A little past noon in May, Kopo, an extra edition freshly arrived from the city still stuffed in his pocket, came to a stop in front of the railroad crossing at the edge of town.
The alarm was ringing.
The barrier , which should always be open, held its black-and-white bar horizontal , motionless. No train seemed to be coming, and no car waited on the far side of the tracks. Kopo tapped the iron bar with the back of a finger. A dry sound rang out, then faded .
That was when all the sound around him disappeared.
Turning around, he found Kirigaminen standing at the crossing’s edge.
A coolness always drifted from that white bear-like body, even in this season. But today’s silence was different from usual. Birdsong vanished. The rustle of reeds vanished. Even the distant drone of farm machinery was swallowed up somewhere. A complete silence spread out in a circle roughly thirty paces wide, centered on the crossing. Kopo remembered Spice once starting to say “that’s more perfect than any AI noise-canceling,” then stopping himself partway through.
Kopo walked up to the barrier.
The scenery on the other side of the crossing had changed.
The paved road was gone, replaced by a gravel path. In place of utility poles, old merchant houses lined the way, lanterns hanging from their eaves. Meiji era , or perhaps even earlier — a few figures in kimono moved slowly back and forth, seemingly unaware of Kopo. Not a trace of the city’s real-time information existed there.
“…What is this place?”
His voice didn’t reach across the crossing. Just then, one of the kimono-clad figures turned, as if by chance, toward him. Their eyes nearly met.
“Big brother!”
Minico’s voice. Small running footsteps approached from behind, tearing through the membrane of silence. Kopo instinctively pulled back from the barrier.
The far side of the crossing had returned to its usual paved road. The alarm fell quiet, and the barrier slowly rose. No train had come.
“Finally found you. Where’d you go?”
“…Was waiting at the crossing.”
“You were standing there spacing out at the crossing, you mean.”
Kopo turned to look at Kirigaminen. The white bear was still there. Saying nothing, standing cool and silent.
“Hey. Did you see that just now?”
There was no answer. Just quiet.
“…Guess so.”
Kopo, still gripping the extra edition in his pocket, walked off toward the bridge alongside Minico. Minico asked nothing. He knew well enough that this town’s crossing sometimes did strange things.
That evening, when Spice happened to pass near Kirigaminen, his workshop’s receiver picked up, for just an instant, a radio wave on a frequency band used in the Meiji era. Spice measured it repeatedly to confirm, but the signal never appeared again.
Margin note: The next morning, a single sooty fragment of a lantern lay on the gravel on the far side of the crossing. When asked which era it belonged to, Kirigaminen said nothing. Kirigaminen never says anything.
【Core of the Tale】
- Phenomena used: the crossing that forgot time, Kirigaminen’s blank (silence)
- The story’s hidden theme: those who know the boundary of time never say which side they belong to
This is an English translation of “向こう側の行灯（あんどん）”, part of Tales of Amencho Town (蛙鳴町奇譚).