Takeo Onsen was nearly empty that day.
It was late afternoon — that soft, bluish hour when steam hangs heavier in the corners and the world seems quieter than it really is.
Outside, the sky had the washed-out tone of paper left in the rain.
Inside, there were two pools: one marked 熱い — hot — and the other, in smaller writing, とても熱い — very hot.
Most people, myself included, stayed in the first.
The second wasn’t hotter.
It hurt.
I was rinsing off at the washing station when he first spoke.
An old man — skin like weathered rope, back bent but not broken.
He nodded at me and said, in slow, self-conscious English,
“Hello. Un… English okay… little.”
His name was Ichiro.
“It means first son,” he said, smiling like it was a secret he hadn’t shared in years.
And then added, “But my parents, they had five.”
He laughed to himself.
It was the kind of laugh that folded in on itself.
We slid into the hot pool side by side.
He waved at the very hot one.
“Not hot. Hurts.”
Then:
“Strange. Everyone wants strong feeling, but not too strong.”
He tapped his chest.
“Same with life.”
Ichiro spoke in fragments, each one separated by a long “un…” — his tongue searching through old songs and memories for the right words.
“I learn English… music. Beatles, Rolling Stones. Un… Simon… Garfunkel.”
He looked proud.
He hummed a line from Angie, but forgot the second half, shrugged, and leaned back against the stone.
He told me he had four grandchildren.
Showed me their names on a crumpled page tucked inside his towel bag.
“One trumpet, one dance. One always… angry,” he said, grinning.
He also had a dog.
“Ugly, small. I love him,” he said.
“Name is… un… Mike. Like Tyson.”
And he laughed again.
—
He greeted everyone who entered the bath.
Some he knew by name.
Some not.
Still, he offered each of them a short bow and a cheerful おつかれさま — as if he were the host of something more permanent than a bathhouse.
Later, after the others left and the steam grew thicker, he grew quiet.
“I have cancer,” he said suddenly, voice low and flat.
“Lung. Four.”
Stage four.
He looked straight ahead.
“Doctor say… I don’t need hospital. Because no money.”
He paused.
Then smiled, not with bitterness, but like someone who had long since handed over the weight.
“But… it’s okay. I am… ready.”
I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t know what to say.
So I just stayed there with him, shoulder to shoulder in the hot pool, nodding occasionally, not out of politeness, but because I wanted him to know I heard him.
Not as a tragedy.
Not as a story.
But as a person.
—
Wabi-Sabi in the Heat That Hurts
Ichiro didn’t go to the hotter pool.
He said it wasn’t worth it.
Not just because it hurt.
But because pain isn’t proof of anything.
“You go too deep,” he said, “you forget what you came for.”
He reminded me — maybe without meaning to — of something I’d once read in the Tao Te Ching:
“Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.”
Ichiro had done his work.
He had lived.
Raised kids.
Made music part of his voice.
Fed a dog named Mike.
Laughed when he could.
Suffered when he had to.
Now, he was just letting go.
Not with drama.
Not with resistance.
Just… readiness.
Like a hand opening in warm water.
—
When he left the bath, he stood slowly, bowed, and said,
“Good talk. Un… take care.”
I bowed back.
“Take care,” I said.
And then he was gone, towel over one shoulder, slippers shuffling lightly across the tiles, the steam folding back in behind him like a curtain.
I stayed in the hot pool a little longer.
The very hot one still bubbled beside me, empty.
Too intense.
Too much.
Most people avoided it.
Just like we avoid the parts of life that burn a little too clearly.
But maybe, like Ichiro, we’re not meant to seek the strongest sensations — only the real ones.
The ones that stay, even after we leave the room.
The ones that don’t need to be remembered in full,
only felt.
life 
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