The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

“Make me a girl who does not love you but needs
you for your money.”
“Precisely.”
The thought greatly excited Momoko. What fun, she
said dreamily.
The excitement that had replaced her gloom was
altogether too bright and open. It put me out of sorts.
She continued. “And of course there is a grain of
truth in it. Mother and Father make a great secret of it,
and I have never said anything myself; but we’re not all
that well off. There was trouble in the bank and Father
took responsibility and all the land at home is
mortgaged. Father is such a good-natured man. He
was the victim.”
She was as entranced with the effort to make
herself into a mean, crass woman (certain that she
could never be one) as a young girl with her part in the
school play. This is the letter which, to that end, I
devised for her there in the coffeehouse.
Dear Nagisa,
Because I am about to make a request of
you, please read my letter through to the
end. The truth is that I want you to stop
seeing Tōru.
I will tell you the reasons as honestly as I