Kiriko’s ear was small and soft but not fleshy, and Junji could fit all of it
into his mouth. His disappointment vanished.
But the fact that Junji had felt an urge to touch Kiriko’s earlobes at all—
there was something in this that filled him with a sense of guilt. Because
for Junji, this desire was linked to the abnormal excitement he had felt on a
previous occasion, when he had fingered the earlobe of a prostitute.
Junji had scarcely known what he was doing when he had pinched that
woman’s earlobe—his first earlobe. It wasn’t that he had admired its shape,
and pinched it for that reason, but then what was it? Why, just when he was
feeling such self-hatred, such a powerful aversion to the idea of touching
any part of a woman at all—why had his hand moved to her ear? Junji
himself couldn’t say.
Yet the cold feeling of that earlobe had instantly cleansed him of his filth.
The earlobe was just as round and plump as an earlobe ought to be—it was
small enough that Junji could squeeze it between the tips of his thumb and
forefinger, no bigger than that—yet it filled him with a sense of the beauty
of life. The smooth skin, the gentle swelling—the woman’s earlobe was
like a mysterious jewel. Her purity had remained intact there, inside it. The
earlobe held dew like droplets of the essence of female beauty. A
sentimentality like yearning welled up inside Junji. He had never known
anything with a texture like this. It was like touching the lovely girl’s soul.
“What on earth are you doing?” The woman shook her head cruelly.
Even after he’d left the woman’s house, Junji said nothing to his friends
about the ear. They would only have laughed at him if he had. And though
it would be difficult to bring that sense of excitement to life within him
again, ever again, it became Junji’s secret—a secret that would probably
stay with him for the rest of his life.
Still, when Junji considered that his desire to touch Kiriko’s earlobe had
originated in his memories of a prostitute’s earlobe, he quite naturally
