The May rice paddies had no voice yet.
Kopo sat at the edge of Dragon God’s Lake, his feet half in the water. The lukewarm smell of mud drifted up, and the surface scattered the morning light so brightly it hurt to look at. The tips of the reeds swayed faintly in the wind, and otherwise everything was quiet.
“Big brother.”
Minico arrived carrying a city extra edition. He unfolded it, small feet pressing down the edges of the paper.
“The Nikkei broke sixty-two thousand yen. An all-time high, it says. The city’s making a huge fuss about it.”
Kopo, still staring at the water, said nothing. Quietly, he put a hand to the base of his throat.
This spring, Kopo hadn’t made that sound even once. Every year, around this time, the sound would naturally come up from the back of his throat — but this year, for some reason, it kept catching, never quite coming out. Loudly claiming he wanted to stand out, and then, when it actually came time to make a sound, his throat locking up — that was the embarrassing truth of the creature he was.
From beyond the weeping cherry, Sonchō came, laughing his “Feh-feh,” an old calendar tucked under his arm.
“What’s wrong? Sore mouth?”
“…Nothing.”
Sonchō sat on a stone and opened the calendar. He slowly traced his thumb over the entry marked “Frog’s First Song.”
“Today marks the end of the first micro-season of the seventy-two. The last day frogs make their first call of the year. In the city, they’re all excited about broken number records — but in this town, the only record being set today is your voice, Kopo.”
“…It’s embarrassing if someone hears it.”
“That it is.”
Sonchō nodded easily and pulled a sakura mochi from his robe , taking a bite.
“A frog sings while still embarrassed. It’s not that courage makes the voice come out. It’s that it comes out because you can’t keep from letting it out.”
A May wind came from the direction of the rice paddies.
Kopo closed his eyes. He could feel something that had been stuck in the back of his throat slowly starting to loosen.
“—Kuwaah.”
Even to himself it sounded surprisingly small, awkward. Minico looked up from the extra edition. The water’s surface rippled , ever so faintly.
Margin note: That night, Spice’s receiver in his workshop picked up a small new signal on Amencho Town’s frequency band. Without checking its source, Spice wrote only one line in his notebook: “May ninth — first signal.”
【Today’s Motif】
- Frog’s First Song: The 19th of the 72 micro-seasons (roughly May 5th–10th), when frogs in fields and waterways make their first call of the year, an early micro-season of the beginning of summer. In 2026, May 9th is its final day.
- Nikkei average hits an all-time high: On May 7th, the Nikkei Stock Average recorded 62,833 yen, an all-time high both intraday and at close.
This is an English translation of “はじめての声”, part of Tales of Amencho Town (蛙鳴町奇譚).