The In-Between

【Episode 4: Survival in the Night of the Typhoon】

Beep... Beep... Beep...

In the cool, comfortable living room, the ominous warning sound of Takumi’s smartphone rang out.

On the screen, the words "Typhoon Approaching: Heavy Rain and Gale Warning" blinked in crimson.

"Whoa, that scared me. But it’s so convenient. My phone tells me the exact pinpoint timing to evacuate."

Takumi let out a sigh of relief and slid his finger across the screen to open the weather radar.

"Our modern world is so optimized. There’s no anxiety. We get safety with zero friction."

"Hmph. Do you kids not even look at the sky unless a machine tells you to?"
Yosuke, sitting in his floor chair, snorted.

"When I was a boy, we had no such convenient warning sounds. So, we humans had to 'prepare' with our own bodies."

"Prepare? How?"
Takumi set his smartphone on the table, looking straight at his grandfather.

"We settlers had our way, and the Ainu had theirs, to prepare for the approaching great storm."

Yosuke slowly closed his eyes, letting his mind drift back to that terrifying night of September 1954.

Autumn, 1954.

An unprecedentedly massive typhoon, said to be the largest in recorded history, was bearing down on the Hidaka region of Hokkaido.

A few days before the rain even began, the elders of Ekashimatsu’s Kotan—the Ainu settlement—began to move quietly.

Without looking at any weather forecasts, they sensed the arrival of the great storm through their wild instincts and deep ecological experience.

The unusual fluttering sound of small birds descending the mountain, the way the gravel settled at the riverbed, and a scent like damp, wet clay mixing into the gaps of the wind.

"This storm is no ordinary rain. Kamuinupuri is going to collapse."
Sensing this instinctively, the elders of the Kotan did not bother to reinforce their homes—their Chise.

To the Ainu, a house was merely a temporary loan from nature.
Instead, they prepared by moving away from the mountain, pre-emptively evacuating to the safety of the high ground.

Ekashimatsu strapped his beautifully maintained wooden bow tightly to his back, preparing to coexist and harmonize with the storm as he retreated.

On the other hand, the settlers, including Yosuke’s father Genzo, took a completely different approach to prepare.

"Yosuke! Bring the nails and boards! Seal up all the windows!"

Genzo gripped an iron hammer, desperately pounding the wooden pillars of their small settler cabin.

The settlers' preparation was about using physical "tools" to reject and push back the storm by sheer force.

The fields they had painstakingly cleared, the wooden house they had built with their own hands, and their precious livestock.

They attempted to defend their "possessions" to the death, anchoring them to the ground with thick ropes and nailing heavy boards shut.

Eleven-year-old Yosuke swung the hammer so hard the skin on his palms began to peel.

Every time a board cracked, a sharp, hard vibration of physical resistance shot through his hands, and sharp, rusty nails scraped his fingertips, drawing blood.

As he desperately reinforced the house, the words Ekashimatsu had taught him before echoed in Yosuke's mind:

'When the wind smells of wet clay, it is a sign that the mountain is weeping. Get away from the mountain.'
Amidst the howling wind outside, that very scent of wet mud suddenly drifted in.
"Father! Sealing the house won't work! The mountain is weeping! It's going to collapse, we have to run!"

Yosuke tugged at Genzo's sleeve, raising his voice.

"Foolish boy! Abandon the house we built with our own blood and sweat? Don't listen to superstitions, keep your hands moving!"Genzo’s eyes flared with anger as he shook off Yosuke's hand.

The settlers' desperate fight for survival—clinging to physical possessions and resisting nature.

However, the sheer fury of Great Nature was enough to mock and crush the settlers' physical preparations in an instant.

From evening into the night, the storm turned into a torrential downpour, violently battering the thin wooden walls of the cabin.

And then, Grumble... Rumble...—an ominous vibration from deep within the earth traveled up through the soles of his feet.

"The mountain is collapsing...! Just like Ekashimatsu said!"
Yosuke knew it instinctively.

With this wind direction, both the settlement and the Kotan village would be swallowed by the mud.

"Father! We have to warn everyone in the Kotan! Their village will be crushed by the mud!"

"Are you insane?! If you jump out into this storm, even an adult wouldn't stand a chance!"

Genzo tried to hold Yosuke back, but Yosuke gripped his Higonokami pocketknife tightly, slipped through his father's arms, and leapt out into the drenched, screaming darkness.

Outside, the storm was like a colossal wall of water.
The pelting raindrops pierced his exposed skin like freezing needles.
Slip.
His foot lost its traction, and he tumbled down a muddy slope.

Cold muddy water rushed into his mouth, and sharp gravel tore his knee, but he had no time to feel the pain.

"Yosuke—!"

Through the roaring storm in the darkness, a sharp voice echoed.

It was Ekashimatsu, standing there, his wooden bow strapped to his back, completely covered in mud.

"Ekashimatsu! You realized it too!"

"Yes! Just as my grandfather said, Kamuinupuri’s soil has reached its limit!
The settlement and the Kotan will be swallowed!"

Transcending the divide of their families' respective preparations, the two boys united as equal partners in the heart of the storm.

"Run to the settlement! Call everyone who's slow to escape up to the high rocks! I'll run to the Kotan!"

Ekashimatsu screamed.
"Understood! Don't die, Ekashimatsu!"

Without smartphone GPS or meteorological alerts.

All they could rely on were their bare toes gripping the freezing slick mud, and their wild, sharpened senses tracing the boundaries of the dark forest.

Yosuke clung to cracked, exposed tree roots, feeling the rough friction of jagged rocks against his palms as he desperately crawled up the slopes.

Because of the extreme inconvenience, an overwhelming physical heat took over—a raw determination to keep each other alive and connect their lives.

"Everyone, run! The mountain is collapsing!"
Yosuke pounded on the doors of the settler houses, violently shattering window glass with the brass sheath of his Higonokami pocketknife.

"Hurry! Run to the high rocks!"

Around that same time, Ekashimatsu finished delivering the ancestral warnings of the elders to the homes of the Kotan.

Right after.

RUUUUUMBLE—BOOOOM_

With an earth-shattering roar that seemed to tear the heavens and the earth apart, a black tsunami of mud, carrying millions of tons of rushing water and colossal, uprooted trees, swallowed the dark Kotan and the settlement below.

Yosuke, who had barely managed to escape to the rocky high ground, clung tightly to the high rocks, his palms wet with his own blood.

"Ekashimatsu... Please, be alive...!"

Inside his tightly clenched fists, as if in prayer, only the cold, hard, fierce friction of the rock face remained.

📖 Next: Epilogue：https://note.com/ttukumoo/n/ne94b41e3a20c
📖Previous Chapter:https://note.com/ttukumoo/n/na8223e4a0ff9
🌐 Original Japaneseher:https://note.com/juicy_laelia8513/n/n15f60db99827

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