When my stepmother Nanako, who had moved to Hokkaido together with us due to my father's job transfer, came back this summer to check on me, I still couldn't treat her as a mother. Despite her unchanged beauty, I, in the throes of puberty, found myself unable to interact with her as a son would. On a sweltering afternoon, as I watched Nanako hang laundry on the balcony, the sweat trickling down her neck, the underarm sweat seeping out, and her blouse soaked with perspiration, I unwittingly began to perceive her not as a mother, but as a woman, stirred by improper desires by her sensuous sweat.
