"I’m looking forward to seeing you trip and fall," she said eagerly, biting into a tomato as though she were a victor savoring red wine.
Kiyono Lin hummed confidently, got up, and went back to her room to change clothes.
When she came down, she was wearing the school’s gym outfit.
"Why are you wearing that?" Dubian Che asked in surprise.
"I decided to come here one day in advance; I didn’t have any sports clothes prepared at my apartment, only the school’s gym outfit," Kiyono Lin explained.
With her personality, she certainly wouldn’t buy sportswear, and Dubian Che had never seen her in athletic clothes; it was mostly dresses.
Once they left the house, Dubian Che went to the warehouse to get a hoe and two shovels.
The sky was as blue as a canvas, dotted intermittently with white clouds that looked astonishingly like French baguettes.
The three of them strolled leisurely along the water channel.
On their way, they encountered a cow led by an old man wearing a straw hat.
The two beauties, who seemed to have never seen a cow up close, stared at it, while Kiyono Lin took out her phone, looking for the right angle to take a picture.
As they waited, the cow approached them, bringing with it the various smells of a cowshed.
Both beauties held their breath, wrinkling their noses and desperately turning their faces away.
At the sound of Dubian Che’s laughter, Jiutiao Meijie covered her nose and mouth with her left hand and smacked his back vigorously with her right hand, making a "bang" sound.
It may or may not have hurt, but it certainly sounded loud.
The cow didn’t even glance at them, swinging its tail leisurely and contentedly.
In front of Yoshida’s house, several people had already gathered, with no adults present—only students who treated bamboo shoot digging as a spring outing.
"A Che, A Che!" A little girl in suspender trousers waved to Dubian Che from afar.
As the three walked over, Dubian Che said to the little girl:
"How many times have I told you, you should call me Che, not A Che?"
The little girl ignored him, her gaze fixed intensely on Kiyono Lin and Jiutiao Meijie, her eyes slowly wavering and starting to gleam.
"Town folks?!" The tone of her voice was as if she had encountered aliens.
Jiutiao Meijie wasn’t at the age to be interested in little kids and surveyed the girls in the front yard who were about her age.
Kiyono Lin smiled at the little girl and said, "That’s right."
The little girl covered her face with her hands, blissfully saying, "This morning, I watched TV, and there was a comedian introducing spaghetti in Tokyo."
"Do you like spaghetti?" Kiyono Lin asked softly.
"When the camera focused on the storefront, a tram ran past."
"Wow, Tokyo really is something," the girl sighed, evidently impressed with the mention of Tokyo, her face beaming with satisfaction.
"Don’t mind her," Dubian Che comforted Kiyono Lin, "this kid’s thinking is a little off the beaten track."
"Aren’t you the last person who should be talking?" Kiyono Lin glanced at him.
"What are you talking about? I wouldn’t be surprised about the tram; isn’t it normal for Tokyo to have trams?"
"From your answer, it’s clear just how weird you are."
"...Huh?" Dubian Che genuinely didn’t understand what was abnormal about him.
"A normal person would be wondering—why did the conversation go from spaghetti to trams?"
"Is that for real?" Dubian Che couldn’t believe it.
Kiyono Lin sighed helplessly with her hand on her forehead.
"Uh-huh." Clearly having just woken up, Reiko coughed, "Um, Little Che, introduce everyone, will you?"
"Almost forgot," Dubian Che put aside his normalcy worries, "this is my girlfriend, Jiutiao Meijie. And this is my friend, also a member of the Wind Instrument Club at school, Kiyono Lin."
After introducing them, Dubian Che then introduced the villagers to them.
"This is Yoshida Reiko, a teacher at Misezawa Branch School, a single woman of a certain age, with the special skill of being able to fall asleep even while sitting."
"No need for the extra comments," Yoshida Reiko interjected sarcastically, and then laughed, "And it’s not just sitting; I can sleep standing up, too."
"That extra comment—think about yourself before saying it to others," Dubian Che responded.
"This is Honma Ayako, my senior at school. She went to high school in Kanagawa because she loves ’Slam Dunk’s Rukawa Kaede but joined the Wind Instrument Club instead. By the way, they didn’t make it to the national competition this year."
"Let’s leave the unnecessary comments out— I mean you, Dubian Che." Honma Ayako pulled out a fierce smile.
"These two are my juniors, Jianai, a first-year junior high student, and Mana, a fifth-grader, both sisters."
"Hello, Jiutiao, hello, Kiyono," the sisters greeted politely with a bow.
"Hello," the two young ladies returned the greeting.
"As for this one," Dubian Che cupped his face and pulled over the little girl still lost in her own world, "my cousin, Dubian Lian, a first-grade elementary school student who is a tad dumber than me but a lot weirder."
"The salmon in Tokyo are really something," sighed Dubian Lian.
The two beauties: "..."
"Let’s get going," Yoshida Reiko broke the awkward silence.
The group headed towards the mountains.
Dubian Lian, holding a child’s shovel, led the way at the front, singing loudly.
"The red~ dragonfly in the evening glow, please tell me: when did I meet you~ in my childhood days, which day was it?"
"Picking up the small basket to the mountain, where mulberry trees are green as emerald. Gathering mulberries in the basket, turning around, it’s all but a dream."
"Little Lian, it’s morning, you know," Honma Ayako reminded her.
Dubian Lian stopped in her tracks, waggling her finger with a lecturing tone,
"Ayako, you really don’t get it, do you? By the time the cherry blossoms bloom, they’re already buried in the ground."
"Ah?" Honma Ayako blurted, "What?"
Dubian Lian’s tiny body heaved a heavy sigh before she suddenly yelled out,
"Ayako! How can you be this way? If you’re too dumb, you’ll be thrown into the mountains and eaten by wild boars!"
"...That’s not going to happen, no, I mean, I’m not dumb!"
From behind, Jiutiao Meijie nodded with interest, "Your cousin is quite amusing."
"Like me, how could she not be interesting?"
"But she seems different from most people," commented Kiyono Lin from the back.
"I worry about her too, not knowing who she takes after," sighed Dubian Che.
They both gave him a sharp look.
Up ahead, after some unknown conversation, Honma Ayako, to prove her intelligence, started singing "Red Dragonfly" with Little Lian.
As they began climbing the mountain to the tune of "The red dragonflies in the evening glow, where are you now? Perched on the tip of the bamboo pole, that’s where the red dragonflies are," their ascent started.
Not far into the hike, Kiyono Lin was already gasping for breath, hands on her knees.
Jiutiao Mei, though tired, was keeping a steady pace.
She made a point of walking in front of Kiyono Lin, occasionally looking back with a teasing smile.
Kiyono Lin, unable to even make a sarcastic remark and short of breath, could only bow her head and continue up the slope.
Dubian Che hung back at the end, making sure Kiyono Lin didn’t fall.
The sight of her black, silky hair appeared very elegant from behind. Gazing at her figure, the already not-tired Dubian Che felt even lighter in his step.
Climbing and climbing, pushing with their hands on their knees.
"Kiyono, we’ve arrived," Kiyono Lin looked up at the sound of Dubian Che’s voice.
Dubian Lian and the others had gone straight up a steep slope from the middle of the mountain path and into the bamboo forest.
The bamboo was lush, as if the season here was still spring.
The mountain wind blew, rustling the bamboo leaves.
Deeper in the woods, bird calls could be heard.
Listening closely, one could also hear the intermittent tapping of woodpeckers; so it seemed, earlier it was a woodpecker calling.
The forest floor was covered in dry yellow bamboo leaves, some stained with white bird droppings.
"Come on." A hand reached out from up the slope, and she instinctively placed hers in it.
The person pulled her up, and she sprang up the steep slope and onto the edge of the bamboo grove with ease.
Looking up, the person pulling her up was Jiutiao Meijie.
"No need to thank me," said Jiutiao Meijie with a grin.
Kiyono Lin took a deep breath.
From within the bamboo forest, Dubian Lian’s childish voice sang a fairytale story about "The Girl Born from Bamboo" turned into song.
"On one particular day~ while grandpa was out cutting~ bamboo, a little girl appeared from a slit in the bamboo~"
"The girl grew up strong~, and before long, she blossomed into a beautiful young woman"