Rikako occasionally raised her amorous eyes to me as if peeping at my face. I was pretty wandered why she had such an expression on that particular day, though by the time I came to know the reason for it, I had already felt that she loved me. It was convenient that neither I had an attempt to snatch her away from her husband nor there even existed a necessity to do so, because it had already occurred that her husband had snatched her from me. Thus my misery fortunately ended up with a happy result, though I did not know whether it would be bringing just another misery to me. Q snatched my wife Rikako from me, to be sure, but it is not totally wrong to say I gave her to him. Among the three of us, there seemed to be such a prick that arrowed nothing to work easily. It was just an ordinary affair commonly occurring in the ordinary world, it is said, but there was something latent within that ordinary situation, which does not seem to me so ordinary as well. The tendency of the human mind is such that although two individuals can get on with each other, three people living together is pretty insecure; if you happened to be getting on, then it is because one of the three is wonderfully smart, otherwise it is because there is an imbecile in the company. Be it applied to our case, it is no doubt that among the three of us I was by far the most ridiculous fool indeed. Especially, as Q and I were concerned, I was acting a clown in everything. We were of the same age, of the same school year and even of the same major, and we were also boarding together in Rikako's house, one living in the upstairs and the other in the downstairs, both desperately trying to catch her attention. One day we brought home a diamond specimen from the university, to do a work assigned in the crystallography class, and we showed it Rikako for the first time, which, as things appeared later, was the occasion her mind started oscillating between Q and I. That is, man, we started her life with the diamond. When that happened, I was in Q's room and we were discussing on the diamond's crystal plane, which I had measured minutes ago in my chamber downstairs. Then she brought cups of tea into the room and started to talk with us, as she always did, and asked a question where that diamond came from. However, though I was familiar with things like the relation between diamond and its base rock, the mode of occurrence and natural crystal planes, I did not know such an ordinary thing the girl most wanted to know. Then to my astonishment Q immediately declared that it was from Minas Geraes. When even I did not even know in what country Minas Geraes was, how Rikako, who was just graduating from a girls' high school, could understand such a thing? I was surprised and could not help doubting his senses, though it did not last long. Indeed, while he was showing the knowledge to me, my astonishment immediately turned into a sense of respect for him and, again, started to change into a totally different kind of astonishment; Q, facing to my doubtful face, bluntly said that the diamond's base rock was a conglomerate, and that its denudation and sedimentation were showing traces of a volcanic activity, meaning that it must be ejected in the Ordovician period. When the base rock was a conglomerate and it was ejected in the Ordovician period, are there any conclusion we can make, other than that it was from Minas Geraes? he said. When I did not even know what Minas Geraes was, why Q was so familiar with the connection between the place and the diamond? I could do nothing but just getting surprised, and, quite forgetting Rikako being beside us, I dear asked where on the earth Minas Geraes was. Then he became silent, as if he was hesitating to further make me embarrassed in her face, and wrote down MINAS GERAES with a pencil, saying that it was something coffee. Uh-huh, you mean Brazil, I said. Only it was too late. It was my first defeat in the presence of her, but Rikako was so young that she was making herself busy comparing our stocks of knowledge all the time. It was like I had been a loser all my life. From then on I started studying like hell, shutting myself up in my room downstairs, in an attempt to compensate my first loss. However, when I was studying so hard, he was also studying as hard as I, and when we made the same effort, it always meant that I could gain just far less than him. When I was reading Lange, he was reading Agricola; when I was reading Humboldt, he Lorentz and Moissan; when I got into Moissan at last, then he had already started Wolf and Haslinger. I studied so hard day and night, but I could never ever catch up with him. And are there anything more vexing you than seeing your rival, living in a room just above your head, keeps going far and far away? By the time he had gone too far beyond me, however, I found in myself nothing but a sense of respect for him. From the beginning I was not a match for him, I noticed. I thought how I had been silly, how in vain I had been bothered myself with what I thought was my rival, while I was not even worth competing with. I felt pity on myself. Besides, Q had his own rival called A, who was always overwhelming him. A had taken the advantage all the way long, just like Q had kept outdistancing me in everything. When Q was studying Neptunism, A was studying Plutonism; when Q set about Uniformitarianism, A had been already occupied with Peyer's theory of evolution. It was such a situation that pushed Q to do more and more hard work. Observing Q was overwhelmed, I would give him whips of words to spur him on further effort, but it was purely from my pleasure to assist him, rather than that of revenge. When Q was defeated at the in-class presentation, however, I felt so depressed as if I had been defeated on behalf of him. I felt blue even so much as when Q had defeated me on the day of Minas Geraes. Criticism against Q's project had started around when he was explaining how the differentiation of magma was related to its mother solution, which was one of the biggest concern in petrology, and he was most severely attacked when A suddenly declared that the aerometry for silicic acid, which was the mother solution to produce obsidian, was the invention of Charles Darwin. I was really surprised, and so was Q, who, as well as the rest of the students, had simply believed that Darwin was no more than a biologist. This was enough to prove that A had been the best informed about our discussion topics, such as specific gravity differences and sedimentary sites of minerals in lava. After that, something like the law of crystallography had gradually governed the classroom: each student started sinking as to his relative density to the others. I was far shallower than Q, A was far deeper than him, and between A and I was laying such an immeasurable distance, so I could even visualize the limit of my future. From then on I grew humble in everything I did. Of course I could not help feeling humble before Q, but it occurred that I felt the same toward my other friends, neighbors, people above my age, and even those who were younger than I. Then it was such a moment when I started thinking about the existence of God. When we are, without an exception, made up of the same number of muscles and bones, how come we are so unequal in terms of aptitudes? thought I. It was my first step toward Him. As I recall such an episode, I know it was only showing that I had something special among my friends. But in that time I was only thinking that it was the product of my defeatism. Anyway, my humility made Q and I closer than before. In everything he helped me, saying that I had a very good nature incomparable among our friends. He praised that the work of my brain, which was so brilliant that it was always moving in the opposite direction and only by this reason happened to be slow-witted, was the real locus of creativity that could not be attained by people like Q and A, who did not have the power of my back-spinning brain. Furthermore, he started treating Rikako and I together so kindly, as if he was delighted to see we became closer. I thought he changed so much, but I could only think that it was an _expression of his great virtue. I kept depending on his generousness, and finally we decided to marry. Whether I seduced her first or she seduced me before it, I do not know. The only certain thing is that there were no people in the house, and that it was the beginning of such a misfortune. When it happened I was, as my routine, doing blowpipe analysis of trachytic rocks that I had gathered at the top of a volcano, she suddenly went into my room, asking me to fix her RadioRayer. By that time it had already become my custom that I would quit my work whenever she spoke something to me, and just the time I threw up my study, I always felt how stupid I was. Q, unlike me, would even hardly turn his head while he was studying. In my part I threw up my study and followed her, admiring his seriousness and feeling anger to myself. I went into her room, saying that an educated lady like you should not disturb men while they were studying. I ask you anything in anytime because it's you, she said in response, it's only you and nobody else I can ask to fix things like a RadioRayer, which touches my skin. But, said I, you use my brain quite often, so that it's becoming more and more degraded. If you want to use my head, I said, you should do it as to pull up my intelligence -- for even in the usual time I cannot help thinking about you and you and you. Suddenly she became silent, got frozen, her head still on my knees. I looked down for a while to see her face, believing that she was weeping. She was weeping because I had said something that I had no liberty to say. I thought I should say something to excuse and apologize, so I tried to help her up. But in her part she mistook it as my attempt to love her, clinging to me and did not come off at all. Then my brain got confused more and more, did not know what was what, and the senses of the time and the place became distant and detached from us.