Chapter 97 – Episode 97. Short-Lived and Long-Lived Species (1)
Since when?
To know that you exist, to realize that you are alive in this world.
At least not when he was born.
No matter how much I recall, I can’t remember who I was born from or where I was born.
Probably the same for most people if you ask.
Like me, when I think of the moment my life began, it only vaguely came to mind after a certain amount of time had passed.
What kind of moment was that time… Okay. At that time, I was sitting curled up under a tree built on a hill.
Seeing the leaves swaying in the cool breeze, and smelling the scent of grass wafting from them…
In the meantime, I would feel the water droplets following me, and when I was immersed in such sensations, there were times when my body would tremble.
Invisible to the naked eye, the sensation of very small water droplets wet the skin…
Looking back, I realized that it was what we call moisture, but at the time I didn’t have that knowledge, I just felt it with my body and realized it one by one.
The way I look at everything I see, think about what it is, and come up with a definition in my own way…
As I watched, reflected on, and repeated the process, at some point I realized what kind of laws the world I live in operates under.
The world exists with what I can perceive and what I can’t.
However, if you look deeply into something you are unaware of, you will come to know its existence, and at some point, even if you do not feel it, you will become convinced that it is there.
After I realized that it was ‘familiarity’, I felt that the time to get to know the things around me was significantly reduced.
Even if it’s the first time you’ve encountered it, if you feel familiar with it, it’s enough just to fill in the parts you don’t know.
How many times can I learn everything about where I live?
“What are you doing dangerously there!”
When I sat on a hill looking at the world, drunk with such sentiments, I would hear someone calling me from down the hill.
Covering the whole body with a black cloak…
A being that looks completely different from the insects and beasts that are widely spread in this forest.
“What would you do if you were alone and met a beast? I should have told you to stay home!?”
He always got angry when I left where I was.
Like a wild beast ready to pounce with its fangs. But that’s only what it seems on the outside, and I could tell that there were subtle tremors everywhere in the emotions he radiated.
“Why are you still? Whatever you say… Wait, are you hurt?”
Whenever I stare at the trembling, I feel that the anger I feel from him disappears and the emotion that caused the trembling becomes clearer.
Looking back, I now know that it was the emotion of worry, but at the time I didn’t know what it meant.
I didn’t know, so I stared at him curiously.
“… Uh.”
With the knowledge I have acquired by observing my surroundings.
“Mom?”
As I muttered words appropriate to refer to him.
“… A mother.”
But was I wrong?
He frowned at the title I had spoken of and answered in a sharp voice.
“Is that what you called me?”
It was the expression he made whenever he was dissatisfied.
Mainly, when I was staring at the bowl without eating, or when I looked around the house and my words increased, I would show that kind of reaction.
“Can I call you Mommy?”
“Are you asking because you don’t know that?”
“I don’t know.”
I asked because I really didn’t know.
Because there were many things I didn’t know at the time.
“Mom, isn’t it?”
Because I didn’t know anything
I just picked up the right words from the words I picked up while walking with him and mentioned them.
“… No.”
“Then, what should I call you?”
“What?”
The man who asked me back as if he didn’t understand me.
Even thinking about it now, I still don’t understand why he gave such an answer back.
Maybe it’s because I didn’t expect to say something like that.
Or did I hate being called by a distinct name?
“Tree.”
But if you don’t understand what has happened, it’s enough if you understand it.
Being with him and realizing it to some extent, I immediately pointed my finger at the thing I was leaning on and said.
“… What about the tree?”
“The last time I asked what this was, I said so.”
“It was.”
“And that a flower, that a bush, a leaf…”
Step by step.
I engraved the things I faced while being with him in my eyes, and repeated the words he pointed out in my mouth.
I used to feel it every time.
A name that can be called is the most certain thing to make you feel the ‘familiarity’ that makes observation easier, condensing everything you have felt and thought for yourself.
“It’s convenient to put a name on what you see.”
When he said the conclusion he had reached at the end, he put on a bewildered expression and raised a finger between his furrowed eyebrows.
“Yeah, it’s surprising that you realized that yourself… Why did you call me mother?”
“I said the other day, looking at a bear babysitting a baby. Mama bear.”
“So?”
“But you’re not a bear, so just mom.”
“…”
“… Aren’t you the mother?”
“Don’t call me mother.”
Wasn’t it the mother who took care of it?
Well, then, unlike that bear, I guess I don’t have a mother.
“Then what should I call you?”
But that’s just because there’s something I don’t know.
At the time, I knew that everything in the world is not the same, and that subtle differences can completely change the name.
So there might be another word used to address him.
Thinking that we need to know that as much as we need to be together in the future, I stared at him and asked.
“… Call me Hey.”
Alright, I finally got a word to call him.
“Yeah, hey.”
The bemused expression he made when he said the name aloud was still vivid in his mind.
“… What?”
“I told her to call me ‘Heira’. So hey.”
He said, “I told him to call me ‘hey. Not Heira.”
It was a very minor misunderstanding.
Because that trivial misunderstanding served as a medium to form the starting point of the first memory I recall.
“Is it different?”
“Yeah, it’s different. In the first place, a distinction must be made between names and adverbs… Damn, I got whipped again.”
Reaction as usual.
When he taught me something, he was just as irritable as he was then.
Even so, he taught me everything he had to teach me, so I kept asking him after that.
“…Well, at this point, it would be nice to have a name for you too.”
However, among the memories I had with him who taught me, the memory of that day was exceptionally memorable because what he did at that time did not end with simple teaching.
“Let’s go home, Heira.”
Hey.
A name that will continue to be called for the rest of my life, created from a minor slip of the tongue.
“…”
“Hey. I called you.”
“… Me, Heira?”
At the time, I didn’t realize it, so I asked him again.
Like the widely spread ‘trees’ in this forest, like the ‘grass’ and ‘flowers’ hidden beneath them.
Did I also have a name to define myself?
“Yes, your name is Heira from now on.”
Hei, who emphasized it again as if driving a wedge into it, ignored the moment of realization and turned away from her seat.
“Answer me when I call you Heira, and run straight to my side.”
“Do you have to do that?”
“Yeah, that’s what you have to do. If you know, follow me right away. Because I need to quickly groom the game I caught today.”
Saying that, Hei takes the lead and starts to walk through the forest.
The footsteps continued for a while, then stopped abruptly, and he looked back at me and said.
“Hey! Are you going to stay there!?”
Hey.
When I heard the name, I immediately got up and started following him.
Because he said so.
“Yeah, I’ll go hey.”
He followed the action and reflected on it.
Hey.
That’s my name Even if this moment disappears, someday it will be a catalyst to remember this moment.
When he calls my name, I run to him…
Also as a medium to remember an act that can no longer be accomplished.
***
Yes, Hey was an unforgettable person in my life.
Even now, looking back at that moment, I still couldn’t figure out who he was.
I don’t even know when I was with him.
I just realized that at some point he took me and raised me and that I could learn a lot from him by his side.
And I thought that such a time would continue in the future.
Because he has been with me ever since I recognized my own existence. Time passed, but he figured that if he lived on, he would be with him forever.
As he taught me, I learned to know that everything in the world has a name, to learn how to hold a bow, to know the habits of animals, and how to capture prey…
And there was no place to use it right away, but I learned how to spend money or how to read a map of the terrain outside the forest.
“Hey.”
I felt more and more impatience in his actions, but at the time I didn’t know the meaning and just learned what he told me to do.
Because I thought that such a time would continue in the future…
“Why are you calling?”
“Can I call you Daddy?”
It was an exceptionally chilly day.
To the point where you can feel the chill even if you light a bonfire in the cabin where you stay.
It’s a story that has nothing to do with him, but the fire I brought at the time was made with firewood that I had picked up, not Hei.
At some point, hey even moved his body became difficult.
“Dad, do you mean me?”
“… Yeah, hey took care of me, and his mom’s opposite is daddy, so that’s why.”
Since when did he become like this?
I looked back, but there was no day that came to mind clearly.
Even though he remembers every moment with him…
I had no memory of being injured as distinctly as when I fell down a mountain and broke a bone, or was bitten by a wild beast.
“Did I say something like that?”
“Yeah, 45 years ago.”
It is natural.
He was slowly breaking down while taking care of me.
It’s just that it happened so slowly that it was too late to notice the changes taking place in the body.
“At that time, I clearly said so.”
But even if you don’t realize it, you realize it.
There are so many differences between the way he first recognized him and the way he looks now.
“… Did you decide to call me the teachings of 45 years ago?”
“Huh.”
But now that I realized that, what would be the difference?
Time only passes and cannot be reversed.
“Like that… Can’t I call you?”
So you should call before it’s too late.
Even though he who took care of me couldn’t be her mother, I thought that she might be the same existence as her father who made that match.
“Call me if you want to call me that.”
Having accepted the request, he draped his wrinkly, withered hands under the bed.
That hand that I don’t even have the strength left to raise on my body.
“Dad.”
I asked him, holding those hands with both hands.
“Does it hurt a lot?”
One day, I became aware of the heterogeneity felt in that body and asked about it.
Why did it end up like that when there were no injuries?
“That’s what getting old is like.”
Hey…
The person I thought was my father answered him quietly.
When he gets older, his body gets sore, his body gets wrinkles, and his hair turns white.
“… Are you old?”
“Huh, it must be a concept that doesn’t reach you. No matter how long you can live, if you don’t learn, you have no choice but to do that.”
My dad who doesn’t stop talking to me even though he’s breathing hard.
The sound of that breath seemed more dangerous than when a beast impaled by an arrow wheezes.
Still, they had the will to live.
Because what existed in the place facing me was the feeling I would call resignation when I let go of everything.
“… Hey.”
And what stands out more than that is a feeling called lingering.
If nothing else, I could understand that feeling very well.
Because when I looked at him blankly because his curiosity about something was not resolved, he would often say to me, ‘Let’s go without leaving any regrets behind’.
I knew very well that regret is an obsession with what is left behind. So I could understand why he was making that face.
“My daughter… Come here.”
It’s coming soon.
Like the beasts that have lived and hunted with him all along, the time has come for him to disappear from this world.
“I have something to confess to you.”
With that moment just around the corner, he told me a story he had been hiding from me all along.
“I was originally a slave hunter who hunted people of different races.”
The secret of my birth, hidden for half a century.
“…Slave?”
“Yes, I…”
Didn’t care all along.
“Actually, he is someone who doesn’t deserve to be called a father to you. Raising you was nothing but atonement.”
The me in the memories that I still can’t recall.
About how it came into his hands.
