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Rh told my mother about you and she has said, with tears in her eyes, how much she wanted to meet you and thank you, and that’s why I brought you to­ day.

“And also,” he soon continued, “there was another reason for bringing you to the mill. Perhaps you know that the owner of that mill is the father of that Okawa I knifed the other day?”

“Yes,” I nodded.

“That’s why I think I was in the wrong the other day. Of course, it’s mean to bully younger boys, but defiance, when a personal grievance enters into it, is worse, it seems to me. If Okawa had been alone that day—that Okawa who is always jeering at me just because my mother works in his mill—I don’t think I would have gone so far as to use a knife. When I realized what I had done, I howled at my own meanness.”

I watched the red evening sun between the roofs of the town as it sank into the sea.

Two or three years passed. We both became students of the same high school. Sakai received a scholarship from the prefecture, while I, somehow or other, succeeded in passing the entrance examination.

We were lying in the grass on a hill that overlooked the school building and talking idly as the summer sun shone down pleasantly on our faces and our new gold buttons.

“I still keep my cocoon,” said Sakai, as if he had suddenly called it to mind.