Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Whenever Katsuko, born with poor eyesight, went out to play with her older brother Ken, Mother would invariably tell them both:

“Be careful now—make sure Katsuko doesn’t fall off the stone walls.”

It was that kind of village—one teeming with stone walls.
From behind the houses lining the seaside road with their fronts facing outward, gentle slopes gave way to stone steps that climbed all the way to the mountaintop behind the village, low stone-walled terraced fields stretching endlessly—such was this land where every home stood atop stone walls, whether high or low.
The narrow alleys wedged between houses had drainage ditches along one side, also built of stacked stones.
For a mother raising a child with weak eyes, these stone walls meant constant worry.
Yet even when she wished most to keep Katsuko indoors, children everywhere shared this truth: the outdoors called louder than any hearth.

One day, no sooner had the two of them gone out than Ken’s scream came from behind the house.
Mother hurriedly rushed out to find Katsuko standing frozen by the roadside, shoulders hunched and brows furrowed in shock.
The one who had fallen into the ditch was Ken, who was wailing as he tried to claw his way up the stone wall.
Ditch mud had splashed up to his face, and Mother’s hands became covered in grime as she lifted him.
Katsuko looked on resentfully,

“Ken was supposed to be careful but fell into the ditch, Mom.”

Her voice trembled as she spoke.

“Honestly now, Katsuko...”

Mother firmly pulled Ken’s grimy hand—no longer crying—roughly made him take off his sweater, and wiped his face and her own hands.

“Kyoto-zukuri, even though you’re acting all Kyoto-zukuri, you can’t go falling into ditches.”

Ken remained silent.
There were no injuries anywhere.
Mother scolded him again while changing his jacket, pants, and even his socks.

“Honestly, you’re Kyoto-zukuri through and through. Starting today, I’ll give you the name Kyoto-zukuri.”

Then Ken made a slightly sheepish face and pursed his lips,

“Aw, I ain’t Kyoto-zukuri!”

he shrugged his shoulders.

“Would a child who ain’t Kyoto-zukuri fall into no ditch? It’s ’cause you been dawdlin’ round like Kyoto-zukuri!”

“Ain’t been dawdlin’! If you’d just think ’bout how Katsuko walks ’round with her eyes shut all time—was careful still fell!”

To this, even Mother had no way to respond,

“Oh, you and your Kyoto-zukuri...”

she laughed.

In this way, Katsuko had none of the troubles Mother worried about, and even when Ken wasn’t around, she roamed the entire neighborhood alone.
To Katsuko, who still couldn’t properly pronounce 'sa',

“Mommy when they say ‘blind’ are they talking about me?”

When confronted with this challenging tone of questioning, Mother looked at Katsuko’s face, wondering how to respond.
At such times, Katsuko would lower her eyelids, her eyes taking on the shadowed look characteristic of the blind, while the corners of her mouth quivered as if she might burst into tears at any moment.
The anger that had welled up from being taunted "blind, blind" while playing outside was evident even in how she held her shoulders.
There had been many times when she had told Katsuko, "You have poor eyesight," yet Katsuko herself behaved with an innocence that suggested her dim vision—not something lost but a natural state of never having possessed it from the start—caused her no such inconvenience as others imagined.
Even so, as she turned five and began to gain wisdom like others, these days she was gradually being made to understand that she alone possessed eyes different from the other children.
However, that manner of being informed was undoubtedly unbearable for Katsuko.
When faced with such a Katsuko—unable to tell her she was truly blind—perhaps even Mother herself could not bring herself to think of her daughter as blind.
In fact, Katsuko could also see to some extent.
The fact that Mother’s trade was a yarn shop had caused Katsuko to memorize an abundance of color names and know them better than any child her age anywhere.
Moreover, with her unique wit, she would declare things like the hot water bottle being bucket-colored.
But once she stepped outside, the world undoubtedly saw Katsuko—who seemed to move purely by instinct—as nothing more than blind.

“If ‘blind’ means not seeing, I can see!”

Katsuko said, half-crying.

“Let me check properly whether you’re blind or not.”

Mother pulled Katsuko close and made her grasp the ball of yarn she had been knitting with,

“Now then, what color is this?”

Katsuko wiped her tears sideways with the back of her small hand and brought the yarn close enough to graze her eyes,

“Yellow and green—two strands.”

She accurately answered about the twisted yarn.

“See? You’re not blind.”

When told this, Katsuko would immediately break into a grin.
Even so, still sounding dissatisfied,

“Everyone only calls me blind, blind...”

Mother felt pained, as if a carefully guarded secret had been violently dragged into the open.
Was telling herself Katsuko wasn’t blind and trying to make her believe it nothing but her own fleeting consolation?
If that were true, should she make you understand that you were blind?
No matter how much she thought or tried to delude herself, society undeniably treated Katsuko as blind, and even without society’s judgment, Mother’s own experiences made this clear.

Once, when returning from shopping, Mother encountered Katsuko coming back from play. When she absentmindedly stood blocking her path, Katsuko put on a serious face and tried to step around her.
Mother squatted down and embraced Katsuko, silently took out one mandarin orange from her wrapping cloth, and placed it in her hand.
Katsuko rubbed it with both hands,

“Thank you,” she said softly.

she expressed her thanks.
It was a meekness toward others, a docility so pronounced that one might doubt this was the same Katsuko who would lunge at anyone or even bite them on occasion.

“Katsuko.”

Mother deliberately whispered in a confidential tone.

“Haaai!”

“Where’s this granny from?”

Katsuko lifted her chin,

“Dunno.”

she answered with a faint smile.

“Can’t you tell who I am?”

she whispered while still holding her close.
At being treated this way, Katsuko stiffened her body and, in a timidly small voice,

“Dunno.”

She answered again.

“Then what about you, Mom?”

“I’m knitting yarn at home.”

Katsuko must have never known any image of Mother beyond her sitting at home knitting yarn.
Mother quietly released Katsuko's hand.
Katsuko walked silently toward the house, her retreating back moving with footsteps too steady for a child who couldn't see.
Keeping some distance, Mother followed behind Katsuko.
Without missing a single step, Katsuko stood at the house's back door and threw open the glass door,

“Mom! Some granny gave me a mandarin orange!”

With that declaration still ringing out, she charged across the earthen-floored entryway toward the front.
Mother deliberately stopped at the well curb,

“Oh... I see... That’s nice...”

“That’s nice...” she answered from there.
When Mother slowly approached, Katsuko peeled the mandarin orange without looking at her hands, slightly turning away as she said,
“The granny said she’d give me this and handed me a mandarin orange.”

Katsuko formed a dimpled smile in that confidential tone only there—how could one insist she wasn’t blind?
Precisely because she was blind, each day found her unconsciously braced against the world beyond.
Yet there was also this incident.

At the back door, along with numerous footsteps, the children’s respective voices tangled together,

Someone called out, “Katsuko’s granny!”
She immediately knew Katsuko wasn’t there.

“Yes, what is it?”

Without pausing her knitting, Mother answered in a loud voice, and the children reported in their own words that Katsuko had thrown stones at everyone.
When Ken wasn’t with her, it was always like this.
Thinking “Not again,” she slipped into her geta sandals and stood at the back door.

“Why’d Katsuko throw stones?”

The children fell silent and looked up at Mother’s face.

“Did Katsuko throw stones without you all doin’ anything?”

“Uh-huh.”

The children all nodded in unison.

“So then, who’d the stone hit?”

None of them answered that.

“Didn’t someone do something mean to Katsuko?”

They remained silent.
Twelve pairs of clear, bright eyes: narrow single-lidded ones, round darting ones, some soiled with sleep.
But it was precisely their eyes that shone with an added beauty, their gaze so pure it seemed impossible they could be lying now—Mother felt this with a physical ache.
To Mother’s piercing gaze filled with such emotions, the twelve pairs of eyes showed a sensitive reaction and recoiled.
Mother, startled, hurriedly forced a smile.
It was because she had realized what a frightening face she was now making as she confronted these children.
But even so, she still felt far from being in the mood to apologize as usual with “Please forgive me.”
Her consideration for Katsuko had always taken the form of self-abasing apologies to the children—handing out rice crackers one by one while begging them to play with her again—yet even knowing they were mere children, she now stood confronting them across the threshold with undignified resolve, unable to swallow the bitterness in her heart.

Those who march ten thousand miles to battlefronts—

Katsuko’s singing voice rang out.
She projected her rich voice, singing with an adult-like cadence.
Even when everyone turned to look her way at once, Katsuko remained oblivious, continuing to approach while swaying her body in a pose that seemed to gaze skyward, all the while singing on.
It was the relaxed expression she wore when not looking at anything.
She was barefoot.

“Katsuko!”

Startled by Mother’s unexpectedly harsh voice, Katsuko abruptly halted her steps and adopted a guarded stance.
Her brows furrowed, her face took on an expression as if probing the surroundings with invisible antennae.

“Your zōri sandals?”

As if to say “Oh, that?” Katsuko formed a thin smile, relaxed her body, and leaned sideways against the stone wall bordering the field.

“They’re the ones who hid ’em.”

She complained in a nasal voice, half-whining.

One of the children,

“They were right by the lantern, but Katsuko couldn’t see ’em,” one of the children said in a singsong voice.
Mother found it painful to direct her searching gaze toward the children anymore.

“We’ll go find ’em for you, Katsuko!” one called out as they dashed off, and the remaining five scampered after them like fugitives.
When she threw stones and bit others, adults—interpreting through their own logic alone—came to believe that Katsuko’s reckless behavior, so often criticized by outsiders, stemmed not merely from her unyielding nature but served as a weapon granted to a disabled child. Thus resolved not to reproach her, they earnestly confronted Katsuko’s adversaries. Yet even as they did so, Katsuko herself would simply go barefoot and sing whenever her sandals were hidden.
When Mother held her and made her stand by the well, she stood on her heels with fingertips pointed upward without complaining of the cold.
As she dwelled on such thoughts, a new emotion welled up in Mother’s heart.
One day, Katsuko would be made aware that she herself was a disabled individual, but this child would not indulge in futile grief.
Katsuko could walk barefoot without zōri sandals—it was precisely such a Katsuko that she had to raise.

“Everyone just calls Katsuko blind and picks on her!”

Katsuko seethed with resentment.

“Really, really—why would they say such things about such a cute child like you?”

Mother embraced Katsuko’s head with both hands, stroking it downward repeatedly, then pressed her own forehead against Katsuko’s—the girl’s expression gradually softening—and rubbed them together.

Part II

“It bloomed, it bloomed, the cherry blossoms have bloomed!”

Though school wouldn’t start until next year, Ken could already read katakana.
In the sunny warmth of the engawa, he sat on a small chair, an open first-grade reader lying atop the footstool desk.
As if to drown out Ken’s voice, Katsuko threw down the building blocks she’d been playing with,

“It bloomed, it bloomed, the plum blossoms have bloomed!”

Katsuko declared in a shrill voice.
On the engawa that connected to the next room, Mother was reading a letter while listening to the two of them.
It had come from Ken and the others’ father.
It had only been recently that Father—who had left Mother and Ken at home for so long while searching for work in the city—had finally found employment, but it was in distant Takada in Echigo.
When they received a postcard depicting children in black cloaks walking along ropes strung between stakes over snow piled higher than the rooftops, Ken widened his eyes at their heads rising above the telegraph poles and declared that if he were to walk there someday, the sky would surely appear closer.
Though she couldn’t grasp such reasoning, Katsuko for her part delighted in the idea of adding sugar to that snow and eating it, and just that day alone, the two of them pleaded again and again to go to Takada where Father was.
But in that village of Ken and the others—a Seto Inland Sea island where snow rarely accumulated enough to make snow rabbits, now fragrant with plum blossoms—Mother understood that life in Takada would bring unimaginable hardships for her. Yet what pained her heart even more was Katsuko’s eyes.
The image of Katsuko squinting her brows at the faintest light—and how much more agonizing her expression might become under the snow’s glare—made Mother’s heart balk.

“Hmm...”

As Mother raised her face with a hesitant groan, Ken pursed his lips and silently pleaded, as if trying to draw in her gaze.
When she looked, Katsuko was straddling Ken’s footstool desk, shaking her shoulders while—

“It bloomed, it bloomed, the plum blossoms have bloomed!”

and puffed out her chest.
When Mother nodded in resignation, accepting Katsuko's mischief, Ken—now appeased—quietly circled behind his sister and pulled out the textbook half-sticking out from under her bottom with both hands.
He wobbled from using too much strength.
Then he spun the chair around to turn his back on Katsuko,

“It bloomed, it bloomed, the cherry blossoms have bloomed!”

He raised his voice even higher and read more rapidly than before.

“Nuh-uh, Ken! It’s ‘It bloomed, it bloomed, the plum blossoms have bloomed,’ I tell ya!”

Katsuko pointed to the garden,

“That’s plum blossoms.”

She said, acting grown-up.
It was Katsuko who, held by Mother yesterday and nearly having her eye poked by a plum branch, had learned the shape of those flowers.

“The plum blossoms are right there bloomin’, Ken! How come you’re still goin’ on ’bout cherry blossoms?”

Unaware that Ken had long since turned his back on her, Katsuko kept talking to his back.
Ken twisted his head slightly,

“I already know that much. Ken’s tryin’ to read here, Katsuko! Keep quiet!”

And then Ken stood up, thrust the book forward, and read again with renewed vigor: “It bloomed! It bloomed!”
But to Katsuko, who knew nothing of written characters, it made no sense why reading a book would declare that cherry blossoms had bloomed.

“Don’tcha get it even when I say plum blossoms, Ken?”

she said derisively.
Though generally timid and—as the older brother who sensed Katsuko’s blindness—not one to complain much even when she sat on his book, Ken now acted as if this were the one point he couldn’t concede.

“It says cherry blossoms right here!” he retorted, planting his feet in a sumo stance.

“Mom, it’s plum blossoms, isn’t it?”

Katsuko lifted her face as if searching for Mother’s whereabouts and asked.
Ken also grew serious,

“It says cherry blossoms right here, Mom!”

Mother smiled, trying to find the right words, then set the letter down and picked up her knitting from beside her.
Though Ken’s reading hadn’t just begun today, it was amusing how Katsuko was trying to corner him with yesterday’s freshly memorized knowledge of plum blossoms.

“Mom, they’re different from cherry blossoms, aren’t they?”

Katsuko pressed.

“Oh dear, Katsuko’s bein’ difficult here—the book says cherry blossoms, but right there’s plum bloomin’ away.”

Hearing this, Katsuko swiftly cut in before Mother could finish her sentence,

“See? It’s plum!”

she retorted domineeringly.
Ken turned back again, pursed his lips, and stammering slightly,

“Look, it says cherry blossoms right here in the book!”

He thrust the book toward Katsuko.
But even Ken’s legitimate argument failed to reach Katsuko, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the dazzling morning light,

“Ugh, it’s plum, I tell ya!” she declared.

“It’s cherry blossoms, I tell ya!” he retorted.

“Pl—um!”

“Sa-ku-ra!”

“Ume! Ume! Ume! Ume-e!”

“Sakura! Sakura! Sakura—”

Their voices whirled into a vortex, and Ken with his sakura found his tongue beginning to trip.

“It’s plum, I tell ya!”

Katsuko finally stepped down from the footstool, stood facing Ken, and punched his shoulder.
Ken wasn’t losing either.
“It’s cherry blossoms, I tell ya!” he shot back, hitting her in return.

“Plum! Plum! Plum! Plum!”

Finally, the two of them grappled each other, and Ken, in a tearful voice,

“Cherry blossoms! Cherry blossoms—”

he kept shouting, floundering as he dodged Katsuko’s punches.
Mother’s attempts to stop them fell on deaf ears, and their brawl showed no signs of abating.
Finally, Ken was pinned down and began wailing loudly.
While Katsuko had her cheek grabbed by Ken, she waved her hand, shouting “Plum! It’s plum!”
Even after being pulled apart, Mother couldn’t help but laugh at Katsuko’s audacity as she stood there with a ferocious expression plastered across her face.

“If you keep on fightin’ like this, I’ll write to Dad sayin’ I won’t take you to see him anymore.”

When Mother said that, Ken began to cry even harder, his voice mournful through tears,

“I won’t fight anymore—I’m sorry,” he apologized, but Katsuko kept her eyes narrowed into triangles, darting them restlessly as she continued muttering in a low voice, “Plum, I tell ya. Plum, I tell ya.”
Katsuko, who never shed tears unless driven to extremes, might have been better loved had she been more prone to weeping, but to all who saw her, that very demeanor could only appear as the obstinacy of a cripple.
If she were to cry and apologize like Ken—if even parents might lean toward leniency—Mother bitterly thought how detrimental this disposition would prove for Katsuko’s future survival.
Katsuko possessed an attitude of stubbornly persisting in what made sense to her.
There was something about it that couldn’t simply be dismissed as mere stubbornness.

Around the time the Seven Herbs of New Year's had passed, perhaps because Katsuko still hadn't shaken off the festive mood, she slipped out wearing her one good dress without her mother's knowledge and returned with a large, jagged tear in it.
The tear showed a complex pattern, as if the dress had caught on a nail somewhere and been violently ripped apart with brute force.

“Mom, what’s this strange-lookin’ thing hangin’ down here?”
She pressed the fluttering torn cloth close to her eyes, trying to make sense of it.
“Katsuko! What in blazes is that?!”

Even though Mother was using an angry voice, Katsuko—recalling for the first time what she had done—suddenly cowered.
Out of pity for her unfortunate child, Mother had managed to sew a proper New Year’s dress despite their poverty, but her fury at seeing it now ruined was only stoked further by Katsuko’s audacious demeanor—the girl standing there in her torn red dress, eyes blazing defiantly.

“From now on, any child who sneaks clothes outta the storehouse without askin’—I’ll feed ’em to the wolves!”

Mother grabbed Katsuko from behind and roughly hauled her toward the storehouse.
Katsuko wailed loud enough to echo through the whole neighborhood.
As usual, she called out to Big Sis from Seto for help and shouted Granny-next-door’s name, but never once said she was sorry.
But the day being fine, all the neighbors must’ve gone to the fields for wheat threshin’ or such—only Katsuko’s voice tore through the deep quiet, ringing clear to the mountains.
Mother’s temper flared up fierce—no matter how pitiful a child Katsuko was, she couldn’t go spoilin’ her beyond what’s needed—and today, ’stead of empty threats, she got dead set on lockin’ her in that storehouse proper to teach a lesson.
But Katsuko fought back harder than Ken ever did, twistin’ her body away from gettin’ shut in and refusin’ flat out to put her feet down.
When Mother tried forcible-like to set her down backward, Katsuko just clung tighter, pourin’ all her strength into those grip-pin’ hands.
They tussled till Mother wore herself clean out, havin’ no choice but to give in.

“Fine—I’ll let it slide today, so don’t go cryin’ anymore.—Don’t you go sneakin’ out clothes by yourself no more.”

As she wiped Katsuko’s tear-streaked face—the girl nodding through her sobs—with her apron, Mother pressed the point again.

“If you sneak out that dress again without askin’ and go tearin’ it up, what’s Mom supposed to do?”

Then Katsuko shook her head and burst into loud sobs,
“Mom... will... sew it... for me...”
she answered.
Mother, who had tried to make her think she’d be locked in the storehouse, found her previous anger deflating,
“Ahh… Ahh… I’ve lost to Katsu now.”
She couldn’t help but laugh.
For Katsuko—who trusted her mother so completely, without a trace of resentment—Mother now thought she had to keep sewing the clothes that Katsuko would undoubtedly tear many more times in the days ahead.
As she thought this, the countless challenges she would have to overcome to carve out a path for Katsuko’s steep future—along with the life ahead for their family, including Father and Ken—swarmed over her like gathering clouds.

The quarrel over cherry and plum blossoms was ultimately just one of those clouds.
And so, compared to Ken who kept wailing loudly, it was Katsuko—clenching her teeth—whose face bore scratch marks oozing blood.
While applying medicine to the wounds, Mother found it oddly amusing that this fight wouldn’t end until the plum blossoms scattered.

“Hey Katsu, even though you keep scrapping with Ken here, I’ll write Dad that I won’t take you to Takada anymore—got that?”

Hearing this, Katsuko suddenly took on an anxious expression and blinked her eyes feebly.

“No! No! Don’t take me away… Katsu!”
Katsuko gulped down her saliva and, in the uncontrollable softening of her expression, looked abashedly—
“Mom, I’m sorry.”

she said in a voice so small it barely moved her lips.

3

Without going to Takada, spring came, and Ken entered the village kindergarten.
The knowledge Ken acquired was transmitted directly to Katsuko.
“Kawai-kun, you know, he poked my back.”

Another time,

“When I was the first one who really had to go pee, Shimada-kun and Yamamoto-kun and everyone else also had to go pee, and the teacher laughed.”

Katsuko would transform completely into Ken and recount these stories to Mother as though she herself had experienced them firsthand in the kindergarten classroom.
Katsuko, who meticulously memorized each detail of the kindergarten stories Ken brought home and substituted herself into them—how on earth did she, a blind child, organize Ken’s complex daily accounts in her mind?
With a realism that couldn’t be dismissed as mere mimicry of words, Katsuko would sometimes laugh and other times grow serious as she conveyed her stories.

“Katsuko was just like an actor.”

Mother shook her head with deep emotion, utterly overwhelmed.

Though Ken had such persuasive power, there were things that simply couldn't reach Katsuko's eyes.
Even when Ken fervently sang while demonstrating dances, Katsuko would memorize only the songs but couldn't comprehend the hand motions or footwork.
Rather than realizing this limitation, Katsuko believed hopping about while singing constituted playtime, while sitting still to sing meant music class.
Before she knew it, Mother found herself joining the children, taking Katsuko's hand to make her tilt her head with the song's rhythm or explaining how to move both hands gracefully—but Katsuko would shake free and do nothing but leap wildly about, indifferent to everyone's laughter.
Though they say eighty percent of human intelligence gained through the five senses comes from sight, Katsuko likely didn't possess even a tenth of that vision.
In her case, ears and hands of extraordinary sensitivity might compensate for lacking sight—yet ears could only hear, and even guiding her hands through dance steps couldn't impart subtle movements.
Knowing this full well, Mother still took Katsuko's hands, had her stand on Mother's own feet while lifting one leg, hopping along with clink-clank-bang sounds.
Yet through this method, she somehow learned to hop.
What seemed trivial to the sighted became an astonishing new wonder for Katsuko.
During that phase, she hopped daily.
Wanting to teach everything conveyable while vowing not to complain—still, the thought if only she could see grew into a massive weight pressing Mother's chest as Katsuko matured.
To send Katsuko into society as a human being—even as they called her disabled—they needed to live in a city with special schools for children like her. With this determination, Katsuko's father had stayed long in Tokyo job-hunting.
Despite such hopes, the position he finally obtained lay in frigid Echigo Province.
Still, Father and Mother clung to the belief that someday they might dwell in a city containing a school Katsuko could enter.

Until just recently, whenever Ken left each morning with a lively voice, Katsuko would chase after him crying. Even though Katsuko didn’t know where in the village the kindergarten was located or what shape it took, she resented that Ken always left her behind to go to that fun place where they sang and danced, and she would dash out barefoot. But the kindergarten was far, and she couldn’t even tell which direction it was in. To Katsuko, who returned crying, Mother one day said, “When you turn seven like Ken...”

“Yoshiko-san gets to go even though she’s five!” she shrugged her shoulders. Even if someone were to tell that Katsuko—“You don’t understand games and can’t do origami”—how could she possibly comprehend it? “Katsuko, it’s dangerous for you to go alone with your eyes being like that.” “Then I’ll just hold hands with Ken-chan and go.”

Being told that was all the more painful.
At times, Mother would pull her hand again, intending to take her early to the doctor to have her eyes fixed properly.
Even without being told, the very same anxieties had already taken root in her parents’ hearts.
They had exhausted every possible measure and shouldered unjust debts, only to finally obtain the faint vision she now possessed—yet it remained far removed from their initial hopes.
As for how much money they could possibly spend through their own efforts going forward, or how effective the supposedly advanced medical treatments truly were—regarding these matters, they felt as though they were standing in fog.

“Katsuko, since your eyes can’t see, won’t you go to blind school when you turn seven?”

At these words from Mother, Katsuko shook her shoulders fiercely,

“Hmph, I’m going to kindergarten!”

she raised her hand.

“Blind school’s fun, I tell ya! If I were you, Katsuko, I’d want to go to blind school.”
“At blind school, nobody will tease you or make you cry.”
“They’ll give you a red stick, and if you walk using that, cars and bicycles will steer clear so they don’t hit you.”

“Why?”

“The driver goes, ‘Oh! That kid’s got a red stick! Ah, must be a child with poor eyesight.’”
“Alright, he’ll have to drive along the side so he doesn’t hit her.”
“Thinking that, he’ll pass by Katsuko’s side.”

“What about bicycles?”

“Bicycles will think the same.”

Katsuko darted her eyes sharply back and forth.
She seemed to recall colliding with a bicycle on the beach and bleeding, then lowered her gaze and hunched her shoulders.
Her face laid bare every ripple of thought.

“Ah! Mom wants me at blind school—but I’m going to kindergarten!”

“Alright then.”

“So? Where d’you want me to go?”

“You’re going to blind school.”

“Huh? Who was it that just said goin’ to kindergarten was fine?”

Mother said in an exaggerated voice.
Katsuko twisted her lips with an awkward expression.

“I don’t like kindergarten anymore!”

she said dismissively, as if discarding scrap paper.

“Look here now, Katsuko’s the only one who gets to go to blind school, there we go.”

Tears streaked down Mother’s cheek.

From that day on, the “red stick” became a universal cane in Katsuko’s world.

“Katsuko, even though you’re going to blind school, that’s just fine.”

The red stick spread its wings within Katsuko’s imagination, as if stepping freely out from that narrow world.
No matter the deadlock or persecution, it seemed that once she swung the red stick, everything would be resolved.
Such a Katsuko—Ken pitied her with his own brand of affection—wearing a serious expression,

“Katsuko, I’m telling you—if you get your eyes fixed properly at the doctor’s, kindergarten’s way more fun than blind school!”

Even when told this, Katsuko simply brushed it off,

“Ugh, blind school it is!”

she declared resolutely.
When told this, Ken looked rather disappointed,

“Kawai-kun’s Maa-chan and Ishino-kun’s Miyo-chan both come to kindergarten...” he said swallowing hard while looking at Katsuko’s face.
Unaware of Ken’s gaze, Katsuko smiled brightly,
“But Ken! If we fight and you lose, I’ll whack you with my red stick!”
She said this as if making up for not listening to Ken’s arguments.