The weeping cherry, half-turned to leaf, stretched its shadow across the river’s surface.
Kopo stood at the edge of the Dragon God’s pond, holding a single notebook in both hands. The cover was blank. Opening the pages revealed nothing but a smudge where ink had bled and vanished on the first line — the rest, blank page after blank page.
“…I can’t write it.”
The pond’s surface rippled and swallowed his murmur whole. The morning light of April lay quietly reflected on the water.
“Kopo, what are you holding?”
Minico’s voice came from behind. Kopo hastily hid the notebook behind his back. “It’s nothing! A theory book. Summarizing my strategy for frog world domination …”
“But it’s blank?”
“…It’s still in progress.”
Minico didn’t laugh. He only looked up at the sky and said quietly, “Today, I feel like the wind smells of books.”
A strange thing to say, Kopo thought — but indeed, mixed into the spring wind was a dry, gentle smell, like old paper.
“That smell might be coming from my study.”
Turning around, he found Sonchō seated on the bench at the base of the weeping cherry tree. A thick leather-bound book lay open on his knee, and he was nibbling a sakura mochi as he looked over.
“Sonchō, when it comes to telling someone… your feelings—” Kopo started to say, then stopped.
Without lifting his eyes from the book, Sonchō said, “Is it hard?”
“I try to write it, but I end up erasing everything.”
“Feh-feh. A book, you know,” Sonchō said, slowly turning a page, “is a vessel for handing over to someone else the thing its writer could least bring themselves to say. That’s why it’s heavy. That’s why you want to erase it.”
Kopo looked at his own notebook. Still blank. And yet, it carried a weight all its own.
“Can I give it to her, even if I can’t write anything?”
“If you offer it up in silence, that blank page itself will become the words.” Sonchō took a bite of his sakura mochi and gave a small “Feh” of a laugh.
That evening, no one saw where Kopo went. Only, on the old bench by the pond, a blank notebook sat, swaying in the evening breeze. In the corner of its cover, a small, clumsy little flower had been drawn.
Margin note: The next morning, beside the notebook on the bench lay a single small branch of leaf-cherry. Only the Dragon God knows which one had been there first.
【Today’s Drop】
- World Book Day: April 23 is UNESCO’s World Book and Copyright Day, a day for promoting the culture of reading and the rights of authors.
- Sant Jordi’s Day: A tradition from Catalonia, Spain. On the feast day of their patron saint, it is customary for men to give women roses, and women to give men books.
This is an English translation of “白紙の贈り物”, part of Tales of Amencho Town (蛙鳴町奇譚).
