When lying down on a slope near a river, the wind caressed my cheek, carrying the young smell of grasses and the fragrance of burnt soil. I spent lying down on the grass field on the way back home, seeing the sun that was over the horizon, almost snuffled, at dusk. If I left earlier, I went down along the river that was connected to the sea and sat on the beach. Then, I often looked for stones that had good shapes for ducks and drakes. I went to rivers and the sea like this and usually put down my face on the ground and sway my head and eyes to make the effect that the scenery of the city was drawing lines in circular patterns. Putting my ears to the surface of the earth, I was listening to the “voice” from the deepest of the bottom through the numeral layers. It should be around childhood or kindergarten-age when I realized that I have the ability to hear the “voice”, different from others.

I often talked to my mother about the lives of things. Mom, today sand was happy. Mom, the road seems to be sad. I told the story like that. And, my mother replied, well, it’s good, and showing her smile, looking at me sideways. I didn’t think she fit my talks at first. But, I realized that she did fit when my mother and I went back home from shopping. She took me to the supermarket and bought some chocolate snacks for me while she was looking for daily needs. Mystically, I didn’t hear any voice from snacks on shelves and vegetables stacked on tables. On the way back home, my mother asked me, did you enjoy kindergarten, and I answered innocently, I played with that friend, or he and I played tag and he imitated a monster, it was so funny, likewise. In the middle of this everyday talking of a child, I started to talk about the voice heard during the walking time around the kindergarten. But, I described the situation then in detail which was different from usual. Road-bah-bah basked in a sun and said it aches. It was heavy rain the day before yesterday but it felt good because it has been no rain. But why Mr. road aches? I asked why but there was no answer. After a while of silence, my mother said quietly, what does it mean? What does it mean? What did it mean by the phrase what does it mean? I couldn’t understand the intention of the question. The talk about the road was just the talk about the road. Nothing more and nothing less. It resulted in confusion and I stared at my mother’s right eye in the rear-view mirror. My mother changed the topic.

I entered primary school after that and made friends there. But when I talked about the voice, not so many friends make conversation as my mother did. Some classmates just reply, there are no such voices. Others made fool of me. I realized the reaction that came out from my mother was a natural reaction through these experiences.

I went down a hill along the river. Peddles on the wide bank were cramped under my feet. The atmosphere around the stones was as if one where a station attendant pushed passengers into a packed train. I sat suddenly. I touched stones here and there.

I started to hear the voice from more concrete things. Thus, they were, for example, shells on a beach, husks fallen from trees in a park, sometimes hollows of tree trunks. When I listened to these things, first every sound surrounding me flies away, and there would be silence. Then, it should be the sound of something shaking from depth, and it adjusted moment by moment, minute by minute, and finally, it started to talk to me. The voices have each different wave, some matched me, and some did not. They had different, as it is called, characters. Like humans have habits they cannot fix. Some voices liked talking, and others hesitated to talk. When it comes to human beings, we might rush to categorize these characters as selfish people or shy people. Despite that, these voices had different paths they have lived. As we call ourselves life. The voice that got along fine was somehow quiet. At the same time, it felt frantic. If it was a person, that person and I would take separated ways and never see each other again even though that person and I matched first. These voices had this coldness, but I didn’t become sentimental in the case of talking with the voices. The voices are sometimes not first meeting ones but identical ones in the past.

When I became a student, I also carried this topic of voice. I was not refused as I experienced in the past. But, it did not go further. I worked at a pub as a part-time worker. Honestly working at these drinking places was banned in the school policy, but I didn’t care just because my friend also worked at different banned places. Though it was my first part-time job for me and the pub was a hectic place, I passed the interview right then. So, please come next week. You will work as a trainee for the first three days, so please come one hour earlier than usual. The manager told me so before he let me go back. The work started then. I could arrive just in time by train after school during the training session. I was able to learn the work more than I thought. I thought of myself as a more clumsy person but I could manage peaks when I needed to serve customers and to help cook a lot. On the second and third days, I thought of the work at the pub on a train to home and school. If I do this, it will be more efficient. I cramped my head with such thinking. When the job officially began, I was assigned not to a server, a cashier, or a cook, but to a feeder of fish for meals. Please feed them every two hours. At five when you come, seven, and nine when you leave. The master instructed me without any other information. I fed as I was told. Feeds were vegetables that were remains of ingredients for cooking, finely chopped. I just thought, is this edible, but at the time as I was instructed, I sprinkled the feed of green and orange and let them fall into the water. Tanks were many and big because they prepared and grew by themselves, but stilling by the tanks, while other two workers around the same age as me were moving their bodies busily, I was too bored. I tried to help first, though every time they just refuse with kind gentleness. There was no difference between the manager and workers about that. You are assigned to that job. I was said like that by the girl classmates who I’d seen just a few times. I spent every day staring into tanks and wide interiors.

I sometimes went to the pub as a customer. I took my friends several times but I went by myself otherwise. Even I ate supper there as a customer, there was no discount. I went there simply because it was placed at the stop of the train line for school. Some of my friends drank alcohol even they were young, but I did never drink alcohol. I ordered oolong tea, green peas, and fried chicken just after I sat at the counter. They were easy meals to prepare. I stayed for a long time without any order and I looked at what my fellows were doing like animals chased by a herding dog, and then compared them with hanging dim lights, behind the noise gradually becoming louder. I was forgotten of my existence. The coworkers often opened their eyes a little bit when I pay. They usually replied to me when I finished my job and said farewell to them, they didn’t say anything at a certain frequency. I didn’t care about anything. I just went back home. I didn’t think that was something they secretly plotted either.

I lived that kind of daily life between school and the pub. I first felt guilty about the work and sweated a lot, but that emptiness gradually get me calm like people who kept their minds cool under the scene of the fire. The spike of the clock over there was striking quietly. The inaudible sound striking at a set pace resonated slowly in my chest. Time was expanded at a moment and a moment and disappeared in eternity. When the time comes, I put feed for the fish. Like a clockwork doll. Fish and shrimp turned their bodies left and right repeatedly in the narrow tanks. Bubbles from the filters were fulfilled in water and soon penetrate the clear inside of the beautiful crystal, and lively fish were taken out from that with a net by my classmates and were cut on the kitchen. Fish that remained in the tanks showed their face as if they didn’t know anything. Rocks and water plants for decoration slept at the bottom of the tanks and stayed still. I looked at those habitations. Fish went through between them or stayed there. I just stared at these meaningless swimming of fish and shrimps until time to feed. Doing so, I noticed little by little that a burrow of the rock was talking something, emitting bubbles shone by lights. It felt like it was appealing to something, but at the same time, it refused me to come close. The atmosphere was fulfilled like that. I stared at that situation with my mind blanking, and soon my body was surprised, and I fell into a rain of feeds of uneven colors.

It was busy also on that day. Why do people often come to these places to drink? I stood by the tanks. It was one day when my friend was called by one teacher. The hole in the rock was sunk into darkness. I sometimes stared through that darkness while I was watching awkwardly how business went. The hole was simply dyed in black and drew a ragged outline. Diminishing bubbles came out from the hole and disappeared before long. The repetition of the release and disappearance of bubbles reminded me of a kind of ripple. A pendulum goes to either end and becomes slow almost to stop, and becomes fast again like running downhill, and slows at the other end. The ripple was similar to this cycle. Bubbles that were shaken floated and the rock started to talk slowly. It was nothing more than that talk. It was just the talk about how recent days went. The rock didn’t talk anything about itself or its fellows living in the tanks. It was just the situation such as the wind becoming cool and the clouds tripping faster. And, the rock sometimes asked me about my situation during that topic.  It was a conversation in a matter-of-fact way. It felt business-like talking with my relatives who I met after a long time. I just replied like, nothing changed. The conversation with the rock didn’t go further after that.

It had been a long time for playing ducks and drakes, but I couldn’t make success. Stones just fell into the stream making a dull sound. I started to walk the seaside after a while. It was around the time the sun was setting.

The beach was shone white by the sun only seen its forehead, and the sky slightly appeared its blueish darkness. The beach where nobody was there, was subtly fulfilled with roars, as usual. I stood on the beach alone and sat and checked the shells I found interesting, and I repeated that standing and sitting. But, when I tried to listen to any voice of shells, I could only hear the high tone of sound like ears ringing and it just diminished. It repeated that cycle. And the sun already set. Every particle of sand, glossy skin of spiral shells, and rough skin of clam; these objects changed into one layer of flat blueish-black skin of flesh. I put my cheek to the cold skin, but it only felt gentle touching. The city began to metamorphose into the form of a megalopolis. Some apartments already showed bright lights in rooms. I stood up again to breathe cool air. The beach was spread wide forever. Like the tunnel unable to see through. I stepped forward there. It sounds like the only crunch of sand. I sat after a while passed. The waves in complete black on the sea continued further and further and had atmosphere made me imagine the land humans had never seen. In that land, rabbits never stop jumping, hops here and there, and turtles with black shells pick up travelers and guide the city, many buildings of granulated material, shaped like a chimney, are scattered. It was like that atmosphere. The surface of the sea gradually started to twinkle. Each edge of the wave became sharp. Then, the particles of sand sparkled. Suddenly, I noticed something blinking along the shore. I stood up and came close, and it was a liter bottle. A clear bottle of alcohol. Inside, there were no drops of alcohol. I touched and checked, and it was smooth glass without any labels remaining. It was as smooth as a knife completely polished. When I grabbed it with both hands, I was impulsed to throw it away. On the other hand, I thought there would be something fateful, waiting for me inside. Fate is perhaps something like that. I looked in the bottle as if I do with a telescope. The worlds diminished, warped, and continued. Universe stiffly rotated around me. I took away the bottle from my eye. There were a few grains of sand like burnt solid in the empty bottle. When I hung the bottle down, the wind touched the mouth of the bottle and blew blunt-toned whistles, saying boo, boo. That sound was as if cramped inside and shaken. I thought what this sound was, and it suddenly changed to the voice. It was the voice I’d ever heard. But, I couldn’t figure out whose voice was it. I listened to what the voice wanted to say without any mind. But the voice didn’t shape. It switched to just a sound just before shaping like a castle made of sand collapsing over and over. I checked the bottle again. It was the bottle whose neck was long. There was nothing strange except for that. I put to close the bottle to my ear again. Sound saying boo, boo, was pushed into my ear. I listened to that sound by sitting. Then, it suddenly started to talk. It talked in a language never heard before. It was not like English and Asian languages such as Chinese and Korean. It was like the language that humans created by intentionally distorting the essentials of languages to the utmost limit. But, I was able to understand clearly what the voice said. The voice first said hi.

You should be surprised, but don’t worry. I will introduce myself. I live somewhere not so far from here. My title is Wood Raiser. I stand up fallen trees. I sometimes go to the roads in the far mountains. In that case, I work instead of road maintenance officer as a specialized job. I cannot raise trees so fast, but I think of my work as an almost professional one. I’m only assigned to that job, but there are various jobs than Wood Raiser. But, this is what I only know. I just know my job. You might have a job like this in near future. The one like matching each step of wood raising, and each phrase of wood raising. Just kidding.

The voice talked to me without any flow of emotion. It was small me, captured in the bottle. I was a small person like an elf and was screaming to myself with great effort. I was talking to huge darkness at a high place.

I drink soda every morning after I get up. Drinking carbonated drinks is not good for your health. After that, I do some gymnastics. My body becomes light after finishing the exercise. I can jump and reach the third floor of buildings. My body becomes light to that degree. My hobby is going to botanical gardens. During the time when nobody is there. I see many species of flowers. Because flowers in foreign countries are big, right? Like they are competing to survive a contest. I go to gardens to see these vivid flowers. I sometimes paint petals of flowers with ink. Maybe I use pink the most. But, be careful. Don’t paint blue ink on your skin. Well, the color is clear and so beautiful, but if you touch it, it’s as hot as melting. It’s like the sun in the desert melting everything all together. The trees of the jungles are not so strong. Actually, they’re weak. So, they should be casually managed. I never thought of myself when I got the job at first. Like, I need to work on a private day. I didn’t think such a thing ––––

The voice resonated so well among the thick walls of the bottle. I put both hands to my mouth and talked as it should be echoed. Doing so, my voice transferred far. My voice ran quickly through in between cities and cities, buildings and buildings.