When the adoptive father saw K's letter, he was furious. He immediately sent back a stern reply stating that he could not send tuition money to such an insolent wretch who would deceive his parents. K showed this to me. Around the same time, K also showed me a letter he had received from his biological family. It too contained harsh words of reproach, no less severe than the former. Perhaps because he felt added shame at having wronged the adoptive household, but they wrote that they would have nothing further to do with the matter. Whether K would be struck from the family register over this incident, or whether he would find some other compromise and remain with the adoptive family—that was to be a question for the future. What needed to be dealt with at once was the monthly tuition he required.
I asked K if he had any thoughts on that score. K answered that he intended to take up work as a night-school teacher. Compared to nowadays, the world was unexpectedly more relaxed in those days, so supplementary jobs were not as scarce as one might think. I thought K would manage well enough with that. But I had my own responsibility. When K went against the wishes of his adoptive family and chose the path he wished to follow, it was I who had agreed with him. I could not, therefore, simply fold my arms and do nothing. On the spot, I offered him material assistance. But K refused it without the slightest hesitation. Given his nature, he must have felt far more at ease supporting himself than standing under a friend's protection. He said that having entered the university, if he could not manage on his own he was no man at all. To fulfill my responsibility, I could not bear to wound K's feelings. So I let him have his way and withdrew my hand.
K soon found the sort of work he wished for. But for one who grudged every moment of time, it takes no imagination to know how bitter this labor was. Without slackening his studies in the least from before, he took up the new burden and pressed forward with fierce drive. I worried for his health. But stout-hearted as he was, he only laughed, and paid my caution no mind at all.
At the same time, his relations with the adoptive family grew ever more entangled. With his time no longer his own, the chances he once had to talk with me were taken away, and in the end I never heard the full account; yet I knew well enough that a resolution grew ever more difficult. I also knew that someone had stepped in to attempt mediation. That person wrote urging K to return home, but K said it was quite impossible and would not comply. In this stubbornness—K said he could not go back mid-term, so it could not be helped, but from the other side it must have looked like sheer obstinacy. That, it seemed, made the situation all the more bitter. He offended the adoptive family's feelings and earned the anger of his own family as well. When, worried, I wrote letters to reconcile both sides, it was already of no avail. My letters were buried without so much as a single reply. I grew angry too. Though until then I had sympathized with K out of a sense of obligation, from that point on I resolved to side with him regardless of right or wrong.
At last K decided upon restoration to his original family register. The tuition provided by the adoptive family was to be repaid by his biological family. In exchange, the biological family said they cared nothing for it—from then on, do as you please. In old words, it was likely a disowning. Perhaps it was not so absolute as that, but the man himself took it so. K was a man without a mother. One aspect of his character can surely be seen as the result of having been raised by a stepmother. Had his true mother lived, perhaps the rift between him and his family need not have grown so wide—so I thought. His father was, needless to say, a priest. Yet in his strict sense of duty, one might suspect he had something of the samurai about him.
