On a May morning, something slid out of the field’s soil.
Kopo narrowed his eyes; it was an earthworm . From the ground, wet with last night’s rain, one after another poked its head out, drawing thin pale pink lines across the dirt. The dawn light slanted in at a low angle, and the worms’ trails glistened faintly with beads of water.
“Why are so many coming out all of a sudden?”
“It’s Geology Day.”
Turning around, Kopo found Mocchi standing with arms crossed. In mud-caked boots, he’d apparently already made his way around half the field.
“geology …what’s that?”
“The anniversary of when people started studying layers of soil. A hundred fifty years ago now. Doesn’t matter to the worms, but that’s the season, so they come out.”
Kopo crouched and gently stopped one of the crawling earthworms with a fingertip. Despite having been underground for so long, its skin was damp and warm, carrying the unmistakable weight of a living creature.
“…This guy was down there for months, huh.”
“Yeah. All winter, moving around in the soil. Even when you couldn’t see it from above.”
Yesterday came back to him. That “Kuwaah” he’d wrung out at the pond’s edge. Sonchō telling him, “a frog sings while still embarrassed,” and his locked-up throat loosening, letting out that pitiful first sound. Minico had smiled a little afterward, but this morning, Kopo finally understood it hadn’t been mockery .
“Mocchi. Do worms come out because they want to?”
“They come out because it’s the season. Not about wanting to or not.”
Mocchi loosened the soil slowly with his boot. A hardened clump crumbled , and another worm crawled out into the light.
Kopo stood and looked down at his own feet.
Spring had come, and summer was near. Something that had been sitting still underground came out simply because it was the season. Just that, somehow, looked a little dazzling in the morning light.
“…I feel like something came out of me yesterday too.”
“I know.”
Mocchi said only that, without turning around.
From the alley beyond the field, Keromi’s voice drifted by, singing as she passed. Kopo silently watched, for a while, the pale pink lines the earthworms had drawn across the soil.
Margin note: The row of seeds Mocchi planted that day was lined up right beside the soil with the most worm trails. Whether that was intentional , he never said, even by autumn.
【Today’s Motif】
- Earthworms Emerge: The 20th of the 72 micro-seasons (roughly May 10th–14th), when earthworms that spent the winter underground begin appearing on the surface. It follows Frog’s First Song.
- Geology Day: May 10th. Established to mark both the 1876 founding of a geological survey office under the Home Ministry, and the creation of Japan’s first geological map in 1878.
This is an English translation of “土の記憶”, part of Tales of Amencho Town (蛙鳴町奇譚).