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At this moment, the master's dull and hazy eyes, which I described in detail the day prior, fix their stare on the cabinet cross the room. The height of this cabinet is about one meter, and it's partitioned horizontally into top and bottom shelves, each with two papered sliding doors. The bottom shelf all but touches the corner of his bedding, so it's only natural that the master's line of sight, as he sits himself up and opens his eyes, should land here. The patterned paper of the sliding doors is torn in places, revealing curious designs in the paper batting that backs it up. Some of these batting papers are printed matter. Others are hand-scribed. Some are face down and some are upside down. As the master surveys this batting, curiosity gets the better of him, and he finds himself wanting to know what's written on these various fragments. It may seem odd that the same master, who just moments ago was angry enough to seize the cartman's wife, push her mug into a pine tree, and use it to scrape the rough bark smooth, is suddenly fixated on reading paper scraps, but such is the nature of sparky hotheads. It's no different than a crying child pacified by a sweet. In former times, when the master lodged in a certain Buddhist temple, a handful of nuns occupied the adjoining room. When it comes to vile women, nuns are as vile as they come, and these vile nuns read the master like a book. While cooking their food, they were known to tap their kettle and sing to the beat. "The crow that cried's now smiling wide, the crow that cried's now smiling wide." The master to this day harbors an intense dislike of nuns, but be that as it may, the nuns were not off base. While the master is highly animated, crying, laughing, swaggering, or sulking in the extreme, none of these moods ever lasts for long. Seen in a positive light, he doesn't fixate on or obsess over things, and his outlook on life is constantly refreshing itself. In simpler, more vulgar terms, though, he's a shallow, wavering, and highly cantankerous brat-child. Given his brat-child nature, it should be no suprise when his hankering for a quarrel, once he's roused himself to his senses, might abruptly fall away and yield instead to intense interest in deciphering the writings on old paper batting in a cabinet door. The first to paper to hit his eye is an upside-down image of Itō Hirobumi. At it's top is inscribed, "September 28, Meiji 11." The Korean Resident-General, it seems, from these earlier days was already chasing his own edict-adorned tail.