Slowly climb up from the spring for half an hour, cross the place called "Second Degree Slope" by the locals, and gradually broaden your horizons. "Let's take a break here." "You can't see Asama from here yet." "You have to climb to the top of the mountain to see it." "Then take a rest! There will probably be no one here." "It doesn't matter if someone comes." This area is a red pine forest mixed with other trees. Under the trees, there is a large area of ​​kudzu and lovage that can be used as Chinese medicinal materials. Against the backdrop of white lovage, the purple kudzu flowers are more dazzling.

The woman spread out the plastic sheet in the woods not far from the road, and sat down with her back to the road. "The scratch on the arm is quite serious. This road is really difficult... Isn't there a better way?" "Don't expect too much! The road to heaven is the best way to go, do you dare to go?" After the man finished speaking, he fell asleep with his head on his back, lying in the kudzu grass. The woman wiped the sweat from her forehead while stroking the scratches on her arms.Then, she took off her shoes and gently massaged her toes. "Ashin, pour me some water."

After hearing this, the man lay down and handed the water bottle to the woman. After the woman took a sip of water, she quickly asked: "Do you want to drink?" "I'm not thirsty." The man replied indifferently, and after a while he spoke again: "Well... let me have a drink too!" The man took a sip from the glass and accidentally spilled most of the water on his jeans. "Oh! You just drink it while lying down, so you spill it all over the place. Do you want another drink?" "don't want." The man put his hands on the pillow, and his whole body fell into the haystack again, as if he was vomiting with the woman.The woman didn't know what to say, but silently tightened the lid of the kettle.

The man named "Ashin" was about twenty-four or five years old, and looked two or three years younger than the woman. The woman's name was Xiao Gongxue, and her complexion was not very good. Judging from her shortness of breath, she probably had something wrong with her chest.A few years ago, she entered the opera house with lofty ideals, but due to her ordinary appearance, it may be difficult for her to make a name for herself in the film and television industry. When she realized that she lacked talent and could not be an actor or dancer at all, she immediately fell into the abyss of despair. After that, Xiao Gongxue had to "part-time work" for her family's livelihood.

After the "part-time job" was discovered by the people in the opera house, Xiao Gongxue was kicked out of the opera house. "Ashin, you'll catch a cold if you sleep in this kind of place, isn't it too cold here?" As soon as the woman finished speaking, the man sneezed two or three times in a row. "Look, you started sneezing as soon as I finished talking." "So what?" The woman lowered her eyes and said quietly: "Ashin, if you hate me, we can break up, and I'll put the medicine here." "Who said I hate you?" "Then why are you so cold to me?"

"Because I don't like people talking to me in this tone, saying that I will catch a cold... Do you want to curse me to die early?" "I'm sorry, I won't say anything." Her cautious tone made the man very unbearable. Not only can Komiya Yuki's personality fail to succeed on stage, she can't even sell her soul and flesh to win the favor of men.Her facial features are pretty pretty, but a man will find it boring after being with her for a long time. Nobuyoshi Tashiro is a student of the Composition Department of the University of the Arts. His father is a practicing dentist in Ogosaka. In addition to his own dental clinic, he also raises his young wives in the outpatient rooms of two other hospitals. Nobuyoshi Tashiro’s father trained the two young wives to be tooth models. As a technician, this has always been what he is most proud of.

His mother was a well-born daughter (at least in the eyes of Tashiro Nobukichi), who married Tashiro Nobukichi's father with a piano as a dowry.Tashiro Nobukichi is the youngest, and he inherited his mother's traits. He liked the piano very much since he was a child, and he didn't get along well with his father. When Tashiro Nobukichi became an adult, he was very proud of passing through the narrow gate of the School of Music at the University of the Arts.It didn't take long for him to encounter difficulties, and in addition to despair, he deepened his desire to go home. His mother was not in good health, so his energetic father would go to the other two outpatient clinics every night. Even if he stayed at home occasionally, his father would not be the object of Tashiro Shinkichi's heart-to-heart talk.

Tashiro's nightmare began last year when his mother died of stomach cancer. His mother died less than a hundred days ago, and his father was in a hurry to marry his stepmother into the family.It is unbelievable that this stepmother is not a dental mold mechanic with whom my father used to be acquainted, but a woman with a little money and a bottle of oil. ... The father and the two elder brothers had a dispute over this matter, and at the same time, a fierce struggle was triggered between the little wife. Although Tashiro Nobukichi, who stayed in Tokyo, escaped the turmoil, he could not expect his family to send him living expenses and tuition fees as before.He spent more and more time playing the piano in restaurants and nightclubs to make money. Soon, Tashiro Shinkichi finally felt physically and mentally exhausted, and his life became more and more absurd.

Last fall, Tashiro Nobukichi began to call prostitutes to have fun with some friends who played musical instruments. The one who came to call was Yuki Komiya. Since then, he has played with Yuki Komiya every night.Komiya Yuki is a submissive woman no matter what a man does to her, which makes Tashiro Nobukichi treat her more and more rough.Because it cost too much to recruit prostitutes, Tashiro Nobukichi could hardly go to school, but worked hard to earn money. Suddenly, there was a sound of men and women playing and footsteps on the hillside. Three men and women were chatting on the edge of the cliff while sliding down the path.

When they saw Komiya Yuki and Tashiro Nobukichi, they immediately stopped talking.Before the sound of their footsteps disappeared down the slope, Yuki Komi felt a sharp gaze shot towards her back. "Ashin, can we go? It would be bad if someone else comes." Tashiro Nobukichi closed his eyes and lay motionless in the haystack.The sunlight shone through the green leaves, making his face a gloomy green color, which gave people a very weird feeling. "By the way, I met a strange man last night." Tashiro Nobukichi suddenly opened his eyes and looked at Yuki Komiya with a weird smile in his eyes.

"Strange man?" "Didn't I stay in the doghouse last night?" "Doghouse?" "It's a hotel like a dog house. The room is only about one and a half square meters in size. The hotel has thirty small rooms like that, and guests like me live in each room." "The place you live is called 'Birch Camp', right?" "That's right, I live in Room 18 of the 'Baihua Camp'. Hmph! In order to wait for you to come, I stayed there for three days." "Sorry, I'm so late." "Forget it, it's nothing, it's that strange man..." "Is there anything wrong?" "Last night he lived in Room 17 next to me. Because I couldn't sleep, I walked through the woods in front of the 'Birch Camp' and went to the hills to watch the stars. Although it was foggy, I could still see the stars... …While I was looking at the stars in the sky, the man came to me at some point, he took a bottle of whiskey and drank it, and he was drunk after a while." "and then?" "That person probably saw some clues from my appearance, and kept asking me for a drink. I found it very annoying, and I didn't want to talk to him, but he kept talking about a lot of things about his wife hooking up with men. , and he has been kept in the dark for a long time, so he feels very shameless, ha..." "Ashin, don't talk about this kind of topic anymore, okay?" "Listen to me! The man said: 'As the saying goes, an eye for an eye, an eye for an eye...' So he wanted to take revenge on his wife in the same way, and said that he came tonight uninvited, just to get Seeing is believing, he burst into tears as he spoke...his wife seems to be good-looking, and she is also a well-known big shot." "Who is his wife?" "He didn't say. He looks like a good man, about forty years old, and he looks like a rich man, but at that time he looked like he was on the street. I don't want to be like him! As long as you are poor, you can't be free and easy. , no wonder his wife develops outwardly. By the way, that man's name is 'Sasuke'." "Is his wife in Karuizawa now?" "It seems to be... that old man seems to be quite nostalgic." "Nostalgic?" "Well, even if his wife gave birth to seven children outside, he will still forgive her." "Ashin!" After Xiao Gongyuki screamed suddenly, she stared at the side of the man, shrugged and said: "Let's go quickly! It seems that the sky is going to change." Suddenly, there was a burst of thunder in the distance, and after a while, a dark cloud floated in the cloudless blue sky. When Tashiro Shinkichi saw the dark cloud floating overhead, he quickly got up and patted the dirt off his body. "Could it be that he knows about me?" "Ashin, is there something wrong?" "No, it's nothing, that person said he was worried about me... Sigh! Forget it, does he know about me... Hey, let's go!" For the next half an hour, Tashiro Nobukichi kept silent as if he was angry, and kept walking up the hill ahead of Yuki Komiya, who followed closely panting. At this time, the rumbling thunder had stopped, but the entire sky was covered by gray dark clouds, only a small group of white mist floating from nowhere surrounded the two of them. When they came near the top of the mountain, they met a strange man walking down the mountain. The man was wearing a white thin shirt with a cyan collar exposed under the thin shirt. The lower part of his body was a pair of thin shiny brown trousers. The trousers were covered with weeds. He wore a pair of dusty white trousers on his feet. Tabi socks and straw sandals tied with brown laces, and a melon skin hat on the head, with natural curly fluffy hair exposed under the brim, which looks like a bird's nest. When the man brushed past them, he asked seriously: "Are you going up the mountain now?" Tashiro Nobukichi glanced at the other party with disdain, said nothing, and looked back at Komiya Yuki. "Axue, let's go, we'll be there in a while." After Komiya Yuki paid attention to the strange man, she hurriedly followed behind Tashiro Nobukichi. The man in the melon cap watched the backs of the two of them for a while, and then began to walk down the mountain again.During this period, he occasionally stopped to look at the couple walking up the hillside. The fog was getting thicker and thicker. The man in the melon cap stopped, sat on a big rock by the roadside, took out a cigarette from his sleeve and lit it. He looked up the hillside, but there was a fog in front of him, and he couldn't see anything at all.The man in the melon cap smoked a second cigarette, but when he was halfway through he threw the cigarette on the ground and walked up the hill again. Milky-gray thick fog surrounded the man, and he couldn't see the scene ahead at all. He stopped to pant from time to time, and listened carefully for the sound of footsteps coming down. Twenty minutes after the man in the melon cap met the man and woman, he had reached the top of the mountain.The view on the top of the mountain is vast, the shallow mountains are clearly presented in front of the eyes, and the white thick fog stays in the low red pine forest. "Hey! Where are you?" The voice of the man in the melon skin hat seemed to be sucked in by the dense fog. He continued to call out two or three times, but still got no response at all. He lifted up his trousers and walked into the bushes. There are three or four raised hills on this mountain, and there is a cave under one of the hills. The entrance of the cave is very narrow, but the inside is very spacious. Groups of bats inhabit the cave, and this is the most common place for people to die together. The place. At this moment, the half-asleep bat hanging from the ceiling of the cave stared at the man and woman lying on the ground. Komiya Yuki seemed to have died, but Tashiro Nobukichi still had a breath, and his whole body was convulsed in pain. From time to time in the thick fog came vague shouts... "Where are you?" Tashiro Shinkichi vaguely heard the voice coming from the fog, and his consciousness gradually became hazy... This is what happened around 4:00 pm on August 16th, Showa 34th.