I move down the mountain in the mini truck, and past the fence. This is still part of the mountain, so it’s still my property.
The road forks a little further down. Right goes to Aikawa’s mountain to the west, and if I go to the left, I’ll see a bridge to the right. Crossing the bridge takes me to the village, but if I keep going and don’t cross it, there will be another bridge, and the path will fork again. Going left and up from there would take me to Katsuragi’s mountain.
If I keep going forward instead of going up, there will be another bridge to the right. And if I keep going and go up, I’ll reach the mountain east of Katsuragi’s. That one has an owner too, but it’s uninhabited. Sorry if I didn’t do a good job explaining.
Going down the western road of the village and then the southern road leads to the town. The east leads further into the mountains. Apparently there’s another small village to the east, and people living even further deeper into the mountains. Before, I would wonder why someone would live in such an inconvenient place, but if you clear some land on the mountain and make fields, you can eat. If people lived without all this information around them, like now, a lot of them would probably never leave their villages. You might be wondering what they’d do if they became ill, but back when they were making villages deep in the mountains, they were probably focusing their all on just having food to eat.
Apparently, a lot of people ran from the mountains when the land tax became too tough, but there was also a time when they would get land if they developed it.
But in this information age, a lot of young people leave to make more money, or because they don’t like the inconvenience. This village has an elementary and middle school, but no high school. There’s only one doctor’s office too, and it’s hard to move without a vehicle because most of the ground isn’t flat.
Pochi and Tama are taking the initiative to go ahead and patrol close to the foot of the mountain Thanks.
And as I walk along the road with Yuma to see if there’s any trash, last night pops into my mind.
Oh? Do chickens have good night vision? I’ve heard that most birds aren’t actually night-blind, but what about chickens?
“Yuma… Can you see at night?”
Yuma pecks at me lightly, like it’s saying yes. Females don’t make a lot of sounds, so I don’t really understand it. But it does talk like a parrot. I still don’t get it.
“So chickens have good night vision…”
Looking into it later on actually tells me they don’t. There’s some debate on that, but still, my chickens really aren’t normal.
I’ve been gathering all the trash that was clearly thrown without a care, into a plastic bag. I do need to separate it into burnable and non-burnable trash, but this dirty plastic bottle should be burnable, right?
“So there actually is trash, uh…”
“Uh…”
Yuma responds, probably because there aren’t any people around.
Plastic isn’t biodegradable, so give me a break. Apparently there’s some biodegradable stuff too nowadays, but these plastic bottles aren’t it, surely. Ah, and cigarette buts too. Come on… At least I’m glad to see there’s nothing really so big that I’d call unlawful dumping.
After cleaning up, I load it all into the mini truck. Then I check the signs again, check if there are any people around, and go back home. Today I’m leaving the fence unlocked, because Aikawa is supposed to come by. I made it so it doesn’t look like it’s unlocked, so I think no one except someone who knows about it would come in.
My lunch today is meat, stir-fried vegetables, and rice. The vegetables are ones I got from pops, the rice I bought, and the meat I bought frozen from the general store in the village. I could get some fresher meat in the town’s supermarket, but I’m not that picky.
It’s like this every day, but food really tastes great after working. Maybe it’s because the air feels good too. The chickens eat the vegetable scraps I make when I’m cooking, and also go outside to hunt for themselves. Sorry about your owner, who doesn’t give you enough food.
In the afternoon, I tend to the field. It’s nice how the chickens take the initiative to eat bugs that would be harmful to it, like grasshoppers and moth larvae. Chickens eat everything, it seems. They even ate boar entrails. That was pretty graphic. I have to shake my head to get that image out of my head. Scary stuff.
“Come to think of it, do they lay eggs?”
I have Pochi, so would they lay fertilized eggs? I’d be hesitant to eat them if so.
And as I think about that and pull weeds, I hear the sound of a vehicle. I guess Aikawa is here.
“We have a visitor.”
Pochi goes out to greet him right away. And sure enough, there’s Aikawa.
“Sorry I’m late.”
Now that I’m seeing him in the light, he really is handsome. Yes, he really does remind me of Kamenashi Kazuya. And his brown hair is real. It’s unfair how cool he looks even in work clothes.
He stops his mini truck next to mine, but it doesn’t look like the long haired girl in the passenger seat is coming down any time soon.
“Oh? What about her…”
“Don’t mind her, she’s very shy around strangers.”
He says with an awkward smile. So she’s very shy around strangers, but still wants to be with him. Damn these normies.
Pochi then goes over to Aikawa’s mini truck and starts letting out intimidating clucks. That’s unusual.
“Pochi, no. What got into you?”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. It happens all the time. But your birds are really great, uh?”
Tama raises its head proudly upon hearing that. Yep, I always think the same thing, but they really do understand us.
“Hum, so, come in.”
“Excuse me.”
Aikawa brought me something. How am I going to beat a handsome guy that’s polite too? No, again, it’s not a competition.
At this point, I still don’t know why Aikawa felt the need to come all the way here to greet me. And the reason is so shocking, that it makes me stare off into the distance and question what life on the mountains even is.
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