Night Garden: Complete Edition (ナイトガーデン 完全版).

Aino Ne

They decided to leave the broken hiiragi-mokusei to a contractor. It would be collected along with the fallen trees from the garden and recycled into wood chips. It hurt, but leaving it where it was could turn it into a breeding ground for pests and disease. Where the roots had been dug out and the soil replaced, a bare patch interrupted the greenery.

 

As Hiiragi crouched and stroked the soft earth with his hand, Kazuaki asked:

 

“Will you plant something else?”

 

“I don’t know… I’m not thinking about it yet. Something’ll soon start growing even if I leave it alone.”

 

“I see.”

 

“Do you know about regeneration on fallen trees?”

 

Hiiragi continued:

 

“It happens in conifer forests, with pines and things. When a tree falls, new shoots grow on its trunk. They get better sunlight there, and they can grow by taking nutrients from the wood.”

 

“It’s an efficient cycle.”

 

“Yeah. Then, as the young tree grows, the one that served as its seedbed rots away completely and disappears. But because the young tree spread its roots over the fallen trunk, that shape remains.”

 

As though forever embracing a parent that had already returned to the earth.

 

What looked like emptiness was proof of a great presence.

 

“They call it raised-root growth. Seeing it for yourself is quite moving.”

 

Kazuaki said nothing.

 

With his back turned, Hiiragi could not see his expression. But Kazuaki never carelessly let someone’s words pass him by, so his silence did not trouble him. Hiiragi continued touching the earth. Eventually, Kazuaki said:

 

“It’s like you and your grandfather.”

 

“What?”

 

“‘Grandpa said this.’ ‘Grandpa did that.’ You say those things so naturally. He’s gone, but he’s properly there inside you, guiding you in all sorts of ways. He exists in a very important part of what made you who you are. When I’m with you, I feel I can always meet him.”

 

Just as the young tree’s roots continued showing the shape of something that had certainly existed there, not through words, but through life itself.

 

“I see.”

 

There was no end to what he wished they could have talked about, or what he still wanted to be taught.

 

“If you’d met me after I’d just gone to school normally and grown up, without living with Grandpa, maybe we wouldn’t have got together?”

 

“Perhaps not.”

 

The ready agreement made him laugh.

 

Maybe he ought to have been disappointed. Instead, Hiiragi felt happy. There was value in having met Kazuaki as the person who lived here.

 

“The same’s true of you, isn’t it?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

He had fallen in love because Kazuaki was the man who had arrived here at the end of a love that had twisted and never been fulfilled.

 

Roots embracing an invisible past would keep growing. Hiiragi holding Kazuaki within him. Kazuaki holding Hiiragi.

 

Each becoming the other’s water, light and soil.

 

“I want to become a good adult,” Hiiragi murmured.

 

“That’s rather vague.”

 

“When I talk about Grandpa, I want even people who never knew him to understand that I had a wonderful grandfather. I want them to feel they can tell just by looking at me.”

 

“I already do.”

 

“If Grandpa were alive, he’d definitely tell you not to spoil me.”

 

He did not know what he would be like in ten or twenty years.

 

But if someone found Kazuaki within him, that would surely make him happy too.