Sonochihama Ryuuta was staring at the low grey clouds that slowly covered Mishima in a thick shade. The smell of wet stone had already come to them, but Ryuuta’s walkway remained dry. It was a nostalgic omnipresence he enjoyed, and it made the warmth of his yukata all the more pleasant as he relaxed his shoulders within. There must have been a man in some exotic place like France who was feeling the exact same thing. It was one of those universal pleasures. Of the short list that men could agree were things which were delightful—rubbing dirt on the knees, running a finger down the underside of one's chin, and even the plain ease of stretching the arms upward—relaxing in cotton clothing while watching the clouds pass over must have been one. 

Ryuuta laid back on the veranda, his eyes blocked by the ceiling of his house. The flooring was cold on the back of his bald head, but it was also terribly swell. He could imagine himself as a younger man, waiting on the day to pass so he could drink at night. There were times like that for young men. Slowly his eyes slipped closed, and his breathing steadied to slow rhythm near in-audible. The cat, Monpe, came from outside and curled itself into the warmth of his still crossed legs. His head grew heavy as the darkness in his eyes deepened. The back of his throat smoothed, the toes in his socks stopped flexing, and a final exhale dared the middle aged man to fall totally into a mid-afternoon slumber. 

“Uncle Ryu?” 

Ryuuta jostled himself awake and lifted himself up on his arms to regard his guest. 

Quite from nowhere, in the middle of the week, Mitsuyo had come. He was surprised, but then she had technically finished school already. She had been writing letters to the University in Tokyo for several weeks without much reply. Always when he would first lay eyes on her the image of that seven year old cheery girl flashed over them. Replaced by eleven years of strife and misery, she was standing there, smiling at her old uncle like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

“There was a poet,” Ryuuta began, sitting up, “who said that ‘It is the pleasure of any man of sense to be woken by a beautiful woman’. How are you doing today, Little Mitsu?” 

“Oh, there you are—teasing me again. No flattery is going to change my mind!” 

Mitsuyo was wearing a long skirt that extended to just above her ankle, as well as a western styled blouse with a slight floral fabric at the hem of her shoulder-high sleeves. The long hair her mother was so proud of had been folded away into a bun at the back of her head, with only a few strands allowed freedom to accent the woman’s face. The outfit made her seem older, which was probably to do with the duty Gendo had unfortunately deposed to her while he went off to San Francisco to negotiate with some bungling magazine publishers. So, she was taking it seriously and looking so youthful for it. 

“I’ve been working diligently Kaninohara-sama…” though even that lie faded into yawn as he rested back on the cool flooring. In the exchange Monpe was only slightly disturbed, but it had otherwise glared and kept its place. 

“Uncle Ryu!” 

“Yes?” 

He could hear the sound of Mitsuyo taking off her shoes and sliding around on the floor. A sharp tap hit the middle of his forehead, but he stood fast to his lethargy and did not react. The tap was followed by another, and soon a smack, increasing in strength until his forehead was stinging from the repetition. He slowly got up and sat straight, causing Monpe to become disenthused of him. It crawled from his lap and stretched its long body across the floor before disappearing into the house to look for a morsel of food. Ryuuta looked to his side and saw Mitsuyo sitting beside him on her knees. The look of western clothes in such a reverent posture almost made his stomach churn. Then, it was the only decent way to sit in a skirt. 

“I suppose that’s my fault then. I thought that, since my interloping agent was off in a foreign country, I would be allowed a modicum of rest from the constant badgering. How much is he paying you, Little Mitsu? I’ll consider paying you more to just relax and enjoy the day.” 

“Gendo-san told me you’d try bribery.” 

“We’ve known each other for more years than have been in the Showa, I’d expect as much.” 

“He also said that I should accept your money and still badger you. Then when he gets back he’ll raise my allowance.” 

Ryuuta laughed while grabbing a coin purse from inside his sleeve. 

“Here’s a few coins, go watch a film and let me enjoy my afternoon, please.” 

Mitsuyo took the money, but she did not leave. 

“Last time you had barely decided on what to call your newest character. Please take this seriously Uncle Ryu. Gendo-san said if you don’t have a decent back-catalogue that the Americans will ‘chew you up and spit you out like crackers’.” 

“I wrote that one about the thief getting turned into a fox last week, wasn’t that good enough? I’ve been doing this for four years, surely he has enough to satisfy them?” 

Mitsuyo crossed her arms and seemed to be looking down her nose at him. 

“Okay Mitsu-hime, let’s get this going then.” 

Ryuuta shifted his focus to the stack of manuscript parchment in front of him. Normally he would have sat on the veranda to write in his journal, but there were tasks that needed to be completed before such things could be indulged in. That being said, he had still tried to take a nap, but his own weakness was something he decided to ignore as he went back to the pages. 

“Iegawa had no reason to live. For all of his hard work, the blisters and calluses which blinded the gods to his youth, and even the fullness of his affection, he was still sitting there alone. The walls watched him with their domineering. Even the floorboards had dozens of lovers as they sat side-by-side beneath his feet. A man from the company had come the day before and tried to bestow upon Iegawa the absolute necessity of his return, but Iegawa could only pity the workman who had been tasked so thoughtlessly. Iegawa was not something required by the bosses. It was more probable that his lengthy absence was intolerable to the degree that they desired to rebuke him to his pitiful face. 

“Then the pages in front of him did not condone any such thoughts. Though he had tried to have one or two accepted by ‘Conciliation’, a magazine from Osaka, and the replies were always noncommittal. No money would be coming from that avenue, and he had almost certainly already lost his real job. Rent for his room at the dorms was soon due, and then his mind would drift to thoughts of her. She who cared little for the shrill insipidation of a man too entrapped within his own mind. She had her whole life ahead of her, and it was certainly going to be a marvelous one. It was his arrogance to have wanted to be a part of it at all.” 

Where had all of that come from? It could have been that he was reading too much of the latest in the literary habits that had taken hold recently. There was a man who threw himself into a river in Tokyo, and ever since his works had been in vogue. Ryuuta had read one, regarding a woman from a fallen noble family, but he did not see the appeal behind the over-wrought self-misery of that style, it was much too arrogant. Then he had written something that quite resembled that. Or, rather, he had more or less written a profile for a character who would be a part of a story like that. Mitsuyo was the first to grasp the problem. 

“So, what’s he going to do?” 

“Do?” Ryuuta found it hard to comprehend. 

“This Iegawa guy, what’s he going to do?” 

“What do you think he should do?” 

Mitsuyo looked over the page with clinical eyes. The side of her face was smooth, it made Ryuuta feel much older than he was when he saw her. Kaninohara had died when his daughter was still only eight years old. The thought of how that tradesman would be flushed at the beauty she had become could almost have made Ryuuta laugh were it not so sad to think that he really was gone. All progressive thoughts about his work had totally left his mind. 

“I think you should pick one,” Mitsuyo declared. 

“Pick one?” 

“Yeah, pick a struggle. I think your problem is that he has too much going on. You should just pick between the job, writing, or his love. Just one of those would make for a decent enough base for conflict.” She returned to sitting politely beside him.

“That wouldn’t be like me at all. You see, Mitsu, that’s how it goes. Sometimes torture can coincidentally transpire atop torture. Occasionally a man may be at the sharp end of many struggles at once, and how he gets through it is a more marvelous sight than if he had overcome just a single conflict.” 

“That’s understandable, but if there are so many things happening at once, won’t you have to write about them in more detail? One of them will suffer.” 

“Okay, what do you think of his work then?” 

“He should get a new job where he’s appreciated.” 

“His writing?” 

“I mean, he’d barely done it, it seems a bit early to give up, right?” 

“What about his love, then?” 

“If she doesn’t care for him, he should let her go and try someone else.” 

Mitsuyo’s expression did not change in the slightest. Each answer came and went like she was simply reciting the latest news about a change in bus schedule. She was sure that her answers were the right ones, or, at the least, that they were the best given the options. They were simple ones that anybody with decent sensibilities would certainly agree with. Ryuuta himself, given a fifteen-year transition to his former self, would have also gone with her simplistic and trite offerings. 

Iegawa would not be so simple. 

“Iegawa had worked for a long time at a company he thought appreciated him, only for the promotion to section lead to be taken by a higher ups son. So he decided to go into his writing, but he had been stagnant for years and the habits of magazine editors tend to be whimsical, biased, and trend-focused. It would be lucky for him to get anything done. As for the woman, his issue is less the fact that she does not care—though since we have written him as a person who is so egocentric, perhaps that is a greater part we can work on—and more accurately that he cares so much for her. He could tell himself to stop caring, but that isn’t really something a person can just turn off. 

“The origin of the emotions and the natural results of them are fairly predictable, but rather than do what normal people would, something has caused him to linger on his failures as self-evident of his own worthlessness.”

Mitsuyo sighed and slouched her shoulders. 

“I guess he’s useless then.” 

Ryuuta laughed as he balled the paper up in his hands. 

“Yeah, there’s not a single thing I could do to make the redemption of a guy like that make any kind of sense. Would you like some tea?” 

Mitsuyo nodded and Ryuuta got up to grab two cups and a pitcher with some cold tea pre-prepared. While he carried the tray down the front hall, he passed the table by the door where his journal was. He slid one hand to the middle of the tray and balanced it while grabbing the worn binding. When he emerged back onto the veranda, Mitsuyo was petting the cat. 

Monpe rubbed its neck and body against Mitusyo’s leg. Its tail swayed and clung to her before floating about again. Mitsuyo was scratching at the space just behind one of its ears, and the reply was a look Ryuuta could have called a smile on the beast's face. 

Ryuuta sat and poured tea in one cup before handing it to Mitsuyo, then pouring his own. He opened the journal to the first blank sheet and set his pencil between the pages. 

“How has it been with the University?” 

Mitsuyo looked away from her cat to answer the question dryly. 

“There’s a professor, Boruo-sensei, who likes my essays, but the rest of his department is apparently too conservative. He’s saying there probably won’t be much luck until the staff change next year. I’m hoping for more open minds!” She clenched her fist in the air and smiled from ear to ear. 

“Well, I suppose we’re going to see.” 

Ryuuta picked up the pencil and began to write his new entry. 

“November 13, 1949. Mitsuyo is still Gendo’s employee. She wears it well, I can tell her mothers vigor has been appropriately inherited. Iegawa is a lout. I despise him with my entire being, but I cannot curse him. To some end he and I are effectively the same. Gendo resents me for that. A curious question; If you have convinced the whole world that you are no more than a spectator, then what are you really? That may be wrong, I will try my best to further develop this idea. Somewhere at the bottom of the man's dreadful well, I may yet find an afternoon where these two agents of mine would let me sleep.” 

A cold wind blew in from the peninsula, carrying with it the coming winter. The quiet neighborhoods of the Mishima outskirts were ever the same, though the people within them had changed. Ryuuta felt the wind on his neck and shivered against the November air.