The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

neither self nor other.
Somewhat bored, Keiko was putting on lipstick.
“Perhaps we should go?”
Faced with the old man’s equivocation, she took on
protective coloring from her dress and began slipping
around the room like a great languid tropical serpent.
Her discovery was that the shelf nearest the roof was
divided into some forty compartments, and each of
them contained a dusty little flag.
Drawn to the bright reds and yellows and greens of
the loosely rolled flags, she stood gazing up at them
for a time, arms folded. Then, suddenly, she laid a
hand on the sharp, gleaming ivory of the boy’s naked
shoulder.
“What are these flags for?”
He pulled back in surprise. “We’re not using them
just at the moment. They’re signal flags. We only use
the blinker. At night.”
He pointed at the signal light in the corner of the
room. Hurriedly his gaze returned to the desk. Keiko
looked over his shoulder at sketches of ship funnels.
He paid no attention.
“May I see one?”
“Please.”
He had been hunched as low as possible over the