Convinced

After Dr Miura tended to my lip, and I purchased the incense my father had sent me for, I strolled home in a state of such turmoil, I don't feel there could have been more action inside me if I had been an anthill.

I would have had a simpler time if my feelings had all yanked me on the same path, but it was not so simple. I'd been knocked about like a crumb of paper in the wind.

Somewhere between the numerous thoughts about my mother—somewhere past the distress in my lip—there curled up a fascinating thought I tried, again and again, to get into focus.

It was about Mr Hiroki. I halted on the hills and stared out to sea, where the surges even after the wind were still like sharpened stones, and the sky had taken on the brown complexion of mud.

I made sure no one was seeing me, and then clenched the incense to my chest and said Mr Hiroki's name into the whistling wind, over and over, until I felt pleased I had heard the melody in every syllable. I know it screams foolish of me—and certainly, it was. But I was only an excited little girl.

After we had completed our meal and my father had gone to the townlet to watch the other fishermen play Japanese chess, Yukiko and I cleared the kitchen in silence. I began to remember how Mr Hiroki had made me grope, but in the cold hush of the house, it had slid away from me.

Rather I felt a persistent, icy dread at the impression of my mother's illness. I found myself wondering how extended it would be until she was buried out in the town cemetery along with my father's other family. What would become of me later?

With my mother dead, Yukiko would conduct in her place, I presumed. I gawked my sister brush the iron pot that had steamed our soup, but even though it was right before her— even though her eyes were focused on the thing—I could tell she was not seeing it. She went on washing it long after it was neat. Eventually, I said to her:

"Yukiko-san, I don't feel well."

"Go out and heat the bath," she told me and stroked her rough hair from her eyes with one of her wet hands.

"I don't care for a bath," I said.

"Yukiko, Mommy is going to die—"

"This pot is smacked. Look!"

"It is not smacked," I said. "That line has invariably been there."

"But how did the water get out just then?"

"You splashed it out. I saw you."

For a moment I could say that Yukiko was thinking something very hard, which interpreted itself onto her face as a glimpse of drastic bewilderment, just as so many of her impressions did.

But she mumbled nothing additional to me. She only grabbed the pot from the stove and strolled toward the entrance to toss it out.

The next morning, to take my sanity off my problems, I went swimming in the surf just inland from our cabin amid woods of pine trees.

The lads from the townlet went there most sunrises when the climate was right. Yukiko came too occasionally, donning a rough bathing dress she had put together from our father's old fishing clothes.

It was not a very decent bathing dress, because it dangled at her chest whenever she leaned over, and one of the boys would wail, "Look! You can glimpse Mount Fuji!" But she wore it just the same.

Around noontime, I chose to retreat home for something to eat. Yukiko had left much quicker with the Yoshiro boy, who was the son of Mr Hiroki's associate. She behaved like a dog around him.

When he went someplace, he glanced back over his shoulder to gesture that she should proceed, and she constantly did. I did not predict to see her again until supertime, but as I approached the house I snapped sight of her on the road in front of me, crouching against a tree.

If you had noticed what was going on, you might have realized it straight away; but I was merely a small girl. Yukiko had her raspy bathing dress up around her shoulders and the Yoshiro boy was flirting around with her "Mount Fujis," as the boys named them.

Ever since our mom first became sick, my sister had matured a bit pudgy. Her breasts were every bit as chaotic as her hair. What astounded me most was that their contrariness seemed to be the exceptional thing the Yoshiro boy found captivating about them.

He jiggled them with his hand and shoved them to one side to see them twirl back and sit against her chest. I knew I should not be prying, but I could not guess what else to do with myself while the road ahead of me was obstructed. And then abruptly I heard a man's voice behind me say:

"Akemi-chan, why are you sitting there behind that tree?"

Assessing that I was a small girl of nine, arriving from a surf where I had been swimming; and deeming that as yet I had no forms or fabrics on my body to disguise from anyone . . . well, it is simple to assume what I was wearing.

When I turned—still crouching on the road, and wrapping my nudity with my arms as useful as I could—there stood Mr Hiroki. I could barely have been more ashamed.

"That must be your tipsy home over there," he said. "And over there, that seems to be the Yoshiro boy. He looks busy! Who is that girl with him?"

"Well, it might be my sister, Mr Hiroki. I am waiting for them to leave."

Mr Hiroki cupped his hands around his jaws and screamed, and then I gave attention to the noise of the Yoshiro boy scampering away down the road.

My sister must have run off too, for Mr Hiroki informed me I could go home and get some clothing now.

"When you behold that sister of yours," he said to me, "I need you to bestow her this."

He gave me a packet folded in rice paper, about the extent of a fish head. "It's some Chinese herbs," he warned me.

"Don't listen to Dr Miura if he tells you they are worthless. Have your sister prepare tea with them and deliver the tea to your mother, to lessen the pain. They are very rare herbs. Make sure not to ruin them."

"I would better do it myself in that case, sir. My sister is not very useful at making tea."

"Dr Miura notified me your mother is ill," he said.

"Now you tell me your sister can not even be counted on to make tea! With your father so aged, what will come to be of you, Akemi-chan? Who gives attention to you even now?"

"I presume I take maintenance of myself these days."

"I know a particular man. He is aged now, but when he was a kid about your age, his father deceased. The following year his mother died, and then his senior brother fled to Osaka and left him deserted. Sounds a little like you, don't you think?"

Mr Hiroki gave me a look as if to say that I should not dare to argue.

"Well, that man's caption is Hiroki Ichiro," he advanced.

"Yes, me . . . although back then my name was Morihashi Ichiro. I was sheltered by the Hiroki family at the age of twelve. After I got a little older, I was wedded to the daughter and accepted. Now I assist run the family's seafood company. So things shook out all right for me in the future, you see. Probably something like that might transpire to you too."

I glanced for a moment at Mr Hiroki's grey hair and the wrinkles in his brow like grooves in the crust of a tree. He looked like the wisest and most informed man on earth.

I understood he learned things I would never realize, that he had an attractiveness I would never have; and that his blue kimono was more elegant than anything I would ever have experienced to wear. I settled before him nude, on my haunches in the mud, with my hair intertwined and my face dirty, with the scent of pond moisture on my skin.

"I don't believe anyone would ever want to accept me," I said.

"No? You are a smart girl, are you not? Calling your house a 'tipsy house.' Saying your dad's head looks like an egg!"

"But it does have an egg shape."

"It would not have been a smart thing to say contrarily. Now run along, Akemi-chan," he declared.

"You need lunch, don't you? Maybe if your sister is having soup, you can lie on the floor and sip what she spills."