Sonochihama Ryuuta sat on the front veranda of his modest home in the outskirts of Mishima, Shizuoka Prefecture. The sun shone down upon him with a vice-grip, causing beads of sweat to melt from his retreating hairline to his chin. He went to his cup only to find it already empty. It was an unfortunate side effect of the post-war economy. The old woman who had been his maid before the war had long disappeared into obscurity. Gone to the country, or gone to the afterlife, he had no clue. The empty cup reminded him of her. 

It was as good a time as any to fill in his daily journal entry. 

“June 24th, 1946: It is hot today. I wish Koba-san was here to refill my cup, I will have to retrieve something from the house instead. An unfortunate, if arrogant, conundrum.” 

As he finished writing, a man rounded the corner of the neighboring house's fence. It was his editor, Gendo, wearing a cotton robe and flat wooden sandals. Sonochihama had the idea to turn him away for looking so ridiculous, but decided not to because, of course, Gendo was not ever one to appreciate decent looks. Gendo reached the veranda and left his sandals on the ground as he crossed his legs before Sonochihama. Before speaking he pulled out a pack of American cigarettes and held one to Sonochihama, who declined. 

“When are you going to smoke with me Ryuuta? I found you a good guy to rebuild the house, didn’t I? You can at least do that much, surely?” 

“I’ll smoke with you when I’m already on my death bed, not a day sooner, understand?” 

“Well, you say that, but I remember when you were fresh out of university. Couldn’t keep you out of the asylum for more than three months, remember? Not one day in there did you smoke with me, so what’s this about?” Gendo lit his cigarette while he spoke in a gruff muffle. 

“I’d have died then, you know? Smoking is not a good match for TB.” He had not smoked since college, when he took one and hated the taste. Then there was no chance while he was in hospice off and on for six years during his twenties. A weak constitution for an even weaker man. Smoking never tempted him.

Gendo nodded in appreciation. 

“Anyways, how is your latest project coming along? We’ve got a newspaper in Kyoto that’s pretty curious about you. At least, they are interested in you based on your reputation. I guess that one about the eel did well down there.” 

In truth, Sonochihama had not been working on any new projects. Considering the change the war had on his access to his family's assets, the prospect of actually having to work to earn his living was a droll endeavor. It was easier, before the war, when he could write his little stories and not feel the financial burden involved. It was a hobby then, and he could engage with it as he saw fit. Likewise, Gendo rarely stressed him too greatly on the matter of releasing new stories or even a novel, though he had yet to complete a single one. He would almost rather go back to the days of his youth when editors did not ask questions about projects or mention deadlines. 

The reminder of his duties to Gendo enthused upon him the fact that the reconstruction of the house, which had been victim to fire during the air raids, had drained a substantial majority of his remaining funds. Probably, if he was not successful within the following year or two, he would have no money left. 

“You know, I wish I was born a woman.” Sonochihama laughed. 

“Who’s to say you weren’t? Anyway, what’s that all of a sudden?” 

“I just think that my sister doesn’t have to worry about sending manuscripts to people. Her husband started a construction business in Fukuoka earlier this year. From what I hear they’ve been doing very well for themselves. Not just from rebuilding, but new construction. Modernization, as I hear it from her letters. It’s like that in Tokyo too. Probably a lot of men are making a lot of money from picking up the pieces. Like that fellow who rebuilt my house, he had a gold ring the one time I met him, can you imagine that?” 

Gendo took a long drag of his cigarette as sweat poured down his face. 

“Hey, Ryuuta, spare a guy some water yeah? Better yet, cold tea.” 

Sonochihama grabbed his own cup and went into the house. It was smaller than it once was, indeed, he chided himself for even thinking it was the same. Really, the footprint was half the property it was before the war, and a good amount of what he managed to keep was restored into a front garden that was, as far as he could stand, an imitation of its ancestor. The stream which used to run down the street in front of his yard was one victim of the war. Where the lakes in the mountains drained now, he did not know, but he missed it and the fish that would swim downstream somewhere far away. 

His kitchen had been replaced with a more modern design, and the water he got from the tap was actually fairly cool compared to what it would be before the war. Improved pipes, no doubt. He had no tea, and even if he did, the thought of serving Gendo did not particularly appeal. No matter how good friends they were. He filled two cups and went back to the veranda where Gendo’s legs were extended across the floor as he leaned back on one arm. He had opened the chest of his clothes and was waving himself with Sonochihama’s notebook. Sonochihama set the cup before him and snatched the book swiftly and with force. 

“Thanks Ryuuta. Hey, you mentioned your sister was doing well, how about that younger brother of yours? You haven’t talked about him lately.” 

“That’s because he hasn’t written to me lately. I got a few letters from him during the war, we managed to mostly stay in touch, but last February was the last I’d heard from him. I’ll tell you this though, he was in a bad way. He’s taken the name of our late uncle, Inui.” 

“Uncle? Oh, you mean the one that went to live abroad? That’s interesting.” 

Before he could respond, Sonochihama saw a pair of men round the corner from where Gendo had come. One wore a soldier's tan jacket, while the other wore a white button down shirt and slacks. The soldier he did not recognize, but the other man was the ragged spectre of his brother, once Sonochihama Deizo, then Inui. 

The pair were clearly inebriated and laughing with each other as they made their approach to the house. Though they shared no liquor at that time, their red cheeks and wobbling feet made their state plenty clear to the two men on the veranda. 

It was a startling recognition. Sonochihama had not seen Deizo for nine years. He knew that the war had taken his brother's job from him, but even from the poor mood his letters described, the state he was in came as a total surprise. 

“Deizo?” Sonochihama blurted. 

The man who wore the face of his brother turned from his companion and smiled. 

“Hey there Ryu! How’s it going?” 

“I’m well enough I suppose, who’s this?” 

“Ah! This is Murosage, I met him last month. He and I are good buddies now, aren’t we Murosage pal?” Deizo smacked Murosages back hard, sending him forward a step. It was enough for the smell to waft over Sonochihama. He could tell from the jolt that went through Gendo’s body that he could smell it too. The men were not just drunk, but they absolutely reeked of sake. 

“I ain’t friends with no teacher!” Murosage growled, holding a fist to Deizo. 

“Well, anyway, we’re drinking buddies. By the way, that’s a good point, I meant to say before, I need some cash. What with the aftermath and all that, I can’t really go back to work you know? You have access to the family funds, don’t you? Come on, just thirty yen and I’ll be on my way.” 

“Oh, “Just”, yeah?” Gendo laughed.

“I’m sorry you came all this way Deizo, but I don’t have the money to help you out like before the capitulation. I had to have the house rebuilt, and there were other expenses from my evacuation and living arrangements in that last year. You understand, right?” 

Immediately upon the rejection the man named Murosage grunted in a guttural, scratching, sound before turning on his heels and walking unsteadily back to the street. Deizo remained, seeming to have sobered from the statement. 

“Come on Ryuuta, call me Inui, brother. And you can just mail father and have some sent. He’s probably living it up with all these damned reforms they got happening in the capital these days.” 

Sonochihama was stunned. 

“Deizo, didn’t you read my last letter? Father died in a fire two years ago.” 

Deizo stood staring at Sonochihama dumbly. Eyes wide. 

“How? Didn’t he evacuate? Didn’t he go live with Grandmother Senko up north?” 

“Yeah, but they weren’t safe from the bombings. The house caught fire and he tried to carry Senko out. I told you all of this in the last letter I sent in February…” Sonochihama watched his brother's eyes glaze over in utter realization.

For Sonochihama there was some inheritance from their father left, but there was none for his brother. He wanted to help, but there were accounts to settle. Debts, small but many, had remained unanswered for several months or even years by that point. Thirty yen was simply too much money to be giving away. Especially, though he cursed himself for the thought, when it would probably just be spent on enough booze to kill poor Deizo. 

“Inui, what are you doing for work now?” Gendo spoke, interrupting the silence that lingered between the siblings. 

“Work?” Deizo asked with a crooked smile. “I’m a goddamn teacher. I don’t have to work. I’ll just get what I’m owed, I’ll teach people, you know, and then I’ll die. Or, I’ll die, and then that’ll teach them…” his voice trailed off into a mumble. 

Sonochihama lowered his head and focused on his cup, half full of water by then. He raised it to his brother and smiled. 

“Well, I can offer you this much, you know?” 

Deizo looked at the cup with a slant to his brow. 

“Damn you, and damn your father too, and this friend of yours. Fools. Fools and fiends, that’s what you all are. You’ve killed me, and I don’t have to forgive you for that.” On that note, Sonochihama Deizo turned and began to walk down the path towards the ghost of his friend. Once he got to the end of the walkway he faced down the street, took another glance at Sonochihama, and then erupted into a sprint away from the house. 

Gendo, smiling with outward slanting eyes, faced Sonochihama. 

“Well, guess that answers that. He sort of runs like a schoolgirl, doesn’t he?”

Deizo was eight years younger than Sonochihama, and yet so proud. When he went to school to become a math teacher, their father scolded him. In truth, their father was ashamed of Sonochihama’s layabout nature. He was the oldest son and yet had no will or ability to follow his father into the diet or even some form of local leadership. From an early age this much was clear to the patron of their family. So it fell onto Deizo’s small shoulders, and he, likewise, angered their father. Only, whereas Sonochihama had forsaken their father with his laziness, Deizo had made the choice to go out on his own. To align himself with that uncle who had disappeared on a boat in hate of his origins and birth-nation. When Sonochihama heard that his younger brother was living modestly for himself in Shimoda as a teacher, he was happy. Sonochihama had thought that Deizo affirmed himself within his own mind. That he did not need the good will of their father to go on living. 

And yet that good will died along with that same living. 

How long had Deizo been unemployed? Since the beginning of the war five years prior? Or perhaps only since the air raids started in earnest? So two years? Even that was too long. In truth, he had no idea what his brother's history had been. Or, even, what his future was. Would he find a way to drink himself to death, irrelevant to Sonochihama’s own involvement? Then, surely he should try to offer at least a place for his brother to live? He should chase him down and drag him back, demanding he live in the rebuilt duplicate of the family home. Yet, after two years or more without a job, likely living with and trading in favors from many unknown friends, the well of good will had once again run dry for him. The only place he had left to go was to beg his sham of an older brother for a piece of the inheritance their father had hatefully left behind. Sonochihama stifled self-resentment, justifying his inaction through ignorance. Perhaps all was mostly well for Deizo, but his state only brought on more internal tortures. 

“Say, Gendo, do you think he hates our father?” 

Gendo pulled out another cigarette and offered one to Sonochihama. He took one from the pack and borrowed a match from Gendo as he lit up. 

The smoke filled his lungs with heat and pain. He coughed slightly, as though clearing his throat, but he took another drag. It was relaxing, forgetting a self-imposed exile from such a vice. He only drank infrequently, but there, beneath the unbearable heat of the summer sun, he had the inclination to open up the bottle of sake that he had bought with scrounged change the week before. Gendo laughed at Sonochihama. 

“You really are an idiot, aren’t you?” 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you took on such a pose there, you know? You sucked on that thing and then started staring off into the distance. You’re getting more affected with age, aren’t you?” 

Age? Yes, he was already forty. Ironically, healthier than he had been most of his life. Sonochihama laughed with his friend, but the image of his brother's back remained in his mind as he continued the conversation. 

“Do you think I still have it in me to write stories like River Eel? I’ll confide this with you, since we have known each other so long now, but I can’t write well lately. That is, it all comes out wrong. Ever since the war I just can’t imagine myself being so carefree as we were in those old days. That old man, the one who delivered newspapers? He didn’t even die in a bombing, apparently someone dropped a vase and the sound caused the old man to have a heart attack.” 

“Yeah, I heard about that. Anyway, that’s not here or there. You know what I think Ryuuta? Look at me when I talk to you, dullard.” Gendo crossed his legs again and leaned in for confidence as his eyes held a firm grip on Sonochihama’s own. 

“I’m looking Gendo. Surprised you’re taking this seriously.” 

“Why not? You're my only client, you know? I’m in this as deep as you, so don’t tell me you can’t think of any good stories anymore. I frankly don’t give two halves of a damn if you get depressed over your brother. I’m even happy you are, because that's the stuff that gets you working, doesn’t it? Remember River Eel? The only reason you wrote that was because you couldn’t catch anything in that damn stream, because a child had shown you up and caught that slimy thing. You ask me if I think Deizo or Inui or whoever hates your father? I’ll say he does, and you have to take that and write it down. You know what happens if you don’t?” 

“You’re being terribly shrewd today aren’t you?”

“I’m being a realist. If you don’t write then we don’t eat. If someone happens to care about the drama between you and your estranged brother then I say let them have it. It’s off your shoulders and you get to buy food. So, will you do it or not?” Gendo’s eyes were fiery but the edges were hazy from a relaxed posture he then adopted while puffing. 

Again the image of Deizo’s back flickered across Sonochihama’s mind. 

“I guess so. Say, you’re pretty bad at cheering somebody up, aren’t you?” 

“That’s not my job. My job is to get you to produce a manuscript, and I have someone in Kyoto who’s damn near willing to take anything at this point. We can’t get back into Tokyo, the papers and magazines there are being overrun by people who actually write books, so if you lose this deal we’re bound for Niigata or Fukuoka with your sister. Come on Ryuuta, we’re friends, so don’t let me down too, eh? I’m busting my ass for you here.” 

Sonochihama raised an eyebrow.

“Didn’t you just say you’re doing it for yourself? I’d be nicer to my only client if I was you.” 

Gendo scoffed with a smile as he downed the last of his water. He took a deep breath afterwards and stretched his arms into the air. A pocketwatch appeared from his sleeve and he yawned while he read from it. Then, grunting as he stood up, he went to put his sandals back on at the edge of the veranda. 

“I’m going to the bathhouse and then probably into town for some food. What are you doing tonight?” 

“Seeing as I don’t have a cook anymore, I guess nothing.” 

“Come with me then? I’ve got enough for two, but we’ll have to be frugal.” 

Sonochihama nodded, grabbing both cups. He went into the house and placed them into the sink of the kitchen before going to the bathroom where he had left his hat. He fitted it onto his receding hairline and acknowledged the sorry state of his head in the mirror. He should have shaved it ages before, but had not found the will or the time. Not that he was busy, but there was simply no time in inactivity to shave. He pulled the hat tight and went to Gendo, putting on his own sandals which were not dissimilar to his friends. 

“I think this is the first time you’ve gone out on the town with me. At least, not since we were in University. How long has it been now? Twenty damn years I think, or twenty-one. Near enough anyhow.” 

“Better times.” Sonochihama answered as they emerged onto the street and began down the neighborhood walkway. 

“No, I don’t think they were. I mean, you were out sick more often than not. I hate that, when people think that the times before the current day were better. I bet your brother is like that, you used to say he was ill from the passage of the era.” 

“He was. He once said that he should die with the final year of the Taisho, and never see the end of that first year of Showa. Never did anything that drastic, of course, but he was younger then, and so passionate about things.” 

“See, that’s what I mean. Why should change always be so terrible with you people? I mean, you intellectual types, though I gag on the term. You may not remember, but back in University your first successful story was the result of your illness.” 

In truth, Gendo was right, Sonochihama had no clue what he was talking about. 

“I’m pretty sure my first success was a story about a couple getting together over rice balls, no?” As he finished speaking a motorized rickshaw came up and split the two men, as it passed and sped ahead Gendo ran a hand through his sweat drenched hair. 

“Nope, you wrote a short story about a guy in an asylum. It was about him and his mother or something like that. Anyway, I stole it from you and had it published. Our first cooperative venture, though you were clearly too sick at the time to recall it. What I mean to say is that you writers, you artists, should really use the ammunition that the gods have given you. Suffering isn’t the end of the world, you know? I mean, death is the end, so if you’re suffering that means you’re still alive.” 

Sonochihama stopped for a moment. 

“Did you just try to cheer me up?” 

Gendo laughed but the breath got caught in his throat and instead he was coughing with a smile. Sonochihama replied with a laugh of his own, and walked forward with his old friend. 

“I’m pretty rubbish at this kind of thing, aren’t I?” Gendo said after his cough subsided.

Then, he could not reprimand Gendo too much for not being the most sensitive of people. Even Sonochihama lacked tact on occasion. It reminded him of fifteen years prior, when he was a younger man still frittering his time away in absent minded hobbies and travels between various family owned estates. The absence of his old maid at home reminded him of the woman who worked for him then. She was inordinately short and a fun person when they drank together. There was an honesty to her antics that amused the nostalgic sensibilities within him. A nostalgia that was pure and undisturbed by the recent memories of the War with America, and yet his post-war eyes colored his thoughts of them. A time when, even though he was frequently ill, he let the woman hang off his arm like it was a tree branch. A time when he found himself deep into a pursuit of calligraphy. Though he expected to miss her, he found he was more grateful for having known her for the time he did. He was even wishing she was well, rather than dwelling on whatever grim fate may have become of her during the air raids. For some reason, though his own father and home were victims of the war, in his mind, she was safe. 

“Say, Gendo, am I annoying?” 

“What’s this all of a sudden?” 

“Well, I used to have a maid, not the old woman, but a younger girl who was attending the university. This was during the summer I lived in the capitol, remember? You visited a few times back then, the short girl.” 

Gendo took a cigarette from his sleeve while they walked and handed one to Sonochihama. They both lit up and adopted an easy pace as the suburbs faded and they entered a shopping district. The sun had descended to one side of the sky by that point, so they were covered by the shade of the taller buildings. 

“So, seeing as how we haven’t mentioned your brother yet, I take it you’ve picked up on an idea for the story, right? I can only delay the Osaka guys for so long.”

“I guess so. But I need another week to get it together.” 

“Of course you do.” Gendo chuckled. He took a long puff of his cigarette, pulled the flame quite near to his lips before popping it out of his mouth and spitting it into the mud on the side of the road. “You know, you owe me. I’m going to have to grovel pretty bad for that week, it better be worth it pal.” 

“Well, I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” Sonochihama smiled. 

The only thing he could do for his brother, as he saw it, was become a better person. At least, become a successful bad person. It was hardly like he was picking up a shovel and getting a job from his brother-in-law from Fukuoka, but it was his own half-affectatious, half-sincere shovel of the mind. Digging through the remains of a life melted away by the rot of inaction and the flames of war. Gendo was right. Even though his father was gone, and even though his brother had become a vagabond, Sonochihama was still alive. He still had his roof, though its face was different than it once was. All he needed was money, perhaps a measly thirty yen to have in case someone showed up to ask for it. If there was someone who wanted to read his stories about past memories and losses, then the discomfort of actually sitting down and scratching away at paper was worth it. At least to be better. 

“It’s been a nice summer, hasn’t it?” Sonochihama said, crossing his arms. 

They reached the bathhouse and Gendo stopped Sonochihama before entering. With a smile he grabbed Sonochihama’s arms and pulled them apart. Then he tapped the writer on the forehead with an open palm sharply before laughing and patting him on the back. 

“You know what Ryuuta, you’re not annoying, but you are a pain in the ass.”