お目出たき人

A first-person narrator recounts yearning for a young woman named Tsuru, describing how a past heartbreak intensified his craving for female companionship and led him to imagine marriage with her while fearing social ridicule and family opposition. He relates chance encounters, missed meetings, and the slow unfolding and stalling of courtship, weighing physical desire against commitment to his work and preservation of self. Interwoven are scenes of domestic routine, reunions with former classmates, and reflective passages on loneliness, the psychological power of attraction, and the tension between idealized love and personal integrity.