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He was playing tag with a younger girl behind the houses. The neighborhood was still bright, but it was just about time for the gas lamp on the corner to be lit.
“Come over here!”
With a comfortable lead, he looked over his shoulder at the girl, who was ‘it.’ She chased after him with all the strength she had, her eyes locked on him. Gazing at her face, he wondered if she was making a strangely serious face.
Her face remained with him for a long time. But at some point in the following months and years, it vanished completely from his mind.
Then, twenty years later, he happened to run into her aboard a steam train in the snow country. As it became dark outside the window, the scent of his damp shoes and overcoat suddenly struck him. Then:
“It’s been a while.”
With a cigarette hanging out of his mouth (this was he and his fellows’ third day out of jail), her face suddenly filled his eyes. She had recently lost her husband and was speaking enthusiastically of her parents and siblings. Unconsciously reverting to a twelve-year-old, he gazed at her face and wondered if she was making a strangely serious face.
They are now married and living somewhere in the suburbs. But since then, he has not once seen her strangely serious face.
(December 1, 1926)