It was a morning full of stillness, spring haze drifting from the Dragon God’s lake all the way to the old stone bridge.
“Watch me — today’s the day I finally…!”
Kopo had a cloth sash, stitched together from scraps of a supply bag, hung around his neck, and was running through the plaza alone. There was no set finish line. He just had somewhere he wanted to deliver it to.
“Running where?”
Mocchi’s face appeared from behind the stone wall. His big hand, having carried heavy loads in from the rice paddies again that morning, was quietly held out in front of Kopo.
“Hand it to me. From here, I’ll carry it.”
“…Huh? Hand it — to you?”
Kopo’s feet stopped. Handing the tasuki to someone else. The idea didn’t sit right, no matter how he turned it over. Running it all the way to the end himself — that was supposed to be what made it look good.
“If you don’t hand it off, it won’t reach anywhere.”
At the base of the weeping cherry tree, Sonchō laughed, “Feh-feh.” Spread open on his lap was an old route map, its lines tracing the Tōkaidō for hundreds of ri, vanishing into the spring haze.
“Long ago, when a road was too long for one person to walk alone, people decided to run it together, passing it on. What you put into that tasuki isn’t your own pride — it’s trust in the next set of feet.”
Mocchi’s hand stayed open, waiting.
Kopo bit his lip once. Then, slowly, he draped the cloth sash over Mocchi’s neck. As the warmth passed between them, something in his chest, for some reason, felt a little lighter.
“…Make sure it actually gets there, alright.”
“Leave it to me.”
Mocchi planted his sturdy feet on the ground and took off toward the far side of the bridge. As his back vanished into the spring haze, Kopo, without making a sound, moved his lips to say “please.”
Margin note: That night, Kopo sat sewing tomorrow’s tasuki, making it just a little longer than before.
【Today’s Drop】
- Anniversary of the Birth of Ekiden: On April 27, 1917 (Taishō 6), the “Tōkaidō Gojūsan-tsugi Ekiden Race” was held, covering roughly 508 kilometers from Sanjō Ōhashi in Kyoto to Shinobazu Pond in Ueno, Tokyo — the birthday of Japan’s own relay competition, in which comrades hand a sash on from one to the next.
- Kizuna (Bonds) Day: Established from a pun on the numbers 2 and 7 sounding like “kizuna” — a day for cherishing the connections between people.
This is an English translation of “タスキの重さ”, part of Tales of Amencho Town (蛙鳴町奇譚).