Pathway to Japanese Literature

I On the grounds, rugby players were practicing their drills. They wore black uniforms with yellow stripes. It somehow gave off a bee-like impression. While passing the ball one after another, about ten of them lined up sideways and all at once began running out across the grounds to start passing practice. Then, clustering together, they would at times shift to practicing dribbling. The sun slanted obliquely, sinking over the red building of the former French consulate from the Korean Empire period atop the hill. There was still time before nightfall.

If one climbed a short way up the hill extending from the grounds, there was a small pool that had been built there. When Sōzō had been a student at this junior high school, that spot had surely been a leek field. Returning to the armory after finishing military drills, catching whiffs of gun oil mixed with leather, he would always seem to see slender blue-green leeks growing there. It had now become a pool. It must have been built very recently. It was a small pool measuring twenty-five meters by ten meters. Round stones had been laid all around. The water was not very clear. The course buoys had all been pulled up and lay stretched out on the stones. A junior high school student with a deeply tanned face, much larger than Sōzō, stood alone. He wore swim trunks on top and uniform trousers below. When Sōzō approached, the boy slightly lowered his head.

“Senior?”

“Yes,” answered Sōzō, feeling a slight twinge of embarrassment.

“Since water polo practice has already concluded, you may swim now.” That clumsy manner of speaking, reminiscent of barracks language, suddenly made Sōzō catch a whiff of his own past life at this school. Mumbling a reply, he nevertheless began undoing his jacket buttons. Ashamed of his pallid, emaciated body before that junior high student, he quickly stripped off his clothes and plunged into the water. The water felt lukewarm and proved surprisingly shallow—reaching just high enough for him to stand. I wonder if they can even practice water polo in such shallow standing depth. He meant to voice this thought and looked around for the junior high student who had been there earlier. But the boy was already gone—likely gone to watch the rugby practice instead. Sōzō floated on his back atop the water. He drew a deep breath. The sky stretched blue above him, its corners now tinged with the translucent indigo of approaching evening, where a small sun-yellowed cloud fragment drifted. He exhaled slowly. Lukewarm water splashed about his ears with tickling sounds. Steadily closing his eyes, he still felt his body faintly rattling as if shaken—the lingering sensation of having been jostled daily by trains throughout this past week. On his return journey from Manchuria via Korea, Sōzō had set foot on Keijō’s soil for the first time in eight years.

And so, first and foremost, he had made sure to visit the schoolyard of his junior high school where he had spent four years of his life.

The day before yesterday at noon, the waiting room at Fengtian Station had been unbearably hot. In the sweltering air, silver flies were buzzing annoyingly. Under a peach tree, a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old Russian boy was gazing up at a poster of a Chinese beauty with bangs hanging down. His hair was a beautiful golden color, and the shins visible below his shorts were straight and slender. It was a beauty that somehow evoked homoeroticism. What the Chinese characters written on that poster meant was unclear to both the Russian boy and Sōzō. However, at the very bottom of the paper, MUKDEN was written in large Roman letters. Since even the boy could read that part, he began loudly repeating "Mukden, Mukden" to no one in particular. Then, abruptly turning around when he met Sōzō’s gaze, he hurriedly averted his eyes as if being reproached for his muttering. They were beautiful, beggar-like gray eyes.

Beside Sōzō sat a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl wearing a red one-piece dress and a diaphanous black hat. An apparently wealthy Chinese old man and a middle-aged Russian woman sat side by side on chairs facing Sōzō. Both were similarly corpulent, identically sweating on their nose tips. Suddenly standing up and approaching, the Russian woman asked the girl beside Sōzō for the time in English. The girl wore an expression of perplexity and an oddly vacant smile, yet seemed to grasp the question's meaning. Rather than answering verbally, she showed her wristwatch to the woman. Satisfied, the woman retreated with a "Thank you." When the girl glanced toward Sōzō blushing and tried to offer an awkward smile, he averted his gaze. On the wall hung a slightly soiled notice reading “小心爾的東西” (Mind Your Belongings). Japanese military police with pistol cases periodically peered inside from the entrance.

Suddenly, a little water entered his nose. The bridge of his nose stung sharply. He stood with his feet on the bottom and pinched his nose hard. Then he began swimming again. After completing one lap, he returned to his original spot and floated on his back once more. A bell tolled in the distance. The dormitory's dinner bell seemed to be ringing somewhat early. The small yellow cloud that had been in the sky earlier had vanished. A dragonfly darted swiftly, skimming just above his face.

In Sōzō’s memory, the Fengtian he had passed through just the day before yesterday intermingled with the Fengtian from eight years prior, when he had been a student at this junior high school on a school excursion. In the station’s dining hall, an elderly Japanese monk in a yellow kesa, accompanied by a young acolyte with a freshly shaven bluish-white head, skillfully wielded his knife and fork while eating beefsteak.

Was that from the day before yesterday? Or was it a memory from eight years past? Even contemplating this now felt wearisome to him. He closed his eyes and floated, faintly sensing through closed lids how the evening light - which until moments ago had filtered thinly through acacia leaves at water's edge - now quietly vanished, suddenly plunging everything into a shadow of pale blue.

That school excursion had been nearly their first opportunity as middle school students to be given considerable spending money and act freely away from home. They were excited and frolicked about. At every stop of their journey, there were seniors who, compared to them, constantly sought to demonstrate their slight superiority over them. They took junior boys and wandered through restaurants and bars. Liquor bottles of various shapes with multicolored labels lined dimly lit shelves, before which dangled sausages glowing reddish-black. Beneath them stood a ruddy-faced old man who appeared to be a White Russian émigré—a large pipe thrust into his dark brown beard—wearing a gray coat. Such exotic bar scenes held irresistible allure for Sōzō as a middle school student. How he must have gazed with boyish excitement at the Russian woman who ignored the likes of him while entertaining only the seniors—her thick black false eyelashes, eyeshadow pooling deep green around her eyes, pungent shoulders baring arms dotted with silvery-green body hair. When they stepped outside feeling as if they’d had some adventure, the stars of early summer blazed intensely beautiful to their feverish eyes. Around that time, a sexual prank called “dissection” had become popular among them. Hiding faces flushed with drink and excitement while evading teachers’ eyes, they slipped back to the inn where their mischief erupted into uproar. A boy who feared this even slept on the train’s luggage rack throughout the trip. The teachers could only smile wryly and tacitly allow it. “Let the teachers try it too!” someone said. “Quit it—it’s just gross,” another retorted, and everyone laughed. The evening they departed Fengtian was beautiful. A little before gathering at the station entrance, he entered a back-alley restaurant alone with his closest friend. The beefsteak was utterly delicious—blood oozing steadily down, the cut feeling nearly an inch thick.

When they left the restaurant, outside lay an extremely late dusk. The suburban field spreading out right from the station stood vast and open, while the sky remained bright. The teacher's assembly whistle echoed mournfully through the deserted station square.

II

It seemed someone walking along the pool’s edge had tossed a pebble; a small plop sounded near his feet. As he floated with his arms crossed over his chest, vacantly gazing at the sky, the shadow of a long pole passed through the corner of his vision. When he abruptly turned his head to look, it was a pole vault pole. A tall boy wearing a uniform with torn sleeves at the shoulders was carrying it and walking along the edge of the pool. Following behind him came another boy—bespectacled and short—carrying one disc in each hand as he trailed along. Sōzō remembered how during his fourth year of junior high, he had suddenly—quite uncharacteristically—taken it into his head to become a pole vaulting expert through some chance opportunity, and begun practicing alone. The beauty of the sport’s form must have also been what attracted the capricious him. Due to his aversion to being laughed at by others, he did not attempt to learn from anyone. Alone, he would secretly take out his family’s clothes-drying pole and, seizing moments when no one was around, practice at the nearby elementary school’s playground. Of course, he told neither his friends nor anyone else. After he became able to vault nearly three meters, he thought he would surprise everyone. But in the end, after jabbing bamboo splinters into his palm multiple times, his pole vault ended up stopping at around two meters.

Around that time, he learned to play the harmonica for the first time. When evening came, he would gaze out at the crimson sky from the second-floor window of that colonial new development’s fringes, playing the harmonica while delighting in the cold metallic touch. He was seventeen years old. With the exception of a single black cat, he loved no one, and it seems he was loved by no one. That occurred not long after the Fengtian trip during his fourth year of junior high school.

Sōzō did not know the woman who had borne him. The first stepmother had died near the end of his elementary school years, leaving behind a newborn girl.

In the spring of the year he turned seventeen, the second stepmother came into his life. At first, Sōzō felt both an odd unease and curiosity toward this woman. But soon he began fiercely resenting her Osaka dialect and the ugliness of her features—made more glaring by her attempts at youthful affectation. And because his father now directed toward this new mother smiles he had never once shown to someone like him, Sōzō came to equally despise and loathe that father too. As for his five-year-old half-sister—her face bearing those same ugly features that mirrored his own—he hated her for it. Finally, he arrived at hating and detesting most of all himself—his own repulsive visage. Each feature he cursed daily before the mirror: the nearsighted eyes squinting on the verge of collapse; the small nose low-set with its tip tilting upward as if apologizing; the overlarge mouth protruding beyond that nose; the big yellow teeth jutting like broken palisades. Moreover, across that bluish-black parched face, acne had erupted everywhere. In fits of anger, he would force blood and pus from still-unripe pimples.

One morning, upon hearing his father praise the new mother’s miso soup, Sōzō’s complexion changed. Sōzō knew full well that until now, his father had never cared for miso soup or such things. He felt as if he himself had been humiliated; abruptly setting down his chopsticks, without even drinking his tea, he grabbed his bag and bolted outside. "I won’t speak another word to those household bastards," he resolved. There had never been a time when speaking with his family didn’t leave him feeling either regret or shame afterward, he thought.

When night came, he would sleep holding the large black cat he had kept since elementary school. While listening to the jet-black beast purring in its throat and feeling the soft fur against his neck and jaw, he went to bed each night. Only during these moments could he barely forget the contempt and hatred he harbored toward his own flesh. True to his resolve, he never exchanged words with his family. He contemplated how to punish them for their shamelessness. As one method, he resolved to deliberately worsen his academic performance. Strangely, his school grades alone remained excellent. Father had boasted about this to others. Even this irritated him. He believed Father made him attend school solely for this petty vanity. Moreover, he found it unbearably unpleasant how Father’s features—particularly his ridged nose bridge and stammer—had been inherited by him unchanged. He felt as if his own ugliness were being forcibly displayed before his eyes, finding it intolerable.

However, despite all these oppressive circumstances surrounding him, the youth within Sōzō was gradually sprouting. At times, an uncontrollable explosive force—an impulse to leap about—would fill his entire body. This was not limited to him alone. His friends were all the same. They were at a loss for how to handle the energy overflowing their bodies. That vitality spilled into tremendous mischief and violence. They would suddenly pounce on someone for no reason, gasping for breath as they wrestled them down, or let out abrupt shouts in the classroom to startle new teachers. There was also a boy who twisted off a public telephone receiver and tied a pebble in its place instead. That same boy would sneak into the physics laboratory at night, steal telescopes and films, and distribute them to everyone. When June came, cherries ripened on the school's back mountain. The boys went to pick them during lunch break and returned with purple-stained lips. There was also a boy who used a slingshot to down a sparrow, plucked its feathers himself, had it roasted at the Chinese restaurant next to the school, and came into the classroom while eating it. How he had obtained it was unclear, but one boy brought erotic pictures. The class instantly erupted into commotion. Even during lunch break, none of them went outside. The pictures were passed around from hand to hand. The boys heaved their breaths and swallowed dryly, staring intently without shame at being observed by others. A boy—one with beautiful skin that looked as if coated in translucent wax and dusted with white powder—placed his frog-mouthed purse on the desk, reddened around his eyes, and spoke in a determined tone despite wearing an awkward smile.

“Will you sell it to me?” “I’ve got about three yen here.”

The boy who had brought the pictures, however, only smirked slyly and was in no hurry to agree.

At that time, they feared no teachers except the military instructor nicknamed Wolf—a former second lieutenant. What they feared was nothing but sanctions from seniors—though now there were only five grades. Even Sōzō, who at home had withdrawn tightly into his shell, would naturally assimilate with his surroundings upon coming to school, becoming cheerful like a different person. It was around that time he finally began neglecting his studies. This was also necessary for his plan of “worsening his grades.” He would go to a hollow in the back mountain during lunch breaks with several companions to secretly practice smoking cigarettes. One of them could blow perfect smoke rings with remarkable skill. To them, this seemed something tremendously impressive—as if it were proof this boy was more adult than the other youths.

Around that very time, he came to engage in unnatural sexual acts. Without being taught by anyone, one night after getting into bed, he had stumbled upon it through a mere chance motion. At first he did not know what it was. Yet it was boundless pleasure. Even after later understanding its meaning—even after being assailed without fail by shame and self-loathing whenever he did it—he could not free himself from that temptation. At times he would feel violent urges toward that desire in broad daylight streets. His breath quickened naturally, pulses throbbing violently around every joint. The expression twisting his face as he fought it became ugly and contorted. In such moments the summer sky he gazed up at blazed blue and oily, unbearably dazzling. At the library he pulled out various dictionaries, looking up words with obscene meanings while secretly thrilling to their definitions. He also stood avidly reading illustrated manuals on the subject in used bookstores. This knowledge was not only what he inwardly craved above all else—even a slight grasp of it conferred superiority among them.

Their school had prohibited students from watching movies. Thus violating that ban and going to movie theaters became a point of pride among them. Neglecting their afternoon classes，they often went to the movie theaters. He was，of course，one of them. It was not so much that the movies were interesting as it was that the very awareness of having broken a ban gave them satisfaction.

The school stood on the site of an old Korean palace. The feeling of sneaking out of school by creeping along old castle walls tangled with ivy or gazing up at gaudy-colored billboards under the intense midday summer sun stirred their boyish, faint spirit of adventure. But even more than that, what unbearably stirred his emotions was the lights of the night streets. When night fell and the street lights began to come on, he simply couldn't keep still. He, worrying about the acne on his face, would secretly apply his stepmother’s beauty lotion and then wander out into the streets. It was as though something that made his chest swell seeped into the air. The decorations of the display windows, the advertisement lights, the Korean night stalls—under the glow of the lights, everything appeared beautiful. On such nights, the sweet scent of face powder when passing a young woman would drive the boy Sōzō into boundless fantasies. But even when he met up with friends, given their lack of money, there was ultimately little they could manage to do. The ultimate extravagance was entering a café and all sharing a single bottle of beer. Even that would happen—when an older waitress came near, they would all grow strangely awkward and fall silent.

Recollections gently stirred his mood that had been floating lightly upon the water. He half-opened his eyes to look up at the evening sky spreading directly above. Hadn't the blue skies of his boyhood days possessed a more fragrant luster than this sky he now gazed upon? Hadn't there been a more brilliant, delicate scent lingering in the air back then? The wind blew as if suddenly remembering, occasionally caressing his wet face with pleasant strokes. Sōzō stretched himself out across the water's surface, filled with a bittersweet sensation where travel-wearied listlessness intertwined with emotions resembling homesickness.

As a fourth-year middle school student, he obsessively loved his black cat. He would give what he had chewed to the cat mouth to mouth. His family members had never seen him fall into such pure anxiety and despair as when that black cat had gone missing for about a week. It was already an old cat, and even its once-beautiful jet-black fur had faded, grimy, losing its luster. Moreover, it would often catch colds, sneeze, and snivel. For this reason, all the family members intensely disliked her. That very fact became another reason for him to cherish the cat. When he returned from school, the black cat would always be waiting to greet him at the gate like a dog. When he picked her up, she would turn eyes like plant seeds suspended in translucent agar, orbs resembling crystals veined with vegetation, and plead in a coaxing voice.

One day, as Sōzō ate dinner with the younger sister and maid, Father and the new mother returned from outside. They said they had gone together to see something and eaten dinner on their way back. As he listened, he felt a strange prickling rise within him. Why didn't they take the sister along? he thought abruptly, despite not loving her. He clearly recognized this as jealousy himself—a realization that only stoked his anger. They gave Sōzō a box of broiled eel as a souvenir. This too repelled his feelings without reason. He made a bitter face and took one bite. Then gave the remainder to the cat beneath the table. Suddenly Father stood up silently. Kicking away the cat that purred while eating, he grabbed Sōzō's kimono collar with his left hand and struck his head three-four times rapidly with his right. Then for the first time Father shouted in anger-trembled voice while stammering.

“What do you think you’re doing? I went through the trouble of buying this for you!”

Sōzō remained silent. Father repeated once more. The son forced an ugly, twisted smile. “Once I’ve received something, isn’t how I dispose of it afterward entirely my own business?” Rage seized his father again. Father struck his son’s head so fiercely that his own fist ached. As he kept hitting, a pathological ferocity gradually intensified—even Sōzō, being struck, could perceive it. He, however, did not attempt to defend himself in the slightest. Rather, somewhere within him, there was even a feeling akin to enjoying being struck. He felt more anger at his father having kicked his cat than anything else. Clearly, this had nothing to do with the cat. The new mother stood dumbfounded, having even forgotten to intervene. The aged maid was the same. The cat escaped into the garden, and his younger sister stood trembling with tears in her eyes.

Eventually, his father stopped his hand. And for a while, he stood there dazedly, looking down at Sōzō. He looked exactly as though he had just awoken from a dream. Sōzō deliberately looked up at his father’s face with cold detachment. When confronted with that gaze, Father clearly showed signs of fluster and averted his eyes. Now, his father was utterly the defeated one. The son, for his part, was thinking spitefully. Even now, does Father still intend to say as usual, “Parents scold their children out of love”? Could he still insist he wasn’t striking his child out of defeat to his own emotions?

And then, after considerable time had passed, there finally began to well up gradually within him a pure indignation toward this fact—that before the parent-child relationship, any individual's personhood is disregarded.

This time, the memory bit bitterly into his heart. Suddenly he twisted his body on the water and, keeping his face submerged, began fluttering his legs in an imitation of the crawl stroke. He hadn’t even gone fifteen meters before his breathing gave out. He raised his face, placed his feet on the bottom, and stood up. Then, before his water-fogged glasses—he couldn’t tell when she’d appeared—there materialized a yellow-clad figure that seemed to be a girl. When he wiped the droplets that had collected on the lenses of his glasses and looked closely, a girl in a soiled yellow Korean hanbok stood about six feet from the pool’s edge, watching his ridiculous swimming. She was eleven, maybe twelve. Her hair was braided and tied with a thin red ribbon. Sōzō nearly let slip Kichibee under his breath. Kichibee was a Korean word meaning "girl." The thought that he still remembered a bit of Korean despite everything brought a faint smile to his lips.

At his house too, they had once hired a Korean girl around this age when his younger sister was a baby. At that time, he would call the girl “Kichibee” or “Kannana.” Kannana meant the same as Kichibee. The girl in yellow clothes, finding herself stared at by Sōzō, turned away with a troubled air and called out to him in words he couldn’t understand. Then, from the shade of the trees beyond, a naked boy of about three came toddling out. Above all else, the boy’s extremely protruding belly button provoked his derisive laughter. The girl gave the young boy’s head a light tap, then took his hand and led him away into the distance. The dirty girl’s retreating figure now reminded him of his uncanny first experience.

One evening, Sōzō was walking through the town with a friend. That friend was the beautiful boy who had suggested buying erotic pictures. On the face of the boy, faintly flushed from his bath, a small pimple—as red as if painted—had formed near his lips. It had a perversely erotic beauty.

Sōzō didn’t want to go home. If he returned home, all that awaited him each night—as one who came back late—were his father’s despairingly sorrowful face and his stepmother’s timidly troubled expression. Father had stopped hitting him. All the more, seeing his father’s sorrowful face had become loathsome to him. He wished he could have kept walking forever. The road sloped upward from the edge of the main street, continuing to climb. They were both vaguely aware of what kind of place that road led to. Sōzō suddenly stopped and looked at his friend’s face. His friend also looked back at him. The two smiled without a word. In that instant, a mixture of fear, hesitation, and curiosity surfaced in their eyes. The next instant, they exchanged smiles once more and, without a word, began climbing the slope again. The yukata-clad friend was worrying about the pimple on his face. Still in his uniform, Sōzō was concealing a vermilion-colored compact volume from the Werther Collection in his pocket. That book was Paul et Virginie.

They had known that such a district existed in that direction, but setting foot there was their first time. When they reached the top of the dark slope lined with acacia trees, there already stood rows of such shops brightly lit. Sōzō suddenly felt his heartbeat grow violent. Wanting to show this wasn’t their first time with such an experience—out of mutual pretense—they wordlessly made a rough guess and entered a dark backstreet.

At each gate of low earthen Korean houses stood four or five women painted stark white. They were all Korean. The eaves lights throughout the area all used antiquated blue gas lamps. Under that pallid glow, only the colors of their undergarments—scarlet and emerald and saffron—flickered before his eyes; each individual face remained completely indistinguishable to him.

When the women saw them, they called out in halting Japanese—phrases like “Come inside,” or simply “You,” and occasionally “Such a pretty boy,” all in broken fragments. When Sōzō realized that last remark was meant solely for his companion, even amid his own fluster and panic, he felt a faint sting of resentment. The women finally surged forward and clung tenaciously. Utterly overwhelmed, they froze. His friend—the yukata sleeve now torn—bolted ahead alone. Though lagging behind, Sōzò wrenched free from their grasp and gave chase. His friend must have been truly frantic; he appeared to have sprinted far beyond reach. The labyrinthine alleys disoriented Sōzò. But upon reaching a stretch where eaves-lights momentarily ceased, he thought himself safe. Yet rounding one corner brought an unexpected sight: another low earthen gate lit by a pallid gas lamp. Beneath it stood a single woman—this time alone. Arriving there through some impulse, Sōzò abruptly laughed. A miscalculation. The woman smiled back. She clomped forward decisively, seized him with small strong hands, and repeated in Japanese through laughter: “Let’s go.” He reflexively slapped her grip away. Though she swayed weakly from the blow—surprisingly frail—her clutch on his uniform jacket held firm. Sōzò shoved her violently back again. Fabric ripped with a shrill tear.

Two or three buttons from his jacket rolled onto the dirt. From the momentum, the girl released her grip in surprise, and in that instant, assumed a womanly expression as if pleading for forgiveness. But this time, she immediately hurried to pick up the buttons. “Return the buttons,” he said, extending his hand. The girl laughed happily and shook her head. “Give them back,” he said vehemently once more. The girl laughed again, showing the buttons while pointing to the house behind her, and said in awkward tones. “Come on in.”

Sōzō glared at the girl for a while. The girl made a gesture as if to enter the house. He was truly angry. “I don’t want it! Such trash! Do what you like!”

He said that and, turning his back, started walking. And without so much as turning around, the girl hurried off after her friends.

His friend stood waiting where the alleyway curved once. Side by side they began descending the lonely slope they had climbed earlier. They kept walking almost without speaking, each ashamed the other had witnessed their panic. When they had gone barely half a block, rapid clattering footsteps sounded behind. Sōzō turned. Unexpectedly, it was the girl from before. She drew near, large eyes fixed unwaveringly on Sōzō’s face. “Button,” she said. Then opening her small palm to show three buttons before him: “Kommenasai.” Her breathing came ragged—she must have run.

It was midway up the slope where the acacia trees thinned out slightly, and a dim streetlamp stood.

This time, he was finally able to look at her calmly.

The girl was petite. She must still be a child, he thought. Her penciled eyebrows were faint, her nose faint, her lips faint, her ears small and fleshless, but her large round eyes—uncharacteristic of Koreans—gave her face a showy appearance. Her underskirt was pale crimson, tied in a large bow near her right hip. From sleeves of a cheap-looking jacket that glinted garishly emerged delicate small hands. To hand over the buttons, the girl reached for Sōzō’s hand. He reached out his hand. The girl placed the buttons and let her hand be gripped in his. It was a soft, cold, slightly damp sensation. Maintaining her posture, the girl stared straight up into Sōzō’s eyes and spoke.

“Please.” There was not the slightest hint of coquetry in her demeanor—merely the attitude of someone making an ordinary request. Sōzō felt a strange confusion blossom within him, distinct from what he’d experienced earlier. He tightened his grip around the small, soft hand still nestled in his own and said, “Goodbye.” “Goodbye? No!” The girl reflexively tightened her hold on his hand, tilting her head to gaze up at him through dark eyes. For the first time, something coquettish flickered across her expression. Sōzō shook his head and repeated, “Goodbye.” Shoving the retrieved buttons into his trouser pocket, he strode eighteen meters toward where his friend waited ahead. When they began descending the slope side by side, the friend—having regained his usual composure—forcefully slapped Sōzō’s back and laughed with deliberate femininity.

“You’re quite the smooth operator.” “Quite skilled.” “You are.” He did so and, showing his own frayed sleeve, laughed again with amusement. After walking some thirty paces and looking back, he could still see the girl standing beneath that streetlamp—now small in the distance. After descending the slope and reaching the main street of the Naichijin district, his friend announced he was going home.

“You’re going home now too, aren’t you?” “Yeah,” Sōzō answered.

After parting with his friend, however, he did not return home. He took out his wallet from his inner pocket, checked its contents, then put it away again. Then, to calm his excitement and palpitations, he began climbing back up the slope he had just descended, taking deliberately large strides.

The room was a low-ceilinged ondol chamber measuring three tatami mats. Dark brown oilpaper covered the entire floor. A small square window facing the courtyard stood open, its paper screen replaced by a blue bamboo blind. No decorations adorned the space. Bedding lay piled in one corner beside a lacquered dressing table with peeling vermilion paint. A gaudy mirror framed in garish yellow, red and green—new in its vulgarity alone—hung above it. This crude ornamentation epitomized Korean taste. Beside the mirror leaned a Japanese doll with straight-cut bangs. This constituted the room's sole decoration. The girl led him inside before flopping onto the hard floor with knees splayed like a kite's wings, peering into the mirror to apply lip rouge. She then turned and barked something in Korean while making an impatient sitting gesture at Sōzō. The ondol's unyielding clay surface offered no cushion. He retreated against oilpaper-lined walls into an awkward squat. "How much?" he demanded in broken Korean—one of his few acquired phrases. "It not matter price," she answered in jagged Japanese before adding after deliberation: "Cheap." Her fragile frame and delicate features clashed grotesquely with these crude phrases—a tender-faced child unwittingly parroting brothel slang. Though fractured language could sometimes charm, her mechanical repetition of men's vulgarities created dissonance bordering on farce.

She stood up and began laying out the futon. She still seemed to fear that he might leave. He asked whether he was the only customer tonight. “I’m not alone. Many,” the girl answered. That, it seemed, was not the reply he had sought—rather, it appeared to mean there were still other girls from her establishment present in this house. He gave up and stopped asking questions. When she finished laying out the futon, the girl looked up at him with questioning eyes. He struggled to convey his intentions. He had merely come to see this sort of place. So he would sleep as he pleased, and she should sleep as she pleased. He tried to explain this meaning, mixing the Korean he knew with Japanese as he spoke. However, it ultimately proved futile. Confronted by a guest earnestly spouting incomprehensible words, the girl found herself utterly bewildered. In the end, he pointed to the futon and said.

“Anyway, you go to sleep.”

Finally, she seemed to understand at least that much. She did exactly as told—precisely as instructed—lying down on the futon without even removing her kimono, plopping onto it with a thud. He turned his back to it, sat beneath the dim electric lamp in the room’s corner, and took out *Paul et Virginie* from his pocket. The eaves light outside was gas, yet the indoor lighting was electric. He took off his jacket and attempted to read further into that sad love story. His focus scattered; even after reading the same passage several times, he could scarcely grasp its meaning. Even so, he kept up the pretense of reading. A cool night breeze came flowing in from outside the blind. After a while, the girl rustled and got up. He put on an oblivious face and continued pretending to read the book. The girl came beside him and sat down. He was still feigning ignorance. After a while, the girl muttered, “Red book,” as if to herself. Sōzō raised his face and looked at the girl for the first time. The girl wore an expression of idle bewilderment. “You go to sleep,” he said again, pointing to the futon. The girl made an increasingly troubled expression that resembled a tearful smile. For her, the customer’s feelings were simply beyond comprehension. The girl tilted her head to the side with a vacant, utterly perplexed smile plastered on her face, peering at him as if gauging whether she ought to fawn over him or not. “Go to sleep,” he said again, this time in a slightly sharper tone.

She recoiled as if frightened. When he was in a bad mood, the look in his black cat’s eyes as it tried to ingratiate itself resembled the girl’s current expression. Suddenly he took out his wallet from his jacket’s inner pocket, extracted four fifty-sen silver coins, and stacked them on her mirror stand. She, looking even more frightened, glanced between Sōzō and the silver coins but did not reach out. He suddenly felt sorry for the girl and spoke in a gentle tone.

“It’s fine. I’m not angry.” “Just take the coins and you go to sleep.”

The girl still wore a puzzled expression. As he watched this, his irritation began to swell once more, so he ignored her and began reading *Paul et Virginie*. But he still couldn't read it. He kept going over the same passage again and again. Amidst this repetition, the girl stood up and—this time—properly arranged herself before slipping into the futon.

The wind passing over the Pool seemed to have gradually grown colder. Sōzō, who was standing with half his body out of the water, sneezed once and thought he really ought to get out now. Deliberately avoiding the iron ladder, when he tried to hoist himself up onto the edge of the deck—about two feet above the water—perhaps due to fatigue, his arms strangely refused to muster any strength. When he finally managed to pull himself up, his right hand slipped, scraping his elbow against the corner of the deck. At first, the skin’s surface turned briefly white, then gradually took on a rosy hue until finally a vivid red bead of blood welled up from a single point. It swelled rapidly before his eyes, soon drawing out a thread before a plump drop fell onto the dirt. He thought with detached fascination how beautiful it looked.

While drying his body with a dry towel, he noticed a magpie perched on a pear tree branch directly before his eyes watching him. It was a Korean magpie with a black beak, white chest, and wings shaded purple. For him who had been inland in Japan and not seen this bird for so long, it had truly been how many years since he had last seen one. Sōzō waved his towel in mock pursuit, yet the magpie stubbornly refused to flee. He began walking slowly toward the pear tree. When Sōzō came within about two ken of the tree, the magpie flew off leaving behind a short guttural cry.

Sōzō couldn't understand how that first adventure—or perhaps the aborted attempt—had leaked out.

About three days later during lunch break, two fifth-year students forcibly took Sōzō to the back hill. Both were relatively hardline students considered upholders of justice. They all had large builds and formidable physical strength. Sōzō had no choice but to follow them. Behind the school lay the ruins of an old palace. Beneath the high roof with peeling yellow paint, a plaque inscribed "Chongjeongjeon" faced frontally. Along the roof's peak stood tiles shaped like phoenixes, lions, and other bizarre forms. Inside were always placed the school's broken chairs and desks. Ascending old stone stairs adorned with dragon patterns, the senior students led Sōzō behind Chongjeongjeon Hall. A grassy stench suddenly assaulted his nostrils. Summer weeds grew so thick and black they hid the stone wall. The June sun filtering through leafed-out cherry trees blazed down upon it.

“If you think the school can tolerate this, don’t get too cocky,” said one of the fifth-year students to him. The other said nothing. Sōzō offered no explanation either. He was clearly gripped by terror. He told himself it was just a beating and tried to force calmness. Yet he felt his pulse quicken and his face grow pale. Without averting his gaze, he kept staring hard at one of them. “Take off your glasses,” said the one he hadn’t been looking at. This was to avoid breaking them during the beating. Sōzō wore thick glasses for his severe nearsightedness. Though thoroughly intimidated, he felt removing them as ordered would be spineless. He remained silent, glaring fixedly at the two seniors. Suddenly, a hand shot out and seized his glasses’ temple. As Sōzō tried to block it, his right cheek was sharply slapped with an open palm, making him drop the glasses. Enraged, he lunged at them wildly. Instantly they threw him onto the grass. When he tried to rise, both piled onto him and beat him senseless. Having administered sufficient punishment, they wordlessly walked away.

Sōzō lay sprawled on the grass and stayed motionless for a while. He felt no pain whatsoever. Teardrops fell from his eyes onto the grass. "I'm a spineless man," he thought. At least not having voluntarily removed his glasses provided slight solace to his self-esteem. Suddenly he fantasized about gaining supernatural powers and mercilessly tormenting those two. In that fantasy, he tormented them thoroughly using sorceries like Son Goku. The fantasy continued for some time. When he snapped out of it, fresh resentment welled up within him. He contemplated how fatally his lack of physical strength compromised his present self. Before that reality, things like academic performance held no value whatsoever. It was unbearably vexing. Moreover, it lay utterly beyond his control. Tears streamed down his cheek once more. The glasses had fallen right before his face. He felt his back grow hot where the sun struck it. From between the stone walls came a lizard—scurrying, scurrying—until it reached his nose tip, then curiously swiveled its tiny pupils while gazing at him. Then it retreated back into the thick grass. With his face pressed into the fierce grass heat and earthy smell, he cried for a long time.......

III

The rugby players had all already left, and the athletic field was deserted. Only the goal—two poles with a crossbar—remained forlornly. The sun had already set, and the black silhouettes of the former French consulate and its forest stood out sharply against the yellow-stained sky. The enclosure separating the outer tram street from the athletic field utilized the old castle walls. The entrance at the far corner of the athletic field, too, was an old Korean palace gate painted in vermilion and yellow. From that gate came Koreans holding long-stemmed pipes in their mouths and carrying water buckets. Inside the gate, a spring welled up, and they would come to draw its water. Several years ago, Sōzō, exhausted from summer military drills, would often scoop up the water there with his hands and drink it.

The color of the sky was gradually shifting to a navy blue tinged with black. At the pool, three junior high students swam in formation. They appeared to be competitive swimmers, each moving with vivid proficiency. Their physiques were truly superb. Their jet-black torsos, their straight-proportioned legs, their muscular shoulders—Sōzō found these things utterly enviable. He stared at his pallid arms and could not escape feeling inferior before them. Just as he had felt years earlier when beaten by seniors—that "submission to flesh" and "contempt for spirit"—he now experienced them anew with piercing clarity.