At the end of May, the air stays soft even at night. As the water’s presence drifting from Dragon God’s Lake slowly carried the withered petals of the weeping cherry along the river, only Spice’s workshop kept its light bulb burning, as always.
“Spice! You in there!”
Kopo kicked the door open; a broken fragment of something clung to his sleeve. Muddy feet. A red scrape on his palm. The marks of something he’d tried to make and failed.
“Don’t shout from the doorway.”
Deep in the workshop, Spice, sorting through wiring ordered from the city, didn’t even look up.
“Everything went wrong. I dropped my map in the river and it washed away, chased after it and tripped on the bridge, stood up and my hat blew off in the wind.”
“And?”
“And… it made me mad. So I came here.”
Spice set down his pliers and pulled out a chair. As Kopo collapsed into it, a small stone lamp at the edge of the shelf caught his eye. Out of place among the workshop’s tools, it was about the size of a fist, its wick quietly flickering with fire.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t know. It was already there when I inherited the workshop.”
“…Ever put it out?”
“Not once.”
Spice, unusually, kept talking.
“I heard a story from Sonchō once. On a mountain across the sea, someone lit a fire more than twelve hundred years ago. Every building, every pillar , every roof burned down and collapsed one night. But someone carried out just that fire and ran, and it’s said to still be burning today.”
Kopo blinked.
“…Even after the building burned?”
“Even after the building burned. Even after the place changed. As long as there’s someone to pass it on, it doesn’t go out.”
Kopo looked at the stone lamp. Its wavering flame wore an older face than any tool in the workshop, sitting there quietly. In the air mingled with mint and old oil, that fire alone seemed to hold a slightly different color.
“You’re not mad because your hat blew away,” Spice said, picking his wiring back up.
Kopo didn’t answer. He just sniffed a little.
On that early summer night, the sound of water came from the direction of Dragon God’s Lake, and the workshop’s light flickered once, faintly, though there was no wind.
Margin note: That night, before heading home, Kopo quietly rested a hand on the stone bridge’s railing , paused there for just a moment, and crossed without looking back.
【Today’s Motif】
- The Undying Flame (Mount Misen, Miyajima): A flame said to have burned for over twelve hundred years on Mount Misen in Miyajima, Hiroshima, kept alive and passed down by human hands even after the main hall it once lit burned down.
This is an English translation of “消えない火のそばで”, part of Tales of Amencho Town (蛙鳴町奇譚).