The In-Between

【Episode 2: Grandfather’s Exaggerated Tall Tales】

August, 2026.
In the cool, comfortable living room, twenty-year-old Takumi lay on the sofa, mindlessly swiping his smartphone's glass screen.

There was absolutely no friction on his fingertips.
Job openings on job search sites, social media timelines, and endlessly recommended short videos.

With a mere slide of his finger, thousands of pieces of information glided past smoothly without any resistance.

It left no impression on Takumi's heart, as if dry sand was slipping through his fingers.

"Hey, Takumi. Keep staring at that phone, and your fingertips will rot."

Sitting in the floor chair opposite him, his grandfather, Yosuke, spoke in a low, raspy voice.

He was eighty-three this year. Though approaching his ninetieth year in a few years, his back was straight, and his eyes still held a sharp glint of wilderness.

"They won't rot, Grandpa. It's called efficiency. I can get news from all over the world with zero friction just by scrolling,"

Takumi replied half-heartedly, keeping his eyes glued to the screen.

"Hmph. Zero friction, is it? Soft, I say."

Yosuke snorted and took a sip of tea from his favorite teacup.

"When I was eleven, I wrestled a three-meter-tall giant brown bear with my bare hands in the primeval forests of Hokkaido."

"Right, right. Here we go again. Grandpa’s exaggerated tall tales."

Takumi sighed, finally looking up from his smartphone.

"Three meters? That's practically a monster. Was Showa-era Hokkaido some kind of fantasy world? What eleven-year-old fights a bear with his bare hands?"

"Don't be stupid, it’s non-fiction! It got caught tight in a snare trap I had set. I pulled out my Higonokami from my pocket and stabbed it like this, thud..."

Yosuke stood up, gesturing grandly like a shadow boxer, puffing out his chest with pride.

"Hold on a second, Grandpa."

With an exasperated face, Takumi opened a search bar on his smartphone, quickly typing and scrolling.

"I searched it. 'Higonokami'. A small folding knife in a brass sheath. The blade is only seven centimeters long."

Takumi thrust the screen toward his grandfather.

"Stabbing a three-meter bear with a seven-centimeter knife? The laws of physics aren't working here. That's pure fantasy."

"Ugh... W-well, perhaps I added a few too many tails and fins to the story. It was actually a giant mountain hare."

Caught red-handed, Yosuke cleared his throat loudly and defensively, his eyes darting away.

"But let me tell you, it was no ordinary rabbit! It was a massive beast, coming up to an adult’s waist, thrashing so violently it nearly snapped the brass wire of my snare trap. I held onto my Higonokami—a traditional brass-sheathed folding pocketknife—and desperately tried to pin it down!"

"A rabbit as high as your waist... Well, I'll believe that more than a bear."
Takumi laughed softly and sat up a little.

"But did you really set that wire trap yourself, Grandpa?"

"Yes, indeed. It was a brass wire snare trap, learned by watching and copying Wajin—non-Ainu Japanese—hunters who had settled from Honshu. You have to twist the stiff wire by hand, but in the winter, your fingertips go numb. I made it while scraping the skin off my fingers and bleeding many times."

The defensive edge faded from Yosuke’s tone, replaced by a soft, deep resonance that filled the living room.

"In those days, we didn't have smartphones, the internet, or even proper tools. We had to bleed our fingers, feel the friction and resistance, and think with our own minds. It was inconvenient, but because of that, there was a tangible handfeel of being alive."

"Huh... So, did you actually catch that rabbit?"

Takumi gently set his smartphone down on the table.

He felt a spark of curiosity toward the genuine, raw fragments of memory hidden beneath his grandfather's exaggerated tall tales.

"Yes. But I couldn't have finished the job alone."

Yosuke shook his head quietly, sat back down in his floor chair, and looked into the distance.

"On the other side of the hare stood a boy, drawing a traditional wooden bow. He was an Ainu boy from the Kotan—an Ainu settlement—named Ekashimatsu. That was how it all began."

"Ekashimatsu..."

Takumi quietly repeated the unfamiliar, foreign-sounding name.
The breeze from the air conditioner gently swayed the living room curtains.

📖 Next Chapter:https://note.com/ttukumoo/n/na8223e4a0ff9 
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🌐OriginalJapanesehere:https://note.com/juicy_laelia8513/n/nea84a24d9af　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

"Thank you so much for reading to the very end!"💗