As the May morning mist drifted in from Dragon God’s Lake, Kopo circled the plaza twice, ran out of places to go, and wandered onto the narrow path along the pond’s edge.
There was a crouching shadow.
“Mocchi?”
Mocchi didn’t turn around. He simply stayed still, facing a small sapling about knee-high. The soil at its base was slightly mounded , still soft.
“Aren’t you going anywhere either? It’s Golden Week.”
“…Look at this.”
When Kopo crouched down beside him, two or three small leaves had come out from the sapling’s branches. They were a thin, translucent green in the morning light, trembling ever so slightly each time the wind moved them.
“Two days ago it was just a branch,” Mocchi said. “The bud came out on the morning of the eighty-eighth night. Yesterday it was yellow. Today it’s green.”
Kopo looked at the leaf. It really was green. Thin, still somehow frail -looking, but undeniably green.
“This the one you planted in autumn?”
Mocchi nodded. With his big hands resting on his knees, he just watched the leaf sway . His face said he had nowhere to go — no need to go anywhere.
Kopo couldn’t think of anything to say back. He just crouched beside him, and for a while, the two of them watched the thin leaf sway gently in the morning breeze together.
Margin note: On his way home, without telling anyone, Kopo moved one of the stones at the sapling’s base a little further into the sun.
【Today’s Motif】
- Greenery Day (May 4th): A national holiday for growing close to nature and giving thanks for its blessings. Falling in the middle of Golden Week, it is set at the time when new spring greenery deepens most.
This is an English translation of “芽のそばの午前”, part of Tales of Amencho Town (蛙鳴町奇譚).