Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Nakajima Atsushi

I

On the sports ground, rugby players were practicing. They were wearing black uniforms with yellow stripes. It somehow gave off a bee-like impression. Passing the ball one after another, about ten players lined up side by side all at once started running across the field and began passing practice. Then, they clustered together and switched to dribbling drills. The sun slanted diagonally, tilting over the red building of the former French consulate from the Korean era atop the hill. There was still time before dusk.

A short climb up the hill adjoining the sports ground revealed a small pool that had been created there. When Sōzō had been a student at this middle school, that place had indeed been a leek field. After completing military drills, while smelling the mingled odor of gun oil and leather as he headed back toward the armory, he would always seem to see thin blue leeks planted in that spot. That had now become a pool. It must have been created very recently. It was a small pool measuring twenty-five meters by ten meters. All around, round stones had been laid. The water was not very clear. The Chaos buoys had all been taken out and lay stretched out on the stones. A single middle school student with a jet-black face, considerably larger than Sōzō, was standing there. On top, he wore a swimsuit; on the bottom, he had on his uniform trousers. When Sōzō approached, the boy slightly lowered his head.

“Are you an upperclassman?” “Yes,” he answered, feeling slightly embarrassed. “Since water polo practice has already finished, please feel free to swim.” That clumsy, barracks-like speech made Sōzō suddenly catch a whiff of his own past life at this school. Mumbling a reply, he nevertheless began unbuttoning his coat. Ashamed of his own pallid, emaciated body before the middle school student, he quickly stripped off his clothes and plunged into the water. The water felt lukewarm and surprisingly shallow - just deep enough for him to stand upright. Could they really practice water polo in such shallow depth? He thought to say this and looked around for the student who had been standing above, but the boy was already gone - likely having gone to watch the rugby practice. Sōzō floated on his back atop the water. He took a deep breath. The sky was blue, gradually taking on the translucent indigo of evening, with a small sun-yellowed cloud fragment floating in one corner. He exhaled loudly. The lukewarm water splashed around his ears, tickling him. He closed his eyes tightly. His body still felt like it was rattling.

The sensation of having been jostled daily on trains throughout the past week still lingered. On his return journey from Manchuria, having taken the route through Korea, Sōzō set foot on Keijō for the first time in eight years. And so first of all, he went to visit the garden of the middle school where he had spent four years of his life. The day before yesterday at noon, Fengtian Station’s waiting room was unbearably hot. Silver flies buzzed annoyingly through the hot air. Under a peach tree, a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old Russian boy was looking up at a poster showing a Chinese beauty with bangs hanging over her forehead. His hair shone a beautiful gold, and his shins visible below knee-length shorts were straight and slender. It was a beauty that somehow evoked homoeroticism. Neither Sōzō nor the Russian boy could understand what the Chinese characters on that poster meant. However, at its very bottom stood MUKDEN in large Western letters. Evidently able to read this much at least, the boy began loudly repeating “Mukden! Mukden!” to no one in particular. Then he suddenly turned around and met Sōzō’s gaze—only to avert his eyes in haste, as if chastised for talking to himself. They were beautiful gray eyes like those of a beggar.

Next to Sōzō sat a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl wearing a red dress and a black hat with a sheer base. An elderly Chinese man who appeared wealthy and a middle-aged Russian woman were sitting side by side on the chairs facing Sōzō. Both were similarly plump and similarly sweating on the tips of their noses. Suddenly, the Russian woman stood up and came over, then asked the girl next to Sōzō in English for the time. The girl made a troubled face and wore an oddly vacant smile, but at any rate, she seemed to have understood the meaning of the question. Instead of answering, she showed her own wristwatch to the other person. The other party seemed satisfied with this and left while saying, "Thank you." When the girl looked toward Sōzō, she tried to show an awkward smile while blushing. Sōzō turned his head away. On the wall there was a slightly soiled paper sign reading "小心爾的東西" [Beware of your belongings].

Japanese military police carrying pistol cases occasionally peered inside from the entrance.

Suddenly, a little water entered his nose. The bridge of his nose stung as if pierced. He planted his feet on the bottom and pinched his nose hard. Then he began swimming again. With one kick he returned to his original position and floated on his back once more. A bell resonated in the distance. It seemed somewhat early for the dormitory's dinner chime. The small yellow cloud that had been in the sky earlier had vanished. A dragonfly zipped past, skimming just above his face.

In Sōzō's memory, the Mukden he had passed through the day before yesterday blended with the Mukden from eight years earlier—when he had been a student at this middle school on a school trip. In the station’s dining hall, an elderly Japanese monk wearing a yellow kesa, accompanied by a freshly shaved acolyte whose head still showed bluish traces from the razor, skillfully wielded his knife and fork while eating beefsteak. Was that from the day before yesterday? Or was it a memory from eight years ago? Even contemplating this now felt burdensome to him. He closed his eyes and floated in the water, dimly sensing through his closed eyelids how the evening sunlight—which until moments ago had been filtering thinly through the acacia leaves at the water’s edge—now quietly vanished, plunging the surroundings abruptly into a pale bluish shadow.

That school trip represented their first real chance as middle schoolers to handle substantial pocket money and act freely away from home. They buzzed with excitement, their youthful energy spilling over. At every destination loomed seniors perpetually eager to assert their marginal superiority through comparison. These upperclassmen dragged junior boys through restaurants and bars where liquor bottles—adorned with labels of every shape and hue—lined shadowy shelves, before which sausages glinted a reddish-black. Beneath them stood a ruddy-faced old man who might have been a White Russian émigré, his gray jacket framing a pipe wedged deep within blackish-brown whiskers. For Sōzō the middle schooler, these exotic tavern scenes proved utterly intoxicating. How must he have stared—with all the fervor of adolescence—at that Russian woman who ignored his kind, fixated instead on his seniors: her thick false lashes like tarred spiderlegs, the greenish hollows beneath her eyes, the stench of sweat rising from exposed shoulders where silvery-green arm hair caught the dim light.

When he stepped outside feeling as though he'd undertaken some minor adventure, the early summer stars appeared intensely beautiful to his flushed eyes. Around that time, a sexual prank called "Dissection" became popular among them. Hiding faces flushed with alcohol and excitement while stealing past their teachers' watchful eyes to sneak back to their lodgings, all hell would break loose with their pranks. The boy who feared this would climb up to sleep on the train's luggage rack even during their travels. The teachers had no choice but to tacitly allow it and smiled wryly. "Let's make the teachers do it too!" someone said. "Stop it." "It's just gross," someone retorted, and everyone laughed.

The evening when they departed Mukden was a beautiful one.

A little before the time to gather in front of the station, he entered a backstreet restaurant with his closest friend, just the two of them. It was truly delicious beefsteak. Blood dripped down in a steady stream, its thickness feeling nearly an inch. When they exited the restaurant, outside had fallen into a terribly deep dusk. The suburban field spreading immediately from the station stretched endlessly under a sky that still retained some brightness. The assembly whistle blown by the teachers echoed sorrowfully across the deserted station square.

II

It seemed someone walking along the pool’s edge had skipped a pebble, for a small splash sounded near his feet. As he floated with arms crossed over his chest, his vaguely skyward gaze caught in its periphery the shadow of a long pole passing by. When he turned his head sharply, he saw it was a pole vault pole. A tall boy wearing a uniform with sleeves torn at the shoulders carried it while walking along the pool’s edge. Behind him followed another boy—bespectacled and short—holding a disc in each hand. Sōzō remembered how during his fourth year of middle school, he’d suddenly resolved to become a pole vault champion through some inexplicable impulse. The beauty of the sport’s form must have appealed to his whimsical nature too. Hating to be laughed at, he never sought instruction from anyone. Alone, he would secretly take out his family’s laundry pole, wait for deserted moments, and practice at the nearby elementary school’s sports ground. Naturally, he told neither friends nor anyone else. Once able to clear nearly three meters, he’d planned to astonish everyone. But ultimately, after driving bamboo splinters into his palms multiple times, his pole vault had stalled around two meters.

Around that time he first learned to play the harmonica. When evening came he would gaze at the scarlet sky from the second-floor window of a place resembling the shabby outskirts of a colonial new development, delighting in the cold metallic touch as he played the harmonica. 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. It was a little after his fourth-year middle school trip to Mukden.

Sōzō did not know the woman who had given birth to him. His first stepmother had died around the end of his elementary school years, leaving behind a newborn baby girl. In the spring when he turned seventeen, the second stepmother came to him. At first, Sōzō felt a strange unease and curiosity toward that woman. But soon he began to intensely loathe both her Osaka dialect and the ugliness of her features—made all the more conspicuous by her attempts to appear youthful. And because his father directed toward this new mother a smile he had never once shown to someone like him, Sōzō came equally to despise and hate that father too. As for his half-sister—who had reached about five years old by then—he hated her for her ugly facial features that resembled his own. Finally, he came to hate and despise himself—his ugly appearance—most of all. Each day before the mirror, he cursed every one of these features—his nearsighted, squinty eyes on the verge of collapse; his low-set nose that turned upward apologetically at the tip; his large mouth protruding beyond his nose; his big yellow jagged teeth. Moreover, his bluish-black rough-skinned face was erupting with acne everywhere. Sometimes, when enraged, he would forcibly pop his still-young pimples until blood and pus oozed out.

One morning, upon hearing Father praise the miso soup that the new mother had prepared, Sōzō turned pale. Sōzō knew full well that until now, Father had never shown the slightest liking for miso soup or anything of the sort. He felt as if he himself had been humiliated—suddenly setting down his chopsticks without finishing his tea—then grabbed his bag and rushed outside. He thought he wouldn’t speak to those people at home anymore. He thought that whenever he spoke with his family afterward, he had never once failed to feel either regret or shame.

At night, 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, while feeling the soft fur against his own throat and jaw, he went to bed every night. Only at such times could he barely manage to forget the contempt and hatred he felt toward his physical body. As he had resolved, he never exchanged words with his family. He was thinking of some way to punish them for their shamelessness. As one such method, he thought of deliberately worsening his school grades. Strangely, his school grades alone were good. Father had been boasting about it to people. Even that irritated him. He thought that Father was making him attend school for this petty vanity. Moreover, that Father’s features—especially his stepped nose, and then his stutter—having been inherited exactly as they were by himself was unbearably unpleasant. He felt he was being confronted with his own ugliness right before his eyes and found it unbearable.

However, despite all these oppressive circumstances surrounding him, the youth within Sōzō was gradually extending its shoots. At times, an uncontrollable explosive force—an impulse to leap about—would fill his entire body. This was not unique to him. His friends were all the same. They were unable to handle the force brimming within their bodies. That vitality overflowed into tremendous mischief and violence. They would leap at someone without reason, suddenly twisting them down while gasping for breath, or let out a loud shout in the classroom to startle the new teacher. There was also a boy who twisted off a public telephone receiver and tied a stone in its place instead. That boy also sneaked into the physics laboratory at night, stole telescopes and films, and distributed them to everyone. When June came, cherry trees bore fruit on the hills behind the school. 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 sparrows, plucked their feathers himself, had them grilled at the Chinese restaurant next to the school, and came into the classroom while eating them. How he had obtained it—one boy brought in erotic pictures. The class instantly erupted into chaos. Even during lunch break, no one went outside. The pictures were passed around from hand to hand. The boys panted, swallowing dryly as they stared intently at the scene without shame of being seen by others. A boy—it was a boy with skin so beautiful it looked as though a thin layer of transparent wax had been brushed over his face and sprinkled with white powder—placed his frog-mouthed purse on the desk, reddened the rims of his eyes, and spoke in a resolute tone despite wearing an awkward smile.

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

The boy who had brought the pictures, however, gave a cunning laugh and showed no sign of agreeing. At that time, they feared no teachers except for the military instructor nicknamed Wolf, a former second lieutenant. What they feared was nothing but the sanctions from upperclassmen—though at present there were only fifth-years—and that was all.

Even Sōzō, who at home withdrew tightly into his shell, would naturally blend into his surroundings upon coming to school and become as cheerful as a different person. He finally began neglecting his studies around that time. This was also necessary for his plan of "worsening his grades." He went with several companions to a hollow in the back mountain during lunch breaks to secretly practice smoking cigarettes. One of them could blow perfect rings very skillfully. To them, this seemed something terribly impressive—that is, proof that this boy was more adult than the others.

Around that same time, he began to engage in unnatural sexual acts. Without being taught by anyone, one night after getting into bed, he had learned it through a mere chance moment. At first, he did not know what it was. Yet it was an endless pleasure. Even after later understanding its meaning, and even after coming to be assailed by shame and self-loathing without fail whenever he did it, he could not extricate himself from that temptation. At times, he would feel intense urges of that desire in the middle of the day on the street. His breath quickened naturally, and at every joint his pulse throbbed violently. His expression as he fought against it grew ugly—twisted and contorted. At such times, the summer sky he looked up at blazed with an oily blue glare, unbearably dazzling. He would take out various dictionaries at the library, look up terms with obscene meanings, and feel a secret excitement while reading their explanations. He would also stand eagerly in used bookstores, poring over illustrated guidebooks on that subject. Not only was this knowledge something he craved more deeply than anything within himself, but having even slightly more understanding of it served to demonstrate superiority among them.

Their school had prohibited students from watching movies. Thus, violating that prohibition by going to picture houses became a point of pride among them. They often skipped afternoon classes to frequent these cinemas. He was naturally among their number. The movies themselves mattered less than the thrill of transgression—the mere act of defiance sustained them. Their school stood where a Korean palace once had. Sneaking out through ivy-choked castle ruins or staring up at lurid billboards under summer sun stirred boyish whispers of adventure. But what truly set his pulse racing were the night streets’ electric glow. When lamps began blooming through dusk’s veil, stillness became impossible. Wincing at his acne’s reflection, he’d steal dabs of his stepmother’s skin tonic before drifting into the luminous maze. The very air seemed swollen with possibility. Shop displays glittered; advertisement neons pulsed; Korean night stalls shimmered—all transformed by lamplight into visions of wonder. A passing girl’s powder-scent would launch him into dizzying fantasies. Yet penniless meetings with friends always dissolved into anticlimax. Their grandest escapade meant crowding some café to split a single beer. Even this ritual faltered when middle-aged waitresses approached—conversation dying as they stared fixedly at table stains.

The reminiscence gently stirred his mood that had been floating lightly upon the water. He half-opened his eyes to gaze at the evening sky spreading directly above. Hadn't the blue skies of his boyhood days possessed a more fragrant sheen than this sky he now looked up at? Hadn't there been a more vivid, delicate scent permeating the very air itself? The wind would occasionally blow as if suddenly remembering something, soothingly caressing his wet face. Sōzō stretched out fully on the water's surface, his mood a bittersweet mingling of travel-wearied languor and something akin to homesickness.

As a fourth-year middle school student, he had obsessively loved his black cat. He would give the cat what he chewed by transferring it mouth-to-mouth. His family members had never seen him fall into such pure anxiety and despair as when the black cat went missing for about one week. It was already an old cat, and even its once-beautiful jet-black fur had become dingy and lost its luster. Moreover, it often caught colds, sneezing and having a runny nose. For that reason, all the family members intensely disliked her. That, too, became another reason for him to cherish the cat. When he returned from school, the black cat would always be waiting at the gate like a dog to greet him. When he picked her up, she would turn eyes like plant seeds suspended in agar—resembling grass-embedded crystal—toward him and plead in a sweet, cooing voice.

One day, as Sōzō was eating dinner with his younger sister and the maid, his father and stepmother returned from outside. They said they had gone out together to look at something and had even eaten dinner on their way back. As he listened to this, he felt an oddly sharp pang of guilt welling up within him. Why didn’t they take my sister along? he suddenly thought, despite not loving her. He himself clearly recognized it as jealousy, and recognizing it only made him angrier. They gave Sōzō a box of grilled eel as a souvenir. That, too, needlessly repelled his emotions. He made a bitter face and took a bite of it. Then, he gave the remainder to the cat under the table. Suddenly, Father stood up without a word. And kicking away the cat that was purring as it ate, he grabbed Sōzō’s kimono collar with his left hand and struck his head three or four times in quick succession with his right hand. Then, for the first time, Father shouted in a voice trembling with anger, stammering.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” “After I went to all this trouble to buy it for you!”

Sōzō remained silent. Father repeated once more.

The son forced an ugly smile, his face contorted.

“Once I’ve received something, how I dispose of it afterward is my own business, isn’t it?”

Rage seized his father once more. Father struck his son’s head so fiercely that his own fist ached. In the midst of the beating, Sōzō being struck could perceive a gradually intensifying pathological brutality. He, however, did not even attempt to defend himself. Rather, there was even a part of him that felt something akin to enjoying being struck. But more than that, he felt indignation at Father having kicked his cat. Clearly, this had nothing to do with the cat. Stepmother was left dumbfounded, having even forgotten to intervene. The old maid had been the same. The cat had fled into the garden, and his younger sister was trembling with tears in her eyes.

Eventually, his father stopped his hand. And for a while, he stood there blankly, looking down at Sōzō. He looked exactly like someone who had just awoken from a dream. Sōzō looked up at Father’s face with deliberate coldness. When met with that gaze, Father clearly showed signs of panic and averted his eyes. Now, it was his father who stood utterly defeated. The son, for his part, was thinking maliciously. Even so, did Father still intend to say, as he always did, "Parents scold their children out of love"? Could he really claim he wasn’t striking his child out of succumbing to his own emotions?

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

This time, the recollection bit bitterly into his heart. Suddenly he flipped over in the water and, keeping his face submerged, began thrashing his legs in imitation of the crawl stroke. Before he had even gone fifteen meters, his breathing gave out. He raised his face, planted his feet on the bottom, and stood up. Then, before his water-fogged glasses—when had she appeared?—there came into view a girl-like figure in yellow. Wiping the droplets that had pooled on his glasses and looking closely, he saw a girl in soiled yellow Korean clothing standing about six feet from the pool’s edge, watching his clumsy attempts at swimming. She was eleven, perhaps twelve. She had her hair in braids 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 retained some Korean after all this time brought a smile to his face.

At his home too, they had once employed 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 was a word with the same meaning as Kichibee. The girl in yellow, finding herself stared at by Sōzō, turned away as if troubled and called out something 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, that grotesquely protruding large navel made him snicker. The girl gave the boy’s head a light tap, then took his hand and led him away into the distance. The dirty girl’s retreating figure made him recall his first unsettling experience.

One evening, Sōzō was walking through town with a friend. That friend was the beautiful boy who had suggested buying erotic pictures. On the face of the boy—still flushed from his bath—there was a single small pimple near his lips, crimson as if painted on. It possessed a strangely erotic beauty. Sōzō did not want to go home. If he returned home, only his father’s face—looking despairingly sorrowful—and his stepmother’s face—appearing timid and troubled—would be waiting for him each night he came back late. Father no longer hit him. For that very reason, he found it unbearable to see his father’s sorrowful face. If possible, he wanted to keep walking forever. The road sloped upward from the edge of the main street and continued to climb. Both he and his friend had a vague awareness of what kind of place that road led to. Sōzō suddenly stopped and looked at his friend’s face. His friend looked back at him. The two smiled for no particular reason. In that instant, a mixture of apprehension, hesitation, and curiosity appeared in their eyes. In the next instant, the two exchanged smiles once more, then began climbing the slope in silence. The friend in the yukata was self-conscious about the pimple on his face. Sōzō, still in his uniform, concealed a small vermilion volume from the Werther series in his pocket. The book was *Paul and Virginia*.

They knew that such a district existed in that direction, but setting foot there was a first for them. When they reached the top of the dark slope lined with acacia trees, there already stood rows of such shops glowing brightly. Sōzō suddenly felt his heartbeat grow intense. Wanting to show that this wasn’t their first time—out of mutual pride—they remained silent, made a rough guess, and entered a dark alley. At the gate of each low earthen Korean house stood four or five women painted stark white. They were all Korean.

The eaves lights in that area all used old-fashioned blue gas lamps. Under the white light, only the reds and greens and yellows of their underskirts flickered into view; as for each individual face, he could not distinguish a single one of them at all.

When the women saw the two, they called out in unfamiliar Japanese. “Come insai, you,” or simply “You, you,” or occasionally “Handsome boys, you are”—such broken phrases they uttered. When he realized that those final words had clearly been directed solely at his friend, Sōzō—even amid such excitement and panic—still felt a faint twinge of displeasure. The women finally rushed out and tenaciously refused to let them go. They were completely flustered. His friend, with his yukata sleeve torn, was the first to break away and escape alone. Sōzō, having been late to escape, nonetheless shook off the women and chased after his friend. Apparently in quite a panic, his friend had dashed far ahead.

Sōzō couldn’t make sense of the winding alleyways. But having reached a stretch where the eaves lights grew sparse, he thought himself safe at last. Yet when he turned a corner there, another small low earthen gate unexpectedly appeared, its pale gas lamp glowing above. And beneath it stood a single woman—just one this time. Arriving there through some impulse, Sōzō suddenly laughed. That proved unwise. The woman returned a smile. Then she strode briskly toward him, seized his arm firmly with her small hand, and said in Japanese with another laugh: “Let’s go.” He reflexively knocked her hand away. Though she staggered weakly back, her grip on his uniform jacket held fast. Sōzō shoved her violently and pulled free. Fabric ripped sharply. Two or three buttons from his jacket scattered across the dirt. Startled by his force, she released him—her face briefly assuming a feminine expression of contrition—but immediately bent to gather the buttons. “Give me back those buttons,” he demanded, thrusting out his hand. The woman laughed brightly and shook her head. “Give them back,” he insisted again urgently. She laughed once more, displaying the buttons while gesturing toward the house behind her with clumsy enunciation: “Come insai.”

Sōzō glared at the woman for a while. The woman made a gesture as if to enter the house. He was truly furious. “I don’t need them.” “Those things.” “Suit yourself.” He said that, turned his back, and started walking. And without so much as turning around, the woman hurried off after his friend.

His friend was standing and waiting around one bend in the alley. The two walked side by side and began descending the lonely slope they had climbed earlier. As if ashamed that each had witnessed the other’s panic, they continued walking almost without a word. Just as they had walked about half a block, rapid pattering footsteps sounded from behind. Sōzō turned around. Unexpectedly, it was the woman from before. The woman approached, her large eyes fixed straight on Sōzō’s face. “Button,” she said. Then she opened her small palm to show him the three buttons and said, “Komennasai.” Her breath came ragged—she must have run. It was midway down the slope where the acacia trees grew sparse and a dim streetlight stood. This time, he could finally look at her properly.

The woman 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, un-Korean-like round eyes lent her face a certain striking quality. Her under-skirt was pale crimson, tied in a large bow around her right hip. From the sleeves of her cheap-looking, glittering coat emerged delicate small hands. To hand over the buttons, the girl reached for Sōzō’s hand. He held out his hand. The girl placed the buttons there and let him clasp her hand in his. It felt soft, cold, and damp. Maintaining that posture, the girl looked straight up into Sōzō’s eyes and spoke.

“Come.”

That attitude contained not a trace of coquetry. It was an attitude as if requesting something entirely ordinary. Sōzō felt a strange confusion—a different kind of confusion than before. He tightly grasped the girl’s small, soft hand within his own and said, “Goodbye.” “Sayonara? No!” the girl reflexively retorted, and firmly gripped his hand. Tilting her head slightly, she looked up at him with her dark eyes—and in that moment, her expression revealed a coquettish quality for the first time. Sōzō shook his head and said again, “Goodbye.” And then, putting the received buttons into his trousers’ pocket, he started walking about ten ken toward his friend who had been waiting ahead. When the two began descending the slope side by side, the friend—having finally regained his usual composure—struck Sōzō’s back forcefully and laughed—yet in his characteristically feminine manner.

“You’re pulling this off quite smoothly. “Quite adept, aren’t you?” “You really are.”

He then showed his own frayed sleeve and laughed again in amusement. After walking about thirty steps and looking back, he could still see that girl standing under the streetlight from before, now small in the distance. After descending the slope and emerging onto the main street of the mainland Japanese quarter, his friend announced he was going home.

“You’re going back now too, I suppose?”

“Yeah,” Sōzō answered.

After parting with his friend, however, he did not return home. He took out his wallet from his inner pocket, checked inside, 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, three-tatami ondol room. Across the floor, persimmon-tanned oilpaper was laid. Facing the courtyard, a small square window was open, and instead of shoji, a blue blind hung down. There were no decorations in the room. In one corner lay a pile of bedding, and beside it stood a red-lacquered mirror stand with peeling paint. A mirror hanger in gaudy colors of yellow, red, and green—the only new item—hung upon it. It was a preference so quintessentially Korean. Beside the mirror, a Japanese child doll with its bangs draped over its forehead was propped up. That was the sole decoration in this room. The girl led him into the room, then plopped down cross-legged on the hard floor, peered into the mirror, and dabbed rouge on her lips. Then she turned around and, facing Sōzō who stood there, said something in Korean while making a hand gesture like “Sit down.” Even if he tried to sit, there was no zabuton cushion on the hard earthen ondol floor. He had no choice but to lean against the wall—papered with the same persimmon-tanned paper as the floor—and squat down. He first asked, “Olmayo?” That was one of the few Korean phrases he knew. “Price… not matter,” the girl replied instead in Japanese. Then, after thinking for a moment, she added, “Cheap.” The girl—with her frail-looking build and delicate features—wore a gentle expression as she spoke in awkward Japanese, evoking a peculiar feeling in him. While broken language could possess its own beauty in certain contexts, hearing her unknowingly speak rough language or vulgar phrases typically used by men created an incongruously comical effect against her gentle expression.

She stood up and began laying out the bedding. She still seemed to fear that he might leave. He asked whether he was the only customer tonight. “Not alone. Many,” the girl answered.

That response didn’t seem to be what he had sought—it rather appeared to mean her fellow workers were still present in this house. He gave up and stopped questioning. After finishing laying out the bedding, the girl looked up at him with eyes full of inquiry. He strained himself to convey his intentions. He had simply come to see a place like this. Therefore, he would sleep as he wished, and she should sleep as she wished. He tried explaining this meaning using what little Korean he knew mixed with Japanese. But ultimately, it proved futile. Confronted with a guest vehemently talking about something utterly incomprehensible, the girl became completely bewildered. Finally, he pointed to the bedding and said.

“Anyway, you go to sleep.”

At last, she seemed to have understood just that much. She did exactly as told—precisely as instructed—lying down on the futon without even removing her kimono, her body flopping heavily onto the bedding. He turned his back to her, sat down under the dim electric lamp in the corner of the room, and took out Paul et Virginie from his pocket. The eaves light outside was gas-powered, yet indoor illumination came from electricity. He removed his jacket and attempted to continue reading that sorrowful love story. His mind wandered; even after reading the same passage multiple times, he struggled to absorb its meaning. Still, he kept pretending to read. A cool night breeze slipped through the bamboo blind. After some time passed behind him, the girl rose with rustling movements. He maintained his feigned ignorance and continued pretending to read. The girl came to sit beside him. He still pretended not to notice. Eventually she murmured “Red book,” like someone talking to herself. Sōzō finally lifted his face to look at her. The girl wore an expression of vacant bewilderment. “Go to sleep,” he repeated, jabbing his finger toward the bedding. Her face twisted into an increasingly troubled grimace—part sob, part forced smile. She fundamentally couldn’t grasp this customer’s intentions. Tilting her head sideways with an empty, utterly perplexed smile, she studied his expression as if gauging whether ingratiation might be appropriate. “Go to sleep,” he said once more, this time with slightly sharper emphasis.

She shrank back as if frightened. When he was in a bad mood, the fawning look in his black cat’s eyes resembled this 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, appearing even more frightened, alternated her gaze between Sōzō and the silver coins but made no move to reach for them. He suddenly felt pity for the girl and spoke in a gentle tone.

“It’s fine. I’m not angry. Just take the money—you’re the one who should be sleeping.”

The girl still wore a puzzled expression. As he watched this, his irritation gradually began to rise again, so without paying the girl any further attention, he started reading Paul et Virginie. But he still couldn’t read it. He kept reading the same part over and over again.

In the midst of this, the girl stood up and—this time—truly prepared herself before settling into the bedding.

The wind passing over the pool seemed to be growing colder. Sōzō, who had been standing with half his body out of the water, sneezed once and realized he had to get out now. Intentionally avoiding the iron ladder, he tried to hoist himself up by gripping the edge of the paving about two shaku above the waterline, but whether from exhaustion or some other cause, his arms refused to muster any strength. When he finally managed to pull himself up, his right hand slipped, scraping the area around his elbow against the corner of the paving stones. The surface of the skin, which had at first turned slightly white, gradually took on a pink hue until finally, a bright red bead of blood welled up abruptly from a single point; it rapidly grew larger, then stretched into a thread before plopping down onto the dirt. He thought it looked beautiful, as though it were happening to someone else.

While drying his body with a dry towel, he noticed a magpie perched on a pear tree branch right before his eyes, watching him. It was a Korean magpie with a black beak, white chest, and purple-tinted wings. For him—having been in the mainland where he hadn’t seen this bird in ages—it felt like encountering something from years past. Sōzō waved his towel in mock pursuit, yet it stubbornly refused to budge. He began slowly walking toward the pear tree. When Sōzō came within about twelve feet of the tree, the magpie took flight with a short rasping cry.

Why that first adventure (or perhaps attempted adventure) had been exposed was something Sōzō could not comprehend. On the lunch break of a day about three days later, two fifth-year students forcibly took Sōzō to the back mountain. Both were relatively hard-line students viewed as upholders of justice. They were all large in build and physically powerful. Sōzō had no choice but to follow them.

Behind the school remained the ruins of an old palace. Beneath the high roof with its yellow peeling paint hung a plaque inscribed with "Chŏngjŏngjŏn," facing forward. Along the roof’s ridge stood tiles shaped into phoenixes, lions, and other strange creatures. Inside lay broken chairs and desks from the school, perpetually kept there. Ascending an old stone staircase adorned with dragon patterns, the upperclassmen led Sōzō behind the Chŏngjŏngjŏn. An acrid vegetal stench suddenly assaulted his nostrils. Jet-black summer weeds grew so thickly that they hid the stone wall entirely. The June sun filtered through young cherry leaves to blaze down fiercely upon it.

“Don’t get too cocky just because you think the school will let you,” one of the fifth-year students said to him. The other said nothing. Sōzō offered no explanation either. He was clearly overcome by terror. “It’s just getting beaten up—nothing more,” he thought, trying to forcibly calm himself. Yet despite this, he felt his heartbeat quicken uncontrollably and his face grow pale. And without averting his eyes, he stared intently at one of them. “Take off your glasses,” said the one he hadn’t been looking at. It was so they wouldn’t break his glasses when hitting him. Sōzō was severely nearsighted and wore thick glasses. Even though he had been severely threatened, he felt that taking off his glasses as told would be spineless. And remaining silent, he continued glaring at the two upperclassmen. Suddenly, a hand reached out and grabbed his glasses’ temples. As Sōzō tried to prevent this, in that instant his right cheek was sharply slapped with an open hand, causing him to drop his glasses. Enraged, he lunged at them in a frenzy. Suddenly, he was thrown onto the grass. As he tried to get up, the two came pressing down on him and beat him mercilessly. When they had beaten him enough, the two left in silence.

Sōzō lay still on the grass for some time. He didn’t feel any pain at all. Teardrops fell from his eyes onto the grass. "I’m a spineless man," he thought. At least not having voluntarily removed his glasses gave his self-respect some small comfort. Suddenly, he imagined himself gaining some supernatural power and mercilessly tormenting those two. In this fantasy, he used dark arts like Sun Wukong to plague them endlessly. The fantasy lingered awhile. When it faded, fresh anger surged through him again. He pondered how fatal his lack of physical strength was now. Before this, things like school grades had meant nothing to him. That bitter truth gnawed at him unbearably. And for him, it remained utterly beyond remedy. Tears streamed down his cheeks once more. His glasses lay fallen before his face. He felt sunlight baking his back hot. A lizard darted out from between stone walls, scurrying up to his nose before peering at him with darting eyes full of wonder. Then it vanished back into the thick grass. With his face buried in the grass’s stifling heat and earthy smell, he wept for a long time……….

Three

The rugby players had all left, and there was no one on the sports ground. Only the goal made of two poles with a crossbar remained forlornly.

The sun had already set, and the black silhouettes of the old French consulate and its forest stood etched sharply against a yellow sky. The fence separating the outer tram thoroughfare from the sports ground made use of remnants from old fortress walls. The distant entrance at the sports ground's corner too remained an ancient Korean palace gate painted in vermilion and yellow hues. Through this gate came Koreans clutching long-stemmed pipes while shouldering water buckets. Within the gate's interior lay a spring they drew water from—the same spring where years earlier, Sōzō would scoop up handfuls to drink when exhausted from summer military drills.

The color of the sky was gradually changing into a navy blue tinged with blackness. In the pool, three middle school students were swimming in a row. They seemed to be competitive swimmers, each displaying brilliant strokes. They had truly excellent physiques. Their jet-black bodies, their straightly stretched legs, their muscular shoulders—Sōzō found these things immeasurably enviable. He looked at his own pallid arm and could not help but feel inferior toward them. Just as he had felt years ago when beaten by upperclassmen—that “submission to the body” and “contempt for the spirit”—he now felt them anew once more.