I arrived at my grandmother’s house, which I only visit once a year during Obon.
I immediately went outside to play with my brother in great excitement.
I ran around the rice paddies with my brother, enjoying the fresh breeze.
And then, just as the sun was rising and it was almost midday, the wind suddenly stopped. Then, lukewarm wind started to blow.
I thought to myself, “Why is there such a lukewarm wind blowing when it’s already hot?” I said in a bad mood because I had just been deprived of this exhilarating feeling. Then my brother looked in a different direction from earlier.
In that direction was a scarecrow.
“What’s wrong with that scarecrow?” He said, ‘No, it’s over there,’ and looked more and more intently.
I was curious, too, and looked intently at the far side of the rice paddies.
I was sure I could see it.
“What…is that?”
From a distance, it was hard to make out, but I could see a white object about the size of a person, wiggling and moving.
And there are only rice paddies around it.
There were no people nearby.
I felt strange for a moment, but I interpreted it as follows.
I thought, “Hey, isn’t that a new kind of scarecrow? It must be!
There has never been a moving scarecrow before, so the farmer or someone must have thought of something!
Maybe it’s the wind that’s been blowing since a while ago that’s making it move!”
My brother looked satisfied with my spot-on interpretation, but his expression disappeared in an instant.
The wind had suddenly stopped.
However, the white object was still moving and wiggling.
My brother said, “Hey… it’s still moving… what the hell is that thing?” And in a tone of surprise.
Perhaps curious, my brother returned home and came back to near me with binoculars.
He was a bit excited and said, “I’ll take a look first, you just wait a bit! he looked through the binoculars with great enthusiasm.
Suddenly, my brother’s face changed.
He turned blue, broke out in a cold sweat, and finally dropped the binoculars.
I was afraid of the change in my brother, but I asked him about it.
“What was it?”
My brother answered slowly.
“IT’s beTtEr noT tO kNoW.”
I don’t know what you’re talking about. ……
It was already not my brother’s voice.
My brother went back to the house.
I immediately tried to pick up the binoculars that were on the floor to look at the white object that had turned my brother blue, but I didn’t have the courage to look at it because of what my brother had said.
But I was curious.
From a distance, it is just a white object wiggling strangely.
It’s a little odd, but it doesn’t cause any more sense of dread.
But my brother…
“Okay, I have to see it.
I’ll see for myself what kind of object gave my brother fear!”
I took a pair of binoculars that had fallen and tried to look through them.
At that moment, my grandfather came running toward me, looking very panicked.
I said, “What’s wrong?” Before I could ask
He said, “Don’t look at that white object! You saw it! You saw it with those binoculars!” He was coming at me.
I replied, “No…not yet…” He said, “Thank God…” and broke down in tears, looking relieved.
I was sent back home without understanding what was going on.
When I returned home, everyone was crying.
Was it about me? No, no.
If you look closely, only my brother is laughing like crazy, wiggling and twirling wildly like that white object.
I was more terrified by the sight of my brother than by the white object.
And on the day I went home, my grandmother said to me.
“I thought it would be easier to live with him here.
He won’t last more than a few days there because it’s too small and he won’t be able to deal with the world… It’s best to leave him at home and after a few years, release him in the rice field…'”
I heard those words and cried out loud.
The brother I once knew was gone.
Even if I see him again next year when I visit my parents’ house, he will no longer be my brother.
“Why did this happen to me…we used to play together just a few days ago…?”
I desperately wiped away my tears, got into the car, and left my parents’ house.
My grandfathers were waving to me, and my brother, who had changed so much, seemed to wave to me for a moment.
As I moved away, I looked through my binoculars to see the expression on my brother’s face, and sure enough, he was crying.
He was smiling, but it was the first and last sad smile he had ever shown me.
And then, just around the corner, when I could no longer see my brother…
I kept looking through the binoculars with tears streaming down my face.
“Someday…things will be back to normal…”
With this in mind, I looked out over the rice paddies, which were all green, with nostalgia for my brother’s former self.
And I just looked through the binoculars, reminiscing about my memories of my brother.
It was at that moment. I saw something up close that I knew I shouldn’t have seen.
