Pathway to Japanese Literature

I don’t really believe in things like human progress or complete transformations of character. Certainly, people do change—but that doesn’t mean they progress, nor does it mean they become someone else. The circuits of emotion and forms of understanding within him had somehow become fixed—these were not things that could be replaced.

There was a season during my university days when I tumbled into staying at a friend's boarding house. At times I feel those boarding house experiences rise vividly from beneath my skin like a brand. And I think perhaps I'll never become anyone other than that self from back then for as long as I live... It's a thoroughly despairing realization—yet only from that despair can I begin anything at all.

The period I lived at that boarding house ran from mid-April into summer—I believe it was the year when the war in Korea, after endless complications, finally came to an end with the Panmunjom armistice signing. I’d just turned twenty-one—a problematic young man who loved drinking and arguing. Women held almost no interest for me. (The year before, I’d had my first encounter with a woman of the trade—a fumbling failure born of overeagerness. While part of this stemmed from wounded confidence, at the time I’d been half-convinced—no, truly half-convinced—that I had no need for women whatsoever.) To put it plainly, I was in my cockiest phase.

Though I called him a friend, he was just a man I’d met at some rundown bar—not a university student. His occupation was that of a movie extra—every day he would take the bus out to the studio. When not drinking, he was an intensely quiet man. Though his hair had already thinned enough to reveal a gleaming scalp, he persisted in wearing bright red shirts and garish checkered socks beneath that perpetually baggy corduroy jacket of his. He addressed me in a low voice as “Mr. You.” …His bearing alone suggested a proper movie man, but in truth he appeared to be one of those hopeless perpetual extras who’d never rise beyond bit parts. But as long as he kept going to the studio, the money seemed to flow in well enough, and I spent my days lounging about there without paying a single penny. At times, he even provided me with small sums of pocket money—this extra gentleman (I never learned whether Isojima Daihachiro was his real name or stage name) would furnish me with funds when needed.

That said, I hadn’t been brought to that boarding house with any intention of staying long from the start. The next day after staying one night there, my decision to settle in as a freeloader at his insistence stemmed solely from wanting liberation—even temporarily—from my burdensome role within the fatherless family. …To my family still living at our evacuation site on the Shōnan coast, I wrote and sent a postcard: I’d be studying at a friend’s house for a while; if they needed anything, send a letter; I’d reply by letter. Mother sent back a grudgingly consenting reply.

Muttering "Worrying was for nothing"—or so the saying goes—I remember being dumbfounded at how smoothly things had gone as I stared at Mother’s consenting letter. Given that even to my past self, that reality had felt like a dream, it’s perhaps only natural that now I can only recall it as something that happened entirely within a dream. However, in any case, I thus began living within a dream.

Isojima Daihachiro was a rather peculiar man. I called him “Ōchan,” but he was skilled at cooking and seemed to approach feeding me—the freeloader—with both responsibility and zeal. On the wall were pasted circular sheets with drawings of cows, whales, and Chinese cabbages, and he would gaze at them daily while muttering “How about vitamins? How about calcium? How about protein?”—calculating nutritional value and calories to prepare meals focused entirely on balanced nutrition and calorie-rich content. Ōchan used to be a monk and had memorized many sutras. I was taught the Heart Sutra by him, but since I couldn’t remember much of it, he gave up after about three days.

He had a hobby of pinning various things to the walls with thumbtacks—there was what he called Saigō Takamori’s death poem (though I’ve forgotten the exact verses), a sheet of paper inscribed in ink with a maxim (?): “Thou shalt never anger, for anger is the means to lose friends; thou shalt never forgive, for forgiveness is the means to lose oneself,” along with old sumo rankings and movie stills that papered every wall of that eight-tatami Japanese-style room. Among them was what I believe to be an English poem by Auden. He had once mentioned something about having been married before, but I didn’t press for details.

Why he had taken it upon himself to let me live with him and feed me—I couldn’t quite understand. I was a student in the English department, but I loved art and would go around to every exhibition I could find, taking notes. And yet this version of me—a me at least ten years his junior—he seemed to regard with something like reverence for reasons beyond my grasp. If I said I wanted a drink, he would go into debt or rouse a closed shop to buy me a bottle of whiskey. Each time, he would nod earnestly and listen to my nonsensical art history lectures. I would spout off-the-cuff, improvised hypotheses as though they were the latest academic theories. I would summarily dismiss all those colossal artists with a single phrase. Then he would nod with evident delight, as if genuinely moved. I gradually grew more irritated with Ōchan, yet paradoxically found my own fervor being fanned until everything spiraled out of control, leaving me collapsed there drunk. And the next day, I would realize I was properly dressed in Ōchan’s yukata and laid out inside the futon.…

Looking back now, it's a story that seems both mystifying and somewhat embarrassing—how we could have done such things—but that was our daily routine at his boarding house. In any case, there I was—spreading my wings as I pleased for the first time in my life, indulging in my own unrestrained chatter, and living quite pompously off another's dime.

The boarding house was on the second floor of a dilapidated house near Shimo-Kitagawa Station, but not long after I began living there, I heard the song sung by a young woman’s voice passing by beneath my window. Night after night, that singing voice would pass along the road beneath the window. Every night around ten o'clock at night, the singing voice could be heard. The boarding house had neither a garden nor a wall; directly beneath the window ran a road that was just wide enough for an auto rickshaw to barely pass through. The road was narrow and long yet ran straight ahead, and if one went in the opposite direction from where the singing voice could be heard, it connected to a somewhat wider road that led out to the main street. The song seemed to be sung by a young woman who commuted daily to work, singing it on her way home; it was never heard on Sundays or holidays.

Perhaps because the road was straight, in the hushed stillness of the residential district at night, the singing voice could be heard from quite a distance. It would first begin like a faint auditory hallucination—a wavering, thread-thin voice—yet sung in crystalline clarity with precisely articulated lyrics, approaching beneath our window as if drawing a white thread through the darkness. The songs were invariably wartime pieces—the same militaristic ones my older sister had once been obsessed with memorizing and singing. The owner of the singing voice was earnestly careful not to make mistakes in the lyrics, and if she stumbled even slightly, she would start over from the beginning. And so she walked through the darkness, enunciating each syllable with precision, her singing brimming with confidence. …From this, I concluded she must be an office girl who’d experienced the war around the same age as my sister—a resolute woman with a kind of fastidious stubbornness, an old maid (at the time, I considered any unmarried woman over twenty an old hag). Ōchan insisted, for some reason, that she must be a virgin and declared he had never heard such singing at night before.

But night after night, her singing voice would begin deep within the silent darkness, matching the rhythm of her footsteps as it passed beneath our window in steady tempo. We, drinking and talking loudly—though in truth, it was almost always me doing all the talking—would sometimes fall silent and listen to that singing voice. To that small yet delicately tense voice, we may have felt a strangely poignant emotion. At times, we would unconsciously find ourselves softly humming along to that fragile, thin singing voice—"Kamikaze Special Attack Unit," "Song of Student Soldiers Departing for the Front," and "Evening Moon Over the Hill."

Evening moon over the hill Mother’s gentle lullaby In my childish heart, the longed-for The sky’s Special Attack Unit… My brother departs… Ōchan was said to have flown naval fighter planes in Tsingtao, yet he knew neither the melodies nor lyrics of those songs at all. Pestered relentlessly by him, I wrote down half-remembered lyrics and compiled a notebook titled Collection of Military Songs. ……His booming voice—honed through sutra chanting—proved utterly unsuited for Western-style melodies sung in low register, yet he carried that notebook everywhere on his person, practicing until its cover frayed. When the singing began, he would pounce on me for the song title like a waiting predator, frantically flipping through pages. Clumsily chasing each verse in his low rumble, he eventually improved enough to feign harmony with her voice. I found little amusement in this. For starters, there was something mortifying about this belated obsession with wartime songs—a resistance and revulsion had begun stirring within me. More than anything else, my irritation grew at how Ōchan’s interest seemed to have shifted from my slapdash art theories to that damned singing.

Before long, I gradually came to want to see that woman’s face. All I had to do was time it right—open the window when her voice approached below. But when I told him this plan, Ōchan stubbornly opposed it for some reason. "Please don't do that," he said to me in a low voice, tears even welling up in his eyes. “For me, that is salvation,” he said. “And so, I end up living each day in a daze.” “Floating through each day—truly, we humans live with our heads in the clouds.” “Somehow accepting that as natural—while keeping up this self-excuse—I go through each day half-present.” “Right?” “For me, this detached state—it’s what matters most.” “What does that have to do with seeing her face?”

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

I couldn’t comprehend Ōchan—hands clasped, prostrating himself as if to worship me.

"I'm afraid of getting serious," he said. "I don't want to think seriously about myself—about what it means that I'm alive. If I started confronting those things head-on, I wouldn't even be able to walk straight down the road. I'd just end up crouching there moping until I died." Ōchan answered with complete solemnity. "What I'm hearing isn't that person's song. It's their emotions as they sing. That's what pierces me. That earnest, desperate voice—that tense way of singing—they stab straight through to my deepest core."

“...It’s just some girl’s song, you know? Ōchan.”

I was appalled. Ōchan gripped my palm and kowtowed, moving it up and down.

“Yes,yes.” “You’re right.” “That is just a girl’s song.” “But for me，that has meaning.” “I’m a slovenly，apathetic human being.” A cowardly，no-good man. I am not a serious person. However，the person singing that song must be different. That voice pierces me like a sharp blade. It makes me remember what I had forgotten at my deepest depths. It shows me where it lies. That is pain. But I like that kind of pain. I need that. ……I can only live half-present in this world. Yet there remains part of me deeply pierced by that voice. This is my salvation. This is serious. Please—don’t dwell on her face. “If we peek at her，she’ll never sing for us again.”

In fact, at that moment, Ōchan was shedding tears. Sensing his determination to stop me by force if necessary, I lost all remaining will to insist on seeing the woman's face......Could what Ōchan perceived in her voice be some form of purity—of innocence? I wondered, but try as I might, I couldn't comprehend his reasoning at that moment. Because I couldn't understand, I may have all the more deeply engraved his expression and words from that moment into my heart as a peculiar impact.

That night too, the singing voice could be heard—approaching, then receding into the distance. I stared at Ōchan’s grave face as he earnestly chanted along in a low voice, when 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 via her clear singing voice acting as a catalyst. But at the same time, he was living in a mood of not wanting to confront that past at all—or so I thought.

However, one night about a week later, I opened the window. I saw the face of the young woman who owned the song. I had not done it impulsively. That night, I undoubtedly held at least a spiteful resolve toward Ōchan. Perhaps I even harbored something akin to hostility toward that song's owner—the one who had stolen away my captive audience for self-indulgent chatter. In any case, I had carried it out methodically.

Ōchan had become part of a bandit troupe directed by a master filmmaker two or three days prior and had been returning home past midnight every night. He would invariably come up to the second floor, immediately inquire about that night's song, and commence cleaning up after the breakfast I had prepared while humming it. The previous night, upon observing his seemingly contented figure from behind, I had clearly vowed in my heart to carry out that idea.

By the time it was nearing nine o'clock, the preparations had been completed. I oiled the window groove, uncoiled the lamp cord, and devised it so that sliding open the window would cast light directly below. Once I even went down to the alley to test the angle. Convinced there wasn't a one-in-ten-thousand chance of failure, I stood poised for the singing to begin. Right on cue, a little past ten o'clock, a muted singing voice rounded the corner. There was no mistaking its usual owner. The song was "Kato Hayabusa Fighter Squadron"—the one with "engines roaring, rumbling..."

Hayabusa flies—to the edge of clouds On wings gleaming, the rising sun and— On our breasts emblazoned the crimson eagle’s— Emblem of our fighter squadron There, the lively, bouncy rhythm abruptly shifted, and a mournful refrain began. ……In the shadow of glory—there are tears— Ah, now gone 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 startled. The owner of the song was a fair-skinned girl with a face still like a child’s. To me at least, she appeared no older than fifteen or sixteen.

But of course, the one startled had been that girl. With lips pursed into a round, anus-like shape, she stared fixedly at me standing by the window through large, wide-open monolid eyes. Her small frightened face turned deathly pale as she held her breath—then I watched it flush crimson in an instant.

Without saying a word, the girl immediately lowered her face and started running at full speed as though fleeing. The hurried footsteps faded away. I started laughing. "So that's all," I thought. She was a petite, slender-necked girl with Japanese features, wearing something like a red cardigan. She appeared to be at most high school age, completely different from the difficult old maid we had imagined. She might have been a part-time high school student after all. I somehow felt let down.

But I was terribly amused. Having seared the songstress' face into memory and forced her to acknowledge my existence like some muddy-booted intruder, I reveled in this malicious triumph—a spiteful joy that curled through me like smoke. After closing the window and setting the lamp cord right, I sprawled on the tatami and kept up that stifled laughter until my ribs ached. Toward both the girl and Ōchan, I felt only that vicious satisfaction—not a flicker of remorse for my trespass. People are cruel by nature. We humans always have these others lurking about, never letting us dwell in solitary worlds. That's simply how things are. So this little incident? Nothing remarkable. We all endure others' intrusions to some degree. That's what living means...

However, as time passed, I began finding the poverty and spitefulness of my own heart increasingly distasteful. That the owner of the singing voice turned out to be an unexpectedly cute girl might have been one reason my heart ached. My cruelty—that act which could only be called a vulgar prank—gradually began weighing heavy on my chest. After all, her singing hadn't been particularly bothersome. Even regarding Ōchan's incomprehensible mystifications, there'd been no reason for me to go out of my way to interfere. I withdrew into myself and started drinking. Ōchan's room lacked even a radio, leaving me no means to distract myself.

Nearing two o'clock, Ōchan came rushing up the stairs. While regulating his breathing, he asked me solemnly, “What song was it tonight?” I ended up failing to mention what I had done. "...The Kato Hayabusa Fighter Squadron song," I answered, my tongue thick with drink. “The engines’ roar, you know—that part.” “I-Is that true?”

Suddenly, Ōchan let out a scream-like shout, startling me. Still half-crouched, he edged closer with fixed eyes. “R-really? That song?” “Was it that one—‘The Hayabusa goes to the ends of the clouds’—you mean?” “No mistake at all?”

“Of course it is. “……What’s the matter?” “Ōchan.”

I answered timidly. I couldn't make sense of his near-frantic excitement.

“No—I was shocked—utterly shocked!” Ōchan’s face lit up as he suddenly seized my hands with both palms. “Our hearts have connected at last!” “Connected?” “What’re you on about?” “Listen—today around ten, I was at the studio. Follow?” “You’re drunk off your ass, but you get me?” “I follow that much.” “Then get this—” “Out of nowhere, I heard the Hayabusa song again!” “Clear as daylight!” “Yes—in her voice.” “It’s gospel truth.”

“Huh?” I sat up and stared at Ōchan’s face in disbelief. “No—it was in my mind.” Ōchan’s face was bright red. “It’s spiritual insight. So I felt certain that tonight’s song must have been that one.” “...Cut it out—that’s ridiculous.”

I said, deliberately regaining my sarcastic expression. "It's a coincidence. Just that it happened to match your auditory hallucination—that's all." "Yes, yes, I understand perfectly well that you insist it must be nothing but coincidence," Ōchan flared up. "But you see, declaring this a coincidence is merely one interpretation." "What changes if you interpret it that way?" "The world isn't filled with interpretations or explanations or solutions." "There are only facts, I tell you." "Humans live crushed beneath the weight of those facts alone."

“What are you trying to say, Ōchan?” I said, shaking my head from side to side to avoid Ōchan’s face as he gradually drew closer while speaking. His acorn-colored, slightly plump face, filled with energy and fervor, loomed before me. He continued speaking, his flat nostrils twitching, the oily sheen on his nose wings glistening. “No—I’m simply stating the inescapable nature of facts. ...You’re trying to explain that away with logic. You insist on dismissing these inexplicable coincidences as mere chance. But you see, for humans, there are only facts—and humans must take responsibility for those facts. You must believe. Today, at the exact same time you heard the real version of that song there, I heard the same woman singing the same song. That...”

Ōchan hesitated mid-speech and returned to his usual timid expression for the first time. As he lowered his gaze to the tatami mats, he suddenly flushed red up to his earlobes. In a low trembling voice yet clearly, he said. “...That’s because I love that person.”

I was left speechless. I could feel the drunkenness fading away, but I must have just been sitting there blankly with an idiotic look on my face. “Because I love that person.”

Ōchan repeated. “...That person and I have already begun an emotional exchange.” “It’s not a lie.” “I now understand that person’s inner self as clearly as if holding it in my hands.” “I feel as though I’ll come to understand everything about what that person’s songs—the ones we’ll hear every night from now on—are truly about.” “It’s a blessing... don’t you think?” “This is love.”

That night, he claimed he had received them from an actress in the extras' common room and served them heaped on a plate—I remember that. While mechanically bringing those small, slightly shriveled sour strawberries—likely grown in some amateur's vegetable patch—to my mouth, my drunkenness sobered up completely, and I thought to myself that Ōchan was either a madman, a fool, or both. I thought I shouldn't tell him about my prank that night. If I told him I'd seen the woman's face, and if because of that the singing stopped coming—this madman might kill me, I thought.

Ōchan was washing my dishes at the second-floor sink, humming a horribly off-key tune with evident delight. Then he turned a beaming smile toward me and winked one eye. I found myself utterly incapable of confessing my prank to him.

“Ah, I’m exhausted. “Got killed three times today alone,” Ōchan said the moment he returned to the tatami room, taking out a sugar canister from a small tea cabinet and licking up about two spoonfuls in one go. “Sugar’s the best thing for recovering from fatigue.” Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, he spoke into my ear. “Listen here. “Make sure to listen carefully again tomorrow. “Tomorrow—it’ll definitely be the submarine song. “Clank, clank, when the sub surfaces—you know the one. “Tomorrow, that song will definitely be heard.”

Of course, I hadn’t truly believed in Ōchan’s so-called "spiritual insight" or anything of the sort. I had made a habit of adopting a sneering attitude toward madness and sentimentality.

However, that night, I sensed in Ōchan an intensity that couldn't be dismissed with a laugh—something eerily akin to a strange truth. He had ensnared me in a peculiar unease.

The next night, I strained my ears and waited for the singing voice to come. After ten o'clock, the faint sound of that familiar singing voice reached my ears. It wasn’t a trick of the ears. It was the same delicate, earnest voice as always. As always, there was a sense of the singing voice steadily drawing nearer, keeping tempo with the rhythm of footsteps.

Somehow, I felt relieved—that despite last night’s prank, the singing hadn’t ceased; that it wasn’t the “Submarine Song” but the “Naval Flight Prep School Song.”...Yet the singing voice stopped abruptly, as if a thread had snapped, far short of reaching the faint lamplight cast by our room’s window. After that night, we never heard it again. There was no doubt this was the effect of my prank. I started drinking again.

It wasn't that I felt pleased about Ōchan's prediction being perfectly off the mark. Had the song been the "Submarine Song," I might have reacted differently. But it wasn't—Ōchan stood clearly, absurdly mistaken. There he was constructing his "love" atop idle, self-satisfied fantasies. Yet somehow I found myself unable to mock him... Not that I felt entirely free of contempt for his sentimental certainty about "love," for that self-serving madness of his. No—the mockery within me remained undeniable. But even as I derided Ōchan, even as I scorned him, I began to feel myself gradually seized by an inferiority complex toward this man.

I was becoming acutely aware—with a certain visceral pain—that I had never loved anyone before, and that I probably would never be capable of loving anyone hereafter. I thought about how I’d lived as though deliberately circumventing the word "love". For me, "love" was an inescapable awareness of connection, a burden, nothing more than another name for an immobilizing "relationship". I had never been able to enjoy it, nor had I ever actively sought it. At the very least, therefore, I had thought that life would be easier without something like "love". Most likely, still young and timid, I was living solely through my disgust and fear of that "burden".

Of course, I wasn’t clearly conscious of these things at the time. What assailed me was, in the end, a single anxiety and vexation. That the "love" I didn’t know—its happiness, its joy, its capacity—existed within Ōchan, and that my response amounted to nothing more than anxiety toward it, interest in it, and jealousy-tinged vexation—this is what I now believe.

When Ōchan returned home, the whiskey bottle lay empty and toppled. The sake bottle also lay toppled. I had ransacked every corner of the room and drunk up every drop of alcohol. I was terribly sleepy.

“How was it tonight?”

Ōchan asked, his breathing ragged.

“Whiskey,” I answered. Then he whirled around like a bird in flight and immediately bought a round bottle, placing it before me. To me, it happened in the blink of an eye. I felt as though Ōchan were a fairy-tale magician hiding whatever I desired inside his black coat. “Here, drink.” “You’re important.” “After all, you’re the living witness who’ll hear her true songs.” Pouring whiskey into a glass with an exuberant voice, he asked again:

“Well， how was it? It was the Submarine Song， wasn’t it?”

I was momentarily at a loss for a reply. “...More importantly, how about you, Ōchan?” “Did you hear it again?” “I certainly heard it!” Ōchan puffed out his chest. “It was the Submarine Song after all.” “Oh?” I said, meeting Ōchan’s utterly ecstatic eyes—like a child awaiting sweets. I averted my eyes in confusion, and in that instant, realized I occupied no place within him. I had been completely ejected beyond his skin, and there I was—a mere utility pole—being perceived by him. ……He was filled solely with his own fixation on love. Now, he had no interest except in himself.

Ōchan had laid it bare. He was formidable. At that moment, something akin to a strange hostility was born within me. How could I meekly endure being treated as nothing more than a utility pole? I’m human too. It’s not like I’m living just for your sake. Alright—I’ll let him suck on plenty of candy first before kicking him down into the valley—I thought. Nonchalantly, I said.

“Amazing… Even over here—it really was also that Submarine Song!” “Isn’t that right? Isn’t that right?”

As if he’d been lying in wait, Ōchan clapped his hands and leapt up. “Ah! It really is genuine!” “True love binds me and that person together.” “Magnificent!” “Truly magnificent!” “It’s love.” “It’s true love—”

Ōchan—and then suddenly fell silent. The silence persisted. I rubbed my eyes and stared at him. With a smile like an ancient Buddhist statue lingering on his cheeks, he slumped his shoulders limply, drool dripping from his lips. His mouth hung slackly open, the string of drool glistening as it stretched and shrank like a yo-yo string. His eyes were staring vacantly into the distance.

He remained as he was and said nothing. I grew slightly afraid.

“Ah—it’s as if the entire world has gathered within me alone,” he said at last. “...How about it? “How about a sumo match?”

But dead drunk as I was, I could barely manage to keep watching him—standing up remained beyond my grasp. Ōchan, lacking any means to express his jubilation, crossed his thick short legs and began drinking while groaning “Ahh—ahh.”

“Ahh—it’s like my whole body’s become one raw wound—dousing alcohol over it and setting it ablaze,” he said while gulping down liquor. “I am fire. “I am a flaming roly-poly. “A light that burns as a single colossal pain. “I am a lighthouse. “That’s right—that person is the lone ship that has finally appeared on the night sea reached by the lighthouse’s light. “A yacht with pure white sails. “The black sea separates us—but a single beam of light connects us. “We cross that bridge of light—coming and going between each other. “Ah—what a beautiful scene this is. “This is poetry. “Hmm. “And this very scene—is that of true love. “Ah—now at last I am living love itself. “Ah—utterly…”

“……But hey, Ōchan.” I was in no state to laugh. Overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of my own lie’s effectiveness—in a daze as though trapped in a nightmare—yet half-seriously posed that question. “You go on about love, but she doesn’t have a clue about you, does she?”

“That’s completely unnecessary.”

Without hesitation, Ōchan answered as though stating the obvious.

“But…”

“But what does it matter?” “Anyway, that person’s song reached my mind’s ear.” “Tonight—in reality—the song that person sang while passing beneath this window!” “However, here and the studio are so far apart that it takes forty-five minutes by bus.” “Such a thing couldn’t possibly be heard—could it?” “What?”

“That’s right. There’s no way such a thing could be heard.”

“Right? But I heard it. “Moreover, it was the very song I prophesied yesterday. “That person sang it, and I heard it vividly in my mind’s ear at the studio. “This is proof that my inner self has finally caught that person in reality. “That person and I have forged a bond that can no longer be severed by distance or scissors—a connection that defies being cut even if you try. “If this isn’t called love, then what on earth should we call love?”

"But if they say it's nothing but Ōchan's illusion, then that's the end of it, isn't it?"

I became unable to comprehend anything and let out a cry resembling a scream. Ōchan made a face as if shocked and looked at me.

“Oh? What’s so wrong with illusions? This doesn’t sound like your words at all.” Perhaps due to his guzzling, Ōchan’s speech was already slurred. “Fundamentally, humanity is illusions. For example—what about the ‘you’ that you imagine yourself to be? It’s an illusion. What about the humanity you imagine? Illusions—the inner being is always illusions. Illusions—that’s what humanity is.”

“Don’t be absurd—illusions are illusions!” I shouted. I, not to be outdone, drank whiskey straight from the glass. Ōchan also threw his back in one gulp. “Illusions are illusions.” “Of course.” “But tell me—if you organize things that way and strip away all illusions from humans, what on earth would remain?” “Humans would become no different from stones packed with matter down to their core, wouldn’t they?” “That’s no way for things to be!” “That’s a lie—the notion that humans are the same as stones.” “Humans, you see—it’s precisely because we possess the ability to create illusions and the courage to believe in them that we’re human.” “A stone is a stone.” “Humans must keep rejecting—constantly—the fact that they are mere stones, that reality.……”

Suddenly, he let out a siren-like roar. He stood up and began a bizarre dance, his limbs stiffening as if thrust out. He bobbed his head up and down, slapped his knees, let out a ferocious roar like a jungle beast, and began circling round and round the room. And then he began stripping off his clothes one after another. Dumbfounded, I watched his grotesque striptease. ...At that moment, I cannot say for certain whether there had been within me a spiteful satisfaction at having successfully deceived Ōchan, or shock and derision at his absurd frenzy that surpassed all imagination. The only thing certain was the fact that, in Ōchan’s figure literally dancing in wild ecstasy, I became acutely aware of my defeat and was profoundly moved. I was watching that dance, deeply moved from the very core of my being. That self of mine—even now, I can vividly bring it back to life.

Before I knew it, Ōchan was down to just his underwear. His naked body—only his face dark-complexioned—was flabbily bloated and unsightly, his brick-red face disproportionately large for his stature while the rest of his body faintly flushed; his short-limbed figure bore a striking resemblance to a pig. With an ecstatic smile spread across his entire face, he let out a shrill cry and repeated the same hand and foot movements over and over. He continued laughing in a shrill voice.

I think he probably kept dancing after that and continued ranting about "love." I also have a memory of my hand being pulled as he urged, "Come on, let's dance—we'll dance together!" But I couldn't stand up. I remained in a state of confusion, a turbulent mix of terror and absurdity swirling within me, until finally, overcome by intoxication, I slipped into unconsciousness without even realizing it.

I came to my senses near noon the following day. I was sleeping in the futon, properly wearing Ōchan's yukata as usual.

Ōchan was nowhere to be seen. The violent bubbling of water boiling in the kettle could be heard from the gas heater next to the sink. I started to sit up and noticed a splitting headache. At that moment, I saw a sealed letter placed by my pillow. It was addressed to me—Ōchan must have brought it with the newspaper before leaving for the studio and left it there. Keeping my throbbing head as still as possible, I took the heavy envelope and opened it. As expected, it was a letter from my mother... Having finished reading it, I felt disgusted. The actual matter occupied only the final page—the rest was filled with nothing but her complaints. Even that main issue merely concerned how neighbors had pointed out two pine trees in our garden being eaten by insects. They were saying we should cut them down as they were dangerous, but she was just asking what to do about it.

While still lying down, I took the postcard and fountain pen and immediately wrote a reply. Have the pine trees cut down right away. If the neighbors report it to the municipal office and the prefecture orders them cut down, they'll only give about a thousand yen per tree in compensation. If you go to a town lumberyard, they'll cut them down, transport them, dispose of the remains, and give you ten thousand yen as payment. Since they have to be cut down anyway, that way would be more profitable... After writing just that, I had nothing left to say. I went vacant. I tried hard to conjure up the faces of Mother, Grandfather, my sisters in sequence, but they appeared before me only as insect-eaten pine trunks some twenty meters tall...... Far from summoning the sweet nostalgia I'd half-expected to feel, I began hearing each of them speak endlessly about themselves with accusatory stares until all I could think with perfect clarity was this: I still don't want to return to that house for some time yet.—

An incomprehensible anger seized me violently at that moment. Suddenly, the scene from last night—which I had completely forgotten until then—flashed vividly before my eyes: Ōchan, in a frenzy, excitedly continued dancing and ranting about “love.” Chafing with impatience, I recalled how I had been overwhelmed by his happiness, left dazed.

I thought. Ōchan had said he was living through love. Indeed, within him dwelled "love" for the owner of that singing voice—or rather, he was subsisting within that very "love." But wasn't this him inhabiting illusions beyond himself? That is to say—hadn't he transformed into an absence? Wasn't he failing to live as himself? —Unforgivable—I thought fiercely. This was intolerable—his blessed talent for shamelessly labeling such facile, absurd madness as "love" and dissolving himself within it; or at minimum, that ability to so effortlessly, so complacently believe in this "love" and find happiness through it. That Ōchan possessed this capacity for self-annihilation while I lacked it—this was unbearable. ...I was clearly jealous of Ōchan. I envied that happiness and detested him. By then, it was neither contempt nor ridicule. What occupied my awareness was a single unequivocal hostility.

The reason I was grimacing wasn’t just because of the headache. I had neither memories of happy “love” like Ōchan’s nor any capacity for such joyful “love.” But that was who I was—why should that have to be my burden?……Suddenly, I recalled the words he had whispered last night. “Tomorrow—it’s Farewell Rabaul.” “I’ll sing that one.” “Now I understand perfectly.”

—Alright. I muttered under my breath. Tonight too—I’ll tell him it was that song again. From now on I would keep deceiving him—dissecting the architecture of his smug 'happiness,' exposing the absurdity of his madness with spiteful thoroughness. I would nurture his "love" with my lies, then shatter it the moment he reached peak elation. I would hurl him into the reality of "rocks". I’d make him realize—whether he liked it or not—that he too was nothing but a single rock.…

……I thought—that this was my sole means of revenge against Ōchan—a self who could grasp no reality beyond that of "rocks," a solitary "rock" incapable of believing in its own sincerity. That he could escape the reality of "rocks" so effortlessly—it defied belief. That smugness of his—so self-satisfied in scorning "rocks" while denying them through such flimsy pretenses—was intolerable. That morning when my mother's letter arrived, I hardened my resolve to challenge him outright.

My throat was dry. I got up to drink water and opened the window. The glittering sunlight stabbed my eyes—across the narrow alley, paulownia flowers at the neighboring house stood revealed, their once-purple clusters faded and scattered into mere brown sticks. Now that I thought of it, I realized—last night the window had already begun paling at its edges. Before I knew it, early summer was already nearing its end. The moist indigo sheen of Shōnan’s sea surface abruptly surfaced behind my eyelids.

The woman's singing voice continued. Even on rainy nights, it could be heard. The songs remained exclusively militaristic in tone, and she seemed stubbornly intent on imposing them upon herself as though under some obligation. Conveniently for me, Ōchan's return home always came after midnight. The master's bandit role appeared to have ended, yet he seemed to be thriving quite well in his work. As planned, I kept deceiving Ōchan.

To be fair, the owner of the singing voice had by no means forgotten that action of mine from before. The singing voice would grow timidly quiet when approaching our boarding house—sometimes abruptly cutting off—but usually regained its original tone once past the range of light cast by my room’s window, though one out of three times it simply wouldn’t be heard at all. It was certain that after that incident, that girl had become aware of my presence. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say she was frightened. Abruptly, the singing voice would cease, and in the several moments that followed, I would often sense on my skin the vivid awareness directed at me by that girl—like a small animal in the pitch-black night darkness, tensing her body upon keenly detecting an enemy’s presence and quietly detouring around it. Naturally, I too would suppress my breath and keep listening intently, imagining that figure and its movements stealthily proceeding forward. Confronting that silence while conjuring in my mind’s eye the unreservedly open expression—caught between astonishment and terror—of that petite, fair-skinned girl I had glimpsed but once. ……That girl must have been thoroughly scared out of her wits by my prank that time—never once did she pass beneath the boarding house window singing as she used to. Apparently, I must have been perceived as a terrifying enemy by her. Indeed, the moment I thought she had passed by—the pattering of light shoes breaking into a full sprint—I heard this countless times.

Of course, I never repeated the prank. On the contrary, I felt almost saved that my act hadn’t killed off her singing voice. And then—this formless battle of silent mutual awareness I sensed each night when she passed by, like countless black imps clashing weapons soundlessly in the dark—gradually began to feel like a strange game played solely between the two of us. Unbeknownst to me, I had come to discover myself waiting for it each night like a secret pleasure.

The rainy nights that continued for some time might have been due to the rainy season. But the girl’s singing voice did not cease. Ōchan’s return home still continued well past midnight, and he would unfailingly announce the next day’s song before retiring each night. Even so, that the real singing voice had never once been sung in accordance with Ōchan’s prophecies was rather strange. Every last one of Ōchan’s prophecies had missed the mark.

But I continued deceiving him every day. By claiming that tonight too had brought the song he predicted, I made a show of reacting with exaggerated surprise, feigned unease, and mockery. Ōchan was completely taken in. By now he brimmed with confidence, existing in a state not so much of happiness as of bliss. He would narrow his already narrow eyes and speak through lips so slack they seemed about to drool.

“Right? Just as I said—that song was sung tonight, wasn’t it?” “Of course I heard it too.” “It’s truly a beautiful voice.” “A dignified, clear, taut voice like platinum wire.” “Tomorrow it’s the Battle of Malaya—she’ll sing that one.” “But you know—tomorrow she’ll make one mistake.” “When it gets to ‘Malay Peninsula, off Kuantan,’ the next part doesn’t quite come out.” “She confuses ‘imazo’ with ‘imaya’.” “So she’ll sing it again tomorrow, you see.”

A thrill ran through me. As planned, he had begun living not by his "love" but by my "lies."... The next day, I would put on a look of having witnessed a miracle and report that everything had unfolded exactly as he said. Ōchan would break into a broad grin, his tanned face gleamed as he nodded.

And he said:

“It’s not just about the songs anymore.” “It seems I understand everything about her… She lives in a house with a hedge.” “The hedge is camellias, you see.” “She’s very fond of white camellias, you see.” “Oh!” “Wow, Ōchan—you can even figure out such things?” “Of course I do! Everything appears before my mind’s eye in flashes—like sudden revelations.” “Love is what creates such mysterious power, you see.”

Flaring his nostrils, he looked at my utterly impressed self. Now thoroughly carried away, he began describing things as if he’d witnessed them firsthand. “That person is the eldest daughter.” “Father passed away, and the family isn’t very well-off.” “That’s why she’s such a capable yet lonely girl—so much so that everyone calls her cold.” “There’s no one she can depend on.” “At work too, she’s so capable that people end up resenting her.” “But those very people are all the more starved for gentle love that would envelop them completely.” “She’s such a poor thing.” “That person is going to turn thirty soon, I tell you.”

“Don’t you know?” “Don’t you know, Ōchan?” At times, I found myself seized by such doubts toward him in his excessive confidence. “Otherwise, you’ve got some model stashed away somewhere, haven’t you? Spit it out.” “Don’t be absurd!” Ōchan looked as if he’d been told something utterly outrageous. He said heatedly to me: “Do you still not understand?” “A model—that’s something entirely different 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, I wonder.” “Just listen carefully to that person’s singing voice.” “Listen deeply, quietly, with your mind’s ear.” “Then everything should become clearly visible to you as well.”

“Hmm… By the way, is she pretty?” “She is—”

When I asked that, he would always make an overtly displeased face.

“Why must you fixate so on faces and outward appearances?” “I wish you’d take more interest in things invisible to the naked eye.” “Besides, some things are better left unsaid.”

Around that time, Ōchan’s “love” apparently reached the point where “that person’s” figure would faintly materialize in the air each night. As I observed the owner of the voice, I was curious about what sort of woman Ōchan imagined her to be, but he always dodged with evasive answers. He probably wanted to keep the image all to himself, I thought. At times, I humored him by joining in song. What I feared most was that Ōchan’s interest would stray from that singing voice.

You and I are cherry blossoms of the same class Though we may scatter apart If flowers have bloomed, they’re prepared to fall. On the same treetop, let us bloom and meet again Whenever we started clapping our hands and singing together, a clear blue sky from the war years would invariably rise before my eyes. Against that blue sky, a B-29 moved, trailing a straight white contrail. The midsummer noon strafing by a small plane at our evacuated home. I have a memory of being seized by an odd jolt while huddled with my family in a corner of the room—pressed skin-to-skin as we crouched together—thinking that even if a bullet struck me dead, this mother and sisters whose flesh touched mine would not die, that tomorrow would still come for them. That I was myself alone—no one else among other people; that I could become none of them; that all illusions of attachment like family or siblings were mere delusions—these alone were certain truths I felt with every inch of my skin while illuminated by the "light of death". I think I was truly born in that moment. At the very least, I think that was when I became aware of the existence of other people—of human beings outside myself. ……But I—though I always started singing of my own accord—would always stop singing of my own accord too. As I sang, I felt as though my very self were being absorbed into that blue sky, dissolving away—and in that sensation, I detected a shameful obscenity. I might have intensely feared, guarded against, and detested my own susceptibility to sentimentality.……

The long rainy season had ended, towering cumulonimbus clouds swelled in the distant sky, and days arrived when the intense summer light heated the room's air well into the dead of night. My improvised art history lectures to Ōchan—which I had been continuing sporadically as if suddenly remembering them—had more or less covered early Christian art, and I was on the verge of turning to Japan-themed topics like Gigaku masks or Hakuhō sculptures when it happened. Suddenly, the woman's singing stopped.

It was early July when it began—two days passed, three days passed, even after a week had gone by—but that strained singing voice of the night passing beneath my window was never heard again. I was thrown into disarray. The last time the song had been heard was July 2nd. Until then, it had continued without fail. I had made it a habit to be at the boarding house every night at that hour—reading books, copying classmates’ notes, or jotting down exhibition records—so there could be no mistake about it. To ensure she wouldn’t stop singing, I made a point of closing the window every day despite the heat, taking care not to cause her any unease.

The song never returned—not after ten days passed, not even after half a month had gone by—as if vanished into eternal silence. Was it because summer vacation had started? Or was the girl ill? Had she moved away? I kept thinking up reasons and grew angry at myself for thinking. Lately I too had come to feel I needed that song's owner—that singing voice now stirred something like affection within me. The existence of that girl—her voice suddenly cutting off or growing faint as she consciously detoured down dark paths to avoid me—had grown strangely dear, and now that she was gone, I felt unbearably lonely. I mustered courage and opened the window. When ten o'clock approached, I watched for figures passing on the road below. But the girl's form never once appeared in that alley.

Meanwhile, Ōchan had kept coming home late. He still assumed the singing voice would be heard every night. Knowing nothing, he would return home, confirm with me that that night’s song matched what he had described the previous night, then energetically predict the next day’s song. Around that time, he even appeared to be holding conversations with "that person." Regardless of the singing voice having ceased, his “love” for its owner had arbitrarily advanced to that point on its own.

……Of course, I had continued lying to him. But whatever fighting spirit or malice I had felt toward him had vanished—I was merely humoring him to avoid trouble, strange as this may sound—for when I observed that the woman’s nightly singing had truly ceased in reality, those lies had already lost their substance as "lies." It was only when the actual singing voice existed—when Ōchan, manipulated by my lies and living through those lies—that I could feel that spiteful delight toward him. But with that actual singing voice now extinguished, even his complacent phantom prattling held no resonance for me.……His verbose ramblings about “that person” became indistinguishable from idle gossip about some unrelated woman—utterly irrelevant to my existence.

I was gradually beginning to find keeping up with him absurd. The hostility I had felt toward him that morning near the end of early summer had also gradually vanished somewhere. Nevertheless, my continued pretense that Ōchan’s predicted songs still persisted amounted to nothing more than apathetic adherence to habit.

“That person has slightly dark skin, you know. “And her face is long. “After all, she’s a woman—she’s deeply ashamed of that, you know.” “Why would there be anything to be ashamed of? That’s what I told her.” “I’m not exactly a good 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. “I’m ashamed that I’ll become merely a single object and decay away as a single object. “As long as one lives, humans must keep striving to live. “That’s how it is. “For a human being striving to live, why should something like their own appearance matter? “Who could possibly die beautifully? “What’s beautiful is being alive. “It’s the courage to live. “It’s guts. “I was finally given that courage by you—that’s what I told her.”

Ōchan kept talking about such things with a serious face. I listened as an obligation. “Your song—that awakened me.” “That stirred me and proved even I had courage—that’s what I said.” “When I first heard your song at the studio—that’s when I realized this self of mine still retained the capacity to love others and love myself,” he said.

"What the hell is love anyway?" I said. To me, his "love" still remained incomprehensible.

“Love,” he began gravely, “is fundamentally an illusion—this notion that we occupy space within another.” His fingers traced invisible geometries on the table’s scarred surface. “The awareness that some fragment of oneself maintains foothold in their being.” A dry laugh escaped him then, more exhalation than mirth. “Or perhaps we might call it…the strength required to sustain such fiction.”

“Hmm.” I found myself increasingly unable to comprehend. “Why would you need such a thing?”

“Because that’s what makes us human.” “Why do you feel so obligated to this legend called humanity? Even if you stopped being human, what’s the problem as long as that feels good?” “If it truly felt good, that is. You may say that, but ceasing to be human is truly terrifying. For three days, I wandered alone through the mountains. At that time, I realized I was gradually ceasing to be human. Or rather, I came to understand I was becoming something other than human. I thought there were only three paths left for me: go mad, become a monkey, or die. All of them were paths leading away from humanity. I felt myself on the verge of becoming one of them…… But now I understand. I had never disparaged humanity as much as I did at that moment. It’s a strange thing. Humans, you see—to be human, you see, one absolutely requires another human. That’s where love arises, you see.”

“So love makes humans human, you mean?” I laughed. “We were never human from the start.” “We just play human till we die anyway.”

“That’s not it,” Ōchan answered as if startled. “When alone, humans cease to be human. They gradually become something grotesque... I know that from my own experience. A human being alone, you see, doesn’t actually exist. Since Adam and Eve, humans—two people have been their smallest unit.”

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

“That is the same as wanting to die.” “I too was actually on the verge of death, I tell you.” “In that state of distracted emptiness, forcing myself through each day, I was practically dead…… And then that miracle happened.” “And then everything became clear to me, and I confirmed my own courage, I tell you.” “That singing voice—how every day it continues exactly as I predicted the previous day—this is what stirs me to my core.” “Through that singing voice, I’ve finally become a full-fledged human again, I tell you.” “……That’s why it’s love, I tell you.” “It’s all because I loved that person, I tell you.……”

In the midst of our art history sessions, Ōchan would often speak like this, as if possessed. I have no confidence that I ever truly understood his words. Yet even as I felt a certain absurdity in it all, there was no denying that his words lingered in my mind. I jotted down fragments of them in a notebook, and I still have that notebook to this day. In nothing but a tank top and underwear, earnestly transcribing Ōchan’s words from the previous night into my notebook—I can still vividly recall that version of myself.

I was eagerly awaiting when Ōchan would learn the truth. I had absolutely no intention of bringing it up myself. I believed he needed to hear with his own ears that it was no longer audible, and was fully intent on closely observing his reaction in that moment. What would he say then? If he told me to wait until tomorrow night, I would expose how it had already been inaudible for over twenty days. Would he strike me in anger? I thought I was prepared to be struck. That much was certain. But even if he did strike me—would that make the illusion reality? He would realize 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 within him what he called my "place"...

I lived each day steeped in those cruel expectations. I would invariably return to my room at the boarding house before ten o'clock and wait for Ōchan to come home. But Ōchan’s return still came well past midnight every night. I always wondered if he delayed his return out of fear of learning the truth, but when Ōchan came back—his thick, greasy face glistening as usual while dissolving its expression—he would first confirm that night's song before announcing tomorrow's selection in a lively voice, as though thoroughly enjoying himself. He did not alter that habit.

So Ōchan had not yet learned the truth. At the very least, those were days when he should not have known—a period that continued on. I had abruptly come face to face with the girl who owned that singing voice.

It was an evening near the end of July, on a day when the year’s highest temperature had once again been broken.

That day, I went out to Yotsuya to collect the rent and land fees for my family's sole source of income - a Tokyo house that had survived the fires. Each month near month's end I would go collect payments, stamp seals, meticulously verify no vandalism had occurred at the property, then mail funds to our house on the Shōnan Coast - this constituted my regular duty. Having just received a letter from Mother consulting me about my sister wanting to invite classmates to the coastal house, I wrote a brief reply at the post office and dispatched it with the money. Then I abruptly wanted to swim.

Until dusk, I stayed at Kōrakuen Pool. After returning the rented trunks, still enveloped in a mood where the smell of water, jumbled noises and shouts, and flickering remnants of vivid swimsuit colors all mingled together, I ambled along the train line street and emerged onto Suidōbashi Station’s platform. The pool had been swarming with children like potatoes being scrubbed in a tub, but I felt somewhat satisfied by the long-absent sensation of water. As I waited for the train whistling, someone suddenly tapped my shoulder from behind. That was the girl.

“Do you know who I am?”

The girl said in a stiffly formal tone, looking up at me. For a moment, I couldn't place her. Round face with wide space between brows and eyes; single eyelids slightly swollen. A small nose like something pinched up by fingertips. Pale skin wearing nothing but lipstick. The girl kept staring at me with eyes that seemed angry.

“Don’t you know? It’s me—” Without cracking a smile, the girl repeated herself. Her dimpled chin was adorably cute; hers was a face of extreme childishness. Ah, so that’s it, I thought. “Ohhh, so you’re that singing auntie,” I said. “Huh. You actually recognized me.” “I looked into it,” the girl answered without flinching, her eyes fixed on mine. “You’re a university student staying as a lodger at that boarding house, aren’t you? Since this spring. I hear you always sleep past noon. Your snoring’s really loud, and I hear you’re a total lazybones?”

“Well… I’m surprised, I guess,” I replied. In truth, I was surprised. I recalled the boarding house landlady with chronic migraines who always had plasters stuck to the neck and temples. I had almost no memory of ever speaking with her. However, there couldn’t be anyone else who knew that much besides that landlady.

“You heard it from the landlady, didn’t you? The one at the boarding house.”

“Well.” “Anyway, I know all about it.” The girl smiled with one cheek, as though finally releasing tension. “On my end, I’ve been seeing you often.” “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 as you before.”

At that moment, the train arrived. I boarded, and the girl boarded too. The girl only came up to my shoulder. Reaching for the strap side by side, I noticed her hair was damp and twisted. She was also holding a small waterproof handbag. “Oh, so you were at that pool too?” “Yes,” she answered in a low voice. With a sullen expression, she was looking out the window. Suddenly, I felt an urge to ask her all sorts of things.

“Which high school? What year?” “Me?” Looking up in surprise, the girl’s face turned indignant. “I have a job. “Because today’s Sunday, I went to the pool to swim.”

“You have a job?” I was also surprised. “Huh, I thought you were still a high school student.” “No, I’m not. I graduated from high school last spring. I’m currently working in the secretarial department of a company.”

“...My apologies,” I said. “But hey—even after I went and did something rotten like spying on you before—why’d you stop singing lately?” “Because... these days I can leave work on time.” She kept her eyes on the window reflection. “The streets are crowded now anyway—there’s no need to sing.” “Need?” My fingers tapped the train strap. “What’s this ‘need’ you keep saying?” “...I’m a coward.” Her voice flattened like pressed flowers between dictionary pages.

With a look of frustration she glanced at me, but answered earnestly. “Our company president was about to be implicated in a bribery scandal back then.” “The secretarial department was in complete turmoil.” “We followed the section chief’s orders—organizing documents, dispersing them, delivering materials to the president’s mistress’s house and his hideout apartments, contacting lawyers... They used us girls because we wouldn’t attract attention.” “So they detained us until past nine every night.” “I’m such a coward, aren’t I?” “That’s why walking alone through that narrow dark alley late at night terrified me.”

“So you were singing because of that?” I realized I’d never imagined such circumstances might exist. “Out of fear?” “That’s right.” The girl’s voice lowered slightly while keeping its angry edge. “...If I kept singing and someone dangerous appeared, the song would stop oddly—I’d notice immediately, wouldn’t I? Then someone might come help. Plus, singing made me forget how scared I was.”

“...But why did you keep singing nothing but those wartime songs?” “Because they’re the ones that feel best to sing. I was trying hard to remember what my brother taught me while singing them.” “I see,” I said. “I finally get it now. There was something I’d really wanted to ask you.” “...There’s something I’ve absolutely had to tell you too.” The girl said in a low, vanishing voice. “When I saw you swimming at the pool, I thought today was finally the day to say it, so I followed you here.”

“To me? “What about?” I peered into the petite girl’s face. The girl directed an unflinching gaze at me and swallowed hard. Word by word, pausing clearly between each one, she said:

“……You are a loathsome person.” “You’re detestable.” “I hate you.” “I despise you.”

As she spoke, the girl suddenly flushed crimson as if straining against herself and swallowed hard. Her lips trembled. "It's that you opened the window and looked at me," the girl said. "Ever since then, I can't stop being aware of you. It's awful. It feels exactly like having something violently snatched from me without warning—forcibly, unreasonably taken. This shame they've forced on me... it feels brutal. Every time I turn that corner now, I sense you—that demon cloaked in light from that night—already watching me. I can't walk home without feeling your eyes. You laughed then, didn't you? It festers in me. You're so... infuriating. I can't even explain it properly. But that's why I hate you. Why I'll never forgive you."

Perhaps I should have apologized. But I was simply left dumbfounded. Looking at the girl who spoke rapidly in a low, breathless voice with tears welling in her eyes, I ultimately couldn’t say anything.

Suddenly, the girl said.

“We transfer at Shinjuku, right?” “…Yeah.”

“Would you like to have some tea? I’ll pay.” I felt as though following her was my duty. Like a boy who’d casually thrown a stone only to be scolded by a frog—that was the position I found myself in. What cruel wounds my actions had inflicted upon this girl’s heart lay beyond my comprehension—a “someone else’s affair”—yet I knew at least this much: I wasn’t entirely innocent in the matter.

In the coffee shop in front of the movie theater, I sat facing the girl. I remained silent. I kept waiting. But the girl said nothing.

It was true—I had been thrown into disarray. "Loathsome man." "I hate you." "Detestable person." "I despise you."—I had never known the happiness of considering myself a likable man, but neither had I ever been denounced so clearly and directly by a woman's lips. I think that shock had left me utterly shaken—head hung low, waiting for the reproachful words that would pour from the girl's lips, believing my sole task was to hear them through, when suddenly—I realized. What filled my heart now was a single sorrow—that this was by no means guilt or remorse. I wasn't regretting anything, nor did I think I'd done something wrong. It was simply that I—the self deemed loathsome by her, the self who was hated—grieved with a sorrow so acute it seemed to seep through my heart at being unmistakably that very self.

I did not apologize, nor did I hold any hope of being forgiven. Everything was simply that I had been nothing but myself. That she thought it loathsome, thought it terrible, accused me of having intruded upon her through something as trivial as merely peeking through an opened window—all that was her own circumstances, none of my concern. Just as others were strangers to me, so too was I a stranger to them—a stranger being always, more or less, something cruel to any individual. Other than enduring those others and enduring oneself, where could there be a way of human existence?

I will not apologize, I thought. I was merely a stranger to her, nothing more. What's wrong with that? But I think I was indeed flustered in all sorts of ways. I was fixated on my own sorrow, utterly consumed by the effort to harden it. The girl sitting before me was a lovely young woman with almond-shaped eyes, and yet despite her now gazing steadily at me with gentle, calm eyes, I had remained unaware of this for a long time. The girl remained silent.

I regained myself when, having silently finished my coffee, the shop’s record changed to a new disc and the jazz trumpet I knew well began to resound. That was "When the Saints Go Marching In." Suddenly the girl became one of those ordinary young girls you always see in coffee shops, and I found myself in a time continuous with the reality of Yotsuya mansions and swimming pools. The strange illusion of awe toward the girl had vanished, and I looked at her. The girl had not touched the coffee.

“What’s wrong? Aren’t you going to drink it?” I said. “It’s all right. I’m watching you.” The girl said this and laughed warmly for the first time. I felt the girl’s snaggletooth like a pang in my chest. She was my type, I thought.

“...I thought you were fifteen or sixteen.” “I’m stupid. That’s why I’m troubled—being mistaken for a child.”

In her usual stiffly formal tone, she abruptly changed the subject. "They say it's true—with corruption scandals, the worse the criminal, the less they get caught." "Our company president seems to have managed to cover things up neatly too." "He's a real bastard, that president." "But thanks to that, you can leave early now—isn't that easier?" "It's not easier." "Every day I have to read thirteen different newspapers, cut out articles and compile them into scrapbooks." "It's exhausting." "I think I might go nearsighted soon." "Is your eyesight good?"

“1.2 and 1.5.”

“Oh, I see. “...What newspaper do you like? “What newspaper do you take?”

But without waiting for my answer, she turned red and pressed both palms to her cheeks. “...I’m such a fool.” “This is all so irrelevant, isn’t it?” “It’s all so unimportant anyway.”

“I suppose so.”

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

The record changed again. At that moment, the girl said. “Tell me, why didn’t you open the window again after that? Didn’t you look at me?” “Why... well...” I faltered. “I just wanted to see your face once, that’s all. In one go, I achieved my purpose.” “So how was that? So you lost interest then?” “It’s not like I meant to interfere and make you stop singing. Since then, I’d been listening to your song every night.”

“Yes… I was constantly on edge, thinking you might suddenly show your face again, that you would pull another nasty trick like that.” “If you opened it again, I was going to scorn you, think of you as pitiful, and scream ‘You’re mean!’ at the top of my lungs.”

“......” I said. “That would’ve been interesting—I should’ve opened it again.” “That’s right.” “You really should’ve opened it again.” “Then I would’ve felt completely severed from you.” “I could’ve calmly ignored you.” “...But the window never opened again.” “The fact that you wouldn’t become my proper enemy ended up irritating me even more.” “But you said you hated me.”

“Yes.” “I do hate you.” “It’s like you’ve settled in without permission—like some trespasser living in my consciousness.” “That’s why I’m angry with you.”

“But…”

“Are you saying ‘It’s none of my business’?” “That’s a lie.” “A lie? Why?”

“Then why do you keep that window shut tight when it’s so hot?” “That window always had a light on, but stayed shut tight.” “That’s because I didn’t want to disrupt your singing.”

“Right? I knew it. All the other windows are open, but that one’s kept shut. Every night... That—that was you being completely aware of me. I agonized over what on earth you could be thinking in there. ‘What a deceitful... what a repulsive man you are,’ I thought.”

“Why?” “I... don’t really get it.” “It feels like I’m being set up.”

“I thought you didn’t even have the courage to open the window again and make me hate you. You go around smirking while doing such spiteful things. ...‘How unmanly,’ I’d think every time I saw that window shut tight despite the heat.” “That’s... a baseless accusation.”

I repeated myself, but my chest was being pierced by the girl's words. I had never considered that single act had imposed such a burden of awareness upon her. ……But I said.

“That’s none of my business.”

“No—it’s my business.” “It’s your doing.” The girl answered. “How cowardly—saying something like that.” “So what if it’s cowardly?” I said. “What am I supposed to do? How exactly should I ‘take responsibility’? I won’t apologize. There’s no reason to apologize. Wasn’t I just some stranger to you? You live your life calling me repulsive and hateful—I’m just living as myself. Right?”

The girl was silent. “All that—I only saw your face once,” I said. “It’s not worth all this resentment, anger, hatred you’re pouring out.” “You’re insane.” “That’s an everyday occurrence.” “I can only take responsibility for my own actions—my own.” “The psychological impact I had on you is none of my concern.”

“You kept that window shut 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 your concern.”

The girl's eyes were serious. "You," the girl said. "Have you ever fallen in love with someone?"

“Sure, plenty,” I answered.

“How many people have you loved in your life?”

"Love" again? "Love" here too? I laughed. "I don't lover anyone--no--can't... Or rather... I hate 'love' itself."

“Why?”

The girl asked eagerly. She stared at me with eyes wide with surprise. I thought—this was exactly the kind of troublesome conversation I hated. “Loving others is a burden for me.” “I already have my hands full with just my own responsibilities—I don’t need such illusions making me even more constrained.” “Human beings are each immobilized, utterly incapable of truly adhering to others—unique individuals.” “That’s my creed.”

“But isn’t that precisely why we require love?”

“Deception, you mean?” “That’s not what I said.” “No difference,” I said. “I know how it works. Love means believing lies—living them. To put it bluntly, it’s inhabiting madness itself. Unfortunately, I lack both the appetite and courage for that sort of thing. All I’ve got is the grit to believe in this irreducible core of mine—this part that refuses to blend with anyone else. There’s no other starting point.”

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

Since the café had no windows, I hadn't noticed—but when we stepped outside, everything had already turned fully to night. It was in Shinjuku's crowds, drenched in shopping district lights, that I suddenly became conscious of the girl's body. Suddenly she took my arm. Amid the jostling crowd, I felt her soft chest and thigh pressed against me. I recognized a heavy, numbing desire rearing its head within me.

“You hate me, don’t you? Think I’m some kind of bastard?” “That’s right,” the girl answered. It was a bright, crystalline voice. “That much is clear. I might just claw at you right now.” “You really hate me, don’t you?”

“I hate you.”

I smiled faintly. I wondered whether the people watching us could imagine this conversation. The girl repeated herself as if biting her lip. “It’s true. I really do hate you.”

“...What’s your name?” “Shibata, Haruko,” the girl said, writing the characters on my palm to show me. It was a gesture like a lover’s. I couldn’t comprehend such a girl at all. I began to tense my arm. “Just what was your reason for following me today?” “...There’s no reason.” The girl answered. “Even if there was one, I don’t know it now.” “I think you’ll surely understand later on... Anyway, I just wanted to confirm it for myself.”

Suddenly, she released her arm. We had come to the station entrance. “I have an errand to stop by a friend’s place.” “Goodbye.” “I’ll take my leave here.” The girl had serious, desperate eyes. I laughed. I must have been made a fool of by this little chit.

“Goodbye,” I said.

The girl blended into the crowd.

That night, I went straight down to Shimokitazawa Station and walked along the dimly lit street—sparsely dotted with lampposts—leading to Ōchan's boarding house. As I walked, I remember muttering aloud two or three times: If there is love... If there is love... In my mind's eye, the white naked skin of that petite, slender-necked girl kept shifting. If there is love. But no—what I want is just a woman's body. Just that girl's body, I thought. Yet I muttered to myself as if driven by unease: If—if there truly were such a thing as love...

I still have not forgotten that strange, flashing ache—like a peculiar kind of pain—that would press into my chest whenever I thought of the girl named Shibata Haruko from that time. Like some unearned sorrow, it spread deep within my chest and stopped me in my tracks. "No—let's stop this. Let's stop thinking about love," I muttered under my breath. I turned on my heel and headed back toward the station right then. With a single bill I'd skimmed from that day's rent money, I decided I would buy myself some alcohol.

That night turned to rain.

It was three or four days later that I received a letter from the owner of that singing voice—Shibata Haruko.

As usual, Ōchan had gone out to the film studio. In the afternoon, when I got up, went out to buy cigarettes, and returned, the landlady with migraines—who always sewed in the shadows—silently handed me two sealed letters. One was my mother’s; the other bore no stamp or signature. That was from her. I opened that one first. Immediately I realized it was from that girl. I was taken aback. Despite my not having told her that day, the girl even knew my name. —I tucked it into notebooks from exhibitions and notes I had taken, and I still possess that letter. It is a letter I should burn soon, but for now I will transcribe its full text here.

Mr. Sasaki Shōji I know your name is Sasaki Shōji. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve scrawled your name across stationery without purpose. I wrote letters too. Every one of them was filled with nothing but loathing and bitter frustration toward you. Each time I thought of you or became conscious of you, anger would rise within me. Everything I said about you yesterday—all those harsh words—is true. But now I mean to write plainly.

Mr. Sasaki Shōji You are a hopeless person. A hopeless human being... I realized that after spending the whole night thinking. You are human scum. Truly worthless. Haven't you thought so yourself somewhere deep down? I believe you must know this—that you're a failure, the lowest kind of person who can only think about yourself. You strut about pretending to have accepted it. But those who resolve to live by such cowardly, apathetic egoism are precisely what they claim to be—genuinely spineless, lifeless egotists. You're truly worthless. That's what I think. I simply hated you. I saw you as a rude, violent trespasser in my heart—someone I couldn't ignore no matter how I tried, yet grew furious night after night because you refused to leave me be. I believe I told you this before.

But yesterday, on the train from Suidobashi Station, I suddenly thought: Could I be in love with this person? Though I found you utterly repulsive—though I thought you were such a loathsome, spineless, brutish, and ill-mannered man—I couldn’t bring myself to leave you. It’s not that you’ve started to appear as a kind, splendid man. In my perception, you were exactly as I had imagined you to be—and yet, I began to feel that I was coming to like that very you. I have even come to think that you are the only person I need. I thought that perhaps I could go on living through you. Happily, vibrantly, I began to feel that you—precisely you—were becoming irreplaceable to me, even for maintaining my existence as what you call a "special individual."

Mr. Sasaki Shōji

I was shocked by this version of myself. Actually, even I was surprised.

After that, I went to a classmate’s house and helped with cutting patterns until late. When I left the house, it was raining. I had been lent an umbrella, but when I reached Shimo-Kitazawa Station, I deliberately began walking in the rain without opening it. The rain felt strangely enjoyable. And then, I—a coward like me—unusually forgetting my fear, kept walking round and round the deserted rainy night streets for what felt like forever. Please do not be surprised. At that time, I had been intending to marry you.

At that time, I believed I could not live my life ignoring you forever. I liked you and loved you. I had to acknowledge that feeling. And as I thought of you, I convinced myself that nothing remained for me but an utterly barren future. With nothing but this compulsion to care about you—this inability to leave you alone—I resolved to devote my life to someone as barren and hopeless as yourself. Fine. That’s fine. I probably wouldn’t be able to save you either. But even so—that’s fine. You lack even the courage to love me—no—you cannot love another human being. How splendid, I thought.

I will surely be defeated by you. But through sheer force—as if devouring you whole—I would make your death my death. I would have us commit love suicide together... I stood nearly entranced by that icy, blinding void of a truth—that between us, in that future, there existed not even such meager hope, no hope whatsoever. Like one intoxicated, I wandered endlessly through the rain, utterly lost to myself.

Mr. Sasaki Shōji

I returned home about two hours ago. But at that moment, this rapture, this conviction vanished and fell away somewhere, as if scales had dropped from my eyes. Slowly, I prepared a bath by myself, emerged from it, and sat down at my desk. To you, I am beginning to write a farewell letter—this very letter.

I am not being capricious. Once I decide something, I am a stubborn woman who won't change it over trivial matters. I don't fully understand why I changed my mind or what it means. I truly don't understand. In the end, I walked along that usual street—meaning I passed through the alley beside your boarding house—and returned home. Your room still had its light on, and loud voices could be heard. But the window was closed. Why was that? Was it merely habit? In any case, there I sensed your stubbornly closed heart—an expressionless void. At that moment, despair came over me.

Why? I truly didn’t understand. But suddenly, you had stepped outside of me. I came to understand that you were a fool deliberately choosing to live in insensitivity toward others—clamorous, ordinary strangers who no longer mattered to you; these tedious, cowardly, hopeless nobodies. Why must I marry someone like you? I refuse. I realized I no longer even hated you. I came to understand that you were a man not even worth hating—one deserving nothing but pity. I would never again be troubled by your existence. I gazed at that closed window and felt you coldly shutting me out—even my rapture. I had been shut out by you; I stood outside your world. At the same time, you too had stepped outside of me……

It was four o'clock. It had been a long letter. But this was a farewell letter. Now I seemed to feel nothing but contempt for you as a distant stranger. But in truth, I still lacked confidence. I would wait two or three more days, and if I truly no longer cared about you, I would entrust this letter to the landlady.

Mr. Sasaki Shōji

It was Wednesday night. I read through it again. I still didn't understand why I'd suddenly given up on you (?). But I deliberately left this letter unrewritten. I would never again have my heart occupied by you. Not a resolution—a fact. Goodbye.

After all, I will abandon our double suicide. Though we only met eyes once and spoke but once, I am giving you this farewell letter to put my heart in order. You were indeed someone worth writing a farewell letter to. But I no longer think of you as either repulsive or hateful. Now, I can ignore you. Goodbye. Shibata Haruko

I read this letter with a wry smile. I started to tear it up, reconsidered and slipped it into my notebook, then opened my mother’s letter. Mother was ill.

Lying on my back on the tatami, I realized the time had come to leave this boarding house. There was nothing left for me to do here. My season at this boarding house had ended. I would likely return to the house on the Shōnan Coast and find myself with no choice but to assess what possibilities remained for me there. Within those relationships in that place, I possessed no sincerity beyond mere survival—no chance at living. Accepting this reality seemed like the one act of courage still available to me. I began gathering my notebooks.

I had thought Ōchan’s return would surely be past midnight again. I intended to meet him once, exchange some courtesies and greetings, and leave this boarding house the next morning.

Even I felt a surge of nostalgia and tried reciting Saigō Takamori’s death poem. Before I knew it, new stickers had appeared with phrases scrawled like “I am the same man as your fathers of old,” “we are sons of flint and darkness,” and “After the first death, there is no more death.” These seemed to be verses Ōchan had picked up somewhere—he must have put them up while I slept. The photograph of Sōtatsu’s Winter Plum Blossoms I’d obtained was pasted on the wall right where his feet would rest. Looking closer, fragments of the Senjinkun military code were mixed among the older stickers.

I spent that afternoon idly reading through them, then ate Ōchan's meat and pumpkin stew prepared that morning with cucumber pickles, adding a raw egg on top. Thinking this would be my last meal of Ōchan's 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 single breath of wind. I opened the window and gazed out at the sea of roof tiles stretching endlessly like drifting debris across Tokyo under the windless midsummer evening sky. It was an ordinary, dreadfully monotonous landscape teeming with squalor. The lingering rosy reflection of sunset in the sky, the twilight deepening relentlessly over trees like a distant forest—to me, they spoke of nothing but the oppressive weight of time that had repeated yesterday and would stretch into tomorrow. In the vacant lot to the left—equipped with a small park-like arrangement of horizontal bars and rotating logs—a lone boy was performing solitary exercises. Only his upper body was visible....However, I felt no affinity for him either.

From every house, white undershirts, pants, and undergarments peered from windows as laundry. I thought of the hands of countless women laundering those items day after day. They grew old while repeating, over and over, the labor of renewing that whiteness. Yet it seemed only the layers of grime clinging stubbornly to that white—no matter how thoroughly washed—guaranteed a concrete existence, serving as proof of life's tangible reality. What am I doing? What will I do to keep living from now on? What in this world is there to love? I asked myself. There was no answer. I don't love life—don't love people entangled in relationships, endlessly piling up those laundry-like existences while aging through daily washing labor—I concluded. I don't love living. Yet I am defeated. This self is fated to be defeated. Why do I cling to this contest I'm destined to lose? I kept thinking. The illusion that I could win—until this completely vanishes, I'll keep losing eternally. But why won't that illusion abandon me? Having lost so much—are my defeats still insufficient?

That day, Ōchan returned home at a time when less than an hour had passed since sunset. I was surprised. Since early summer, it was the first time he had returned home early.

“You! You!” he called out loudly as he came up the stairs to the second floor. He was visibly ecstatic, his white polo shirt heaving at the chest. The moment he rushed into the room, he threw his sweaty body around me.

"What's wrong, Ōchan?" “Rejoice for me! Rejoice!” “Through this, I’ll truly become a complete person.” “I’ll rejoice gladly, but what’s this about?”

“I’m getting married!” Ōchan said. I doubted my ears.

Placing both hands on my shoulders and forcing me down onto the tatami as if by brute strength，Ōchan noisily gulped bancha from the earthenware teapot． “Today—you see—today I met that person！It’s truly her！”

Ōchan said. His lips were wet and glistening from bancha and drool. “It seems I was slightly mistaken. She was a petite person. But she was exactly my type.”

Shibata Haruko. I conjured up that face in my mind's eye. Her mouth gaped open and closed like a goldfish’s. “...Congratulations,” I finally said.

“Thank you,” Ōchan said. “You’re a good person. “You’re truly a good person.”

He lowered his voice. “By the way, there’s something I need to ask of you.” “That person is downstairs right now.”

“What?”

I stood up. But it meant nothing. Ōchan, his face still slackened untidily, restrained me with his hand. "Now, calm down." "Please." "The truth is... I don't want to tell that person I'd been listening to her singing." "That person never once strayed from singing the songs exactly as I'd prophesied." "But I don't want to voice that." "For me, it was inevitable—but for that person, meeting me today was mere chance." "And so we fell in love." "That's how I want it framed." "What's mystical to me would seem like a madman's fantasy to her." "That'd work against me." "So you—keep quiet about the songs too."

“But Ōchan,” I asked. “You kept quiet about the songs—so how did you figure out that person was the source of those military songs?”

“It was intuition.” Ōchan flared his nostrils. “This morning, I bumped into her on the street.” “At that moment, it flashed upon me.” “This is the one, I thought.” “So we’d been talking at a coffee shop until now.” “My intuition—or should I say spiritual insight.” “This was correct.” “Truly, she was exactly the person I’d imagined in personality and circumstances.” “Please wait.” “It wouldn’t do to keep her waiting.” “I’ll bring her up now.”

With those words, Ōchan clattered down the stairs and disappeared below. I stood there in a daze. But there was little time to think. Almost immediately, Ōchan came back upstairs bringing the woman.

“Allow me to introduce,” Ōchan said. “This is my friend, Ms. Mochizuki Yasuko.” He turned to me with theatrical formality. “And this is Mr. Sasaki, my art teacher.” “...Nice to meet you,” I said. My voice came out hoarse. The object of Ōchan’s devotion stood before us—a dark-skinned woman with a long, equine face. She looked well over thirty. “Nice to meet you,” she said. Her voice had the timbre of struck tin. I bit back laughter. The woman turned to Ōchan with immaculate composure. “Well, see you tomorrow,” she declared, executing an absurdly precise Ogasawara-school bow before pivoting away. The sound of her descending footsteps made me aware of two things: First, that she favored her right leg. Second, that she’d left behind the faint odor of mothballs and hair tonic.

Ōchan, who had gone to see her off, did not return to the room until an hour had passed. In that time, I had thoroughly tasted his absurdity and my own self-loathing to the point of disgust. But who could have predicted such an outcome? “What do you think? What did you think of her?” The moment Ōchan returned to the room, he rubbed his hands eagerly. “Right? A perfect match, right? The woman I had described. Though she seems a bit short in stature.”

“A perfect fit,” I said. Certainly, she was precisely the type of unfortunate old maid whom no one could like.

“I pushed her today—made her skip work, you see. “So she won’t be passing by here singing anymore. “I retract what I said yesterday. “It was ‘The Song of the Gyokusai on Attu Island,’ wasn’t it?” “So we’re bidding farewell to the songs too, then?”

I said.

I no longer harbored any malice or resistance toward Ōchan. I resolved to keep silent about all my lies up until now. That was my meager congratulatory gesture for the kindhearted Ōchan’s fresh start. And I told him that tomorrow I would leave this boarding house and return to my home on the Shōnan Coast. He seemed to think I was being considerate and pleaded with me to stay regardless. Until I showed him my mother’s letter, he persistently insisted on continuing our communal life.

“I see… If it’s due to illness, then there’s no helping it,” he said. “Then shall I move to her house? She’s the eldest daughter, you see. It seems there are circumstances that make it difficult for her to leave home. I replied that I’d consider that point today, you see.”

“What? That’s quick—you’ve already gone and finalized the engagement?”

I was dumbfounded. “You’re quite the operator.” “Heh heh,” he laughed. “After all, we’d been connected through song for about four months, so she caught on right away.” “...Where is that person’s house?”

“It’s behind that park.” “Her house is a tobacco shop, you see.” “You should move.” I recommended this out of meddlesome concern. “Go as far from this alley as possible.” The instant I finished speaking. I shuddered and stared at Ōchan’s face. Ōchan’s expression transformed before my eyes. His earlier cheerful happiness vanished—he turned pale and began trembling. By then, the singing voice rounding the corner already echoed clearly in our ears.

“That voice. “Without a doubt, that is that person’s voice.” Ōchan groaned those words and edged closer to the window frame. He opened the frosted glass door. Gaping open, the midsummer night’s darkness was split there, and the singing voice, in that thin, strained tone, gradually drew nearer to our window. …See the parachutes descend upon the sky See the parachutes conquer the sky See…the parachutes conquer the sky… The song did not stop even when it came beneath the window. Unperturbed, it persisted in the same tone.

“Glory of the century! Parachute, parachute Upon that pure white, crimson blood Who offer without remorse, the raiding unit This blue sky too—the enemy’s sky This land too—the enemy’s stronghold This land too—the enemy’s stronghold “No... “Wrong!” Ōchan cried out in anguish. He was staring fixedly at the figure of the woman walking away down the alley. The song, sung in a tense voice without any hesitation, proceeded and slowly moved away. That was Haruko’s voice. ...Where doth appear that childlike face

Ah pure white flowers borne aloft Ah blue skies with flowers borne aloft Ah blue skies with flowers borne aloft... Before I knew it, I had stood up. Ōchan pressed his face against the window frame and began crying out. The plump flesh of his shoulders gripped the window frame with brute force, quivering in tiny spasms. I had lost my words. Raising his face glittering with tears, Ōchan looked at me. While sobbing like a child, he said.

“...You knew... You knew all along, didn’t you?” Without a word, I bowed my head. Ōchan did not say anything after that. He simply buried his face in his arms and continued to cry. Leaning against the wall, I stayed up all night that night.

When I awoke from a doze that morning, Ōchan was gone. As always, I could hear the kettle hissing. I slowly drank a cup of Ōchan's final considerate bancha tea. I knew I wouldn't be forgiven by Ōchan, by Haruko—no, by anyone—nor would I cling to any hope of forgiveness. And I thought that I myself would forgive no one either. I stood up with the bundle of notebooks I'd prepared the night before. That day was August fifth.

I left the boarding house with the casual air of someone going out for a morning bath. A clear blue sky hung above me. But I walked to Shimo-Kitazawa Station step by step, savoring the feel of earth beneath my feet with each deliberate tread. I have never returned to that boarding house since.

A considerable amount of time has passed since then. During that time, I met several women and ultimately parted ways with every one of them. For me, "love"—the more I strive for it, the more it brings me nothing but gnashing despair, humiliation, and vexing constraints. Rather than blissful reconciliation, all that is granted to me is a suffocating submersion. The power to dissolve even my own core into that illusion along with joy is something I lack.

Is defeat still not enough for me? As Shibata Haruko said, I may indeed be an unfortunate man of the lowest sort—barren, cowardly, with nothing but a frozen future ahead. But I—who set out from that thirst for a deserted blue sky spreading alongside military songs—have always mustered the utmost effort and courage I could summon for "love," devoting myself to it. The anguish of being nothing but myself—each time, it has returned to me. I feel as though I am only deepening that very thing.

But now, as a high school teacher, I am trying with all my might to perform an act that would let me believe in "love" once again. This spring, I intend to marry for the first time. Afterward, I never learned what became of Shibata Haruko. Nor do I know what happened with Ōchan and Mochizuki Yasuko's marriage. I haven't seen Ōchan either. Yet this New Year, in a film I happened to watch—a work by the same master director who once had Ōchan play a bandit—I spotted Ōchan among the samurai being cut down in rapid succession by the heroic warrior during that fleeting moment. At least in his daily life, he must still be circling through the same routines. I remembered how he'd fretted over his thinning hair, but unfortunately, the samurai wig he wore made his current state impossible to discern.

Moreover, my mother remains alive and well.