This time after reading Takadai’s letter, O Kino laughed out loud. But she gave the same reply to the old servant.
O Kino was very worried about whether Takadai Jiro was right in the head because his choices did not seem correct.
However, the servant insisted that until he had fallen in love with Kino, he had been perfectly fine. But for the past three days all that the servant could do was to listen to the poems that Takadai Jiro had made about Kinu's beauty and his love.
However, O Kino was very firm in her reply and asked the servant to repeat the reply to his master.
On hearing her reply, Takadai was miserable for some more time. After that he wrote a letter to O Kino's father.
When the father read the letter, he replied that he would not influence his daughter in love and that he firmly believed that the diving girls were very strong in mind, heart and body and that he could not influence Kino in such a thing as her marriage.
Takadai's heart was broken when he heard that there was nothing more that he could say and nothing more he could do.
After that, he retired to his room in the inn and he never left the place.
Day-by-day he grew thinner and was becoming an invalid.
Takadai wrote a last letter to Kinu and as soon as the villages of Oiso were asleep, he went to the cottage belonging to the diving girl and slipped the note under the door after that he went to the beach.
There he got into a boat and rode himself about a hundred yards from shore and jumped overboard into the water and drowned and killed himself.
Adapted from Japanese Folk-lore
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