common occurances which affect kyoto japan
The servant put his sword back in its scabbard and rested his hand on its hilt while he listened to her story unsympathetically. Sure enough, while he listened, his right hand nursed the red pus-filled pimple on his cheek. As he was listening to her story, he felt the courage that he had lacked under the gate a few moments earlier building up inside him. It was leading him in the completely opposite direction of the courage he had when he climbed up the gate and grabbed the old woman. The servant was no longer debating whether to starve to death or become a thief. The way he felt now, the idea of starving to death was virtually unthinkable.
"That's definitely true," the servant agreed derisively when she had finished speaking. He took a step forward and suddenly tore his right hand away from the pimple. Grabbing the woman by the scruff of the neck, he said to her in a biting tone:
"Well then, you won't hold it against me if I try to steal your clothes. If I don't, you see, I too will starve."
The servant deftly stripped the woman of her kimono. She tried to cling to his leg, but he kicked her violently onto the corpses. The entrance to the stairwell was a mere five paces away. In the blink of an eye, the servant ran down the steep staircase and into the darkness, carrying the dusky-red kimono under his arm.