The Devil's Disciple by Shiro Hamao

the sake of justice. It brags that it is on the side of the truth. But how many laws have been made to serve the cause of iniquity! And how powerfully, how tyrannically, has iniquity yoked the law to its purpose!
    The time allotted to me is short. I must complete this manuscript as soon as possible. Let me hasten to record the facts.
    I met Michiko for the first time on an autumn day three years ago. My mother had uttered her final curse at the world and followed my father in death around the time I graduated from secondary school in my home town and I had been sent to Tokyo to continue my education under the care of my uncle. Because this uncle had once studied with Michiko’s father, who was a university professor, I visited Michiko’s house not long after I arrived in Tokyo.
    From the first time I met Mrs Kawakami and her daughter I fell in love with Michiko. She was so much more approachable than her mother. How she welcomed me, who had only just arrived from the country, into her home.
    Of course Michiko was a proper young lady then.
    If there is such a thing in this world as love at first sight, then surely that is what I experienced with Michiko. From the first time I saw her and with the first words we spoke, I was smitten.
    She responded with a warm intimacy and I became a frequent visitor at her home even after I had found my own lodgings in a boarding house. Beginning that autumn, this young man from the country lived entirely for Michiko.
    As our interactions increased I discovered that she was surrounded by quite a number of admirers. Among her visitors there were even several from the same university I attended. Surrounded by so many men, Michiko was never at a loss, and she managed these interactions with exquisite tact and social poise. For this reason it was impossible to determine whom she liked best. Idiot that I was, I trusted what her mother said, and believed that she held me in special esteem.
    Michiko, for her part, scrupulously avoided any serious communication. She was like this with everyone I think. She spoke to all of us about music, literature and theatre, and seemed to enjoy teaching us how to play bridge and mahjong.
    During all of this I was quietly in love with her. I was young. Actually I am still young. But when I first met Michiko I was even younger. Still a child really. There was nothing strange about a young man with such pure feelings loving her with all of his being. But if one thinks about it, Michiko’s attitude was also responsible for nurturing my obsession with her.
    But I confess. I did not feel confident that I would be chosen from among all those men to be her husband. Yet like all people in the throes of love I combined an extreme humility with the most outlandish hopes. For this reason, when I heard that Michiko was to marry Oda Seizō I was in no way surprised, but this did not prevent me from feeling that I had been forced to swallow boiling water. I suffered greatly. I can still remember it – on the night of her wedding (I was invited to the reception but how could I possibly stand the sight of her as a bride?), I didn’t know what to do with myself and wandered around Tokyo, going from one bar to another. In the end I passed out drunk in a filthy house somewhere in the alleys of Asakusa, putting an ugly end to a wretched evening.
    Michiko was now Mrs Oda, but she still continued to see me. At first I was determined not to see her any more, but when letters from her kept arriving my resolve faltered and our meetings brought me a potent combination of suffering and happiness.
    Michiko began to reveal her affection for me only after her marriage. She wrote to me often. Of course these letters did not contain any explicit declarations of her feelings, but to a sensitive young man in love they left a much stronger impression than any conventional love letter stringing together half-baked protestations of love. Michiko had a real gift for writing this