The slope leading up to Frog Mountain was thick with the smell of earth.
Kopo stopped in his tracks when he spotted Mocchi’s back. Cradling a sapling in both arms, his already-solid frame looked even bigger than usual. Thin roots hung down from the root ball, swaying quietly in the spring light.
“What are you planting?”
“There’s a dead tree by the Dragon God’s shrine. Sonchō asked me to.”
Kopo fell into step behind Mocchi. He couldn’t quite explain why. He just couldn’t bring himself to leave a back carrying something like that alone.
Beside the shrine stood an old stump — a round, empty space where a tree had once been pulled out.
“Think it’ll give shade in ten years?” Mocchi said, digging the hole.
“Ten years?” Kopo repeated, almost reflexively. “That’s a long way off.”
“Yeah. A long way off.”
Mocchi didn’t smile — he just said it, and kept working the soil loose with his thick arms, in silence.
From the bench at the base of the weeping cherry tree, Sonchō’s voice reached them.
“This morning, word came that a distant country was swept away, soil and all. There’s a place where more lives are being swallowed by water than there are hands to plant trees.”
Kopo silently pressed down the soil around the sapling’s base. The earth was heavy. A warm, rain-soaked kind of heavy.
“Putting down roots, and heading off somewhere — are those…”
“…the same thing?”
When Sonchō finished the sentence for him, he laughed, “Feh-feh.”
“Don’t say it for certain yet. You’re still in the middle of both.”
The sapling stood upright. Its thin trunk swayed in the spring wind. Its roots were still invisible.
Margin note: On the way home, Kopo ate dinner without washing the soil off his palms.
【Today’s Drop】
- National Arbor Day (USA): The last Friday of April. A commemorative day that began in Nebraska in 1872, marked by tree-planting activities across the United States.
- Afghanistan Floods: As of April 24, reports indicated 178 deaths and 236 injuries from flooding.
This is an English translation of “十年後の木陰”, part of Tales of Amencho Town (蛙鳴町奇譚).