It was a little before seven when I returned to my room. I started packing as soon as I was in the room, and the astonished old lady asked me what I was trying to do. I’m going to Tokyo to fetch my Madam, I said, and paid my bill. I boarded a train and came to Minato-ya on the beach and found Porcupine asleep upstairs. I thought of writing my resignation, but not knowing how, just scribbled off that “because of personal affairs, I have to resign and return, to Tokyo. Yours truly,” and addressed and mailed it to the principal.
The steamer leaves the harbor at six in the evening. Porcupine and I, tired out, slept like logs, and when we awoke it was two o’clock. We asked the maid if the police had called on us, and she said no. Red Shirt and Clown had not taken it to the police, eh? We laughed.
That night I and Porcupine left the town. The farther the vessel steamed away from the shore, the more refreshed we felt. From Kobe to Tokyo we boarded a through train and when we made Shimbashi, we breathed as if we were once more in congenial human society. I parted from Porcupine at the station, and have not had the chance of meeting him since.
I forgot to tell you about Kiyo. On my arrival at Tokyo, I rushed into her house swinging my valise, before going to a hotel, with “Hello, Kiyo, I’m back!”
“How good of you to return so soon!” she cried and hot tears streamed down her cheeks. I was overjoyed, and declared that I would not go to the country any more but would start housekeeping with Kiyo in Tokyo.
Some time afterward, some one helped me to a job as assistant engineer at the tram car office. The salary was 25 yen a month, and the house rent six. Although the house had not a magnificent front entrance, Kiyo seemed quite satisfied, but, I am sorry to say, she was a victim of pneumonia and died in February this year. On the day preceding her death, she asked me to bedside, and said, “Please, Master Darling, if Kiyo is dead, bury me in the temple yard of Master Darling. I will be glad to wait in the grave for my Master Darling.”
So Kiyo’s grave is in the Yogen temple at Kobinata.
—(THE END)—
[A: Insitent]
[B: queershaped]
[C: The original just had the Japanese character, Unicode U+5927, sans description]
[D: aweinspiring]
[E: about about]
[F: atomosphere]
[G: Helloo]
[H: you go]
[I: goo-goo eyes]
[J: proper hyphenation unknown]
[K: pin-princking]
[L: Procupine]
[M: celabration]
[N: wans’t]
[O: paper.]
[P: girl shead]
[Q: stumblieg]
[R: Rad]