A Silent Step
【第5話：砂利を踏みしめる音、嘘のない空へ】
The morning at the fifth station of Mount Fuji was wrapped in a skin-piercing chill and a startling, crystal-clear silence.
On Tatsumi’s back, as he stood at the trailhead, rested that heavy, rugged Showa-era canvas backpack—the kissling. It was the physical embodiment of a hundred-year history, containing Grandmother Chiyo's pride of independence and scars of defeat, which Mother Aya had quietly watched over with deep, conflicted love.
The wide canvas straps bit into his shoulders. It was the very physical weight of real life, mud-stained and substantial, which had never existed within the "comfortable space" of his video games. In that heavy pressure, Tatsumi felt a definitive, living texture—tezawari.
"You are truly going, Tatsumi."
The voice of his mother Aya, standing beside him, had completely lost the cold, denying tone that once echoed through the bedroom door. In its place was a quiet, trembling, and profoundly deep affection, gazing at her son's resolve.
"Yes. The thing you and Grandmother had to leave behind for so long... I will carry it to the summit with these legs of mine. There is no curse left here anymore. This is the proof of our survival."
Tatsumi smiled, tightening the cold, rusted iron buckles of the backpack with his warm hands.
"See...? It turned out exactly as I said."
Aya smiled faintly, a single tear slipping from her eyes. But those words were no longer meant to bind Tatsumi. Having acknowledged her own twisted fear, she freed herself from the curse, offering the phrase with genuine tenderness to bless her son's departure.
"Go on, Tatsumi. Move forward firmly, with your very own feet."
"I'm off, Mother."
Tatsumi nodded deeply, passed through the gate, and took his first powerful step forward.
Zari—the sound of his thick soles treading upon the volcanic gravel echoed against the quiet mountain slope.
It was the sound of a tangible resistance—teikō—presented by the physical world, which Grandmother Chiyo had once dreamed of, yet slipped upon. However, rather than finding this gritty resistance unpleasant, Tatsumi’s feet welcomed and cherished it.
As he climbed, the slope grew steeper, and the cold wind whipped his cheeks. The air entering his lungs was thin and freezing, making his chest ache with every breath.
In the world of video games, a simple slide of a fingertip allowed the character to run endlessly without any friction or pain. But on this real mountain, unless he moved his muscles and expanded his lungs by his own will, he could not advance even a single centimeter.
Yet, that very breathlessness was the joy of being alive—yorokobi—that he had sought for so long. The pain of past failures, the scars of his frayed wings—all of it circulated like hot blood through his entire body, proving that he stood here now as a living, breathing human being.
Treading gravel and scrambling up rock faces for hours, Tatsumi finally reached the rocky terrain of the eighth station.
The very place of fate where, in the summer of 1956, twenty-year-old Chiyo had grown arrogant, thinking "there is no mountain I cannot climb," only to slip in a single moment of complacency—yudan.
Tatsumi paused, placing his hand against the rugged rock wall. This was the turning point of the family curse, the place that had stopped Chiyo’s steps and stolen Mother Aya’s dreams.
Yet, the frozen stove deep inside Tatsumi’s chest was no longer cold. Lit bright red through his dialogue with his mother, the unyielding coal—sumi—continued to send a constant warmth throughout his entire body.
"Grandmother, Mother. I am no longer afraid to take a step forward."
Tatsumi took a deep breath, planting his healthy right foot firmly onto the absurd slope that had once shattered Chiyo's leg. The rock groaned under his sole, and a reliable friction held his foot in place.
There would be no slip. Free of complacency, he concentrated every nerve in his body on each step, treading as if loving the roughness of the earth, firmly gripping reality with his own feet, standing up, and taking step after step.
The turning point of the curse was quietly crossed beneath his treading feet.
And then.
The light of dawn overflowed from beyond the sea of clouds.
The moment Tatsumi climbed over the final rock face and set both feet upon the flat ground of the summit, the world was filled with an overwhelming light.
The kissling backpack on his shoulders shone divinely, bathed in the golden light. Once sealed in darkness as a monument of self-reproach and defeat, the backpack had now fully sublimated into a "vessel of blessing," completing a hundred years of love and unyielding history.
Tatsumi slowly looked up at the sky.
There, without even a shred of cloud, stretched a deep, beautifully clear blue celestial sphere, expanding infinitely.
The convenient noise of the AI’s "failure-free career plan" projected on the smooth screen of a smartphone. The windless, flat, and painless "comfortable space" inside the game.
All of them had vanished, and now, above his head, stretched the overwhelming, naked sky—the "sky of unveiled truth"—which could only be looked up at by those who had climbed to the top on their own feet, carrying the mud-stained weight of real life.
Tatsumi—to stand on one's own.
Carrying a century of texture on his back, standing alone and dignified under the sky of unveiled truth, a real wind—cold, yet incomparably comforting—gently swept across the cheeks of the young man.
📖Previous Chapter:https://note.com/ttukumoo/n/n1a2a240ab641
🌐OriginalJapanesehere:https://note.com/juicy_laelia8513/n/n4b1246ff5022
"Thank you so much for reading to the very end!"💗
