Sunaga had been listening without offering a word, neither of contradiction nor of comment. To Keitaro, such behavior appeared mature, but he actually took it as mediocre. He left hating the calm way in which the other listened, seemingly unconcerned about his aspirations. Yet before five days had elapsed, he wanted to see his friend again, and as soon as he left his boardinghouse, he caught a streetcar for Kanda.
A stranger would have found Sunaga's house extremely difficult to locate. To reach it one had to turn two or three times along a twisting side street sloping upward and branching off to the right from Sudacho, where a tall building, formerly the Ogawatei but now the Tenkado, stood at the corner. Since Sunaga's house was on a back street crowded with many small residences, the lots were not as wide as those in the uptown area. Nevertheless, it was a fine house. Leading from the gate to the bell by the lattice door at the entrance was a path of some yards paved with granite flagstones.
Sunaga's father had owned the house and had rented it for many years to a relative. But after his death his wife thought that this house would be more convenient for her small family, especially in terms of location and size, so their residence on Surugadai was sold and they moved. When Keitaro once heard from Sunaga that the house was considerably repaired, almost rebuilt, he looked with renewed interest at the upstairs alcove post and the boards lining the ceiling. This second-floor room had been added later as a study for Sunaga. Except for some slight reverberations on very windy days, it was a perfect room of its kind, clean and bright and divided into two parts, one of four tatami, the other six. Sitting in this room, Keitaro could see the branches of a pine tree in the garden, as well as the upper part of a wooden fence that had traces left by the carpenter's adze and a protective line of spikes at the very top. Looking down through the railing of the balcony outside the study, Keitaro noticed some white flowers at the foot of the pine and, asking Sunaga their name, was told they were snowy herons.
Each time Keitaro visited Sunaga and was shown into this room, he could not help being reminded of the clear difference between his friend and himself, one the young master, the other not much better than a university student. And while he felt contemptuous of Sunaga for living so settled and cozy a life, he envied the comfortable though too quiet pattern of his friend's existence. He thought it bad for a youth to live in this way, yet at the same time he wanted to become what Sunaga was. This time too, with that divided interest of these two contradictory thoughts within him, Keitaro proceeded to his friend's house.
When, after following the twisting side street, he came to the corner where it crossed the street Sunaga's house was on, he saw before him a young woman just entering the gate of the house. He had caught only a glimpse of her back, but that curiosity common to young men, combined with his own peculiar romantic strain, made him hurry to the gate as if he were being pulled there by some invisible string. He cast a glance inside, yet even the woman's shadow had vanished. He saw only that the shoji—those familiar doors whose handles were adorned with maple leaves inserted between transparent paper — were quietly closed as usual. He stood looking wistfully at the closed shoji for some time. But presently he noticed a pair of clogs, a woman's, on the stepping-stone. They had been placed neatly together, the front of them facing the inside of the house, indicating that the maid had not turned them in the proper direction. Keitaro, combining in his mind the direction of the clogs and the unexpected promptness with which the woman had gone inside, concluded she was a frequent guest, someone who had no need to announce herself and who could easily slide open the shoji. Or perhaps she was part of the household — but this latter thought seemed a little odd to him, for he knew quite well that only four persons were living there: Sunaga, his mother, a maid, and a kitchen servant.
For a while Keitaro remained standing in front of Sunaga's gate. He wanted not so much to watch secretly from outside the wooden fence the behavior of the woman who had gone into the house as to imagine the pattern of romance being woven by her and Sunaga. But all the same he found himself listening attentively. Yet it was, as usual, quiet inside. He heard not so much as a cough and certainly no woman's amorous voice.
His fiancee? Such was Keitaro's first thought, but his imagination had not been disciplined enough to remain content with that. I bet his mother is out with the maid visiting a relative. The kitchen servant has retired to her room. And right now Sunaga and the girl must be whispering tete-a-tete. If this were true, it would be out of place to clatter open the lattice door as he usually did and in a loud voice ask for admittance. Or perhaps Sunaga, his mother, and the maid have all gone out together, and the kitchen servant is taking a nap. At just such a moment, the woman entered the house. If so, she must be a thief. It would be unpardonable for me to go away and leave things as they are.
Keitaro stood there in a daze as though he had been bewitched by a demon.
Presently the shoji of the upstairs room opened, and Keitaro was awakened from his reverie by the sudden surprise of seeing Sunaga along the passageway, a green glass bottle in his hand.
"What are you doing down there? Did you lose something?" Sunaga asked, as though he found it odd to see Keitaro just standing there. Around Sunaga's throat was a white flannel cloth. The bottle in his hand seemed to be for gargling. Keitaro looked up and exchanged a few words about whether Sunaga had caught cold, but continued to stand where he was. Finally Sunaga told him to come up. Keitaro cautiously asked if it was all right to. As if not understanding, Sunaga nodded and withdrew behind the shoji.
As Keitaro walked upstairs, he thought he heard a slight rustle of clothing in the inner room below. On the second floor he noticed nothing unusual except for a padded dressing gown with a black collar which his friend seemed to have been wearing and had discarded on the mats. From Keitaro's temperament and from his intimacy with Sunaga, it might have been expected he would ask straight out about the woman who had given him such concern, but owing to his sense of having wronged his friend in giving too free a rein to thoughts not altogether innocent, and because of his awareness that his imagination had settled on a conjecture too cynical to mention directly, Keitaro was deprived of the courage to ask freely who the girl was who had just entered the house. Instead, as if trying to hold back a thought that wanted to rush forward, he said, "For the time being I'm abandoning my dreams. I've come to the realization that earning a living is more important."
He asked quite seriously that Sunaga introduce him to the uncle he had previously spoken of, the one living on Uchisaiwaicho, saying he wanted to have an interview with him for that very purpose. This uncle was the husband of the younger sister of Sunaga's mother. He had gone into business after leaving government service and was now connected to several companies. Sunaga apparently had no intention of asking his uncle for help in finding a position. Keitaro remembered Sunaga's once saying that this uncle had offered him any number of possibilities, but that none of them appealed to him.