Thirty-six to thirty-seven

by Natsume Sōseki

K was reluctant to stop talking about his wife and daughter. Eventually, he started asking me private questions that I couldn't even answer. I was struck more by a sense of wonder than by annoyance. When I recalled how he had been when I first spoke to him about the two of them, I couldn't help but notice that his tone had clearly changed. I finally asked him why he was saying such things today of all days. At that moment, he suddenly fell silent. However, I didn't miss the slight tremor in his mouth. He was originally a taciturn man, and he had a habit of chewing around his mouth before trying to say something. The way his lips refused to open against his will might have contained the weight of his words. Once he spoke, his voice had twice the power of an ordinary person's.

As I stared at his mouth, I felt that something was about to come out, but I couldn't predict what it was preparing for at all. That's why I was surprised. Imagine me when a heartfelt confession of love for his daughter came out of his heavy mouth. I was frozen in place as if under a spell. I couldn't even manage to chew my mouth.

At that moment, I felt like a single mass of fear and suffering. From my head to the tips of my toes, I suddenly became as hard as stone or iron, losing even the elasticity to breathe. Fortunately, that state didn't last long. Just a moment later, I regained my human feelings, but at the same time, a sense of being outpaced surged up within me.

However, I had no idea what to do next. Perhaps it was because I had no leeway. I sat still, enduring the creepy sweat seeping through my shirt from under my armpits. During that time, K opened his heavy mouth as usual and began to share his heart little by little. I was in unbearable pain. That pain was probably clearly affixed to my face like a large advertisement. No matter how much K tried, he couldn't have missed that, but he was so focused on himself that he probably had no time to pay attention to my expression. His confession was consistent in tone from beginning to end. Instead of being heavy and dull, it gave me the impression of being extremely difficult to move. My heart was half listening to that confession and half disturbed by thoughts of what to do, so I hardly caught any details, but still, the tone of his words resonated strongly in my chest. As a result, I began to feel not only pain but sometimes fear as well. In other words, the fear that the other person was stronger than me began to take root.

When K's story came to an end, I couldn't say anything. I was silent, thinking whether I should confess something similar in front of him or if it was wiser to keep it to myself. I just couldn't say anything. Moreover, I didn't feel like saying anything.

At lunchtime, K and I sat facing each other. We were served by the maid, and I finished an unpleasant meal that was different from usual. The two of us hardly spoke during the meal. I didn't even know when the wife and daughter would return.

The two of them isolated themselves in their respective rooms and did not see each other. K's silence was the same as in the morning. I was also lost in thought.

I naturally thought that I should confide my feelings to K. However, it felt like the timing had already passed. I began to think that it was a significant oversight not to have interrupted K's words earlier and retaliated. I also considered that it would have been better if I had at least followed K's lead and expressed my feelings on the spot. Now that K's confession had come to a pause, it felt strange to bring up the same thing from my side. I did not know how to overcome this awkwardness. My mind was shaken by regret and felt unsteady.

I wished that K would open the sliding door again and rush in from the other side. From my perspective, it felt as if I had been caught off guard earlier. I was not prepared to respond to K at all. I had the feeling that I wanted to regain what I had lost in the morning. So, I occasionally looked up at the sliding door. However, that door never opened. K remained eternally silent.

Before long, my mind began to be disturbed by this silence. I couldn't help but wonder what K was thinking on the other side of the door. Usually, it was common for us to remain silent with just a sliding door between us, but at that moment, the quieter K was, the more I found it normal to forget his presence. Yet, I could not bring myself to open the door. Having missed my chance once, I had no choice but to wait for the opportunity to be prompted from the other side.

I finally couldn't stay still any longer. When I forced myself to be quiet, I felt like jumping into K's room. Reluctantly, I stood up and went out to the porch. From there, I went to the tea room and, without any particular purpose, poured hot water from the iron kettle into a teacup and took a sip. After that, I headed towards the entrance. Deliberately avoiding K's room, I felt like I was placing myself in the middle of the street. I had no clear destination in mind. I just couldn't stay still. Therefore, without caring about the direction, I aimlessly wandered around the New Year's town. My mind was filled with thoughts of K, no matter how far I walked. I wasn't wandering around trying to shake him off; rather, I was aimlessly roaming while actively picturing his figure in my mind.

He seemed to me to be an incomprehensible man. I couldn't understand why he suddenly confided in me like that, or why his feelings for me had grown to the point where he couldn't help but confess. I wondered where his usual self had disappeared to; everything was a puzzling issue for me. I knew of his strength and understood his seriousness. Before deciding how I should act moving forward, I believed I needed to know more about him. At the same time, the thought of facing him from now on felt strangely unsettling. As I walked through the town in a daze, I pictured him sitting quietly in my room. No matter how far I walked, I heard a voice somewhere saying that I could never move him. In other words, he seemed like a kind of monster to me. I even felt as if I were cursed by him for eternity.

When I returned home tired, K's room was still silent. It felt deserted.