Chapter 4

Have you ever seen the great divide between fair weather and rain? I’d like to have you imagine yourself standing in a downpour listening to drops of water striking the road. When you wipe away the rain running down your face and look forward, just a few steps ahead, the sun is shining bright, and the pavement doesn’t seem to be wet at all. Before your eyes is the border between fair weather and rain. I witnessed that strange phenomenon only once, when I was a child. That winter, I found myself thinking of it again and again. There’s a drenched rat running through the cold rain. That’s me, of course. I’m trying to get into the sun. But just like the shimmering summer heat, it flees when I approach, even though I can see it in front of me. Standing in that sunlight is the black-haired maiden I’m always thinking of. She’s surrounded by warmth and tranquility; the area is filled with god’s goodwill, and it probably smells nice. In comparison, what about me? Far from goodwill, I’m surrounded by the folly of youth, wet with my tears of self-loathing at my clumsy struggles and whipped around by the storm of love. She walked the streets where the God of Colds ran rampant, and as you might expect, she was the star of that December without even trying. She didn’t realize it then, and she probably still hasn’t. Meanwhile, I was smitten by the God of Colds. Tormented by a high fever, wrenching my lungs with a horrible cough, curled up in bed, unable to go after her, I was lost in fantasies. Having failed to seize the lead role and having to make do as a pebble by the wayside, it seemed I was fated to begin the new year all alone. But it all happened right there in my futon. This is her story, but it is also mine. The pebble by the wayside finally got out of bed thanks to the plot convenience of fate. My strenuous efforts at the school festival in fall were surely worthy of admiration. Setting aside the fact that they relied entirely on God’s plot convenience, it’s, first off, not overkill to say I risked my life. The mayor of the city of Kyoto should have publicly acknowledged my efforts in front of city hall, and I should’ve been jostled by a pile of girls in bunny suits. To attract her attention, I leaped into the air from the engineering building roof. I hijacked the guerilla theater production and took on the weighty lead role. Going back even further, I fought powerful rivals in mortal combat around fire hot pot to acquire a picture book for her at the summer used bookfair. In the spring, I got knocked around as I walked through the streets the night of a monster parade. Most plans work out after you put that much thought into them. But the fortress of the black-haired maiden was impregnable. My problem was that I avoided making any definitive moves. For the time being, I’d like to reject the many arguments that I was taking a giant, unnecessary detour. I’ll mull over them later. I was most unclear about how she felt about me. Did she see me as a man? Or even as a human, her equal? I had no idea. And that’s why I hadn’t made a move. My apologies, but it’s difficult to explain how I felt at the time. After all, up until then, I’d been completely absorbed in other funteresting things and so had neglected to train for the wheeling and dealing between men and women. I was convinced that such negotiations were reserved for the adult pursuits of gentlemen and ladies dressed to the nines in a corner of a masquerade ball. I didn’t think they had anything to do with a child like me. Since my heart wasn’t ready, it was difficult to consider his feelings, as I could hardly grasp even my own nebulous emotions, so cotton candy–like as they were. I do, however, remember feeling something like relief when, moments before the curtain rose for the guerilla theater production The Crackpot of Monte Cristo, my clubmate appeared before me. Perhaps it was because I often ran into him around town. And another thing I’ve had difficulty forgetting is the strange feeling of being held in his arms, which was according to the stage directions. Even after the school festival ended, that moment would pop into my head. And every time that happened, I’d get distracted, in a way. Of course, I’m not the kind of person who usually has razor-sharp focus anyhow, but this was hard-core empty-headed behavior, truly some harebrained stuff, and if there were such a thing as a World Befuddlement Championship, I would surely have been entered as the representative of Japan. And after recovering from that daze, I’d feel so restless I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I would pummel the red koi plushie in my room or squish it out of shape. The poor thing. I owe it an apology. And after perpetrating that violence on my koi, I would always be exhausted. In that way, November ended and December began. I spent my days attending university lectures and also sometimes spacing out. The leaves painting the mountains just to the east with warm colors eventually fell, and winter deepened further. Looking up at the treetops along the street, exhaling puffs of white, no one could deny that frigid winter had reached every last corner of Kyoto. One day in about the middle of December when I was scarfing down a soft-boiled egg, wilted spinach, and miso soup with rice for lunch at the central cafeteria, Mr. Higuchi showed up and sat across from me. He was wearing a navy yukata and a beat-up jacket like a character in an old detective drama would wear. “Hey, I found you,” he declared with a smile. He looked a tad haggard. “What’s wrong? You don’t look so good.” “Lately, neither Hanuki nor my disciples have come to see me, and I didn’t have any food. I’m so hungry, I have a splitting headache.” “That’s no good!” When I hurriedly lent him two hundred yen, he stood up and eventually came back with a soft-boiled egg, miso soup, and some rice on a tray. Then he dug in like a starving stray dog. “How is Ms. Hanuki?” “Well, the thing is, she’s sick in bed with a horrible cold. With my source of meals out of commission, I nearly died of hunger myself.” She’d had a nagging cough for a few days. Then two days ago, her fever went up, so she’d taken off from her work at the dental office to sleep in her apartment. When the image came to mind of that beautiful, noble woman racked by coughs in her futon, unable to drink her beloved alcohol like a fish the way she usually did, she seemed so pitiful, I couldn’t sit still. My afternoon lectures? They were of no consequence. I needed to go visit Ms. Hanuki even if I lost my credits. Why? Because she and Mr. Higuchi were the people who’d broadened the horizons of my life at university. “If you’re going, then I’ll go, too. Luckily, I’m not starving anymore.” Mr. Higuchi and I excited the central cafeteria to campus where fallen leaves were rustling. Heavy clouds hung in the sky, and a cold wind was blowing. On our way to Ms. Hanuki’s apartment complex, we stopped at the grocery store on Higashi Oji and bought a ton of cold-fighting fruits and yogurt. All those nutritious foods would surely banish the God of Colds from Ms. Hanuki’s body. Mr. Higuchi and I carried the stuffed plastic bags and walked down Higashi Kuramaguchi Street toward the Takano River. Ms. Hanuki’s apartment was one room in a newish building along the Takano River. When we called her on the intercom, Ms. Hanuki, wearing a cardigan over her pink pajamas, opened the door for us. Her hair, disheveled from staying in bed, drooped thinly over her face, and she looked under the weather. She smiled, but it didn’t have the energy of the one she wore the night we walked together down an alcohol-steeped Ponto-cho. “Aw, you came to visit me?” “I heard from Mr. Higuchi. I couldn’t bear to do nothing. You look like you have quite a fever. Please rest in your futon.” The small room was styled charmingly, and white steam puffed peacefully out of a white, square humidifier. While I put the food we’d bought in the fridge, Ms. Hanuki wrapped up in her egg yolk–colored futon so just her face was peeking out. She had some sake, so I put in some sugar and an egg to make egg sake. “I take my egg sake minus the egg and the sugar,” she mumbled from her futon. “No, that won’t do,” I objected. Mr. Higuchi sat up straight on his knees next to Ms. Hanuki and put his hand to her forehead. “You could fry an egg on there! What are you trying to do by cranking your temp up so high?” “It’s not like I got a fever on purpose.” “You catch colds when you neglect your soul. Just look at me.” “Higuchi, you don’t catch colds, because you have no stress. And because you’re too stupid.” “If you don’t pipe down, your cold will get worse. C’mon, now,” he cautioned and went about trying to put one of those blue, soft gel sheets on her head. That was all he did. When the egg sake was ready, Ms. Hanuki sat up in her futon to drink it. “I was cracking jokes earlier, but this is actually pretty tasty.” I was glad to have impressed her. “So you made her buy all the stuff, huh, Higuchi? I can’t believe you’d visit someone’s sickbed empty-handed.” “Hey now, don’t go expecting anything out of me.” “But I’m sure surprised you even came to visit. I wasn’t expecting it, so I’m honestly a little happy.” “It’s ’cause I just happened to run into this one here.” There was something so adorable about the smile Ms. Hanuki gave me when he said that. She was very pretty with her eyes all distant and gleaming from the fever. Mr. Higuchi was polishing off the pudding I bought for her. When Ms. Hanuki finished the egg sake, she lay down in her futon and told us about a dream she had while delirious. “You have such weird dreams when you have a fever,” she murmured. But eventually, I learned that her cold was a special one. My room was in Higashi Ogura-cho in Kitashirakawa. The decrepit wooden apartment building was ruining the atmosphere of that quiet residential district. Something about it resembled the Crackpot Castle of Wind and Clouds. My room was on the western side of the second floor, and when I opened the window, I could practically reach out and touch the trees along the canal they were so close. Now their leaves had fallen, and I could see straight through to the empty university playing field on the other side. Every day, I came home from the university long after the sun had gone down. I parked my bicycle on the gravel out front, and when I stepped into the entryway, the lamp illuminated a pile of scattered shoes. Looking up at that light bulb shining in the darkness, I was seized by a lonely feeling. Sometime after winter started, someone had stolen my slippers. As I walked along the hardwood hallway, the bottoms of my feet absorbed the frigidity of the season. Since my labmates were all out with colds, the only thing I did was make busy laps between home and school as time passed in vain. Rumor had it that a nasty cold was going around that winter. The club that the girl and I were in couldn’t escape the wicked hand of the God of Colds, either, and members were dropping like flies. When I heard she was going to visit everyone, briskly dispensing ginger rice porridge and egg sake, I thought, Maybe I’ll catch a little cold, too. But though I was in the mood, the God of Colds didn’t come for me. When you’re thinking of only your own schedule, things don’t go as planned. The director of the School Festival Office is always hip to the latest trends, so he was out with a cold. I went for a visit, half to tease him, bearing honey ginger tea and vitamin drinks. He was sitting in bed surrounded by school festival papers, books on one-man Japanese comedy shows, his guitar, and a whole bunch of junk, impatient for his long-distance girlfriend to come visit him from Nagoya. Apparently, the Bedroom Investigation Commission’s Youth Division had invited him to a smutty-book viewing, and when he wandered over there, he brought the cold back. It’s well-known that obscene books lower the immunity of idiot students. There’s nothing else to say besides “You reap what you sow.” As I spent my dreary days in this manner, I developed lovesickness. Yes, lovesickness—that is, becoming ill because your feelings aren’t reaching the object of your affections. Lovesickness isn’t one of the 404 recognized diseases and thus cannot be cured by drinking traditional herbal medicine. It’s the result of my soul spending half a year in long-distance love while I focused only on busily filling in the moat around her. With nowhere to go, my passion stagnated in my body until it formed a whirlpool. That’s why I feel so feverish now. That must be it. I got back to my room after dark and felt so spacey; I had no motivation to do anything. My body was horribly heavy. As usual, the moment I turned the heater on, I burrowed into my futon. The forest of Kyoto Imperial Palace lies west of the Kamo River and south of Imadegawa Street. Exiting through the Seiwain Gate onto Teramachi Street and heading east into a quiet neighborhood, you’ll find the Uchida Internal Medicine Clinic. The wooden clinic is surrounded by a wooden fence, and the lush green pine branches peeking over the top of the fence are a rare sight these days. Dr. Uchida of the Uchida Internal Medicine Clinic is a former member of the Sophistry Debate Team, and ever since we met him last spring, Ms. Hanuki and Mr. Higuchi have been going drinking on occasion with him and another former Sophistry Debate Team member, the president. After a few days, Ms. Hanuki’s symptoms still hadn’t improved, so Mr. Higuchi said he was going to take her to the doctor. “I hate big clinics. You get even sicker in those places,” Ms. Hanuki whined. While Mr. Higuchi and I were trying to think of where to go, she remarked, “I wanna go to Dr. Uchida’s.” Mr. Higuchi gave her a piggyback ride, and the three of us visited Dr. Uchida’s clinic. While she was being examined, Mr. Higuchi and I warmed up in a waiting room that had a space heater going. Nothing fazed him, but even he had a pensive look on his face, his brow furrowed. The small waiting room was full of people waiting their turn, so we huddled together near the shoe cubbies. The afternoon sun shining through the fogged-up window made a faint, hazy puddle of light on the hardwood floor. I didn’t get sick very often as a child, but I remembered the few times my dad did take me to the family doctor. I had the feeling I’d looked into the same sort of pool of light on a hardwood floor back then, too. “If we had Junpairo, we could cure a cold in no time,” Mr. Higuchi said as if he had just remembered. “What’s Junpairo?” “It’s an illusory miracle drug once used to treat tuberculosis, a mixture of multiple expensive Chinese medicines with the consistency of a syrup. Supposedly, twirling the dipper and giving it one lick will bring down a fever and fill your whole body with energy. It’s said one drop is all it takes to make a person captive of that sweetness that melts on your tongue and the rich fragrance that rushes through your mouth and nose. It was so delicious, people kept licking it even when they weren’t sick—which always resulted in nosebleeds.” “It was like an awesome medicine. Too bad it doesn’t actually exist.” “You can’t get it anymore. It’s really a shame.” Before long, Ms. Hanuki came out. While she was getting her medicine, Dr. Uchida came to the window in his lab coat. “Well if it isn’t the girl who challenged Rihaku to a drinking contest.” He smiled. I was grateful he remembered me after all those months since that night in Ponto-cho. Dr. Uchida seemed to want to chat more, but the waiting room was full of people. He went back to his exam room, and we left the clinic. Walking along Imadegawa Street with Ms. Hanuki on his back, Mr. Higuchi said, “Business sure is booming over there. It seems like Dr. Uchida doesn’t have a moment’s rest.” “I heard there’s a nasty cold going around. And apparently, that’s what I have.” Ms. Hanuki gasped with her cheek resting on Mr. Higuchi’s shoulder. “I probably got it when I was drinking with the president last week.” “Oh, the president has a cold, too?” “I guess he’s moaning and groaning about his high fever… Got it from the newlyweds.” “Everyone’s so careless. Take a look at me. Just look! You think I’m going to catch a cold?” “You just don’t have any stress, Higuchi.” As they bantered back and forth, we walked along the bank of the Kamo River. Ms. Hanuki coughed on Mr. Higuchi’s back, gazing at the silvery sparkling water. Then she started singing, “Kittakazeeee, kozo-o no, Kaaantarooo!” As it started to get colder, I tended to spend most of my time at home in my futon. I watched TV in my futon, I ate in my futon, I studied in my futon, I fell deep into thought in my futon, I soothed my dear willy under my futon. The futon I never put away was truly the battlefield of my despicable youth. That day, too, I burrowed under the covers straightaway and stared up at the dingy ceiling. When I breathed, the air turned white. My joints felt floaty and soft; my body, heavy; it was almost as if I were melting into my futon. I faded in and out and descended into incoherence. I’d tucked my memories of the school festival into the treasure chest of my heart. I tried to remember how it felt to embrace her small shoulders. But each time I returned to that memory, the sensation of her body faded. Her face looking up at me from inside my arms looked hazy, too. It all seemed like a lie. Did that even really happen? Or was it just a personal fantasy of mine? The Daruma doll I’d picked up at the festival was by my pillow. As I gazed at it absentmindedly, the twilight that had surrounded me then enveloped me once more. Beneath a clear indigo night, I was chasing her. Looking up, I could see the black shapes of the school buildings slicing into the sky. What am I doing here? I knew I needed to catch up to her quickly, but I didn’t know where to go. Just then, I saw the School Festival Office director and his staff charge into an engineering department building. I went after them in a panic. Throngs of students were going up the stairs. The office staffers ahead of me shoved the spectators aside and raced up. The roof, when I reached it, was filled with people there to watch the show. The Crackpot Castle of Wind and Clouds towered beyond the crowd, its unreasonable number of chimneys spouting white steam into the dusk. The office staffers trying to halt the performance were in a shoving match with the crowd. I saw her, in the lead role, escaping the crowd under the protection of some audience members. It was too late. The curtain had gone up for the final act before I could reach the castle. Crazed spectators blocked my path as I tried to follow her. “Let me through!” I cried, but my efforts were in vain. I reached out with all my might, but the dark mass of people came between us, and I couldn’t even see her final performance. Had she gotten up on the stage? In that case, would she leave me behind and get embraced by the Crackpot of Monte Cristo when he appeared? Who was back there getting ready to hold her? Who the hell could it be? Why isn’t it me? Unable to stand the frustration, I picked up the Daruma at my feet and threw it. It flew in a huge arc through the twilight. The nearby audience members glared disapprovingly and surrounded me. I stood there alone. Through the debris of my heart, burned by jealousy, roared winds of passion. Since the God of Colds usually avoids me as it passes, I’m great at visiting sick people. That winter, beginning with Ms. Hanuki, pretty much everyone came down with a cold, and I was extremely busy. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I made a barrel of egg sake. I’m sorry—yes it would. But anyway, I went around to visit all sorts of people. About the time Ms. Hanuki seemed to be doing a bit better, I went to go visit the retired School Festival Office director at Ms. Noriko’s invitation. Ms. Noriko and I have remained close friends even after the festival ended, and we even went to the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art in Okazaki together. The day of the visit, we met in front of the Ginkakuji police box. The cherry trees along the Philosopher’s Walk had lost all their leaves, and the winter scene was so melancholic, it was hard to even imagine the flowers in full bloom like sugary sweets. The whistling wind whipped past so hard I felt as if it might rip my hair out. I’m cold—I’m so cold, I thought, looking up at Mount Daimonji and humming that song about the boy of the north wind, “Kitakaze kozo no Kantaro.” But before long, Ms. Noriko and the former Chief-in-Chief Underpants showed up. They had lots of gifts for the director. “Hey, how have you been?” the former Chief-in-Chief Underpants asked, looking refreshed. Since he’d achieved his goal of reuniting with Ms. Noriko, he was finished with the harsh austerities of not changing his underwear, had said good-bye to maladies of the lower body, and seemed to be in a great mood. I was very glad to see that things were going well. “The director’s mad. He said the Bedroom Investigation Commission’s Youth Division gave him the cold.” “What’s the Bedroom Investigation Commission’s Youth Division?” “It’s, uh, well. You know. I can’t really say it in front of you ladies.” The festival office director’s house was about a five-minute walk from there, a big gray apartment building on the Lake Biwa Canal. The room was so full of get-well-soon gifts, there was nowhere to stand, and the director himself had been driven into a corner. This spoke to the popularity of someone who filled the important post of director of the School Festival Office; one earthquake would’ve been enough to bury him alive in that popularity. “I wish,” he mumbled into his futon. “I actually feel bad we brought you so much stuff,” remarked Chief-in-Chief Underpants, smiling awkwardly. “Pretty soon you won’t have anywhere to sleep.” “No, it’s fine. I appreciate it.” The director carefully set the items from Chief-in-Chief Underpants atop the giant white tower of get-well-soon gifts. “An awful lot of people have come to visit you, huh?” I commented. “The Keifuku Electric Railway Research Society came, the Sophistry Debate Club came, the film club Ablutions came… Every single club came, but I can’t remember all of them. That guy from your club came the other day, too.” “Which guy do you mean?” “That bonehead who played the Crackpot of Monte Cristo in the guerilla theater production. I’ve been friends with him since our first year.” After that, Ms. Noriko and I made a hearty rice porridge, and Chief-in-Chief Underpants put away the huge stacks of gifts. Then the four of us ate porridge and chatted about fond memories of the craziness at the school festival. I worried it might not be good for the director, but he expressed, “I feel better when I’m talking to people.” Then my clubmate came up in our conversation again. “He was so desperate to play the Crackpot of Monte Cristo,” Chief-in-Chief Underpants pointed out. “I don’t know why.” “Oh, really? He said he just happened to be passing by…” “Ha! That takes some nerve. He basically hijacked the play.” “He has his own plans,” the director insisted with a hard look at me. “I guess you wouldn’t understand.” The winds of passion had been blowing so hard it seemed I’d caught a cold of passion. Thus, I became one of those legendary men to suffer lovesickness. I was quite pleased for a while, but when I made some frank observations of the symptoms, I realized that that wasn’t the case. It was just a cold. I probably got it from the director. How stupid. This really sucks. There’s nothing charming about this at all. As I was lamenting my luck, my symptoms rapidly worsened. Snot dripped from my nostrils like an overflowing sink. I coughed so hard I thought surely I’d start bringing up blood. My body felt as if it were literally made of lead, and it was no easy task to crawl out of my futon to go to school. Perhaps because I blew my nose too much, I developed a nasty zit above my lips. It was only a few days before Christmas, so this was really just unfair. Is there no god or Buddha?! Despite everything, hard on myself as I am, I took it on as a challenge and insisted on going to school; the reason being my two labmates were already out with a cold, so if I collapsed, we wouldn’t have any data for our experiments. But surveying the deserted student lab, I saw the number of dropouts had only increased, and many a table was completely empty. The cold student lab with its run-down equipment was dreary on a good day, but now it had taken on an air of desolation. I felt as if I were watching the God of Colds punching students out right in front of me. I performed experiments with shaky hands, broke a flask, blew toxic substances all over in a coughing fit, and fell asleep and nearly scorched my chin on a burner. Unable to watch me so exhausted with my lab coat buttoned all the way to my chin, the assistant professor stood me up and said, “It’s fine—just go home. Go home and sleep. The school’s practically shut down.” As I walked across campus and watched withered leaves fluttering down, the frigidity of winter, my awful cold, and my loneliness all attacked in full force, and I nearly breathed my last. Thinking I had to escape all of that as soon as possible and burrow into my dear futon, I mounted my bicycle. In order to intercept the God of Colds, I stopped by the grocery store on the corner of Shirakawa and Imadegawa. I walked along with a zombielike gait, hurling vitamin drinks, bottles of Pocari Sweat, pastries, fish burgers, and tissues into a basket, when I came upon a man standing there trying to catch his breath. He was carrying a large bottle of Coca-Cola and, for some reason, clutching a package of ginger. His eyes, half-closed, seemed to say, This is as far as my faculties of reason go. His hair was a disheveled mop, and his body was swaying slightly. He was obviously very sick. I was thinking I’d seen him somewhere before, and in fact, it was Chief-in-Chief Underpants. No, he achieved his goal at the school festival, so he had no doubt cast off that fearsome underwear he’d had on for a year straight. So I suppose it should be “Former Chief-in-Chief Underpants” now. I didn’t have the energy to say hello, so I passed quickly behind him. He stood there absentmindedly with his bottle of Coke and didn’t seem to notice me. I practically crawled back to my room and, after flinging the food into the fridge, immediately collapsed into my futon. The cold futon was warm before long and eased my shivers. I’d been scheming to get the girl to visit me, but I couldn’t very well ask her now. That wasn’t how a gentleman did things. After mulling it over, I decided to spread a rumor to my club that somehow implied I was out suffering with a cold and wanted the black-haired maiden to rescue me. But even though I sent that text for help, thirty minutes passed without a response. It was like I’d thrown a rock into the void. I could think of two reasons for that. One was that no one wanted anything to do with me and they’d decided it wasn’t their problem. The other was that everyone was out with a cold. I hope it’s at least the second one, I thought as I fell asleep. Everyone has different ways to get over a cold. The first one that comes to mind is the grated apple my mom used to make for me. Remembering scooping the soft apple with a spoon and the texture as I chewed it up takes me back to those quiet mornings when I was home sick from elementary school—those painful yet sort of happy, sweet times. I almost never caught colds, so those memories are precious to me. When I ate grated apple and fell asleep hugging a Daruma doll, I’d get over the cold in no time. I suppose we can say that apples and Daruma are marvelously effective. Why did I sleep with a Daruma? Because my big sister taught me that putting one in your futon made it a protective charm. I was going to visit Ms. Noriko that day. She was sick with a cold. Ms. Noriko likes small, round Daruma, so I thought I’d teach her my sister’s charm. I was carrying a little doll that I’d picked up at the school festival. Ms. Noriko’s house was in a little egg yolk–colored apartment building on the eastern slope of Mount Yoshida. As I trudged up the steep, narrow hill from Kaguraoka Street, a sprinkling of snow fell from the cold, gray sky. It may have been the first snow of the year. When Ms. Noriko met with me, she observed, “Maybe I caught it when we visited the director,” and her tidy eyebrows crinkled. She always gave such a delicate, impermanent impression, but now she looked even more fragile, like a glass ornament that would break if you touched it. “I was supposed to go to a Crackpot of Monte Cristo screening today, but I can’t.” Chief-in-Chief Underpants’s guerilla theater production, The Crackpot of Monte Cristo, had been filmed by the Ablutions film club as they followed the play around campus. Apparently, they made a movie version by editing that footage and setting it to music and were going to show it. Ms. Noriko said she was supposed to go see it with Chief-in-Chief Underpants, but her fever didn’t go down, so she was stuck at home in frustration. I explained the mysterious wonders a Daruma could work and was just tucking the doll into her futon when Chief-in-Chief Underpants showed up with a big bottle of Coca-Cola. But the visitor’s breathing was actually more labored than the patient’s; one look was enough to tell he had a bad cold. Despite his own high fever, he had walked the long road to her apartment under the cold sky. Breathing with some difficulty, he set the bottle of Coke on the counter and took a package of ginger out of a grocery store bag. “This is what you need for a cold.” He poured Coke into a pot, added sliced ginger, and simmered it. Apparently, the secret ingredients in Coca-Cola are highly effective against colds, and adding ginger increases their effectiveness even more. Ms. Noriko looked a bit troubled, but she put up with it and swallowed it down. Chief-in-Chief Underpants seemed relieved he was able to have Ms. Noriko drink his hot ginger Coke, and he sat down cross-legged on the floor and hung his head. “I never caught a cold while I wasn’t changing my underwear,” he grumbled. “Well, I had lower-body diseases instead. I guess neither is very good.” Ms. Noriko hugged the Daruma to her chest and said, “Thanks for coming all this way.” “No problem. It was nothing. Now you’ll get over your cold.” As I watched that kind exchange, I felt somehow happy. Getting along is beautiful! I thought. “It’s too bad, though. We were supposed to go to that screening of The Crackpot of Monte Cristo today.” “Oh, that’s not happening.” “Why?” “It got canceled because the cold hit everyone.” “It spread that much?” “I think the root of this evil is the director of the School Festival Office. Everyone who went to visit him got the cold, and it went on from there. The university is pretty much deserted.” With that, he looked toward me. “You should be careful.” “I’m all right. I think the God of Colds must hate me.” Chief-in-Chief Underpants and Ms. Noriko eventually started feeling so bad that they spoke less and less and finally just watched over each other with spacey fever eyes. I thought I’d better take my leave soon but wondered how the sky was doing. I stood up and went to the window. I could hear the faint noise of leaves brushing against the glass. When I pulled the curtain back, I gasped. I could see the buildings along Kaguraoka below, and beyond that, Mount Daimonji. The bottom of the hill was like a bowl, and the snow, falling harder now, had coated everything. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed as if all movement had stopped and the snowy neighborhood had gone quiet. Everyone’s caught a cold and is curled up in their futons listening for the sound of the first snow on their windows, I thought. I leaned my forehead on the cold, foggy glass and stared out at the snowy neighborhood. Still, though, what was going on? God of Colds, God of Colds, why do you make such prodigious efforts? Having drifted off to sleep once and woken up, my body felt even heavier. I struggled to drag myself out of my futon, and when I wobbled out into the cold hallway to the common bathroom, snow was blowing in from an open window in the hall. My teeth chattered loudly as I did my business. Even once I was back in bed, I was beat. I couldn’t even project visions of my future on the dirty ceiling or bounce philosophical questions off the corners of the four-and-a-half-mat tatami room. I pulled the futon up overhead, curled into a ball, and hugged myself. It was an act of self-sufficiency stemming from the fact that I had no one to hold me and no one I could hold. Then I thought about her. Staring into the darkness inside my futon without moving, I confronted the big, fundamental problem. Why, in the half a year since I’d met her, had I specialized only in moats, strayed from the correct path of love, and degenerated into a perpetual moat-filling machine? I could think of two potential answers. One was that I was a despicable chicken who couldn’t get a clear confirmation of her feelings. That brought my dignity into question, so I set it aside for the time being. Which left only one answer: Maybe I didn’t actually have a crush on her? There is this evil assumption people make about university students—namely, that they already have significant others. But it’s actually the reverse. All the foolish students, pressured by this assumption that “all university students have significant others,” race around to keep up appearances, which results in the strange phenomenon of everyone and their brother having a significant other, which in turn fosters the assumption. I needed to take a good, hard look at myself. Was I perhaps being pressured by this? Was I putting on the airs of a solitary man while actually succumbing to the latest trend and falling in love with the idea of love? If a maiden is in love with love, that’s still pretty cute, but men who are in love with love are all just creepy! What do I even know about her? It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that aside from the back of her head, which I’ve stared at so hard I’ve practically burned a hole in it, I didn’t know a single thing about her. So how did I fall for her, then? The reason isn’t clear. Couldn’t that mean she just happened to get sucked into a void in my heart? I used her to try to fill the emptiness of my heart. That motive’s weak and all wrong. I should be ashamed of myself. I should prostrate myself before her and apologize. Before trying for an easy solution, I should have paid more attention to my own situation. I should face the wall, blush red as a Daruma doll, and sulk. I can only become a complete human by using this adversity as a foothold. Eventually, I got tired of thinking, and my eyes, vacant with fever, stared at my bookshelf. I remembered that summer afternoon I spent wandering around looking for her at the used bookfair. The feeling of sweat dripping down my forehead, the ceaseless song of the cicadas, the strong rays of light coming through the old treetops… We sat next to each other on a bench with a cover over it and drank Ramune soda… Wait, did I drink Ramune soda with her? Was that just a fantasy of mine? I can remember the cold flavor hitting my throat, and I can see her face so vividly, smiling as she held the pure-white picture book next to me, but… As I continued to sit on the bench, I’d assumed The Thinker’s pose. The riding ground that stretched north-south grew gradually shadowy starting from the north side, as if it were sinking into a lake. When I looked up at the sky, there were gray clouds that appeared to be full of water. That heart-wrenching, sweet smell presaging a shower filled the air. Before long, it was coming down, so I took shelter in a nearby tent. Listening to the rain drumming on the roof, I hunted through the bookshelves, and a collection of writing by Yumeji Takehisa caught my eye. I picked it up to flip through it and noticed a poem: Waiting for your lover is unbearable Making your lover wait, more unbearable still Then what of me, all alone Neither waiting nor awaited? The rain pounded down. If it’s a midsummer afternoon, why am I so cold? Because of the sudden shower? Because I’m all alone? “Then what of me, all alone?!” Eventually, the rain gave way to striking rays of sun. I ran through the never-ending mountains of books looking for her. I’ve got to find her before the bookfair ends. And then I’ve got to reach out for the same book as she does, I schemed. I was so impatient. Suddenly, I saw someone who looked like her. That catlike gait, that glossy black hair… But the figure kept running away, beyond the infinite rows of bookshelves. The never-ending bookcases came between us. How far does this bookfair even go? Why am I chasing her only to be left behind? Hey, hey, why do you make such futile efforts? The sun finally went down. Orangey lanterns lit up between the tents fading into the twilight. There were no people in sight. I was standing stock-still in the middle of a deserted used bookfair at night, stunned. Just then, beyond the dark trees, a mysterious triple-decker train radiating bright lights went by down the approach to Shimogamo Shrine. The lights gleaming in the windows illuminated the silent forest. Flags of the world and various streamers fluttered on a string in the night. I’d seen that train somewhere before, and I watched alone as it went past. Alone. “Then what of me, all alone?!” This time, I screamed. Asada Ame was the invention of a doctor of herbal medicine, Sohaku Asada, during the Edo period. Mr. Sohaku Asada studied the Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders under Kyoto’s Dr. Shinsai Nakanishi and, following the Meiji Restoration, became the imperial physician. A man named Mr. Horiuchi learned to make cough drops from him and promoted it far and wide with the cute slogan “Good medicine that’s sweet on the tongue,” and it still exists today. It’s a small yet potent throat drop that has battled all the worst colds in history. And one mustn’t forget its brave struggle against the Spanish Flu that raged during the Taisho period and claimed many lives. Good medicine that’s sweet on the tongue! That is, I have nothing bad to say about it. I’d like to be as brave myself. …is just me repeating what I heard. The owner of the used bookstore Gabi Shobo told us that story when Mr. Higuchi and I went to visit him in his sickbed. That morning had been the last lecture of December. I ate a big lunch at the central cafeteria before heading to the clock tower, where I met up with Mr. Higuchi. From there, we took the bus to Shijo Kawaramachi. Mr. Higuchi paid the fare with some tickets he got from Ms. Hanuki. He said her fever had finally gone down some, which was a relief. Christmas was clearly right around the corner in Shijo Kawaramachi. The whole area was festive with red and green decorations, and cheerful Christmas melodies were playing from here and there. The Hankyu Department Store had a huge banner announcing the arrival of Christmas. Mr. Higuchi was getting lots of tissue packets with advertisements from ladies dressed like Santa Claus. “If I catch a cold, these will come in handy,” he said. “It’s Christmas everywhere you look!” “Yeah. Seems fun.” “Of course, it’s a foreign custom that has nothing to do with us. But you know, what’s fun is good!” “I totally agree!” Mr. Higuchi and I spent a little while getting tipsy on the holiday spirit and played around with Santa merchandise we found on display, but before long, we remembered our original objective with a start. We turned into a narrow alley going east, went past an abandoned schoolhouse, and left the bustle of Kawaramachi behind. Once we crossed a little bridge over the Takase River, we were in Kiyamachi in the daytime. There were no mysterious festivities like the night we were all out walking and drinking there. Mr. Higuchi turned down an alley between some buildings and guided me to a wooden house with a latticed door. When he called “Hello?” and slid the door open, it smelled like my grandmother’s house. Mr. Higuchi didn’t wait for an answer and thumped right in. The bookseller was sunk deep in a green sofa in the first-floor living room, listening absentmindedly to the radio. When he saw that Mr. Higuchi didn’t even hesitate to walk in, he groaned, “Don’t just barge into people’s houses!” “We’re here to visit! We brought you a get-well-soon gift,” announced Mr. Higuchi. The bookseller had a brown scarf wrapped around his neck and a red cap covering his shiny bald head, and in his mouth, he was sucking on his trusty Asada Ame. He told us his wife had a cold, too, and was sleeping on the second floor. He had us sit on the opposite sofa and poured us some tea mixed with Chinese herbs. When he turned off the radio, the ticking of the clock on the wall seemed loud. Despite being in the middle of the city, they had a tiny yard outside a glass door from the living room where an ugly little tree like a wire statue grew. Its few remaining leaves swayed under the gray sky. “Is it all right for you to be up and about?” “I was lying down all morning. It’s just so boring.” He coughed and then crunched on the Asada Ame. “I caught this at the Bedroom Investigation Commission’s general meeting. That bonehead Todou should’ve stayed home in bed if he was sick. Instead, he came out, and now all the attendees are sick—the owner of Chitoseya, all the students from the Youth Division…” He blew his nose, irritated. Hearing Mr. Todou’s name for the first time in so long made me nostalgic. Mr. Todou is a middle-aged man, the shrewd manager of Todou Koi Fish Center in Rokujizo, and a philosopher on the meaning of life. When, at the end of May, I went out in search of alcohol, Mr. Todou was the first person I met. If I hadn’t run into him, I wouldn’t have ended up at a certain bar on Kiyamachi, I wouldn’t have gotten groped, I wouldn’t have been rescued by Ms. Hanuki, I wouldn’t have met the admirable Mr. Higuchi, I wouldn’t have met Mr. Rihaku, or the president, or any of the others, and my world would still be as small as a cat’s forehead. Meeting Mr. Todou was a gift. He opened up a whole new horizon in my life. “Mr. Todou has a cold, too? I’ll have to go see him.” “You can leave him alone, that scoundrel,” the owner of Gabi Shobo said bluntly. “I’m sure his daughter is taking care of him anyway.” Just then, the latticed door slid open, and a voice politely called, “Excuse me.” When the bookseller greeted, “C’mon in,” the one who entered the living room was the owner of the traditional Kyoto cuisine restaurant Chitoseya. He was puffy and all bundled up, so his appearance was rather substantial. Also, he was carrying a parcel. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” The owner of Gabi Shobo frowned at him. The owner of Chitoseya scratched his head awkwardly. “Well…yeah, but I’m busy this time of year. I came by while I was out shopping.” “If you overdo it, you won’t make it to next year.” The owner of Chitoseya took a big kabocha squash out of his bundle. “I hope you’ll get some nutrients out of this,” he proclaimed. A little glass bottle also appeared out of the package. It was stuffed full of pickled plums. “I don’t eat kabocha. Had too much of it as a kid.” “Oh, don’t be like that. It’ll be the winter solstice soon. Gotta eat kabocha.” “What’s with the plums? I don’t like pickled plums, either.” “And you call yourself Japanese! In Manners and Customs of Edo, they say aged pickled plums work as medicine for colds. You could eat these with some rice porridge. How’s your wife?” “She’s asleep. Got a high fever.” “That’s no good.” And from there, we chatted over tea with Chinese herbs. The round kabocha was cute, so I put it on my lap and petted it. The owner of Chitoseya said, “I have two, so I’ll give you that one.” I hugged it and thought, I’ll simmer this and take it to Ms. Hanuki. “Been a while since I’ve seen you,” the owner of Chitoseya commented, looking at Mr. Higuchi. “You were at the bookfair, right?” “Hmm, maybe.” “We ate fire hot pot together, didn’t we?” Mr. Higuchi suddenly seemed to remember. “Yes, that was tasty.” “You liked it? I thought I was going to die.” “Oh? I can’t really remember.” “You don’t remember? Are you serious…?” For a few moments, he was lost for words. I’ve never eaten Mr. Rihaku’s fire hot pot, but it must have a terrifying flavor profile. My tongue is so sensitive to heat that just hearing the words fire hot pot seemed to make it burn. The owner of Chitoseya collected himself and continued. “That was an odd collection of people. That old gray-haired guy, you, the student from the Keifuku Electric Railroad Research Society… You and one other guy managed to hang on till the end.” “Oh, him.” “You know, he was supposed to take the Hokusai for me, but he betrayed me partway through. For crying out loud. He wanted that picture book, whatever it was called, so bad.” “He beat me.” Mr. Higuchi looked at me. “You know him—your clubmate,” he added. We eventually departed, carrying pickled plums, kabocha, and Asada Ame. Please forgive us for greedily leaving with loot when we were the ones visiting. The owner of Gabi Shobo saw us off to the door and said, “Drop by the shop if the mood strikes you.” “Isn’t it closed?” “I found a promising kid, so I left him in charge. He’s a little guy but with a wonderfully sharp mind and a quick wit. He’s much more reliable than college kids these days.” I wandered out of my room along the canal and walked Kitashirakawa. As I reached the Kitashirakawa Betto intersection, I saw a convenience store sparkling brilliantly in the twilight, and I finally realized I’d come out to buy something to drink. Due to my fever, the outlines of everything around me trembled as they do when you’re drunk. When I threw some yogurt and drinks into a basket and went to check out, a poster encouraging reservations for Christmas cake caught my eye. But I no longer had the energy to get aggravated, scream into the void, or make an escape. All I wanted was to ingest enough nutrients to not die and lie in bed. I didn’t even have the wherewithal to lament how low my standards were. After returning to my room, I sipped some instant soup and burrowed into my futon. I coughed into the darkness inside it and whispered, “Even when I cough, alone.” With my body in such a weakened state, I couldn’t think of anything good. My grades haven’t improved since I started school, and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be happening anytime soon. I loudly proclaim I’m continuing on to grad school, but it’s only an excuse to delay the job hunt. I’m not witty, I’m not talented, I’m not rich, I’m not strong, I’m not brave, I’m not charismatic, and neither am I the type of lovable little piglet guy you want to rub cheeks with. I’m never going to be able to make it in this world with nothing, nothing at all. I got so anxious, I hauled myself out of my futon and crawled around my four-and-a-half-mat room on all fours, my hands pattering across the floor, searching for any talent or gifts I might have left lying around somewhere. Then I remembered in my first year, my creed was “A skilled hawk hides its talons,” and I had stashed a “talent bank” in my closet. “Right, I have that! Oh yeah!” I was delighted. When I opened the closet, it was full of huge mushrooms. When the heck did this happen? I wondered, pushing the slimy fungi aside. The talent bank I pulled from the back gleamed golden. Like a symbol of my future. I tipped it over and whacked the bottom like a madman. What came out was a single piece of paper that said, “Do what you can, step-by-step.” I collapsed in my futon and nearly bawled my eyes out. I was up and at ’em on the morning of the winter solstice. My eyes popped open in bed, and when I looked out the window, I could see the wind was gusting. I needed to go to the co-op and buy a ticket to go home for the holidays. I got up and did the Sophism Samba to get myself psyched. I threw my clothes in the laundry machine and turned on the TV. While I was frying an egg, I saw that the Kyoto TV news station was covering the cold going around. The God of Colds, not content with merely knocking out everyone I was close to, was apparently attacking people around town like a murderer in the streets. The news had put together an emergency feature on cold remedies. There was a poster hanging in the lobby of my apartment complex in Mototanaka that warned, “Beware of colds!” I heard the landlord and his whole family on the first floor were bedridden. The whole building was quiet, and I hadn’t even heard the boisterous late-night mah-jongg games in a few days. On top of that, it was supposed to be my club’s year-end party that evening, but the night before, I’d gotten a phone call that it was canceled because most of the members were sick. Apparently, this was unheard of. There were so many people sick in bed, I couldn’t possibly visit them all. I felt bad. After boosting my immunity with breakfast, I got ready to go out. The laundry was done, so I hung it out on the veranda. A somehow disquieting, lukewarm breeze was blowing in, but it didn’t seem as if it was going to rain. Once the laundry was out to dry, I thought, Time to go! and when I was doing a point check to make sure the gas was off and whatnot, I noticed the red koi plushie in the corner of my room. It was a prize I’d won with some splendid shooting skills—if I do say so myself—at the school festival in the fall. Oh, I know. I’ll give this to Mr. Todou as a get-well-soon gift. Just the thought of it made me happy and excited. The owner of Gabi Shobo had coldly said I didn’t need to go, but he did tell me how to find the Todou Koi Fish Center. Now my plans for the day were set. Mr. Todou was breeding carp, so seeing one this big would be sure to cheer him right up. Yes, indeed. Then I packed the koi plushie into a big cloth bundle and headed confidently out. Come to think of it, haven’t I spend all this time in university uselessly thinking too hard about everything, intent on finding ways to delay taking the first step toward anything? It’s the same—I’m endlessly circling her castle’s moat, doing nothing but exhausting myself. A multitude of myselves began debating, precluding any definitive action. I got out of my bed and went down the long hallway to the conference hall. When I appeared and turned in my application to date her, the room went nuts. “I’m firmly against getting swept up in popular trends.” “All you’re after is some comfort for your loneliness, you coward. Just grit your teeth and endure it.” “You’re just using her as an escape because you can’t figure out what your future will be!” “Be careful! First you need to see how she really feels—in as indirect a way as possible!” “Are you even capable of something that requires as much sensitivity as dating a girl? Do you think it’ll be fun?” “You just want to get your hands on a boob or two. Your head’s full of obscenities!” Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer and retorted, “It’s true my head is full of obscenities, but that’s not all. There are lots of other things in there, too! More beautiful things!” “Then here’s a question: Let’s say you’re going out alone together for the first time. By chance, you happened to have a fun day together, and that night, she snuggles up to you. What do you do?” “She wouldn’t warm up to you as quickly as instant ramen!” “This is just a hypothetical. If she said to you, C’mon, squeeze my breasts, would you refuse?” All I could do was writhe. “I wouldn’t refuse! I wouldn’t, but…” “There, you see that? You’re a dyed-in-the-wool pervert. Tell her you’re sorry. Throw yourself at her feet and apologize. Then content yourself with squeezing a rubber ball by the wayside!” I was furious, but I couldn’t retaliate. “Sophistry! That’s just sophistry!” I shouted. “I’ll make myself clear. How did you fall for her? Why did you choose her? If you insist on making a move, then show me a reason we can all agree on.” All at once the insults started flying: Coward, traitor, rebel, pervert, idiot, airhead… The deluge of abuse left me out of breath up on the platform. “But, gentlemen!” I raised both my hands and yelled hoarsely at my opponents crowding the room. “If you say I have to think it through so thoroughly, then how do men and women ever start dating? Isn’t the pure beginning to a romance that you desire impossible? If I consider every factor and perform an exhaustive analysis of my motives, I’ll be like the motionless arrow in the void, unable to take a step forward. Call it horniness, or her looks, or a trend, or a fantasy, or plain idiocy—I’ll accept it all. They’re all correct. But isn’t there a moment when you have to understand that and take a haphazard leap anyway? Even if you land in an abyss of heartache? If I don’t leap now, I’ll be stuck going in circles forever in this little corner of my youth. Is that what you want? Is there any one of you who can say you wouldn’t regret it if I died alone tomorrow without telling her how I feel? If you do, step forward.” The hall fell utterly silent. I stepped off the platform, went back down the long hallway, and opened my eyes in bed. Apparently, I’d been screaming my throat raw at the ceiling, and a trail of hot tears was flowing from the corner of my eye. I didn’t feel as if I’d slept at all. “At any rate, I’m stuck in this situation at the moment… I don’t have a way to make a move anyhow…” Coughing, I sat up. Panting, I hauled myself across the tatami and turned on the TV. I stared sulkily at the screen, eating a banana and drinking tea. The light out the window was pale and bright; it was exactly what a winter morning should look like. Apparently, it was the solstice. I caught the Keihan train at Demachiyanagi Station and rocked along with my big bundle of koi plushie. At Chushojima, I transferred to the Uji Line; there were three stops to Rokujizo. When I reached Rokujizo, I walked toward Fushimi Momoyama with my parcel on my back, and before long, I was in town. But I had trouble finding Mr. Todou’s house. The Todou Koi Fish Center had to have spacious tanks as far as the eye could see and innumerable fish leaping into the air—I was sure it was just like the undersea Dragon Palace of myth. There was no way I could miss such a fabulous facility. But it was very strange: I turned my map sideways and upside down, pacing back and forth through the quiet neighborhood. Eventually, I realized I had passed a house with a sign that said TODOU KOI FISH CENTER quite a few times. When I asked Mr. Todou later, he said the reservoir was in the back. Next to the house was something like a workshop, full of glass tanks, pipes, and all sorts of clutter. A machine was groaning incessantly. A man in work clothes and a white mask was going around checking the tanks, so I approached him. “Sorry to bother you while you’re working.” But he answered, “What can I do for you?” “I’m just wondering if Mr. Todou is here.” “The president? He’s sleeping up on the second floor of the office…” “I heard he had a cold, so I came to visit…” The man let out a big sneeze and complained, “Agh, enough already” in irritation at himself, then turned to me and bowed politely. “Oh, thank you for coming out of your way. This way, please, right this way.” In the office, there was a stout little heater. The kettle on it was quietly spouting steam. I sat there getting warm for a little while, and Mr. Todou came down wearing a cotton-padded coat. His familiar cucumber face looked haggard and even thinner; the lower half was covered in stubble, and his eyes gleamed with fever. Even so, when he saw me, he smiled. “Oh, it’s you. You came all the way out here?” “The man from Gabi Shobo told me the way.” “He’s probably mad at me right? ’Cause I gave him the cold.” “He was a tiny bit mad.”’ When the man in the work clothes said “Mr. Todou, kakkonto” and handed him the medicine, Mr. Todou obediently drank it. Then he complained, “My daughter had been coming to see me, but then she got it… So I’m really in such a miserable state. No one’s been to visit since then. I’m really thankful you remembered me.” “But I owe you so much, Mr. Todou.” “You owe me? Really?” As I drank my tea, I told him about all the experiences I’d had thanks to meeting him that night in Ponto-cho. “Wow, that’s a whole lot of stuff.” He listened with interest. When I gave him the big koi plushie as a get-well-soon gift, he started to cry and professed, “This really brings back memories. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a fun night as that.” So we reminisced about that night. “Talking with you is better for me than any panacea. I haven’t felt this good in a long time.” “You must have had it rough.” “My fever wouldn’t go down; the cough was horrible… All the dreams I had were bizarre, and I never felt well rested when I woke up…” “What kind of dreams were they?” “Awful ones. I told you about the tornado that hit us this spring, right? I’ve seen that thing in my dreams a zillion times. The sun’s setting, and I look up at the sky, calling out each of my carp’s names. But they get sucked into the tornado… I kept having that dream over and over till I couldn’t stand it.” “That sounds terrible.” “But man, here I am causing trouble for everyone again, giving them my cold…,” he mumbled sadly and held his hands up to the heater. As I watched over that pitiful figure, the image of the God of Colds skipping from person to person came vividly to mind. After leaving Mr. Todou, the God of Colds journeyed to Ms. Naoko and her husband, from them to the president, from the president to Dr. Uchida, to Ms. Hanuki… And meanwhile from Mr. Todou to the members of the Bedroom Investigation Commission, to the owner of Gabi Shobo, to the owner of Chitoseya, to the Bedroom Investigation Commission’s Youth Division, and to the director of the School Festival Office… The director of the School Festival Office gave it to Chief-in-Chief Underpants and Ms. Noriko, as well as the other people who came to visit him from the Keifuku Electric Railroad Research Society, the film club Ablutions, the Sophistry Debate Team, and more. Those people, who numbered in the dozens, gave the cold to all the people they knew, and from there, it wouldn’t take long to rampage throughout the entire university. The cold carried by several thousand students would be spread to their workplaces and hangouts and eventually to the entire city… At that point, I suddenly had a thought and asked, “Mr. Todou, how did you get your cold?” He winced. “Well, it’s that habit of mine, again. Mr. Rihaku said he had an amazing…well, one of those shunga I like. So I went to go see it. He was coughing when I went. I’m sure that’s how I got sick.” Mr. Rihaku! The God of Colds raced down the threads connecting us all, and sitting right in the middle of that miraculous scene is Mr. Rihaku. Struck by that solemn thought, I sighed in front of Mr. Todou. But why, if everyone was catching the cold together in harmony, was I left out? I felt like a child, wide-awake in bed in the middle of the night when everyone else is sound asleep. “Then what of me, all alone?” I murmured in spite of myself. “Are you all right?” Mr. Todou asked, concerned. I spent the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, in bed going back and forth between sleeping and waking. A younger club member with a stuffy nose alerted me that the year-end party planned for that evening had been canceled. When I got mad at him—“Why haven’t you come to visit me?”—he maintained, “Things are way worse than that,” ignoring my situation, and described in detail how quiet the city was due to this cold. “Please watch the news.” I sat up in my futon, put the top layer over my shoulders, and watched Kyoto TV. The Christmas mood raging through town had been displaced, and the God of Colds was the star of the show now. The feature programming on colds continued in full force, and I was inundated with a ton of preventive strategies too late for me to deploy. The streets that should have been hopping in the run-up to Christmas Eve were instead being overrun by the God of Colds. I instinctively shouted with glee. I was stuck home alone being tormented by my cold anyhow, so I couldn’t make any preparations for Christmas Eve. All the impertinent rabble who thought they were going out that night could get a kick in the pants from the God of Colds and end up in bed, too. “Even so, this is pretty wild. It’s like the Spanish Flu or something.” Even I was stunned by how lonely the streets looked. A reporter on TV, wearing a surgical mask for extra drama, shouted, “Take a look at how few people are out!” standing at the Shijo Karasuma intersection. Almost no one passed by, and hardly any cars, either. The municipal bus going by was an empty box. The streets were decked out for Christmas, twinkling, which threw the dreary lack of people into high relief. It felt eerie, like a ghost town. The reporter wandered the streets as if she were searching for survivors after a world war and talked to anyone she found. Before long, a black-haired maiden striding briskly down Kawaramachi Street came into the frame. Before I knew it, I had crawled out of my futon and was literally clinging to the TV. “You seem awfully healthy, not even wearing a mask. What’s your secret to ward off colds?” asked the reporter. “I don’t really have one… If anything, the God of Colds doesn’t like me.” “Why do you sound so sad?” “Because I’m the only one who’s left out…” The maiden of my dreams spoke sadly into the camera. I got on the Keihan train back the way I came. There were almost no passengers. Rocking along in the train car, I got to thinking. I hadn’t seen that guy from my club lately. I started to wonder if something had happened to him. We met every few days by coincidence. It was rare to not see him for so long. I began to worry. Could it be that he caught a cold and is all alone in bed with a high fever? That would be quite serious. As Chief-in-Chief Underpants, the director of the school festival, Mr. Higuchi, and the owner of Chitoseya had told me, he’d been so active on campus when I wasn’t looking. To be imprisoned in his room with a cold must be torture. He’s such a kind person, so full of love. That’s why he battled for my picture book, acted opposite me in the play, and has always been there to help me. I’ve got to repay him! I was determined to help. I got off the train at the Keihan Shijo Station, thinking to visit Gabi Shobo. When I went up the stairs and exited to the east end of Shijo Bridge, the streets were oddly quiet. Usually, a crowd of people would be coming and going across the bridge, but today there was only a handful. The sparkling sunlight had weakened. When I looked over the bridge’s railing to the north, I could see the end of the Kamo River and dark, threatening clouds gathering in the northern sky. An eerie, stray breeze brushed my cheeks and left a muggy, lukewarm sensation in its place. Even when I turned onto Kawaramachi Street, all I found was the wind blowing through the empty town. The whole row of shops was decorated for Christmas, gleaming brilliantly, but there were almost no customers. Everyone tottering past me was wearing a big mask. At the Shijo Kawaramachi intersection, there was a reporter doing street interviews, and she talked to me, too. She seemed to be catching a cold herself, and when I told her to take care as we were parting, she emphasized, “You be sure to take care, too.” Then, with nothing left to say, we surveyed the cityscape. It was as if we were standing on the corner of Shijo and Kawaramachi after the end of the world. The Christmas melodies playing from the shops were sometimes drowned out by the gusting wind. It whipped through the valleys between buildings with a noise almost like the roar of some gigantic beast lurking deep within the town. Where in the world does this wind come from? Walking through the gusts battering both Christmas and me, I finally arrived at Gabi Shobo. When I pushed on the glass door and went inside, the shop was silent, as if the stacks of used books sucked up all sound. The heater was making the place toasty, so I was relieved. Right when you walked in, there was a stack of beautiful box sets of collected works stretching up high like towers. Occupying the register in the back was a beautiful little boy. He was resting his chin on the register with his cheeks puffed crankily out, scowling at an old book lying open on the table. “Hello,” I said to him. He sniffed and looked up, and his face brightened when he saw me. “Oh, it’s the Ra Ta Ta Tam lady. Long time no see!” “Since the bookfair, huh? I never thought I’d run into you here.” “I’ve become the disciple of this bookseller. Once winter break starts, I’ll be here every day.” “He said you have a lot of promise.” “Of course I do. I’m a genius.” “What are you reading, there?” “This? It’s this Chinese medical book called Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders.” He put the Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders away and poured me some tea. I thanked him with an Asada Ame drop. As he enjoyed it, he observed in a low voice, “But I’m not sick. Cold medicine is poison for your body when you don’t have a cold, you know. If you eat too much, you get a nosebleed. There’s a crazy cold going around right now. Are you doing okay?” “The God of Colds hates me.” “No one can leave their bed. Until the God of Colds settles down, the city will be at a standstill. Isn’t it sort of fun? You and me are the only ones who haven’t been defeated by this cold.” He stroked the Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders and hinted with a smug look on his face, “If it comes down to it, I’ll just have some of the medicine for colds that cold medicine doesn’t cure.” “What’s that?” “A medicine that’ll immediately cure a cold that cold medicine doesn’t.” He took a little bottle out from beneath the register. It was a puffy shape like a Daruma doll and contained a clear brown liquid. The label on the side in an old-timey font said JUNPAIRO. “This is a cold medicine they used to sell back in the Taisho period. You can’t get it anymore. My dad knew a lot about Chinese medicine and figured out how to make his own. I can make it, too.” “Does it really work that well?” “Like magic. If you want, I could give you a bottle.” Then it hit me: If my clubmate is suffering from a cold, I have to take this medicine to him and pay him back for all he’s done for me. I carefully put away the bottle the little boy gave me. He was nice enough to see me off as I pushed open the glass door again and went out onto Kawaramachi. The wind blew down the lonely streets again, and some scraps of paper slid by. Something like a glittering streamer caught the little rays of sun peeking from among the clouds, as it whirled up into the air and went flying between two buildings. The boy and I stood under the eaves of the shop for a while, gazing up at it. “I don’t think you’re going to catch the cold. It’s up to the God,” he ruminated. “You should use that medicine for someone important to you.” “Thank you.” “We hope you’ll come again.” I caught the municipal bus to stop at home. Besides the driver, who was wearing a mask, there were no other passengers. I rode through the quiet streets. Usually, the area in front of Demachiyanagi Station was crawling with young people, but today it was quiet. As I walked from there to my apartment complex, the neighborhood was so quiet, everyone seemed to have gone extinct, and the only sound was the wind whipping past the tops of the telephone poles. It was so quiet it was scary. Just as I got to my building, I ran into Ms. Hanuki coming out bundled up in a large scarf. She was carrying a big shopping bag. “Oh! There you are!” Her face was bright and cheery. “I dropped by while I was out shopping.” Her voice was hoarse, but she seemed good, so I was relieved. The wind was messing up her hair. She stood next to me with a disgruntled expression and surveyed the streets. “Hey, so why’s it so quiet?” “Apparently, an incredibly bad cold is going around.” “I though the world got destroyed while I was out sick.” “So, Ms. Hanuki, what brings you here anyway?” When I asked that, she whispered, “Don’t be alarmed,” and furrowed her beautiful brow. “Higuchi caught a cold.” Enduring my sickness all by my lonesome, I tossed and turned in bed. Whenever worries and anxieties attacked me, I whispered, “Do what you can, step-by-step.” I said it so much, the words echoed in my brain and got stuck in my head. Do what you can, step-by-step. Step-by-step. Step, step. Step, step. Before I knew it, I was walking down the stone pavement of Ponto-cho at night. Sandwiching the pavement were the lights of restaurants and bars, like phantoms floating in the darkness. I didn’t know where I was headed. I was just walking step-by-step, weaving through the drunk people coming and going along the busy street. Just then, an apple dropped down right in front of me. What’s an apple doing here? I thought, but it was a Daruma doll. Eventually, I wandered into a bar. My usual self could never do something like that. But this was a dream, so there was no resistance. As I sat there alone drinking a faux electric brandy, a cheer went up from the very back of the long hallway-like bar. After some time, a shady-looking guy in a yukata came floating along up near the ceiling, stopping above the bar. He was puffing up a storm on a fat cigar. Even in a dream, I knew only one person who would do something so strange. “Hey, Higuchi,” I called, looking up at him. Higuchi spun around in the corner of the ceiling and then got into a cross-legged posture. “Oh, it’s you. That’s funny,” he said. “Haven’t seen you since the school festival, right? I bet you caught that cold.” He made a gentle landing on the seat next to me. “Embarrassingly enough, I finally caught it, too,” he griped with disappointment. “Either way, you seem pretty energetic.” “That’s that; this is this.” “I don’t get it,” I responded, and then I asked him, “How did you fly? I sure can’t.” “It’s impossible unless you know the trick. Will you be my disciple?” “Mm, I’d hate to be your disciple. Yeah, no, sounds awful.” He insisted, “Oh, don’t say that. Until Hanuki comes to visit, I’m just here in bed alone, so I don’t have anything in particular to do. And if I teach you Higuchi-Style Flight now, it’ll come in handy when you need it.” “When will I need it?” “Oh, don’t worry about that. Let’s just do it.” Higuchi cackled like a tengu and took me out of the bar. Mr. Higuchi lived in a wooden apartment building in Shimogamo Izumigawa-cho. Shimogamo Yusuiso, it was called, and it looked terribly old. The outdoor AC unit installed on the sagging roof seemed as if it was going to fall out at any second. Clothes fluttered like flags on a laundry pole jutting out of one window, and the glass in the row of windows rattled in the wind. If a sumo wrestler charged the building, the whole thing would probably come toppling down. Ms. Hanuki and I visited around three in the afternoon, but because the entire sky was suddenly overcast, it was as dark as evening. Strong gusts of wind set Tadasu no Mori to the west rustling. It almost seemed like the wind was blowing from deep in the dark forest. When we went up to the second floor, a heavy wind shook Yusuiso like an earthquake, and Ms. Hanuki and I instinctively grabbed each other’s hands. We walked down the dusty, dimly lit hallway and found so much junk piled up outside Mr. Higuchi’s door at the very end that there was nowhere to stand. “This place is filthy!” she nagged as she shoved stuff out of the way. When Ms. Hanuki and I entered the room, Mr. Higuchi was wrapped up in his futon with his face twisted into a frown. “I had a weird dream,” he mumbled at the ceiling. Then he shouted in frustration, “I can’t believe I caught a cold!” After placing the kabocha squash I got from the owner of Chitoseya by Mr. Higuchi’s pillow, I decided to make egg sake with the electric burner on the counter. Ms. Hanuki was sticking a gel sheet on his forehead and getting her revenge. “So you got the cold after all.” Mr. Higuchi had sat up in his futon, and before long, I handed him some egg sake. “How did you of all people get the cold, Mr. Higuchi?” “I tried to go visit Rihaku,” he started, blowing on it to cool it off. “But the closer I got to his place, the more mercilessly the God of Colds attacked. Tragically, before I could reach my destination, I was defeated. This cold is not fooling around. The sickness on the loose is the Rihaku Cold.” “Where is he?” “Tadasu no Mori. That’s where the cold is coming from.” “So we need to cut it off at the source.” “But there’s no medicine that’ll work on Rihaku, and even if there were, it’s then a question of who would be able to take it to him.” I took out the little bottle I got from the boy at Gabi Shobo. Mr. Higuchi’s face suddenly sparkled, and he held the amber bottle up to the light with a sigh. “Ahhh!” he marveled. “This is Junpairo, the first and last miracle drug. That’s one of the two ultimate articles I wanted to acquire, along with the ultra-efficient Kamenoko scrub brush. Rihaku drank it a long time ago to survive the Spanish Flu… Where did you get this?” “A boy at a used bookstore gave it to me.” “Excellent, excellent.” Mr. Higuchi took the lid off, twirled a chopstick in its syrup, closed the bottle again, and returned it to me. Then he happily slurpled the Junpairo. “It’s so tasty, just delicious.” “Will this cure Mr. Rihaku?” Just then, a black gust like a great, big beast crashed into Yusuiso. The windows rattled so loud it seemed as if they would break at any second. We ducked instinctively. Ms. Hanuki stood up, opened the curtains, and gasped. When I peeked out the window and looked beyond the roofs of the neighboring houses, a huge dark column was standing tall enough to reach the heavens. It was moving at a leisurely pace right down Mikage Street, heading toward the Kamo River. Its outline was hazy, so it was hard to tell what was going on, but sandwich boards, leaves, flyers, and cans were getting blown into the air. Something echoed loudly as it ripped. “Is that a tornado?” Ms. Hanuki murmured. “I’ve never seen one before! Sweet!” “That’s one of Rihaku’s coughs. It’s full of germs. This looks like the end.” Mr. Higuchi looked at me as he licked the Junpairo. “Rihaku is practically dying of this cold. The God of Colds has taken up roost in his body, creating more and more lackeys to spread the Rihaku Cold. Anyone who tries to save him will fall sick. If we don’t do something, Kyoto will be destroyed by a cold. Take this Junpairo to Rihaku.” I clenched the bottle and stood. “Yes, sir.” In order to confront the excessively powerful Rihaku Cold, I had to make careful preparations. I went to the public bathhouse nearby. Next to the entrance curtain fluttering in the wind was a notice that said YUZU BATH TODAY. There was no one at the bathhouse. In the large bath, round yuzu bobbed inside a net. Soaking in the big citrus-smelling bath, my body warmed up. Then I thought over the mission god had given me and whispered “All right!” at the ceiling. When I returned to his apartment, Ms. Hanuki put all sorts of things in a backpack for me. She was so concerned. She said to take everything that could fight a cold, just in case: eggs and sake, Coca-Cola and ginger, pickled plums from the owner of Chitoseya, simmered kabocha, a big yuzu, an apple, and herbal medicine. The all-important bottle of Junpairo we wrapped against my stomach with a cloth. I was like a walking cold remedy. Mr. Higuchi and Ms. Hanuki saw me off, and I headed for the approach to Shimogamo Shrine. Dark clouds hung overhead, and the sky was gloomy like the day of an impending typhoon with that lukewarm wind. Mikage Street was a terrible mess of garbage, bicycles, and other detritus after the tornado earlier. I stood at the entrance to Shimogamo Shrine on Mikage Street and looked at the path leading deep into Tadasu no Mori. I suppose you could call it an evil wind? Blowing from deep within the empty forest, the spooky air whipped up dust, hitting my face. The thickly growing trees swayed dramatically, and a horrible sound echoed throughout the forest. As if invited by the wind, I stepped onto the long, deserted path and headed north. While I was walking, I remembered the first time I met Mr. Rihaku, that night in Ponto-cho. We had a blast drinking faux electric brandy. I recalled that feeling of happiness starting in the pit of my stomach. Rumor had it that Mr. Rihaku was a heinous loan shark, but to me, he was just as kind as my grandfather. To the left of the path was the riding ground where the summer used bookfair was held. Something gigantic was moving around over there making a horrible noise. I fled to the right and clung to a tree by the side of the path. There was so much dust and so many leaves swirling in the air that I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and the big tree I was clinging to swayed hard in the violent wind. Across the grove, a tornado was cruising south, sucking the mud of the riding ground up through the treetops. The sound of trees being ripped up by their roots mixed in with the wind, as if Tadasu no Mori were screaming. I was covered in mud after hanging on to the tree to weather the tornado. Wiping my forehead, I opened my eyes slightly to peer down the road to the shrine. Another gust of wind roared, and tattered shreds of flags from all around the world and a rainbow streamer flew by me. I was sure they were decorations from the triple-decker train, Mr. Rihaku’s home. When I realized that, I looked around and saw there were decorations scattered all over the path and caught in the trees. When I continued down the path, I noticed an orangey light blinking on the northern edge of the riding ground. A dark corner of the forest glowed like magic and then went dark again. Eventually, I came upon Mr. Rihaku’s triple-decker train parked behind the trees. The poor thing was a shadow of its former self, with its festive decorations all ripped apart and blown away. The bamboo grove on the roof was ruined, and all the windows were broken. It seemed like an abandoned train, but it grew brighter and darker almost as if it were breathing. Just as you thought the light was dazzlingly scary, an awful wind would rush out, and it would fade to darkness again as if losing power. It seemed like the pained breathing of Mr. Rihaku in his sickbed. “Ohhh, Mr. Rihaku! I’m on my way to visit you right now!” I adjusted my backpack on my shoulders and headed straight into the wind. I was flying leisurely above Ponto-cho. Higuchi, the student-tengu, taught in a way that could have hardly been vaguer. He had barged into the house of a used bookstore owner he knew, gone out by the laundry pole, and then pointed at the sky. “It’s about living without letting your feet touch the ground. Then you can fly.” I thought he was making fun of me until I envisioned a completely impractical future for myself: One day, I’ll dig into the mountain out back at my parents’ house, strike oil, rake in the dough, become a zillionaire, quit university, and live a happy life till I die. My body grew rapidly lighter, and suddenly, I was floating up from the veranda. Higuchi stood there waving for a little while, but then he was gone. I jumped nimbly from rooftop to rooftop among the crowded houses between Ponto-cho and Kiyamachi. If I was careful about the netlike electric lines, I could go anywhere. Kicking off the roof of a taller commercial building to jump higher, I twisted around and gazed down at the nighttime scenery. The lights of the city were sparkling like jewels: the office building lights around Shijo Karasuma, Kyoto Tower off in the distance like a single candle, the red lights of Gion, and the lights of the entertainment district stretching south of Sanjo and Kiyamachi like the netting… I eventually landed on top of a commercial building and sat on the edge, letting my legs dangle. The moon was hanging large in the sky. Below me, Ponto-cho gleamed from north to south. I was sitting there wondering, Where is she right now, and what is she doing? when I saw a mysterious vehicle radiating bright lights proceeding quietly down Ponto-cho. It was like a train with a bamboo grove and a pond on the roof. It was Rihaku’s triple-decker train. I remembered that strange night. After my long, fruitless journey, I was on the roof of that train by the side of the pond listening to her talk with Mr. Todou. He was trying to manipulate her with some tall tale about a tornado blowing all his koi fish away. I stood up from the grass to rescue her innocent soul from that contemptible man, but something came flying out of the heavens, struck me in the head, and tragically knocked me out. I feel pathetic every time I think about it. Then I realized something: If I wait here on this rooftop, eventually she’ll show up to have a drinking contest with Rihaku. I cast myself nimbly off the roof into the night sky, aiming for the roof of the triple-decker train. In midair, a thought occurred to me: What will I do if she actually shows up? I had already silenced the committee in my brain with my earlier speech. All I could do was shut my eyes and fly toward my glorious future. As the train below me grew closer, I could start to see in the windows filled with orangey light. The brilliantly gleaming chandelier swayed as the vehicle proceeded. I could see Rihaku from behind as he relaxed in a chair. But, I thought as I aimed my landing, what will I do if she twists her face into a grimace as if to say something like Ew, what are you talking about, you scumbag? Can my pride handle such humiliation? I’ll probably lose all hope and have nothing left but my naked flesh. A wave of real-life worries swept over me. I couldn’t fly anymore. Unable to withstand the weight of reality, I crashed into the pond on the roof. The pond. The sound of me splashing down. In a corner of my vision as I drowned, a brilliant red-and-white koi leaped, arching its body. The study on the first floor had been ravaged by the wind, and there was none of its ornateness from last time. Torn ukiyo-e and traditionally bound books were scattered between the filing cabinets and overturned table. The tremendous wind coming down the spiral staircase blew them into a crumpled heap. I crawled up the stairs into the second-floor banquet room. At the far end, Mr. Rihaku had laid out a futon to rest inside. A string of tin lanterns was set up around the sleeping area. Every time he curled up and groaned, they all grew brighter. That was the blinking I’d seen in the woods. The lanterns illuminated the banquet hall, so I could see it was completely ruined. The grandfather clock had fallen over, and the phonograph was crushed beneath it. The celadon vase and raccoon statue had been shattered, and their shards were scattered in a jumble on the floor. All the windows had come out of their frames, and every last one of the masks, brocade woodblock prints, and other decorations on the wood-plank walls had blown away. A tragically torn oil painting had caught on the spiral staircase. And in the middle of all that wreckage was Mr. Rihaku sick in bed… I felt so sorry for him, I nearly burst into tears. I ran over and hugged him through the futon. “Mr. Rihaku! Mr. Rihaku!” I shouted. He had his eyes clenched shut, but when he heard my voice, he opened them. His lips were trembling, and he was so pale I was frightened. His eyes gleamed. “Oh, it’s you,” he finally groaned. “I’m about to die.” “You’ll be all right. Please don’t worry.” I fixed his disheveled gray hair and put a hand on his burning-hot forehead. Just then, the lanterns shone especially bright. Mr. Rihaku writhed and let out an enormous cough. With my hand on his forehead, I was caught up in the gust and blown back, and I was forced to withdraw to the staircase. When the wind died down, the lights had gone out, and the area around Mr. Rihaku was dark. I clutched the railing of the staircase and held my breath, and at last, the lanterns began to shine again. “Mr. Rihaku, I brought you some medicine,” I continued. “I don’t care anymore. Leave me alone,” he rasped in a pained voice. “You’ll catch my cold.” “No, I’ll be okay.” I got blown away a few more times, but I went back and forth between the corner of the hall and Mr. Rihaku’s bed to take care of him. When I swirled a chopstick in the Junpairo and held it up, he smiled sentimentally and licked the medicine that gleamed like amber in the lantern light. “This is it! This is it!” he murmured happily. I took a gel sheet out of my backpack and stuck it on his hot forehead. In the gaps between his coughs, I grated the apple and fed it to him. It was a long, tough time during which the only sounds I could hear were Mr. Rihaku’s coughing fits and the stirring forest. As I was drowning in Rihaku’s pond, I poked my head out of the water, and I was suddenly somewhere else, a fishy-smelling reservoir. The evening sun was so bright I could hardly see. I had just been at Ponto-cho in the dark a moment ago, so I frowned. The scene was changing awfully fast even for a dream. What’s that loud roaring, and why is it so windy? The pool of water grew choppy, and the poor koi fish panicked. I rested my chin on the edge of the reservoir and choked, then spit out the seaweed tangled around my tongue. Just then, beyond a fence, I saw a middle-aged man getting his arm tugged by a younger guy. Eventually, he shook off the worker trying to stop him and ran toward me with a sorrowful expression on his face. It was the koi fish center owner, Todou. Bathed in the evening sun, what little hair he had getting whipped around in the wind, he opened his arms in an appeal to the heavens. “Stop it!” he shouted. “Give Yuuko back! Give Jirokichi back!” He called a lot of names. I watched Todou succumb to insanity as I steeped in the reservoir. Finally, he started to cry and run back where he’d come from when he suddenly noticed me there in the water. His jaw dropped so far, I thought it was going to fall off. Then as he fled, he waved his arms at me and looked up at the sky with wide eyes as he yelled, “Run! Run!” When I turned around, there was a dark tornado towering before my eyes. The reservoir water and the koi with their glittering scales were getting sucked up into the sky. “There’s no time!” I gracefully resigned myself, closed my eyes, and focused inward. In due course, I followed after the fish, bravely lifting off into the sky. Mr. Rihaku’s cough seemed to have subsided at some point. After being battered by the wind, I was tired and nodded off. I’m not sure how long I slept, but the next thing I knew, a soft blanket was over my shoulders. The fallen grandfather clock was ticking and pointing to five o’clock. When I looked up, Mr. Rihaku was taking an intact bottle of faux electric brandy off a smashed shelf. When he saw I was awake, he confessed, “I’m so glad you came. I probably wouldn’t have made it without you.” Then he burned a broken oil-painting frame in a chipped celadon dish and heated up some faux electric brandy in a pot for me. “Now drink this to warm up.” Next to Mr. Rihaku snuggled up in his futon, I sat wrapped in the blanket, and we drank faux electric brandy with a squeeze of yuzu. The pit of my stomach got floaty and warm, and I regained my energy. Our surroundings started to look more colorful, bit by bit. Mr. Rihaku poked his head out of his futon and looked at me. “I become so feeble when I get a cold. It’s really a bother.” “Well, you had such a bad fever.” “Sleeping alone on a melancholy winter night gets so lonely. I don’t have anyone… I’m all by myself. When a fever keeps me up at night and I open my eyes, I feel like a little child. I remember those days so long ago. If I opened my eyes alone in bed, I’d call for my mother. But now there’s no one…” “I’m here,” I whispered, and I suddenly remembered my clubmate. Is he also sleeping alone in his futon? Is he spending this longest night of the year all alone? “A night with a cold is a long night,” he lamented. “Today is the winter solstice. It’s the longest night of the year.” “But no matter how long the night, dawn is bound to come.” “Yes, that’s right.” Mr. Rihaku looked at me and smiled contentedly. He seemed to be moving his mouth, so I brought my ear close. “The night is short—walk on, girl,” he said. Right when I smiled at him, the lanterns around the futon all twinkled brightly. Mr. Rihaku abruptly took a big breath and motioned for me to get out of the way. It was so sudden I could only back up a few steps. When he coughed, I experienced the strongest gust I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Later at the party to celebrate his recovery, I’d come to find out that was the moment he’d finally managed to expel the God of Colds. The God of Colds, who came out of his body as a blast of wind, laid waste to the banquet hall once more, flew out the window, and became a huge tornado, swirling the night air around and shaking Tadasu no Mori. The twinkling lights inside the dark black tornado were the lanterns from Mr. Rihaku’s futon. The lights whirled in the air, gleaming on their string like a train. I think they would have been a terribly mysterious sight if I could have looked up at them from the outside, but I couldn’t. Because I was spinning around inside the tornado with them. Around and around I spun. I had no idea what was going on anymore. I was truly happy the God of Colds had left Mr. Rihaku, but now it had whisked me off into the sky. After being sucked out of the reservoir by the tornado, I was still rising. It was like heading up into the sky sliding down a spiral slide in reverse. I went higher and higher at a tremendous speed and went with the flow. I’d probably gotten pretty high, but it was dark, and I couldn’t see anything, so I got bored. How high am I going to go anyway? When I looked up, I saw a row of twinkling lanterns glide by in the darkness. They were on a string like a train. They must have gotten sucked up somewhere along the way. I thought that was a beautiful find. When I squinted, I could make out the figure of a petite woman attached to the very end. She was clinging to the lanterns with her eyes squeezed shut. The moment I thought she was a beautiful find, too, I realized it was the girl. The only thing that occurred to my mind was the word coincidence. Anyone insensitive enough to rain on my parade by saying It’s just a dream can go get eaten by dogs. Dreams, reality—that wasn’t the heart of the problem. Certainly, my talent bank was running low. But I’d been forgetting the one ability—my greatest—left to me: the power to confuse dreams for reality! If I can rescue her from this crisis, I can open up new and glorious horizons in my life, I thought. Undoubtedly. My fantasies were unstoppable once my passion started burning, and the highlight reel of my future went by like the shadows of a revolving lantern—from scenes of my first date with her to winning the Nobel Prize. With so many spectacular prospects filling the deep grooves of my brain, it was impossible to keep my feet on the ground. My body grew lighter as if I were being filled with helium. Using Higuchi-Style Flight, I soared like a Steller’s sea eagle. When I grabbed the end of the lanterns and pulled, she opened her eyes slightly. The roaring of the wind was too loud, so we couldn’t say anything. She smiled and in a voice that wasn’t a voice said, “Funny seeing you here.” I replied in a voice that wasn’t a voice, “I just happened to be passing by.” I reeled her in and held out my hand. She grabbed it. Holding on to her, I flipped and tried to escape the howling tornado. Pushing through the torrent of whirling air, we were proceeding through the gloomy clouds when the darkness imprisoning us abruptly broke, and our field of vision expanded. Freed from the rampaging winds, we found ourselves gliding in a clear sky. And as we squeezed each other’s hands, we saw the city of Kyoto below us. The mountains surrounding it were faintly misty. The university where we had the school festival; Tadasu no Mori, where the used bookfair was held; Ponto-cho, where we walked that long night; the business district; the Kamo River; the temples and shrines; the forest of the imperial palace; Mount Yoshida; Mount Daimonji; and the roofs of the houses, apartments, and complexes where the countless people connected by the strings of fate lived—it was all fading into the purple morning mist, waiting for sunrise. Freezing in the frigid air, we descended toward the predawn streets. Suddenly, she leaned in and shouted, “Namu-namu!” With sparkles in her eyes, she watched the brilliant first ray of sunlight stream from the direction of Nyoigatake, beyond Daimonji. The light was gorgeous hitting her fair cheeks. We watched dawn arrive on the city sunken in indigo mist like a cascade of dominoes. When I opened my eyes in bed, I moved my groggy head, still facedown. The happiness I’d experienced a thousand feet over Kyoto ebbed like a tide. Thrust back into reality, I opened my mouth against my pillow and groaned, “Uuuuugh.” It’d been such a realistic dream. I remembered the touch of her hand so vividly. Wait a minute, isn’t this a little too vivid? When I turned my head, she was sitting there on her feet holding my hand. The bright morning sunlight shone on her black hair. She was gazing at me with gorgeous, slightly moist eyes—almost as if she was worried about me. “Are you all right?” she asked. Then I remembered: The moment I fell for her was when she peered at me, as I was about to spit at the heavens by the pond. It was at dawn, the morning after the night we walked Ponto-cho. What a long way we’d come since then. I was swept away by sexual desire, I couldn’t resist society’s trends, my loneliness was unbearable—a myriad of thoughts passed through my mind, but soon all those transient things disappeared, and I was left only with the impression of her gleaming eyes, her voice like a whisper, and her beautiful cheeks. “How did you end up there?” she questioned. “…I just happened to be passing by. But how did you end up here?” “You brought me yourself, didn’t you?” Did I? I thought I’d been in bed having nonsensical dreams the whole time… “You made a very skillful landing.” She reached out her hand and put it on my forehead. My fever was still high, and her cold hand cooled me down. They say people with cold hands have warm hearts. She showed me a little Daruma-shaped bottle. She dipped a chopstick she’d found by the sink into the syrup-like substance and drew some out. I did as I was told and licked it. She watched, smiling, and told me about the long night she spent with Mr. Rihaku. “When Mr. Rihaku’s cold gets better, let’s go celebrate with him, the two of us.” I could probably say such a thing only because my fever still hadn’t gone down and the fragrant syrup caused the blood to rush to my head; I almost had a nosebleed. “Together?” “Together. And I’ll show you a cool used bookstore,” I added. She gave me a big smile and nodded. “I’d like that.” Then she was in a daze for a while. If there were such a thing as a World Befuddlement Championship, I think she would’ve surely been entered as the representative of Japan. She babbled with a laugh that she felt as if she might have a fever. “Maybe I caught a cold, too.” She went home for the holidays the next day, but thanks to the Junpairo, I finally managed to escape the God of Colds’ evil clutches. While I was still in bed regaining my strength, Christmas passed by, and the busy New Year’s season arrived. And apparently, during that time, the evil cold epidemic finally ended. The quickest to recover was the School Festival Office director, and he stopped by to visit me before he went home for break. I had no idea since I’d been in bed all alone, but he told me Chief-in-Chief Underpants, the Sophistry Debate Club guys, and everyone had been out with the cold. When I accused, “Isn’t that because you gave it to them?” he replied, “We all share the same fate.” When I told him I’d arranged to go out with the girl, he praised my hard work: “Nicely done.” But he left me with a disagreeable parting shot. “You know, of course, from here on is the hard part. Dating women is just…” I went home for the holiday. When I got back to my room in the new year, there was a little card in my mailbox. It was an invitation to Rihaku’s recovery celebration; Higuchi was organizing. Apparently, Rihaku was footing the bill, and everyone was invited for an all-you-can-eat buffet of tasty things and all-you-can-drink faux electric brandy. After clenching the receiver all day long, I finally called her. The day of, I left my room and headed for the café Shinshindo on Imadegawa. The party for Rihaku would start at six in Tadasu no Mori, so I had arranged to meet with her for coffee beforehand at four. To make sure I wasn’t late, I had to leave at two. In order to do that, I had to wake up at seven. Why? I needed a couple of hours to wash and dry my clothes, an hour to shower and dry my hair, five minutes to brush my teeth, thirty minutes to style my hair, and a few hours to rehearse potential conversations. I’d been extremely busy. Walking along the canal, I saw that the university sports teams were up and at ’em in the new year, enthusiastically running around the playing field calling out to one another. The scenery was all familiar, but looking at the city in the bleach-bright winter sun, everything seemed somehow refreshing like a new year should. But my feet were dragging. My stomach was heavy as though I’d drunk a barrel of lead. I was anxious at the thought that she might not come and even more anxious at the thought that she might. I smoked a cigarette and took a meandering detour. I don’t know how to act when I’m with her. What do the men and women of the world talk about when they’re alone together? They can’t just be gazing into each other’s eyes the whole time. But neither do I imagine they’re having heated discussions about life and love. What if these are more sensitive dealings than I’m capable of? I could tell a joke and make her laugh, but won’t that just get me labeled as a chatty guy? I wouldn’t be able to resolutely seduce her like that. I’m not a cheerful, witty dude. At this rate, we’ll end up making pointless small talk and endlessly drinking coffee. I could have fun just gazing at her, but would that be fun for her? I feel bad about eating up her precious time like some evil demon. Actually, I feel really bad. Maybe it would have been easier and more fun to just keep filling in the moat. Ahhh, this is a mess. I miss filling in the moat. How I long to return to those glory days. I sat on a bench by the canal and looked at the leafless trees. She must be getting ready to leave right now, I thought. That day, I’m embarrassed to admit, I was so excited I woke up at six in the morning. My clubmate had called and invited me out for coffee before the party for Mr. Rihaku. Could this be what they call a “date”? Yes, indeed. And it was the first time I’d been invited to participate in such an event. This was serious. I pondered this and that while I cleaned, and time flew by. While I got ready, I tried to think about what I should talk to him about. There were so many things I wanted to ask him, like what kind of night he had last spring in Ponto-cho. Plus how the fire hot pot tasted at that summer’s used bookfair. And what kind of adventure led him to play the Crackpot of Monte Cristo at the school festival in the fall. I wondered what he was up to when I wasn’t around. I really wanted to know. When I enthusiastically stepped out of my apartment complex, sunlight was shining, clear and crisp. The Rihaku Cold had subsided, and the streets that had been so lonely in December were lively once more. I was suddenly so excited as I walked toward Shinshindo. I finally steeled my resolve and headed for Shinshindo. It goes without saying, but seeing as I’d invited her, running away was out of the question. I pushed open the heavy door and entered the dimly lit café at three o’clock. I still had an hour. Out of breath, I claimed a window seat and thought about what to talk about as I drank some coffee. After completely racking my brains, I finally thought of something good. There were so many things I wanted to ask her, like what kind of night she had last spring in Ponto-cho. And what kind of books she encountered at the summer used bookfair. And how she ended up playing such a major role in that play at the school festival in the fall. If she talked to me about those things, I could talk to her about my memories, too. Feeling a bit lighter, I looked out the window at Imadegawa Street. The bright afternoon sun was pouring down, and everything seemed to sparkle. I spaced out. Eventually, I heard the door open and noticed she had appeared. I bobbed my head. She offered a little bow, too. This was a moment to remember: It was the moment I quit filling in the moat and took on an even more difficult challenge. Wise readers, please be merciful. And be well until we meet again. Farewell, my days of moat filling. In closing, I leave you with this: Do all you can and then wait for providence. Walking along Imadegawa Street, I thought about the day the trees lining the street would finally take back their green. In spring, I would be a second-year student. What a strange, funteresting year it had been. Before long, I was so excited for the coming year, I could have burst. That was all thanks to the many people I had met, like my clubmate. I was full of gratitude. Eventually, I arrived at Shinshindo. When I nervously pushed open the glass door, warm, soft air enveloped me as if I were entering another world. The dimly lit interior was filled with the sounds of people chatting across the darkly gleaming tables, spoons stirring coffee, and pages being turned. He was sitting by the street-side window. The winter sun shining in looked so warm it could have been spring. In that pool of light, he was sitting there daydreaming with his head propped up on his elbows like a cat partway through a nap. The moment I saw him, the pit of my stomach warmed up. It was like lying in a meadow with a little cat, light as air on my stomach. He noticed me and bobbed his head with a smile. I bobbed my head. So it was that as I walked over to him, I murmured: There must be some reason we met.