“No,” Nitta said earnestly. “I think it was just that the maiden was more in love than he was.”

“You may be right. The maidens in foreign stories are cute like that—very daring. I mean, if they love somebody, they’ll even swim across a river to meet him. You won’t see that in Japan. Just think of . . . what was the title of that play? In the middle there’s a river, and on one bank stands a man and on the other a princess, and they spend the whole play weeping and moaning. There’s no need for the princess to carry on like that. Why doesn’t she just swim to the other side? When you see it on stage, it’s a very narrow river—she could probably wade across. All that crying is pointless. She won’t get any sympathy from me. Now, in the Asagao Diary it’s the Ōi River—that’s a big river, and Asagao is blind, so you feel for her to some extent, but, even so, it’s not as if it’d be impossible for her to swim across. Hanging on to some piling beside the river, ranting and blaming it all on the sun—what good is that going to do? Ah, wait a minute. There was one daring maiden in Japan. She was something. You know who I mean?”

“Who?” The young men’s eyes lit up.

“Lady Kiyo. She swam the Hidaka River, chasing after the monk Anchin. Swam like hell. She was something, I tell you, and according to a book I read she was only fourteen at the time.”

We walked along the road chattering drivel like this until we came to a quiet old inn on the outskirts of town that was run by an acquaintance of Tanabe’s.

We drank there, and Fuji was good that night. At about ten o’clock, the youths left me at the inn and returned to their homes. Rather than going to sleep, I walked outside in my dotera. The moon was astonishingly bright. Fuji was good. Bathed in moonlight, it was a nearly translucent blue, and I felt as if I’d fallen under the spell of a sorcerer fox. Such a sparkling, vivid blue. Like phosphorus burning. Will-o’-the-wisp. Foxfire. Fireflies. Eulalia. Kuzu-no-Ha, the white fox in human form. I followed the road, walking a perfectly straight line, though I could have sworn I had no legs. There was only the sound of my geta clogs—a sound that had nothing to do with me but was, rather, like a separate living thing—reverberating with exceptional clarity: clatter, clop, clatter, clop. Stealthily I turned to look back. Fuji was there, burning blue and floating in space. I sighed. A valiant Meiji Royalist. Kurama Tengu. That’s how I saw myself. I rather cockily folded my arms and marched on, convinced I was an awfully dashing fellow. I walked quite a long way. I lost my coin purse. It held about twenty silver fifty-sen pieces—it was heavy and must have slipped from the folds of my dotera. I was strangely indifferent. If my money was gone, all I had to do was walk to Misaka Pass. I kept walking. At some point, though, it occurred to me that if I retraced my steps I’d find my purse. Arms folded, I ambled back the way I’d come. Fuji. The Meiji Royalist. A lost coin purse. It all made, I thought, for a fascinating romance. My purse lay glittering in the middle of the road. Of course; where else would it be? I picked it up, returned to the inn, and went to bed.