“Splat…”
On a May morning, at the edge of the pond, Kopo quietly let a half-folded piece of paper drop onto his lap. The air was heavy. A damp southern wind, carrying the first scent of the rainy season, stirred Dragon God’s Lake, and the reeds on the bank bent softly.
What Kopo had been folding was a paper airplane — though not just any paper airplane. He’d tucked a drawing inside it. He’d torn a page from a blank notebook and, doing his best, drawn a face that looked like Keromi, and beneath it, five characters: “I — I li— like your singing.” The letters were shaky, and the drawing looked like it had three arms, but Kopo had spent over thirty sheets on this one, working since before dawn .
“Won’t fold…”
The paper, ruined by the damp air, had gone limp and soft, refusing to become a plane.
“Feh.”
A low laugh sounded from the shade of the weeping cherry, and Sonchō approached, his old bamboo chair creaking . In his hand, instead of this morning’s newspaper, he held a thinned old notebook.
“Kopo, mind if I tell you about an old friend of mine?”
Kopo looked up. Instead of answering, he showed the crumpled paper in his hand.
“Long ago, on a distant battlefield I once traveled to. At a field hospital, there was a boy with a red cross sewn onto his sleeve. He went around handing wounded soldiers, one by one, drawings of flowers that children had made. Not skillful, not clumsy — just clumsy drawings. …But every soldier who received one cried a little, and smiled a little.”
Kopo silently looked once more at his own limp paper.
Then came the sound of leather shoes.
“Smells like bitter melon… what is that?”
Ohisama, passing along the pond’s embankment , stopped. Kopo hurriedly crumpled the paper, and one small torn corner flew off in the damp wind, landing at Ohisama’s feet.
Ohisama crouched down and picked up the scrap. On it remained only a single character: “li—”
“…It’s not addressed to me or anything.”
Saying that, she tucked the scrap into her skirt pocket and walked off, looking as if nothing had happened.
Kopo stood facing the pond, unable to move for a while. The surface of Dragon God’s Lake quietly reflected the early summer sky.
Margin note: That evening, passing by the lakeshore, Mocchi picked up, one by one, nearly thirty crumpled balls of paper scattered at the water’s edge, and took them home without telling anyone. He never opened them.
【Today’s Motif】
- World Red Cross Day: May 8th is the birthday of Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross. Its founding idea — helping the wounded on a battlefield, friend and foe alike — began there.
- Bitter Melon Day: From the wordplay “gō(5) yā(8)” (bitter melon). May is when bitter melon shipments begin to increase — a distinct nourishment hidden inside its bitterness.
- Paper Airplane Day: From the wordplay “GO(5) HIGH(8).” Even if it doesn’t fly high, a feeling can still land somewhere.
This is an English translation of “飛ばなかった紙飛行機”, part of Tales of Amencho Town (蛙鳴町奇譚).