[Novel] Breath of Frost
Before dawn, beneath the ground, water moved thinly, still unaware of sleep. Silently, secretly, like a single thread of will. In the village where winter had descended, the breath of the soil was faintly frozen, and the roots of the grass were locked in a shallow slumber. Yet, the water alone, like an unseen beast, was trying to go somewhere.
That morning, the frost columns appeared. Pushing up the soil, becoming white towers, and turning into a swarm of light that had no name yet. At the boundary of temperature, unable to become either solid or liquid, they seemed to be searching for a way to unravel the world.
Yu, a fifth-grader in elementary school, was a child who walked so as not to step on the frost columns on his way to school. Every time his friends cheered and crushed them, his chest would ache deep inside. He felt as if the sound of them breaking resonated with a pain somewhere else.
Yu did not yet know the reason for this. He simply fell silent, unable to find words, as if seeing the water break would cause something within himself to break as well.
One winter day, his grandmother placed a steaming bucket on the edge of the garden and said while warming her frost-bitten fingertips,
"Water, you see, even if it changes its form, it always returns to the same place."
Yu peered into the bucket and stared at the water surface swaying beyond the steam. He touched it gently with his fingertip and was slightly surprised. Even though it was warm, a hint of coldness remained somewhere. It was like a letter that had returned from far away.
"Even the frost columns?"
"That's right. Once they return to the sky, they come down again and push up the ground. The frost you left behind by not stepping on it also goes its own way, you know."
His grandmother's words vanished into the sky as quietly as the steam.
That night, Yu could not sleep and listened intently under his quilt. The outside was deathly quiet, and he felt as if he heard the sound of the world being reborn beyond the window. He drew the feeling of water rising beneath the soil into his heart.
Whether in the form of tears or laughter, water changes its shape without anyone noticing. Suddenly, Yu remembered his own tears. The day last year when his father left to work in a distant town. The morning he bit his lip to keep from crying, yet his pillow was damp and cold. I wonder if those tears still remain somewhere, too.
If water returns, will the things I lost also return someday?
The next morning, in the corner of the schoolyard, there were taller frost columns than yesterday. For a brief moment before the sun hit them, Yu crouched down and kept staring at them without even touching them with his fingertips. The columns were transparent, countless tubes letting light pass through, trembling like a future that had not yet become words.
Before long, the sky was dyed a pale pink, and the frost columns began to melt without a sound. The towers did not collapse; they simply vanished quietly. That sight was neither losing nor running away. They are returning, Yu thought.
Water returns to the soil, and the soil heads toward spring once again. At the seams of a cycle that no one notices, the world is constantly and softly connected.
That day, for the first time, Yu stepped on the frost columns. Not to break them, but to see them off. There was a small sound under the soles of his shoes, but strangely, his chest did not ache. The crushed columns became white fragments and immediately turned transparent in the sun.
On the way home, the wind that touched his fingertips was a little warm, and Yu's stride was a little larger than yesterday.
Perhaps every time water changes its destination, it creates a small path in people's hearts. Even on a freezing morning, while leaving behind a faint warmth.
The world is quietly melting somewhere again today.
And, it is softly returning to the same place.
#NovemberLiteratureTheme #November23 #FrostColumns #Water
#Novel #SS #ShortShort #ShortNovel #PureLiterature #Literature
https://kakuyomu.jp/works/822139839968017267/episodes/822139839968036036