It shrieked piercingly. It was a cry as if its throat were being wrung dry. It felt as though his eardrums would be torn away. Young Jian had to clap his tiny hands over both ears. Terror swelled to an enormous size. “Kyaaaak!” With a cry that sent chills down his spine, it surged in, flapping its gigantic wings.
It was like a wave of despair that allowed no resistance. Its saw-toothed beak gaped wide, and for a moment it seemed only natural, as a human, that his entire body would be ripped to shreds by it… Jian felt his young self to be unbearably powerless.
Flap! Flap! The sound like a gale born from those wingbeats made his heart sink. He could feel it drawing closer and closer.
At last, that enormous beak was just about to swallow him and his mother whole.
Rumble! All of a sudden, a thunderous roar followed, and with a violent tremor, the ground caved in. The two of them plunged into deep darkness. If there was any mercy in it, the long, saw-like beak merely snapped at empty air. At the same time, Jian’s eyes flew open.
/////////
“Cough! Cough!” A violent, dry cough burst from him. Along with the coughing, he had to spend a long while vomiting up the river water he had forced down. His chest burned. Soon, gasping for breath, he barely managed to move his trembling body. With great difficulty, he crawled out onto the gravel riverbank.
He lay sprawled on the gravel, which still held the warmth of the day, and panted heavily. His chest swelled and fell again and again, so sharply that his angular ribs stood out, and a metallic rasp mingled with his ragged breathing. “Haa… haa…” Every breath sent pain through him as if his lungs were being torn apart. In particular, from his toes to his fingers, the cold brought not just numbness but a stinging pain. Ah… at this rate, he might end up with frostbite. So he had to do something before then. But right now, there was no strength in his body at all.
Cough! Cough! Worse still, the coughing showed no sign of stopping. But if he stayed like this, even after barely surviving, he might soon be in danger again.
‘I have to move… hurry… somehow…’
Scolding himself, he tried to move his hands despite the pain. Frozen stiff, the sensation in them was horribly dulled; he kept curling and uncurling his fingers. It felt exactly like when blood failed to circulate. At last, he barely managed to stand and, crossing the gravel bed, headed toward a somewhat large tree. His limping steps were still precarious.
When he finally reached the tree, he hurriedly stripped off his wet clothes and, naked, moved his body frantically. He jumped up and down in place, rubbed his hands together furiously like a fly, then cupped them to his mouth and blew warm breaths into them, doing whatever he could to bring back sensation. Even so, his body heat did not return easily.
Rummaging through his soaked bag, he soon pulled out a small pouch, then gathered dry branches and dry leaves that could serve as kindling from the surroundings. Inside the pouch was the fire steel his mother had always carried with her.
Normally, they did not make fires. No—fires were not to be made. Especially not in an area filled with forest. But now, he felt he had to light one even if only to survive. As things stood, there was truly no helping it. Otherwise, he might freeze to death first.
Chik… chik… Trembling like an aspen, he struck the fire steel with the knife he always carried.
Sparks flashed up several times, and thankfully, the dry leaves caught fire. Under the tiny flame that rose up, Jian placed a few twigs and blew on it, trying to make the fire a little bigger.
Ah… little by little, the warmth of the campfire began to drift toward him. “Hoo… hoo…” Jian held out the hands he had been rubbing like a fly toward the small fire. Ah! If he could have done as he wished, he would have thrust both hands straight into the flames. That was how much it felt as if his fingers and toes were about to fall off.
Time passed in a daze amid the terrible cold. Fortunately, sensation gradually began to return between the joints of his fingers. When he felt the body heat he had lost beginning to come back as well, he finally felt as though he might live. Still not wearing a single thread, Jian sat down and let out deep sighs. Only after he added more branches he had gathered to the campfire and raised the flames did he finally have the leisure to look around.
The area was still shrouded in pitch-black darkness. And it was deathly silent. In this place where, untouched by human hands for many years, traces of civilization had slowly vanished and the forest had arrived, it was not easy to find signs of life. That was probably because the animals of the forest also knew how dangerous the night was. The animals, too, knew that if they caught their eye, they would be brutally devoured, so once night fell, they held their breath as much as possible. Even the tiny grass insects did.
Was that why? Except for the sound of the river flowing a little distance away, the area was as quiet as the grave.
In truth, that made him even more uneasy. Perhaps he still had not escaped its territory. Ah… sadly, because he could see nothing in the surrounding area, he could not tell exactly where he was now. It was especially hard to find anything that might pinpoint his location.
As his body temperature gradually returned and his body began to find a little ease, his original anxiety at last peeked its head out.
Swallowing dryly, he looked around repeatedly with a face full of tension. Crackle, crackle… In the meantime, the sound of the campfire’s wood burning seemed especially loud, making him flinch for no reason. Would it be better to put out the fire soon?
But…
Jian’s gaze fell on his wet clothes. They still needed more time to dry. If he put on wet clothes like this, he might quickly lose the body heat he had barely regained.
‘If I’d known this would happen, should I have prepared more spare clothes…?’
Regret washed over him along with impatience. Just as the saying went, if he had known this would happen, he would have prepared more spare clothes… It was then. Ssssss… A sound broke the silence. Startled, he turned his head toward the direction it had come from.
A tree was trembling faintly. Beneath it, the dark undergrowth was dancing suspiciously. It looked like an artificial dance. Was something there? Or was it the wind? He did not know. His heart began pounding again. Jian pulled the bag beside the fire toward him. With his pale hand, he opened the inner pocket of the bag and thrust his hand deep inside, preparing for the worst. Even then, his anxious eyes continued to scan the silent forest.
Ssssss! Once again came the sound of leaves in the brush striking against something.
He swallowed dryly. Then a strange wind blew in; though it was only the beginning of autumn, it was little different from the biting wind of midwinter, further stirring his sense of foreboding. The flames of the campfire he had lit began to waver uneasily. Jian took the flare gun round out of the bag. Then he reloaded the flare gun he had fired once before.
Slowly, he took a deep breath. With an uneasy gaze, he stared intently in the direction from which the subtle sound had come.
Ssssss… Once again, the leaves trembled uneasily. They were shaking more openly than before. There was no doubt. Something was there. And it was getting closer. The campfire’s flames began to weaken, as though huddling in fear.
He slowly rose to his feet. Glaring fixedly at the thicket that was shaking in a distinctly unnatural way, he gripped the flare gun tightly. Thump, thump, thump… His wildly pounding heart felt as though it would leap out of his mouth. Cold sweat beaded and ran over his body, which had only just been chilled to the bone.
‘Was lighting the fire… a mistake after all? But… but if I hadn’t lit it, I would’ve gotten frostbite… Damn it… I’m really unlucky today…’
Ah… today truly was an unlucky day. And when the thought came to him that perhaps today might be the last day of the survival he had struggled so desperately to cling to, anger surged up in him for no reason.
‘I was trying to struggle somehow. I tried to live, somehow.’
After the day he lost his mother, he had lived for a while as if he had given up on life. By some cruel luck, he had survived alone, but young Jian, left by himself, could no longer feel any hope of living. At the same time, he was sick of it. How long would he have to keep struggling desperately just to survive? There was no hope anyway.
Humanity, of course, would go extinct… It would vanish into the back pages of history. They would live as the shadows of the new humanity and then, in the end, disappear without a trace. So what was the point of clinging to life so desperately? Even at that young age, Jian knew. There was no hope for them. Only despair awaited them. For what reason, then, should he go on living so desperately, so pitifully? And he would be lonely alone…
He did not know why they had abducted his mother instead of eating her on the spot. Well… such things happened from time to time. It must have been up to their whims. What mattered was that the moment they took his mother away, in the end, they had taken even his tiny hope with them.
And so Jian had wanted to give up.
He was at his limit. He wanted to end this wretched survival. Yet the reason that thought reached a turning point was, as expected, his mother. Just as he was about to give up everything, on the high cliff he had climbed to end his own life, darkness happened to be receding and the sun was rising in the distance. And within the vast nature revealed then, that beauty…
Why was it, at that moment? He thought of his mother, who had sacrificed everything to survive somehow.
‘For you, Mom can do anything. I can give up everything I have.’