Life In The Reverse World

Dense shrubs crowded along the mountain path, like attendants waiting to welcome their princess. The uneven dirt trail was barely wide enough for Harutaki and Chouko to walk one behind the other.

After several dozen steps, Harutaki’s view suddenly opened up.

It wasn’t that the road had widened. Rather, the faint footpath that people had once walked had simply disappeared—blending back into the forest itself. The moment it vanished, a strange sense of liberation surfaced in his chest, as if all restraints had suddenly been cast off.

This small mountain resembled Kifune Shrine in one way: both were already overflowing with greenery and life even in the early summer of May, the vegetation lush and vibrant.

And yet, the feeling they gave was completely different.

If Kifune Shrine possessed a quiet, restrained beauty—so solemn that one would hesitate to raise their voice for fear of disturbing the gods above—then this mountain was the opposite.

It made him want to shout.

To run freely.

This place truly felt like summer.

Chouko moved lightly through the woods, pushing aside branches and slipping past thickets with ease, like a small woodland creature perfectly at home here. Her lively figure flickered between tree trunks and rocks, like a butterfly dancing among flowers—free and pure.

“I haven’t come here since middle school… it’s really been a long time.”

She stopped, spun around, and looked at Harutaki, who was quietly taking in the scenery.

“…Harutaki-kun, what do you think?”

What do I think…

After pondering for a moment, he replied jokingly,

“It definitely seems like a good place. A place capable of growing a cute girl like Shihou.”

“What do you mean growing?! That makes it sound like I sprouted out of the mountains or something! I’m Chouko, not a mushroom!”

She puffed up her cheeks in protest. Then, as if remembering something, she hurried over, grabbed his hand, and dragged him deeper into the forest.

Soon, they stopped beneath a massive rock roughly as tall as a one-story building.

The stone was irregularly shaped. Moss covered its upper surface, while fresh fallen leaves lay quietly on top. Its pitted surface and patches of yellowing told a silent story of time’s slow erosion.

“This is…”

Harutaki had been about to ask what the rock meant to her when he noticed something faint etched into it.

Marks that clearly weren’t natural.

Crooked horizontal lines roughly at his waist height.

And beside them, crudely carved characters—“Shihou” and “Sato.”

Sato had even misspelled one of the strokes in the character for Tō.

“This is where we recorded our heights when we were kids.”

Chouko bent slightly and gently traced the lowest mark with her fingers.

“Most children go through a phase where they can’t wait to grow taller and become adults, right?”

More accurately, Harutaki thought, until around the time they enter university.

But in reality, most people who once dreamed of growing up quickly and escaping their parents eventually regret that wish.

In a world that has never lacked hardship, the purest and most carefree time for most people is probably the period when they lived under their parents’ protection.

You didn’t need to worry about food, clothing, or shelter—because your parents took care of you.

You didn’t need to worry about going astray—because they would warn and correct you.

You didn’t even need to fear making mistakes—because people are generous toward children.

“I used to want to grow up quickly too,” Chouko said quietly. “So I could escape my family’s control.”

She looked at the rock.

“But before I realized it, I’ve already grown this tall… this big. And yet I still haven’t achieved what I dreamed of when I was little.”

“You already are.”

Noticing the sudden melancholy, Harutaki tried to lighten the mood with a joke.

“But did little Shihou ever imagine her chest would grow this big?”

“Ahh! Harutaki-kun, you’re the worst!”

Bonk, bonk.

She punched his chest twice—not very hard, but enough to vent the gloom in her heart.

“I was talking about something serious!”

She glared at him with those pale golden eyes, then picked up a thin stone from the ground. Standing beside the “height record rock,” she drew a straight line above her head.

Then she neatly wrote the character Shihou beside it—far tidier than the childish scribbles below.

Handing the stone to him, she said,

“We have to record it every time we come here, okay?”

A moment later, two new marks appeared on the rock.

One of them, close to the top, had Hoshikawa written beside it—standing more than a head higher than the mark labeled Shihou below.

“Looking at it like this,” Harutaki said, “Shihou seems pretty short.”

“For girls, 160 cm is enough!”

She pushed him toward the path they’d come from, leaving the giant rock behind to silently continue recording time and growth.

Just before it disappeared from view, Chouko turned back and glanced at it.

The marks—old and new, shallow and deep, childish and mature—stood out clearly.

Goodbye… Onii

Perhaps he had never truly done anything wrong to her.

Perhaps it was she, Shihou Chouko, who had placed too many expectations and too much admiration onto him.

And perhaps she had never truly wronged him either.

She was simply pursuing her own happiness.