by Nisioisin
“I would not. Fine. Continue the story.”
“‘What’s this? Have you always been here, o honored boobies?’ I said.”
“You’re getting mixed up again. If there were heretofore unnoticed boobies in the courtyard, that would be a big deal.”
“A tree was a big deal too. I mean, no one’d ever noticed. It was higgledy-piggledy, everyone was like, Huh? What’s this doing here? Did someone plant this here in the middle of the night?”
“…”
“‘Higgledy-piggledy’ sounds like the name of a sausage-maker, doesn’t it? Hilda the Pig Lady.”
“Just because I’m not talking doesn’t mean I’m bored, no need to force yourself to say something funny.”
“Seems like their sausages would be the best. Or not the wurst, anyway.”
“Maybe it’s your turn to try not talking! Um, so, what was it actually like? Was there anything left?”
“Huh? Oh, no, big brother, I haven’t actually eaten there. No leftovers, sorry.”
“I’m not asking about the sausages. I’m asking if there was any trace left of someone coming into the courtyard in the middle of the night and planting that tree. That’s a big operation, examining the dirt around it ought to tell you something.”
“Yup. I’m sure it would even tell you something, big brother.”
“Are you asking me for help, or mocking me? Which is it?”
“I’m mocking you while asking you for help.”
“Don’t try to be clever.”
“There was no trace of anything like that. It was firmly rooted. No evidence of any digging or planting. Of course neither the sensei nor any of the pupils are experts on soil or trees, so I can’t be perfectly, a hundred-percent certain, but as far as anyone can tell, the tree seems to have been there for ages. It’s an /an-tee-duh-loo-vee-un/ tree, seems like it’s been growing there for decades and decades.”
“Hmmm…”
Not only does she not know how to spell “antediluvian,” she seems to think it’s just a synonym for “old.”
How can she possibly get such good grades?
She must’ve figured out how to game the system.
“But that’s…kind of scary. A tree no one ever noticed, growing in a courtyard that everyone uses all the time for training and whatever else─”
“That’s the thing, big brother!”
Karen slapped the floor.
With a smack.
What’s she trying to do to my floorboards?
“That’s what everybody says! What, are you on their side too, big brother?!”
“No, no, I’m on your side, of course?” I instantly tried to appease my little sister. I seemed to be making a habit of it; this big brother really doesn’t have any dignity, does he… “And? What exactly are they saying, Karen?”
“Everybody, they keep saying that the tree is scary. Scary, or freaky. Of course our sensei isn’t saying anything like that, but all my insufficiently disciplined senpai and kohai are, they’re spooked.”
“…”
Lumping her senpai in with her kohai. Even supposing she spoke formally towards anyone besides her sensei, it’s gotta be a pretty exclusive group…
“Freaky, huh? Even if that’s going too far, it’s not like I can’t understand where they’re coming from.”
I’m not sure this is a fitting analogy, but wouldn’t it be like cleaning your room and finding a book on your bookshelf that you didn’t remember ever seeing before?
A book you didn’t remember buying, didn’t remember reading.
Sitting on the shelf as if it had been there all along─even if it wasn’t freaky, it’d be a little unsettling.
“I see. So you’re on their side, after all. You’re one of them.”
“One of them? You keep talking about them, but I’ve never even met a single one of these people…”
“How can you side with people you’ve never even met! I’m the one you should believe! Are you really going to listen to a perfect stranger over me?”
She was getting really worked up.
A scary little sister. And even stupider than she is scary.
What could be worse than a scary, stupid little sister?
Maybe this is asking too much, but how about you try being just a tiny bit moé.
“At least hear me out! Can’t you treat us evenly, even?”
“Okay, okay. I’ll even be even. So, you’re saying you don’t feel that way?”
“Huh? About what?” Karen looked blank. “Um, what were we talking about again?”
“Don’t get sidetracked. You’re losing the thread of your own story. You didn’t feel like it was freaky that there was a tree you’d never noticed before growing in the courtyard?”
“Nope. Sure, I was shocked, but I wasn’t spooked. I always order gizzard when I have yakitori, so I have a lot of grit.”
“That’s not how it works, and I think courage is associated with the heart.”
“That’s fine. I usually order that too.”
Now that you mention it, the girl does go for the innards.
“In fact, when I first noticed it I felt ashamed to call myself a martial artist. So ashamed I considered suicide.”
“Sounds like you don’t have the mental fortitude to be a martial artist…”
“I hoped everyone else would feel the same about it, but apparently they didn’t.”
Completely ignoring my dig, Karen continued with an uncharacteristically forlorn look in her eye. No, not just uncharacteristic. She’s not the kind of person who ever has that look in her eye. Which meant─this must’ve been a greater shock to her than I’d thought.
“And because they’re scared─they’re talking about cutting it down.”
004
And that’s how I ended up ’round back of the dojo.
Led there by the arm.
I don’t mean that metaphorically, we really did go the whole way arm in arm.
I’d be delighted to seem like a guy out for a companionable jaunt with his little sister, but the reality is that people probably thought I was the younger sibling. Karen’s so much taller than me.
And while we’re at it, the arm in arm part was “to keep me from running away before we got there,” so the truth is that it wasn’t particularly “companionable” either.
Well.
There is precedent for me breaking my promise to Karen and running off, so I can understand why she felt that way, but for once I had no thought of running away.
Given how emotional and quick to judge she is, I took her story with a grain of salt─but to be honest, this story of a “tree that existed without anyone noticing it” piqued my interest.
…It had nothing to do with avoiding my exam prep, of course.
“Hmm…”
As I’d told Karen, the tree was a lot smaller than I’d imagined─even so, and even though it was an aged tree, it seemed highly unlikely that it could’ve been there without anyone noticing.
It seemed unlikely─but apparently that’s what happened, so what can I say? If Karen had been the only one claiming this, I would’ve said my little sister was oblivious and that’d be the end of it (okay, maybe not?), but with the other pupils and even the master of the dojo all corroborating her story…
“So you were the first one to notice it? This tree?”
“I sure was. Praise me, praaaise me. Pat my head, paaat it.”
“I’m sorry to say you’re too tall, I can’t reach.”
“I’m not that huge…”
“So when everyone is training in the courtyard, you stand closest to this tree, right? Don’t you think it was just that no one could see the tree because you were in the way?”
“I’m telling you, I’m not that huge.”
Karen went and actually stood in front of the tree.
Some portion of the trunk was hidden, of course, but it’s not like I couldn’t see the tree─obviously, since it was at least ten feet t
all.
There wasn’t a single leaf or fruit or anything─whether it was just that the season had passed, or whether the tree had run out of the requisite life force to produce such things, I couldn’t say… But judging from its height, I would’ve expected it to be visible even from outside the walls.
I asked Karen about this.
Shaking her head, she replied, “Dunno. I take a different route. Maybe I saw it…but I was never aware of it.”
“There you go… I mean, most people don’t go around peering at the trees in other people’s yards, right?”
“Yeah. And I think the same is basically true even when you’re inside the yard itself, or in the middle of training. So maybe we just never noticed it. But doesn’t that mean it was just our own negligence?” As she said this, Karen turned around and touched the tree. “We never noticed this tree thanks to our own negligence─we weren’t kind enough to notice it, and now that we’ve noticed it we say that it’s freaky and ought to be cut down? Isn’t that fucked up?”
“Well…”
To be perfectly honest, I could see where the people who said it “ought to be cut down” were coming from. But at the same time, it was only natural for Karen to think the whole thing was “fucked up”─whether or not it actually was “fucked up” is another question, all I’m saying is it was only natural for Karen to think so.
Both sides’ opinions were valid.
As a disinterested third party, I could only say that I understood where everyone was coming from─but the important thing here was that I wasn’t a disinterested third party.
There’s a time and a place, of course.
But at that time, and in that place, all I could be was Karen’s big brother─that’s all I wanted to be.
“Okay then. It seems like you were telling the truth this time, so I’ll help you.”
“What the hell, big brother, are you saying you didn’t believe me? How rude, when have I ever lied to you?”
“Including only the clearly verifiable instances, you’ve lied to me on 293 occasions. The first time was when you were two years old and had broken one of my toys.”
“I don’t know whether to say you’ve got an amazing memory, a small mind, or a short stature…”
“Leave my stature out of it.”
Anyway, let’s get down to business.
Needless to say, we were currently trespassing on someone else’s property─for Karen this was evidently a mi casa es su casa situation, but this was my first visit to the home of someone who I didn’t know from a hole in the ground.
I could not have been more antsy.
“In other words─you want to figure out some way to keep the tree from being cut down, right?”
“Yeah. With your political pull, big brother, I know you’ll manage something.”
“I wouldn’t count on my political pull.”
“I have an even more shameless request… ‘Keeping the tree from being cut down’ makes it sound like it’d be okay if we found some way of moving it somewhere else. But that’s off the table.”
“Off the table…”
Dial back the language when you’re asking for help, okay?
Why the hell are you saying that to me like it’s some kind of rule, or a condition of my contract?
“It’d feel like we were driving this tree out of its home, and I couldn’t stand that. Which is why I ask that you find a way for it to stay here like this forever.”
“Forever, huh…”
The tree seemed like it was going to die of its own accord in the not too distant future, so the “forever” part honestly seemed a bit difficult…though likewise, moving a tree that old somewhere else was probably worse than difficult.
If we were to preserve the tree, it seemed like it was going to have to be done there─whether or not I had the political pull.
“From what you said, your sensei doesn’t think this tree is freaky.”
“Are you kidding my? It’s me sensei we’re talking about.”
“That didn’t come out right, did it?”
“Are you kidding me? It’s my sensei we’re talking about.”
“Geez, saying it with the same gusto like you never messed up. In that case, though…can’t you just ask your sensei to talk to the students who’re so freaked out about it?”
“It’s not that easy! Sensei certainly isn’t freaked out by the tree, but that’s only because to a martial artist, trees are just something to be kicked over.”
“…”
That’s nuts.
Kicking over trees instead of cutting them down?
Faced with someone like that, I guess Karen couldn’t simply come out and say she felt sorry for the tree─
“If this tree were gone, there’d be more room for training. So freaky or not, I think sensei would secretly be glad to see it go. But it’s not like I haven’t already pled my case. I managed to get the tree a temporary reprieve.”
“Is that so?”
“Just because I came to you, big brother, doesn’t mean I didn’t go to my sensei first.”
“Is that so…”
“But it’s impossible to stop all the other disciples. They’re all pretty cocky and won’t just quietly follow sensei’s orders.”
“Hmmm… In that case, what if you tried to convince them as their fellow karate student instead of your sensei handing down an order?”
“No good. Otherwise I would’ve done it already and not have bowed my head to you, big brother, I seriously hated having to.”
“Seriously hated, huh…”
The hurts just keep on coming from this little sister of mine.
Like she’s trying to gradually wear down my health bar.
“At the same time, if I can convince the others, I bet I can convince my sensei─that is, sensei said as much.”
“A-ha…”
“To be exact, what sensei said was, ‘If you can beat the shit out of all the other disciples and change their minds, I don’t mind leaving the tree alone. For your sake, I’ll suppress my desire to kick it over.’ But I really don’t want to beat the shit out of all the other disciples.”
“…”
Seemed like her sensei erred a little too far on the side of practical combat.
And the fact that Karen said she didn’t “want to” rather than “couldn’t” was terrifying… Though if they went by majority rule, she would get pwned, so maybe her sensei was considering her feelings in a way.
The courtyard belonged to the dojo, so it was up to the sensei what happened to the tree─yup, Karen was a cherished disciple.
“And my cherished little sister… If that’s how it is, the obvious course of action would be to try and convince each of the other pupils one by one…”
Cocky.
I’m not sure exactly what Karen meant by that, but if every one of them was a seasoned combatant, convincing them one by one didn’t seem like it’d be an easy task.
Instead of dealing with them one at a time─the best solution would be to come up with a “principle” that could convince all of them at once.
I touched the aged tree as Karen was doing─and it felt real, in a way that didn’t come across when you were simply looking at it.
It made me think, This is a living thing.
It wasn’t just Karen, anyone might’ve been opposed to “killing” it simply because it’d started to wither…or simply because no one had been aware of it before.
Putting aside whether or not I agreed.
“If nothing else, we’ve got to get rid of this preconception that the tree is freaky. In other words─if we can prove that it’s not an aberration, or an apparition, or some kind of evil spirit, but just a regular old plant…”
“Right. If only we can set those scaredy-cats’ minds at ease.”
“…”
It might not be so easy to convince those “scaredy-cats” with such a hostile attitude…
“Yeah? Fine, let me rephrase tha
t. Chickens, not scaredy-cats.”
“Still only sensing hostility. You’ve got to be buddy-buddy with them.”
“It’s not like we’re not buddies. I usually have the utmost respect for my fellow fighters. But in this case they’re chicken. A bunch of Chicken Littles, running around like chickens with their heads cut off. But mark my words, their actions will come home to roost.”