"Punching and Punched Poet Tavern" ep. 27 "The Imperial University Student in the Moonlight"

The eggplant-colored sunset dyed the dark blue robes into a deep indigo.
As always, they are singing the "Song of the Empty Wallet" in unison.

Then, unfamiliar students in black robes approach us sluggishly, as if walking through mud.
Their backs are scorched by the setting sun, and their shadows swallow up the dark blue robes.

"...-chan?"

There is a faint, blue scent of carrion.
It's cobalt...

When I turn around, there is a man wearing an out-of-season cloak fluttering in the wind.
Its hem is soaked through with cobalt.

"Saku-chan!"

I had stopped in my tracks.
I couldn't move, as if my feet were stuck in the mud.
For some reason, I feel a stinging itchiness in a line along my cheek.

"Are you crying?"

Now that I think about it, I can see two departing red ovals and the setting sun in my right eye.
Judging by the way the light is breaking and flowing, I might be crying.
But inside my heart, a terrifying amount of nothingness is piling up.

"Hey, look!"

I look where Dai-chan is pointing.
A flock of bats is dancing in the sky that has begun to dye itself deep indigo.
One, two... one, two, three... four...
There must be well over a hundred.

"Hey, Dai-chan."
"Hmm?"

Dai-chan glances at me while adjusting his collar, which is lined with gold buttons.

"Which do you like better, Nagon or Shikibu?"
I felt embarrassed, so I pulled my student cap down low and asked in a muffled voice.

──Clap!

"What are you talking about? Don't tell me you've forgotten?"
Dai-chan, wearing his dark blue robes, stares right through my pupils with mischievous eyes, his hands still clapped together.

"We fought over Nagon, didn't we!"
Dai-chan continues in a mock-tearful voice while circling around me.

"And you, without even feeling guilty, were dyed in the summer sunset with Nagon... the taste of my pillow that night..."
"The taste of your pillow?"
"The... taste... of my pillow..."
I desperately tried to suppress the trembling of my shoulder bones.
Dai-chan is already twitching his throat, writhing on the sunset-colored ground.

"Can you stand?"
"How could I possibly stand?"

I carried Dai-chan on my back and walked.
It might be the first time.
Warm and heavy, it is life, it is a body.

"That pillow of yours from that day must have tasted quite good, right?"
"Are you still going on about that..."
"So, what kind of..."

Suddenly, a burp escaped.

"Hey! You womanizer! You're remembering it right now, aren't you!"
"Huh?"
"Just now! Your stomach was growling, wasn't it?"

Dai-chan jumps off my back and pinches the area around my ribs.
"Is it here? Isn't it in here?"
He has the face of a boy again, completely.
I suppose I do too.
I have no memory of walking after that.
As proof, the dark blue robes that had transformed into deep indigo returned to their original dark blue, covered in faint gray sand.

"It's a race!"
Dai-chan shouts from the bottom of the stairs.
"Did you forget that my legs are longer than yours?"
That is likely not the case.
"Oh? You said it, didn't you?"
The next moment, with a loud thud, we are both racing up two, three steps at a time.

"Saku-chan? If you break this boarding house, you're going to Rashomon!"
Iyo-san yells from the back.
Dai-chan and I look at each other,
"Kyoto... that's nice."
"Then you'd better do it for real! My Uji-kintoki... hey, wait! That's cowardly!"
While Dai-chan was busy licking his lips over imaginary sweets along with his rumbling stomach, I dashed up to the tenth step.

"Hey, Saku-chan! Not now! You shouldn't be doing that now!"
Dai-chan is choking.
I start to say sorry, but the words hang in the air.
Instead, I turn around, grab the arm covering his face, and push him forward, saying, "Go on, you go first!"
"Whoa!"
Making an irregular sound, I give a firm push to Dai-chan's back as he moves ahead.

"Ah..."
In an instant, I despair at my own stupidity.
My right toe leaves the ground, and my spine curves toward my belly.
My eyes vaguely envelop that dust-covered lightbulb, and my solar plexus softly vanishes.

There is nothing more terrifying than an unwanted fall.

I failed to grab the hand Dai-chan reached out.

At that moment, what I saw was the face of Iyo-san, holding a rolled-up literary magazine in one hand and threatening, "Go!"
Her finger was pointing in the exact opposite direction of that gate.

"Ouch..."
I rub my head while dripping blue-black ink from my fountain pen.
"Are you an idiot? Saku-chan, you've always been a bit of a blockhead."
Dai-chan adds to my titles.
"What is it... make up your mind whether I'm a blockhead or a womanizer."
"A blockheaded, bumbling womanizer..."

Outside the window, blue and black are mixing seamlessly.
The chestnut-colored moonlight dyes the manuscript on the small table a soot-stained yellow.

──The students in high-collared uniforms under the moonlight pass through the gate, fearing the warning bell.
They must be bumping their wings, which they have spread quite properly, and making the souls of the tides flowing within them clash on sound waves.
They will be buried in the flock.
They will be merry in the land where they are cast out.
On the night of the new moon, your own eyes...

All night long, I continued to drop blue-black voices onto the paper.

──I wonder what the black-robed ones at the Bat Imperial University are doing right about now.

I placed a pillow under the head of Dai-chan, who had fallen asleep as if collapsing while sitting.
"Don't eat it..."
I hold the back of my hand to his nose.
A warm breeze hits it periodically.

I let out a yawn and stick my face out the window.

Two bats are sleeping happily upside down under the eaves, even though it is night.

"You'll be late."

Saying that, I traced the shape of the moon with my pen tip and dyed the squares of the manuscript paper with the color of the night sky again.

As always, the shadows of the bats swayed every time the wind blew.
The moon has a mischievous look on its face.

Morning still seems far away.

(To be continued)

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A story about a protagonist who doesn't want to lose to Yudai Chiba on the screen.

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The peach blossoms have begun to bloom.

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Written by Yukio
The story takes an unexpected turn.
The era shifts from Taisho to Showa.
Though the times change, the hearts of the young men remain the same.
The splendor of the universal, found here.