I’m about to say goodbye to this place. I’ll probably miss the mountains.
Those mountains that swallow the sunset like a symphonic wave, those that after the fireworks stand lonely alongside me, working to match the color of the dark sky. You are neither at the road’s end nor at the other side of the stars.
It suddenly occurs to me: isn’t what I’m standing on right now a mountain? Aren’t we, these mustard-seed creatures, part of what makes up the mountain? When I speed past and the trees ahead blur into a great fissure at the edge of vision, have I truly escaped from this towering dust of years? The mountain is only there, turning its eyes to watch us, absorbing the wounds we bring it. I can’t help wondering: can it really be reached? Or perhaps at the mountain’s center lies the dream-world of Spirited Away. Why else would those who walk into the mountains vanish without a trace?
Night came, and the mountain finally retreated into the black tide; dust and nebula tangled together, weaving the indecipherable image of an ending deep in my imagination. I saw a green silhouette without a face struggling out of my body and walking resolutely into the mountain. Ah—you too are going to join them. My body felt a sudden lightness, but my heart grew heavier. When the green silhouette reached the foot of the mountain, it abruptly turned to face me. At that moment the full moon rose from behind the mountain, its cold radiance dyeing ten thousand leaves through with jade. In that moment of distraction, I looked again for the silhouette—it was gone, leaving only the silver light rising and falling across the leaves.
「またね。」
I murmured it to myself, and stood for a long time watching the place where the silhouette had disappeared, my ears filled with the hum of leaf-butterflies beating their wings, deafening.