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complicated syllables. They were stores that displayed a wide range of things, punctuation twinkling like the crest of a venerable family, sentences breathing
peacefully, words whispering. I returned to reality when the roof of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion shimmered from far away and the sky turned orange. As darkness descended, Mother closed the
doors. The world of sentences sank into the night, the heroes and kings and ladies mourning lost love falling asleep. On our way home Mother looked lonely; I would make endless conversation, asking
about the books that had been sold that day, who bought them and what they were about. I was always pleasantly surprised when Mother gave me detailed answers about what she’d read long ago,
or books she’d wanted to read but hadn’t got round to. Mother sometimes laughed, although her laughter was always hollow. I knew I couldn’t take on her loneliness or her
exhaustion; I could almost smell Father’s cigarettes and sweat and faint sorrow. Like a drawing in sand, Father’s face eroded with time. We didn’t receive a single letter from
him. Eventually I found myself no longer waiting for him to write, no longer pining for his return. I forgot him; I had to forget him first, so as not to be forgotten myself. I didn’t want to
waste my whole life hoping for a miracle.
    Mother was lonely and I was withdrawn, but we weren’t unhappy. That fortress of books was our refuge. I discovered this only a long time later, but it was also the price of my
father’s life, what he’d given us when he walked into the war zone in Manchuria. I might have been a little less sad if I’d never known that. But the timing of everything is
always off. Man is in pain because he finds love too early, because he hasn’t seen someone for too long and because he discovers the truth too late.

I SEE THE BACK OF A SAD MAN WALKING ALONE UNDER A METEOR
    The next morning, Maeda greeted me in his office with a smile. He poured me a cup of tea. ‘What have you discovered?’
    My voice as hard as a log, I answered that I didn’t have anything special to report.
    He fiddled with the brim of his cap. ‘No, it won’t be easy for a young student-soldier like you. But make it your business and see it to the end.’
    I took out the piece of paper from my inner pocket and unfolded it. ‘I discovered this note in the dead guard’s pocket. There’s a mysterious verse written on one side of
it.’
    Maeda looked at me, then at the note I placed on his desk. He laughed. ‘Of course. You can’t get rid of your habits that easily. He couldn’t help himself.’
    My curiosity was piqued.
    ‘Sugiyama Dozan was a bookworm, but he was like a lost dog among the sentences.’ Maeda smiled slyly. ‘He was also the censor of Ward Three.’
    The role of censor sounded important, but I knew that all he had to do was sit in a back room. When I was in Ward Four the censor there was an old guard. It was a position given to him out of
respect because he found it difficult to manage the prisoners. He sat in his small office and dozed all day, reading letters. How could a top-notch guard like Sugiyama have been the censor?
    ‘Ward Three is a separate entity within the prison,’ Maeda explained, noting my surprise. ‘The most evil criminals are kept there. Compared to these Koreans, the prisoners
you’re used to in Ward Four are gentlemen. To inspect their correspondence, the censor has to be just as vicious and unmerciful. Sugiyama was not just an excellent guard, he was also the best
censor in the prison.’
    ‘But he seemed not to care for words . . .’ I said, unbelieving.
    ‘Quite. Since he was new to reading and writing, he could be an excellent censor.’
    ‘How?’
    The water boiling on the stove melded with his voice. Maeda cleared his throat. ‘When those Koreans poured into Ward Three, we found that we needed a different censorship method, because
they think differently from us Japanese. First we