I made up my mind to boldly confess my heart to K. Not that this resolution began at that moment. Even before we set out on our trip, I had already steeled myself to it, but neither seizing the opportunity to confess nor creating such an opportunity came easily to my clumsy hands. Looking back now, all the people around me in those days were strange. Not a single one would speak of anything intimate regarding women. Some of them, no doubt, simply had no such tales to tell, but even those who had them seemed to make a habit of silence. To you, breathing the comparatively free air of today, it would surely seem odd. Whether it was a lingering habit of moralism, or a kind of shyness, I leave the judgment to your understanding.
K and I were the sort who could talk about anything together. Occasionally the subjects of love or romance did come up, but they always ended as nothing more than abstract theory. And even those were rare topics. Mostly we were entirely occupied with talk of books, of learning, of future enterprise, of ambitions, and of self-cultivation. No matter how close we were, on days grown so stiff as those, one could not suddenly break the tone. The two of us only grew close in the same stiff way. How many times I was tormented by an impatient, unpleasant agitation after resolving to confess the young lady to K, I cannot say. I felt a desire to pierce some one spot of K's head and blow soft air into it.
What would seem to you utterly ridiculous was, to me then, a genuine difficulty. Even on the journey, I was as cowardly as when at home. Always watching K with the intent to catch an opportunity, I could do nothing with his strangely aloof attitude. To my mind, the region around his heart was as good as thickly coated and sealed in heavy black lacquer. Not a drop of the blood I poured toward it entered that heart; all of it was repelled.
At times, because K's manner was so strong and lofty, I was on the contrary reassured. And while regretting my suspicion within myself, in that same breast I apologized to K. As I apologized, I seemed to myself a very low sort of person, and was suddenly seized by distaste. But before long the old suspicion returned in reverse, and struck back hard. Since everything was deduced from suspicion, everything was to my disadvantage. Even his face seemed to me the sort women would prefer. His nature, untroubled by the petty fretting that characterized me, I thought would please the opposite sex. The way he was somewhere vacant yet somewhere firmly manly too seemed to me superior to myself. As for scholarship, though our fields differed, I was conscious that I was no match for K. — The moment all his good points scattered thus before my eyes, the briefly reassured me at once returned to the original unease.
Seeing my restless state, K said that if I disliked it we might as well return to Tokyo for the time being, but on being told so I suddenly lost all wish to go back. Perhaps in truth I simply did not want to send K back to Tokyo. The two of us rounded the cape of Bōshū and came out on the other side. We were beaten by hot sun, walked in misery, deceived by the seeming nearness of some spot in Kazusa a mere ri away, and trudged on. I hardly understood the meaning of walking so. Half in jest I said as much to K. Then K answered that since we had legs we walked. And when it grew hot he said we'd go into the sea, and soaked in the tide wherever we chanced to be. Then we were baked again by the fierce sun, so our bodies grew weary and went slack.
