There was a man from Nagasaki, from a hill village east of the city, beyond the saddle, who for forty years made window and door frames and is now eighty-four.

Eighty-four, which is to say that on that day he was three and a half, and he was behind the hill with his mother.

His mother never spoke of it, his family tell me, and of that day he remembers nothing of his own: he remembers the things he was told, and he says them as things told.

Told by others, then: the rain that came in the afternoon, the dead fish in the ditch, the ditch water drunk for three days because the main was stopped.

The main stopped and the bus stopped, and of the two weeks after, in the family, nothing was ever known: his mother skipped them, and she skipped them always at the same place, the way you skip a step that is no longer there.

Stopped the matter stayed as well, for eighty years. The matter is a line: the State drew an area around the city and said that whoever was inside the area was a survivor and whoever was outside had only been near.

Near, Terada's village was. By how much, I could not say exactly and no one in the family says it the same way: some say two hills, some say one.

One thing they all know, though, and it is that the line runs down the middle of a road. On one side of the road the houses are inside. On the other side of the road the houses are outside. The houses are the same and the road is six metres wide.

Six metres, and a paper. The paper had been given to him by a clerk in nineteen ninety-six, and since then Terada had carried it to eleven meetings, to two lawyers and to a judge, and he had never opened it in front of anyone because each time the turn belonged to someone else.

Someone else spoke, yes, and spoke well. In two thousand twenty-four the city court ruled on forty-four people like him and recognised fifteen.

Fifteen yes and twenty-nine no, and for the twenty-nine the court did not explain where the difference ran, or it explained it in words that lawyers understand.

Lawyers understand this too: that the State pays the medical costs already. The care is equal, the name is not. And when a thing is equal in everything but the name, you find out that what you wanted was the name, and the finding out comes late.

Late was that Sunday as well. That Sunday was the Sunday of the anniversary, eighty-one, and in the hall there were the representatives, the chairman of the survivors' council who is eighty-five, and the prime minister.

At eleven the official at the back of the hall stood up and straightened his jacket, which is the way of saying that the time is up without saying it. Time being up Terada knew well, because in eighty years of queues he had learned that it is always up while a man is still opening something.

What he was opening was the paper. The paper was half open on his knees, with the middle fold arching and not wanting to lie down.

Down it would not lie, and so Terada put his open hand over the fold, and with his hand over the fold he rose from the chair by half a palm, no more, enough for a seated person to count as standing to whoever is looking from the back.

From the back someone said his name quietly, perhaps to stop him, perhaps not: it was never known who it was and no one asked.

No one, in that room, spoke out of turn. The turn belonged to the chairman, who was eighty-five and who had already said his sentence, and the chairman's sentence had been a sentence for everyone.

For everyone, yes. But Terada said: "Give me the name. The care I have already."

Then he sat down. He sat down the way you sit down when you have finished, that is all at once, and the paper slid off his knees and stayed open on the floor between his shoes.

The answer came at once and was courteous. It was courteous and it was about medical costs: that to the unrecognised the State gives allowances for medical costs equal to those of the recognised, and that it will go on giving them.

Giving them was a thing already done. Terada had had those allowances for eleven years and with those allowances he had had the cataract done on both eyes, one at a time, a year apart.

A minute apart the official said the name of the next item and then gave thanks, and the hall began that noise of chairs which is always the same in every hall in the world.

Of the world outside you could hear the cicadas, because in Nagasaki the ninth of August is hot.

Terada picked the paper up off the floor. He turned it the right way round. Then he folded it along the folds that were already there, one at a time, first the two long ones and then the three short ones, the way you fold a thing that has been folded many times and has learned where to fold.

Folded like that it fitted in a pocket. He put it in his pocket.