"Your comic strips are getting quite a reputation, aren't they? There's no competing with amateurs—they're so foolhardy they don't know when to be afraid. But don't get overconfident. Your composition is still not worth a damn." He dared to act the part of the master to me! I felt my usual empty tremor of anguish at the thought, "I can imagine the expression on his face if I showed him my 'ghost pictures'." But I protested instead, "Don't say such things. You'll make me cry." Horiki looked all the more elated with himself. "If all you've got is just enough talent to get along, sooner or later you'll betray yourself." Just enough talent to get along—I really had to smile at that. Imagine saying that I had enough talent to get along! It occurred to me that a man like myself who dreads human beings, shuns and deceives them, might on the surface seem strikingly like another man who reveres the clever, wordly-wise rules for success embodied in the proverb "Let sleeping dogs lie." Is it not true that no two human beings understand anything whatsoever about each other, that those who consider themselves bosom friends may be utterly mistaken about their fellow and, failing to realize this sad truth throughout a lifetime, weep when they read in the newspapers about his death? Horiki, I had to admit, participated in the settlement after my running away, though reluctantly, under pressure from Shizuko, and he was now behaving exactly like the great benefactor to whom I owed my rehabilitation or like the go-between of a romance. The look on his face as he lectured me was grave. Sometimes he would barge in late at night, dead-drunk, to sleep at my place, or stop by to borrow five yen
