Pathway to Japanese Literature

"Now, a man died on the beach.
Meanwhile, at that very hour, a man was turning a street corner—"

There existed a phrase in some popular song along these lines—but whenever Niriyama Chikawa contemplated that eerie figure who must surely even now be turning those street corners in broad daylight, he felt revulsion.
I too must become a man who turns street corners, he thought.

Niriyama Chikawa was a type of dilettante.
His face and torso swelled bulbously, appearing at first glance like a drowned corpse.
Lately, while remaining as swollen and bloated as ever, a raw shadow of fatigue had begun to cast itself about him—in short, he had become a weary drowned corpse.

"There exists within me an unavoidable, unknowable grief.
That is why I drown myself in you, yet never imagine being saved by you.
Though I cling to you to distract pain with pain, this too ultimately amounts to nothing but my desire to probe the sedimented depths of an ancient swamp through the hellish noise we create together—"

Chikawa was indeed a man of the grumbling sort.
By nature he preferred melancholy, daily turning vexation into a habitual refrain without ever tiring of it.
The aforementioned words were one example of this, but this particular phrase—a foolish one that Asama Mayu had long grown tired of hearing—was among them.
According to this phrase, Chikawa appeared to Mayu in the form of an absolute ruler, but in reality, he was utterly despised by her.
Mayu was not Chikawa's lover.
Not that she wasn't his lover, but Mayu was a reckless poetess who openly maintained relationships not only with Chikawa but also with his friends Izu and Ogasawara.

Chikawa had no desire to monopolize Mayu.
However, he hated being despised by women.
He had wanted to be loved.
In such aspects lay grounds for being despised by women, and there was also a reason he had made a habit of affectedly voicing his complaints again and again in an attempt to avoid this.
Such pretentious talk about wanting to probe the sediment of an old swamp beneath hell's noise was nothing but self-indulgent nonsense, and Chikawa—that hollow fraud—kept licking at his inescapable melancholy in the swamp's depths all along.
It wasn’t that he wanted to probe—he was tormented throughout by having probed too deeply.

When Chikawa could no longer endure his inwardly attacking melancholy, he would suddenly leap over to the sickly Izu—timid as a mouse—and, looming over him, declare: “Mmm, ah—I can’t stand the sight of that freakish poetess anymore.”
Chikawa contorted his face into an exaggerated grimace, abruptly folded himself into an elaborate cross-legged position, and let out a sigh of such theatrical anguish it seemed rehearsed.
“You marrying that woman would be just perfect,” he pressed.
“I’ll lend a hand here—after all, you’re smitten with her…”
“I’m not in love with her at all,” said Izu, lowering his sickly pale face in displeasure.
Chikawa suddenly began trembling violently, his flabby cheeks twitching, as he pounded Izu’s chest with his stubby fist: “You… you utter beast!
“You don’t understand even a speck of a friend’s heart…”
What followed was an abrupt paroxysm of wailing.
Though neither surprised nor particularly moved—yet powerless to intervene—Izu concealed his thin lips behind a trembling counterfeit of a smile and could do nothing but nod along to each persistent complaint.

Though Mayu was called a poetess, she remained a woman of careless ease with no true kinship to poetic talent.
She disdained grave expressions, and whenever she sank into vacant reverie, her plump round face took on the aspect of an imbecile's.
In matters of introspection or shame—what one might call moral sensibilities—her standards stood thoroughly deranged, such that her sudden outbursts left one unable to discern whether they sprang from idiocy or cunning.
One day, Chikawa—himself worn thin by inner corrosion—escaped through a bestial frenzy born of solitude, luring Mayu along, luring Izu along, luring Ogasawara along, fleeing to some hot spring inn nestled at a mountain's foot.
While the men grew daily more mired in bleak melancholy, their minds eroded by tangled psychologies and lingering drink-sickness, Mayu alone floated utterly untouched, supremely unperturbed.

The men awoke at dawn every day.
Crushed by oppressive hangovers, they would escape their rooms as soon as possible and wander through merciless mountains like a silent funeral procession—adrift in hollow bitterness—until the leader suddenly struck down a dead branch, whereupon the other two would mechanically snap branches too, their faces deathly pale.
When they emerged onto a sprawling panoramic switchback, it felt as though they had suddenly reclaimed their own hearts—yet overwhelmed by the vastness, the men desperately gazed at endless mountain waves while feigning grand exhilaration. They flickered curses toward unknown entities, sensed eerie tremors toward valley depths, and fought the urge to scream.

When at last this hour arrived and the men had gone out to the mountains, every morning Mayu would wake later than anyone else.
Amidst the room’s gloomy disarray and the thick air seeping with stagnation, Mayu leisurely lit a cigarette, drowsily propping her cheek on her hand as if pressing her earlobe against the viscous atmospheric sediment—yet her posture suggested someone comfortably savoring exhilarating freedom beneath a cerulean sky.
When the men came down from the mountains, Mayu would suddenly seize each one with secretive, singsong delight and whisper, “I... I like you...”
The men made angry faces one by one.
Without acknowledging this, Mayu abruptly emptied her expression, turned aside to gaze at the leaden winter sky, and transformed into a vacant simpleton murmuring, “I like that sky.”
Mayu soaked endlessly in the bath, leaning against the spacious tub alone with her mouth agape—as if hearing the resonant sound of full-bodied growth swelling forth—her nose forming faint wrinkles while she remained utterly still.

When the men sank into unmanageable melancholy from some vague premonition, Mayu too wore a bloodless, disinterested face—so one might assume even this woman had succumbed. Yet her condition traced an entirely different trajectory from theirs. Suddenly raising her head with abrupt awareness, she began examining each man's face as if making novel discoveries, leaving them aghast—in that whirling moment of bewilderment, they found themselves recalling their hometowns.

Mayu had maintained a queenly state of mind until twenty-two (the men being around thirty). One day, accompanied by the group, she visited Madame Kotō. This was Chikawa's woman—a distinguished female painter whose nervously beautiful features at thirty-five could pass for mid-twenties. With splendor bearing equal measures of the men's melancholy and mania, Madame Kotō spoke and laughed with refinement. Pollen like misty rain drifted through the room's air, seeping painfully into Mayu's eyes and footsoles until it grew unbearable. Mayu sullenly withdrew into silence.

Several days later, when Chikawa met Mayu, she made a strange face and, while looking down, asked, “Do you like Madame Kotō?...”
After falling silent again, this time with an even more pronounced expression, she asked, “Do you intend to die with that person?...”
As Chikawa stared in exasperation, Mayu laughed with a pale smile to hide her embarrassment before turning serious again. “Do you like that sort of elegant, clever person?
“If that’s how it is, then fine. But... do you hate me?
“Will you cherish me?
“Cherish only me, right…...”
She dejectedly raised her head, but soon gazed into Chikawa’s eyes and smiled bewitchingly.
Chikawa was thoroughly exasperated.
He had truly lost all sense of direction.

The desire driving Izu to kill Chikawa had not begun only now.
For Izu, Chikawa was a poison-laden mist.
Chikawa was indeed a hollow fraud of a man—his ostentatious appearance alone, upon materializing, would plunge the surroundings into twilight through his gloomy shadow, while his toxic body odor mercilessly overwhelmed others’ emotions, revealing him as a recklessly domineering figure to the core.
For Izu, whose mind and body were utterly exhausted, there was no burden more nerve-wracking than this. What had initially been a mix of awe and familiarity had instead swelled into loathing toward Chikawa’s very existence—a presence that now sprawled limitlessly in his dazed awareness—transforming his withered loneliness into something unnervingly loquacious.

Izu had inadvertently ended up starting to write a letter to Chikawa.
At first, he had intended to casually write about recent happenings with an opening like: "I am overwhelmed by your life force—the more I remain alone like this, the more I fear you, and with that fear comes boundless hatred"—but once he began writing, his pent-up emotions gradually surged until he fell into confusion. With only the conclusion spreading starkly clear across the page and no means left to suppress his passion, he started writing anew—stifling his pounding heart—to frankly convey the following meaning.

“I will kill you.
“Rapturously indulging in fantasies of your death at my hands has been my reason for living these past few years.
“You’ll writhe in panic more violently than anyone on earth.
“Even now in my mind’s eye, you thrash about in your most hideous form.
“Soon I shall witness this reality.
“Ha ha.”

Dangling it while holding it with his hands tucked in his sleeves, he went to mail it with an oddly composed, ashen gait.
Though it was the withered tail end of winter, the town lay in a hurried, murky twilight.
At that time, he had in fact given almost no thought to the actual act of killing Chikawa.
He felt profound satisfaction simply by imagining the violent turmoil Chikawa must have experienced upon receiving this letter.

Several days passed.
Needless to say, no reply came.
Then Izu suddenly began to feel anxious.
He had begun to seriously doubt the letter’s effectiveness.
When imagining how Chikawa—upon reading it—might have instantly pierced through his inner workings with a pitying sneer before effortlessly dismissing it through that venomous demeanor of his, he felt an irritation so intense it seemed to churn his very entrails into violent disarray.
After battling this fierce anxiety for about a week, he went out one evening with an unconcemed gait and visited Ogasawara.
Dangling his usual hands-tucked-in-sleeves pose while maintaining an air of peculiar composure, he stood sluggishly erect until Ogasawara emerged—first attempting to twist his pallid face into as carefree a smile as possible—before declaring: “I’m going to kill Chikawa this time.”

“Yeah, I’d already heard that from Chikawa—”

Ogasawara muttered dismissively as if stifling a yawn, his entire demeanor steeped in languor. After gazing elsewhere with vacant absorption for some time, he finally turned his head—now with even more unbearable weariness—and added, “Just last night while drinking with Chikawa... he did call you a pitiful mental wreck......”
Then he limply leaned his long-waisted torso against the chair, jerked his head back abruptly, and stared fixedly at the ceiling as though petrified.
Izu felt a dizzying surge of defiance toward Ogasawara’s attitude that had wholly dismissed his resolve.
“I can see that bastard writhing like it’s right here in my hands.
“I’ll strangle his neck proper—watch him spew blood and thrash about hideously...”

Izu began to say that much when he instantly struck a thrashing pose himself, but unable to endure his extraordinary excitement, burst into laughter.
That laughter was but a hollow sound resembling futile clattering earth; with each reverberation, Izu felt a pain crushing his solar plexus, yet he remained intoxicated by a pleasure as though he had already exacted his revenge.
When his laughter subsided and he suddenly became aware, Ogasawara remained as before—head tilted back against the chair with a heavy thud, gaze fixed on the ceiling—wearing an expression of utter boredom and bitterness as he vacantly stared into nothingness.

“Well...”
Suddenly Ogasawara stood up with utter indifference; stretching his back at length in a manner that dismissed Izu’s very presence, he muttered, “Well... I suppose I should head over to Chikawa’s place...” With that, he changed into Western clothes and emerged ready.
“We’re supposed to drink again tonight.”
Having said that, he briskly descended to the entryway.
Izu followed behind Ogasawara in a profoundly unsatisfied, dark wretchedness, but upon stepping outside was suddenly struck by a murky tightness in his chest and crouched by the gutter to vomit up white bitter liquid.
He writhed in agony for several minutes.
Ogasawara naturally offered no care.
Without so much as turning around, he gazed fixedly at the desolate winter sky at dusk with a face steeped in utmost melancholy.
When he sensed Izu finally beginning to rise, he began walking off leisurely with long strides, still not turning to confirm. When Izu—pallid face grimacing—finally caught up, he suddenly remarked with coldness like dripping water: “Are you coming too?”
“No.”
Izu shook his head heavily.
“Today my chest feels too tight to drink.”
“Is that so?”
Ogasawara nodded scornfully. “Is that so? Well then, goodbye.”

The place was not yet where they were to part, but Izu instinctively slowed his pace upon hearing this. He felt a void beyond remedy. Exhausted beyond measure, Izu vacantly watched Ogasawara's retreating figure until suddenly regaining awareness—realizing with bewilderment that he was seeing off that cold-hearted man with an odd sense of affinity. He sought to convince himself that Ogasawara was a beloved conspirator. As for why, Izu himself seemed strangely averse to deep inquiry—ultimately wanting to believe that Ogasawara too desired Chikawa's death and conspired to make him commit the murder. Yet Izu's conjecture was naturally unreliable. Anyone would find comfort in imagining one ally rather than confronting two enemies. Sensing this inclination within himself now, and unwilling to probe too deeply lest he expose his true nature, Izu deliberately left everything nebulous—regardless, he felt Ogasawara was his cherished comrade. With exaggerated nods as though fully digesting Ogasawara's implications, he carved a small wrinkle of satisfaction into his nose and returned home buoyantly.

Ogasawara walked immersed in twilight with his characteristically quiet gait, until eventually he could thoroughly imagine every psychological development that had arisen in Izu's mind.
He discerned the cruel subconscious within himself that sought to drive Chikawa and Izu's conflict toward a bloody conclusion through almost demonic underhandedness.
Yet he felt neither surprise nor alarm.
He experienced violent anguish as though walking alone through an eternally obliterated monochromatic night.
All twists and turns appeared veiled in endless dusk, with nothing foreseeable that might disrupt the unceasing tedium.
With calm resolve, he acknowledged that he might indeed be a demon, and couldn't help but feel boundless weariness.

Mayu quite disliked Izu.
That same Izu came up to Mayu’s house one bright daytime and stood there with his hands tucked in his sleeves and an expressionless face when suddenly he pulled out his hands and began flailing them unsteadily as he clung persistently to her; as she wondered what he was doing, he first moved his hands from her neck down to her chest, fumbled around for a while before finally seizing her collar and beginning to strangle her.
Mayu was startled.
However, repelling the feeble Izu in one motion, she grabbed his neck instead and began strangling him without allowing any protest.
Izu flailed wildly and nearly lost consciousness.
Even after Mayu released him in dismay at the abruptness, he remained lying on his back for a while, writhing alone as if still being strangled. Eventually managing to rise, he slowly turned around and crawled to the center of the tatami room before vomiting up a whitish fluid.
Appearing to be in considerable distress, he remained motionless in a dog-like posture for several minutes, his face drenched in tears.

“What a spineless coward you are! Since you couldn’t kill Chikawa, you decided to kill me instead? Blue gourd!”

Mayu sneered after shouting that.

Izu did not respond.
He seemed too distressed to even respond; still on all fours, he lifted only his head and kept retching dejectedly.

“I’ll kill everyone eventually.”

After leaving these words, Izu staggered toward the doorway with such difficulty that walking itself seemed a struggle, but this time appeared unable to find his geta; after several minutes of fumbling about, he finally departed.
The next morning upon noticing, she realized he had thrown away one each of Mayu’s zori sandals and shoes into the gutter before leaving.

Then, the next day at high noon, Izu came staggering back again.
He entered silently and gazed fixedly at Mayu, but this time feigning distraction as if about to leave somewhere, he lurched closer, groping for her neck until finally seizing her collar to begin strangling.
And then he licked Mayu’s cheek.
Mayu violently shoved him away.
Mayu grew furious.
Flipping the feeble Izu onto his back, she strangled him again until he neared unconsciousness.
Izu thrashed his limbs and foamed white bubbles from his mouth, but after Mayu released her grip, he gasped for air awhile before slowly crawling on all fours and vomiting up white fluid in the center of the room.

That day, he did not try to leave immediately.
He grew increasingly pale, making gestures as if licking the air while seemingly suppressing chest tightness, then abruptly rose to cling to Mayu's waist before heavily collapsing forward of his own accord, ending up pinned beneath her.
Despite being nearly unconscious and convulsing all over his body—clinging like a man on death's threshold—he still occasionally jabbed his fist dreamily at Mayu’s solar plexus.
Mayu shook him off and stood up.
Now she understood Izu’s grotesque sexual compulsion.
Mayu looked down at Izu lying motionless with closed eyes as if unconscious, intently monitoring his breathing awhile before quietly extending her plump milky arms as though concealing them, then pressing down on his neck to strangle him forcefully.
Watching Izu’s grotesque thrashing—blowing white bubbles, limbs flailing with spent strength yet writhing desperately—Mayu felt a prickling tension swell through her ample bosom and experienced a spring-like flush of exhilarated satisfaction.

One day, Madam Kotō heard from Ogasawara about the complications between Izu and Chikawa and engaged in lighthearted conversation. After seeing Ogasawara off however, she suddenly felt a dizzying relief that made her shoulders slump.

Wearing a troubled expression, Madam Kotō returned to her residence while dazedly observing confusion flickering like ripples across water. She sank into an armchair and wondered what exactly had kept her so tense until now.

Come to think of it—she realized with startling clarity—she desired Chikawa’s death. The thought struck her as absurdly obvious.

Truly, its self-evidence felt almost excessive.

Of course—since wanting at least a clean break from Chikawa meant death alone could provide decisive resolution—she undeniably wished for his demise…… Yet even as this terrifying realization crystallized, Madam found herself remarkably unperturbed—so much so she nearly laughed at her own composure.

Rather than panic, an uncanny serenity enveloped her like warm water.

As if gazing at summer clouds through parted eyelids, she conjured Ogasawara’s face across her entire visual field.

Madam turned toward this mental image and smiled coquettishly—a silent declaration that yes, they shared identical desires beneath their polite façades.

That man had departed with flawless composure earlier—no trace of emotion staining his conversational tone—but she knew better now didn’t she? He too secretly craved Chikawa’s extinction—this certainty made her head swim deliciously.

If true…… If true…… Then he must surely harbor feelings for her too……

Within tension cold enough to burn—a tension stretched wire-taut—countless smiles bloomed simultaneously like hothouse flowers before dissolving into silent tears that traced porcelain cheeks.

Ogasawara, who had taken his leave from Madam Kotō’s residence, also momentarily felt a sense of relief that made his entire body go slack; yet as he walked on with quiet footsteps for a while, he conjured up with vivid clarity the aforementioned psychological state that Madam Kotō must have fallen into.
And he felt a calm satisfaction like a con artist who had accomplished an elaborate scheme, but upon suddenly coming back to himself, he hurriedly tried to sweep away all the images in his mind with bitter resolve.
He suddenly came to hate himself.
He could no longer bear being his own hindrance.
It was as though his own bothersome self were clogging up the space like some irritating stranger, leaving him disgustingly sick of it all.
When he thought about it, this self of his was utterly haphazard—doing nothing but unintended things. When meeting Izu, he would subtly imply that he too harbored hatred for Chikawa; when encountering Madam Kotō, he would suggest that he earnestly believed in her devotion. Yet in reality, while these sentiments existed in part within him, he never held them with single-minded conviction.
Far from it—when it came to things he had been single-mindedly convinced of, there was in truth not a single one. Upon reflection, this applied not merely to the present but to his entire past life as well; never had there been a single instance where this self of his had maintained such single-minded conviction.
If human existence’s semblance of existence lies solely in what one seeks, then he should be easily deemed nonexistent—though not from such logic—but in any case, Ogasawara felt a rootless perplexion as if he lacked any self.
And yet, like mist—formless and diffuse—there existed an oddly tenacious persistence, which felt exasperatingly verbose and left him unbearably vexed.
Anyway, he thought he’d have a drink.

Chikawa began feeling somehow guilty toward Ogasawara. It was an odd thing—though there were reasons to resent him, there should have been none to feel guilty—yet Chikawa somehow felt bad toward Ogasawara. If Ogasawara were to sever their friendship, an exaggerated fear surged with visceral urgency—the conviction that there would be no world left for him to inhabit. Unless he kept seeing Ogasawara's face at all times, anxiety and desolation overwhelmed him with such intensity that he felt he might vanish at any moment. Yet he found himself both afraid to meet him and feeling it strange besides, so his feet wouldn’t carry him forward. One evening, he set out intending to visit Ogasawara but lost his nerve along the way; suddenly and unexpectedly finding himself visiting Madam Kotō—whom he had even less desire to see—only to discover she was unfortunately out. After wandering about various places, he found that returning home now would only heighten an unmanageable sense of desolation. When he finally steeled his resolve to visit Ogasawara, the weight of this decision tormented him with unbearable, futile irritation, and he walked the night path as if running. Ogasawara’s residence was a hushed apartment on a hill, and as the surrounding area had long since fallen into slumber, when he appeared at that street corner and reached beneath the streetlight, an absurd loneliness welled up within him—as if he were a gecko clinging to a clouded light. From there, looking up, he discerned that Ogasawara was home from the light shining in his third-floor room. Yet it also seemed that the absent Madam Kotō might be somewhere nearby if he let his guard down—so a guilty turmoil of emotions churned within him, as if he were wronging both of them—and he stood vacantly beneath the streetlight. But then an anxiety arose: in illuminated areas, someone might spot his face by chance and cause trouble, so this time he approached a shadowed earthen wall. As he stood vacantly in the darkness gazing at the faint glow spilling from a third-floor window, suddenly something quiet like water came flowing in—welling up with an earnest heart yearning for human connection until it overflowed—and he somehow grew utterly bewildered; taking two or three steps in this state, he gently pushed open the stone entranceway chillingly illuminated by a small gate lamp and slipped his body inside. The footsteps echoing through the stone corridor pierced sharply into his temples; their very stillness needling his nerves—intermittent light from some indeterminate source on the stairway washed over his face until gradually his consciousness began to recede.

He knocked on the room's door and said, “Are you there?...”—yet despite having grown so anxious his chest throbbed, the instant no reply came from within, he had already pushed the door open.
An awkward light washed dully over Chikawa's face, but when he opened his eyes wide and peered into the room, Ogasawara—who had been working alone at his desk—turned around vacantly.

Suddenly, Chikawa became dazed.
As he entered the room, tears suddenly welled up.
They were tears like an impossible mass, all at once clogging his throat as though his body might collapse.

"What a fool I am... I disgust even myself......"
When his throat cleared, Chikawa let out a dejected sigh.
He gradually settled down.
Then, as if he himself had dissolved into those tears, he began feeling his body turn transparent.

“I don’t understand my own actions at all, and sometimes what I think is myself suddenly vanishes… It makes me feel truly helplessly lonely…”

Ogasawara nodded quietly and looked down with a melancholy expression, but after momentarily raising his eyes to gaze vacantly at Chikawa’s face, he listlessly lowered his head again and began moving his fingers languidly over his folded knees, muttering as if to himself:

“In our complex lives, the most artificial things turn out to be instinct.”
“In this tangled existence of ours, there is nothing as impoverished as what we criticize in ourselves; a hundred introspections amount to naught before a single act.”
“The progress of culture has merely bestowed upon human spiritual life an inscrutable mystery; ultimately, it has only taught culture its own defeat.”
“Ultimately, humans as beings can hardly escape remaining fundamentally animalistic in their existence.”
“Fundamentally, we who have been poisoned by culture make a fundamental error in trying to find ourselves within the delicate fabric of cultured life—rather, we should have grown by critiquing culture from our animalistic wildness, trampling it mercilessly while cultivating only what suits our nature...”

Ogasawara kept lowering his face or turning away as he muttered such things in a sleepy, monotonous tone, whereupon Chikawa too vacantly looked downward, nodding at each point for no reason, feigning an oddly devout air of listening.
In truth, he was terribly bored, but nevertheless, simply sitting face-to-face with Ogasawara gave him a sense of peace.

Ogasawara had escorted Chikawa home and, with a cold expression that showed none of that familiar emotion, said, “You’re in a bad season now.
When spring comes and your health improves, things will start going better for everyone.
Be sure to take good care of your body,” he said and quietly left.
Chikawa once again grew dazed, listening to Ogasawara’s words like a child, but when he entered his own room and realized he had just concluded a peaceful meeting with Ogasawara, he felt a serene emptiness.
Chikawa stood for a long time in the dimly, dully glowing late-night room while intoxicated by gentle melancholy.

One day when Chikawa went to visit Mayu, she was in remarkably high spirits and welcomed him warmly, but

“Mr. Ogasawara is such a terrible person—”

“Why…”
Chikawa was flustered.

Mayu suddenly hurled a guffaw at Chikawa’s cheek,

“Are you angry?”
“Feeling sore?”
“Hahaha.”
“Mr. Ogasawara and Madam Kotō are such terrible people...”

Chikawa made a crumpled, tear-streaked face that seemed on the verge of collapse, but suddenly erupted into a terrifying display of rage,

“You idiot! How could someone like you understand a man’s heart? These things mean nothing between men. Meddling so insolently—if I called you this grinning fool of a bizarre woman poet……”

“Sorry! Sorry!” Mayu suddenly sank her teeth into Chikawa’s neck and smothered his face with kisses.

“Forgive me, hmm? I didn’t mean it nastily. Be a dear and forgive me?...”

Bringing her face close to his and peering into Chikawa’s eyes, she said, “Little one...”

Mayu smiled enchantingly and buried her face in Chikawa’s chest.

The day after parting with Chikawa, Mayu assumed an overly solemn expression and held her hands over the brazier for a while, then took out stationery and wrote the following letter addressed to Ogasawara.

"You make me so lonely—you know full well, yet why won’t you come? You don’t even remember me anymore, do you? I want to see Rune’s melancholy face once more—but you’ll come, won’t you? Tormenting me like this—"

Mayu smirked as she dropped the letter into the postbox, then remained in viciously high spirits, taking a brief stroll through the sunlit streets before returning.

Chikawa would occasionally remember Izu, and each time he would fly into an inexplicable rage. At such times, he became so indiscriminately irritated—as if Izu stood right before his eyes—that he tried to verbally tear into him relentlessly in his mind, though the frustration defied all description. One morning after a long absence, Izu suddenly came visiting Chikawa, who broke into a delighted expression before even having time to be surprised. Chikawa hurriedly rushed out and—given all that had transpired—smirked awkwardly with an embarrassed air as he said, “Well, come in,” but Izu remained utterly expressionless, standing silent while swinging his hands tucked in sleeves as if he’d mistaken the address. Then suddenly, without so much as a greeting or any change in demeanor, he turned around and began walking back, flapping his empty sleeves all the while. Chikawa instantly flew into a rage and, still barefoot, leapt down from the entranceway, grabbing Izu by the scruff of his neck and wrenching his face around.

“Hey—what’s your game showing up here?”
“Quit that pretentious act.”
“If you miss your friend, just say so! If you want your existence acknowledged, drop the theatrics!”
“You bastard! No cold-blooded creature’s less deserving of friendship than you!”
“You snake!”
“What’s this about killing me—”

“I’ll kill you soon…”
Izu attempted composure with a drained expression. “Can’t do it now—no strength left.”
“This time I’ll get strychnine from a doctor friend…”
His attempted laughter cracked into hollow resonance as he eerily shook his emaciated shoulders.
After a pause, he sneered—

“You don’t have the power to kill Ogasawara either, do you?”

"Oh!" Chikawa thought.
He suddenly zoned out.
Then a river of rage came surging through him while simultaneously making him want to wail aloud, but at that moment reading an awkwardly blanched expression on Izu's face, he felt the loneliness shared by those with mutual afflictions.
An unexpected quiet introspection spread through him like cold seeping from nowhere, leaving him strangely somber enough to astonish himself.
"That differs somewhat from your situation."
"We seem to overthink all manner of superfluous things."
"Of course I want to kill Ogasawara in a certain sense—and if pushed to extremes, I still have the power to kill people even now."
"But merely 'thinking' amounts to nothing in real human life."
"There may be no truth except through killing someone or dying yourself, but..."

Chikawa had been muttering in a stuttering rapid-fire manner—his face clenched as if angry, as though insisting he was revealing truth—but suddenly cut off his words. He had abruptly found speaking tiresome, and besides, a simple solution had occurred to him. No sooner had he stopped speaking than Chikawa suddenly assumed a warrior’s stance toward Izu. From the momentum of that motion, he began crying like a child. Chikawa pinned Izu down. While sobbing, he ground Izu’s head against the stone pavement, cursing vilely and striking him. Izu kept snickering slyly as he was beaten, though clearly in pain—occasionally puffing air through his lips. This time determined to prevent Izu’s laughter, Chikawa obsessively twisted his cheeks until finally releasing him and standing up. Still unsatisfied, he kicked him several times before storming off toward the main street instead of returning home, dashing toward the deserted part of town. Even while running he kept cursing Izu relentlessly, but upon rounding the street corner, sudden relief overwhelmed him—tears gushed forth until his legs buckled. He finally clung to a telephone pole, “What should I do? What am I supposed to do? I don’t want to live anymore,” he gasped, throat constricting as he desperately pounded his chest.

Izu somehow managed to get up, spent some time retching in agony, then—as if suddenly remembering something—twisted his face into a smile. Without bothering to fix his disheveled clothes, he abruptly tucked his hands into his sleeves and ambled away, swaying unsteadily.

On the evening of the third day after that letter, Ogasawara came to visit Mayu.
The next day when they parted, they made plans to meet again even as they said goodbye. Yet Mayu still promptly took out stationery, wrote a letter nearly identical to the previous one, and went to mail it with a smirk.
On the promised day, Ogasawara came.
They repeated this several times.
When Mayu saw Ogasawara approaching—his melancholy face forced into a smile—she felt an awkward flutter of emotion, yet greeted him with exaggerated cheerfulness more boisterous than she showed anyone else.
For some reason, while laughing and chatting alone before Ogasawara’s gravely troubled expression, Mayu would suddenly feel like making a mischievous face—even sticking out her tongue—and since she had no desire to hide it, she would do so in the end. Yet Ogasawara paid no particular heed, maintaining his melancholy expression while occasionally making efforts to smile or speak himself.
At such times, Mayu would abruptly recall Madame Kotō’s nervous face.
Confronting Ogasawara’s solemn countenance head-on—with no alternative but to irritably mirror his own grave expression—Madame Kotō’s demeanor must be quite a spectacle to witness, Mayu thought.
Mayu sometimes felt like giggling and impulsively rubbed her cheek against Ogasawara’s.

Ogasawara suddenly left Tokyo.
Ogasawara wearied of intimacy.
He decayed from the complex entanglements inherent in intimacy.
Having exhausted the patience to keep watching his dear ones, he embraced a vast sorrow that yearned endlessly for their company even as it hastened to bid them farewell, and cherishing it, boarded the train.
When he came to a seaside village where he knew no one and gazed at the sea, he felt relieved.
The small heart that found solace in nothing felt itself merging into the hazy monotony of the sea as though dissolving, experiencing a refreshing vertigo.
Tears that had been sealed at the depths of long exhaustion—stagnant and festering, now likely to emit a foul odor—he finally felt trickling down his cheek.
Every day he would lie on the shore, endlessly playing with shells or mindlessly gripping sand, finding peaceful respite in sweet melancholy.

One rainy noon, he wrote to Madame Kotō with tidings of the sea.
With the single-minded homesickness of a quietly rain-filled sea, he wrote inviting her to visit if she felt inclined, mailed it, and knew without doubt that Madame Kotō would come.

A boredom resembling prolonged fatigue—like a room that let no light in—overflowed boundlessly even from the rain-drenched sea.

It wasn’t that he had lost the will to live, nor had he given any real thought to living or dying at that moment—yet that night he took a large dose of sleeping pills.
He had once thought suicides were often those who most wanted to live, but now it seemed someone like himself was particularly one of them.
After taking the pills he first flew into such a violent rage that he grew dazed, forced bitter smiles for no reason, at times burst into tears, and began frantically thinking of various matters—yet suicides required no particular courage; however one considered it this wasn’t something to put on airs about—but ultimately he couldn’t conclude suicides were necessarily fools.
In any case it was all futile thinking.

Ogasawara recalled with such distant affection—so profound it nearly made him smile—the many moments with Mayu, Madame Kotō, and their caresses. Yet even then, that stubborn loneliness yearning to bid farewell to all he held dear seemed to have persisted.
In any case, Ogasawara died.

The next day, removed from the futon, he lay like a log.

More than a month had passed since then, but Chikawa had not encountered Izu.
Izu, affecting a misanthropy colder than death itself, attended neither the scene of Ogasawara’s suicide nor the funeral—and thus met no one.
Every time Chikawa remembered Izu, fury seized him; yet one day he abruptly resolved to visit him.
He intended to meet Izu and declare:
“The three of us are all fools.
“We carve out these cramped worlds—like rancid scraps—from the vast living world and cling to them as sacred relics. What’s the use of honing our nerves in tiny cages, raging about living or dying?
“It’s no different from hurling ourselves into prison.
“Beyond lies a world stretching boundless.
“You and I have ended up here by overacknowledging each other’s strength until it strangled us. We must stop snarling our nerves—lean on each other plainly instead—and live more soundly, joyfully, in this vital world—”

Chikawa could vividly imagine his own pompous demeanor when broaching the subject in various ways as he walked along—worked up with determination. Yet the moment he saw Izu’s face, he found himself seized by nothing but unexpected thoughts. After ranting absurdly about entirely unrelated matters, he spat out, “I’ll never see a Snake like you again!”—then savagely beat and kicked him before finally staggering back, weeping and disheveled.

Now the haggard Dosagem ran off to the mountain hot spring inn as if snatching Mayu away.
He’d hurriedly plunge into the hot spring; start a game of Go with the innkeeper only to shoulder skis and wander out into the snowfield mid-thought; after all this frantic, irritable pacing about, when night fell he’d shrivel up as if about to vanish in disappointment.
Mayu paid no mind whatsoever to Chikawa, carrying herself with the composure of someone who had come entirely of her own volition. She would stride down the quiet corridor—devoid of any other guests—to take baths or learn skiing; yet whenever their eyes met, she would typically smirk while leisurely smoking a cigarette, then burst into laughter as though thoroughly amused.
To this Mayu, Chikawa would start complaining or getting angry at every little thing.

One night, Mayu alternated between peering into the mirror to fix her makeup and gazing at her own face with rapt absorption when she suddenly smirked and turned toward Chikawa, who sat dejectedly.

“I’ve really forgotten Mr. Ogasawara’s face now.
“I just can’t recall…”

With a cheerful voice she shouted this and laughed uproariously.

Chikawa suddenly turned pale, then after a moment staggered his torso as if recalling something. Now straining with indignation, he yelled complaints—"There's no one as cold-hearted and faithless as you!"—until finally clinging to Mayu and breaking into whimpering sobs,

"Just don't forget me.
"I've become such a pitiful wretch that even when I touch my own proper body, I can't comprehend it as something real.
"Just don't forget this wretched me—please, I'm begging you......"

Raising a sorrowful voice, quivering his body like one in death throes, he pleaded desperately.
Mayu embraced Chikawa like a mother would and burst into shrill laughter, but—

“It’s fine, it’s fine.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“I could never forget your face.”
“Because it’s so strange, you know…”

Mayu burst into another roar of laughter, then tightened her embrace around Chikawa—who could only offer muffled nods within her arms—before gently rubbing her cheek against his and wiping away his filthy tears.

(1933 [Showa 8], Bungei Shunju vol. 2)