I have a baffling memory.
When I was an elementary school student, I lived in a housing complex, and during the off-season when the nearby rice fields lay fallow, I often played there. Weeds sprouted from the dry, cracked ground, and sometimes I would accidentally step on a frog. I used to run around breathing in that uniquely fishy, damp air. It's the landscape of my childhood.
It happened when my good friend Ken-chan and I were kicking a ball around the rice fields in the twilight. Ken-chan stopped kicking the ball back. When I called out, "Hey, Ken-chan," he was just standing there, spacing out.
"Oh." Ken-chan pointed behind me.
When I turned around, a gigantic mushroom cloud was rising on the other side of the crimson sunset. Far beyond the mountains. Yet it was so huge that I had to look way up at it.
Shocked, I started to cry. Ken-chan said, "An atomic bomb dropped somewhere."
I ran home as if fleeing for my life, buried my head in my futon, and cried.
Every time I remember it now, I feel a strange sensation. What on earth was that?
Comments (-)