Within the limits of the facts I had grasped, I tried to comfort the mistress. The mistress, too, seemed willing to be comforted by me as much as possible. And so the two of us went on discussing the same problem indefinitely. But I had not, from the first, seized hold of the root of the matter. The mistress's uneasiness, in truth, also arose from a vague suspicion that drifted like a thin cloud. As for the true state of the affair, even the mistress herself did not know much. And even what she did know, she could not tell me everything. Thus both I who comforted and she who was comforted floated together upon the waves, swaying to and fro. As we swayed, the mistress reached out endlessly, trying to cling to my uncertain judgment.
When, around ten o'clock, the sound of the master's footsteps was heard at the entrance, the mistress suddenly forgot all that had passed, left me sitting there ignored, and stood up. Then she met the master almost head-on as he opened the lattice door. Left behind, I followed the mistress from behind. The maid, apparently having dozed off, never came out at all.
The master was rather in good spirits. But the mistress's manner was even better. Remembering the light of tears that had pooled in the mistress's beautiful eyes just moments before, and the figure-eight furrow knit between the roots of her black eyebrows, I watched the change with careful attention, as something abnormal. If it were not feigned—and indeed it did not seem feigned—then the mistress's earlier appeal might have been taken as a mere idle feminine game, devised specially for me as a companion with whom to toy with her own sentiment. At that time, however, I had no mind to view the mistress so critically. Seeing her attitude suddenly brighten, I was rather relieved. I reconsidered: at this rate, there was no need for such worry.
Laughing, the master asked me, "Well, thanks for your trouble; did the thief come?" Then he said, "Since he didn't, hasn't the whole thing lost its point?"
When I left, the mistress nodded and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry for you." Her tone sounded less like an apology for having made me waste my time when I was busy, and more like a joke—sorry that, though I had come all this way, no thief had broken in. Saying this, the mistress wrapped the remainder of the Western sweets she had put out earlier and placed the packet in my hand. I tucked it into my sleeve and hurried through the deserted, cold evening lanes, winding toward the lively town.
I have drawn out that night's events from my memory and written them here in detail. I write because there is need to write; but truth be told, when I received the sweets from the mistress and went home, I did not regard that night's conversation as so weighty. The next day, when I came back from school for lunch and saw the packet of sweets still lying on my desk, I immediately took out a chestnut-brown castella coated in chocolate and popped it into my mouth. And as I ate it, I savored it with the awareness that the two man and woman who had given me these sweets existed in the world as a happy pair.
From the passing of autumn into winter, nothing in particular occurred. In the course of coming and going at the master's house, I asked the mistress to help with washing and re-making my clothes. It was from this time that I, who had never worn a juban before, began to layer a black-collared garment over my shirt. The childless mistress found such fussing to be a diversion from boredom, and in the end said it was almost like medicine for the body.
"Why, this is hand-woven. I've never sewn such fine cloth before. But in exchange, the sewing's dreadful—not a needle will go through. Thanks to you I broke two needles."
Even when voicing such complaints, the mistress never showed the least sign of trouble or annoyance.
