She asked him if he was all right.

It’s okay. It doesn’t matter what you say. 　I replied calmly, “I don’t care what you say. 　In fact, Yoshiko was such a genius of trust that she did not doubt my relationship with Tsuneko, not only with the madam of the Kyobashi Baa, but also when I informed her of the incident I had caused in Kamakura, and it was not because I was a good liar, but sometimes I even made blatant remarks, but Yoshiko could only hear them as jokes. But Yoshiko seemed to take it all as a joke. 　You’re still as serious as ever,” she said. It’s nothing serious, but a message to visit Koenji once in a while. 　Just as I was about to forget it, the bird of prey flapped its wings and came to me, piercing the wounds of my memory with its beak. Immediately, the memories of past shame and sins unfold before your eyes in vivid detail, and you cannot sit still for fear of screaming. 　Let’s have a drink. 　And myself. 　All right. 　And Horiki. 　Myself and Horiki. They looked like each other. Sometimes I felt like we were the same person. Of course, this was only when we were drinking cheap sake here and there, but anyway, when we saw each other, we would turn into dogs of the same shape and fur, running around in the snowfall. 　From that day on, we renewed our old friendship and went to that little old lady in Kyobashi together, and finally, the two drunken dogs visited Shizuko’s apartment in Koenji and even stayed overnight there before leaving.

From that day on, we renewed our old friendship and went to that little old lady in Kyobashi together, and finally, the two drunken dogs visited Shizuko’s apartment in Koenji and even stayed overnight there before leaving. 　I will never forget it. It was a hot summer night. He came to his apartment in Tsukiji wearing a shabby yukata around dusk and asked for a loan of money because he had pawned his summer clothes for a certain need and it would be very bad if his old mother found out about the pawn. Unfortunately, he did not have any money to lend himself either, so, as usual, he asked Yoshiko to take her clothes to the pawnshop to make some money, and since there was still some left over after lending it to Horiki, he had Yoshiko buy some shochu with the money left over. We had a very dirty party on the rooftop of our apartment, enjoying the stale breeze that sometimes blew in from the Sumida River. 　We began to play guessing games with comedic and tragic nouns. For example, steamship and train are both tragic nouns, and tram and bus are both comedic nouns. A playwright who inserts even one tragic noun into a comedy has already failed in that alone, and the same is true of tragedy. 　May I? 　Do you want a cigarette? 　I ask myself.

May I? 　Do you want a cigarette? 　I ask myself. 　Tiger. （Tiger, for tragedy.) 　Horiki replies in his own words. 　What about medicine? 　Powder? 　Pills? 　Injections? 　Tiger. 　I don’t think so. 　There are hormone injections, too. 　No, definitely tigers. Needles first. You’re a fine tiger. 　Okay, I’ll let you win. But you know, medicine and doctors, they’re more comedic than you think. And death? 　Kome. So are priests and monks. 　Great job. And life is a tiger. 　No. That’s also rice. 　No, that would make everything and everyone a rice. Well, let me ask you something else. What about cartoonists? 　Surely you can’t call it rice? 　Tiger, tiger. The great tragedy. 　What? You’re the big tiger. 　It would have been a boring pun if it had turned out like this, but they were proud of their game, which they thought was very clever, something that had never existed even in the salons of the world before. 　I had invented another game similar to this one. It was the guessing game of synonyms. Black’s ant (short for synonym) was white. But white ant is red. Red ant is black. 　What about the ant of a flower? 　I asked myself, and Horiki bent his mouth and thought, “Let’s see, there is a restaurant called Kagetsu.

What about the ant of a flower? 　I asked myself, and Horiki bent his mouth and thought, “Let’s see, there is a restaurant called Kagetsu. 　Let’s see, there was a restaurant called Hana-getsu (flower moon), so it’s a moon. 　No, that is not an ant. Rather, it’s a synonym. Even star and violet are synonyms, aren’t they? It’s not an ant. All right, it’s, you know, a bee. 　A bee? 　On peonies, …… ants? 　Nah, that’s a painting. Don’t cheat. 　Okay, okay! 　Flowers and clouds, …… 　It’s probably clouds on the moon. Yes, yes. Flowers and wind. Wind. Hana no anto wa kaze. 　That’s not good. That’s a naniwabushi phrase. It’s a naniwa-bushi phrase. 　No, it’s biwa. 　It’s even worse. The ant of flowers is …… the most un-flower-like thing in the world, and that’s what you should name! 　So, you know, …… wait, what, a woman? 　And while we’re at it, what’s the synonym for woman? 　Guts. 　You, apparently, don’t know poetry. What’s the ant of guts, then? 　Milk 　This one’s a little better.

What’s the ant of guts, then? 　Milk 　This one’s a little better. Keep it up, one more. Shame. Ant of the Ont. 　Shamelessness. Trendy cartoonist boss Kota. 　Where’s Horiki Masao? 　We both started to feel gloomy, as if our heads were filled with shards of glass, which is characteristic of shochu intoxication. Don’t be cheeky. I have never yet suffered the shame of a robe like yours. 　Horiki was startled. Inwardly, Horiki did not think of himself as a real human being, but only as a mortal, shameless, idiotic fool, a so-called “living corpse. He only saw me as a mortal, shameless, stupid, and dead, so to speak, and used me only where he could, for his own pleasure. 　I felt bad, but I also thought that Horiki saw me that way, and that I had always been a child with no human qualities, and that perhaps I deserved to be scorned even by Horiki. 　Sin. What is the antonym for sin? This is a difficult question. 　I’m not sure,” he said, feigning a casual expression. The law.

The law. 　Horiki replied so matter-of-factly that I found myself reassessing his face. In the red light of the flickering neon sign of a nearby building, Horiki’s face looked as dignified as that of an ogre detective. I was truly dumbfounded. 　Sin, my friend, is not like that. The opposite of sin is the law! 　But maybe everyone in the world thinks it’s that simple and lives with a clear mind. Sin is always hanging around where there are no criminals. 　What is it then, God? 　There’s something about you that makes me think you’re a little bit of a yaso-boy. No, it’s just a taste. 　Well, don’t take it so lightly. Let’s both think about it a little more. This is an interesting topic, though. One answer to this question can tell us everything about a person. 　No way. ……The antidote to sin is goodness. A good citizen. 　Let’s not joke about this. But good is the ant of evil. Not the Ant of sin. 　Is there a difference between evil and sin? 　No, I think not. The concept of good and evil is man-made. It’s a man-made moral code. 　Shut up.

Shut up. Then it must be God. God, God. I’m sure that everything is God. I’m hungry. Yoshiko is cooking fava beans right now. 　Thank goodness. It’s my favorite food. 　I lay down on my back with my hands folded behind my head. 　I heard that you have no interest in sin. 　That’s right, I’m not a sinner like you. I may be a man of pleasure, but I don’t make women die or take money from them. 　Even though a faint but desperate protest arises somewhere in my heart that I didn’t cause their deaths or take money from them, I quickly come back to the habit of thinking that it is my fault again. 　I am unable, by any means, to engage in a head-on discussion. I tried my best to suppress the feeling of becoming more and more severe with each passing moment due to the gloomy intoxication of shochu, and said almost to myself, “I am not going to be thrown in jail, but I am going to be thrown in jail for the rest of my life. 　But being thrown in jail is not the only sin. I think if we can understand the ant of sin, we can grasp the substance of sin. ……God, ……Salvation, ……Love,…. …light,…… but God has an ant of Satan, the ant of salvation would be suffering, love has an ant of hate, light has an ant of darkness, good has an ant of evil, sin and prayer, sin and contrition, sin and confession, sin and …… aha, they’re all synonyms, what’s the counterpart of sin. 　The counterpart of tsumi is mitsu.

The counterpart of tsumi is mitsu. Sweet as honey. I’m hungry. Bring me something to eat. 　Why don’t you bring me something to eat? 　I was almost angry for the first time in my life. All right, then, let’s go and commit a crime together with Yoshi. More of an on-the-spot inspection than an argument. The guilty party was a honey bean, or a fava bean, or something. 　I was so drunk that I could hardly speak. 　Do as you please.