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"Then don't do it," I felt like an echo replied, but that doesn't matter. Anyway. "This just won't do."
This isn't the time to be losing my mind, shouting "I'm free! Be free!" or anything. And there's absolutely no need right now for that whole emotional, spreading-my-arms-to-feel-the-wind thing.
Despite nodding to myself, only my neck was moving. I was using a rotten, fallen log as a chair, resting my chin on my hand, which was propped on my thigh. For a while now, I'd been letting my throat go dry, stretching myself out, and then stretching some more. Seeing me like this, some people might say I wasn't doing anything. But I'd ask them to wait a second.
"When you're lost in the mountains, you're not supposed to move around carelessly."
According to the manual authored by my short, fragmented life, that should be correct.
I don't have a compass, the trusty companion for castaways and the lost. Not that it would mean anything if I did, since I wouldn't know which way to go anyway.
...Come to think of it, this happened once before, playing 'lost in a fog' in the mountains.
Back then, I had a really hard time finding my way back. "Hmm..." I also slit my wrists good, stabbed someone, and oh yeah, my clothes got all muddy.
On top of that, even the bento I'd made got all squashed, like a crystallization of sweat, sand, and dirt. It was a total disaster.
"Hmm... Right." Then this time, I'll eat my bento before it gets ruined.
It's still a little early for lunch, and this is another solo act, but if you're going to eat poison, you might as well lick the plate. Makes no sense.
And just what kind of neural connections are firing here, the calm me (the one known for rarely making an appearance) muttered in a corner of my mind, but my stomach holds more power.
While rummaging in my bag, my mind, full of lingering attachments, replayed the past.
I must really love the past; given any chance, memories grab my leg and pull me back.
Maybe because the present is so empty, they're doing me a huge, unwanted favor by trying to fill it.
When I come to the mountains, it's usually about my sister. Well, even seeing a Shiba Inu or the school's animal hutch reminds me of my sister. For me, the mountains and my sister are a set, inseparable.
Because if you shorten it, you get *yama-imo* (mountain-sister/mountain-potato), and to put it bluntly, it's because they're sticky. ...Mhm, that's a solid lie.
As I took out my bento box, my index finger throbbed, reminding me of the cut I'd already forgotten. Looking at it, blood was oozing out just enough not to spill. If there had been ketchup in the bento box, I thought about smearing it around to camouflage the cut. That's a lie, though.
That was probably the most memorable, I guess.
It was the first time I'd ever bled that much.
The story about getting lost just now.
The first time I went into the mountains with my sister.

This is me, a current fourth-grader (my second time, mind you), recalling myself from several years ago, so it might not be an accurate account of events.
Discrepancies in memory, or differences due to a heart that has changed shape, haven't been taken into account.
Well, although there were some incidents in between, it's still the same person thinking, so I believe I thought similar things and acted accordingly. It's probably mostly accurate, I think.
Back then—whether it was one, two, or three years ago is vague—but back in those days, I had a younger sister.
A time when my older brother was still alive, my sister was around, and incidentally, my last name was different too.
My sister had naturally curly hair that seemed to exude her personality right from the roots. Her gaze was sharp in a way that didn't resemble either of our parents. She loved our mother and hated the rest of the family. She was selfish, quick to raise her hands—something her kindergarten teachers constantly warned her about—always standoffish, and she'd eat anything, in a sense different from not being a picky eater.
She ate the neighbor's Shiba Inu (a pet), ate a crow (apparently it was gamey), ate a cicada (apparently it tasted like dirt). It felt less like she was interested in eating and more like she was just filling her stomach to satisfy her own curiosity. Come to think of it, she had various eccentricities beyond her eating habits.
Pictorially, the impression of meal scenes involving anyone other than my sister is stronger, so those other things get hidden in its shadow.
Well, how should I put it... she had that twisted disposition that made me think, "Yep, that's my sister."
She inherited her temperament from our father's side... just like me. My brother resembled our mother.
That's why, perhaps, my sister chose to use me in that house, reluctantly, as a kindred spirit.
On most holidays, I'd be woken up early in the morning by my sister kicking my lower back or the back of my knees, and then I'd be made to get the bicycle ready. For someone with such a feral attitude, my sister was an early sleeper, in bed by nine at night, and an early riser, up by six in the morning.
An autumn holiday, having escaped the lingering heat of October. That day, too, began much the same way.
Even after I got out of my futon, my sister would attack my shoulders or sides several times. With the soles of her feet, stamping and kicking. The fact that it was getting subtly more painful each year was how I sensed my sister's growth. It's not a lie, exactly, but it certainly wasn't something to be happy about.
My night-owl brother would be one with his futon until past nine. The person opposite to Mother had irregular, unhuman-like habits, so only I, and my sister's mother, were able to appreciate things like how refreshing the early morning air was.
My sister's mother was also an early riser. She'd go out into the garden a little before sunrise, tidying up or feeding the neighborhood dogs. She was fundamentally an animal lover (humans, not so much). She tried to get a dog for our house, but because of some hypothetical dog that didn't even exist yet, she was hit by the head-of-the-household-like person who complained "its barking would be too loud," so that plan was scrapped. After that, she kept several tropical fish, but my sister wiped those out, so now she had to make do with playing with other people's dogs and just human children.
...Come to think of it, my sister "didn't eat" those tropical fish.
She simply, messily, stomped them to death.
After I'd sluggishly changed my clothes, my pouting sister, stretching up, pinched my bangs and pulled.
"Worker ant, food." "Yeah."
As per my sister's orders, I went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast and, while I was at it, a bento. I wonder if it's a big deal if you displease the princess ant. Her mood always seems bad, but if that's her normal, then it could get even worse than it is now. Hmm... I'd be gobbled up and probably end up coursing through my sister's veins.
I moved from my room on the second floor to the kitchen on the first. When everyone was together for dinner, we ate in the living room, but otherwise, it was the kitchen. Breakfast was already prepared on the table. Leftover white miso soup with onions and potatoes from yesterday. Sausages and thick rolled omelet. Rice was self-service. I took a bowl from the shelf and opened the rice cooker.
We shared the rice served in a single bowl. That became the most hassle-free way to get the right amount.
Me, eating sparingly, and my sister, eating slowly. Even sitting next to each other, there was no conversation during the meal. But my sister would occasionally stuff her cheeks full of rice and glare at me, and the fact that I could stare back meant maybe we weren't indifferent to each other.
After finishing eating, drinking some barley tea, and choking a little, my sister went to prepare her tools while washing her face. In the meantime, I made three onigiri for lunch and wrapped them in plastic. No fillings. I'd sprinkle some salt on them, but sometimes I'd forget that too. When that happened, invariably, a "Gross," accompanied by my sister's knee kick, would land. But she never left any, so maybe it was worth making them.
I filled the water bottle with well water and put it with the onigiri into the bag. And I wrapped two mandarin oranges in a handkerchief. I figured she'd eat them if I brought them since they're her favorite. It's not that I thought in the order of "If I bring them, she'll eat them because they're her favorite." I just explained it to myself that way. Grabbing my bag, I left the kitchen. I looked for my sister's mother to tell her we were leaving. I walked down the slightly long, cedar-planked hallway towards the covered walkway facing outside, from where you could see the garden.
The morning sun lit the outside reasonably well, and even my eyes, often lacking Vitamin A, could see the garden through the glass. My sister's mother was in her usual spot in a corner of the garden, tending to potted plants.
She was someone who always wore a hat, saying sunlight gave her headaches. It might be a red baseball cap or a knit hat, changing with the season, but she often wore one even inside the house. Yet, in the end, whenever she went out shopping or something, she'd end up grimacing, "My head hurts," a person whose best friend was headache medicine.
At the sound of the sliding glass door, my sister's mother noticed me. Her long eyelashes fluttered as she blinked, and her mouth twitched.
"Mm... yes, good morning." For some reason, she averted her eyes once and paused before greeting me.
"Good morning," I replied in a low voice, the kind that makes you need to check loudly if the other person heard.
"Going out today too?" she asked, pointing to the bag tucked under my arm.
"Yes."
"I see. Bye-bye."
For an adult, her greeting was childish, and the way she waved her small hand was utterly detached. Towards everyone. There was a coldness there.
And yet, a certain comfort clung to it as well.
Like a round stone, naturally polished smooth and shiny.
Like a softly rippling, pale blue cloth.
There was something about this person that made you want to touch her. Both her skin and what was inside.
That's why her husband, or my sister, probably liked her.
Back then, I used my head just a little and imagined such things.
After bowing once, I closed the glass door. The sound of my sister's footsteps coming down the stairs echoed from the back right of the house, so I headed to the entrance at a slightly quicker pace.

My sister came down from her room on the second floor, weapons in both hands.
In her right hand, a child's bat used for 'hunting,' and in her left, a small knife. The bat was something my sister's mother had bought, but the knife was an item she wasn't permitted to have.
But a bat can't cut. A knife can't bludgeon. And my sister has two hands.
It's like she can't let her non-dominant hand be idle during meals, though that's a lie.
She'd also changed her clothes. She wore a skirt on the bottom, but a long-sleeved shirt on top. That's usually how it was when she went to the mountains. Since I don't go into the mountains, I don't wear long sleeves on top either.
"What's wrong?"
Even after I put on my shoes and made way for her, my sister, without changing the direction of her feet, twisted her waist and looked around. Though, she should only be able to see the hallway and the stairs.
Ah, she's looking for Mother, I realized, staring at the back of her head.
"I just told her we were leaving," I said. My sister turned around and punched me in the hip joint with her fist.
I tied my sister's shoelaces, went out the front door, and headed towards the garage. The car, which hadn't been used since my mother was alive, had its windows caked with dust, dirt, and bird droppings falling from a nest above, looking like some kind of art. The meaning isn't very clear.
I unlocked the adult-sized bicycle parked beside the car and pulled it out. Even with the saddle lowered considerably, my feet barely touched the ground. Because I'm a long-torsoed, short-legged Japanese... yet, for that, I remember Mother having incredibly long legs. It was like she was always on stilts. This means my leg length was inherited from someone other than Mother.
I resemble *that person* even in that respect. Maybe only Pappy's blood flows through me. Impossible, though.
My sister put the bat in the bicycle basket and the knife in her pocket. I often found myself putting my feet on the pedals while vaguely thinking that if my sister felt like it, she could stab me in the back, side, or the nape of my neck and kill me while I was pedaling.

When things were going well, I'd start pedaling the bicycle towards the mountain, a journey of about fifty minutes one way. My sister, riding on the back rack, would dig her fingers into my right side to maintain a stable ride. Around this time, I often ended up with bruises in several places on my body from things like that.
Getting punched by Father when we passed in the hallway (this was because I passed on his right, his dominant hand side; I slightly regretted not passing on his left), or being ordered by my brother to "Go buy a book" and then dropping the thick book I bought on the top of my foot. And, well, then there was being kicked black and blue by my sister.
Perhaps because I was blessed with so many opportunities, the duration for which I felt pain gradually shortened. Or maybe, since it happened so often, my body just got tired of reporting "I'm in pain" to my heart.
A small, piercing pain in my heart. As it intensified, I turned left. My internal GPS, prone to getting lost, was an honor student that even used pain to drill in its poor memory.
On country roads with no traffic lights, the unchanging scenery paradoxically dug up pain out of boredom. Even if I thought about talking to my sister about something, I had so little to talk about that I could probably kill time just by worrying about what to say.
A slightly strong wind traced my skin with the temperature and texture of melting ice. Even looking up at the sunlight from diagonally above, only a glare reached the back of my eyes, unaccompanied by the heat that plants redness.
It was then I felt that autumn had come early that year, cooling down quickly.
Thanks to that, the period during which the biggest person in the house was irritated by the heat was shorter. Everyone in the family was happy. ...Though "family" is a strange word.
Putting that aside, I was bored. My selling point was a lack of concentration that made me feel idle, not doing something else, no matter what I was doing. Actually, forget selling; I'd happily give it away, just toss it out.
So, while pedaling the bike, I decided to play with my head, the part of my body with the least to do.
Sometimes, someone, for some reason, picks up a question from somewhere inside me and places it in my brain. This time, it was one that fit the current situation.
Is my sister part of my family?
The sound of the wheels induced my head to spin. Round and round, vertically, my brow and all.
My sister's mother is quite blatantly indifferent to her daughter. Not cold, but faint. When I tried asking why, my sister ordered me to inquire with more than five times her usual violence, so when Mother just slowly tilted her head left and right, saying, "Hmm... I wonder why. Why do I even have a daughter... I wonder," and went into neck stretches, the matter was left unresolved. I, too, had no idea why my sister existed, so I tilted my head as well.
"Idiot, you're gonna fall!" "Huh?" My internal GPS's warning and claws gouged me from behind.
Like a soap film stretched before my eyes had burst, colors and shapes rose up from the flat plane. It seemed my real head had been replaying the past, and I had tilted my neck dramatically. Because of that, the bicycle's center of gravity shifted, and I was about to topple sideways onto the small slope between the rice paddy and the road. Feeling sweat break out just above my waist, I hurriedly turned the handlebars. Swaying further left and right, I somehow managed to recover.
"Hya-hya-fu-ari. Hyanto-ho-he," my sister mumbled, probably berating me while biting my back.
"Sorry, sorry!" While I was apologizing without focusing on anything,
The rear wheel caught something, and with an inconvenient sensation like biting down on sand, the pedals also forcibly stopped.
Only the front wheel strained, pitching us forward. It was five seconds before we made an emergency landing on the ground.
This time, the only recovery method I could think of was "borrowing an alien's power to float in mid-air," so I obediently fell. Still gripping the handlebars, my body was thrown diagonally to the right. My sister, stuck to my back, coming along for the ride, was like a tandem bungee jump, which was a little amusing.
The moment we hit the ground, I picked up another casual question—"What would happen if I let go?"—so to satisfy my intellectual curiosity, I switched to a hands-free fall. As a result, I slid quite well.
I tumbled satisfyingly down the sloped junction of the rice paddy and the road. Sharp stones pierced me in several places, and the grass growing there gave me cuts on my arms. Those wounds, more than the bruises I probably had on my back, made me grimace. Looking at them, a bitter fluid seemed to well up from around my molars.
Wounds inflicted by anything other than tools meant for cutting or hitting feel like they have a sort of "unnaturalness" stagnating in them, making them more painful or unpleasant than usual ones. Maybe it's just me, though.
After brushing off the pebbles and dirt from my hair and automatically confirming that my sister had the energy to hit me as usual, I was about to say something like, "Did a stray dog run into the wheel and get its neck caught?"—which was a lie—but I looked around a bit to see if the reason for our fall was still loitering nearby. I found it right away.
It seemed my sister had stuck her foot in the wheel. The mark of having been jammed in the wheel remained on her shoe, and as a straight red swelling and black dirt on her bare foot. I tried comparing which was more swollen, her pouting face or her foot.
My sister noticed blood oozing from a scrape on her knee and kicked me in the shin with an angry face. The word "UNREASONABLE" scrolled like a news ticker from the left to the right of my mind, but when I watched my sister use the recoil from the kick to stand up and briskly walk towards the bicycle, "UNREASONABLE" didn't get to make a return trip.
After confirming there were no noticeable injuries on my legs, I returned to the bicycle, whose front wheel was still spinning idly.
I righted the bicycle, put the bat and her shoe that had fallen from the basket back in, and, responding to the "encouragement" of my sister who diligently found fault with me every day by saying "You're slow!", I started off again on the remaining forty minutes of the journey.
I forgot to ask my sister why she had interfered with the wheel's labor, but I had buried any inclination to look back or open my mouth in the rice paddy. Dismantled into pieces, so no buds would sprout.
I don't understand my sister.
I know her name but have never called her by it. We're siblings, but she's never called me "brother." I'm her worker ant, and though that shouldn't be taken for granted, there are no "thank yous," and she never hesitates.
I didn't feel like I could understand what kind of creature she was.

After arriving at the foot of the mountain, I realized I'd forgotten to bring a towel. As expected, having moved continuously without a break, I was drenched in sweat down to my back, and I could understand the value of the blowing wind with my skin.
That mountain, which seemed to have been left for eccentrics rather than tourists, was apparently someone's private property, but the locals didn't seem to mind much, using it for hiking, secluding themselves, or as a place for martial arts training. That's a lie, though. When I took my sister to the mountain, I rarely encountered anyone on the way.
Yes, rarely. I only met someone once. Just once, that day.
My sister wiped the sweat from her forehead with my shirt before getting off the bicycle. She took the bat—one you wouldn't pull out and use as a weapon even if you were the legendary hero who alone could wield it—from the basket and, with a swaggering, brave gait, walked into the pathless mountain. I don't accompany her. According to my sister, I'm apparently a "nuisance."
My role is to take my sister to and from the mountain where she forages for food; I'm not fit to be her playmate. If I were to insist on participating, it seemed the only way would be for me to become the target of her "hunt."
After seeing off my sister's back, which never once looked back, I put up the bicycle stand with my foot. No one comes here, and I'm not going anywhere, so I don't lock it.
I look for a shady spot where the ground isn't too muddy, sit there, and then wait.
How long I wait depends on the day and my sister's mood. If things go well, she's late; if not, she's early. My sister is good at knowing when to give up on things. The only thing she's bad at judging is Mother, I think.
Why does my sister like only Mother so much? The easiest explanation to accept is that she was just born that way. If the feelings she had for Mother from the very beginning were a predetermined fact, like one plus one equals two, or like humans inevitably die, then that, in itself, is...
Wonderful? Enviable? Something to emulate?
...Who knows, maybe it's all a lie.
Because I've always felt, since way back, that I don't understand what "family" is.
I might be interested in things I don't know well, but I don't admire them or anything.
If you don't like them, maybe it's okay not to be family.
"..." *Yawn*. A yawn escaped me, and I rubbed my eyes.
From my crouched perspective, I looked up and down. Fallen leaves, a bicycle with rusting parts, and then, a slightly large house, unchangingly standing or lying there. You could describe the house as a mansion, but my house was truly (and pointlessly) bigger.
Compared to my brother, whose head was useless for anything but reading books in the house, which of us is healthier? I wondered, staring at a spider's corpse at my feet.
Also, while I was just consuming my lifespan, waiting blankly for my sister, I imagined there were people out there spending the same time playing with friends, fishing for crayfish, or doing tomorrow's homework. When I tried to look at it from an objective viewpoint, as if seeing the back of my own head, such things somehow felt incredibly amusing.
There are probably lots of fun things in the world, but the fact that it's okay for me not to be involved in them...
...was "Ukukukuku."
Eventually, my vision clouded, my tongue tried to loll out on its own, and just like that, my consciousness was abruptly cut off.

"Oh, ah." My head, shaken without warning, saw konpeito-shaped lights spinning in my eyes. After a little while, the situation reached me, delayed like the sound of thunder.
While I'd been sleeping a little, my sister had returned from the mountain, empty-handed from her foraging.
My alarm clock was the same as in the morning: the sole of my sister's foot, standing over me like a Nio guardian statue. It seems my face was kicked upwards, with my forehead as the center. Realizing that her taking off her shoes to do it barefoot was a sign of her consideration is the first step to happiness, I discerned. That's a lie, though.
With a "Hmph," my sister snorted, opened the bag, and took out the water bottle. After removing the lid, she put her mouth directly to the bottle and tilted it up. Without worrying about rationing or anything, she drank it down, gulping audibly.
While waiting for her, I observed the sun and the way the light fell, guessing that it wasn't even noon yet.
My sister took her mouth from the water bottle and, as expected, wiped her face on my shirt.
Even after drinking plenty of water, the wrinkle between my sister's eyebrows hadn't disappeared.
"You didn't get anything today?"
After confirming she was empty-handed except for her weapons, just as she was before entering the mountain, I asked.
Of course, after being kicked before she replied,
"There's something weird."
Pointing towards the mountain, my sister swung the bat once.
"Something weird...?" At that moment, I imagined something like a tsuchinoko. Incidentally, I also thought the sister in front of me was weird, and if I were to say it, I thought everyone in my family was like that.
"Do something about it, worker ant."
"Do something...?" *Thwump.* A blow with a rather dull sound effect for my sister landed on my forehead. It seemed like a failed attempt at hitting me. My sister, apparently dissatisfied with the sound, tapped my face, *kon kon*, with the second knuckle of her middle finger.
"Is there anything inside this?"
"...There is." So please don't try to cut it open with a knife to check, I thought, not as any kind of joke. This sister of mine has a naturalness, devoid of intimidation, that means if she says she'll do something, she'll definitely do it.
"So, what's this 'weird thing'?"
I stood up, brushing off my butt, and asked.
"It's kinda big. And hairy." My sister indicated its size by stretching up and extending her hands.
"Hairy?"
"Fluffy-hairy. And it's bigger than you, worker ant, or Mother."
"Hmm..." Neither of them are particularly tall creatures, after all.
Even that snake dead on the roadside on the way here, if it started walking on its tail, it'd probably line up behind me by height at a school assembly.
"And then that weird thing was killing animals, before I could."
A big, hairy, weird thing that kills other animals (in other words, a creature you don't see often)...
Could that be a live-action version of that honey-loving Mr. P Bear or something? Would something like that appear on a mountain like this...? Ah, but then again, the news said one appeared at the livestock center the other day... If animals live where there's nature, then this place certainly has the qualifications... More importantly, how did my sister manage to get back safely? I inadvertently stared at her, and she almost poked my eyes out with her fingers, so naturally, I dodged that. My sister's violence is feeble, and repelling it is easy.