“She’s still only about a month old, so not yet.”
“No way! Look at how big she is!”
Yuma hid behind me, perhaps feeling annoyed. If this had been Pochi or Tama, they would’ve probably pecked the boy. They shouldn’t do that, of course.
“Hi, Sho-chan. Your neighbor from the next mountain over was here earlier.”
“Next-mountain neighbor, huh?”
Hearing that from the shopkeeper reminded me that every mountain had its owner. In the case of a neighbor next door, it was customary to go and say hello, but next mountain was a different story, so I’d been putting it off. With it getting warmer, maybe it was time to introduce myself. I wonder if I should bring a present or something.
I decided not to trust my own judgment too much, and that night, I called Yumoto-san. I didn’t want to show up unannounced twice on the same day, and if I did, they’d probably tell me to stay around for dinner too. Not that I didn’t want to have dinner with them—I was just being polite.
“Er...your neighbors...?” Uncharacteristically for him, Yumoto-san seemed a bit evasive. I heard him turn to his wife and say, “Hey, Shohei’s asking about his neighbors,” before handing the phone over to her.
“Hello, Shohei-kun?”
“Hello.”
Come to think of it, I’d heard that the mountains next to mine had also changed owners recently. On the mountain to the east lived a young woman, and on the one to the west there was a flashy-looking guy—that was what I’d been told at least. And, like me, they were both living in the mountains, which was surprising.
“The young miss from the mountain to the east moved in just about two years ago, I think, and the one to the west came three years ago. Both mountains have wild animal warning signs, and it seems they both moved out here after unpleasant experiences in the city. I think maybe it would be best if you talk to them when they come to the village.”
Basically, “don’t intrude on another’s mountain” was what she was probably trying to say. I assumed they both had their own circumstances.
“Wild animal warnings... Do they put up those signs on all the mountains?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve never seen them around here, though apparently there are bears, boars, and other such beasts out there. Shohei-kun—that’s a bit of a mouthful, so I’ll just call you Sho-chan, okay?—there might be bears on your other mountain. Be careful, will you, Sho-chan?”
I paused for a moment, then replied, “Okay.” I had indeed been warned about that when I’d bought the mountains.
When most people thought of bears, things like teddy bears came to mind, and the zoo was the only place folks would ever get to see a real one. Because of this, people had a tendency to forget that bears were, in fact, vicious beasts. I remembered reading in a book somewhere about the Sankebetsu brown bear incident, a series of bear attacks in Hokkaido. The sheer horror chilled me to the bone. If there were indeed bears on the mountain, I had to do something about it.
Maybe I should have gotten a hunting license before moving here.
As usual, I had underestimated life in the mountains.
After the call, I was feeling blue. The chickens gathered around me, as if trying to console me.
“Pochi, Tama, Yuma, you’re such good chickens... You know, it looks like there might be bears around here. You guys be careful.”
What do you even mean by “be careful”? I thought to myself as I gently petted their wings. Chickens liked taking dust and water baths, which actually got them pretty clean. Yuma even took baths with me. I was worried at first that the water might be too hot for her, but she seemed to enjoy it a lot, so I started inviting her to bathe with me every night. I did invite Pochi and Tama too, but they just gave me a “What the heck is he saying?” kinda look. That hurt, guys. Maybe I traumatized them by bathing them when they were chicks.
“Wild animals and neighbors... First, I have to do something about the wild animals.”
There were apparently a few villagers with hunting licenses, but with the aging population, they’d been getting scarcer every year. Getting a license myself would cost money, and there was no guarantee I’d actually have a use for it. Plus, guns needed maintenance, and most hunting was actually done through trapping anyway. It was a far cry from the bang-bang type stuff I imagined.
Carnivores were indeed a problem, but so were prey animals such as deer. A lot of people associated deer with the city of Nara and its vast park where they roamed freely, but they often needed to be exterminated after finding their way to human civilization and causing damage to crops. Their usual habitats were in forests and meadows, but I’d heard there were deer around here too. They could also only be hunted during a specific season, and failure to follow this was punishable by law. I’m not sure about the details. All in all, they were quite a pain to deal with. Incidentally, deer-hunting season here was between November and mid-March. The hunting sign boards didn’t list the months because the season length varied by location.
“I wish I had asked them more about pests...” I knew so little I didn’t even know what I should ask. “And I hope nothing happens to my fields.”
Life in the mountains was a fight for survival.
All of this weighed on my mind, but there was no point in mulling it over, so I decided to go to sleep.