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"So it's happened at last!" I told myself. "Just as I feared, I've committed a crime—without knowing it." Perspiring profusely and my heart beating wildly, I rushed to the room of my schoolmate and asked for his assistance in returning the watch, which I had evidently stolen from the clerk. My friend agreed and took the watch back to the clerk. Once he had explained that I was a somnambulist, the clerk was very understanding and agreed to consider the incident closed and forgotten.

After that shocking incident, however, word quickly got around that I was an incurable sleepwalker. Even in my classroom, I knew that the other students were talking about me behind my back.

With all my heart I yearned to be cured of my horrible affliction. There had to be a way out—some way out— and I was determined to find it, regardless of whatever sacrifice this might entail. Every day I bought and read books by the armful, tried various types of calisthenics to improve my health, and consulted several doctors. Far from improving, however, my condition went from bad to worse.

At first, the fits came over me only once or twice a month, fits in which my subconscious mind completely dominated my actions. And every time I learned what had happened only by seeing what I had taken or what I had left behind in some unfamiliar place. If only I hadn't left these evidences of my nocturnal wanderings, I told myself, it wouldn't be so bad. And yet, if I did not leave any evidence, then how was I ever to know what type of felony I had unconsciously committed?

One night I strayed out of my lodging house at about midnight and began to wander about the graveyard of a temple in the neighborhood. It happened that one of the office clerks who lived in the same house with me was returning from a late party, and as he came along the street beside the graveyard, he caught sight of my quietly moving figure beyond the low hedge. He quickly spread the report that a ghost was haunting the temple grounds. Later, when it was discovered that I had been the "ghost," I became the laughingstock of the whole neighborhood.

But, as you can well imagine, it was no laughing matter for me. Instead, it was a horrible tragedy from which I now seemed to have no escape. As for the nights—those quiet moments of darkness and calm which spell restful-ness to all ordinary human beings—they meant but one thing so far as I was concerned—fear. My state of mind finally became such that I grew to fear the very word "night"—and everything connected with the ritual of sleep.

Meanwhile, I continued to delve deeper and deeper into the workings of the human mind. What strange mechanism makes one act so abnormally, I asked myself over and over again. I was thankful that, despite all my anguish, I had not so far committed a serious crime. But what would happen, I asked myself, if I were to become responsible for some fatal tragedy? According to the many books on sleepwalking which I had accumulated and read with deepest absorption, ghastly crimes had been committed by somnambulists. Was it then not possible that I too might commit some such bloody act as murder?

Once caught in this web of thought, I could contain myself no longer. Deciding that the best course was to abandon my studies and return home, I wrote a long letter to my parents, explaining all the circumstances and asking their advice. And it was while I waited impatiently for a reply that the very catastrophe which I most feared actually came to pass. . . .

All this while Saito had been sitting motionless on his square cushion, taking in every word as if hypnotized. Outside, the sun was beginning to set, and as the New Year bustle of this popular hot-spring resort was now over, the absolute stillness seemed ominous.

During the brief pause which he allowed himself, Ihara eyed Saito intently, trying to fathom the others reaction to his story, while simultaneously trying to place the strange resemblance of his listener to another face which he had once known. . . somewhere. . .