that rhythm. Whether he looked toward the north window or the south window, the rain kept falling, repeating, repeating those infinite iterations of its languid rhythm... It fell without any hope of stopping, no matter how many days passed...

＊　　　　　＊　　　　　＊

There was a hill there.

When viewed from the veranda of his house, the pine branches and cherry branches in the garden extended from both sides to intertwine, forming a dome-shaped space there—the arching curve created by these trees' branches and leaves was supported from below by the hedge's straight upper edge. So to speak, they formed a green frame. It was a picture frame. And through the depths of that framed space, the hill appeared distantly visible.

When had he first discovered this hill? In any case, this hill caught his eye. And he grew deeply fond of this hill. During each and every day of these long, gloomy rains, whenever he turned the window of his sunken heart—his eyes—away from life’s gloom and turned them outward, it was that hill that appeared reflected in his gaze.

The hill, particularly when viewed through that dome-shaped frame formed by the branches and leaves of his garden trees, naturally assumed an air of being a separate realm. Positioned at precisely that ideal distance—more dreamlike than reality yet more tangible than dreams—it would seem at times to draw slightly closer to him, at others to recede far into the distance, depending on the rain's shifting density. At moments it appeared faint, as though seen through frosted glass.

The hill somehow resembled the curve of a woman's flank. It was a three-dimensional form created by elegant curves meandering with leisurely emotion—countless lines running in their own chosen directions, rising and supporting one another. And there it lay—neatly contained within that green frame—the scenery beautiful without artifice, harmoniously composed without any fussiness, much like a story that expands with utmost boldness yet maintains perfect correspondence between its inception and grand conclusion. It was amply filled with a serene yet vivid beauty said to reside somewhere in ancient Greek sculptures. It also resembled the corner of a woman’s mouth bearing a noble yet charming smile. At the hill's summit stood mixed woodland, each tree spreading its branches like open fingers reaching toward the sky—from where he stood, they appeared about an inch or five inches tall, though at times they seemed merely an inch in height, and at others a full five inches. The grove, standing as neatly trimmed as short hair, appeared to grow with a beautiful hairline solely at the summit of the bare hill it used as its forehead. At the border where those groves met the sky, there existed the most minute undulations, and these held an inexhaustible rhythm. Where one might perceive a slight deficiency in this rhythm, a single thatched roof belonging to the house to which the grove belonged stood to remedy its monotony. And upon that plump, green velvet-like flank, hundreds of vertical lines—spaced at regular intervals, parallel—slid down the slope’s surface in arcing curves from top to bottom, tracing out bold daimyo stripes. It was the cross-section of a green striped agate. These were probably seedling beds of cedar or cypress or something. But that didn’t matter. However, what made this hill appear so painterly and ornamental was how the subtle artificiality within nature had unintentionally contributed its most striking effects for that very purpose—just as one might glimpse a house’s roof amidst the grove. And in this case, it had become impossible to distinguish where nature ended and human creation began. Human labor exerted upon nature had blended harmoniously into its fabric. What beauty this was! It was gentle and dear to behold. The artistic world I wish to inhabit is right there...

“What are you staring at so intently?”

His wife asked him.

“Yeah.” “It’s that hill.” “It’s that hill, you see.” “What about that?” “It’s nothing... Isn’t it beautiful?” “I can’t put it into words…”

"You're right. It does look rather like a kimono." This hill was wearing an omeshi kimono of restrained taste, his wife thought. It was a monochrome painting rendered entirely in green. Yet this monochrome, like all excellent ones of its kind, contained nearly infinite colors within its single hue. The longer one looked, the more its richness welled forth. At first glance merely a mass of green, yet each part revealed countless variations of green. And still it wove together one unyielding color tone. It resembled a green gemstone that, while maintaining its fundamental verdancy, produced differing hues and effects across each polished facet.

His eyes always gladly rested upon that hill. "A transparent heart!" "A transparent heart!" The hill addressed his eyes with those words.

One day.

That day, the rain had abruptly ceased the previous night, and from morning onward it remained overcast. Before long, as noon approached, even the sun's form—seeping through the clouds—began to appear faintly from the sky's depths in an eggshell hue.

His wife proposed going to Tokyo under the pretext of preparing autumn kimonos. Rather than concerning herself with the actual weather, she seized this moment while her husband's temperament remained stable—after an early lunch, she hastened toward Tokyo, that nightly object of her yearning. Her heart had likely reached Tokyo three hours ahead of her body. He stood alone on the veranda gazing vacantly at his customary visual anchor—the hill—without truly seeing it. Then he noticed something peculiar about the hill's overall demeanor. This difference couldn't be attributed solely to the daylight. Yet he couldn't pinpoint the cause. As he kept staring, he suddenly remembered and began searching through his desk drawer for glasses. Though severely nearsighted, he'd recently grown forgetful about wearing them. For someone engaged in nothingness lately, glasses had become nearly obsolete. All while remaining oblivious that this very neglect exacerbated his neurasthenia. When he donned them, heaven and earth revealed themselves as distinct realms. Today between these realms he glimpsed something resembling joy. Because the sky shone bright. The hill stood clearly visible. Indeed. The hill appeared altered—crows swarmed above its mixed woodland. Bathed in waning sunlight from above, its flank displayed unevenness honed into rounded smoothness, gleaming with metallic green-gold luster. The hundreds of vertical stripes comprising seedling beds—ah, there lay the difference. Examining the ground between these stripes revealed ordinary green earth transformed inexplicably into blackish purple around a leftward corner—spreading upward in fan-shaped and triangular formations. What sorcery!

When had it changed so drastically? Why had it changed? He felt utterly mystified. He stared at the hill as though witnessing some unprecedented marvel. To him, the hill now resembled a Fairy Land. Beautiful, compact, and today even imbued with mystery—wasn't it? As he kept watching, the border between purple and green on the hill's surface began swelling autonomously, the purple domain gradually expanding its territory. Persisting in his scrutiny—though the effort made his brow ache—he discerned minuscule figures hunched over, squirming as they busily harvested the green. Between those sapling rows, the farmer must have planted something. Yet to his eyes, it appeared less like harvested crops and more like purple soil welling up from beneath.

He peered into what seemed like a mysterious telescope's depths and, while feeling transcendent toward this small hill as if observing Fairies of Fairy Land at work within it, gazed with unblinking longing—precisely like a child peering through a kaleidoscope. He finally carried out the tobacco tray and zabuton cushion to the veranda, ceaselessly staring at this self-swelling purple soil. The purple earth swelled up as if surging. Again and again it swelled. The purple territory invaded the green territory, rapidly encroaching from one edge. Meanwhile, the fading sunlight gradually brightened. Suddenly, sunset light burst forth en masse through a narrow gap in western clouds that had been slowly clearing and struck the hill. The hill abruptly began shining amidst whirling light rays. As though colored footlights had been cast upon that slope. Upon the hill, both fairies and mixed woodland dragged long dense shadows across ground. Thus Fairy Land's scenery emerged even more distinctly. The newly risen purple soil—with a voice like an organ's deepest tone—appeared ready to cry out in unison. The thatched roof in woodland atop hill's crest had turned smooth, from within which thick white smoke rose straight and unbroken like censer incense. And now he stood entranced as Fairy Land's king.

The glory of heaven and earth, nature's own ecstasy, vanished like a momentary dream when the setting sun was hidden by clouds. The setting sun slipped free from the clouds, then plunged toward even darker clouds and the distant mountain range at the horizon’s edge. Leaving behind a bright, gleaming afterglow in that narrow gap between the clouds.

When he came to his senses, the hill had already turned completely purple... for the Fairy's work was done... While he was absorbed in gazing, the surroundings had become completely dark without him noticing. Even so, he thought that in his eyes, only the hill of Fairy Land still remained clearly visible in the darkness. Eventually, even the hill he had thought would remain visible forever vanished…….

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When he returned to himself, no longer king of Fairy Land, darkness came surging from distant fields and mountains, packing itself densely into every room of the house. His immediate surroundings were utter darkness. First thinking he must light the lamp, he struck a match from the tobacco tray. And he struck matches everywhere throughout the house. It was to search for where the lamp might be. Yet try as he might, he could not find where it had been placed.

Really, such things had happened to him quite frequently lately. Though a lamp could hardly be considered so large an object, things that had just been in his hands moments before—items he had been using like pens, pipes, or chopsticks—would abruptly vanish somewhere. And then, those items that had temporarily vanished would later emerge from places he could never have imagined—though upon reflection they were perfectly ordinary spots—or from absurd locations where he was certain he had thoroughly searched. However, when searching, they never showed themselves in a truly spiteful manner. Such things happen to everyone quite often. However, the frequency with which such things had been happening to him lately was something that never occurred to anyone. For him, such things had happened at least two or three times a day without fail lately. How significant such trivial matters must have seemed to him each time they occurred. He even came to feel it as a truly inexplicable event—so mysterious as to border on the mystical, one might rather call it fateful. He even began to think that some unseen presence existed and was temporarily concealing those items during that time. And he came to feel that his belongings were vanishing from around him in this manner—two or three items disappearing each day as if by some sudden whim. Therefore, even with the lamp—"There it goes again," he thought—he resolved to temporarily abandon searching for it. Strangely, it seemed that the more he gave up, the quicker they would appear. Realizing this, he gropingly took down the candlestick from atop the chest of drawers. He lit a gloomy red flickering flame upon it.

That night-like hour in such rural isolation—alone in a house with every side still unsecured—unnerved him profoundly. Not burglars or any known intruders, but some strange unknowable breed of trespasser... ultimately formless invaders... he felt himself permitting their free passage through his domain. Sliding door pockets inherently occupied every corner of the house. For him—constitutionally timid beyond measure, now grown to a degree incomprehensible to ordinary people save perhaps neurotic children—even these domestic corners brimmed with unease. As he stood sliding each door panel shut, their rumbling tracks crawled heavily across open fields to echo hollowly in distant emptiness. Startled perhaps by these sounds—his two dogs that had been sleeping silently now emerged pale from beneath the floorboards and immediately began their customary evening howl... He had just secured the ten-odd veranda doors and was moving to fasten the shorter ones opposite when stepping through into the six-mat room— There in the tokonoma it stood impudently perched! The lamp. Hadn't he searched everywhere? Hadn't this very spot been meticulously checked?! Could it be another of those vanishing trifles? But this was something substantial... At this thought came a sensation verging on terror—one mustn't touch this lamp carelessly. Reaching instinctively to grasp it—what if before his eyes it vanished again?—such imaginings possessed him. Chiding himself for such absurdity, he resolutely extended his hand. The lamp proved solidly real.

After lighting the lamp and closing all the doors, when he came before the hearth, he noticed there was no hot water even to make tea. The charcoal had turned to pure white ash, and the iron kettle that had been hissing and boiling all day now sat cold along with its water. That was only natural. When his wife had left around eleven o'clock, she had left it burning as it was, and he had not added any charcoal since then. As for charcoal—no, for him there existed nothing in the world beyond that Fairy Land hill—not even himself. ...The dogs, who must have thought their howling had ended surprisingly quickly today in good measure, now both began snuffling their noses. This was their demand for dinner. It was not only them and the cat who were hungry. He himself was so hungry that he thought at least some of his recent unease—that timid apprehension making his chest flutter strangely, that lingering chill—must surely stem from his empty stomach. However, to eat dinner tonight required first cooking rice—his wife, who had suddenly announced she was going to Tokyo, had made lengthy excuses about train schedules preventing preparation, saying she would ask Okinu to handle it on her way to the station. But having been tormented just last night by what must have been Okinu's tenth telling of her life story, he had made his wife wash the rice and add water before deciding to cook it himself. Sitting down before the unlit hearth, he thought skipping dinner for one night might be just as well. Yet being pestered like this by the dogs and imagining these perpetually starving creatures' hunger, he found himself unable to avoid cooking rice. "These days it gets dark before you realize—we must prepare early..." he recalled his wife's words as he carried himself toward the kitchen.

He released the dogs from their chains and called them over to the kitchen. The dimly lit kitchen, with its many corners, felt desolate with only him there. The dogs came to his side where he was squatting on the dirt floor, as if they knew their master’s mood well—Frate and Leo pressed close against him and sat down. The cat came to crouch near his face at the edge of the wooden floor. When his peculiar family had gathered in a wordless, forlorn circle before the earthen stove piled high like a horse’s hoof, he finally felt some semblance of reassurance. Then he started the fire. The kindling alone burned well. As it blazed up, his heart too grew brighter. But the fire went out immediately, and the two or three logs he had thrown in never caught fire. He merely burned through the kindling to no avail. The firewood was thoroughly soaked from the prolonged rain. And the kindling—if only he had prepared more of this stuff! The meager kindling had already left not a single scrap remaining after being fed into the fire five or six times. He hit upon an idea and retrieved the kerosene can. With trembling hands, he poured kerosene over the firewood. Immediately it floated up three to four inches above the ground, forming a large light mass that ignited. It burned as if racing. It burned frantically. It burned with a frenzy reminiscent of someone utterly lacking mental focus—someone exactly like himself. It burned without prudence, abandoning reason yet lacking strength—all at once in a single breath.

Immediately it went limp and collapsed into embers. The kerosene burned only itself while it lasted, but once consumed, that once-enormous mass of flames split into several smaller ones. Each crept along the firewood's surface—bluish flickers that seemed to lick at the wood—only to vanish moments later. The smoke with its distinctive dull black stench and dull black color—that smoke resembling the heavy mood following absurd exhilaration—clumped together all at once and rose languidly. The cat started upright in surprise, and the two dogs uniformly turned their faces away—so thickly did the smoke billow. After trying the same method once more, he discovered that kerosene spilled on the ground burned through to the end longer than when poured over firewood—indeed, with that pathological meticulousness of his, he had been intently observing how the kerosene burned, seeing in its behavior a physical manifestation of his own agitated exhilaration—whereupon he removed from beneath the stove the firewood whose surfaces alone had been charred black by the kerosene's burning. Now, after pouring all the kerosene he could muster onto the ash at the stove’s base, he arranged and stacked firewood upon that earthen foundation. Now, he threw a handful of burning matches into it. A small amount of black smoke and a large flame were fully expelled, coursing beneath the pot. Gradually, it began to catch on the firewood.

"Perfect! Perfect!" He involuntarily exclaimed these words to himself. Hearing that low voice, Frate raised his slender, pointed face and looked up at him as if questioning their meaning. At last, the firewood that had gradually begun to burn produced flames as reliable as the powerful exhilaration of a genuinely moved human. Oh! How joyous was a blazing fire! He and his dogs stared with equally shining eyes at these burning flames that primitive peoples had worshipped as divine. Through his eyes dappled by the firelight, he suddenly—without any connection—felt he saw his wife's retreating figure, so very small—as small as that Fairy. His wife within the burning flames somehow seemed to be amidst a tremendous crowd... This was no mere imagination but closer to a flickering vision before his eyes—and when such a fantasy arose unexpectedly within him, taking form as what he imagined a true vision might be—Ah! She's gone out to work! This intuition struck him with certainty. Next, half by his own volition, his fantasies drifted toward what seemed like Tokyo's busiest districts. Then in the next moment... Could it be that I myself am walking through such crowds right now?—this impossible notion surfaced in his mind as though it were the most ordinary thought. ...This self crouching in a dim, faintly cold kitchen corner before the stove—this self who had been fixedly watching flames that refused to burn properly since earlier. This self surrounded by dogs and cat, gazing into burning flames that contained his own emotional state like some ascetic continuing his austerities. Could this not be my true self—and does my real self properly exist elsewhere—making this me here but some shadow-like imitation? Such feelings pressed in on him with visceral intensity. When this sensation permeated his being, an icy chill flashed down the very center of his spine. Everything around him—himself, the stove flames, both dogs, the cat; when he lifted his eyes, the rice tub, hand bucket, lamp, sink—all seemed in peril of vanishing instantaneously.

And then, trembling with fear, he timidly surveyed his surroundings. On the wall spread three shadows—his own and those of the two dogs—stretching large and black across its surface in three directions, quivering smaller then larger upon the wall's face as flames danced. With each ceaseless tremor, they drew bit by bit closer to their physical forms until they seemed poised to engulf those very bodies they mimicked. Then Leo, who had been seated at his left, abruptly rose and slipped through the door's slightly cracked gap—left ajar to vent smoke—before stepping outside. He then suddenly emitted a shrill, clipped bark. Frate, who had pricked his ears backward at his brother's cry, likewise departed in identical fashion. They barked in unison. —as if announcing some unseen presence drawing near. Fear compelled him upright. Yet the dogs soon ceased their clamor and with sullen solemnity returned to their original positions beside him.

The dogs' behavior struck him as undeniably suspicious. Having calmed himself, he stretched up slightly and tentatively peered through the knot hole in the door to observe outside. Then, through the faint darkness his eyes pierced, from behind the persimmon tree trunk emerged a small black figure—miraculously soundless! The figure's smallness somewhat reassured him. Yet this was truly someone who made no sound at all! But when it moved forward and met the lamplight leaking through the door gap, there proved nothing strange about it. This was indeed Osamu—the thirteen-year-old girl from the neighboring house who often visited. But...? When he considered how this chatterbox—who always came rushing from afar while shouting loudly, calling the dogs' names or whistling; who never visited after nightfall—shouldn't be approaching so stealthily tonight, Osamu padding softly closer still seemed uncanny. He tried calling out to verify——

“Is that you, Osamu?”

“Whoa there! “You scared me! “Were you here, Uncle?” The one who had answered was indeed Osamu. However, whereas his call had been a strangely composed, loud utterance resembling a soliloquy, Osamu's reply was truly an exaggerated cry. At that voice, he who had been enduring loneliness nearly leapt up. Reassured by Osamu's voice, he opened the door. Outside, Osamu’s peculiar expression stood out starkly, brightly illuminated.

“What’s wrong, Osamu? …Were you scolded at home?” “—” Osamu did not reply immediately. But after a while, this child began chattering as usual—asking whether Uncle had been cooking rice or when Aunt would return. After a while, Osamu spoke as if suddenly remembering. “Oh right! “I’d forgotten all about it. “I heated the bath today—what with the fine weather, everyone went out to the fields. “I’m heating it right now. “Come on over once it’s ready. — You’re such a strange one, Uncle! Wantin’ to bathe when there’s no call for it, then not wantin’ when there is, ain’t that right?” Having said this, Osamu hurried off back home. Tonight of all nights, he wished Osamu would stay and talk longer— When the girl had walked five or six ken away,

“Uncle. It’s started rainin’ again.” And there she was—Osamu in her usual manner once more. Osamu must have felt relieved just now, he thought—for when she mentioned the bathhouse, he had already coincidentally deduced that the soundless Osamu approaching earlier was indeed her. He connected this with what his wife had told him—the rumors about needing to be cautious of Osamu’s family, how the firewood stacked outside had recently dwindled too much, and how on some mornings two or three logs that had slipped from their bundles lay scattered by the wellside.

Having come to understand this, such things no longer mattered to him. Only, “Uncle—it’s started rainin’ again.” Osamu’s words—"It’s started rainin' again"—and Osamu herself as that figure who had emerged from behind the persimmon tree at that moment remained with him. The rice he had labored over—whether from some utensil or his own hands—reeked unmistakably of kerosene. (After pouring tea over it and holding it up against lamplight—though nothing peculiar surfaced—) he found himself able only to choke down a single bowl. That night permeated more than just rice. The collar of his nightgown—the pillow—the hollow by his shoulder—the air itself—even the cat pressed against his arm transmitting tiny heartbeat flutters through its quivering frame—all stank of kerosene. And this phantom odor—wedded through some alchemy with all that tea gulped instead of supper—precisely through its elusiveness whipped him toward frenzy…… The stench existed when acknowledged—vanished when denied. ……Abruptly recalling dusk’s match-striking lamp search—kerosene-tinkering fire attempts—that mesmerizing spark parade flickering beneath lifted pots—this room now saturated with fuel stink—even Osamu fetching firewood—every thread wove itself into premonition……tonight this house must burn……The atmosphere hung primed—its preparations manifesting through his senses as kerosene reek. Such notions too took root. At last……let this wretched hovel blaze away. Fire brings ecstasy. No no—dwelling thus invites real flames…… Should fire erupt—first free dogs from chains lest they roast alive…… Better release them preemptively than panic later……Yet surely no fire comes…… If only dawn would hurry…… Even amid these musings another voice wondered—had she truly gone kinema-bound?

I pictured her figure engaged in that Fairy Land work during today's daytime. And then—as the setting sun abruptly illuminated the hill—from its hue arose again the thought of fire……. He felt as though he were still awake contemplating this himself, yet also thought he might already be asleep pondering it within a dream. And as for which it truly was—when looking back later, it became even less clear.—

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It was a certain evening after the rain had cleared. Was that a much later day, or was it around the proper chronological point to write of it here? I cannot tell.

In any case, it was a certain evening after the rain had cleared. A large round moon rose quietly from that hill, as if gliding forward like a stage backdrop.

That night, both dogs barked more sorrowfully and more fiercely than ever before.

He went out into the garden intending to let those dogs play. From the garden, he went out again. The moon being out in the sky gladdened his heart. The moon had nearly reached midheaven. The sky was crisply clear in the east, growing ever cloudier toward the west until its farthest reaches turned pitch black. The vast sky had been blurred with a single brushstroke. He looked up fixedly at the moon. And so he walked. The sound of a distant waterwheel came echoing across the open fields—clunk, clunk, clunk. Upon the flank of Fairyland Hill’s woman, moonlight showered down in fine droplets, glistening wetly. He walked back and forth along the road before his house countless times. With the moon at his back, he looked at his own short shadow. Or, without looking at his own shadow, he walked while gazing into the boundless moon. The two dogs followed behind him, playfully teasing each other as they frolicked with delight. When he stopped, the two dogs chased each other in circles around where he stood. He lent his ear to the murmur of water. Beside the road, beneath his standing feet, the narrow water of the ditch along that path flowed while shattering the moonlight. It was black like a large sheet of mica or something of the sort, shining and quivering noisily. Suddenly, from beyond the southern hill, the 10-something final train bound from K to H roared through a corner of the moonlit world, shaking it as it passed. The sound lingered for some time.

At that moment, he found himself longing for sound. The moonlight made it bright as daytime—no, brighter than rainy daylight—and across the open fields, he turned his gaze toward the southern hill.... Where the sound had been heard beyond that hill, there must lie a magnificently bustling metropolis. ...There, from house windows, lights clustered and glittered... Without any logical connection—merely hearing a distant train's rumble—such fantasies suddenly welled up within him. Come to think of it, for an instant—a mere instant—the sky behind that hill had glowed faintly red across its entire expanse like the reflection of countless lights... or so it seemed, before vanishing immediately. That was truly a mystical moment.

"Am I developing nostalgia for the city?" While thinking this, he turned his gaze away from the hill. As he did so, he noticed a black figure approaching him from ahead along the solitary road where he stood rigidly. It stood about two hundred meters away from him. He stared at it while feeling an undefined unease about someone traversing such an exposed space under moonlight. And he thought moonlit nights held more terror than pitch-dark ones. Then, at that moment, from the direction of that figure—

"Fweet!" A single whistle rang out high and clear. Both his dogs suddenly dashed toward the shadowy figure with gale-force intensity. This first struck him as intensely unpleasant. For until that moment, these dogs had never attempted to approach anyone besides himself—their master—when summoned. Yet this night alone, upon hearing that solitary whistle, they bolted like loosed arrows. He reacted with panicked urgency,

“Fweet!” He blew an equally high-pitched whistle in response. This was to recall the dogs. Hearing his whistle, the dogs seemed to notice and frantically turned back toward him. “Frate!” The shadowy figure uttered this as it called the dog’s name. “Frate!” He too panicked and shouted the name identically. The voice with which he had cried out bore an uncanny resemblance to the figure’s. By immediately echoing the same words, his voice rang out like a mountain echo of the figure’s call. Even he himself perceived the two voices as utterly identical in their inexplicable similarity. Surely even the dogs must have heard it this way. Once they dashed off, the dogs remained drawn to the figure and never returned.

He stood dazedly on the road, straining his eyes wide to ascertain that shadowy figure. The shadowy figure seemed to follow the rice paddy banks from the road toward the open fields, curving around the area of the stone Jizo statue. And then—!

What an incredible mystery! The figure vanished abruptly in that bright moonlit field where nothing obstructed the view. Biting back an "Ah!" in his throat, he dashed headlong through the gate and into the house.

......No one in this village should know my dogs' names. Because it's a difficult name to call. No—children know. But they must have learned to mispronounce 'Frate' as 'Kurate'. Even if called by name, there's no reason my dogs would go to anyone but me. Even if they went, if I called them back, they should surely return to me. This has never happened before. He thought this alone......And why did that shadow vanish so abruptly, as if erased?...Could it be—at that moment—that I, this very self, split into two separate people? Does this depersonalization illness truly exist? If so, might I be suffering from depersonalization? Dogs must possess subtle abilities to distinguish sounds. Particularly, they should recognize their master's voice clearly, but...

The intense pounding of his heart continued for over twenty minutes. For some reason, he kept watching the clock's pendulum swing while contemplating various literary accounts of depersonalization and matters concerning the dogs, waiting for his heart's throbbing to subside. When his mind finally settled, he ordered his wife to check if the dogs were under the veranda as usual—for he feared they might never return if they kept following that shadowy figure. The dogs weren't there. Yet when his wife called, they had luckily returned—or so he thought. He asked whether the moon still shone. His wife replied that it did.

The following morning, he told his wife about the previous night's incident for the first time. For he had been too terrified that very night to even have the presence of mind to tell anyone about it. Upon hearing this story, his wife laughed so hard at its absurdity that it irritated him. The sudden disappearance of the figure occurred because the dogs had drawn close to that person's feet - undoubtedly someone had bent down to pat their heads. Because of this, the person walking along the paddy path was likely concealed by the shadow of the rice plants and thus became invisible. Such was his wife's interpretation of the matter. Indeed, that seemed like a reasonable interpretation, he thought. However, the peculiar terror he had felt in that moment was not dispelled by that explanation.

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Once, such a thing also happened――

One night, late into the hours, a single moth came fluttering to the lamp. In this region where sericulture flourished, around this time of year, these insects were often seen flying about. He disliked this insect most intensely. Once before when such an insect had approached his lamp, he had struck it with a homemade fly swatter. Crushed upon impact, the insect first made its thick antennae—shaped like arched brows or comb teeth—quiver with minute vibrations too precise to describe. With final effort it flipped over completely to expose its grotesquely swollen abdomen. All six tiny legs convulsed simultaneously in motions resembling desperate embraces while periodically its wings strained to lift the bloated torso. These small yet rhythmical movements—antennae twitching, legs spasming, wings fluttering, abdomen heaving—continued ceaselessly, compelling him to witness every detail of its mortal agony. Though diminutive in size, it proved more than sufficient to horrify him as he observed. From that moment onward he harbored particular loathing and dread toward this creature.

The insect’s head—strangely small, covered entirely in gray silk-like fur—and those eyes: vermilion, tiny, slightly protruding, eerily reflecting a deep crimson from within their ashen-black sockets. Its wings pressed tightly against the lampshade as though suctioned there, maintaining an oppressive stillness. Then, suddenly as if gripped by madness, it would violently thrash those heavy wings—a spectacle of frenzy. No matter how much he tried to shoo it away, it continued circling the light with shameless persistence, utterly unperturbed. When it performed death-dance-like ecstatic convulsions near the lamp, its grotesque shadow would blacken more than half of the whitish-blurred brown wall, and though making no sound, whirl madly like a clamorous crowd screaming in turbulent unease. Evading his attempts to chase it away with lumbering movements, when it finally escaped to the upper part of the shoji screen, it now began beating the paper surface flap-flap-flap with those thick wings, like the stamping feet of a frenzied dance.

He waited until the moth grew still, then finally managed to pin it down with a scrap of newspaper. Then, sliding open the door, he threw the eerie insect outside. Because he had learned his lesson about killing them. However, before even ten minutes had passed, the moth (or perhaps a different one) once again crept toward his lamp from somewhere. And then once more began a terrifying, black, oppressive, clamorous whirling of wings. He once again pinned down the moth with a scrap of paper. Then he slid open the door once more and threw it out the window.

However, before even ten minutes had passed, the moth crept back from somewhere for the third time. He did not know whether this was the same moth that had threatened him twice before or a different one, but since the one he had so thoroughly wrapped in paper and crushed earlier could not possibly have emerged, let alone remained alive, this must have been an entirely different moth. In any case, they assaulted his lamp twice, three times—up to four times. ...There was some evil spirit dwelling within these small flying insects. He could no longer keep himself from thinking this. Once this thought took hold, he found himself too terrified to subdue it again himself. So he deliberately roused his wife and made her catch the insect. Then taking from her hands what had been captured in a large newspaper sheet, he wrapped the small creature layer upon layer within that paper, then used another sheet to fold it up with meticulous care. This time instead of discarding it outside, he placed it on the desk and weighted it down with a thick old magazine.

Thus, finally feeling relieved for the first time, he got into bed.

After a while, unable to sleep, when he lit the candlestick’s flame, something came fluttering over and mockingly grazed the light. That too was a moth!

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He became unable to sleep.

At first, the sound of the clocks struck his ears noisily. He stopped both the pillow clock and the wall clock. Truly, in their current life, clocks served no purpose beyond being mere noisy nuisances. Nevertheless, every morning upon waking, his wife would set the approximate time and set the clocks' pendulums in motion. His wife said that without even the sound of clocks in the house, she felt uneasy—it was too lonely. To that, he too completely agreed. Due to some circumstance, there were moments when all sounds came to a complete stop—the neighbors' voices, the dogs' barking, the chickens' clucking, the wind's rustling, his wife's voice, even his own voice, and every other conceivable sound. These were moments he had frequently experienced. That instant was, for him, an intensely lonely, heartrending, and rather frightening thing. At such times, he would think how nice it would be if something made a sound or noise, and grow wistful with anticipation. Even during those seemingly soundless moments, he would meaninglessly address his wife with whatever came to mind. Otherwise,

"Yeah, that’s right," he muttered to himself.

And he would utter such meaningless soliloquies.

But at night, the sound of the clocks struck his ears too noisily, and he simply couldn't fall asleep. With each passing moment's sound stimulating him, his mood gradually rose and became more agitated. Therefore, when getting into bed, he made sure to stop the clock hands. And every morning, his wife would start the clocks he had stopped. The husband stopped the clocks his wife had started. Moving the clocks and stopping them became their respective daily rituals every morning and night.

When he stopped the clocks, this time the murmur of the channel flowing before the garden began to bother him. And now it felt as though that sound was hindering his ability to fall asleep. Due to the daily rain, the water's sound must have been somewhat more intense than usual. One day, he peered into that channel. There lay submerged - still refusing to wash away even now - the thick branch he had pruned days prior from a cat willow on the embankment, back when they first moved into this house and tended its derelict garden. Acting like a weir, it intercepted leaves floating downstream along with newspaper scraps, while the water, striving to surmount this barrier, surged up repeatedly in clamorous agitation. That clamorous nightly sound of water had indeed been caused by this. Having reached that conclusion alone, he waded into the channel in the rain and pulled out the branch from the water's depths. On the thick branch with its many smaller limbs, slimy blue waterweed had densely entangled itself across every surface. He temporarily placed it by the roadside. When he peered into the water once more, among the leaves, paper scraps, straw fragments, and strands of women's hair that had been caught in the cat willow's weir-like structure and now flowed onward, a long object floating and sinking five or six ken downstream suddenly caught his eye.

When he looked, it was that silver-handled cane—the one from that night when he had argued with the drunkard, struck the dogs, then slammed into the water. He felt overjoyed at this strange twist of fate that had returned it to his hands. For no particular reason, shame and foolishness overwhelmed him—though he had kept its loss secret from his wife, he had carelessly let it slip out. And he thought—that clamorous water sound must surely have been the cane's doing. Through this act, the cane must have been telling him—who had been searching—where it lay hidden.

He held the cane in one hand and stared intently at the water's surface flowing relentlessly onward without hindrance. Now that this was done, tonight would finally be quiet—he thought he could rest assured. However, that was a mistake. That night too, though one might say the stream's murmur was noisier than the previous night, it was by no means quiet—though originally an extremely faint sound, to him it was painfully intrusive, and that it disturbed his sleep was the same as the previous night.

But there was nothing more he could do about the murmur of the stream. In addition to that, another distinct sound began visiting his ears. It was the noise of the last train running beyond the Southern Hill, audible only when night grew sufficiently deep. Moreover, given how late it was—though with stopped clocks obscuring precise timekeeping—could this truly be the 10:06 departure? The final train scheduled to leave T Station at 10:06 should have passed four kilometers beyond their house across the hill far too early for this hour. Nor did it come just once each night—after first hearing it in such deep darkness, within another hour's span the train's rumble would sound again. This utterly contradicted actual timetables... Even were it some pitch-black freight train, no rural line would dispatch cargo transports so frequently through midnight hours. Yet despite these clearly audible train noises, his wife maintained she never heard them. Whenever that distant roaring reverberated through the night, he grew certain some unexpected friend had come visiting him in this backcountry—and that he himself rode within that very train. If such a thing were truly happening, who might it be? O perhaps? ......Or E? ......Maybe T? ......Could it be A? ......Or K?...... He mentally catalogued every acquaintance he could recall. Yet none seemed plausible candidates. Nevertheless, someone—a familiar figure—leaning solitary against a carriage window materialized in his mind with startling vividness. Stranger still were evenings when this vision abruptly transformed into himself—that seated form providing his eccentric fantasies with both terror and allure, like the genesis of some Poe-esque tale.

The ticking of the clock's second hand. The stream's murmur, the train's advancing rumble. Through this progression, he gradually came to hear various other sounds each night. One overlapping sound was the distant shrill screech of streetcars braking—a noise he'd often heard late at night in the city. It sometimes violently assailed his eardrums. One night while dozing off, he jolted awake to bright organ tones drifting from the village elementary school about a hundred meters upstream. Thinking morning must be late and singing lessons starting, he looked around to find his wife still fast asleep. No morning light seeped through the door cracks. No other sounds existed... save that organ music. Midnight still reigned. Half-doubting his wakefulness, he strained his ears further. Wasn't that organ sound—with its distinctive timbre, refreshing yet sweetly plaintive like a late spring dusk—carrying some familiar march melody on the wind? He lay entranced by these musical notes. Another night brought brass band phrases from movie theaters... also marches... leaking inexplicably through the darkness. Once attuned to these musical sounds, the stream's murmur ceased registering in his ears. He stopped struggling to sleep, finding insomnia less agonizing now. All these noises—excepting streetcar screeches—brought their own pleasures: some lively and bright, others hauntingly distant. Before suspicion could taint these phenomena, he found indescribable comfort in listening. The organ sounds pleased him most. Next came the brass band's resonance.

Then there were times when the faint sound of a bell—as if struck by someone making a winter pilgrimage—would continue. The organ’s tones were heard only two or three times, yet the band’s music reached him nearly every night without fail. While listening intently to it, he inadvertently mimicked it under his breath, and with the sensation of slightly lifting his reclining body, kept rhythm with his entire form. It was as if this were a kind of pleasure that could be called sexual—that is to say, one that was simultaneously sensual and spiritual in nature. If that had occurred within a monastery, people might have called it spiritual ecstasy.

The auditory hallucinations brought phantom visions in their wake. Or phantom visions would arrive alone without any prelude of auditory hallucinations.

One of them was an extremely minute yet extremely clear cityscape. It was a portion of that. With the scale and intricacy of a miniature, right before his eyes as he lay supine—around his nose—the tiny city would be constructed and emerge vividly. It was a splendid city, unreal in its splendor. Though he had never seen it before, he could imagine—indeed believe—that somewhere in Tokyo there must exist a place exactly like this. It was an illuminated nightscape. The Western-style building's height—about five stories—would not have measured even fifteen centimeters. Yet even that house, and smaller ones not half or a third its height, each had their own entrances and windows from which dazzling light spilled forth. The houses were mostly pure white. Even the blue window curtains were arrayed before his eyes with a fineness beyond human measurement or ordinary imagination—yet with vivid clarity. Ah, but there was more still. Beside lightning rods atop those towers gleamed a single star—only one—as sharply vivid as silver thread stitched into black velvet... Strangely, though it was nighttime in this splendid city, not one vehicle nor pedestrian could be seen... Rows of willows stood as street trees... A hushed silence permeated everything—yet through those bright windows one sensed an indefinable commotion... For reasons unknown, he intuitively recognized that building as a Chinese restaurant... Staring fixedly at it, the entire city gradually receded from above his nose, growing ever smaller until nearly vanishing—then with tremendous speed expanded. The same city swelled to enormous proportions, almost life-sized, still growing ceaselessly until it became vast as the world itself... Gazing vacantly at this transformation, the city quietly contracted again into its original miniature form, returning once more above his nose. In this way—whether over minutes or seconds—he felt himself soaring between Lilliput and Brobdingnag in fairy tales, making a single round-trip flight. When the city became Brobdingnagian, the distance between his own eyes would suddenly widen—like a giant's—making his visual field seem to expand all at once. At times by some trigger, the phantom city would attain near-life-sized immensity and abruptly freeze. There had been moments when he—suddenly seized by the notion he might have actually entered such a town—would fumble for matches and survey his soot-stained ceiling in darkness.

Those landscapes often appeared before his eyes. Each time it appeared, not a single detail differed from its previous manifestation. This too was one of the mysteries accompanying this phenomenon.

At times, rarely, instead of those landscapes, it would be his own head. His head felt as small as a bean... expanding before his eyes... filling the house... growing as large as the Earth... reaching infinity... How could such an enormous head possibly fit within this universe? Then, with tremendous speed, it would shrink back to the size of a bean. Overcome with anxiety, he reflexively ran his hand over his own head. And then, he finally felt relieved. He found it comical and wanted to laugh. At that very instant, a Key-y-y-y—the screech of a streetcar braking—pierced through the space between his eyebrows.

However, these visions and phantom sensations did not seem to bear any necessarily close or inherent relationship with the auditory hallucinations. While auditory hallucinations generally brought him pleasure, these visions that abruptly expanded and contracted between infinite largeness and infinite smallness felt eerie even to him, leaving him deeply unsettled.

He felt these bizarre pathological phenomena growing increasingly intense with each passing night. He began to consider that these phenomena were being transmitted to him from his wife. The rumble of a steam train. The screech of a streetcar. The music of a moving picture. A town unknown yet situated somewhere in Tokyo. All these phantoms—could they not be manifestations of his wife’s desperate nostalgia for the city, her unconscious wielding some sorcerous influence to take shape and voice in his sleepless eyes and ears? He tentatively hypothesized this. It was, at first, a mere hypothesis. But before he knew when, this began to feel like truth to him. That is why fantasies of Tokyo filled to the brim in the direction of the kitchen where his wife always stayed, and when he once cooked rice alone one evening, he had suddenly recalled that matter. And so, he even thought such things. Upon one such as himself—whose willpower had weakened to near nonexistence—he could not help but acknowledge it as a plausible reality: that the wills of other humans possessing greater strength of volition, or those spirits from an invisible world thronging this very space, might exert more forceful influence than his own. Life is a certain force that momentarily conquers all that surrounds it, devours them, draws the power within them into itself, and thoroughly unifies it. Physically, this is clearly so. Spiritually as well—mentally as well—it must be no different. And now, the mysterious force that had possessed the power to absorb and unify all else was gradually waning away from him. Rather, he was only continually dissipating the self he had maintained until now.

It was also at this time that he realized darkness was a gathering of things thronging densely without gaps—and that it had weight. In this manner, his joys, angers, sorrows, and fears—indeed, all his terrors—transformed into something entirely different from those experienced by others surviving in the real world. Loneliness and idleness—these siblings—possess a truly strange power. ――If I were now in a monastery―? And so, he thought at a certain time. ……If he were not living this life with his wife, but instead paying daily homage to an image of Maria—that beautiful Eternal Maiden—while in his current mental and physical state, then the night visions would likely be heavenly ones, their unpleasant counterparts infernal. And so, the noble, gentle lips in the image would have come alive and spoken to him. And all that tormented him would have manifested with the ugliness, repulsiveness, and terror of the demon painted by Spinello Spinelli, appearing and disappearing before his eyes to plague him. Moreover, during those nights devoid of even a moment’s sleep, when faint dawn crept through the door cracks and he suddenly heard the intermittent chirping of a bird—that lonely, heartrending, yet refreshing feeling that seemed to beckon tears—would surely have become penitence. In monasteries—those places—the lifestyle, the ideological suggestions, all were constructed through various mechanisms so as to evoke such visions, to make them easily evoked, to necessitate their evocation…

He even thought such things. However, that thought would coalesce much later than this immediate moment.

＊　　　　　＊　　　　　＊ Suddenly, the shape of a human foot floated into view before his eyes. Only the foot seemed to float suspended in mid-air. It was impossible to tell how large it was, but given that its size didn’t particularly draw attention, it must have been about that of an ordinary human’s. It was a beautiful white bare foot. While gazing at it... suddenly, the white fingers of a hand appeared. It was a hand shaped like those often seen in El Greco’s paintings, with the thumb and index finger poised as if pinching something small.……Eventually the hand vanished, leaving only the earlier foot still moving there—now it began to bob up and down as though treading on something. Each time it moved, the toes would rise and fall, force surging there—with every motion, the toes of the foot would bend and stretch like an inchworm. ……What a strange dream this is, he thought within his dream. That's it! That's it! This is the foot of the thread-spinning girl from the house we entered after losing our way during that excursion to Ozenji. That was her hand. She is treading the spinning wheel. It was the hand gesture of pinching all the threads being spun out. As soon as he thought this, the fingers of that hand appeared once more. They were white hands and feet rare in the countryside... When she glanced up at him, she had a pretty face. On the way there, somewhere an evening shower had passed... a rainbow had appeared... he had seen it in the mountains. That girl was about sixteen... If only her entire figure would come into view more clearly, not just her hands and feet... While continuing to dream of those swaying white bare feet and reminiscing in such a manner, suddenly his surroundings turned crimson bright all around... and when he looked, the candle stand’s flame came glaring into his eyes.

He woke up. His wife was sliding open the shoji screen and entering from the veranda. She must have gone to the restroom. "You need to be more careful—how many days have I been telling you this?" "Doesn’t even a bit of light getting into my eyes make me wake up right away?" "I’d only just managed to fall asleep!" While looking up at his wife and blinking his dazzled eyes, he nagged. "I thought I was being careful… You must have been sleeping with your eyes open again?"

Having said that, his wife now belatedly hurried to blow out the lamp. “What happened at Ozenji?” “You were talking in your sleep just now.” “When?”

“Just now, when I tried to light the lamp and struck a match.”

He felt utterly ridiculous. What he had taken for a beautiful foot in his dream was surely his wife’s own foot he’d been seeing. I must have removed my pillow and slept with my cheek pressed flat against the tatami—that’s why I mistook the sight of her feet walking by for a dream. He realized this. Yet he found it strange how this girl—the one who’d spun thread at that solitary house near Ozenji—had surfaced from his semiconsciousness. At the time, he’d found it curious that such a place housed a beautiful young girl spinning thread in lonely modesty, yet afterward had completely forgotten her existence.

This was one example. This was not the only instance. Around that time, when he wished to sleep, he would often sleep such sleep.

＊　　　　　＊　　　　　＊ “It’s not a fever at all—if anything, it’s rather cold.” His wife, who had been holding her hand over his forehead, removed it from there and placed it on her own forehead to check. “I’m the one who’s much hotter.”

That left him deeply dissatisfied. When he tried taking his temperature and had the thermometer brought out, he found it broken from their frequent long-distance moves. If it wasn't a fever, then it must be this weather. This violent wind. he thought. The day truly raged with violent winds. Driving sparse raindrops sideways, clouds and wind itself tore through the sky. Yet paradoxically, the air hung sweltering. On such days he'd always trembled at earthquake fears, but today's fierce winds at least spared him that anxiety. Yet windy days brought their own torment—this peculiar weather stirred such irritating unease it left him jittery with foreboding.

Cat, O cat! Follow behind, behind! Cat, O cat! Deeper, deeper, push it in! Suddenly, from beneath the violently raging storm, fragments of a children's chorus came flying in tattered shreds. Carried by wind gusts, they seemed to reach his ear in fitful bursts. Yet this too was likely an auditory hallucination. For it was a children's song from his hometown—one he had long forgotten. On days of fierce winds (yes, precisely such tempestuous days), the children—girls especially—would scamper about clutching the obi sashes of those ahead, or ducking under haori coats as they sang this very melody on endless repeat. Whipped into frenzy by the gales, they would circle round and round the square before his childhood home's gate... A monotonous yet nostalgic rhyme with a tumbling rhythm—a game perfectly matched to the song's spirit. Transfixed, his child self materialized vividly—that boy standing in dust-swirled winds. This became memory's thread. Back then... in the black cedar woods behind castle ruins—that narrow path skirting the base of the highest stone wall on Castle Mountain. There stood a great cedar grove where through slender gaps between clustered trunks, a river glinted. Sails of ships showed white. At his feet grew massive ferns; the path lay perpetually dim. And there hung that heavy, sodden cedar scent—lofty and particular to those woods. As a child he'd loved that path above all... Even grown, it remained so. When he'd injured himself during calisthenics and been anesthetized twice, his drugged dreams had wandered those forest trails. Both times...

In that forest one evening, he discovered a large black lily; drawing near to pluck it and peering closely, he was suddenly struck by a bizarre terror reminiscent of old legends and went tumbling down the mountain path. The next day he took a servant and scoured every corner of the area, yet found nothing there. To him, this marked the first manifestation of what seemed a bizarre natural phenomenon. Was it a hallucination from his own childhood, or some genuine flower of such strangeness one might call it nature’s own hallucination? Even now he could not tell when recalling it. Only the beauty of that flower swaying in the wind remained etched in his heart through the years. As if that rare bloom had symbolized his “blue flower,” he had been that sort of lonely child since those days. He would often walk alone through places like the mountain with castle ruins behind his house and the forest along the opposite riverbank. The pool people called Nabewari particularly captivated him. There stood a lime-burning hut there. Limestone and calcite crystals taught his young mind nature’s mysteries. At that pool he would often gaze dreamily at lapis lazuli whirlpools—swirling masses each spanning four tatami mats—that sometimes formed there. He even saw them occasionally in his very dreams. He must have been eight or nine then……Whenever he told a lie, he would invariably wake at midnight that same night. Troubled by this, sleep would elude him completely until he shook his mother awake, made anguished confession, and begged forgiveness to finally sleep again……And yes—yes—there were nights too when I heard the clack of loom reeds weaving at midnight. Back then I must have been five or six. I wonder if I’ve been neurasthenic since those days, since way back then. That his tendency for auditory hallucinations also traced to that time—this realization left him aghast.

Those trivial childhood events were recalled more vividly than yesterday’s affairs (to him at that time, yesterday’s matters had been but a vague blur). What was particularly strange was that just three or four months prior, around summer’s end, he had seen a solitary mountain house—where lilies and crape myrtles bloomed—and the young girl living there alone with her elderly mother in that deserted dwelling; that girl whose beautiful white feet and fingers had appeared in his waking dream. That vision, steeped in fairy-tale atmosphere, had receded deep into memory’s recesses. These fragments became forcibly—erroneously—woven into childhood reminiscences, striving to transform into wood nymphs within memory’s primeval forest. Each time he caught himself entertaining such fancies, he would scold inwardly: No—this happened mere months ago! Thus chastised, he corrected course... yet still lingered among boyhood recollections—all near-forgotten until this moment’s resurgence. Becoming that remembered child anew, he yearned achingly for mother, brothers, father—unprecedented intensity for one not prone to self-reflection. To father, mother, any sibling—he’d sent no word these six months past. His estranged sister—returned home half-deaf—pained him especially. First he strained to summon mother’s face—though seen half a year prior—yet found only void until scattered impressions coalesced grotesquely: seventeen years vanished revealed her erysipelas-distorted visage—black medicinal mask glistening save sunken eyes; monster-mother waving listlessly from sickbed forbidding approach... Childhood self fled weeping to garden’s sasanquas—their blurred branches through tearful eyes now clearer than maternal memory... Unrecalled details queued unbidden... This mood abruptly turned him deathward—this must be how dying men feel.

If that were so，then wasn’t I going to die before long？ ……Even so，in this mountain village where I know no one—am I to die like this now？……And if I were indeed to die here？ His delusions flowed endlessly． He had never once directly thought about death until now． And at this time，he first began—with some curiosity and in his characteristic style of delusion—to picture one by one the states of those acquaintances who had known of his own death at that moment． Amid the fierce wind，toward a stillness detached from this clamorous world，he strained his ears to the shrilling of katydids that seemed to beckon human spirits．

He reached out his hand and tried to randomly pull a book from the bookshelf far above his pillow. The moment his hand touched the bookshelf—clang! There came a sound of something breaking. He startled as if he himself had dropped something, then looked around sharply. It was the sound of his wife breaking something in the kitchen, carried by the wind to his ears.

His bookshelf now lay in pitiable condition. There stood a few aged books amidst the dust, propping each other up while tilting sideways on the verge of collapse. Only volumes of little worth had naturally remained—all books he had grown thoroughly weary of seeing over these past two or three years. What he now pulled out was a translated Faust. To escape his own futile, morbidly curious fantasies about his death, he resolved to read this book that held no interest for him. Yet the wind's sound ceaselessly grazed his ears. The lone glass pane fitted above the kitchen sink clattered and rattled without respite, grating on his ears and fraying his nerves.

He lay prone and fixed his eyes on the opened pages. "A pleasure surpassing this earthly realm. Between darkness and dew, lie deep in the mountains, Embracing heaven and earth with pleasant warmth in one’s bosom, Through my own efforts, I scrape out the marrow of heaven and earth, Experiencing the six-day divine work within my own breast, Feeling haughty strength, I savor something unknown, At times spreading overflowing love to all creation, The aspect of being a child of the mortal world disappears and vanishes entirely." By chance, it was Mephisto’s lines from the “Forest and Cavern” chapter. The meaning of these words was clear to him. Was this not precisely the state of mind he had when first coming to this countryside?

He staggered up from the bedding to take the red ink and pen from the desk. And starting from the passage he had just read, he went back even further and began reading from Faust’s soliloquy in the cavern. He soaked his pen in red ink and underlined each line of the verses he was reading in the margins. With those lines, ensuring they neither touched the printed type nor deviated even slightly, he drew thin, nervously precise straight lines. That demanded tremendous effort from his violently trembling fingertips.

……………………………………………… "To put it briefly, at times you may taste such pleasures yourselves— "You may taste such pleasures without hindrance. "But you won’t be able to endure it for long. "You’re already showing considerable fatigue. "If this continues any longer, you'll either go mad with frivolity, "Or grow gloomy and cowardly and perish." Enough already... While preoccupied with underlining, when he read over the lines’ meaning once more, he suddenly understood. Mephisto is now speaking to me from within this book. Oh, what an ill omen! "Or grow gloomy and cowardly and perish." Was this truly real? For him now, words so perfectly apt—even were he to desperately search through every line of however many vast tomes—would never again be revealed here. This phrase was so perfectly apt as a critique of his current life. As he stared at those all-too-apt printed words, even his heart began to harbor something akin to terror.

"My, what a terrible wind this is! Look at the trees in the thicket behind. They’re so spindly yet tall and swaying—imagine the wind lashing those wavering things! They’re shaking dreadfully! You don’t think they’ll snap, do you?" His wife’s voice reached his ears—half drowned by the wind as if coming from afar, yet freighted with what seemed either momentous event or hidden allegory.

When he came to his senses, his wife was standing by his pillow. She had been standing there since earlier. His wife had been asking him about the meal. He did not even attempt to answer, laboriously turned over in bed, and spitefully averted his face from her. But he immediately turned back to face her again.

“Hey! You broke something earlier, didn’t you?” “Yes, the ten-sen Western plate I bought.” “Hmm.” “A ten-sen Western plate?” “You don’t think it’s acceptable to break it just because it’s a ten-sen Western plate, do you?” “Ten sen and ten yen and such—those are prices humans have arbitrarily assigned on a provisional basis.” “Moreover, that served me beyond its ten-sen value.” “Even a single plate is precious.” “Well, if I may say so, that too is something akin to being alive.” “Well, sit down there. You’ve been breaking about five things a month lately.” “You hold a plate in your hands but don’t think about it, just vaguely pondering other things.” “That’s why, in that moment, the plate gets angry and escapes from your hand.” “It slips and falls.” “The problem is you’re always thinking about Tokyo.” “You don’t know the key to an abundant life in this desolate countryside.” “Just look closely at how lively it is here.” “Even each and every kitchen tool that you think is boring—if you’re willing to listen—will tell you any number of interesting stories.” “To love life—to truly live joyfully—isn’t it nothing but finding full-hearted delight in such trivial things, in the daily routines of existence…?”

He continued grumbling like one delirious. For him—ordinarily so taciturn—this amounted to an uncharacteristically protracted lecture. He kept piling word upon word as he spoke on. Yet even as he did so, the remarks he'd meant for his wife gradually swerved inward, becoming a soliloquy directed at himself. Mid-speech, he realized these were fragments of unexpected notions—ideas he would never normally entertain. When he sensed what seemed like a new insight taking shape, the words no longer reached where he meant to aim them. They merely skittered haltingly across thought's surface. "The sanctity of daily life—the mystery of daily life." He thought he was trying to voice something beyond human language's capacity. And with that, he finally fell silent.

The two of them fell silent and listened to the raging storm, but after a while, the wife spoke up resolutely.

“You know, the three hundred yen we received from your father in March has dwindled to barely more than ten yen now.” He did not even attempt to answer and suddenly muttered to himself under his breath. “I have neither talent nor any confidence left…”

＊　　　　　＊　　　　　＊

Darkness seethed around him. It was a supremely oppressive darkness, layered in a seamless accumulation of reds and greens and purples. He groped for matches in the darkness, and after lighting the candle by his pillow, rose from bed. And then he held the candlestick still over the face of his wife sleeping beside him. However, having fallen into a deep sleep, she did not stir in the slightest. For a while, he stared intently at the woman’s unresponsive face in the flickering candlelight. At this moment, he looked at his wife’s face as though seeing it for the first time, studying it with curious intensity.

The candlelight divided the shapes of things into two distinct realms—the world of light and the world of shadow. The human face seen in that light, bathed in strong sidelight, became something entirely different in impression due to the effect produced by the intense gradations of that red light. He profoundly felt that human faces—not just his wife’s, but in general—were truly so ugly. It appeared to his eyes as an eerie, ghastly, grotesque mass—a single bizarre entity. His wife had placed her undone chignon hairpiece, rolled into a black ball, by the pillow. In this strange phenomenon, when he saw that chignon hairpiece, he realized for the first time that this woman sleeping there was his wife.

He lifted the candlestick slightly higher, then pressed it close beside the woman’s ear, gazing at it in various ways as if experimentally playing with the changing effects of the light for some time. His wife remained completely unaware of this as she slept. She did not even turn over. Would this woman still sleep undisturbed even if a blade were pressed to her throat now? But in such a situation—no matter how unresponsive this woman might be—even she would surely open her eyes by human instinct, as one naturally should. It must be so. He thought such things. And then, he even wondered if perhaps this woman was now dreaming of being killed. Even so, from such bewitchment of light, human beings do recall all manner of things. From such things, have there not been men since ancient times who actually resolved to kill people...

"To be sure, I'm not actually trying to kill this woman right now—" He involuntarily muttered those words under his breath. He hastily offered this justification to himself for his own shocking delusion.

“So then… What was I doing this for just now?” He came to his senses and abruptly shook his wife awake.

It was the middle of the night. His wife had finally awoken, but seemingly dazzled, she avoided the flickering candlelight and averted her eyes. And then, as people not yet fully awake often do, she moved her mouth restlessly, half-mumbling to herself, “Are you checking the locks again? It’s fine.” With that, she turned over. “No, I’m going to the bathroom.” “Come with me for a moment.” After emerging from the bathroom, he tried to wash his hands and slid the door about halfway open. Then, through the gap of the now-opened door, moonlight suddenly streamed in. The moon struck the veranda head-on, shining as a distorted rectangle upon the floorboards. Strangely enough, he had seen in a dream—just moments earlier—the veranda where moonlight streamed in exactly like this, completely identical, and had just awoken from it. What a strange coincidence this was. To him first and foremost, that felt unbearably eerie. And then he was suddenly struck by the suspicion that even now, as they stood here like this, it might all be a continuation of the dream…

“Hey, this isn’t a dream, right?” “What are you talking about? You’re still half-asleep, aren’t you?” The candle, held in his wife’s hand and bathed in moonlight from above, lost its own light, glowing faintly red. The tip of the flame swayed as if about to be extinguished by the wind, but behind his wife’s sleeve screen, it wavered and swayed heavily. The wind had unknowingly grown calm, but the clouds were surging southward with ferocious momentum. From the fantastic rift in the pitch-black cloud—a gaping giant mouth that passed by sprinkling a light rain—the moon shone down on them with icy clarity.

He forgot to wash his hands and looked up at that unusual moon. It was an odd moon. What phase could it be? Though round, its lower half had faded so faintly it seemed on the verge of vanishing. Yet the upper half floated out with crystalline clarity between black clouds in the deep sky's midsection - sharp as if honed. The distinct roundness of that upper half resembled something intensely familiar, he thought. That's it. It resembled the curvature of a skull's crown. Come to think of it, the entire moon's shape resembled a skull. A silver skull. A silver skull - honed or perhaps freshly drawn from a furnace. The mechanism of his associations suddenly made him recall something like a pirate ship. "Sacred Pirate Ship" For some reason, that phrase rose in his mind. He gazed endlessly at the blue moon. Ah - this same occurrence, this exact same occurrence - I had stood here like this before too. The cloud formations and moon's shape were identical to now. Not one detail differed from start to finish. Not only that - he had thought this very thought even then. He had thought precisely what he thought now. Even in that distant past - like some faint hole's depths - there had been events completely identical to the present moment, perfectly overlapping without slightest variance... Blankly, he considered this instantaneously... When could that have been... Where might that have been...

The scattered clouds racing across the entire sky were on the verge of swallowing the moon, the silver skull.

“Can I close it now?” His wife said, shivering. Perhaps her words finally brought him back to his senses; he leaned out to wash his hands. That was when it happened. “Oh no!” “What?” “A dog!”

“Dog?” He immediately grabbed the bamboo stick used to secure the door and hurled it with full force toward the garden’s entrance. In his vision appeared a white dog that nimbly dodged the spinning bamboo fragment, lunged at it abruptly, then fled down the path still clutching the splintered wood in its jaws. With its tail clamped tightly between its legs and ears flattened back, it bared white fangs from its bamboo-gripping mouth while drool streamed down, charging headlong along the road before his house. Bathed in moonlight, this large silver shaggy dog with matted fur—its swift weaving strides—flashed before his eyes in dizzying bursts. It was the dog from Ōzenji Temple, a lone mountain sanctuary. Every detail of its form became vividly clear to him in an instant.

“It’s a rabid dog!”

He frantically called his dogs' names. He kept calling. Perhaps they weren't nearby—the dogs didn't respond to his voice. His wife remained utterly unaware of what had occurred. Yet following her husband's lead, she too raised her voice to summon them. Her shrill cries echoed across the hillside. After seven or eight calls came the heavy clatter of chains—both dogs materialized together with palpable reluctance. Though clearly perplexed by this sudden summons, they wagged their tails near to breaking while sniffing vigorously, chains clanking with every movement.

The moon had been swallowed into the clouds.

No sooner had he taken the candlestick from his wife’s hand and held it out toward the dogs than the wind extinguished it in an instant. Immediately, he tried relighting the lamp, but his dogs showed no particular signs of anything amiss. “Ah, I was shocked. I thought our dogs had been bitten by a rabid dog.”

He got into bed but proceeded to explain in detail to his wife what he had just witnessed. His wife denied it from the very beginning. However bright it might have been, there was no way such clarity could be seen by moonlight. Moreover, while it was true that Ōzenji’s dog had become rabid, it had already been slaughtered for that reason a week or even ten days prior. At that time, Okinu— “So please take care with your dogs as well.” —had said so. That matter was something she herself should have told him about at that time.—His wife explained things to him in a soothing manner, breaking them down. However, he thought he had never heard any story about Ōzenji’s dog going rabid.

"The ghost dog was running about the field like that. "And these spiritual things are visible only to me..." ...A world of melancholy, a world of groans, a world where spirits wander. Were my eyes made for such a world—a melancholic room’s melancholic window thrown open toward a melancholic abandoned garden. He thought in that way. The place where I now live is no longer part of the world of the living—yet neither does it belong to the world of the dead. Is this not some twilight realm existing between the two? Am I wandering through the world of death while still alive...? If it is said that Dante traversed heaven and hell with his body intact... At the very least—at the very least—the place where I now stand is a slope that tilts steeply toward extinction, with death itself lying at its base…

＊　　　　　＊　　　　　＊

The following day—after the rainy night—dawned clear for the first time in ages. Heaven and earth seemed reborn that morning. During the prolonged rains, all creation had imperceptibly deepened into autumn's embrace. The sunlight bathing rice ears, the caressing breeze, the sky itself with its lone thread-like cloud—all had naturally shifted from their summer guise. To him, everything appeared translucent, like scenery crafted from stained glass. He felt this transformation through his entire being. He drew a deep breath. The crisp air piercing his chest felt sweeter than any drink. That his wife had failed to leash the dogs as usual this morning seemed only natural—indeed prudent. In distant fields, both Frate and Leo darted about freely. A young farmer petted Leo's head while the docile dog basked in attention. For some time he gazed rapturously at these sun-blessed fields, the dogs, and the bent-backed laborer toiling there. The sun stood high. Why hadn't he risen earlier to behold this? he wondered. Descending to wash his face, he found last night's bamboo fragment—the one supposedly carried off by the white dog—lying at the bush clover's roots. An involuntary wry smile escaped him—though it verged on cheerfulness.

At the wellside where his wife was attempting to gather spilled rice—he thought she might have intentionally spilled extra—sparrows had alighted. There were so many of them flocking together—thirty or forty—more than he had ever seen here before. Startled by his footsteps, they all took flight at once toward nearby branches. There was no need for them to flee like that. On that persimmon branch alongside the sparrows sat a small white-faced bird whose name he did not know. At that moment he recalled Saint Francis preaching to birds. Morning smoke rising from his house’s eaves clung to persimmon branches through sunlight like purple gauze. Roses battered by rain into blossomless states now bloomed sporadically this morning. Spiderwebs were illuminated by sunlight-reflecting dewdrops. Dewdrops tumbling from rose leaves would shine onto webs—under these momentary jewels’ ungraspable weight, webs swayed grandly; drops raced down threads toward lower strands; glinting once before falling onto grass below—he could behold such commonplace beauties with fresh emotion.

He lifted the rope bucket to draw water, but when he suddenly peered into its depths, there—framing a boundless azure sky within a three-foot circle and spreading out a bottomless expanse of lapis lazuli with perfect calm—the well water appeared as if glowing translucently from within. He could not help but hesitate to drop the bucket. As he peered into it, his mood settled like the well water. The water he had drawn up was rather muddied by the days of rain, yet his tranquil mood was sufficient to forgive that much.

When he sat down at the dining table his wife had prepared, his heart was at peace. On the dining table were the unusual foods his wife had brought from Tokyo the other day. On the charcoal brazier, an iron kettle was boiling. And indeed, his gloomy mood had come from the unpleasant weather just as his wife had said—he thought. He was about to pick up his chopsticks when he suddenly recalled a certain rose bud he had seen earlier by the well.

“Hey, didn’t you notice? This morning’s flowers are blooming splendidly. My flower. It’s about two-thirds open now, and this time the red has an exceptionally deep, settled hue!” “Yes, I saw it. You mean that one blooming high up in the center?” “That’s right. ‘One stem standing solitary in the courtyard’s heart’—as the verse goes.” He then muttered to himself: “New blossoms against the white sun—? No, ‘white sun’ sounds odd. After all, they’re out of season...”

"They’ve only just begun blooming in September, after all."

“How about it? Why don’t you go pick those and bring them here?”

“Yes, I’ll go get them.” “So you’ll place them here, right?” He said while tapping the center of the round dining table with his finger. His wife immediately stood up but first appeared with a white tablecloth. “Then I’ll lay this out.” “This is nice. “Oh! “You had washed it, hadn’t you?” “If it got dirty, I thought with that rain we wouldn’t be able to wash it, so I had kept it stored away.” “This is pure! “We’ll hold a banquet with flowers as our treat!”

While listening to his cheerful laughter, his wife left to pick flowers. His wife returned immediately, holding a cup filled with flowers. In a somewhat theatrical and unnatural manner, she came bustling in while presenting it. That was strangely unpleasant to him. He himself felt as if he were being maliciously satirized. He said in a disinterested voice: “Oh, you’ve brought quite a lot.”

“Yes, every last one. All of them!” “All of them!” Having answered thus, his wife looked triumphant. This irritated him. The meaning of the words not getting through.

“Why? One would have sufficed.” “But you never specified.” “Did I tell you to bring so many?... Just look at this.” “A single stem was all I wanted.” “Shall I discard the others then?” “No need.” “After your trouble gathering them...” “Never mind.” “Place it there.” “...Wait—you didn’t pick the bud I described, did you?” “How could I? You never mentioned it—there’s barely anything there!” “Over there—”

“Is that so… I could’ve sworn there was a red bud tinged with sky blue at the bottom. I just wanted that one, that’s all.” “Such a thing… There’s no bud tinged with sky blue at the bottom—that must’ve been just the sky’s reflection.” “I see… So?”

“Oh, you needn’t make such a dreadful face.” “If I was wrong, forgive me.” “I only thought having more would be better…” “I don’t want your hasty apologies.” “What I want is for you to understand… Just one thing.” “That single bud—I wanted to place it before my eyes, let it bask in sunlight, and watch it bloom into a flower.” “Just one!” “The rest could’ve stayed on their branches.”

“But you never liked abundance.” “Rather than a heap of trivial things, a single truly good one.” “That is true richness.” He spoke slowly and deliberately, as though savoring each word. “Come now, please cheer up. It’s such a lovely morning…” “Exactly—precisely because it’s such a rare fine morning, this displeases me all the more.” Yet even as he spoke these words, he grew increasingly pitying of his wife. He had become aware of his own selfishness. On his wife’s index finger—likely pierced by a rose thorn—blood welled up. This caught his eye. But given his nature, no words emerged to convey these feelings to her. Instead he wrapped them tighter still—desperate to keep them hidden. He found no place to halt the unpleasant words. This only aggravated him further. He forced his mouth shut. Then he picked up the cup filled with arranged flowers. First he raised it to eye level and peered through the glass. The green leaves submerged in water burned vividly emerald. The leaf undersides shone silver in patches.

In their shadow, faintly red thorns could also be seen. The thick bottom of the cup shone coldly like crystal. The small world within the small cup was a clear and beautiful autumn of green and silver. He placed the cup beneath his eyes. And then he gazed intently at each flower in detail. The flowers there—both petals and blossoms—were all, unfortunately, blighted. Not a single one was perfect. That disturbed his heart, which had just begun to settle. “Look at this flower!” “If only you had picked them more carefully.” “Hmph—all blighted.”

He unintentionally blurted this out but then felt sorry for his wife. Suddenly plucking out the most beautiful bud from among them, he softened his tone and,

“Ah, this is it.” “The bud I was talking about.” “There, it was here!” “It was here!”

In his words lay an intention to both soothe himself and mend his wife’s mood. However, his wife made no attempt to reply and continued silently serving her own rice into a bowl. He glared at it sideways while stealing a glance at his wife’s forehead. If he were to smash this cup there, onto her forehead— No—I mustn’t. It’s me who’s being selfish from the start. He, helplessly and with a lonely, aching heart, began to gaze at the plucked bud he had thrust before his own eyes. ...On the still-firm bud, there was a needle-sized hole in its swollen side. The white, small, and deep perforation pierced through layer upon layer of the bud’s crimson petals all the way to its stamen—needless to say, it was the work of an insect. He continued to stare at the bud while furrowing his brows in disgust.

Startled by the thought, he dropped it. With that hand, he swiftly lowered the seething iron kettle, but upon snatching up the bud again, immediately hurled it into the fire.—The bud’s petals sizzled as they burned……. The moment he saw that raging crimson charcoal fire, “Ah!” He nearly let out a scream. He nearly stood up. He barely endured it—If I leap up here, I’ll be a madman! Thinking this, he once again swiftly—yet as calmly as possible—picked up the flower bud burning in the brazier with the tip of the fire tongs and threw it into the nearby charcoal basket. Having done all this, he then cautiously peered into the brazier's ashes—yet found nothing there. There was nothing there resembling what had just existed. There was nothing to cry out in astonishment at. He stirred through the ashes. Nothing came up from the bottom either. Even faster than kerosene spread through water, it flared across the ash surface in vivid blue! What he had seen was likely nothing more than a fleeting vision—a mere instant’s illusion.

He retrieved the bud once more from the charcoal basket's depths. The fire tongs' grip had left the bud faded from flame exposure, its surface now smeared with pitch-black charcoal dust. He began scrutinizing the stem anew. There upon the quivering stem—transmitting every tremor of his fingers from calyx to the blighted leaves' undersides—swarmed creatures of unfathomable nature: infinitesimal insects matching the stem's bluish hue, their bodies layered as intricately as miniature phantom citadel ramparts, sheathing every millimeter without even a needle's gap between them. What he'd perceived as blue spreading across ashes had been illusion, but this stem-enshrouding insect multitude held tangible horror—an endless expanse of vivid azure teeming beyond measure...

“O Rose, Thou Art Sick!” Suddenly, at that moment, he heard. It had issued from his own mouth. Yet to his ears, it sounded like someone else’s voice. He could only think that something other than himself had compelled his mouth to utter those words. That phrase was a line from someone’s poem. He probably recalled someone having quoted it on a book’s frontispiece or such.

He tried to compose himself by taking the still-upside-down bowl before him and quietly holding it out toward his wife. As he reached forward, “O Rose, Thou Art Sick!”

Suddenly, again, the phrase escaped his lips without meaning. He finally managed to finish his breakfast with just one bowl. His wife was sobbing quietly. “Ah!” “Here we go again,” she muttered to herself about her husband. And while clearing the table, she picked up the flower cup but found herself at a loss over what to do with it. That charred, blighted bud—he must have unconsciously torn it apart—lay shattered into crimson fragments upon the brazier’s cat board, strewn in pieces. While pretending not to see those things even as he looked at them, he stepped one foot down from the veranda toward the garden. And in that instant—

“O Rose, Thou Art Sick!”

Fairy Land Hill today etched the lines of a woman’s flank against the deep blue sky with striking clarity, while beautiful clouds emerged with utmost lightness from the treetops of trees that rose small and spread wide at the hill’s lofty heights. The yellowed russet hue was achingly beautiful. The ground’s color, which had turned purple at some point during the day, further accentuated those green vertical stripes. Moreover, today threads of black shadow were woven into those stripes. Today, that hill drew his gaze twice as intensely.

"In the end, will I hang myself there? "There, something is beckoning me." "That's absurd. “Don’t take such pointless suggestions from your own morbid curiosity!”

“I just hope you don’t meet a gloomy end.”

His fantasy made him abruptly raise one hand. Now, as if trying to hang an invisible sash—or something—on an invisible branch atop that hill... “O Rose, Thou Art Sick!” The water in the well rippled calmly in a perfect circle, just as it had that morning. His face was reflected in it. A single diseased persimmon leaf fluttered down and came to rest floating there. From that slight point, a circular ripple spread out quietly across the entire surface, and the well water rippled. And then it returned to its original calm. It was calm, calm. It was endlessly calm.

“O Rose, Thou Art Sick!” Now, in the rose thicket, there remained not a single flower. There were only leaves. Even they had all been eaten away. When his eyes happened to catch sight of it, he saw without truly looking—his wife was placing the cup that had held this morning’s flowers in a dark corner of the kitchen, beside a shelf, forlornly, redly, as if hiding it there. That pierced his eyes.

“Why do you get angry over such trivial matters?” “You are treating life as a toy.” “It’s terrifying…” “You have no patience.”

“O Rose, Thou Art Sick!” On a certain branch of a certain bamboo in the thicket behind the house, a kudzu leaf had entangled itself, and though there was no wind at all, that sole leaf alone swayed vigorously from side to side with uncanny persistence. And each time, the underside of the leaf would gleam white—even if he stared at it intently… The dogs, having spotted him, hurriedly rushed back from the field and clung to him from both sides. Even as he tried to twist away from their clinging... Even if a shrike on some branch of some tree began shrieking with piercing shrillness... Even if he looked up to see flocks of migratory birds scattering down as they swarmed chaotically across the dazzling sunset sky... Even if he gazed upon the deep blue of the bright evening sky... Even if he saw the faint evening meal smoke rising motionless and quiet from the house at the foot of the opposite hill...

“O Rose, Thou Art Sick!” The words pursued him ceaselessly. They were spoken through his mouth, yet they weren’t his voice. His ears heard someone’s voice. If not that, then his mouth instantly mimicked whatever voice his ears had caught—though he hadn’t uttered a word all day. The dogs barked in unison. Terrified by their own echoes, they barked even more fiercely. The echoes grew more violent. The dogs barked louder still... His mental state became their voices; their voices became his mental state. In the dark kitchen, his wife lit a fire in the hearth. Her desire to return to Tokyo was surely being nurtured there at this very moment. The cat that had returned from somewhere meowed insistently, demanding supper. When flames suddenly blazed up, half her face glowed crimson—grotesquely illuminated. In that kitchen corner emerged the rose cup, solitary in the darkness. That rose—the blighted rose was smoldering!

He tried to light the lamp, struck a match—suddenly, in that moment when the space around his hands lit up— “O Rose, Thou Art Sick!”

He forgot to bring the match to the lamp’s wick and listened to the voice. When the thin stem of the match burned out, it first became a red line, then extinguished lifelessly in an instant. The blackened match head plopped down onto the tatami. Could it be that the air in this house had grown gloomy, damp, and rotten to the point where the lamp refused to light? He struck another match.

“O Rose, Thou Art Sick!”

No matter how many he struck, no matter how many he struck.

“O Rose, Thou Art Sick!”

Where in the world could that voice be coming from? Could it be a revelation? Could it be a prophecy? In any case, the words pursued him. On and on and on…

(Taisho 7, September)