このあくびがまた
The master's yawn, like the cry of a whale, is characterized by waves of intricate undulations. As it finally subsides, he slowly changes out of his bed clothes and heads off to the washroom to wash his face. The wife, who's been waiting in the wings, promptly folds up the bedding and bed clothes and sets into her cleaning routine. Just as the wife cleans per routine, the master washes his face per his own long-established routine. As I've previously described, his usual sounds of "ge-ge" and "ga-ga" echo from the washroom. After carfully parting his hair, he enters the living room in grand fashion, his Western-style hand towel draped over his shoulder, and casually takes his place by the long side of the brazier. At the mention of a long-sided brazier, some may imagine marbled zelkova wood, with inlaid copper lining, and a yound maiden seated thereby with freshly washed hair and one knee drawn up, tapping a long-necked pipe against the black-persimmon edging. In the case of our dear Kushami, though, the long-sided brazier is by no means anything so stylish. It's antiquated to the point that no layman could possibly discern what it's made of. The great merit of a long-sided brazier is the sheen it aquires through years of polishing, but in the case of this particular article, that's seldom seen a cleaning cloth and is greatly the worse for wear, it's entirely unclear what it's dark shadows hide, be it zelkova, cherry, or paulownia. When asked where it was procured, the master and his wife have no recollection of procuring it anywhere. In which case someone gifted it to them, yet they can identify no such giver. Such being the case, one has to ask if it's pilfered, and the answer here is none too clear. Long ago, among their relations, was an old retired couple. The couple passed away, and the master and his wife were asked to hold down the property. Then, as it's told, when it came time to move out and establish their own household, this brazier, which they'd been using as their own, just naturally came with. The whole thing seems a bit underhanded. At the same time, while a bit underhanded, it's not at all out of the ordinary. Take the banker, for example, who handles others' money every day. Over time, they say, he comes to regard this money as his own. Then there are government officials, servants of the citizenry entrusted with authority for handling affairs on behalf of those they represent. However, as they carry out business, day after day, wearing this mantle of borrowed authority, they're apt to lose their bearings, imagining their authority is their own and consigning the citizenry to irrelevance. Given the prevalence of such cases, it would hardly be proper to fault the master for sticky fingers. If the master is at fault for sticky fingers, then so too is the bulk of humanity.