Pathway to Japanese Literature

I don't really believe in things like human beings progressing or undergoing complete personality transformations. It's true that people change, but that doesn't signify progress, nor does it mean becoming someone else. The pathways of his emotions and patterns of understanding had somehow become fixed over time - these weren't things that could be replaced.

There was a time during my university days when I tumbled into lodging at a friend’s boarding house. At times, I feel my experiences at that boarding house vividly rise up from deep within my skin like a brand. And perhaps, I think, I will never be able to become another person separate from that version of myself... This is a rather despairing realization, but still, it’s only from that despair that I can begin anything at all.

The period I lived at that boarding house spanned from mid-April through summer, and I believe it was the year when the Korean War—after protracted difficulties in the Panmunjom negotiations—finally came to an end. I had just turned twenty-one and was a troublesome man who loved drinking and arguing. I had almost no interest in women. (The previous year, I’d had my first encounter with a prostitute and made a premature mistake. Part of it stemmed from my lack of confidence, but at that time I half-seriously believed I didn’t need women.) In short, I was at that cocky age.

Though he was called a friend, he was just a man I’d met at a rundown bar—that guy wasn’t a university student. His occupation was that of a film extra, and he commuted by bus to the studio every day. He was a terribly taciturn man when he wasn’t drinking. Though his hair had already thinned to where scalp gleamed through, he wore bright red shirts and gaudy checkered socks, always draped in an ill-fitting corduroy jacket as he addressed me in a low voice as "Anta-san."... His appearance alone suggested a proper film industry man, but it seemed he was just another perpetual extra who'd never risen above bit roles. But apparently, as long as he kept going to the studio, the money came in decently enough, and I spent every day lounging around there without paying a single sen. At times, even small sums of spending money—that extra (whether it was his real name or stage name I don’t know, but he went by Isojima Daihachiro)—would provide for me.

However, I wasn’t brought to that boarding house from the start with the intention of making a long stay. The next day after staying overnight there, my resolve to impose myself as a live-in dependent at his urging arose solely from wanting liberation—even temporarily—from my onerous role within a fatherless family...... I wrote and sent a postcard to my family, who were still living at our evacuation site on Shonan Coast at the time, saying I'd be studying at a friend's house for a while—if they needed anything, to send a letter, and I'd reply by letter. My mother sent back a reply of reluctant agreement.

Muttering "They say easier born than worried over," I found myself dumbfounded at how smoothly things had gone as I gazed at that letter of consent from my mother. Even to my former self at that time, that reality felt like a dream, so perhaps it’s only natural that now, to my present self, I can only recall it as something that happened entirely within a dream. However, in any case, I began living within that dream.

Isojima Daihachiro was a man of distinctive peculiarity. I called him "Dai-chan," but he was skilled at cooking and seemed to feel genuine responsibility and enthusiasm for providing proper meals to me, his live-in dependent. On the wall were pasted circular sheets of paper with drawings of cows, whales, and cabbages, and every day he would gaze at them, muttering "How's the vitamin content? How's the calcium? How's the protein?" as he calculated nutritional values and calories, solely focused on creating meals that were nutritionally balanced and calorically sufficient. Dai-chan was a former monk who had memorized many sutras. I was taught the Heart Sutra by him, but since I could hardly remember any of it, he gave up after about three days.

He had a hobby of pinning various things to the walls with thumbtacks—though I forget the exact wording—including what he called Saigo Takamori's death poem and a sheet of paper with a maxim(?) calligraphed in ink that read: "Thou shalt never grow angry, for anger is the means to lose friends; thou shalt never forgive, for forgiveness is the means to lose oneself." Old sumo tournament rankings and movie stills covered every wall of that eight-tatami Japanese-style room. Among them was what I'm certain was an English poem by Auden. He had once mentioned something about having been married before, but I never asked for details.

Why he had shown such kindness as to let me live with him and feed me was something I couldn’t quite comprehend. I was a university English student, but I loved art and would go around to every exhibition in sight, taking notes. And yet this me—a me who was at least ten years his junior—he seemed to regard with something approaching reverence. If I said I wanted a drink, he would go so far as to borrow money or even rouse a closed shop to buy me a bottle of whiskey. Then he would nod earnestly at each point and listen to my nonsensical art history lectures. I would spout off-the-cuff, improvised hypotheses as if they were groundbreaking academic theories. I would dismiss all the great painters with a single brushstroke. At this he would nod with evident delight, as if genuinely moved. I gradually grew irritated with this Dai-chan, yet paradoxically found myself whipped up by my own bravado, until finally losing all restraint and collapsing drunk on the floor. And the next morning, I would discover myself neatly dressed in Dai-chan’s yukata and laid out inside the futon.…

Looking back now, it's a story that seems both mystifying—how we could have done such things—and somewhat embarrassing, but that became our daily routine at his boarding house. In any case, it was there that I first truly spread my wings as I pleased, reveling in my own unrestrained chatter to my heart's content while living off others with great bravado.

The boarding house was a dilapidated two-story building near Shimokitazawa Station, but not long after I began living there, I heard the song of a young woman's voice passing beneath my window. Almost every night, the singing voice would pass along the road beneath the window. Whenever it neared around 10 PM, the singing voice would become audible.

The boarding house had neither a garden nor a fence, and directly beneath the window ran a road just wide enough for an auto rickshaw to barely pass through. The road was narrow and long yet continued straight ahead; going in the opposite direction from where the singing voice came would lead to a somewhat wider road connecting to the main thoroughfare. The song seemed to be sung by a young woman commuting daily to work on her way home, as it couldn’t be heard on Sundays or holidays. Perhaps because the road was straight, within the hushed stillness of the residential district’s nights, the singing voice could be heard from quite far away. It would first begin like faint auditory hallucinations—a thin, hesitant voice—yet sung with clear enunciation and lucid phrasing, as if drawing a single white thread through the darkness toward our window. The songs were invariably wartime pieces, all of that militaristic style my sister had once obsessively memorized and sung. The owner of the singing voice took earnest care not to make lyrical mistakes, restarting from the beginning whenever she faltered even slightly. Pronouncing each word with crisp clarity, she walked slowly through the darkness with confident precision in her singing…… From such details, I came to feel this woman must be an office girl who had experienced the war around my sister’s age—a resolute old maid harboring fastidious stubbornness (at that time, I considered any unmarried woman over twenty an old hag). For some reason, Dai-chan insisted she must be a virgin and declared he’d never before heard such nighttime singing.

Yet almost every night, her singing voice would begin from the depths of the hushed night's darkness and, keeping time with her footsteps, pass beneath our window in precise tempo. Drinking and talking loudly—though in truth, it was almost always me doing all the talking—we would unconsciously fall silent and listen intently to that singing voice. Perhaps we felt a strangely sorrowful emotion toward that small yet delicately strained voice. At times, we would unwittingly find ourselves softly humming along to that fragile, delicate, and tense singing voice—songs like "Kamikaze Special Attack Unit," "Song of Student Soldiers Departing for the Front," and "Evening Moon Over the Hill."

Evening moon over the hill / To the flying wild geese

Mother's gentle lullaby In a child's heart / Yearning for... Sky's Special Attack Unit / Brother departs...

Dai-chan was said to have flown navy fighter planes in Qingdao, but he didn't know any of the songs' melodies or lyrics at all. He kept pestering me until I wrote down half-remembered lyrics and compiled them into a notebook titled Collection of Military Songs. ...His booming voice, tempered through sutra chanting, proved utterly unsuited for softly singing Western-style melodies, yet he carried that notebook everywhere until its cover frayed to tatters. When the singing voice began drifting up, he'd demand the song's name like a hunter springing a trap, frantically flipping through the notebook's pages. In a gravelly murmur, he'd clumsily chase each verse until finally managing to harmonize with the woman's voice. I found it all rather tedious. For starters, getting obsessed with wartime songs now felt pathetically anachronistic, and I was developing active resistance to the whole affair. What truly grated was how Dai-chan's fascination had shifted from my slapdash art theories to that damned singing voice.

Gradually, I began wanting to see that woman's face. All I needed was to time it when her voice approached beneath the window and open it. Yet when I shared this plan with Dai-chan, he inexplicably resisted with fierce stubbornness. "Just don't do that," he implored me in a hushed tone, tears glistening in his eyes.

“For me, that is salvation,” he said. “This is how I somehow keep living each day. “Floating through each day—truly, we humans live with our heads in the clouds.” “Somehow thinking that’s only natural, continuing to make such excuses to myself, I pass each day in a daze.”

“Don’t you think?” “For me, this spaced-out state of mind is what’s important.”

“What does that have to do with seeing the woman’s face?”

I couldn’t quite comprehend why Dai-chan had clasped his hands together and prostrated himself before me as if in worship. “I’m terrified of taking myself seriously,” he said. “I refuse to properly consider myself—to contemplate what it means that I’m alive. If I started confronting that directly, I wouldn’t even manage to walk straight down a road. I’d just squat there dithering in the street until I died for certain.” Dai-chan answered with utmost solemnity. “What I hear isn’t that person’s song. It’s the emotions of whoever’s singing. They stab through me. That single-minded, desperate voice—that strained way of singing—it pierces the deepest part of me.”

"...It's just a girl's song, right? Dai-chan." Dai-chan."

I was dumbfounded. Dai-chan gripped my palm and kowtowed while shaking it up and down.

“Yes, yes. You’re exactly right,” he said. “That’s just a girl’s song.” “But for me, that holds meaning.” “I’m a slovenly, apathetic creature.” “A cowardly good-for-nothing man.” “I’m not serious by nature.” “But the one singing that song—she’s different.” “That voice stabs through me like a honed blade.” “Makes me remember what I’d buried deepest.” “Shows me where it festers.” “That pain—” “I crave that pain.” “Need it like air.” “...I can only drift through this half-aware existence.” “Yet that voice spears straight through my core.” “This—this wretched salvation—” “I mean this with absolute sincerity.” “I beg you—don’t dwell on her face.” “If we glimpse her—if we violate that mystery—she’ll never sing for us again.”

In fact, at that moment, Dai-chan was shedding tears. Sensing Dai-chan’s determination to stop me even by force, I lost any remaining will to insist on seeing the woman’s face. ……I wondered if what Dai-chan felt in that woman’s voice was some form of purity or innocence, but try as I might, I couldn’t comprehend his reasoning at that time. Perhaps precisely because I couldn’t comprehend it, I had carved his expression and words from that moment deep into my heart as a strange shock.

That night too, the singing voice was heard, approached, and receded into the distance. As I gazed at Dai-chan’s grave face chanting along in a low, fervent voice, it suddenly struck me—he must have killed several people during the war, and those memories were ones he couldn’t forget. He probably loved his own purity from the past—a purity that unfolded through the catalyst of that woman’s clear singing voice. But at the same time, he was living in a mood of not wanting to confront that past head-on—I thought such things.

However, one night about a week later, I opened the window. I saw the face of the young woman—the owner of the song. I did not do it on a whim. That night, it was certain that I harbored at least a spiteful will toward Dai-chan. Perhaps I harbored something akin to hostility toward the owner of that song—the one who had stolen away the heart of the man who had been my captive audience for all my rambling monologues. In any case, I had done it with deliberate intent.

Dai-chan had become part of a bandit troupe in a film directed by a renowned director starting two or three days prior, and his return home always passed midnight. Without fail, upon coming up to the second floor, he would ask what tonight’s song had been and, while humming it, begin cleaning up after the meal I had prepared for him that morning. The previous night, upon seeing his seemingly blissful back, I had clearly resolved in my heart to carry out that idea.

By around nine o'clock, the preparations were complete. I applied oil to the window groove, extended the lamp cord, and as I slid open the window, devised a way to immediately illuminate the area directly below. Once, I went down to that alleyway to test the angle. Intending that there was not even a one-in-ten-thousand chance of failure, I waited in readiness for the singing voice to begin.

Sure enough, just past ten o'clock, a hushed singing voice rounded the corner. There was no mistaking the owner of the familiar voice. The song was "Kato Hayabusa Squadron," you know, the one with roaring engine sounds...

The Hayabusa soars to the edge of clouds The rising sun glistens on silver wings Upon our chests, the crimson eagle's emblem Marked as our squadron's pride

There, the lively, bouncy rhythm abruptly shifted, and a mournful refrain began.

...Within glory’s shadow lie tears

Ah... now-lost warriors'...

It was precisely at the break in that refrain. The singing voice reached beneath the window. I forcefully slid open the frosted glass door, grasped the lamp shade with one hand, and aimed it toward the narrow dark alley where the singing was coming from. I was surprised. The singer was a fair-skinned girl with a still childlike face. To me at least, she looked no older than fifteen or sixteen. But of course, it had been the girl who was shocked. With her lips pursed into a perfectly round shape like an anus, she stared fixedly at me standing in the window through her wide-open monolid eyes for one frozen moment. Her small frightened face turned pale as she held her breath; in the next instant I saw it rapidly flush crimson with rising color.

Without saying a word, the girl immediately lowered her face and broke into a run at full speed. The sound of hurried footsteps faded into the distance. I burst out laughing. "Is that all?" I thought. She was a petite girl with a slender neck and Japanese-style features, wearing something like a red cardigan. She appeared to be at most high school-aged, completely shattering the image of the stern old maid we had imagined. She might have unexpectedly been a night school high school student. I somehow felt my assumption had been off.

Yet I felt intensely delighted. Having memorized the song's owner's face in that manner and forcibly making the girl notice my existence—a single stranger—as if I'd rudely barged in with muddy shoes was delightful; it granted me a spiteful sort of joy.

After closing the window and putting the lamp cord back in place, I lay on my back across the tatami and kept giggling quietly for ages. Toward both the girl and Dai-chan, I could only feel "Serves you right!"—not a shred of guilt over having done wrong or needing to apologize ever surfaced. Others—those things we call strangers—are always cruel. Humans will forever have those strangers existing around them, and strangers will never let humans live in a world of solitude. That's natural—that's how the world works. So something like this isn't any big deal at all. To varying degrees, all people endure others. That's what living is...

However, as time passed, I began finding the meagerness of my heart—this malice—unpleasant. That the source of the singing voice turned out to be an unexpectedly cute girl might have been one reason it pained my heart. My own cruelty—this act that could only be called a vulgar prank—had gradually begun sitting heavy in my chest. After all, her singing hadn't really been much of a nuisance to anyone else. Even regarding Dai-chan's incomprehensible mystical delusions, there'd been no reason for me to go to such lengths interfering. I withdrew into gloom and began drinking. Dai-chan's room didn't even have a radio, leaving me no other way to occupy myself.

Close to two o'clock, Dai-chan came up the stairs as if running. While steadying his breath, he gravely asked me, “What song was it tonight?”

I ended up not mentioning what I had done. “...Kato Hayabusa Squadron,” I answered, drunk and slurring my words. “The engine sounds—roaring, you know, that one.” “R-really?” Suddenly, Dai-chan let out a scream-like cry that startled me. Remaining in a half-crouch, he fixed his gaze and edged closer. “R-really? That song?” “Was it that song—the one that goes ‘Hayabusa flies to the edge of the clouds’?” “Are you absolutely certain?”

“It’s true, I tell you.” “…What’s the matter?” “Dai-chan.”

I answered fearfully. I couldn't comprehend his barely contained excitement. "No—I was surprised—I am surprised, I tell you!" Dai-chan's face lit up as he suddenly seized my hands with both palms. "Surely our hearts have finally connected!"

“Our hearts connected? What’re you on about?”

“Today, around ten o’clock, I was at the film studio. Right?” “You seem drunk, but do you understand?”

“I understand that much.”

“So then, you see? “Suddenly, I heard the Hayabusa song again, you see.” “Vividly, you see.” “Yes, in that woman’s voice.” “It’s true.”

“Huh?” I sat up and stared at Dai-chan’s face in disgusted astonishment.

“No, well—it was... inside my mind.” Dai-chan’s face had turned crimson. “It’s spiritual insight. That’s why I felt certain tonight’s song would be that one.” “Cut it out… how ridiculous.”

I said, consciously reassuming my ironic expression. “It’s just a coincidence, Dai-chan. It was merely matching your auditory hallucination.” “Yes, yes—you insist it’s mere coincidence—I understand perfectly,” Dai-chan grew heated. “But declaring this a coincidence is itself an interpretation. What changes if we interpret it that way? The world isn’t some marketplace of interpretations or solutions. There are only facts. Humans live shouldering nothing but those facts.”

“What are you trying to say? Dai-chan.” I said, shaking my head from side to side to avoid Dai-chan’s face as he gradually drew closer while speaking. His acorn-brown, slightly plump face—brimming with energy and fervor—loomed before me. He twitched his flared nostrils, made the oil on his nasal wings glisten, and kept talking. “No, I’m simply stating the inescapable nature of facts. You’re trying to explain it away with logic. You try to dismiss these incomprehensible coincidences as mere chance. But listen—for humans, there are only facts. We must take responsibility for those facts. You have to believe this: today, at the exact same time you heard that genuine song here, I heard the same song from that same woman. That means…”

Dai-chan hesitated mid-sentence and reverted to his usual nervous expression now for the first time. While looking down at the tatami mats, he suddenly turned red all the way to his earlobes. In a low, trembling voice yet clearly, he said. “...That is because I love that person.”

I was at a loss for words. I could feel the drunkenness fading away, but I must have simply been staring blankly with a foolish look on my face.

“Because I love that person.”

Dai-chan repeated. “...That person and I have already begun an emotional exchange.” “It’s not a lie.” “I can now understand her inner being as clearly as if holding it in my hand.” “I feel I’ll comprehend everything about what her songs—the ones we’ll hear every night from now on—truly mean.” “It’s a blessing... don’t you agree?” “This is love.”

...That night, he said he’d received them from an actress in a large communal room for extras, and I remember him piling strawberries on a plate and serving them. While mechanically moving those small, somewhat shriveled sour strawberries—likely grown in an amateur’s vegetable patch—to my mouth, my drunkenness faded, and I thought Dai-chan was either a madman, a fool, or both. I decided I wouldn’t tell him about my mischief that night. If I told him I’d seen the woman’s face, and if because of that the songs never came again, this madman might kill me—that’s what I thought.

Dai-chan was washing my dishes at the sink attached to the second floor while humming a terribly off-key tune with evident delight. He smiled happily at me, occasionally winking one eye. I absolutely lacked the courage to confess my mischief to him.

“Ah, I’m tired. “I got killed three times today,” Dai-chan said no sooner had he returned to the tatami room than he produced a sugar canister from the small tea cabinet and licked up about two spoonfuls in one go. “The best way to relieve fatigue is sugar.” Then, lowering his voice, he whispered into my ear. “Listen carefully. “Make sure to listen carefully tomorrow as well. “Tomorrow, you know, it’ll definitely be the submarine song. “Clang, clang—when the hull rises,” that one. “Tomorrow—you’ll definitely hear that song.”

Of course, I did not genuinely believe in Dai-chan’s so-called “spiritual insight.” I had made a habit of taking a sneering attitude toward madness and sentimentality.

However, that night, I sensed in Dai-chan an intensity that couldn’t be simply laughed off—a peculiar, unsettling truth-like quality. He had ensnared me in a strange unease.

The following night, I strained my ears and waited for the singing voice to come. After ten o'clock, I faintly heard that familiar singing voice. It was not an auditory illusion. It was the same frail yet earnest voice as always. As usual, the singing voice seemed to steadily approach while keeping tempo with footsteps. Somehow, I felt relieved. That last night's mischief hadn't stopped the singing. And that it wasn't the "Submarine Song" but the "Yokaren Song". ...Yet the singing stopped—as if a thread had snapped—far short of reaching the faint halo of light cast by our room's window. After that, I couldn't hear it again that night. That this resulted from my mischief was undeniable. I began drinking again.

I was not feeling good about how spectacularly wrong Dai-chan’s prediction had been. If the singing voice had been "Submarine Song," I would have reacted differently. But the song was not "Submarine Song", and Dai-chan had clearly committed an absurd error. On trivial, self-satisfied fantasies, he was building his "love". Yet somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to mock that Dai-chan...... It wasn’t that I held no contempt whatsoever for his sentimental conviction of “love” or his arbitrary, self-indulgent madness. No, within me, mockery toward him certainly existed. However, even as I mocked Dai-chan and scorned Dai-chan, I gradually began to be seized by an inferiority complex toward that very Dai-chan.

I was acutely aware that I had never loved anyone before, and that I—who would likely never love anyone in the future either—existed with a certain piercing anguish. I thought of myself having lived as though deliberately circumventing the word "love". To me, "love" was nothing but an unmanageable awareness of connection, its burden, an alias for that immobilizing "relationship". I had never been able to enjoy it, nor had I ever actively sought it. At least, therefore, I thought it was easier to live without something like "love". Probably, still immature and timid, I was living solely through my disgust and fear of "burden."

Of course, I wasn't clearly conscious of these things at that time. What assailed me was ultimately a single anxiety and irritation. I now think what assailed me was nothing but anxiety toward, interest in, and jealousy-tinged irritation at Dai-chan possessing this unknown "love"—its happiness, its joy, its very capacity.

When Dai-chan returned home, the whiskey bottle lay empty and knocked over. The sake bottle had also toppled. I had ransacked every corner of the room and drunk every last drop of alcohol. I was terribly sleepy.

“How was it? Tonight?” Dai-chan asked breathlessly.

“Whiskey,” I answered. Then he spun around like a swift bird and immediately procured a round bottle, placing it before me. To me, it happened in an instant. I felt as though Dai-chan were some fairy-tale magician concealing whatever I desired within his black coat.

“Here，drink up.” “You’re someone very important.” “After all，you’re the living witness who listens to that person’s genuine song.” In a cheerful voice，he said as he poured whiskey into a glass and asked again.

“Well, how was it? It was the Submarine Song, wasn’t it?” For a moment, I was at a loss for a reply. “……Anyway, what about you, Dai-chan? Did you hear it again?”

“Oh, I most certainly heard it!” Dai-chan puffed out his chest. “It was the Submarine Song after all.” “Huh,” I said, meeting Dai-chan’s utterly ecstatic eyes—like a child awaiting candy. I averted my eyes as if flustered, and in that instant, realized I occupied no place within him. I had been completely expelled beyond his skin; a utility pole-like me was being seen by him. ……He was filled solely with his own fixation on love. Now, he had no interest in anything but himself.

Dai-chan was laying it bare. He was strong. At that moment, something resembling a strange hostility was born within me. I couldn't just sit there being treated like some utility pole! I'm human too. There's no way I'm living just for your sake. "Alright," I thought, "first I'll let them suck on that candy good and long, then kick them down into the valley." Casually, I said.

“I was surprised… Over here, it was also the Submarine Song after all.”

“Right?” “Right?”

As if he had been lying in wait, Dai-chan clapped his hands and leapt up. “Ah, it truly is real! Real love is connecting me and that person.” “Splendid.” “Truly splendid.” “It’s love.” “It’s real love.…”

Dai-chan suddenly fell silent. The silence persisted. I rubbed my eyes and stared at him. Maintaining a smile like that of an ancient Buddhist statue on his face, he slumped with his shoulders dropped, drool trailing from his lips. His mouth hung slackly open, the string of saliva glistening as it stretched and contracted like a yo-yo's string. His eyes stared vacantly into the distance.

He remained as he was and said nothing.

I grew slightly afraid.

“Ah, it feels like the entire world has gathered within me alone,” he said at last. “……How about it? Shall we wrestle sumo?”

But dead drunk as I was, I could barely manage to keep watching him, let alone stand up. Dai-chan, having no means to express his jubilation, crossed his thick, short legs and began drinking while groaning, “Ah, ah.”

“Ah. “It’s as if my entire body has become an open wound, doused with alcohol and set ablaze,” he said, gulping down more liquor. “I am fire. “I am aflame.” “A light burning as one colossal pain.” “A lighthouse.” “That’s right—that person is the lone ship that has finally appeared offshore in the night where the lighthouse’s light reaches.” “A yacht with pure white sails.” “The black sea separates us, yet a single beam of light connects us.” “We cross that bridge of light to come and go between each other.” “Ah, what a beautiful sight this is.” “This is poetry.” “Yeah.” “And this very sight is that of true love.” “Ah, now at last I am truly living love.” “Ah, utterly…”

“...But hey, Dai-chan,” I was in no position to laugh. Overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of my lie’s effect—in a dazed state as if witnessing a nightmare—yet half-seriously, I posed that question: “You keep talking about love, but does the other person even know you exist?”

“There’s no need for that at all.”

Without hesitation, Dai-chan answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“But…” “But why does that matter? Anyway, that person’s song reached my mind’s ear. Tonight’s song—the one she actually sang while passing beneath this window—right? But this place and the studio are forty-five minutes apart by bus. There’s no way you could physically hear it. Huh?” “Exactly. No way you could hear it.” “Right? Yet I did hear it. And it was precisely the song I predicted yesterday. She sang it there, and I heard it here at the studio—vividly in my mind’s ear. This proves my inner self has finally captured her reality. She and I have forged a connection no distance can sever—a bond no scissors can cut through. If this isn’t love, what else could you possibly call love?”

"But if they say that's nothing but Dai-chan's illusion, then that's all there is to it." I grew utterly bewildered and let out something like a scream.

Dai-chan put on a look of genuine surprise and stared at me.

“Oh? What in the world is wrong with illusions? This doesn’t sound like Anta-san’s words at all.” Perhaps from chugging his drink, Dai-chan’s speech was already slurred. “Fundamentally, human beings are illusions. “For example—the ‘you’ that you think you are—what is that?” “An illusion.” “What is the human you imagine?” “It’s an illusion—the human interior is always an illusion. “Illusions—this is what humans are.” “Don’t talk nonsense! Illusions are illusions!” I shouted. I, not to be outdone, drank whiskey straight from the bottle. Dai-chan also downed his in one gulp.

“Illusions are illusions.” “Of course.” “But tell me—if we organize things like that and strip away those illusions from humans, what on earth would remain?” “Wouldn’t humans just end up the same as rocks stuffed with matter all the way to their core?” “That can’t possibly be acceptable.” “Humans being the same as rocks—that’s a lie.” “You see, humans have both the ability to create illusions and the courage to believe in them—that’s precisely why they’re human.” “A rock is a rock.” “Humans must continue to reject the reality that they are but a single rock.…”

Suddenly, he let out a siren-like roar. He stood up and began a strange dance, thrusting out his arms and legs. Violently bobbing his head up and down, slapping his knees, letting out a ferocious roar like a jungle beast, he began spinning around the room. And then, he began taking off his clothes one after another.

Dumbfounded, I watched his grotesque striptease. ……At that moment, whether I truly felt that malicious satisfaction toward Dai-chan—the satisfaction of having successfully deceived him—along with astonishment and derision toward his absurd frenzy that surpassed imagination, I cannot now definitively state. However, the one thing certain is the fact that I felt genuine defeat and was profoundly moved by the sight of Dai-chan literally dancing in ecstatic frenzy. I was watching that dance with genuine emotion from the depths of my heart. That self of mine—I can still vividly revive it.

Before I knew it, Dai-chan was down to nothing but his underwear. His naked body—only his face sun-darkened—was flabbily, disgracefully obese; his brick-red face too large for his stature, the rest of his body faintly flushed, his short-limbed figure bore a hideous resemblance to a pig. With an ecstatic smile spread across his entire face, he let out a strange cry and repeated the same gestures and movements over and over. He continued laughing in a shrill voice.

I think he probably continued dancing after that and kept delivering speeches about "love." I also have a memory of my hand being pulled as he said, "Come on, let’s dance! We’re dancing together!" But I couldn't stand up. I continued to feel a jumble of terror and absurdity amidst my confusion until, overcome with intoxication, I fell asleep without realizing it.

I came to my senses near noon the next day. I was sleeping in the futon, properly wearing Dai-chan’s yukata as usual.

Dai-chan was gone. By the gas stove next to the sink, I could hear water boiling violently in the kettle. I started to sit up and noticed a splitting headache. At that moment, I saw a sealed letter placed by my pillow. It was undoubtedly a sealed letter addressed to me that Dai-chan had picked up along with the newspaper before heading to the film studio and left behind for me. Keeping my throbbing head as still as possible to avoid moving it, I took the heavy sealed letter and opened it. As expected, it was a letter from my mother... Finishing reading it, I felt utterly disgusted. The actual matter was confined to the final page alone; the rest was nothing but my mother’s complaints. Even that actual matter concerned nothing more than being warned by neighbors that two pine trees in the garden had become infested with insects. They were saying to cut them down because they were dangerous, but it was really just her asking what to do about it.

Lying there, I took a postcard and fountain pen and immediately wrote a reply. You should have the pine trees cut down immediately. If the neighbors report it to the municipal office and the prefecture ends up cutting them down, they’ll only give about 1,000 yen per tree in compensation. If you go to a town lumberyard, they’ll cut them down, transport them, clean up afterward, and give you 10,000 yen as payment. Since they have to be cut down anyway, it’s more profitable that way…… Having written just that, I had nothing left to write. I stared vacantly. I tried hard to recall my mother’s face, then grandfather’s, then my sisters’ in succession, but they appeared before me no more distinctly than the twenty-meter-tall trunk of an insect-eaten pine tree.…… Far from feeling the sweet nostalgia I’d somehow anticipated, I came to imagine each of them glaring reproachfully while droning on about nothing but themselves, until I clearly thought just one thing: I still didn’t want to return to that house for a good while yet.—

It was at that moment that an unfathomable rage violently seized me. Suddenly, the previous night's scene—which I had completely forgotten until then—vividly revived before my eyes, and I remembered Dai-chan frenziedly continuing to dance while excitedly talking about "love." Burning with impatience, I recalled myself being overwhelmed by his bliss and left in a daze.

I thought. Dai-chan had spoken of living love. Indeed within him dwelled the “love” for the owner of that singing voice—no, rather he existed within that very “love.” But wasn’t this him inhabiting a fantasy beyond himself? That is to say—hadn’t he become an absence, failing to live as himself?

——I can’t forgive this, I thought fiercely. This—I couldn’t forgive: his blissful talent for labeling that facile, absurdly ridiculous madness as "love" without a shred of shame and dissolving himself within it; at the very least, this ability to so effortlessly, so smugly believe in "love" and remain happy through it—this I couldn’t forgive. That this capacity for self-annihilation existed in Dai-chan and not in me—this I couldn’t forgive. ……I was clearly jealous of Dai-chan. I envied that happiness and hated him. No longer was it contempt or derision. What I was conscious of was one unmistakable hostility.

My grimacing wasn’t solely due to the headache. I possessed neither the memory of such blissful “love” as Dai-chan’s nor any capacity for that joyful “love.” But that was me—why should that become my burden?……Abruptly, I recalled the words he’d whispered last night. “Tomorrow—‘Farewell, Rabaul.’ “That’s what she’ll sing.” “Now I can truly discern it.”

——Alright. I muttered under my breath. Tonight too, I’d tell him it was that song once again. From now on, I would keep deceiving him—thoroughly dissect the architecture of his smug "happiness," the absurdity of his madness, down to its spiteful core. I would nurture his "love" with my lies, then rip it apart the moment he reached the peak of his elation. I’d thrust him down into the reality of being a "stone." I’d make him realize—whether he liked it or not—that he too was nothing but a stone.……

……I thought this was my paltry revenge against Dai-chan—revenge from a self that knew only the reality of being a "stone," from a self that couldn't believe in its own sincerity, being nothing but a solitary "stone." That someone like him could break free from this stony reality with such ease seemed inconceivable. That smugness of his—how he scorned the "stone" yet denied it through such shoddy pretense while basking in self-satisfaction—I couldn't forgive. On that morning when my mother's letter arrived, I hardened my resolve to confront him.

My throat was dry. I got up to drink water and opened the window. The glittering sunlight was dazzling, and across the narrow alley, the paulownia flowers in the neighboring house caught my eye—their purple tassels faded and scattered, leaving them like mere brown sticks. Come to think of it—last night the window had already begun paling with dawn—I thought. Before I knew it, early summer was already drawing to a close.

The fresh deep navy-blue glow of Shonan's sea surface suddenly floated before my eyes.

The woman’s singing voice persisted. Even on rainy nights, it reached us. The songs remained exclusively militaristic in style, as if she were stubbornly compelling herself to maintain them. To my advantage, Dai-chan’s homecomings always came past midnight. Though his bandit role for the renowned director seemed finished, his work as an extra appeared to be flourishing. True to plan, I kept deceiving him.

However, the owner of the singing voice had by no means forgotten my actions from that time. The singing voice would grow hesitantly quiet or sometimes snap off abruptly when approaching our boarding house, yet usually regained its original vigor once past the reach of my window's lamplight—though one in three times, it simply failed to reach us at all.

That girl had undoubtedly become conscious of my existence after that incident. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say she had been frightened. When the singing voice abruptly ceased, in those few moments that followed, I would often vividly sense on my skin the girl’s consciousness directed at me—like that of a small animal in the pitch-black night, stiffening upon keenly detecting an enemy’s presence before stealthily detouring around it. Naturally, I too would suppress my breath and, while straining my ears, imagine her figure moving cautiously away. I resisted her silence while conjuring the utterly exposed expression of that petite, fair-skinned girl I had seen only once—a face caught between astonishment and terror. ……The girl had been thoroughly frightened by my prank that day; not once did she ever pass beneath the boarding house window singing as she used to. Apparently, I must have been perceived as a terrifying enemy by her. Indeed, countless times I heard it—the moment I thought she had passed by, the pattering sound of light shoes would break into a full sprint.

Of course, I never repeated that prank. On the contrary, I felt somehow saved that my act hadn’t killed off the singing voice. And then—this silent battle of mutual awareness without shape or form that I felt each night when she passed by, like countless black imps clashing weapons without sound—gradually began to feel like a strange game played solely between her and me. Before I knew it, I discovered myself waiting for it like a secret nightly pleasure.

The stretch of rainy nights that had continued—perhaps that was due to the rainy season. But the woman's singing voice did not stop. Dai-chan’s return home still persisted past twelve o’clock, and he would invariably announce the next day’s song before going to bed each night. And yet, it was rather strange that not once had the real singing voice ever been sung as Dai-chan predicted. Every last one of Dai-chan’s predictions had missed the mark.

But I continued deceiving him every day. I would claim that tonight too, the song he had predicted could be heard, then make a show of reacting with exaggerated surprise, feigned unease, and mockery. Dai-chan was completely taken in. He was now brimming with confidence, existing in a state not of mere happiness but of absolute bliss. He would say this through lips practically dripping with drool, narrowing his already narrow eyes even further.

“Right? Tonight was that song again, just as I predicted?” “Of course I heard it too.” “Truly a beautiful voice.” “A dignified, clear, taut voice like platinum wire.” “Tomorrow’s the Malaya Offshore Naval Battle—she’ll be singing that one.” “But you know, tomorrow she’ll make one mistake.” “It comes to ‘the Malay Peninsula, off Kuantan,’ then the next part doesn’t quite come out.” “She confuses ‘Now is the time!’ with ‘Now at last!’, you see.” “So she’ll sing it again tomorrow, you see.”

A creeping thrill came over me. Just as planned, he was beginning to live not through his "love" but through my "lies." … So the next day, putting on a face like I’d witnessed a miracle, I reported that everything had unfolded exactly as predicted. Dai-chan broke into a grin, his brown face shining brightly as he nodded. And he said:

“You see, it’s not just the songs anymore. It seems I understand everything about that person... You see, she lives in a house with a hedge. The hedge is camellias. That person is very fond of white camellias.”

“Oh.” “Wow, Dai-chan, you can even figure that out?” “Of course I understand—everything flashes before my mind’s eye in sudden bursts. “Love is what produces such mysterious power.”

Flaring his nostrils, he looked at me as though I were utterly enraptured. Getting fully into his stride now, he began describing things as if he'd witnessed them firsthand.

“She’s the eldest daughter. Her father has passed away, and the family isn’t very well-off. That’s why she’s become such a capable girl—so responsible that everyone calls her cold—yet remains a lonely young woman. She has no one to depend on anywhere. At work too, she’s so capable that people end up disliking her. But it’s precisely such people who hunger for a gentle love that will envelop them completely. She’s a pitiable person. That person will be thirty soon.”

“Don’t you know? “Dai‑chan?” At times, I found myself seized by such doubts when faced with his overly confident manner.

“Otherwise, you’ve got some model for this somewhere, haven’t you? Just confess already.”

“Don’t be absurd.” Dai-chan gave me a look as if I’d said something utterly outrageous. Vehemently, he said: “Don’t you understand yet? A model? That’s on an entirely different plane from such earthly matters. I’m simply following that person who grows clearer in my heart with each passing day. Why can’t you believe this? Listen carefully to that person’s singing voice. Listen deeply and quietly with your heart’s ear. Then everything should become perfectly clear to you too.”

“Hmm… By the way, is she a beauty?” “Is she—”

Whenever I asked that, he would always make an overtly displeased face. "Why do you fixate so much on matters like her face and appearance?" "I wish you'd show more interest in things invisible to the naked eye." "Besides—some blossoms are best left unspoken."

Around that time, Dai-chan’s "love" seemed to have advanced to where each night, the hazy form of "that person" would materialize in midair. As I watched the owner of the voice, I grew curious about what sort of woman Dai-chan imagined her to be, but he persistently dodged my questions with evasive answers. I concluded he likely wanted to keep that mental image exclusively his own.

Sometimes, I humored him by singing in chorus. I feared most that Dai-chan’s interest would stray from that singing voice.

You and I are cherry blossoms of the same class Though parted ways, should we scatter— Once bloomed as flowers—resolve to fall Let us blossom on the same bough and meet again

When the two of us started clapping and singing together, the clear blue skies of wartime would invariably rise before my eyes. Against that blue sky moved a B29 trailing a straight white contrail. The midsummer noon strafing by a small plane at our evacuation home. I remembered huddling in a corner of the room with my family piled on top of me, struck by a strange realization that even if a bullet killed me, the mother and sisters pressed against my skin would survive—that tomorrow would still come for them. That I was solely myself and no one else among other humans, that I could become none of them, that all illusions of familial bonds were mere delusions—this alone being certain truth—I felt through every pore while illuminated by death's light. I think my true birth occurred within that moment. At least, that was when I awakened to others' existence... Yet I would always start singing voluntarily only to stop just as abruptly. As I sang, I felt myself dissolving into that blue sky—a shameful obscenity permeating this dissolution. I might have been desperately fearing, guarding against, and detesting my own sentimental tendencies…

The long rainy season had ended. In the distant sky, imposing cumulonimbus clouds billowed up as days arrived when the intense, heavy summer light heated the room’s air until deep into the night. My self-taught art history lectures to Dai-chan—which I had been continuing as if on a whim—had just finished covering early Christian art, and I was thinking of returning to Japan to begin discussing either Gigaku masks or Hakuhō sculptures when it happened. Suddenly, the woman’s singing voice ceased.

It was early July; two days passed, three days passed, a week went by—yet I could no longer hear that tense singing voice passing beneath my window at night.

I was disconcerted. The last time I heard her song was July second. Until then, it had continued without fail. I had made it a rule to always be at the boarding house each night at that hour—reading books, copying classmates’ notes, or taking records of exhibitions—so there could be no mistake about that. Because she did not stop singing, I had gone out of my way each day to close the window despite the heat, taking care so as not to cause her any unease.

The song was no longer heard—as if vanished into eternal silence—even after ten days passed and half a month had gone by. Had summer vacation begun? Or was the girl ill? Or had she moved away? Each time I considered these possibilities, I grew angry at myself for thinking them. Lately, I too had come to feel I needed the existence of that song’s owner and had begun harboring stirrings of affection for that singing voice. The presence of that girl—her voice abruptly cutting off or growing faint as she took detours down dark paths to avoid me—felt strangely nostalgic, and her absence left me unbearably lonely. I resolutely opened the window. When it neared ten o’clock, I watched for figures passing along the road below. But that girl’s form never once appeared in that alley.

Meanwhile, Dai-chan continued coming home late. He remained convinced the singing voice could still be heard every night. Oblivious to reality, he would return home, have me confirm that night’s song matched his previous description, then zealously proclaim tomorrow’s selection. By then, he even seemed to be holding conversations with "that person." Though the singing had ceased, his "love" for its source had willfully advanced to that stage on its own.

……Of course, I kept lying to him. But whatever fighting spirit or malice I'd felt toward him had vanished; I was merely humoring him to avoid trouble—strange as it sounds, once it became clear those nightly songs of hers had truly ceased, even that "lie" lost its substance as such. It was only with her actual voice present that I could feel that spiteful satisfaction toward Dai-chan—him being manipulated by my lies yet living them—but with that voice gone, even his complacent chatter about phantom visions held no weight. [...] His endless talk of "that person" became indistinguishable to me from gossip about some unrelated woman elsewhere.

I gradually began to find it foolish to humor him. The hostility I had felt toward him that morning near the end of early summer had gradually faded away. And yet, my pretense that the songs continued exactly as Dai-chan predicted was nothing more than apathy toward habit.

“That person… well, she’s a bit dark-skinned.” “And her face is long.” “After all, she’s a woman—she’s deeply ashamed of it.” “‘Why feel shame?’ That’s what I told her.” “I’m no great man myself.” “But I don’t feel ashamed of that.” “What I’m ashamed of is my very existence.” “I’m ashamed that I’ll die.” “Ashamed that I’ll become just an object rotting away.” “As long as they live, humans must keep striving to live.” “That’s right.” “For those striving to live—why should their looks matter?” “Who could die beautifully?” “What’s beautiful is being alive.” “It’s the courage to live.” “Guts.” “I told her—‘You finally gave me that courage.’”

Dai-chan continued talking about such things with a serious face. I listened out of obligation. “Your song—that awakened me. That shook me and proved that I too had courage—that’s what I told her. At the film studio when I first heard your song, I realized I still retained the capacity to love others and love myself.”

“What the hell is love anyway?” I said. I still could not comprehend his “love.” “Love is—you see—the illusion that one occupies a position within another person. It’s being aware that your self holds space inside someone else. You might call it the strength needed to believe that.”

“Hmm.” I found myself even less able to understand.

“Why do you need such a thing?”

“That’s because we’re human.”

"Why do you feel so obligated to this legend called humanity? Even if we stopped being human, as long as it feels good, what’s the damn problem?" "If it truly felt good, then maybe. But you say that like becoming non-human isn’t terrifying. I once wandered alone through mountains for three days. That’s when I understood I was ceasing to be human. No—becoming something else entirely. I saw only three paths: madness, becoming a monkey, or death. All roads away from humanity. I felt myself sliding into one of those abysses... But now I understand. In that moment, I’d never scorned humanity more bitterly. Strange thing about humans—to remain human, you absolutely need another human. That’s where love takes root."

“So love makes humans human, is that it?” I laughed.

“We’ve never been human from the start. Until we die, we’re human anyway.”

“That’s not it.” Dai-chan answered in surprise. “When alone, humans cease to be human. They gradually draw closer to grotesque things—I know that from my own experience. A solitary human being doesn’t actually exist. Since Adam and Eve, humans have had two people as their smallest unit.”

“So what about humans who want to be alone?”

“That’s the same as wanting to die.” “I too was actually on the verge of dying, you see.” “In a state of distracted emptiness, forcing myself through each day, I was practically dead… That’s when the miracle occurred.” “And then everything became clear to me—I confirmed my own courage, you see.” “That singing voice continuing daily exactly as I’d predicted—this is what invigorates me.” “Through that singing voice, I’ve finally returned to being a full human being.” “…That’s why it’s love.” “Everything exists because I loved that person…”

During our art history sessions, Dai-chan would often speak like one possessed. I cannot say with confidence that I had understood his words. However, while feeling a touch of the ridiculous, I was certainly preoccupied with his words. I jotted down fragments of it in my notebook, and to this day I still possess that notebook. I can still vividly recall myself in nothing but a tank top and underwear, frantically transcribing Dai-chan’s words from the previous night into my notebook.

I waited in eager anticipation for when Dai-chan would discover the truth. I hadn't the slightest intention of broaching it myself. I believed he needed to hear with his own ears that it could no longer be heard—that very moment when I would meticulously observe his reaction.

What would he say then? If he told me to wait until tomorrow night, I would reveal that it had already been inaudible for over twenty days. Would he strike me in anger? I thought I was prepared to accept that blow. That much was certain. But even if he struck me, would that make his illusion reality? He ought to realize that what he'd been living wasn't "love" but merely my "lie." That very moment of his downfall would become the sole instant when I could discover my "place" within him—as he liked to phrase it...

I spent each day steeped in that cruel anticipation. I always returned to the boarding house room before ten o'clock and waited for Dai-chan to come home. However, Dai-chan continued returning home past midnight every night. I always wondered if he delayed his return home out of fear of learning the truth, but when Dai-chan came back, he would contort his glossy, thick-featured face—first meticulously verifying that night’s song—then announce tomorrow’s selection in a lively voice, as if thoroughly enjoying himself. He did not change that habit.

Therefore, Dai-chan still didn't know the truth. At the very least, it was a period when days of presumed unawareness continued.

I had abruptly come face to face with the girl who produced that singing voice.

Near the end of July, on an evening when the year’s highest temperature had once again been broken, I went out to Yotsuya that day to collect rent and land tax from our fire-scarred Tokyo house—the sole source of income for my family. Each month near month’s end, it was my job to collect payments, stamp seals with meticulous care, verify no vandalism had occurred at the estate, then mail funds to our house on the Shonan Coast. Having just received a letter from Mother about my sister wanting classmates over at our coastal home, I wrote a brief reply at the post office and sent it with the money. Then I suddenly wanted to swim.

Until dusk, I was at Korakuen Pool. After returning the rented trunks, still enveloped in a mood where the smell of chlorine, chaotic noises and shouts, and vivid afterimages of swimsuits flickered chaotically in my senses, I wandered aimlessly along the tram street and emerged onto Suidobashi Station's platform. The pool was swarming with children like potatoes in a wash bucket, but I found some satisfaction in the long-missed sensation of being in the water. As I waited for the train whistling, someone suddenly tapped my shoulder from behind. That was that girl.

“Do you recognize who I am?”

“Do you know who I am?” the girl said, looking up at me in a stiffly formal tone. I couldn’t recall for a moment.

She had a round face with a broad space between her eyebrows and eyes, and slightly puffy single eyelids. A small, neatly compact nose, as if pinched up by fingertips. Her complexion was pale, her skin bearing no trace of makeup save for lipstick. The girl was staring at me with angry eyes.

“Don’t you understand?” “It’s me.”

Without so much as a smile, the girl repeated herself. Her dimpled chin looked adorable—she was a girl with an extremely childlike face. "Oh—that’s right," I thought.

“Oh right, you’re that singing auntie,” I said. “Huh.” “Well done figuring out it was me.”

“I investigated,” the girl answered without flinching, her eyes fixed on mine. “You’re a university student lodging at that boarding house, aren’t you? Since this spring. You always sleep until past noon, I hear. They say your snoring’s terribly loud and that you’re a real lazybones?” “Well… color me surprised,” I replied. In truth, I had been surprised. I recalled the boarding house landlady with chronic migraines who always had plaster patches stuck to her neck and temples. I had almost no memory of ever speaking with her. But there was likely no one else who knew that much besides that landlady.

“You got this information…from her auntie?” “…at…boardinghouse.”

“Well...” “Anyway, I know for certain.”

The girl finally relaxed her tension and smiled with one side of her mouth. “On my end, I’ve been seeing you frequently.” “You sometimes go out to the university or somewhere, don’t you?” “You take the Inokashira Line.” “I’ve even been in the same train car before.”

At that moment, the train pulled in. I boarded, and the girl boarded too. The girl only came up to my shoulder. Reaching for the strap as we stood side by side, I noticed the girl’s hair was damp and twisted. The girl was also holding a small waterproof handbag.

“Oh, you were at that pool too?” “Yes,” the girl answered in a low voice. She stared out the window with a sullen expression. Suddenly, I felt an urge to ask her all sorts of things. “Which high school? What year?” “Me?” The girl looked up in surprise, her face turning resentful. “I have a job. Because today’s Sunday, I went swimming at the pool.” “You have a job?”

I was also surprised. “Huh, I thought you were still a high school student.” “That’s wrong. I graduated from high school last spring. I work in the secretarial department at a company now.” “...My mistake,” I said. “But hey—even though I did bad things like peeping on you before—why aren’t you singing these days?” “Because... nowadays I can leave work on time. There are so many people on the streets now—I don’t need to sing anymore.”

“Need? What’s that ‘need’ you’re talking about?” “...I’m such a coward.”

With a resentful glance in my direction, yet the girl answered with complete seriousness. “Back then, our company president was about to get embroiled in a corruption scandal. “That’s why things were so hectic in the secretarial department. “Following the section chief’s orders, we organized documents, dispersed them, took information to the president’s mistress’s house and hidden apartments, contacted lawyers… Since we wouldn’t attract attention, us girls were used. “That’s why we were kept at work past nine every night. “I’m such a coward, aren’t I? “So walking alone down that narrow shadowy path late at night was absolutely terrifying for me.”

“So that’s why you were singing?” It struck me that I’d never imagined such circumstances. “Because you were scared?”

“Yes.” The girl answered in a voice still edged with anger, her tone dropping slightly. “...If I kept singing, even if someone scary appeared, I’d know right away because the song would cut off oddly?” “Then someone might come help, and besides... singing made me forget how scared I was.” “...But why stick to nothing but those wartime songs?”

“Because they worked best.” “I was singing while desperately trying to remember the songs my brother taught me.”

“I see…” I said. “Now I finally understand. There was something I’d always wanted to ask you.” “...There was something I’d also once felt I absolutely had to tell you.” The girl spoke in a voice so faint it seemed on the verge of disappearing. “When I saw you swimming at the pool, I thought today I would finally say it, and that’s why I followed you.”

“To me? “What?”

I peered into the petite girl's face. The girl directed her straight gaze at me and swallowed her saliva. She said, enunciating each word clearly with deliberate pauses.

“...You’re absolutely disgusting.” “You’re a horrible person.” “I hate you.” “I detest you.”

Even as she spoke, the girl suddenly turned beet red as if straining and swallowed her saliva again. Her lips were trembling. “You opened the window and looked at me,” the girl said. “Ever since then, I haven’t been able to stop being aware of you.” “It’s cruel.” “Like something was stolen from me—forcibly, unreasonably, suddenly and violently.” “Somehow you made me feel intensely ashamed, and that feeling itself has such a violent quality.” “Whenever I turn that corner, I feel like that demonic version of you—carrying that light from back then—has already started watching me. I can’t return home without being conscious of you.” “You laughed back then, didn’t you?” “It infuriates me beyond measure.” “Somehow...I find you so frustrating...I just...can’t put it into words.” “But anyway, that’s why I hate you.” “I absolutely cannot forgive you.”

Perhaps I should have apologized. But I simply stood dumbfounded. While the girl spoke in a panting tone, low and rapid, her eyes brimming with tears, I ultimately couldn’t say anything. Suddenly, the girl spoke.

“We change trains at Shinjuku, don’t we?”

“...Yeah.”

“Would you like to have some tea?” “I’ll pay.”

I felt that following her was my obligation. I found myself like a boy who carelessly tosses a stone only to be reprimanded by a frog. The cruel wounds my actions had inflicted upon this girl’s heart lay beyond my grasp—an “other’s affair” I couldn’t fathom—yet I understood at least this much: I wasn’t entirely blameless.

At the café in front of the movie theater, I sat facing the girl. I remained silent. I continued waiting. But the girl said nothing. Indeed, I had been shaken. Disgusting man, I hate you, horrible person, I detest you... While I had never once experienced the happiness of considering myself a likable man, neither had I ever been so clearly and directly cursed by lips belonging to a member of the opposite sex. I think that shock had left me utterly shaken—head still bowed, waiting for the accusatory words to pour from the girl’s lips, believing my sole task was to hear them through—when I suddenly realized. What filled my heart now was a single sorrow—it was by no means guilt or a sense of sin. It wasn’t that I felt regret, nor was I thinking I’d done something wrong. It was simply that I—this self being thought disgusting by her, this self being hated—was acutely grieving, with piercing sorrow seeping into my heart over being precisely and undeniably that self.

I neither apologized nor held any hope of being forgiven. Everything was merely that I had been being myself. That she found it obscene, that she found it cruel, that she accused me of having intruded upon her over something as trivial as opening a window to look—all these were matters of her own circumstance, none of my concern. Just as others are others to me, I too am an other to them, and others are always, more or less, nothing but cruel things to any single person. What way of life exists for humans other than enduring those others and enduring oneself?

I will not apologize, I thought. I was merely nothing more than another other to her. What's wrong with that? But I thought I had indeed been flustered in many ways. I focused intently on my own sorrow, utterly consumed by the effort to crystallize it. Even though the girl sitting before me was a lovely young woman with almond-shaped eyes who now gazed at me with gentle calmness, I failed to notice this for a long time. The girl remained silent.

It was when I had silently finished drinking my coffee, when the café's record changed to a new disc and the jazz trumpet I knew so well resounded, that I regained myself. It was *When the Saints Go Marching In*. All at once, the girl became one of those ordinary young women you always see in cafés, and I found myself within time's continuous flow connecting to the reality of Yotsuya mansion and the pool. With the strange awe-inspired illusion toward the girl having vanished, I looked at her. The girl had not touched her coffee.

“What’s wrong?” “Aren’t you going to drink it?” I said.

“It’s alright. I’m watching you,” said the girl, laughing familiarly for the first time. I felt her slightly crooked tooth pierce my chest like a physical ache. She was exactly my type, I thought. “...I thought you were fifteen or sixteen.” “I’m an idiot. That’s why it’s a problem—you seeing me as a child.”

In her usual stiffly polite manner, she abruptly changed the subject. "They say in corruption cases, the worse they are, the less they get caught—it’s true, isn’t it? Our company president also seems to have managed to cover it up successfully. He’s a truly awful person, our president."

"But thanks to that you get to leave early—isn’t that easier for you?" “It’s not easy at all. “Every day, I have to read thirteen different newspapers, cut out articles, and compile scrapbooks. “It’s exhausting. "I think I might become nearsighted soon. “Do you have good eyesight?”

“1.2 and 1.5.”

“Oh, right. “...What newspaper do you like?” “What newspaper do you subscribe to?”

But without waiting for my answer, she turned red and pressed both palms to her cheeks. “...I’m such a fool.” “All this... it’s completely irrelevant talk, isn’t it?” “It’s all just meaningless anyway.” “I suppose so.”

I answered without understanding why. I couldn’t figure out what the girl wanted to say.

The record changed again. At that moment, the girl said.

“Hey, why didn’t you open the window after that? Didn’t you... see me?”

“Why... you ask,” I stammered. “I just wanted to see your face once—that’s all.” “One look was enough to satisfy my purpose.” “So? What did you think?” “Did you lose interest that quickly?” “It wasn’t about stopping your singing.” “Ever since then—every night—I’ve listened.”

“Yes... I was always on edge, thinking you might suddenly show your face again, that you might harass me like that.” “If you opened it next time, I thought I’d despise you, think you were pitiful, call you mean—yell at the top of my lungs. That’s what I kept telling myself.”

“...Huh,” I said. “That would’ve been interesting—should’ve opened it again after all.” “That’s right. You really should’ve opened it again for me. Then I would’ve felt completely cut off from you. You—I could’ve easily ignored you. But... the window never opened again. I’ve ended up getting irritated precisely because you wouldn’t become my proper enemy.”

“But you said you hated me.”

“Yes.” “I hate you.” “It’s like you’ve barged into my mind and made yourself at home without permission.” “That’s why I get angry at you.”

“But...” “Are you saying it’s none of my business? That’s a lie.” “A lie? Why?” “Then why did you keep that window closed even though it’s hot? That window always had its light on but stayed shut.” “Well, that’s because I didn’t want to interfere with your singing.” “Right? So that’s how it was after all. Even though other windows are open, only that one is closed. Every night... That meant you were completely aware of me. I kept wondering what on earth you were thinking in there. ‘What a sneaky... what a disgusting man,’ I thought.”

“Why?” “...I don’t really get it.” “This feels like a false accusation.” “I thought you didn’t even have the courage to open the window again—to make me hate you properly.” “You can smirk so casually while doing something that mean,” “...how utterly unmanly you are—that’s what I kept thinking every time I saw that window still tightly shut in all this heat.”

“That’s... some baseless accusation.” I kept repeating myself, yet the girl’s words pierced my chest. I had never imagined that single act could have placed such a psychological burden on her awareness. …But I said.

“That’s none of my business—mine.” “No, it is my business. “It’s something you did.” The girl answered. “How cowardly of you to say that.”

“So what if it’s cowardly?” I said. “What do you want me to do? How do you expect me to take responsibility? I won’t apologize. There’s no reason to apologize. Wasn’t I just another stranger to you? You live your life calling me disgusting and hateful, and I just live mine—that’s all there is to it. Right?”

The girl remained silent. “Sure, I only saw your face once like that,” I said. “It’s not that big a deal for you to resent, get angry at, or hate me so much.” “You’re abnormal.” “That’s commonplace, you know.” “I can only take responsibility for myself.” “The psychological impact I had on you or whatever—that’s none of my business.”

“You kept closing that window every night. I think I’m having a psychological effect on you too.”

“That might be true. But that’s mine. It belongs solely to me. I don’t consider that any of your business.”

The girl had a serious look in her eyes. "You," the girl said. "Have you ever loved someone?" "There are plenty," I answered.

“About how many people have you loved until now?”

"Love" again? Here too with "love"? I laughed.

“I don’t love anyone, you know. I can’t love—or rather, I hate love.”

“Why?”

The girl asked earnestly. She stared at me with eyes wide in surprise. It’s precisely this kind of troublesome talk that I hate, I thought.

“Loving others is a burden to me.” “I’m already swamped with my own responsibilities—I don’t need some illusion making me even more restricted.” “Humans are unique entities—each unable to budge an inch, utterly incapable of truly merging with others.” “That’s my creed.”

"But that’s precisely why love is necessary, isn’t it?" “Deception, you mean?” “No.”

“It makes no difference,” I said. “I know. Love is believing lies and living them. To put it bluntly, it’s living in madness. Unfortunately, I have neither the taste nor the courage for that. All I have is the courage to believe in this one core within me that doesn’t blend with anyone. That’s the only starting point for anything.”

“I... I don’t understand what you’re saying,” the girl said.

The café had no windows, so I hadn’t noticed, but when we stepped outside, the surroundings had already turned completely to night.

It was in the Shinjuku crowd, drenched in the shopping district’s neon glow, that I suddenly became aware of the girl’s body. Suddenly, the girl took my arm. In the jostling crowd, I felt her soft chest and thigh press against me. I realized a heavy, numbing desire was rearing its head within me.

“You hate me, don’t you? You think I’m a horrible person, right?”

"Yes," the girl answered. It was a bright, clear voice. "That much is clear. I might just scratch you to shreds at any second."

“You really hate me, don’t you?” “I really do hate you.”

I laughed slightly. I wondered whether the people watching us could imagine this kind of conversation. The girl repeated her words as if biting her lip. “It’s true. I truly hate you.”

“……What’s your name?” “Shibata, Haruko,” the girl said, writing the characters on my palm. It was a lover-like gesture.

I couldn't understand that girl at all. I put strength into my arm. "What exactly was your reason for following me today?" "...There's no reason." The girl answered. "Even if there were one, I wouldn't know now." "I think you'll surely understand later... Anyway, I just wanted to confirm something."

Suddenly, she released her arm. We had arrived at the station entrance.

“I need to stop by a friend’s place briefly.” “Goodbye.” “I’ll take my leave here.”

The girl had serious, intent eyes. I laughed. I must have been thoroughly played by this young girl.

“Goodbye,” I said. The girl disappeared into the crowd.

That night, I remember getting off directly at Shimokitazawa Station and walking along the dimly lit path with sparse streetlights leading to Dai-chan's boarding house, muttering aloud two or three times: "If love exists... if love exists..." Within my mind's eye moved the white naked skin of that petite girl with her slender neck. If love exists. But no—what I desired was merely a woman's body. Only that girl's body, I thought. Yet driven by unease, I continued muttering to myself: If—if true love really exists...

I still had not forgotten that flickering ache like a strange pain—the one that would crush my chest whenever I recalled the girl named Shibata Haruko from that time. Like unearned grief, it spread deep within my breast and made me stop walking. “No—enough,” I muttered lowly, “I’ll stop thinking about love altogether.” With those same halted steps I turned back toward the station. Using a bill I’d taken from that day’s rent money, I resolved to buy liquor instead. That night brought rain.

It was three or four days after that when I received a letter from the girl who owned that singing voice—Shibata Haruko. As usual, Dai-chan had gone out to the film studio. In the afternoon, when I woke up, went out to buy cigarettes, and returned, the landlady with chronic migraines—who always sat in the shadows doing her sewing—silently handed two sealed letters into my hand. One was from my mother, and the other had no stamp or signature. That one was from her.

I slit open that envelope first. Immediately, I knew it came from that girl. This surprised me. Though I hadn't told her my name that day, she'd somehow learned it anyway. I slipped the letter between exhibition pamphlets and notebooks filled with scribbled notes - that cursed thing still sits among my possessions today. This was correspondence I should've burned ages past, yet here I transcribe its full contents.

Mr. Sasaki Shoji

I know that your name is Sasaki Shoji. I don’t know how many times I’ve aimlessly scrawled this name—your name—on stationery before now. I wrote letters too. They were all letters filled with nothing but hatred and resentment toward you. Every time I thought of you or became aware of you, I would end up getting angry. Everything terrible I said about you yesterday was true. But now I intend to write plainly.

Mr. Sasaki Shoji

You're utterly hopeless. A worthless human being... I realized that after thinking all night. You're human scum. Truly hopeless. Don't you think that somewhere deep down? I believe you know it yourself—that you're worthless, the lowest kind of creature only capable of self-obsession. You strut around as if you've accepted it. But those who resolve to live with such spineless, apathetic egoism are precisely the truly cowardly, apathetic egoists. Utterly hopeless. That's what I think. I simply hated you. I saw you as a vulgar intruder violating my feelings—yet couldn't ignore you no matter what. Though you refused to leave my mind, every night I'd seethe—seethe beyond endurance. I've told you this before, haven't I?

But yesterday, on the train from Suidobashi Station, I suddenly thought—could I be in love with this person? Even though it was utterly unbearable—even though I considered you such a repulsive, spineless, crude and ill-mannered man—I found myself unable to leave your side. It wasn't that you'd started appearing kind or admirable. To my senses, though you remained exactly as I'd imagined, I began feeling drawn to that very version of you. You even came to seem like the one indispensable person I needed. I thought perhaps I could sustain myself through you. Happily and vibrantly, so that I might become the "special individual" you described, I started perceiving you as someone irreplaceable.

Mr. Sasaki Shoji I was surprised at myself for being that way. Actually, even I found it unexpected.

After that, I went to a classmate’s house until late and helped with cutting patterns. When I left that house, it was raining. I had been lent an umbrella, but when I arrived at Shimokitazawa Station, I deliberately began walking in the rain without opening it. The rain was strangely fun. And I, a coward, unusually forgetting my fear, wandered round and round the deserted streets of the rainy night for what felt like an eternity. Please don’t be surprised. At that time, I was in the mindset of marrying you.

At that time, I believed I could not live my life ignoring you. I liked you and loved you. I couldn’t help but acknowledge those feelings. And as I thought of you, I convinced myself I had nothing left but an irredeemably barren future. I thought that with nothing but this feeling of being unable to abandon you—because I cared—I would dedicate my life to you, a barren and worthless man. Fine. That’s fine. I too will surely be unable to save you. But even so, it’s fine. You lack even the courage to love me—no, you cannot love another person. How wonderful, I thought.

I will surely lose to you. But by forcing my way—clinging desperately—I will turn your death into my own. I will make us commit double suicide... I was almost ecstatic at that chilling void between us—no, not even a void between us, but a complete absence of hope in our future—that overwhelming blankness that felt like it would crush my eyes. I wandered through the rain as if drunk, losing all sense of myself for what seemed an eternity.

Mr. Sasaki Shoji

I returned home about two hours ago. But at that moment, this ecstasy, this conviction—as if scales had fallen from my eyes—vanished and crumbled away to nothing. Slowly, I drew a bath alone, emerged from it, and sat down at my desk. To you—I have begun writing this farewell letter.

I am not being whimsical. Once I decide something, I'm a stubborn woman who rarely changes it. I don't truly understand why I changed my mind, or what it means. I really don't understand. In the end, I walked down that familiar street—meaning through the alley beside your boarding house—and returned home. Your room still had its light on, and I could hear loud voices talking. But the window was closed. Why? Is that just a habit? Either way, there I sensed your stubbornly closed heart—a single impassive mask. At that moment, despair seized me.

Why was that? I truly don’t understand. But suddenly, you had stepped outside of me. I realized I was a fool forcing myself to live in numbness toward you—a single clamorous nobody, a tedious weakling, a hopeless stranger—who no longer mattered. Why must I marry such a person? I don't want to.

I realized I no longer even hated you. I realized you're not even worth hating—just a man deserving nothing but pity. I will never be troubled by your existence again. I gazed at that closed window and felt you coldly shutting me out—even my ecstasy. I have been shut out by you, existing outside of you. At the same time, you too have stepped outside of me.…

It’s four o’clock now. It was a long letter. But this is a farewell letter. At present, I seem to regard you only with contempt as a distant stranger.

But in truth, I still lack confidence. After waiting two or three more days—if I truly no longer care about you—I will entrust this letter to the landlady.

Mr. Sasaki Shoji

It was Wednesday night. I read it over again. I still didn't understand why I had suddenly abandoned you (?). But I would leave this letter intentionally unrewritten. I would never again have my heart captured by anything concerning you. It wasn't a resolution—it was a fact. Goodbye. After all,I had decided to abandon any notion of double suicide with you. Though we had only locked eyes once and spoken just once,I gave you this farewell letter to sort out my feelings. You were indeed someone worth writing a farewell letter to. But I no longer thought of you as either disgusting or hateful. I was now able to ignore you.

Goodbye. Shibata Haruko

I read this letter with a bitter smile. I started to tear it up, reconsidered, tucked it into my notebook, then opened my mother’s letter. My mother was ill.

Lying on my back on the tatami, I realized the time had come for me to leave this boarding house. I had nothing left to do at this boarding house. My season at this boarding house came to an end. Probably, I would return to the house on the Shonan Coast and within it, I would only be able to ascertain my possibilities. In that place within that relationship, there was neither any sincerity of mine other than barely managing to live on, nor any chance for me to survive. I thought that accepting it was the least bit of courage possible for me. I started gathering my notebooks and such.

Dai-chan would surely return home past midnight again, I thought. I intended to meet him once, exchange a perfunctory thank-you and farewell, and leave this boarding house the following morning.

I even felt a surge of nostalgia and tried reciting Saigo Takamori’s death poem. New stickers had appeared without my noticing, scrawled with phrases like: “I am a man like your fathers of old,” “we are sons of flint and darkness,” and “after the first death, there is no more death.” They seemed to be verses Dai-chan had picked up somewhere; he must have pasted them up while I slept. The photograph of Sotatsu’s *Winter Plum Blossoms* that I’d acquired was pasted on the wall right where his feet would rest. Looking closer, I saw fragments of the Senjinkun military code mixed among the old stickers.

I spent that afternoon idly reading through them, then ate the meat and pumpkin stew Dai-chan had made that morning, accompanied by cucumber pickles and a raw egg. Thinking this would be the last of Dai-chan’s home cooking made it taste delicious. I had deliberately eaten it cold, but when I drank the bancha, sweat broke out all over my body. It was a hot day. There wasn’t a breath of wind.

I opened the window and gazed out at Tokyo's endless sea of roof tiles stretching like flotsam beneath the windless midsummer dusk sky. It was an ordinary yet dreadfully monotonous vista saturated with sordidness. The lingering rose-tinted afterglow of sunset in the sky, the twilight deepening inexorably over distant forest-like trees—to me they conveyed nothing beyond the oppressive weight of time that had repeated yesterday and would continue into tomorrow.

In an empty lot to the left with a small park-like horizontal bar and swaying log, a lone boy was doing solitary exercises. Only his upper body could be seen. ...Yet I felt no sense of kinship with him either.

White undershirts, briefs, and bloomers hung out to dry peeked from every house's window. I thought of the countless women's hands that laundered them day after day. They grew old repeating, over and over, the labor of renewing that white color. But even after washing and rewashing, only this layered grime clinging stubbornly to the white fabric seemed to guarantee what we called a proper, tangible life - it served as proof of its actual existence. What was I doing? What would I do to live from now on? What on earth would I love? I kept asking myself. There was no answer. I did not love life, people, being ensnared in their relationships - layering that laundry-like existence at their core, growing old through the daily labor of washing it - or so I thought. I did not love living. But I was defeated. This I was certain to be defeated. Why did I persist in a contest I was certain to lose? I had been thinking. The illusion that I could win - until this illusion completely vanished, I would continue losing forever. But why wouldn't that illusion leave me? Even having been defeated this much - was my defeat still not sufficient?

That day, Dai-chan returned home less than an hour after sunset. I was surprised. Since early summer, this had been his first early return home.

“Anta-san! Anta-san!” he called out loudly as he came up the stairs to the second floor. He was visibly ecstatic, his white polo shirt’s chest heaving heavily. The moment he rushed into the room, he hugged me with his sweaty body. “What’s the matter, Dai-chan?” “Please be happy for me, please be happy for me. With this, I’ll finally become a proper adult.” “I’m happy for you, but what’s this about?” “I’m getting married.”

Dai-chan said.

I doubted my ears.

Placing both hands on my shoulders and forcing me down onto the tatami as if by brute strength, Dai-chan gulped noisily at the bancha from the earthenware teapot. “Today—today, I met that person.” “The real one.”

Dai-chan said. His lips glistened wet with bancha and drool. "I seem to have been a little mistaken. She was petite. But she was exactly my type."

Shibata Haruko. I conjured up that face in my mind. Like a goldfish, her mouth gaped open and closed. "...Congratulations," I finally said.

“Thank you,” Dai-chan said. “You are a good person.” “You are truly a good person.”

He lowered his voice.

“Anta-san, by the way, I have a request.” “Right now, that person is here downstairs.”

“Huh?”

I stood up. But it meant nothing. Dai-chan, his face slack and disheveled, stopped me with his hand. “Now, please calm down. Please.” “...Actually, I don’t want to tell her that I was listening to the singing voice.” “She never once deviated, singing the songs exactly as I had predicted.” “But I don’t want to say it out loud.” “For me, it was inevitable, but she simply happened to run into me out of the blue today.” “So we fell in love.” “And that’s how I want to keep it.” “What’s a mystery to me would seem like a madman’s delusion to her.” “That would be a detriment.” “So you see, you must keep quiet about the songs too.”

“But Dai-chan,” I asked. “If you kept the songs a secret, how did you figure out that she was the singer of those military songs?”

“It’s intuition.” Dai-chan flared his nostrils. “This morning, I ran into her on the street. At that moment, it flashed upon me. This is the one, I thought. So we were talking at the coffee shop all this time.” “My intuition—or should I call it spiritual insight? This was correct.” “Exactly—she was precisely the sort of person I’d imagined in terms of both character and circumstances.” “Please wait. It’d be strange to keep you waiting too long. I’ll bring her up now.” No sooner had he spoken than Dai-chan clattered down the stairs and disappeared. I was left in a daze. But I didn’t have much time to dwell on it. Immediately, Dai-chan came upstairs bringing a woman with him.

“Let me introduce.” “This is my friend, Ms. Mochizuki Yasuko.” “This is Mr. Sasaki, my art teacher.”

“……Nice to meet you.”

I said. My voice came out hoarse. The "her" Dai-chan had believed in was a dark-skinned woman with a horse-like face. She clearly appeared to be over thirty. "Pleased to meet you," she said. Her voice had a stiff, metallic quality. I couldn't contain the laughter bubbling inside me. The woman kept her composure perfectly. "Well then, see you tomorrow," she said turning back to Dai-chan, executed an absurdly precise Ogasawara-style bow, and rose briskly. I became aware through the footsteps descending the stairs. She walked with a slight limp.

It was a full hour after he had gone to see her off that Dai-chan returned to his room. During that time, I had thoroughly savored his absurdity and my own self-loathing to the point of nausea. But who could have foreseen such an outcome?

“How was it?” “Her impression?”

No sooner had Dai-chan returned to his room than he said this, rubbing his hands together. "Right? "A perfect match, right?" "And the image of the woman I described." "Though she does seem a bit short in stature."

“A perfect match,” I said. Certainly, she was the type of unfortunate old maid that nobody would like. “I made her skip work today. “So today she won’t be passing by here singing songs.” “I’m retracting what I said yesterday.” “That was the ‘Attu Island Gyokusai’ song, wasn’t it?”

“So, you’re saying goodbye to the songs too, huh?”

"I said. I no longer harbored any malice or resistance toward Dai-chan. I had resolved to keep silent about all my past deceptions. That was my meager substitute for congratulating the good-hearted Dai-chan on his new beginning. And I told him that tomorrow I would leave this boarding house and return to my home on the Shonan Coast. He seemed to think I was being considerate and pleaded, 'Please stay; it's no trouble.' Until I showed him my mother's letter, he persistently insisted on continuing our communal life."

“I see... If it’s an illness, then there’s nothing to be done,” he said. “Then, shall I move to her house? She’s the eldest daughter, you see. She seems to have circumstances that make it difficult for her to leave home. Today, I replied that I would consider that point, you know.” “What? That’s quick. You’ve already gone and gotten engaged?” I was dumbfounded. “You’re quite the smooth operator.”

"Heh heh," he laughed. "Well you see, we'd been connected through song for about four months, so she understood immediately over there." "...Where is that person's house?"

“It’s behind that park. The house is a tobacco shop.” “You should move.” I offered that advice out of meddlesome concern. “You should go as far away from this alley as possible.”

The instant I finished saying that, I shuddered and gazed at Dai-chan's face. Dai-chan's expression began changing before my eyes. All traces of his cheerful happiness were wiped away; he turned ashen and began to tremble. By then, the singing voice coming around the corner was already resonating clearly in our ears.

“That voice. Without a doubt, that is that person’s voice.”

Groaning, Dai-chan said this and edged closer to the window frame. He opened the frosted glass door. A gaping void split the midsummer darkness there, and the singing voice—in that frail, strained tone—gradually drew nearer to our window. ...Behold the parachutes descending from the sky Behold the parachutes conquering the skies Behold the parachutes conquering the skies… The song did not cease even when it reached beneath the window. Feigning ignorance, it continued unabated in the same cadence. O blossom of the century—parachute, parachute

Upon that pure white O crimson blood we offer We offer without regret, O raiding unit

This blue sky—the enemy’s sky This land—the enemy’s stronghold This land—the enemy’s stronghold

“...No. “That’s not it!” Dai-chan cried out bitterly. He stared intently at the figure of the woman walking away down the alley. The song continued without hesitation in a strained voice, slowly fading into the distance. That was Haruko’s voice. ...Where does it appear—that childlike face Ah, pure white flowers borne Ah, bearing blossoms against blue skies Ah... bearing blossoms against azure skies...

Before I knew it, I had risen to my feet. Dai-chan pressed his face against the window frame and began to cry out. The fleshy bulk of his well-fed shoulders gripped the window frame with brute force, trembling in minute, violent spasms.

I was at a loss for words. Dai-chan raised his tear-glittering face and looked at me. Sobbing like a child, he said: "You... you knew all along, didn't you?"

In silence, I lowered my head. After that, Dai-chan said nothing more. He simply buried his face in his arms and continued crying. I remained leaning against the wall and stayed up all night that night.

When I awoke from my doze in the morning, Dai-chan was gone. I could hear the kettle hissing as usual. I slowly drank a cup of bancha tea—Dai-chan's last thoughtful gesture—taking my time with it. I knew I would not be forgiven by Dai-chan, nor by Haruko—no, by anyone—nor would I expect to be forgiven. And again—that I myself would forgive no one—this was what I thought. I stood up with the bundle of notebooks I had prepared the night before.

That day was August 5th.

I left the boarding house with the casual air of someone heading out for a morning bath. A clear blue sky was above me. But I walked to Shimokitazawa Station step by step, as though savoring each moment of treading upon the earthen path. I have never visited that boarding house again since then.

Since then, a considerable time had passed. During that period, I came to know several women and ultimately parted with every one. For me, "love" became something that brought only gnashing despair, humiliation, and vexatious constraint the more earnestly I pursued it. Rather than joyous harmony, what was given me proved suffocating submersion. The power to dissolve even my core into that illusion alongside rapture remained beyond my grasp.

Is defeat still not enough for me? ...as Shibata Haruko said, I might be an unfortunate, lowest-of-the-low man holding nothing but a barren, cowardly, freezing future. But I—who set out from that longing for the deserted blue sky spreading with military songs—have always mustered every last ounce of effort and courage for the sake of "love," and have devoted them all. The torment of my irreducible self—and each time, it came back to me. I feel as though I am only deepening that very thing.

However, I was now attempting with all my might as a high school teacher to perform the act of believing in "love" once again. That spring, I intended to have my first marriage. Since then, I had not known of Shibata Haruko’s whereabouts. What became of Dai-chan and Mochizuki Yasuko’s marriage—I didn’t know that either. I had not met Dai-chan either. However, this New Year, in a film I happened to see—a work by the same master director who once directed a movie in which Dai-chan played a bandit—I discovered Dai-chan among the samurai being cut down in rapid succession by the heroic protagonist. At least in his daily life, he must still have been trapped in the same cycle. I recalled how he had been concerned about his increasingly thinning hair, but unfortunately, as he was wearing a samurai wig, I couldn’t clearly discern its current state.

Furthermore, my mother is alive and well.