CHAPTER 86
But there was more. Something had changed in Ojōsan’s attitude, I noticed. Both Okusan and Ojōsan set about providing us with the female care and attention that we needed to regain normalcy after our journey, but it seemed to me that Ojōsan was far more attentive to me than to K. If it had been blatant, it might have made me uncomfortable, even irritated. But I was delighted at how decorously she behaved. She devoted the greater part of her innate kindness to me in a way that only I would notice. K therefore remained oblivious and unconcerned. A gleeful song of victory sang in my heart.
Summer ended at last, and mid-September arrived, the time when lectures would resume. Our schedules meant that once more we came and went from the house at different hours. Three times a week I returned later than K, but I never detected any sign of Ojōsan’s presence in his room. K went back to turning as I entered and remarking, “Just back, are you?” and I answered with my usual mechanical and meaningless response.
It would have been the middle of October. I had overslept and rushed off to classes without changing out of the Japanese clothing I wore around the house; rather than waste time with laced shoes, I hastily slipped on a pair of straw sandals. Our schedules meant that I would get back home before K did.
When I arrived, I flung open the lattice door, assuming he wouldn’t be there—and caught the sound of his voice within. I also heard Ojōsan’s laughter. Not needing to spend time unlacing my shoes at the door as usual, I stepped straight out of my sandals and into the house and opened the sliding doors to our rooms. My eyes took in the sight of K, seated as usual at his desk. Ojōsan, however, was no longer in the room. All I caught was a glimpse of her retreating form, obviously making a hasty exit.
I asked K why he had returned early. He had stayed home that day because he felt unwell, he replied.
No sooner was I back in my room and seated than Ojōsan appeared with tea, and now at last she greeted me. I was not the sort of person who could ask with an easy laugh why she had run away just then; instead, the matter nagged at my mind. She stood up and went off down the veranda, but she paused a moment before K’s room and exchanged a few words with him. They seemed to be a continuation of their previous talk, but as I had not heard what had gone before, I could make no sense of them.
Over time Ojōsan grew increasingly nonchalant. Even when we were both at home, she would go to K’s room via the veranda and call his name. Then she would go in and make herself at home. Sometimes, of course, she was bringing him mail or delivering his washing, the kind of interaction that could only be considered normal for those living under the same roof, but my fierce and single-minded desire to have her all to myself drove me to read more into it. At times I felt she was going out of her way to avoid my room and visit only his.
So why, you may ask, did I not ask K to leave the house? But that would have defeated the very purpose for bringing him there in the first place. It was beyond me to do it.