Chapter 1

“A butterfly flying on a rainy day

Who knows what it is running from?

It spends its one-day life escaping through that downpour.

Aren’t humans butterflies too?

Butterflies escaping from their troubles.”

For some reason, I was deeply affected by these words that I had randomly written while sitting quietly at my desk and thinking. I remember the day I wrote them. There was only the light of a candle in a dark room. On my old walnut desk were the papers I had been reading and scribbling on, and to my right was my cigarette, its smoke slowly rising. Outside, heavy rain was falling; the sound of the drops hitting the window is still in my ears. The rain was falling like a sad song. At that moment, I understood: I was the butterfly flying in the rain, knowing that it would die…

Looking back into the past, I suppose I must have written those words because I had been running away from too many responsibilities. I spent my entire life running away from people and responsibilities.

I remember the village where I spent my childhood. Perhaps it was a village that people would call “disgusting,” but I was happy there. My family were fishermen. Our house was in the most beautiful part of the village and was the most beautiful house in the village. It was a village resembling an island village, close to the sea.

Every morning, I would wake up to the sound of seagulls and the waves of the sea. Without even having breakfast, I would go down to the shore, sit on the large moss-covered rocks by the sea, and watch the sea and the seagulls.

The children in the village also played by the sea. Sometimes they played skipping stones, sometimes they played tag. I knew all of those children. We would occasionally talk, and they would invite me to join them. I played with them whenever I felt like it.

Some of them didn’t like me. They called me a freak because I wasn’t talkative.

Time passed, and those children and I had all become adults. I still sat on those large moss-covered rocks just as I used to. For years, I watched that deep blue sea and the seagulls hunting the fish swimming in it. But until then, no one had ever sat beside me and watched the sea with me.

As I grew older, I occasionally went fishing with my family on their boat to help them. One day, when we were returning from fishing, it had become very dark. That blue sea I loved looked gloomy and frightening to me. I wanted to get back to land immediately.

While looking toward the shore, I saw another large boat. I think they called them ships in the cities. The ship standing near the shore would occasionally visit our village. Some relatives of the families living in the village would come from the city on this ship to visit them.

The ship illuminated that enormous, dark sea so brightly with its lights that I couldn’t take my eyes off it. A huge black ship covered in lights—anyone would have been amazed by it.

As we approached the shore, I saw a few people who had come to the village. They were wearing clothes, carrying bags, and wearing hats that I had never seen in the village before.

After watching the people for a while, I heard my older brother calling out to me.

“Hey, you little rascal, aren’t you going to help us unload the buckets from the boat?”

I looked at my brother and nodded, saying I was coming.

While carrying the buckets filled with fish, I carefully examined the ship at the same time.

When I arrived home, my eyes were closing from exhaustion. Fishing was hard work. The constantly rocking boat and the wind blowing from the sea exhausted and challenged a person greatly. That was why my family took me with them only occasionally until I got used to it.

As I went to my room and lay down from exhaustion, I heard a sound. It was such a loud sound that it echoed throughout the entire village.

It was the sound of the ship leaving the village.

I was a little sad. I wanted to see the inside of that ship. As I lay there, I thought to myself, I wish I had a ship like that. Fishing would be easier on a big ship.

The next morning, I woke up as usual to the sounds of the sea and the seagulls. I wasn’t going fishing that day.

As soon as I got up, I took some bread from home to eat and ran outside to the place where I always sat.

Those enormous moss-covered rocks were now completely covered in moss, resembling gigantic balls of moss. That was why I liked those rocks even more.

Nothing changed in the village. Whenever I went to the shore, the children around my age were there too.

Only the elderly and the families in the village liked me. Because secretly, without my family knowing, I would hide buckets of fish that I had caught myself and distribute them to the elderly and families in need in the village.

No one ever spoke about it because they knew my family was strict.

There was a small school in the village. It only taught us how to read and write, and once we learned, we graduated.

I didn’t like that school either. I thought it was unnecessary and didn’t attend its lessons. I had already learned how to read and write from my older brother. Since there wasn’t much of an age difference between us, he had taught me while he was attending that school.

The people in the village thought I was someone who couldn’t read or write because I didn’t go to school and always ran away from it.

On the contrary, I thought I was more knowledgeable and intelligent than the people in the village.

There were also villagers who thought I was sad, depressed, and lonely because I was quiet and constantly sat alone on the rocks.

How do I know this?

Because while I was sitting on the rocks, I could hear the children playing on the shore talking about me.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t talk to the village children my age, let me explain.

My family was above the villagers, so they didn’t like me. That was the first reason.

The other reasons were that I could never get along with them. They didn’t think the way I did. They didn’t see the beauty I saw.

They saw me as a freak.

Once, when I tried to join them and said hello, they asked me,

“Why do you always sit on the rocks and stare blankly at the sea for hours?”

In response, I said,

“I don’t stare blankly. Whenever I sit there every day, the colors, fish, and seagulls I see aren’t the same. Every day is different. That’s why I sit there. Whenever I look, the view is different.”

When I gave them that answer, none of them understood anything. They looked at each other, made fun of me, and called me a freak.

When we grew older, around the age of seventeen, they stopped calling me that. After all, we were becoming more mature. But since they knew I wasn’t like them, we only greeted each other.

A week had passed since the ship left the village.

I had secretly taken the fish I had caught from the boat and gone to the house of the oldest person in the village, the old grandmother. Since I had caught very little that day, I was going to give all of it to her.

I quickly knocked on her door.

When the door opened, it wasn’t the grandmother who always looked at me innocently and thanked me.

A young girl around my age had opened the door.

Thinking I had come to the wrong house, I said to the girl,

“I’m sorry. I think I’ve come to the wrong house. I must have gotten confused.”

The young girl smiled at me and shook her head, saying no.

“No, you haven’t come to the wrong house. My grandmother told me to open the door when the fisherman boy came so I could take the fish. She told me that there was a young man who brought her fish and that this meant he was in good health. I suppose you’re that young man.”

She spoke quietly in an innocent and slightly delicate voice.

I nodded, saying yes, left the fish, and quickly walked away.

As I walked along that dark village road, the face of that girl I didn’t know kept coming to my mind.

Her long black braided hair, her snow-white, bright and pale skin, her enormous black eyes looking at me, and her pink cheeks kept appearing before my eyes.

I had never seen a girl this beautiful in the village.

Since I had grown up with the girls in the village and constantly saw them, I considered them ordinary girls.

For my age, I had never been interested in girls.

Some of the children around my age were getting married, but I had never thought about marriage or any girl.

There had been girls who wrote me letters wanting to meet me, but I had never written back to any of them or spoken to them when I saw them.

This girl I didn’t know made me feel a strange emotion I had never experienced before.

As I walked, I shook my head and came to my senses.

What is happening? What am I thinking? Who is this girl to suddenly leave me so dazed?

I ran home, went straight to bed, and fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, it was very late.

Strangely, I hadn’t woken up to the sound of the seagulls at all.

I got up and looked around. My family had already left home and gone out to sea on the boat.

After looking around, I splashed some water on my face and went to my favorite place.

As I approached the rocks by the sea, I saw someone with a red ribbon sitting on them.

No one else in this village had ever sat there besides me.

I slowly approached because I wanted to see who it was.

When the girl sitting on the rocks noticed me beside her, she suddenly screamed.

“Aaaa! You scared me! Why did you approach me so quietly?”

“S-sorry. I’ve never seen anyone sitting here before. I was curious who it was besides myself.”

“Oh, you’re the fisherman boy who brought fish to my grandmother yesterday, aren’t you?”

“Yes, that’s me,” I said.

Normally, I should have felt cold in that wind. Instead, after that tiny conversation, the weather felt strangely warm to me.

My heart had started pounding.

I hope she can’t hear it.

I remember that we talked a little more while sitting on the rocks.

The girl with the red ribbon was named Miyo.

She had been sent here from the city by her family. She was supposedly here to take care of her grandmother.

But no matter how much she said that, her pale, white face told me otherwise.

We talked for a while, and she even laughed at all my silly jokes.

When it started getting dark, I offered to walk Miyo home, and she accepted.

She said her grandmother was very sick and that she had a feeling she would pass away soon.

I didn’t say anything. All the words became stuck in my throat.

Miyo quietly murmured,

“My grandmother is all I have left.”

Even though she said it so quietly, I heard her.

Her family sending her here was a lie.

Whatever had happened in the city, she had lost her family there and returned to the only surviving member of her family, her grandmother.

She was a sixteen-year-old girl.

After I walked her home, the road seemed very long.

This girl was very beautiful, but at the same time, she was a withered, unhappy piece of a rose.

Since what I experienced happened years ago, it is very difficult for me to remember. Let’s try to continue from where I can remember.

About two years had passed in the village.

By then, I went fishing with my family every day. I was nineteen years old now, and it was time for me to take responsibility and get involved in the work.

Every evening, Miyo waited for me at the pier to return from fishing.

She helped me and my family unload the buckets of fish.

After unloading the buckets, we would go to the moss-covered rocks and talk.

I would tell her about the different kinds of fish I had seen during the day and the funny things that had happened, making her laugh.

My family kept telling me things like, “You should marry Miyo.”

Honestly, whenever I looked at Miyo, I also wanted her to be my wife.

While we were laughing on the rocks, a voice rose from the village.

“The old grandmother is lying on the floor in the house on the mountain!”

After hearing that, I looked at Miyo. She had already stood up and was about to run.

I grabbed her and said,

“Wait. Calm down. Let’s go together.”

We quickly ran to the grandmother’s house.

I wish I could erase that day from my mind.

The grandmother had passed away.

Miyo ran toward her grandmother, hugged her, and the crying voice of the girl I loved echoed throughout the entire village.

A few months later, Miyo became even paler. Her old happiness was gone.

I tried every day to make her laugh, but she never did.

About seven months after her grandmother had passed away, the girl had started to recover a little.

One evening, I went to check on Miyo.

I entered the house, and when I saw a huge suitcase on the floor filled with Miyo’s belongings, I wondered what was happening.

Miyo said,

“I’m going back to my city.”

I remember getting angry with her and shouting at her in a moment of anger, but afterward, I told her all my feelings and cried, asking her not to leave.

After that night, we decided to get married.

We told my family and the people in the village that we were going to get married.

Everyone was very happy.

We got married, and the house where her grandmother had found peace became our perfect home.

Our days were so much fun that Miyo was always laughing.

We had become a perfect married couple.

A few years later, Miyo and I decided to move to the city.

My family supported us and helped us as well.

At that time, leaving the village I loved was very difficult for me.

The day finally came.

I was finally going to board that huge black ship I had never been able to take my eyes off and see the inside of it.

After entering the ship, I was speechless.