Short Story: "Walking backward into the future"
"If I were to be reincarnated, I'd want to be a dung beetle," Yamazaki-senpai said, his gaze still holding a trace of his boyhood.
"Are we talking about that again? I've already heard it thirty times."
As I replied, feigning exasperation, he shrugged his shoulders happily.
"Is that so? Well, then this is the thirty-first time. Listen to me, this is the shout of my soul."
"Yes, yes. They're rock 'n' rollers, right? ...They plant their front legs firmly on the earth and kick their dung backward into the future. They don't care how much the world laughs at them for being filthy. Crawling on the ground while keeping the beat—rock 'n' roll! ...That's it, right?"
I repeated the words I had heard thirty times, almost like a ritual.
"Oh, you remember it."
Yamazaki-senpai laughed with a look that was both surprised and embarrassed.
"Well, of course I remember."
"That's rock 'n' roll."
Those words were released into the night sky, where they mingled with cigarette smoke and lost their shape. Far above that, the Milky Way flowed faintly. The grains of light twinkled like the reverberations of a distant past.
Dung beetles. They sometimes climb onto their dung balls and dance. Why do they dance? It seems it's to cool their feet on hot days, or to check the path they should take. Before I knew it, I had become a total dung beetle freak myself.
"Rock 'n' roll!"
When I shouted it toward the night sky without thinking, Yamazaki-senpai laughed and patted my shoulder.
The two of us danced on the dung ball called Earth as if we were keeping the beat.
The world spun just a little bit.
The End
(577 characters in the main text)
Afterword
I suddenly thought I'd like to write a rock-and-roll story. First, the Rolling Stones came to mind, and when I thought about things that roll... dung beetles popped up. The story that emerged was about a slightly mischievous senior and his junior. The story rolled along more than I expected. Rolling sh*t. I thought it was rock.
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