Free The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima

he whiled away the time by poking his fingers into the holes in his black sweater, making them still larger.
    He became lost in the sensations of his body as it gradually became warm, and in the voice of the storm outside;he surrendered himself to the euphoria created by his trusting devotion itself. The fact that he was lacking in the ability to imagine all sorts of things that might keep the girl from coming did not trouble him in the least.
    And thus it was that he laid his head on his knees and fell asleep.
    When Shinji opened his eyes, the blazing fire was there before him, burning as brightly as ever, as though he had only closed his eyes the moment before. But a strange, indistinct shadow was standing across the fire from him. He wondered if he were dreaming.
    It was a naked girl who stood there, her head bent low, holding a white chemise to dry at the fire. Standing as she was, the chemise held down toward the fire with both hands, she was revealing the whole upper half of her body.
    When he realized that this was certainly no dream, the idea occurred to Shinji that, by using just a little cunning and pretending to be still asleep, he could watch her through half-closed eyes. And yet, her body was almost too beautiful to be watched without moving at all.
    Diving women are accustomed to drying their entire bodies at a fire upon coming out of the water. Hence Hatsue had apparently not given the matter a second thought upon doing so now. When she arrived at the meeting place, there the fire was, and there the boy was—fast asleep. So, making up her mind as quickly as a child, she evidently had decided to waste no time in drying her wet clothes and her wet body while the boy slept. In short, the idea that she was undressing in front of a manhad never crossed her mind. She was simply undressing before a fire—because this happened to be the only fire there was, because she was wet.
    If Shinji had had more experience with women, as he looked at the naked Hatsue standing there across the fire, in the storm-encircled ruins, he would have seen unmistakably that hers was the body of a virgin. Her skin, far from fair-complexioned, had been constantly bathed in sea-water and stretched smooth; and there, upon the wide expanse of a chest that had served for many long dives, two small, firm breasts turned their faces slightly away from each other, as though abashed, and lifted up two rose-colored buds. Since Shinji, fearful of being discovered, had barely opened his eyes, the girl’s form remained a vague outline and, peered at through a fire that reached as high as the concrete ceiling, became almost indistinguishable from the wavering flames themselves.
    But then the boy happened to blink his eyes, and for an instant the shadow of his lashes, magnified by the firelight, moved across his cheeks.
    Quick as thought, the girl hid her breasts with the white chemise, not yet completely dry, and cried out:
    “Keep your eyes shut!”
    The honest boy immediately clamped his eyes tightly shut. Now that he thought about it, it had certainly been wrong of him to pretend to be still sleeping.… But then, was it his fault that he had waked up when he did? Taking courage from this just and fair reasoning, for a second time he opened wide his black, beautiful eyes.
    Completely at a loss as to what to do, the girl still had not even so much as started putting on her chemise.Again she cried out in a sharp, childlike voice:
    “Keep your eyes shut!”
    But the boy no longer made the slightest pretense at closing his eyes. Ever since he could remember, he had been used to seeing the women of this fishing village naked, but this was the first time he had ever seen the girl he loved naked. And yet he could not understand why, just because she was naked, a barrier should have risen between them, making difficult the everyday civilities, the matter-of-course familiarities. With the straightforwardness of youth, he rose to his feet.
    The boy and girl