「
「そんなに
「
「起きるとおっしゃってもお起きなさらんじゃありませんか」
「
「いつでもですわ」
「
「どっちが
"You need to be there by nine, do you not? Better get moving or you won't make it."
"I know that. That's why I'm getting up now." This response, coming from somewhere under the bedding, is none too credible. The wife's been through this before, assured that the master was waking up, only to have him fall back to sleep on her. "Well get up then." She stays on him, ever vigilant. Being told to get up, after one's already said one's getting up, infuriates a self-centered man like the master, who at this point finally throws off the bedding under which he's been hiding. Both his eyes are wide open.
"Enough of your racket. If I say I'm getting up, I'm getting up."
"To say you're getting up is one thing. I'll believe it when I see it."
"When have I ever backtracked, faking and staying in bed?"
"Only all the time."
"Nonsense!"
"We'll see who's talking nonsense." The wife stands her ground, broom planted firmly by the master's pillow, with a defiant scowl on her face. At this moment Yatchan, the youngster from the cartman's place that back's to the master's, breaks out bawling. Yatchan is under orders from the cartman's wife to parrot the master's outbursts with fits of his own. This is all well and good for the cartman's wife, who earns pocket money by setting her child off whenever the master is riled, but it's a terrible imposition on the child himself. With a mother like that, he'd just as well bawl all day, straight from morning through night. The master, for his part, should sense what's going on and refrain from his outbursts, if nothing other than for Yatchan's sake. Kaneda may be funding all this, but only a full-fledged deviant, worse by far than Tendō Kōhei, would carry out such asinine orders. It would be one thing if Yatchan's bawling was only in response to the master's outbursts, but every time the local rogues, again at Kaneda's bidding, came out to harangue the master with shouts of "Imado no Tanuki," Yatchan has to bawl. Whether the master is truly riled or not, his outrage is anticipated, and Yatchan is hence set to bawling. In these cases, it's unclear whether the master's outbursts are setting off Yatchan's bawling or Yatchan's bawling is triggering the master's outbursts. The master has thin skin and frayed nerves, so a simple scolding of Yatchan, which starts him bawling cross the way, is as good as a slap to the master's face. It's told that in Western countries, in times past, when a criminal fled the land and escaped justice, they would sculpt an image in his likeness and burn him in effigy. Among Kaneda's minions, it would seem, is a strategist well-versed in such traditions and applying them tactfully in present-day form. Whether the boys of Rakuunkan or Yatchan's mother, the master is ill-equipped to counter the forces that assail him. Stated more generally, the master is ill-equipped to process anything and everything that surrounds him. There's more I could expound on, but all in due time, lest I stray too far from the matter at hand.