That man, the grasshopper

That man, the grasshopper

Not long after sunset, the lights of the houses went out and the town became quiet. For a town that is supposed to be lively at the end of the year, the doors of all the town houses were tightly closed, the liquor stores had hung up their signs, and not even a soul was to be seen on the main street. In the shadows between the busy houses, it would have been natural to find a drunken man, who had lost his place to sleep, slumbering peacefully, but a quick look around did not reveal the slightest sign of a dog or cat. The only sound was that of the snow falling in a thud from the roofs under the moonlight, echoing lonelily in the twilight that enveloped the town. It was a wintry night, with the wind blowing in the trees. Following the direction of the wandering footsteps of a street in the distance, pushed by the wind, you will find a man with a shattered hat on his head, a tattered coat, and a guitar on his back, standing stunned like a misplaced comedian at a window of a house lit only by a light in the darkness. He would be standing there like a strolling performer.

The wife ant, who had just returned from greeting her husband and putting their child to bed in the back room, looked anxiously at her husband's face when she saw the man's strange appearance outside the window.

"I wonder if he's begging again."

"He's without a place to stay. He must be asking for a place to stay. If the racket keeps going on like this, there will be plenty of people without work and without money."

"He's knocking on the door. He must be persistent. What are you going to do?"

"There's a room available, and I wouldn't mind giving them a place to stay for the night with dinner.”

As soon as they opened the front door, the couple's faces changed quickly and they stood still. The man stumbled in, the hem of his coat billowing up to reveal two long, thin wings. In addition, his long beard flashed from between his torn hat. The guitar string on his back made a rattling sound as if it had been moved unexpectedly. The two of them jerked up and stared at the curious visitor with hard eyes. They regarded the curious visitor, in other words, the man, as a grasshopper musician.

"I'm very tired from all the nights I've been camping out. I'm tired of staying out in the field, so I need a place to stay the night."

He fumbled in his coat pocket with both hands, pulled out a few coppers, and tossed them carelessly onto the table in the center of the room. The woman's voice immediately echoed back.

"This little bit is only for a night's stay," the woman's voice replied.

" I can't prepare meals for you."

"I'm not asking you to stay the night. I'm hungry. I'm hungry, so please share your food."

"Hmmm, I guess you are just a beggar. You are just a beggar, aren't you? Or are you just going to come in and steal from us?"

"I'm not stealing anything. It's just..."

Her husband, Ant, who had remained silent, his eyes narrowed like a connoisseur as he studied the man from top to bottom, interrupted in a grave voice,"Even if I had money, I wouldn't share even a piece of bread with you.”

He then surreptitiously pocketed the copper coins tossed on the table and circled around the man with a look of blatant contempt on his face.

“What are you dressed like a street performer? You've got a beard and a guitar on your back, and that hat is just a business tool to get some change, isn't it? How can you say that showing us a phony trick and taking our hard-earned money is not stealing? It is stealing.”

"Yeah, that's right. You're all robbers, you know that?”,his wife joined in.

"I'm not a thief."

“If you are not a thief, what are you? A freedom-loving minstrel? In my opinion, such a thing is nothing more than the excuse of a spoiled gobbler. In the first place, I think you are underestimating what human life is all about. Life is about labor, or living in conflict with nature. Spring, summer, fall, and winter, nature brings fertility and harshness to our lives. A warm spring day is followed by a hot summer, then a fertile autumn, and then a long, harsh winter. Winter is the season of death. All living things either die out or go into a long sleep.In preparation for this, some people eat a full meal of nourishing food in the fall to replenish their bodies, while others spend their time throughout the year gathering enough food to last them through the long winter. That is what life is all about. I, too, had to work hard every day to make it through the winter. Labor is to survive while struggling from time to time with nature, which both gives and takes away. Do you understand the meaning of life at least a little? Don't you think that people like you, who spent your summers playing musical instruments, need to reflect on your own miserable behavior before you start imitating beggars?”

The grasshopper man laughed sarcastically, clutching his empty stomach.

“Then I suppose you must have accumulated a lot of food during the summer when we seemed to be playing around. Where have you hidden it? I don't steal or threaten to steal. I am starving now. You have all the food. That's all there is to it. All I'm saying is that I'm here to demand a fair share of the wealth.”

After saying that, he suddenly realized something was wrong. Something was not right. When he first arrived in the town, he had taken a quick look at the houses on either side of him and found that, for some reason or another, they had all turned off their lights and gone to sleep. He had expected a wealthy merchant couple to live here, but when he looked around, he saw that the rooms were literally empty, with no furniture except for a table in the center of the room.

As he rubbed his hungry eyes carefully, he saw that the ant and his wife were both pale and their cheeks were skinny, making them look not like a wealthy merchant couple, but almost like ghosts. The master's long, boring story was not so much a sermon by an elderly man who had made a name for himself as it was an attempt to humor the young man's indulgences, getting merely blood out of a stone to show off his pretensions. The sound of a hungry child crying came from the back of the room, and it echoed sadly in the empty room, which was devoid of anything but tables.

“There is nothing here,I can't even feed my children anymore…”

The wife ant sobbed, writhing in agony. She was sobbing and writhing in pain, but then the grasshopper's sensitive ears...well, his long antennae twitched and he noticed a strange noise approaching from afar, like the sound of an army approaching in unison. He noticed a strange noise approaching from afar, like the sound of an earthquake, as if an army of soldiers were coming in unison.

“I think something's coming.”

“It's going to be hard.” The husband ant whispered.

“They've taken everything. “

The wife was crouched down in a corner of the room, covering her ears. The footsteps of military boots were close at hand. The searchlights that were searching the area penetrated into the walls and rooms of the houses, casting their shadows, large and small, as eerily shimmering as if they were revolving lanterns.Looking out the windows, what they could discern in the darkness was a strange group of people dressed in flashy black and yellow military uniforms, marching through the streets shamelessly.

“It's those wasps.”

Her husband, ant, looked disappointed.

“I’ll give you a piece of good advice, you'd better get out of town before they find you.” ,he said.

Rumor has it that not a single insect, not even a blade of grass, will be left behind after they attack and fly from forest to forest and town to town. Leaving aside the question of who was the person who spread the rumor, this explains the appearance of the unusually desolate town that greeted the grasshopper when he first arrived. According to the husband ant’s story, wasps arrived in this ant town about three years ago. One morning, out of the blue, he heard a buzzing sound like the explosion of an airplane, and as he looked up, a dark shadow covered the entire sky. The shadow soon swooped down like locusts, swallowed the town in an avalanche, and swept into the lives of the people with the force of a spreading fire.

However, this is the impression that people later had in retrospect. Even they would not take such a foolhardy approach as to invade out of the blue. In the beginning, they started by repairing roads and bridges, and by trying to please the local residents, and then they skillfully slipped into their daily lives. Some people even welcomed this change in their lives. However, the rule of the people extended from the civil to the administrative, and eventually to the judiciary. It was all well and good until one of the town's officials was caught on suspicion of bribery and was hanged by a gang of hornets. However, the town lost its autonomy, and soon fell completely into their hands.

Since time immemorial, it has been said that pigs should be fattened up before eating. It was only natural that those who descended from the heavens should begin to treat those who live on earth with arrogance, as if they were gods or something. We have given you an advanced civilization, and you are obligated to return the favor. No, if we liken their relationship to that of man and livestock, we have the right to take from you as we wish. By that logic, we will commandeer your grain, we will rough up your women, we will kidnap your children. The town would soon be deserted, the people would be so frightened that they would shut themselves up in their houses, and there would be no one to be seen on the street.

The number of people fleeing into the night, in the same clothes and furnishings as before, continued to increase, and even if the few people who remained huddled together, the place was already a ghost town.

The people who had devoured the fattened pigs were headed for nothing more than a journey in search of new pigs. It would not take much time for this town to become an uninhabited wilderness with not a single insect, not a single blade of grass, not a single tree. The sound of military boots had faded away, and the only sound that remained was the quiet howling of wild dogs.

“That's why there's nothing left here,” he said.

“There is no wealth that can be shared fairly with you. Now get out of here.”

The husband ant took the only bottle of whiskey he had kept from the shelf, poured it down his throat, and stared at the man, stifling a strange laugh that came to him. In the darkness of the quieted night, his wife's choked sobs cracked. A child's wailing could be heard in reply, but she seemed to have no choice but to lie on the floor, helpless.

“Don't you think you're a bastard?"

“What?”

“Why do you go along with them so quietly? Don't you know how to fight?”

　The grasshopper stood up on both feet.

“I don't need a greenhorn like you to tell me what to do.”

“That's right. Why should he be lectured by a playboy like you? He has worked hard to protect his family. He worked hard every day to gather rice and wheat, traveled long distances from town by himself, and had just built up enough wealth to last his family through the winter. He barely managed to protect his family's property from the elements, while keeping an eye on them and trying not to defy them. In the old tale, those of us who worked hard during the summer to save money were rewarded, while your friends who played around were unable to make it through the winter and were left destitute. It has to be that way. So what? But we have no choice. Now that it's come to this, there's nothing we can do but follow our destiny.”

“Destiny...What is the point of destiny? If it is true that the hard-working ant is rewarded and I, the idle grasshopper, am left in the dust, and if that common sense has been shattered by them, then how can it be destiny? Your husband said it earlier. Your husband said that it is human life to fight against the nature that gives and takes away. In this town, it must be those wasps that are giving and taking. Then why don't you think that the meaning of life lies in fighting against them?”

The ant couple simply fell silent. The fireplace was nearly extinguished, and the firewood to be added to the fireplace had run out. The cold air was filling the room, but the grasshopper's voice was strangely hot.

“In our home town, we would all take up arms and fight. Here's a story.”

He took a piece of paper from his inside coat pocket, which looked like a memo filled with small scribbles, and began to speak, his eyes wandering toward the couple in turn, as if his passion was surging out of him.

“This is a story from my birthplace. Once upon a time, there were two fiddlers who were very proud of their skills. One was born poor, and his only aim in life was to make his way in the world. The other was born blessed, but his aim was to make music that would encourage people to live their hard lives, by taking into account the circumstances of their less fortunate neighbors. One day, the two fiddlers were invited to the castle to compete with each other before the king. It was a kind of ‘Imperial Match,’ so to speak. The winner of the match would be given a prize that would allow him to live happily for the rest of his life. The other was not interested in such a thing, but he was afraid of the rumors of the cruel punishment that awaited him if he lost the match, so he reluctantly participated.”

“Hey, who won?”

“In a fairy tale like this, the one who sides with the peasants always wins. It's all a matter of good and evil. All I expect from a story is a lesson to be learned.”

　Forgetting the cold weather, the couple became absorbed in the man's story without realizing it.

“But it turns out that the man who was glorified was literally a man who believed in success in life. The reason for this is simple. The art that a king who annoys his people with such a self-indulgent event can understand is surely the heroic bluff music played by a man who has risen to glory. The music made by the other men did not move the king's heart in the slightest. As is typical in the story, the fiddler was thrown into prison, and although he was able to escape with the help of a village girl, he lost confidence in his own art. After much distress, he came to the conclusion that in order to make art truly popular, it was necessary to destroy the world ruled by kings and aristocrats before he could do so. At the same time, unrest was growing in the country, and the fiddler was carried up under the banner of the Peasants' Revolt. However, within the guilds of the country's musicians, there was a strict rule that those involved in the arts should not get involved in politics. The fiddler violated this rule and was hunted down even by his fellow artists.”

“So what happened?”

“The king's army was sent out and the revolt was quickly put down. He was captured and burned at the stake. He was made a representative of the revolt.

　After a moment of silence, the husband ant leaned forward and inquired.

“The fiddler, the hero of the story, is dead. Does that mean the story is over?”

“No, it is not. No," the grasshopper replied.

“When the hero of the story dies, it means that he begins to live among us. It is not the end, but the beginning. That fiddler realized that he had a message for the people, a truth. Our fight would begin from there. There is no easy lesson of good and evil in this story, but in the sacrifice of the dead hero, we can carry on his spirit.”

Just then, the glare of an emergency searchlight shone in from outside the window, and suddenly there was a flurry of footsteps, and several wasps, soldiers dressed in flashy military uniforms that were bright even to the night, kicked down the door and stepped in. The master ant sat up with a start. He looked around the room and saw one of them suddenly thrust a bayonet in front of his nose and pushed him backwards. When he ran into the wall behind him, the tip of the bayonet veered slightly away from his face and stuck into the wall. The soldier's mouth, expressionless, opened and closed like a toy.

“Have you seen a young man who looks like a scribe?”

“No.”

“Is that poor fellow a customer?”

　The grasshopper man sat down on a chair, took off his hat and greeted him politely.You classy little geisha. You're a fucking comedian, the soldier's face twisted in a mocking manner, as if he were trying to say so. You know that this town is now under martial law. There is a gang lurking nearby, stealing weapons and ammunition and secretly plotting treason. If you find them, let us know immediately. You will be rewarded handsomely. After saying these words, almost as if on a gramophone, the soldiers rushed out, leaving the door open. The room was filled with a couple with devastated faces, a man pretending to be a shabby artist, and a stale, heavy, somber atmosphere. The footsteps of the soldiers' boots gradually faded away, and just as they were about to disappear into the darkness, there was a scream that cut through the darkness. It was the voice of a young man, or perhaps a woman. I found it. Pull him up. Then, as if a clerical response like that was faintly heard, it was accompanied by another shrill cry, gradually fading into the distance, shaking the glass doors of the houses and making a harsh cracking sound on the cobblestones, until the voice disappeared into the darkness as if carried away by the blowing night wind.

“I see. I see...you're turning a blind eye.”, the grasshopper stood up and brushed the dust off his knees. “You're going to have to save your money like that”, the grasshopper said. If you want money, you can sell me out. But I'd like to take half of the proceeds to increase the contents of my own wallet. Otherwise, I have no use for this place, and I'm out of here. I need to find a good-looking old man somewhere to take up my abode for the day. I'll look elsewhere.

"Hold on!”, the husband ant called after the grasshopper standing in the doorway.

"You're ready to sell me out, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not. No, I'm the opposite. I'm against it. If I sell you out to them and get some money out of it, it will only make me look like a coward. There is nothing honorable about it for me. It's wrong to protect yourself and your family in the face of their tyranny, while others in your town are being sacrificed one after another. Fighting against nature, labor. Even if we try to fool ourselves with such trite words, such a way of life is not worthy of the name of human life. It is the life of an unjust and unscrupulous person."

The ants, his wife, who had been listening nearby, suddenly lifted their anxious faces. The husband walked to the back of the room and placed his hand on the raw wound on the wall where the soldier wasp had pierced it with the point of his bayonet just a few moments before. Through the crack in the wall, he thought he could hear the screams of the young man who had been taken away from him leaking out from a long distance away. I'm a coward. I'm a coward… came the stifled mutter.

“I’m not going to sell you. In fact, I'm even willing to buy you. I'm even willing to buy you, for the story you just told me about your hometown. I don't care if it's a lie. If there is truth in it, I'm willing to bet that I'll buy it.”

The master ant finished quietly, shrugged off his wife's attempts to stop him, and grabbed an old hunting rifle from the gun rack on the wall. He told the woman to give the grasshopper a loaf of bread hidden in a cupboard, and blew away the years of dust on the barrel of the gun in a single breath. Just then, he heard a voice,

”By the way, I haven't asked your name yet.”

“It's Mohammed Ant. It's a very significant name given to me by my father. I don't know the details of the origin of the name, but I remember hearing my father say that Mohammed was a great guy who danced like a butterfly and fought with bees. I think the phrase might have been a little different, though.”

“Where are you going? Where are you going?”

The husband dodged his wife's sudden attempt to run to him with a dance-like movement and rushed out the door with the force of a bullet. A strong headwind immediately blew and slammed the door in front of his wife, who was about to follow him to the door. Outside the window, a blizzard was raging. The husband's figure was drowned in the snow, which was now whistling by his side, and his whereabouts were no longer known. The grasshopper stood by the window for a while. Eventually, he sat down on a chair. With a sarcastic smile on his face, he laughed out loud, not at anyone, but with a self-mocking crack.

“How is my concocted tale good enough to impress your husband? Is it good enough to impress your husband? No, I don't know. I think he might be the kind of person who would run out of the house in a hurry one day even if he didn't have to listen to my lies. In any case, it makes me happy as an author to be praised for taking a chance on a lie that has a shred of truth to it.”

“You liar. You're the one who's a coward. I'm not going to give you any food. Get out of my house right now!”

Liars. That's right, isn't it? They make up genuine impressions with a mass of lies. However, such things are usually like cheap candy, and depending on how much or how little of the additive drug is used, some people will be poisoned by art and wander around the world of fiction for the rest of their lives, while others will be stupid enough to run off toward love, revolution, and all sorts of misguided directions. Otherwise, they would not do such a foolish thing as shedding their own blood, but would follow the dictates of an antiquated code and spend the rest of their lives as passengers on a prison ship called a library, wobbling on the waves, under the illusion that they have made it to a literary platform, an editorial platform, a singing platform, a poetry platform, a stage, a teaching platform, or any of life's great stages. They spend the rest of their lives wobbling along on the waves as passengers on a prison ship called a library.

...I'm sick of this. It's time to call it a day. And yet, I am the one who still can't run out, the one who deserves the name of the most dastardly of all. When he stood up with vacant eyes, the blizzard had stopped and the wind had died down. Once again, the sound of footsteps of military boots came like ripples in the stillness.

“Yes, I'm leaving.”

The grasshopper man put his guitar back on his back, put on his hat and staggered out of the house. At that moment, They heard a hungry child crying from the back room. The housewife, Ants, came to her senses, let out a small cry, and rushed to the door. Wait a minute! What have you done? How will we live without my husband? Please bring him back, for the rest of my life.... I promise. If you bring him back, you can stay at my house tonight for free. I'll even give you dinner.

Her plaintive cries were not likely to have reached the ears of the man who was running unsteadily along the cobblestones in the distance, for a single gunshot rang out in time with her cries, and the man's shadow seemed to flutter away in the distance. The man's shadow seemed to have fallen into the distance as a single gunshot rang out in unison with his screams. The guitar on his back fell to the ground, and an inaudible crack could be heard. But there was no way to tell what had happened to the man without risking a leap into the darkness. The middle-aged woman, who had been left alone, stood silently looking out the window for a while before giving up, shaking her head and retreating back into the back room.

A second shot rang out. A third shot rang out. No one knew who had fired the shot or even who had been shot. All we know for sure is that the roar of the gunfire must have shaken the beds of all the residents, who were all sleeping in a daze. The windows of the houses were lit up in turn, and the crowd of people, leaning out of their windows and shouting, pushed and shoved their way into the cobblestone streets, the noise spreading like wildfire to every corner of the ant city. Where on earth could such a large number of people be hiding? The waves of people flooding the streets grew from ten to a hundred, and from a hundred to a thousand, and the rich and the poor, or rather, thanks to them, the rich or the poor already had no distinction, and if one looked at the faces gathered in the square, all of them, men and women, young and old, all of them looked like workers. The faces of the people gathered in the plaza, young and old, male and female, all had the look of laborers.

The black face was black to the point of blackness, glowing until it absorbed all the darkness of the night, and the waves of people coming in fast were gradually forming into a line. There was no flag to carry at the front. They just pushed forward in all directions in an avalanche. What would happen if the yellow-and-black men were waiting for them with guns at the end of their path?

The two sides glared at each other, and as they drew closer, a call came out of nowhere, "Trample them down!" Immediately, a swarm of people attacked, and without disruption, they pushed straight ahead. The wasps ran for cover, and a few of them were hit in the back by bullets and fell down. The bodies of their motionless comrades lay like a carpet of people looking out at their thrones in the distance, seeming to carry away the throngs of people who were stepping steadily forward on them.

Fires were lit on hills, churches, police stations, and anywhere else that smelled of wasps. The feast seemed to last well into the night. After a single gunshot, the wasps were gone, and all the people were scattered, leaving the flames and the stars to flicker in the night sky like shimmering flames.

☆

How much time had passed since then? When he awoke, he felt a sharp pain in the knuckles of his body and feet. He felt as if he had been dreaming for a long time. The crowd was swarming, pushing forward with stones and guns in their hands, and an army of wasps was chasing after them. As he wandered through the burning city, he thought he heard the shrill cries of the wife ants, chasing after him, but he did not think he heard anything like that.

When he heard the first gunshot, did he instantly faint, having mistakenly thought he had been shot? The pain in his knuckles was probably due to the fact that he had been getting up, getting knocked down by someone, falling down, and getting up again many times during the night.

The grasshopper man tried to raise his upper body. He tried to get up, but the sheet clung to his arms and legs like a thin film, preventing him from getting up. He seemed to be struggling in a dream that he could not wake up from. The first thing his writhing hands grabbed, as if searching for something, was a torn hat.

As he tugged on it, a strange, smoky smell hit his nose. It was not this one. He opened his eyes and saw a brown stick-like object standing straight out in front of him. His outstretched hand gripped the end of the stick, and he felt not the touch of hard wood, but something soft and substantial. A spark immediately flashed in front of his eyes. It was as if he had been cracked with a whip.

When he jumps up, he finds himself lying on a bed in a strange room, unclothed and disheveled, with a small table next to the bed. There is a small table next to the bed, and as his eyes follow the hands that are busily setting the breakfast plate, he sees a grim-faced woman frowning at him. It was an ant girl he did not remember. The windows were closed, but the light was not dim. From outside, the sound of a trumpet announcing the time could be heard faintly from time to time. The grasshopper took a quick look around the room, and only then did he realize that his guitar, which he had always carried with him, was nowhere to be found.

“What happened to my guitar?”

The grasshopper gasped and screamed.

“If it was so important, how could you have lost it?”

The woman responded quietly, not resting her hand on it.

“I lost it? Are you kidding me, I…”

The grasshopper man was about to say something, but then he was at a loss for words. He had lost his guitar. Even if he were to accept this as fact, where and when would he have lost it? The events of the other night seemed to be fading into the shadows of his memory, just as a dream that he remembered clearly when he first woke up would vanish like smoke by noon. On the other hand, it was as if the memory of running through the street, with its dancing sparks of fire and blood-drenched swarms of people, was coming back to his mind in vivid detail.

... I may have accidentally hit my head when I dropped my guitar. What I do remember is that I was carrying a guitar on my back. That means I must have been an artist, a musician who plays an instrument. Why then did I wander into this town like a beggar?

The grasshopper suddenly realized that he could no longer remember anything that had happened before he arrived in the ant town.

“Apparently, it wasn't just your guitar you lost.”

The ant girl looked at the man with pity.

“But don't worry. As you can see, we are in a hospital. I'm sure there are many patients like you in there.”

“Patients? No way.”

The man jumped out of bed and landed flat on the floor. A sharp pain shot through his body.

“I must have been a musician.”

The grasshopper still crawled away from the bed and tried to approach the door to his room.

“I have to go find my guitar.”

“What's wrong with the music? What's wrong with the guitar?”

With that, the ant girl pushed the patient back onto the bed. Then she mumbled sympathetically,

“I really feel sorry for you, you are such a pitiful person. You forget everything, but you remember something like that.”

The grasshopper burrowed deeper into the sheets, his legs aching with pain.

“I’m a nurse. I'm a nurse, and I must say that you need to take your place in the world a little more seriously. Here, the sick and injured are supposed to be in bed. It is our job to take care of them. It is a noble thing to be involved in medical care. It means taking life seriously and serving people's lives. I think that is the requirement for a good job.”

The grasshopper heard the nurse's words as a roundabout way of criticizing artists.

“Why did you save me, a grasshopper?”

“Why should I, of all people, help a wounded man like an ant or a grasshopper? But it's going to be a hard life for you, grasshopper.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Instead of responding to the question, the ant girl stared at the grasshopper with a look of pity or contempt. She then finished her work with her usual ease and left the room, seemingly having swallowed something she was about to say.

The ceiling was high, and the room was spacious. The bed was covered with a soft feather comforter, and the curtains were closed so that one could not see the outside scenery, but when the sun went down at night, one would surely be able to see the night view from this window, which shone far into the night sky. This is not the right place, is it? Come to think of it, there is nothing more out of place in this place than me, he thought. Why should I, a mere bum, be treated as well as royalty and aristocrats? This must be some kind of dream come true that I saw on the street when I was on the verge of death after a harrowing experience. ….

With this in mind, he picked up the tattered coat hanging on the wall and noticed that the edges were burnt and the smell of smoldering smoke wafted into his nose. This was proof that it was not a dream.

The table was lined with items too luxurious for his stomach, which had been wandering the streets last night in a stupor. Without time to taste it, he tossed it into his empty stomach, and immediately felt the gastric juices rushing up to the side of his throat from all the bad food he had eaten. As he staggered to his bed, a nurse came running back with crutches, held up a huge syringe, and suddenly thrust it into the grasshopper's buttock. There was no time for a gasp. In his fading consciousness, the grasshopper could smell the smoky odor leaking through the doorway and the cold smell of chemicals and disinfectant. The tablecloth he had grabbed when he collapsed onto the bed slipped off, and several plates of food fell to the floor of the hospital room and shattered.

…You were lying in the street being licked by a stray dog. Then a kind gentleman offered to pay for your medical bills and put you up in this specially furnished room. You were in a position where you could not complain about dying in the field. You are a very lucky man.

When he came to, the nurse was already gone. On the table in the room was a notebook and a pen.

“Feel free to write your thoughts.”

He found this scribbled in poor handwriting on the cover. He staggered to the door on tired legs, turned the knob, and found it locked from the outside.

Meals are brought to him when he needs them, and bathing and other facilities are satisfactory. As for his freedom of movement, as long as he is accompanied by a nurse, he seems to be allowed to enter any part of the facility without any restrictions. After several months of wandering around the building, the grasshopper seemed to have a vague idea of what was going on in this ant town.

After the uproar, it seems that the wasp's hegemony was quickly overthrown. However, the ants were not able to regain control of the entire city, and the town has become a wasteland of insect bites, with the residual forces of the wasps and the resistance forces of the ants fighting each other. Sporadic skirmishes continue here and there. The revolutionary uproar did not lead to victory for either side, but only to the devastation of the city. As the days and months went by, it was almost as if the people had forgotten who had started the fighting and who had raised the alarm for the outbreak of war.

The hospital that burned down in the deserted town was a refugee camp for ants and wasps alike. I, who had wandered into town on a whim and was thrown out onto the street, was somehow, by the kindness of others, living in a luxurious environment. Of course, since I am not free to go outside, this would be considered confinement. But for what purpose?

The habit of writing down the day's events in a notebook before going to bed became more and more a part of the grasshopper's life as he was forced to do so by the nurse. Wandering around the hospital with the nurse every day to write his notes was almost like the lifestyle of an old retired man. Even so, it was hard work to spend all day long staring at the bleak, concrete building.

As soon as he arrived at his room, he fell down with his crutches, and it was free time. No, he must have meant that in the luxurious prison life, where there is no freedom at all, he should think carefully about the meaning of what he had seen and heard that day. When he held a pen in his hand, it ran over the blank pages of his notebook as if it had a mind of its own.

Night fell, the pen spilled through his fingers, the notebook tumbled to the pillow, and the grasshopper's body collapsed onto the bed like a hungry horse. Just as he was about to stretch his wings under the covers, a trumpet sounded from outside the fence, heralding the arrival of morning.

When the nurse came to his room, she said it was time for a "walk. From his room on the third floor, he would first go down to the first floor, cross a long hallway, and then climb back up to the fifth floor. He had not yet set foot on the rooftop or the basement floor, but all the floors had a similar appearance. The hospital beds were full of old ants with broken legs and wounded wasps with burned-out wings, crowded together to the point where they became a nuisance to the stretcher traffic, which was constantly coming and going. In some places, even the hallways were lined with waiting patients.

Indeed, from what the grasshopper had seen and heard over the past few months, he was inclined to believe the nurse's words that she did not discriminate between ants, grasshoppers, or even wasps as patients. The young nurse led the way, leaving the grasshopper staggering along, clacking his crutches.

Then the grasshopper caught sight of a man in a wheelchair passing by in the hallway. It was no mistaking him for a young ant who had wandered out into the middle of the noisy street and had suddenly met his eyes as he passed him by. One night, the young man's eyes were as sharp as the eyes of a bird of prey in the darkness of the night, and his feet were as fast as his wings could fly, dashing past the grasshopper like a gust of wind. He had a gun in his hand, and his chest was filled with anger and fervor, perhaps the energy for tomorrow... When he collapsed, the grasshopper had already lost sight of the young man.

The second meeting happened in passing. He said 'Thank you.' His voice certainly came from the wheelchair. When he turned around, the wheelchair had disappeared around the corner. He was certainly that young man, but his eyes were glazed like old lenses, and his gaze drifted through the air like a fly, while the wheelchair crawled slowly down the hospital corridor at a snail's pace.

…What does "thank you" mean? If the cause of last night's ruckus was my spurring the ant master on with a bogus tale, what do I mean by thank you? No, no way. He couldn't have known about it. Besides, the commotion last night was caused by the ant master who had selfishly come to his own conclusion and rushed out, so there was no need for me to feel responsible for it. Yes, the ant master took his gun and ran out into the night. I was just watching from the corner of my eye. In other words, I could be blamed for not running out with him, but I could never be thanked for having inspired him to do so. When such divine power is possessed by art, much less improvised fables...

“You still haven't gotten over the drugs you took yesterday, have you?”

With that, the nurse strode down the corridor, up the stairs, through another long corridor, and blindly made her way to the top of the building. The grasshopper followed her movements much later. By the time he reached his destination, he was considerably out of breath, and a pleasant breeze blew in to wipe away the sweat that clung to his body, the medicinal smell, and the heat of the people.

“We're on the roof.”

The nurse walked up to the fence, using one hand as a sunshade. The building has the second best view in town after the city hall, so I'm sure you'll be able to clear your head and see everything clearly.

The hospital has a wall half the height of the building and trees planted inside, making it difficult to look out the windows of any of the patient rooms. He seemed to have forgotten how surprised he was when he opened the window to see the night view and instead of stars in the sky, he was confronted with a pitch-black concrete wall that loomed hopelessly over him. He rushed to the fence with his crutches clattering, and he yelped and screamed. The wind seemed to have taken away all the debris from the ground along with the stagnant air. The view was not good. The building seemed to have been protected by chance, thanks to the fence.

“Take me to the shrink.”

If one were not insane, one would have thought that the slamming noise, the skirmish between the angry crowd and the wasps, had burned down the houses, overturned the cobblestones, and plunged the entire town into a horror of destruction and chaos. The incomprehensible screams, mad women's laughter, and moans of pain heard from downstairs must have been the screams of those who were thrown into this hospital after wandering around aimlessly, having been burned out by the smoke beneath their feet. If not, could it be that the voices were actually coming from inside his head? Before he knew it, she was out of his sight. He heard the nurse's voice from behind him.

"You have to see it in your mind's eye, in your mind's eye, in your mind's eye!”

"All of that..."

"My family lost their house, too, and I've been moving from place to place. You are lucky to be alive. It's not that I have anything against you. Even before you came along, there was a lot of discontent in this town, where wasps are so prevalent, among those who have gone underground. The town was a balloon that was bursting at the seams, so to speak. And then you, the tip of the needle, poked in from out of nowhere. But that's not the same thing. I don't know if you can be held responsible for this mess. But at least you can say you had a hand in it. Nothing can ever go back to the way it was. I wonder if you can face this reality and still be cool with your artistic illusions."

“I am…”

At that moment, the scene in the hospital that he had just seen came vividly back to the grasshopper's mind. It would be a difficult world for me, the grasshopper, to live in. The nurse's words as she was about to leave the room came back to him, as if they were hitting him deep in the pit of his stomach.

“Do you think music and stories can save the sick and injured or fill the stomachs of starving children? If so, you must be a very lucky man.”

…I must have inadvertently tapped into the history of this town, the grasshopper thought. But what does history mean? I don't remember anything before I came to this town. I don't even know the history of this town. In a town where the sick and the wounded are everywhere and the arts are not even looked at, I must be a very lucky man to have lost my memory and not give up my passion for music and art. I am nothing more than a nuisance to the people of this town. What would it mean if this troublesome, happy-go-lucky stranger was involved in a history that brought misfortune to the town's inhabitants? The nurse looked blankly up at the sky, as if she had heard nothing else. The grasshopper, after much thought, finally found the words.

“But there are some things I don't understand. Why should I, who was responsible for the deaths and injuries that turned the hospital upside down, be treated to a luxurious private room, meals, and educational guidance by a kind nurse like you, or some other kind of preferential care? Is this some kind of special arrangement by a kind gentleman?”

“Let me answer that question for you."

When he turned around, he saw a white-robed man with a beard puffing on a pipe standing where the nurse had been standing just a moment before.

“When I found you unconscious on the side of the road, I must confess that I couldn't afford to be bothered.There was a mountain of rubble as far as the eye could see, and the streets were filled with people who had been badly injured in any number of other ways.

Then a very special person appeared. He pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and said,

I'm going to buy the fate of this stranded man with money, and I want you to take care of the rest.”

“I see. So, what's this guy's name?”

“I don't know. He looked like a common country gentleman with a brown cap and a walking stick. I accompanied him to the hospital to drop you off, and when I came to, he had suddenly disappeared. I don't suppose he was a relative of yours. Or do you have any idea who he was?”

…It seems that the unfortunate person who was forced into the custody of a stranger, a wayward man, with a wad of cash twisted in his pocket by this unknown country gentleman, is to be my doctor. With a few bucks in cash paid by the kind gentleman, I will have a comfortable place to live in the hospital. Not a bad position to be in. However, depending on how you look at it, the gentleman may have locked me up in the hospital. I don't trust the doctor's statement that the gentleman disappeared quickly and is nowhere to be found. In other words, I am a prisoner in this hospital, where I have no freedom, and the nurse, under the guise of taking care of me in general, must be in the role of reporting to the gentleman on my every move. What was she doing this for? Well, I am on crutches and cannot leave the hospital on my own. So far, the doctors and nurses were neither friend nor foe. They were not the right people to ask for advice. The sun was setting and dusk was approaching. When I looked back, there was no one in sight. If they were on duty to keep an eye on me, did this mean that they had granted me a brief moment of freedom? But it was dusk. Contrary to logic, I began to feel lonely.

“What the heck?”

　The grasshopper man rushed to run down the stairs. His crutches were slowing him down. As he descended one or two flights of stairs, the light on the landing flickered on and off. The tip of his crutch failed to catch the bottom as he tried to take a step forward, and the grasshopper's body was thrown out into the darkness. As he rolled downstairs, he bumped into something cold and hard, and then the iron door opened with a sharp, unpleasant sound. The heat and the noise of people rushed in and seemed to envelop the grasshopper man who stood up unsteadily and carried him away into the womb of a warm animal.

“Who the hell are you?”

The iron door seemed to close of its own accord. At that moment, five or six patients were already surrounding the grasshopper man. They did not look like patients to be admitted to a hospital, but all of them had thick, tanned limbs and were ready to grab him at any moment. The grasshopper man took a couple of steps back and put his hand on the knob of the iron door he had just rolled in. It wouldn't open. Before he realized it, their brawny hands were stretched out and locked firmly on his shoulders.

“I’m a patient.”,the grasshopper replied quickly.

“I was just admitted to the hospital a few days ago, so I don't know what's going on.”

“What's the name of the disease?”

“I don't know. I just found myself thrown in here. You are the ones who are crazy for asking such an obvious question.”

Suddenly, a burst of loud laughter erupted among the men. Then, like a ripple, a circle of laughter spread among the women and children who had gathered around them. The grasshopper looked around at the faces of those surrounding him. The gray walls divided the room, which looked like a boiler room in the basement. A number of beds and some household items were brought in there, and the number of people huddling around was no more than fifty. When the waves of laughter finally died down, he could hear the voices of the people who had settled down at the tables here and there and were absorbed in chitchat.

-This town was a shithole to begin with. The mayor before you came along was taking the taxpayers' money, which was deducted from the money we worked diligently every day, and putting it into his own pocket.

-Hey, Liberation Army! They crowded onto the roof of the city hall, fireworks were going off, cherry blossoms were blooming, and there was a big party with lots of drinking and singing.

-Do you think the people will keep quiet about such a thing? The losers have their own way of making things right. It's a court trial.

-When I get out of the hospital, I'm ready to throw myself into the ranks of those who are still camped out in the open...

Some are back at their tables chatting, some are absorbed in playing poker or hanafuda (Japanese playing cards), and some are half-naked and dancing on the table, as if they have already forgotten about the grasshopper man. Here, one moment is forgotten the next. Forgetfulness seems to be considered a virtue.

The guy from before stepped forward and said, "You're right. We are crazy. This place is a paradise, so to speak, a mental ward. Or perhaps we can call it a hideout for tomorrow's battle."

The man continued in a more serious tone.

“You may be wondering if it's okay to talk like this. We're pretending to be crazy, so people outside won't take what we say seriously, and besides, this is a place where patients are allowed to have autonomy. It would be easier to say that the hospital is like a dumping ground for bad patients. In other words, it's as if the hospital has lumped together those who don't want to be taken care of, provided them with a roof to shelter them from the rain and dew, and left them to do whatever they want with their food and other things, whether it's farming or stealing. Doctors and nurses visit only once a month. The entrances are supposed to be heavily guarded, but even so, every once in a while a hospital agent sneaks in. At that time, we beat them until they really go crazy, then we strip them down to the bare bones and throw them out.”

As the grasshopper was guided, he looked around at the lives of the people living here. It was probably a community like an asylum that had been temporarily set up within the hospital. It may be a refuge for those who have fallen on hard times, or have come to the end of their lives and have no place to stay in the hospital or in the world. Rather than throwing the unwanted out into the wild, they are placed in one place and given the freedom to live their lives. The rulers may believe that this approach is easier to monitor if they are willing to make some sacrifices. From the conversations he overheard, it seems that freedom of life means forcibly taking what one needs from the outside world according to one's needs. The goods taken from the outside world are not eaten and wasted in a disorderly manner, but are sorted and distributed fairly. It must be a paradise. Here and there, the sound of people laughing and murmuring happily drifted through the air. Sometimes, there were even voices singing pleasantly. This was in a hospital where there was no shortage of drugs. The medicinal effects of the drugs were clear for all to see.

At that moment, a little girl jumped out in front of the man and shouted excitedly,“It's being born!”

Then a young woman, who was being supported by some patients, was hastily carried into the back of the room on a stretcher. Her belly seemed to be swollen. “It's Maria,” someone said. “It's Maria!” Joyful voices erupted from the passers-by on the street. The little girl gestured for the two men to follow her and chased after the stretcher.

The stretcher was eventually carried into the tent set up at the back. Hindered by the crowd, the crutches wobbled to the right and left, leading the grasshopper man to the entrance of the tent. The little girl who had arrived earlier waited and, upon witnessing their arrival, took the man's hand and pulled him into the tent.

“You're quite a child who isn't shy around strangers. You don't seem to have any sense of wariness towards people.”

“We don't have the barbaric idea here that parents can have their children all to themselves. The baby that will be born here next will surely be cherished as a treasure by all of us.”

The place is crowded and hard to see. A roar of applause erupted and the crowd that had gathered surged like waves. Amidst the commotion, the baby's crying could be heard intermittently. Certainly, as the man said, children here are not the exclusive property of their parents. Feelings such as "mine" and "yours" about parents and children are nonexistent here, and the birth of a child is undoubtedly a matter for all the residents here to celebrate.

“It's born!”

Suddenly, the grasshopper's mind drifted back to the baby he had left behind one night. The master ant grabbed his gun and ran out of the house, leaving his wife and child behind. Taking revenge on wasps is a good cause. But going up against the strong may mean making sacrifices for the weak and puny. There are those who are left behind the guns. He immediately saw the image of an wife ant fleeing the war zone with her baby in her arms. If the baby that was now screaming in front of him was the child of all the residents, no one would leave this tiny baby behind and run away, no matter how the world changed. But what if the day comes when all the residents here run out into the street? A hideout for tomorrow's battle. That's what the man said. If today's life is to be sacrificed for the sake of tomorrow's battle, then the fate of the newborn babies here will be...

The grasshopper man, waving his crutches, staggered into the tent as if attracted by a magnet. The woman on the stretcher was moved to a bed, and the baby was wrapped in a fluffy cloth and cradled in the hands of a midwife. The people were busy blessing the baby, lifting it in their hands one after the other, and no one noticed the grasshopper man. Then the woman called "Maria" saw him staggering toward her, and it occurred to her that she might have met him somewhere before. She saw the scene of the two of them passing each other in the midst of the burning fire and the people who were running away from each other. It was not a memory of a past encounter, but a momentary flash of inspiration, similar to the illusion that they might meet in the future. Maria suddenly thought of the baby's father. A grasshopper man called out to her from nearby.

“Are there any of your relatives with you?”

“My husband was lost in the battle.”

Maria's happy eyes faded, and she cast down her eyes.

The grasshopper suddenly found a cello propped up against the wall and picked it up.

“Are you a person who plays an instrument too?”

“Yes.”

“My husband was an ant, but he loved to play an instrument. He also composed music. He composed a song for working people, suitable for an ant. It is a fork anthem for working people, sung and danced around the fire after working in the fields, with beer in one hand and a song in the other. ...If you don't mind, could you name my baby? I am sure he would be happy to have someone who plays an instrument to be his godfather.”

Maria did not know why such words came out of her mouth so suddenly. The grasshopper picked up the cello that had belonged to Maria's husband and stroked its body, touching its strings and pondering. A anthem of labor. Come to think of it, he had heard those words somewhere. He had a feeling that he had something to do with it. And, for some unknown reason, he had a feeling that his search for it would lead him to retrieve his lost guitar. But just as the sound of the guitar fades into the past, so do the words. Maria remained silent, as if waiting. Somehow, she felt strange not to chide the man who was holding the instrument, her husband's memento, in his hands. Soon, the words came out easily.

“Mohammed. Mohammed Ant.”

“Sounds like a tough name. What does it mean?”

“I don't know. I don't know either, but what it means will depend on the kind of life he will lead when he grows up. If you ask him what kind of life he will lead, it will only make it more difficult to remember his name.If you don't like it, forget it.”

At that moment, a man standing beside him, who was acting as a guide, shouted, “Hurray Mohammed Ant!” The man in the tent shouted, “Hurray Mohammed Ant!” The voice quickly became a rallying cry amongst the throngs of people outside in the tent, and it spread like wildfire to every corner of the room. A band appeared out of nowhere, liquor was served, and people began to dance as if they were suffering from a fever. The men were half-naked, writhing and clapping their hands, and the women were dancing wildly, adorned in stolen costumes they had pulled out of the market. Children formed a circle around the tables and spun around in a merry-go-round style.

As the grasshopper danced and chanted, ate and drank, and stood around in a merry mood, he noticed that the time had flown by and the sky in the east was getting brighter. The hospital's lights-out time had long passed. As the grasshopper was about to head for the door, someone grabbed him by the shoulder with a strong grip.

“I think back, no intruder has ever entered through that iron door,” he said. “There is a saying, ‘The iron virgin’. The fact that the iron door has opened may mean that the iron door has taken a liking to you.”

The grasshopper was a little embarrassed.

“You're crazy, you know that? You smell just like us.”

☆

The nurse flipped through the notebook and handed it to the man lounging in the chair beside her. The old man in the white coat lit a cigar and began flipping through the pages, exaggeratedly widening his eyes and frowning, interspersed with occasional low grunts. The nurse glanced at the old man with a prompting look, but he just stared at the wall with a stunned expression on his face.

It was already evening. No one knew how many nights it had been. Since he had been brought here, he had been going through the same routine, and his sense of the day seemed to be gradually becoming numb. He would wake up early in the morning, be shown around the hospital during the day, and at night he would write a report in his notebook for an unknown purpose that was a combination of a diary and an opinion piece. Since he was not allowed to go outside the hospital, writing was a comforting way to relieve the boredom. However, when this report was to be read, things naturally became different. Like a sea bream on the chopping block, or a small laboratory animal waiting to be disemboweled on the table, the grasshopper had no choice but to wait with a mysterious face for the psychiatrist to finish reading his notes.

“I will make my findings first. May I, doctor?”

“Go ahead,” the old doctor gestured.

“I have read your notes and found them very interesting.”

“I only wrote it down honestly, as you instructed me.”

The grasshopper man looked at her disapprovingly.

“I don't know what to say. What you have written is not in the style of a factual record and an internal reflection of your own behavior since you came here. What you have written here is deliberately twisted and not true. It is a hodgepodge of convenient interpretations created by your imagination, so to speak.”

“Well, from what I've seen... From what I've seen…”

The old doctor opened his mouth heavily and said, “It seems that you have a tendency to make up stories out of insufficient facts, using your imagination to cover up your own inadequacies. You seem to have a tendency to confuse facts obtained through experience with interpretations obtained as a result of examining those facts. You misinterpret as fact what is not clearly related to cause and effect. For example, the fact that you gave a big speech at a certain house is a completely different event from the disturbance you just experienced. However, you write that a man, influenced by your grand speech, ran out of the house with a gun in his hand, leading to the destruction of the town. On the other hand, you also write that the riot was not caused by you, but rather by the frustrations of the town's residents, which had been piling up. It is a strange combination of megalomania and avoidance of responsibility, don't you think?

It seems that while you like to think of yourself as an important person who can have a great impact on the world, you are at the same time a very petty and timid person. Therefore, your narrative lacks psychological coherence and your heart is always wobbling. One moment, you mention an incident and feel deep regret, and within a few lines, you are making sarcastic remarks and jokes about it, with a nonchalant expression on your face. This is not the kind of sincere reflection I would expect from you.”

“Yes, I wonder if you have any remorse in your heart.”,she said.

“Remorse? I don't know. I do feel guilty about the mess I made of the town, but when I happen to meet an strange person who thanks me for giving him the opportunity to stand up against the tyranny of wasps, I suddenly feel as if it were an incident that has nothing to do with me. Besides…”

　The grasshopper made no note of the incident on the basement floor.

“It's rather annoying to be thanked so misguidedly,” he said.

“Is this irresponsibility? Or is it a virtue of humility?”

He looked at him and snickered.

“At the very least, I don't think it's a virtue.”,she said, dismissing him lightly,

“You're so quick to run off with lame excuses because you don't know how to face reality, I'm sure.”

“What?…”

“You've lost all sense of self.”

“You're being very snobbish, aren't you? for me,I have nothing to hide anymore.”

“I wonder if your twisted way of speaking and your cynical outlook on life is really innate”,she said.

“The view of life comes from the memory. I think…”

During their discussion, the old doctor, who was still not resting his hand on his notebook with the smoke from his cigar rising in a thick haze, suddenly lifted his head and seemed to interrupt the conversation.

“There must always be a one-to-one correspondence of memory to one's view of life. A super-optimistic view of life must be backed up by a super-optimistic memory of life, and a pessimistic view of life must be backed up by a pessimistic memory of life. This relationship is absolute, just as a cherry tree does not grow a pumpkin. You are right, his excuses and his cynical outlook on life are not innate. But even the cleanest cloth can quickly become as dirty as a rag if it is washed in a ditch. What is needed may be to wash it off completely.”

Turning to the nurse, he stood up and opened the window. It was already late at night. The night wind blew in the fifth floor window from the windswept city. The wind made the gray hair of the old man standing by the window flap and wave like a flag, as if a ghost outside the window was beckoning to him. The old man turned his head toward the grasshopper.

“I said earlier that all views of life are related to memory. But what is this memory? A fragment of past reality. No, it is not. It is nothing more than a heap of sand, created by sifting through the various impressions of experience. As the pile of sand grows, the nature of the sieve itself will change rapidly. The sieve is immediately related to how one's view of life is formed.

Your notebook, which I was able to take a look at, is, so to speak, a part of the record of your growth. However, a quick look at the contents reveals many inconsistencies and holes, and the descriptions are inaccurate. I am sure that a mountain of contradictory and disjointed views of life will be created. I don't ask you to fix it. What you should look back on...no, what you should confront, is the memory you have taken on, that is, your past. What do you think? How about leaving this hospital and visiting the town where you grew up?

“My past?”

“Can you remember exactly where and how you lived before you came to this town?”

The grasshopper remembered the morning he woke up in the hospital room. From there, he tried to trace back his memory, but anything before that night when he wandered into town with his guitar on his back was too dark and foggy to see. Amnesia? That's ridiculous. …I remember the loss of my guitar, which I always carried with me, in my head.

“Past? Huh, what about it?”

The grasshopper looked up and stared at the doctor.

“I may not be able to remember the past, but I remember my precious guitar.

In other words, instead of my hazy and unreliable memory, the guitar's memory proves everything about me. I was playing music. Artists don't need the past. Art is about kicking the old moldy beauty in the foot and replacing it with new beauty. And since the old beauty has been forgotten from the beginning, I should be thankful for the loss of the past.”

“Forgetting the past shouldn't be so easy."

The doctor turned around and took a small piece of paper from a filing cabinet.

“Here is a map of the town where you were born.”

“How did you know about my hometown? ”

The grasshopper took a few steps back and looked into their faces. The doctor and the nurse were both silent. They looked as if they knew everything, or as if they knew nothing at all, or as if they had no idea what was going on.

“I see. Come to think of it, the reason a penniless, homeless person like me can enjoy a luxurious, carefree life of confinement here is because that gentleman bought my custody with money, isn't it? You don't mind letting me go out into the world on my own?”

”I already know you'll be out of here someday. ”

The doctor looked at the nurse with a smile.

“In my opinion as a nurse, your wounds should have healed by now. There is no reason for you to stay here forever.”

“Unfortunately for you, things don't always go your way.”

Suddenly, the door was opened violently, and a group of black-clad men came rushing in, their footsteps making a loud noise. Two of the strongest men, both wearing iron helmets and metal rods, flanked the grasshopper, who was stuck in the room looking for a place to escape, and immediately grabbed him by both arms and tightened them with tremendous force.

“What are you doing?”

Before he could utter a word of protest, the men grabbed him by his crutches. The older man, who appeared to be the head of the group, stepped forward and shouted in a loud voice.

“The hospital has just come under the control of the Commission. Therefore, from now on, any admission or discharge of patients must be permitted by a committee approved by the authorities.”

“Nonsense,” the old doctor exclaimed quietly.

“The authorities have informed us that this man, who calls himself an artist, is in fact a suspected lumpen or political prisoner. He is suspected of two things: of having shown up the day before the chaos in the town and incited a riot by spreading dangerous ideas to good citizens, and of having daily contact with the patients in the basement where the dangerous elements are quarantined. Therefore, the authorities have the authority to take him into custody until he is ready for trial.”

While the grasshopper was being dragged away to be put into a cell in a half-underground cell in another wing, the doctor and nurse were watching on in a daze with a look of amazement on their faces. Just as he heard the door slam behind him, the crutch cracked against the grasshopper's brain and his vision went completely black.

The grasshopper man suddenly opened his eyes to the sound of footsteps approaching in the darkness. Had the nurse brought in breakfast as usual? Stupefied, he turned over in his sleep and immediately felt a chill on the hard, cold floor, not on the soft featherbed or sheets. It was as if everything that had happened yesterday was a lie.

…My luxurious and carefree life in solitary confinement now seems to have been the result of some kind of miscalculation, or at the mercy of some capricious rich person. Besides, the doctors and nurses never complained about the people who put me in solitary confinement, did they? I guess they, who had no choice but to look away from me with their mouths open, and these so-called ‘special gentlemen,’ are more helpless than I thought, unable to save even a grasshopper.

No, not necessarily. Who are these people in all black? In the past few months, some mysterious force that could call itself the "authorities" has sprung up like bamboo shoots in a burnt-out town, and it may be that this hospital has fallen into their hands. If this is the case, it is not impossible that they would quickly grow into bamboos, and the whole town would find itself in the same cage as a caged bird.

The owner of the footsteps crouched down in front of the grille and pushed a plate of what looked like porridge, with few ingredients visible, through the gap.“I can't eat this!” But how could an empty stomach remain silent in the face of food? After watching the guard's footsteps move away, the grasshopper took a bite of his plate without shame or shame. As soon as he swallowed, he felt a sharp shock in his teeth, as if he had been biting a stone, and spit it out on the floor... Ah, the key.

In the dusk of dawn, a faint shiny metal made a sound. Who could have done this? For the time being, however, it did not matter. The problem was that even if he managed to get out of his cell with the key, the building was still under double and triple security. There was a small window at the top of the wall facing the outside. It was hopelessly small. All was not well. He looked at the key in his hand and, out of anger, threw it through the small window.

“Ouch!”

The key was instantly returned to his hand.

“Who's there?”

“Who's going to throw away all that help? It's me.”

The grasshopper could not see him in the darkness, but he recognized the voice of the man who had led him to the basement. The man slipped a small piece of luggage tied to the end of a string through the small window. It seemed to be a folded piece of paper. When he unfolded it, he read it as a floor plan of the hospital building and its premises.

“Look closely at this drawing, which shows the free time when their patrols change and the points where security will be weak. It's the same one we use to go out of the hospital to work or thieves, so it's going to be useful.”

The grasshopper folded the map and clutched the key.

“Thanks for your kindness, but there are so many things I don't know. According to the guys in black suits, I'm here because I have some kind of connection with you.But have I caused any trouble for you by wandering in here?”

“Don't worry. The guys in black are thinking of letting us playing cat and mouse we want for a while and catching us before something big happens around town.I'm sure there must be some other reason why they made an example out of you. Now, cut the chatter and hurry up. There's a plan in place for you to escape with our comrades leading the way.”

The man behind the small window quickly disappeared in the darkness. The grasshopper opened the grille and stepped out into the corridor. When he saw that the guards were unable to see him, he ran swiftly through the darkened prison cell.

☆

Once on the train, the grasshopper sits down in the window seat. Across from him, a country gentleman with a beard, as you would find in any countryside, was reading a newspaper and puffing a thick cloud of smoke from his pipe. The smoke floated like a wispy cloud and disappeared into thin air. As he followed the path of the smoke with his eyes, the grasshopper remembered how his escape had gone so well yesterday. The building's security system was not so bad, and the whole thing went off without a hitch. Everything went according to the instructions on the plans.

The patrolmen seemed to be standing and sleeping in a daze, probably because they had been working the night shift continuously. When the grasshopper occasionally encountered a tough guy with a clear-eyed look in his eye, he was a little disappointed to find that the guy had already been paid off by the people in the basement and offered to show him the way. The only person who had dared to challenge him was the guard at the main gate. The guard fell to the ground when the men on the basement floor, who had been waiting for him, dropped the crutch from behind him with great force.

By the way, the man who served as his guide gave him something that Maria had requested. It was a small basket container, perfect for a picnic. He asked if it was a sandwich for lunch, as he was hungry from all the running he had done.

“No,” he replied, “it's a carrier doves. If you are in danger, open this basket immediately. Maria told me to tell you so.”

There was one more thing that was entrusted to the grasshopper man. A letter from a doctor.

The letter said, “...But I still can't say anything about the distortion of your mind, or rather, your outlook on life. What kind of transformation will you undergo when you return to your hometown and encounter your past? That is my medical interest. I am obligated to accurately measure the distance between you now and when you return from your journey. You may be going home, but I want you to promise to come back here at least once more.

In other words, it is a homecoming with a string attached. You pull the string, and we will provide you with the roadside money and other travel arrangements. I am sure there must have been some kind of mistake in the way things were going on at the time. By the time you return, I will have urged a certain gentleman to prove your innocence.”

It was difficult to tell whether the letter was a bluff or an attempt to hide something. The grasshopper saw a bill enclosed in the letter, perhaps a parting gift, or perhaps street money from a gentleman. He tucked it into his pocket, crumpled up the letter and tossed it out the window. The scrap of paper stayed in the air for a few moments before being blown backward. The train was running furiously, billowing black smoke.

The man sitting across from him frowned, took his mouth off his pipe, and looked up from his newspaper. When their eyes met, the word "fugitive" came to mind and he was startled. The fugitive was not, of course, the man in front of him. The glass door with the window closed showed a faint image of himself in a shredded hat in front of the flying scenery. Fortunately, the seats on the train are not so crowded. A merchant-looking man with his tools of trade and a woman with a child are seen here and there. In the light of the peace and tranquility that illuminated the scene, no one could see the shadow of an imminent pursuer.

When he exhaled a puff of smoke, the man uttered a single phrase, "Unbelievable," and tapped the surface of the newspaper with one hand. The tone of the man with the voice of the grasshopper man became naturally conciliatory, perhaps due to the psychology of an escapee who involuntarily flinched. He asked as follows:

“What’s bothering you?”

“It's the newspaper,” the rural gentleman shouted in an angry tone.

“Even if you say that, I don't understand. Is it about murder cases or corrupt politicians? What's the problem?” asked the grasshopper man.

The rural gentleman let out a sigh and lowered his voice.

“It's a novel. It's one of those newspaper novels that have become popular recently. It's true that it's outrageous, but it's quite interesting.”

Without the other party saying a word, the man began to explain the plot of the novel, pointing to the newspaper page. The story was about a young, poor painter whose talent was not fully revealed in the novel, but who had just enough ability to make a living from his art. He endured poverty and the hardships of life, and finally completed his masterpiece after much effort and dedication.

A certain day, a day laborer who had lost his job and became desperate broke into the room and killed the artist before stealing his paintings and fleeing. The robber exchanged the paintings for money at a pawnshop and then went to a brothel to buy a woman. The woman revealed that she was living with a young artist. In fact, the robber had taken a liking to her overnight. The man was surprised and decided to change his mind completely, and turned himself in to the police.

The grasshopper man listened to the story and was somewhat interested in the part about the artist appearing.

"However, this story seems like something I've heard before," he said.

“That's right. There are plenty of incidents where poor painters or artists die in poverty on the streets. Whether it's an accident or murder, it's not a big deal. If you count those who end up turning to crime after being lost and destitute, there are probably more than you can imagine. The death of a struggling artist and the murder that comes at the end of extreme poverty. If you combine these, it's not difficult to come up with the seed of a dime novel. “

“I see.”

“This story ends like this: when the man who committed the robbery goes to the police, it turns out that the man who was said to be living with the woman and the man he killed were completely different people. At that point, the man regrets his actions and cries out, 'Damn it, I was fooled!’.”

The rural gentleman chuckled and closed the newspaper.

Suddenly their field of vision opened up and they saw a parent and child sitting across the aisle from each other. A young woman, who appeared to be the mother, was dozing with her head leaning against the window. Nearby, a boy, who looked to be about five years old, was stretched out on the seat and struggling to put his hand on the trunk on the shelf. Is he trying to pick up one of the snacks in the trunk? He looked around and seemed to glance at the faces of the adults, but no one paid any attention.

“So my question to you is, who do you think defrauded this robber?”

“I don't know. The man probably thinks he was cheated by the brothel girl, but from the woman's point of view, it's just a false accusation. It was a mistake of the man who immediately jumped into a short circuit after hearing the story. Who deceived the man? If I had to guess, I'd say the robber stumbled on his own stupidity.”

“That's a good answer, but it's a smart alecky opinion that goes past the facts.”

The gentleman opened the window a little, turned the pipe upside down, and tapped it against the edge twice to remove the dust.

“It is true that it does not look that way if you trace the top of the matter. The murderer repented. He killed someone else. He withdraws his remorse. He resents the woman. If this remorse were taken seriously, the man's insincerity would be a respectable gesture, but things are not that simple. Think about it. The author writes as if this murderous thief, or robber, had a change of heart and repented after he fell in love with the woman. Well, we can accept that this is so if the author wrote it so, faithfully following the promise of a novel. But why, then, was his remorse quickly undone when he later discovered that he was mistaken?”

“Is it because he has fallen in love with a woman?"

The grasshopper man asked, but the gentleman did not answer him.

“I don't know. For example, it could be said that his remorse for having been influenced by the woman's passion was shallow, but this is still not enough to show the truth. In other words, it comes down to this. The man regretted the fact that he had killed a man who was related to a woman he was in love with, but he probably did not regard his act of murder as a crime. In other words, he was only afraid of losing the woman's favor if his deed was revealed in the light of day. This robber is a complete and utter fool, a man who only cares about his own needs and desires.”

“I see.”

“If that is so, don't you think he had been need not to have felt remorse when he heard about the man from the brothel girl? Your lover is the guy I killed, for sure. So what? I feel better now that my love rival is gone. Now, from today on, I'm going to be your partner. If he thinks that way, he will not have to feel remorse, and he will not resent the woman for cheating him after he finds out the truth. …”

“That's the thinking of a douchebag.”

The grasshopper man yelped. The country gentleman opened his big mouth and burst out laughing. The train roared into the tunnel. The light from the gas lamps installed on the wall of the tunnel shone through the windows. The country gentleman's face flickered in the darkness, illuminated by the pale light.

“I don't really care how that weak-minded man lives his life. If there is one part of the story that frustrates me, it is the question of what the artist was doing the painting for. “

"I suppose it's money."

"What did the laborer who committed the robbery want?"

"Money, of course."

"And what did the brothel girl want?"

"Money."

"Both the painter, the laborer, and the brothel girl are all at the bottom of society..."

"Money, that's what they all wanted."

"So why did the painter, who was killed, have to die?"

"Because of money."

"Now I know who's trying to deceive whom in this story. It's the author of the story trying to deceive the readers."

The interior of the train became instantly bright. The train seemed to have gone through a tunnel. The grasshopper man put on his hat and stood up indignantly. At that moment, something seemed to have happened on the seat of the parent and child who had just left. As the boy reached for his luggage, just as his hand reached for the overhead rack, the train jerked and the trunk he had missed flew into the air, nearly falling on top of the child's head. The grasshopper man leapt across the aisle and quickly caught the trunk with both hands. His hands, or rather his legs, seemed to move before he could think.

The child is left with a stunned look on his face. When the mother woke up, she panicked and tried to thank him. The grasshopper man slips past her, looking uncomfortable, and returns to his seat. The country gentleman glanced sideways at the scene, and then he slowly refilled his pipe, never stopped chuckling. Then he said that he was going to get off at the next station, so there was no need to switch seats, and started smoking again.

The train stopped at a small station standing alone in a desolate field. The country gentleman put on his brown cap, and with a clang of his walking stick, disappeared onto the platform where there was not a soul to be seen getting on and off.

That night, the grasshopper man had strange dreams and woke up several times. The pain he must have felt when he was taken out by the black-clad man and hit on the top of his brain with his crutches must have affected him by now. His awareness suddenly brightened as if he were emerging from the darkness, and then sank back into it. In the deep darkness of his consciousness, in a deserted atmosphere like the tundra in the middle of the night, he sees a man in a tall mountain hat disappear.

As he followed the man to avoid detection, the man in the mountain high hat turned around and swung down his walking stick.

The scene changes instantly. Swarms of locusts storm into the town like a giant tidal wave. They swoop down on vegetables at the market and in the open-air market, and in no time at all they are gobbled up. The insects attack people without mercy. The grasshopper man rushes out at the same time as the people run for panic and scream. A woman's cry of "coward" comes from behind.

The grasshopper man finds himself locked in a room with iron grilles. A woman comes in, hands him the key, and guides him to escape. On her shoulder, a large locust is gnawing at her, and it is out of breath. When he lifts his head, he sees a glimpse of her face through the veil. At that moment, the train's whistle blares with a shrill roar. He realized that he was on the bed, screaming and shaking on his upper body. Sweat ran down his back like a river.

It was raining outside. Each dream was an empty shadow, flowing like a knot of raindrops slanting across the window. They lined up behind the man, extending like a chain to hold him beyond the time that had passed. It was indeed the face of the woman he had met in the basement of the hospital. The grasshopper man vaguely recalls this as he looks out the window.

☆

When Maria first met the grasshopper man, she was surprised. I have met this man before. It was a strange feeling, as if a chance encounter was scheduled in the future. Was this a fateful encounter? No, that would be too corny. Otherwise, to dismiss it as deja vu would be...well, absurd. Let fate be eaten by dogs. She decided to embrace the idea that the future is decided by the will of the human being. And in her arms, the future, in the form of a living creature, breathes peacefully and sleepily. To celebrate the baby's birth, her comrades sent her many bouquets of flowers. As she looked at one of them, she remembered a long time ago, when she stood on a street corner freezing under the cold winter sky.

It was the evening of New Year's Eve. In the midst of the bustling crowd, a shabbily dressed girl wandered out from behind an alleyway and stood on a street corner with a bouquet of flowers in her hands. The bouquet was not a celebration, of course. They were a commodity to be sold to earn a living. The poor sales of the product could not be attributed to the girl's appearance or lack of talent.

The reason for this was that in the neighborhood where the flower girls were doing a modest business, recently a number of big stores with the influence of gangsters had opened up store one after another, blatantly interfering with their business. One by one, the daughters closed their businesses, and when one left, two left, and when three left, four left... Here, Maria, the only one left, her complexion waned, along with the bouquet of flowers in her hand, and she staggered unsteadily to her feet and hit a bump. When she looked up at the other face, she saw a thuggish-looking guy with a fierce look on his face,

“What the hell are you looking at?”

“Excuse me, would you like to buy some flowers?Flowers…”

“We don't need any wilting flowers,” he said,“If you just do us your favor for a minute, we'll show you a better way to do business. Follow me and I'll inspect your products…your body.”

Suddenly, out of the shadows came five or six men of shady-looking and rough. In the blink of an eye, they had roughly picked up the girl and were about to disappear into the back of a crowded alley when they heard a pistol shot and the whinnies of a horseman behind them, He stood there with a dignified appearance that was almost divinely majestic.

“The policeman had arrived. Get out of the way! “

The men, who looked like small-time crooks, quickly disappeared into the night, and the girl followed them to the military police station to be questioned about what happened. The onlookers, who had not bought any flowers and were busy watching the spectacle, could only watch as the messenger of justice defeated the town's thugs, a true example of good versus evil, but after a storm of applause, they all went home to their families.

Maria does not remember that night. The next morning, as she walked through the snowy alleyways, she could only remember that the roar of pistols and horsemen, and the divine and dignified figure of the military police, had all vanished in a hazy mists. Is being asked about the situation at the police station the equal of forgetting everything? Does it mean that the head cannot remember events that are not worth remembering? No, that was not the case. It was similar to the 'hatred' that was forgotten by the robbers after they had taken everything away.

I would have been better off following the thugs and becoming a good business associate.

Maria collapsed by the side of the road and cried aloud for her body and soul.

“The way of the police is always so cruel. They don't understand chivalry.”

She looked up to see a well-dressed elderly man standing there, puffing on a cigar. He appeared to have just got out of a luxurious black carriage nearby. Maria instantly turned herself around and leapt into the man's arms, screaming.

“Inspect me.”

“Inspect you? Hey, what's the matter?”

“Make me a good business associate.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. But you've got a pretty good voice. How would you like to try your hand at singing? I'm involved in both front-room and backroom business and I was just thinking about getting into the entertainment business. If you don't have any relatives, I'll take care of you too. …”

The idea of singing seemed to strike a chord with Maria. She had never been averse to singing. When she stood on a street corner selling flowers, or when a customer bought a bunch or three of flowers on a whim, Maria's mouth would smile and she would naturally begin to sing. She was happy as she walked home alone in the night wind, humming the song. But she had no idea how the song would fit in with the entertainment side of the man's wide-ranging business.

The man's business seemed to be thriving both behind the scenes and in front of it. He was extremely busy with civil engineering and construction, real estate brokerage, black market finance, restaurant management, pimping, and pyramid scheme sales, and it was not unusual for him to visit ten or twenty homes of his mistresses as he flew from place to place.

As for Maria, it seemed that taking care of her life meant becoming a man's mistress. The entertainment business went smoothly. By spring of the following year, there were already long lines of devoted fans waiting for Maria's arrival at various touring venues. The shows were always a great success, and the man never forgot to show his gratitude by inviting her into his bedroom each night on his bloated belly.

“By the way, have you been keeping any secrets from me lately?”

Maria was startled by the question, which was not the right one to ask.

“No, I'm lying. I was just trying to scare you a little. I found an unmarked letter stuck in my office the other day. According to the letter, you're in love with a young fan. Of course, I don't believe that. It's mostly a prank by a guy who is jealous of our success. But what I do know is that there are a lot of bastards out there who hate us and want to bring us down. You better watch out, too.”

In fact, there was a dispute growing between him and his business rivals over his relationship with the wasps that had begun to make inroads into the ant town. When he learned that the wasps were quickly gaining control of the political world, he shamelessly joined forces with them. Using them as a springboard, he used all manner of violence and intimidation to utterly destroy his competitors, and there seemed to be no room for hesitation or restraint. If he found someone who was obstructing his business, he would call in his men and wait for a few days. Within a couple of days, the brain-pierced idiots would be floating on the surface of the river.The man began a secret campaign to gain the title of “honorary hornet” by lobbying social circles.

It's laughable that a country bumpkin should pretend to be an eminent person, you traitor!

As the graffiti began to cover the downtown walls, the man became more and more lonely, and, refusing to go out, he began to indulge in the pleasures of his bedchamber with Maria.

By the way, even though his entertainment business was on track and his political maneuvering was going well, the suspicious letters from an unknown source did not stop arriving every morning like the morning newspapers. The man became so frustrated that one day, without informing anyone, he quietly had a carriage driven to the mansion where Maria lived. He got out of the car a few towns away, and instead of entering the house openly through the front door, he went around and snuck in through the back door. No, there was a certain amount of perverse pleasure mixed in with it. He tiptoed to the bedroom and stood there, his courage to step in suddenly weakened.

The sound of a musical instrument being played was coming from the inside of the room. The fact that the music is quite good is known to the man, an incorrigible philistine. Maria was a singer, not a performer. Then, what could be the source of this sound? Doubt began to grow in the man's mind as he thought of the mysterious document, the source of which was unknown. He put his ear to the wall and heard a whisper the size of an insect's buzz.

“You are staying with that old gangster, by all means?”

“Yes, I owe him a favor.”

“He's just using you. Let's run away together.”

“No, you can't. He'll kill you.”

The song stopped and the woman's words were cut off before she could finish, so one would imagine that the man's lips were covering the woman's and blocking them. The young, strong body embraced Maria's, and the two collapsed on the bed, twirling around as if dancing. The bed light went out and their costumes flew about like fireworks....

“Someone is outside.”

Maria cut off her words because she felt the presence of someone outside. When the young man playing the cello opened the door, there was no sign of anybody. Looking out the window, he did not seem to notice that the carriage had rushed out and was gradually moving away.

Some time later, Maria shut herself up in her room for several weeks and never came out. She took a hiatus from performing, and refused to even entertain a man's invitation to his bedchamber. Whenever the man tried to force his way into her room, she would throw things at him and stubbornly refuse. The reason for this is that a few days after that night, a body was found washed up on the banks of a river. A bullet had struck him in the side of the head. Was it a suicide or a death in a duel? The investigater’s opinion was that it was an odd death, but this was almost as if nothing had been concluded. For a woman surrounded by men living in the underworld, a young man's suicide or strange death is not an unusual event.

Maria secretly wondered about her sweetheart's death. She took the cello that he had left in her room on the last night and practiced it nightly as a consolation. When she touched the strings, it was as if she could feel the man's body twitching like a bow. As Maria's poor cello playing gradually improved, the old man watched with a complex mix of emotions.

“This must be the place. I just saw his mistress walk in.”

“You found his lair.”

“The bastard must be there. Today is the day he pays for selling his soul to the wasps with his own blue blood.”

The figures of men dressed in black moved in the shadows of the trees. From shadow to shadow, the men seemed to approach the target little by little in the distance, communicating in secret. Maria closed the door and went to the back bedroom where the older man was waiting. By this time, Maria was once again in the man's hands. No, the man had already lost all semblance of manhood, and her sleeping with him was more like caring for the old man than arousing his desires. The man's age was one thing, but the way he lived, shifting from place to place in several hidden offices to escape the forces that sought to strike him down in the dark, naturally put a strain on his old bones, and without her help, he was too frail to straighten his back even with a straight back.

As she opened the curtains, Maria saw a dusting of snow outside the window and called out to the man resting in the easy chair by the fireplace.

“I remember a night like tonight.”

Maria looked out the window with a blank look.

“It was snowing. If you hadn't picked me up that night instead of the military police, I would have probably died like the little girl selling matches.”

“Do you really think so? You must hate me.”

“No.”

“Were you happy that I found you? Did you enjoy singing?”

“I still love to sing.”

“Will you forgive me?”

Maria pulled the cello from its place against the wall of the room. When she plucked the strings, she thought she heard a noise in the distance, mingled with the sound.

“Wait a minute, that's a gunshot,” he said, “I’m sure it's a gunshot.

I'm sure of it.”

The old man sat up from his easy chair. As soon as he left the room and headed for the door, there was a rush of footsteps in the yard, and seven or eight men dressed in black rushed down the hallway, kicked down the bedroom door, and stormed into the room.

Two of them seized the old man by both arms and pulled him away, then suddenly grasped his chest and threw him to the ground.

“You and your concubine are living in hiding in a place like this? You've got a good thing going for you, you traitorous boss. Today is the day you shall make up for the bitterness of your erased brothers and sisters, and you'd better get ready to be relieved of your burdens right here and now. By the way, lady. I don't want to hurt you, but if you're willing to help us deal with this old man, I might be able to show him some mercy. “

As soon as the light outside the window suddenly brightened, it seemed as if fires were being lit all over the place. Was there a fire? Just then, there was another flurry of footsteps, and a man dressed in black tied the wasp man up from behind so that he could not move, pulled him to the center of the room, and kicked him to the ground. The old man recognized his face. It was the face of a wasp politician, with whom he might have had some business relationship, bound hand and foot and with his wings stripped off, begging for his life.

“Help me.”

“I don't know this guy.”

A man dressed in black, who appeared to be the head of the group, strode out, looked around at all the faces, and said in a high voice, “Did you see that?

Did you see that? You see,” he said, “our brother in arms looks so ugly. He eventually turned his back on the Lords of the wasps, just like the rest of us.

I'm in awe of your clairvoyant eyes that can accurately discern the trends of the times, and you are no fool. By the way, take a good look out of the window. On a snowy night, on this perfect day for revenge, as if it were a play, there are many strange people who have come up to follow us!”

Outside, a line of people formed up, lighting torches and parading through the night streets from left to right. The columns soon became waves, filling the alleys and overflowing into the streets, chasing away the fleeing and hiding prey, setting them on fire and smoking them out, and with their rampaging energy, sometimes mercilessly smashing down walls. The glass windows and walls in front of them were shattered, and an avalanche of people came rushing in.

“Are there any wasps here?”

“If there are any, turn them over. Kill them!”

The old man was lying on the floor on all fours, while the others were shouting, and he said, “The guy's here. I'm not your enemy. I'm one of you.”

He fell to the ground in a heap. Immediately, a burst of laughter broke out, mingling with the shouts and taunts of the crowd.

“You are all scum of the earth!”

Maria stood up, glared around her, and bellowed. The crowd, which had flinched for a moment, suddenly burst into a wild yelp and avalanche into the room. She clutched her cello close to her and, with a maddened yelp, darted through the crowd like a dancer twirling in a dance towards the blazing street. The town was on fire everywhere. She could see the smoldering corpses of wasps everywhere.

It did not matter to Maria whether the town had been uprooted overnight or whether anyone, anywhere, had suffered the consequences. The familiar town was gone. There was no going back to her old life. She wandered around the burning streets, trying to figure out where she was.

Maria suddenly found herself standing alone in a dense night forest. The town seemed to have passed by some time ago. Wasn't she dreaming? No, as evidence to the contrary, she looked back and saw the distant town everywhere, ablaze with flames, smoldering, and billowing smoke. Maria breathed in the moist energy of the trees, and her body was instantly drained of all power, and she fell to the ground and fainted.

The next morning, she awoke to find herself by a spring in the middle of a deep forest. Maria was lying peacefully in the shade of a grove of trees with her sweetheart, cello, in her arms. But her clothes were soaked in blood and stained with soot. To cleanse them, there was a spring. The water was crystal clear and seemed to go on forever, but there was no bottom to be found.

Maria jumped into the water and she dived deeply. Her body itself was like water. As she floated back to the surface and showered her wet face with the morning sun, a song came out of her mouth. As her singing became absorbed in the song, the twittering of birds and the rustling of trees seemed to sing out after her. The song vibrated in the spring, echoed through the fields, and spread to all parts of the forest, calling to each other among the trees. By the time she had sung her fill and went to rest in the shade of a tree, the birds, rabbits, raccoons, foxes, deer, bears, and all the other forest animals were gathered around the spring, all singing, all clearing their throats as if waiting for the song to begin again.

Then, out of nowhere, a white dove swooped down and perched on Maria's shoulder.

Go back to town.

She felt as if she could understand what the dove was saying. It was a mysterious thing, come to think of it. Another mystery was that she was pregnant with a child at that time. Maria remembered that she had slept with cello for a night. She carefully held the instrument in her arms and started walking alone in the forest, following the dove that had flown off toward the town.

☆

It was after it had stopped raining. A small man in rags pulled a cart and came to the store. He stopped by a decorative window and stood still, staring at the glass, not moving. It looked like a wedding dress store. The pure white dresses and tuxedos did not seem to have anything to do with the soaking wet small man. While the grasshopper was pondering over the map, the small man disappeared before he knew it.

Something is wrong. As he got off the train and walked in circles around the station, a light rain began to fall. As he sat in the rain under the eaves of a strange store, he could not be sure that this was the right town for him. The foggy memory that had just come back to him was as useless to him as the old map that the doctor had given him.

But even if he had lost his memory for a while, how could he have strayed from the town where he lived? Has he completely changed? No, it is the town that has changed. To find out, he needed to find some kind of unchanged sign.

As he looks across the street at the front of a wedding dress store, a woman peers into a decorative window. He glimpses her face reflected in the glass...Ah, the woman of his dreams. No, it is not.

The woman who rescued me when I was thrown in jail. The woman who screamed "coward" at me as I fled.

The woman who was bitten on the shoulder by a locust that jumped on her. But he cannot be sure if there is a bite mark on her shoulder, hidden by her clothes. At any rate, the dream seemed to have brought back to him unclear memories of reality. Having said that, the grasshopper decided to trust his first instinct. This woman must have had something to do with his hometown.

As he watched, a carriage stopped in front of the woman. The carriage picked up the woman and dashed off down the muddy road. The grasshopper man rushed to call for another carriage and ordered his coachman to follow it. The car with the woman inside went straight down the main street in front of the station. With a crack of the whip, his car followed.

This area was the center of the town, a corner with a glittering array of theaters and music halls. Visitors called it a “small art capital”. The city had a policy of protecting the arts and culture, and painters and poets from across the mountains and plains came to the town to live and work. The square in the center of town would always be crowded with young people with guitars in their hands and street painters. Such scenes came back to his mind with nostalgic memories.The grasshopper leaned out of the carriage window. However, the view he saw before his eyes was of a grim, inorganic town with banks and magnificent brick stores lined up alongside shiny, well-maintained roads.

The carriage with the woman on board turned left at the end of the street and headed toward the downtown area. This area is crowded with young artists who rent small buildings to share their studios, and the residents and bohemians who live in the area gather in cafes and bars. The waterway that runs beside it is as fresh and clear as a stream, and is a well-known spot for lovers to relax, even in the midst of the city's crowded streets.

The carriage in front of him passed by the famous spot and turned a corner. As his carriage followed it along the side of the waterway, a woman with a cigarette in her mouth and a nightgown glanced over and smiled at him. He saw a woman dressed up in a brightly-colored dress and an elderly woman in a disheveled costume, arms folded, looking languid in the daylight.

The woman he had seen in his dream finally got out of the carriage and walked toward the back of the alley, which was crowded with a mess of rubbish. The grasshopper man got out of the carriage and followed her, but the woman's steps faded into a blur. He wandered aimlessly down the alley like a lost traveler, dodging middle-aged men with short beards, and a young man with a sign hanging from his chest, who was shouting, "Hey, brother, let's play a little.

“Is this really the town where I was born and raised?”

A wastebasket in a building was overturned, and a stray cat jumped out of it, chasing a swarm of rats. In the alley, women and men, some of them unidentifiable, were lying on their backs, covered in vomit. Disgusted by the stale smell, the grasshopper went further into the alley. He came upon a familiar-looking corner. It was the old town with only a few buildings left. Further down the alley, at the end of the alley, he saw a small tavern with a shiny sign. No touts were standing there. The sun was setting, and the shadows of the taller buildings made it dark beneath his feet. The grasshopper was drawn to the dazzling light like an insect to a gas lamp.

The restaurant was deserted with only a few customers. It was probably because it was early in the day. The door was closed, and the view of the room, illuminated by the dim light of the lamp, shook like a flickering fire, but the customers paid no attention and did not turn around. The people gathered at the end of the counter, chatting in private, were dressed just like the grasshopper man, with their shredded hats and tattered coats, as if they had been punched out of the same mold. It looked as if their friends had just wandered in by chance.

Posters in faded colors cover the walls, and in one corner is a pile of old phonographs and other junk piled up as if they were rubbish. In a town that has completely changed, this place retains some of the artistic atmosphere of the old days. The owner takes a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard and pours it into the glass in front of him without a word.

He looked suspiciously at the first glance of a visitor as he looked around the room.

“It's a nice place. I didn't know there was still such a hole-in-the-wall in this town.”

The greeting came out of his mouth in a casual manner.

“I guess so. This is the only place left. The town has changed so much in just a few years.”

The owner's face lit up with a smile, as if he had loosened up somewhat.

“The only thing that hasn't changed is me and my customers. Sometimes I wonder if you used to live here.”

The grasshopper nodded vaguely and remained silent,

“I see. But since you were carrying such a big bag, I thought you might be a traveler from far away.”

“It's been a long time ago.”

“It's been not so many decades, but it seems like a long time ago. In those days, the town was called a small art capital. There were many theaters and music halls near this bar, and this place was always full of young actors and poets.”

Apart from the regulars stationed in the back of the room, no other customers seemed to be coming in. The owner was absorbed in a nostalgic story of the old days. A theater. A music hall. A small art capital. The same words seemed to fly around and around in the same place, running through the time that had passed. No matter how many words were spoken, the past, which had already been lost, remained at the bottom of time like a cup of tea. However, the master's words finally hit the bottom of it, and the hazy city that had vanished from the earth came rushing back toward the grasshopper man. Suddenly, the master's eyes seemed to glisten with tears. Promising to come back tomorrow, the grasshopper man was about to pay the bill when his master stopped him with a shake of his head.

“I’m going to close my business today,” he said. “I’m being evicted. The rent is going up, the customers are not coming, and I can't keep my head above water. It may be out of line for me to ask you to come here for the first time, but I thought this would be the last banquet…”

“The reason we're in this mess in the first place is because of this town…”

Suddenly, a drunken man's voice came from a seat in the back of the room. A tall, skinny man staggered toward him, bottle in hand.

“It's the fault of those who broke the code,” he said. ”The people who broke the code, the code of this city of art.”

“I’m tired of hearing the same old story again,”

“I’ve heard enough of your stories.”

The other replied in disgust from a distance.

“I don't forgive those who break the code, but it's not all their fault that the town was taken over by money-worshiping strangers,” another man interrupted. The tall man suddenly stood up on his chair and shouted to his audience, interrupting another man who was about to speak.

“What are you talking about? It's their fault, of course. What happened to them after they went around spouting all kinds of nonsense like they were heroes in a Western movie? A swarm of locusts attacked the town. Did they fight like they always say they would? The answer is no. They left the town at the critical moment.”

“You want to say that a bunch of money-worshipers took over the town. But it is not only because of those who started the revolution before and after the flapping of locusts. You are mistaken.”

One of the men, who was calmly sipping his cup, said in a low voice, “You are mistaken.”

“Speaking of money worship, its influence had already crept into this town long before the locusts and the like. You know, ‘Imperial Match’. You may remember the violin competition, as we call it to make fun of the mayor. It was a big event that the city organized with great fanfare to further promote the city as a center of the arts. Musicians from all over the city were divided into two groups, and the winners were decided by a winner-takes-all system. Winners were promised huge cash prizes, but losers would have all their property confiscated and would never be allowed to play an instrument again. The strict rules of the competition must have been designed to excite and enthuse the audience. I think the last two who played were…”

The grasshopper man twitched his antennae and listened intently.

“I remember. The one who won was that guy who is now a minor official at the Agency for Cultural Affairs. He must have gotten on the mayor's good side after that, you son of a bitch.”

“Yes, that's right. It seems that he is the one who caused the town to become completely corrupt. His music was more appealing to the public and the mayor because it was easy to understand, appealed to the powerful, and had the appearance of bravery, rather than artistry.

Ever since he sat in the Cultural Affairs Agency's bureaucratic chair, they began to give priority to theater productions that would generate money, whether plays or music, and the works of unsuccessful artists were pushed to the back corner, with no opportunity for presentation. Artistic activities on the streets and squares were outlawed, and all portrait painters and street performers were thrown out of town. The former capital of the arts was now covered in the color of money worship, and instead of wandering poets, adventurers from outside the city came in their droves. After the town swelled up into a blistering blister, it was swept away by a huge wave of redevelopment and the townscape was completely replaced.”

“Oh, damn it. They're all full of shit.” The tall man nodded and sat down beside the long-winded man and began to drink.

“I don't want to hear any more about that bastard slumped over in that petty official's chair,” he said. “What I can't forgive is the one who lost the imperial game. He is…”

“I didn't hate that man.”

The owner, who looked like he wasn't listening, took a break from his work and suddenly interrupted.

“Yes,It happened the way it did, but...” he said. “But you remember his performance at the competition? It was a great song. No, that's not enough. Was it a great performance? If you say so, you may feel that way. But the important thing is not whether the music was good or not, or whether the performance was wonderful or not. His music immediately struck me right to the core of my heart. I felt the entire history of the songs of joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness that people have sung in their lives, in every corner of the human world, flowing like a torrent into my body. The fragments of emotions that people have probably held in their hearts, hitting each other and echoing each other, united the feelings of many people who were present at the concert. It was as if they were in a dream that was just beginning to awaken. I think that's how everyone felt.”

“Yes, that's right. He made us expect so much from him. He made us expect so much from him...by the power of his art in this terrible world.... Isn't it all the more sinful for that?”, the tall man spat on the floor.

“I don't think even he believed in the power of art to change the world.”

The calm man next to him had already had several more drinks, but he showed no signs of drunkenness,

“Because he didn't believe in such a crazy idea, he was brought up to be the leader of the anti-government riot that erupted after the defeat in the imperial game. When a town develops into a blistering mess because the city government is bent on money worship, those who are left out of the development are driven out to the outskirts of the town, where slums are formed. It did not take long for the lawless zone to become a nest for the disaffected, as people freely flowed in from outside and inside the city. The revolutionary uproar began when these people gathered in large numbers in the square at the center of the city and demanded that the city hall be handed over to them. I thought it was not surprising that his face was among them, considering that he must have had some personal resentment and bitterness over losing the match. But then...what was his slogan, or banner? Don't laugh. In order to make art for the people, the world itself must be put back in the hands of the people. Art for the people is the truth. As long as the rich people control the world, there is no other way but for art to be used to make money. So, this is a kind of revolutionary philosophy of art to destroy such a world itself. As a bedtime story, this one is one or two better than the previous one. No, if you look at this as a snore, you can even smell the scent of violence.”

“Hey, I've got a monopoly on violence, don't I?”

A large, drunken man suddenly jumped up on the table and brandished a bottle.

“It was his fault in the first place that he put his hopes in politics and neglected the Code. It is a code that has been handed down since the time of our grandfathers, and their grandfathers' grandfathers. If an artist gets involved in politics, it's not a good thing. If a poor artist becomes head of state, he will draw a bad picture on the map of the world and set it on fire. When a novelist puts on a military uniform and climbs a high place, the cherry trees blossom and he do a harakiri. A politician who gives a blithe answer looks so cute. That is how bad the quality of artists is when combined with politics. So, the dreamers with a crazy sense of life should be quickly moved to the back of the house, and someone with no artistic sense at all should be elected mayor, leaving the politics to him. That's what we all decided.”

“If that's the case, it's not so much that the man broke the code, but that the mayor, who has no artistic sense whatsoever, has organized an imperial game that has brought this town to this state.”

“What does that mean? It's not his fault, is it?”

“…Politicians should have been banned from getting involved in the arts, too. The time when the mayor, who had no idea what he was doing, let the arts run wild with his laissez-faire attitude, was, in retrospect, the best of times.”

The man gulped down his cup in a calm manner.

“And, well, in the end, the philosophy of the artistic revolution of the man who went to the trouble of breaking the code was defeated. Or, perhaps, he was so frightened by the swarm of locusts that suddenly attacked his town that he fled without a fight. Revolutionary philosophy may have been able to defeat the enemy of man's power, but it was powerless against the fury of nature, that is, the violence of animals that do not speak the language of man. When the locusts that had ravaged the city were gone in a flash, the artless money-grubbers from other towns who had come to take advantage of the chaos, seduced the mayor and his minions, and made them their puppets. The theater and music hall were demolished, and the town was busy building a bank and digging a hot spring in their place. The history of a small city of the arts is now at an end.”

“Oh, no, they're all bastards. They're all bastards, really, you bastard.”

The tall man shouted as if to throw up, and then slammed the bottle he was swinging with his passionate speech onto the floor with a mighty thud. Immediately, the supposedly deserted room erupted in a woman's scream, which was quickly quelled. The sound of people standing around and rustling arose in the room... While the men who were regulars were absorbed in the heat of the discussion, new customers took up seats here and there, and before they knew it, the place looked like a lively party place. The guests were seated at various tables, poking at plates, laughing and whispering, and the champagne corks were flying wildly.

“Well,it's already closing, but the business is unexpectedly thriving.”, the owner looked around the room and said with a little happiness. The calm man continued to drink in a calm manner. The tall, boisterous man seemed to have lost interest in the content of the discussion and was licking the bare backs of the women in ball gowns at the other tables with a lecherous interest. Many of the guests were probably returning from a wedding party or something. All of them were young, colorfully dressed, and frolicking like little birds, seemingly oblivious to the sight of the men.

“Speaking of women…”,the man's eyes suddenly lit up.

“There must have been a woman who helped that bastard of art and revolutionary philosophy run away to the outskirts of town. She was almost a peasant girl…”

“That's probably just town gossip. It's not something to talk about seriously.”

“Well, you know what? I saw it. I saw her walking around in broad daylight, looking exactly as I had read in the gossip magazines. I'm sure of it. She had a scar at the base of her shoulder wing where a locust had bitten her when she let the bastard go. Why is she dressed in such a way that I can see it? Because…”

There was a thumping sound of a chair falling over. The sound of an approaching person behind him, a tall drunk turned his head and saw an unfamiliar man in front of him. The grasshopper man who had just appeared in the evening was standing there.

“Where are the woman?”

“Woman? There are plenty of women standing by the canals all over town.”

“That's not it. I'm looking for the woman with the scar on her shoulder.”

“So you don't know, do you? It's a waterway.”

“The waterway?”

“That's right. She's probably standing on a bridge by the waterway or somewhere, smoking a cigarette and folding her arms, with a greedy look on her face. What the hell do you care about any of them women, damn it?”

“You're the bastard!”

The grasshopper man pushed the tall drunk with all his might, and ... well, it was he himself who was pushed, and he immediately fell to the floor, kicked and sprawled. Then his opponent's hairy arm came up and wrestled him to the ground.

“You son of a bitch! even If I teach you a lesson in kindness, will you to pay evil for favor? Or do you think you can take advantage of our noble art theory?”

“Art theory?” The man snickered,

“That's a laugh. Is getting drunk, chasing women, and acting up, that's your theory of art? You're a big douchebag who would be ashamed to hear you talk like that.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

As soon as he saw the bright red bearded face approaching, ready to strike, the basket of doves under his tattered coat fluttered open and leapt into the air. A leisurely dove race would not be enough to meet the situation at hand. Before the grasshopper could close his eyes, two, three, five, and six white doves flew out of the basket in rapid succession, and all eyes were on him as if a new entertainment was about to begin at the banquet hall. The doves flew out in flocks of fifty, then a hundred, and soon they were flapping their wings.

Flocks of doves swooped around the room like a wave, splashing on the ceiling, spraying the seats, shooting glasses at targets, knocking over liquor bottles, and gobbling up all the food on the tables. And then, in the midst of the screaming and yelling, they shat themselves on the heads of tuxedos and dresses that were being moved left and right. At the stand, a calm man continued to drink calmly, while the tall, drunken man, clutched by pigeons, flapped his arms and legs in a flailing struggle, as if the messenger of peace must have taken a liking to his daily activities and was about to congratulate him.

“It's been a lively evening, hasn't it?”

The grasshopper man ran out of the room through the throngs of people.

He had no recollection of when that lively night had really been. It was not that he had lost all the memories that he had recovered along with the stuff he had spewed out in his hangover. He may or may not have seen the shadow of a woman as he ran out to the bank of the waterway in a daze. The blurred image of the woman in his drunken eyes was not enough to make him believe that it was a solid memory. But even if she was the woman in question, what was wrong with him? In retrospect, the fact that he had tried to confirm but could not, was merely an illusion of what might or might not be in his life. Instead of a phantom, what was clearly recalled was... well, was that the memory the doctor was talking about? The vague memories that have just returned seem to have come back to his mind more clearly now.

Just as strong drink can wake one up with a start, the events at the bar must have shaken the grasshopper and made him remember his time in this town. The story he told his master, an ant, was not a lie, nor was it a legend of his hometown. If it were not true, it would have been an illusion. On the other hand, what he lost in exchange for his recovered memories was the contents of his wallet. It was the roadside money he had received from the gentleman in question, which was enclosed in the letter from the doctor. Even if it had vanished when he awoke on a park bench, why should he stay in this town any longer?

Let's go back to the ant town. The grasshopper mumbled, and staggered back along the tracks. He was back to his old routine of walking around as a beggar. As he trudged along, the snow melting and the flowers falling, the scenery changed in an instant. It was an afternoon, several months after that night, when he passed through a grove of green and young leaves, and looked up to see the towering town of Ant, which was undergoing a remarkable reconstruction.

☆

“What a dubious character.”

He seemed to be awakened by the unexpected splash of cold water on his face. He sat up and looked around to see that he was surrounded by a crowd of onlookers and a few guards in military uniforms. Where was he? In the distance, he could vaguely make out a blur of white buildings in the haze, and he felt as if the blood was suddenly draining from his brain, and his consciousness suddenly ceased. He must have fainted from hunger.

When the grasshopper staggered to his feet, the circle of people surrounding him quickly widened as if in fear. Indeed, he must be a suspicious fellow. He had not taken a bath since he left his hometown. His clothes were in tatters, his coat was shabby, his hat was wrinkled with more than before, and his stench was so foul that he almost resembled a beggar monk who had fallen ill at the end of his journey through the country. Nearby, a group of men with upturned eyes wandered around, and one of them grabbed the beggar monk by the arm and asked, "Do you have any identification?”

“Identification?”

“Yes, who would try to enter the Republic without identification?”

“The Republic? And then…”

Apparently, he had fallen ill near the town of Ant, and was taken into the town by a guard who had spotted him. But is this really the town of an ant? It does not resemble the atmosphere of the old town. In other words, it is neither a European-style town with old-fashioned brick houses nor a burnt-out field after the revolutionary upheaval. It is a completely different place, with the sound of reconstruction hammering away, and here and there, new and unfamiliar buildings lined up in a row. The town is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, and the sight of a patrolling policeman can be seen here and there. However, when he looked up at the sky, he saw the city hall towering over the center of the town, and he realized that this was indeed the town of ants.

One of the guards pushed the grasshopper away, and the others mocked him.

“Don't you see what we look like? This is a republic.”

When he looked at the crowd that had gathered around him, some of them were ants and others were wasps. All of them wore uniforms with a black and yellow star on a red background sewn into their shoulders. When he looked up at the city hall, he saw a flag of the same design flying high, fluttering in the early summer breeze. It was probably the national flag. The black and yellow stars must represent ants and wasps, respectively. The grasshopper thought back to the time when he had left this town. Considering the fact that even then, there were people who tried to arrest him with the word "authorities," he was not so surprised by this welcome. However, the black-clad men at that time and these guards were somewhat different. When ants and wasps coexist in harmony and co-prosperity, it is not hard to imagine that this is a system that has been created after the triumph of the underground group.

“Wait a minute. I'm not your enemy. The doctor at the hospital asked me to take care of something…”

He pulled a dirty notebook out of his coat,

“This is a record of my time there. If you show this to the doctor, I'm sure he'll prove that I'm not a suspicious man. I want to see the doctor and the nurse.”

A large, bayonet-slinging guard strode forward and roughly snatched the notebook. A man who appeared to be the captain took the notebook, flipped through it, and said.

“All right, listen up. All the people of this republic, regardless of whether they are ants or wasps, are required to carry identification cards. Do you know why?”

The grasshopper looked grim.

“The reason for this is to prove that you are either a laborer or a soldier,” he said.

“In the Republic, anyone who is neither a laborer nor a soldier is suspected of being a lumpen, or artist, and is thrown into a camp with political prisoners. That's the rule.”

At that moment, a short, lowly-looking guard with a sneer strode out and said,

"Hey,grasshopper.Isn't this one yours? ",he said.

With that, he thrust out a gourd-shaped instrument with a shiny, varnished surface and strings that were flexible and taut... How on earth had it been flowing all this time, no doubt it was the grasshopper man's guitar, which he had lost that night.

“Ah!”

When the grasshopper reached out his hand, the guard pulled back his gourd-shaped instrument and danced a little while holding it high in the air. As he was about to leap forward with a cry of “Take it back,” the arms of the two guards reached out and grabbed him roughly from both sides.

“Take him away!”

The order was given. Before he knew it, a crowd of onlookers had gathered around them, watching from afar. The guards on either side were soldiers of ants and wasps, respectively. They must have been the same people who had been quarreling, taunting, and killing each other a few months earlier. The grasshopper man's arms were tightened from both sides, and they were dragged along the road, chatting and laughing as if they were two young parents holding hands with a child in the middle. Artists are thrown in with political prisoners? Are they saying that useless people are the same as criminals? the grasshopper man groaned. As he was being dragged along, he turned his head to look behind him and dimly saw the shadow of the musical instrument, which he was carrying, gradually becoming smaller and smaller in the dusk and fading away into the distance.

“This has become a country of workers and soldiers.”

“It's no place for a lumpen like you who eats for nothing.”

The crowd of onlookers began to gather from behind the houses and homes, and the number of yells and curses that flew around like stones did not stop until the rag-like figure of the man being dragged away was no longer in sight. A small figure stood behind the throng of onlookers, staring out at them from a distance. She was a child. The tiny figure slipped through the crowd and ran off into the darkness toward the hospital.

On a night with the moon shining brightly, two shadows stood on the roof of a five-story building where no one lives now. One was a woman, the other a man, but there was no sign of the romantic atmosphere of a secret meeting or encounter. It was as if two birds of prey, tired of circling in the night sky, had landed on the top of a giant tree. The giant tree stood tall and majestic, looking down on everything that fluttered in the darkness of the night.

However, nothing could be seen of the creatures that lived in the hollows and branches of the trees. The building was no longer used as a hospital. In other words, patients and doctors were scattered all over the place, and now it was completely empty, waiting only for the demolition scheduled to take place some time in the future. Of course, it cannot be only this empty husk of junk that should be blown up and dismantled.

Standing at the top of the ruins, the shadow of a man pointed to the thousands of lights at his feet and the lights of the City Hall, which loomed tall in the distance, and opened his mouth...

“Tomorrow is the big day. Do you have any regrets?”

“No,” the shadow of a woman replied.

“To tell you the truth, I regret a little that I let you join us. No, I would put it in more precise terms: half regret, half gratitude. Without you, we would not have been able to build up our organization so quickly.”

“Don't overrate me.”

“Maria, when you wandered through the hospital gates, pregnant, I gave you the wisdom to pretend to be crazy and join the underground population. That was the beginning, come to think of it. I didn't know anything about singing or performing arts, so I had no idea you were a famous singer.”

“You took advantage of me, didn't you?” Maria responded with a blank.

“I suppose it could be that way. But I don't know. At that time, the people in the basement were so depressed by all the commotion in the street that they had lost all will to live. But then you came along and not only did your song immediately captivate them, it seemed to infuse them with a kind of hope. As a politician of some sort, I have a weakness for anything that has the potential to bring people together.”

“You seem to be so good-natured that you speak such easy words as hope. I'm sure it's just an unreliable illusion that will fade away as soon as the drugs in the hospital wear off or I finish my song.”

“Don't you dare mock the comrades who have followed us here.”

“I’m sorry. I am not confident. I can't believe that my song will change the world. In the small world of the hospital basement, it may look like it's working. But not this time.”

“That's what I meant earlier when I said I had half a mind to do something I regretted. This time is different from the previous ones, in scale and in its own way. It was fine as long as we were making fun of the people who started to act so arrogantly in the heat of the moment that night. But after they decided to launch a new organization, it seems that we have become too big to deal with the new situation. I guess I'm responsible for getting you into this dangerous business. But there's nothing to worry about. We will get it done. No matter how it turns out, I think it is my last duty to at least see it through to completion.”

Maria hardly seemed to hear what the man was saying.

“I think,” she said, “that my songs are just songs for making money, sung by gangsters in the business world to make a living. No matter how popular they become and how much they are sung, I don't think they will ever become people's own songs. Even if you fight with such a song as our banner, I think it will only be empty. You try to use anything that can be used to rally people. This is the position of a politician. In the end, you are just like those who control the town today, hiding under the guise of building up the people's power. Apart from this case, I want songs to be for the sake of the songs themselves. I want to sing because I enjoy singing, not because it is a tool for money-making or politics. But because my freedom to do so is being threatened, I have taken the emergency action of collaborating with you. You and I must be in the same bed, in the different dream.”

“A different dream in the same bed, huh.... That's a little sad, in the sense of the word comradeship.”,the man continued.

“I don't agree with the adoption of a commercial song as the people's song. I don't know much about songs. I don't know much about songs, but if there really is a song of the people, I have the feeling that it was written with the blood that was spilled when we clashed with the enemy on the battlefield. I may have heard that line somewhere or read it in a book.”

“It seems to be true that all males are fools. I don't want to be lulled into a false sense of hope and people's songs and empty words, and I don't want a tomorrow that can only be greeted by the shedding of blood”,she said.

“Then how are we going to make tomorrow a reality? The people who pay for blood will be disappointed to find out later that they have been given a fake. And we don't even have the cash to buy the fake stuff. Look at this.”

The man pointed down at the flickering lights of the house and said, “Look at that. What you see there is a fake happiness. There are thousands of lives in every one of those windows, waiting for us to get up.”

Maria laughed,

“If you can spit out such a stinking phrase with such ease,you can't compose lyrics for the people's song. I will do it my way. If you bet on bloodshed tomorrow, I'll bet on no bloodshed. Either way, the odds are one in two.”

“Okay, I accept.”

At that moment, a small shadow ran in through the darkness, gasping for breath. It was the girl who had brought the grasshopper to Maria on the day the baby was born. When Maria received a brief report that the grasshopper had been taken away by the guard, she stood up with a start.

“I have to go now.”

“No,” he said. “Right now, tomorrow is more important.”

“What are you talking about? That man is the godfather of my baby. If I can't save the man to whom I owe so much, how can there be a revolution or an overthrow?”

“Don't get so emotional. The situation is different from before. It's not going to be the same as with the men in black. It won't be too late to rescue him, after tomorrow's successful uprising.”

“It's a funny thing to hear a man who is prepared to shed blood tomorrow being cowed by the winds of cowardice today. Don't you understand that no one who can't stake his life on the present will follow you if you decide to rise up tomorrow? I'm going.”

“Are you going to ruin tomorrow's showdown?"

Before the man could finish, Maria had disappeared. It seemed dawn was already near.

☆

The moonlight shone in through a small window that was positioned high enough to look up at. The walls were cold, not to mention the bluish-white light. Surrounded on three sides by these chilly walls, his gaze fell on the iron bars. He wondered how many times he had already been put in a place like this. This is not a zoo. Instead of spectators, the only people who occasionally come to see the show are the guards, who have nothing better to do. If it is human beings who are confined in the freak show, this place is definitely a camp for lumpen, or political prisoners.

“A nation of laborers and soldiers…”

The grasshopper man mumbled, blinking his vacant eyes. A republic of ants and wasps, a nation of workers and soldiers.

…That's what the guy who pelted me with rocks from behind said. But being neither a worker nor a soldier, I had no identification. No ID card means that I am neither a worker nor a soldier. Needless to say, a republic is made up of those who work to make the country rich and prosperous, and soldiers who protect the lives and property of the people from enemies.

What is the place of the artist in this republic? In other words, this camp is a model answer. Indeed. I must be a useless artist. A musician who plays an instrument and a bard who tells stories. I do not make the food and tools necessary for life, nor do I save the sick like a doctor or nurse. My music and street stories may entertain the ears of passersby for a moment, but they can never fill the empty stomach of a starving child.

The grasshopper's eyes suddenly turned to look into the distance, and he sank deep into the abyss of memories that had just come back to him. Memory. Yes, the doctor had told him that this memory was the supporting factor for his outlook on life. Suddenly, a woman's face appeared in front of the grate. But he could not see her face clearly through the thin veil. Through the veil, he could see the dimly lit landscape of his hometown. The city of art. A competition. Revolutionary uproar. Locust attacks. What kind of view of life would be supported by the memories of all these defeats?

“Who the hell am I?”

Thanks to his recovered memories, his own outline was becoming less and less clear. His identity became more and more vague, and he felt as if his own shadowy figure, illuminated by the moonlight, would wander aimlessly into the darkness and disappear regardless of his will.

The grasshopper remembers how he was called a thief by a couple of ants when he first came to this town. A thief. Yes, that may be true.

…I may have stolen the history of this town. This republic would not have been born if I had not come here.

No, this is what doctors call megalomania. If I were big enough to steal the town's history, I probably wouldn't be locked up in a place like this. I am not a robber! Instead, it was my guitar that was stolen, and my freedom. My freedom was stolen. What awaits me is a trial and then execution. No. If lumpen or artists are not entitled to civil rights, then I should not have the right to a trial either. If this is the case, then execution without trial....

A cold sweat immediately ran down his spine, and the wall he was leaning against felt chilly. The sky through the small window was a little brighter, but it seemed it would never be dawn again. As he fell back onto his back on the floor, he suddenly noticed a hazy figure standing in a small window near the ceiling. It seemed to be a woman calling out to him in a whisper. The grasshopper man got up, checked outside the prison bars to make sure the guard was not there, and headed for the small window.

“I don't know who you are, but I'm not going to make it this time.”

“Don't give up.”

“I don't care if you tell me not to give up, what's not good enough is not good enough. And I've remembered so many things that I was lucky to forget…”

“Now listen to me.”

The owner of the voice interrupted the grasshopper with a gasp.

“I rushed over to you, but I don't think I can help you right now,” she said. “Even if we were lucky enough to get you out, you would not be able to get out of the barbed wire fence that surrounds the town. If you wander around the town, you will be caught by checkpoints, and you will be permanently stuck between the prison and the public... But don't give up too soon. Tomorrow, the town is planning a big, all-out festival. Not just any festival, but an event where the city hall officials will be thrown out of town, the barbed wire fence will be torn down, the soldiers will be disbanded, taxes will be waived, and people will bring their own drinks and food...in short, we'll expand the underground world of that hospital you know to the whole town.”

“You're the one who…”

“You finally realized it. You're a dullard, aren't you?”

“But it sounds familiar. I'm not so young anymore to believe that such a scheme could easily succeed.”

“How long are you going to keep talking nonsense? If you keep on hesitating, you too will be turned into a dried insect snack. Of course, we don't expect this to be easy either. I might even be in danger of being made a sacrifice myself. By the way, I have a favor to ask you.”

“What is it?”

“It's Mohammed Ant. My baby. I've left him with my friends. If anything should happen to me, I want you to take him somewhere safe.”

At that moment, the sound of footsteps approaching in the darkness came, and Maria quickly ducked out of the small window and disappeared. The footsteps gradually became louder and louder in the corridor, and when they stopped at the iron bars, a voice emanated from the darkness.

“You're free to go. Get out of here.”

His voice was as cold as iron. However, the proof that it was not a lie was that there was a carriage waiting for them out front. It was already dawn. The guide man urged the grasshopper man to get into the carriage so as not to be seen, and the two men got into the carriage. The man began to explain the situation in the rolling carriage with a curt, curt smile on his face. It was more like an order than an explanation. From now on, he is to be allowed to freely conduct himself outside the off-limits area, regardless of whether he carries his ID or not. The charges related to art, in other words, illegal expressive activities, had been given a special amnesty by order of the head of the Revolutionary Council of the Provisional Government of the Republic. Perhaps the notebook was in the hands of a doctor, or perhaps it was not, but some mysterious world mechanism was spinning, and it was having a dramatic effect.

With a crack of the whip, the carriage rushed off, and the crowd naturally broke apart to make way for the carriage. The carriage moved easily through the crowd. It passed the main street, turned the next corner, and climbed the hill toward the government office district. The grasshopper leaned out the window and gave a little yelp. The carriage glided slowly past a gilded statue in front of him, as if paying homage. The huge statue held up its arm, pointing to the sky, and held a gun in one hand. It's a statue of a revolutionary hero, the man beside him explained.

“The head of our government wants to meet with you.”

How had he never noticed the presence of this huge statue before? The statue must have been placed just behind the town hall building, as seen from the gate of the town the grasshopper man had arrived at yesterday. By the time he realized this, the carriage had passed through the square, entered the gate, and stopped quietly in front of the soaring leaning tower of the Provisional Government of the Republic, the old city hall.

☆

People have been calling the old city hall building the leaning tower for some time. This is because the tower had been gradually leaning since it was built in the first place. Of course, the Leaning Tower could not have been used as a town hall in ancient times. A chateau, or leaning tower, is a castle, or in other words, a lord's mansion. A lord's mansion was not a stage for fairy tales or a book division, but a symbol of power.

In the history of this town, as is usual in the world, there has never been a king without a beggar, or a lord without a slave. In fact, in the history of this town, in which the owner of the tower has moved in and out at a dizzying pace, whether by hereditary succession, assassination, or election, no one has had the good fortune to encounter the miracle of having the lordly ruler and the humble non-ruler sitting at the same table.

Or, those who fantasized about a world in which no one would be arrogant and no one would humble himself or herself would be thrown into a hospital or a prison cell. Those who ran up the spiral staircase inside the tower in a furious quest for power were doomed to be pushed down by those who followed behind them as soon as they reached the top. This is a good example of why climbers should be wary of what is behind them.

The seemingly endless games of climbing up and being kicked down cannot be said to continue forever. This is because the tower is slightly leaning even as we spend our time talking nonsense.

The grasshopper man climbed the stairs. It was as if he was being urged on by something. As he climbed the stairs, he thought about the statues he had seen along the way. A statue was following him from behind, and the same statue seemed to beckon to him ahead. At that moment, the scene in front of him brightened. The door opened suddenly, and the grasshopper man fell down there as if he were rolling.

The view that opened up was not of the floor he had fallen through, nor was it of an underground prison. It was a large room with glass walls on all sides, like an observation deck overlooking the ground. A desk was placed in the center of the room. The flag of the Republic hung over the desk. The top floor of the tower, from which he had just risen, must have been the command post controlling the entire Republic. Across the windowpane of the command tower, the gilded bronze statue that he had just looked up at from inside the carriage was shining brightly in the sun.

At that moment, the mouth of the gilded statue moved, and he felt as if the statue had issued a command to him to "step back. Was it an illusion? No, the owner of the voice was standing a few steps in front of the grasshopper man, on the other side of his huge office desk, with his back to him, looking pitiful. But is there such a thing as a hero in miniature? He was a small old man with his back arched, as if he were afraid of a gun aimed at his back. There he was, a contradiction in terms, a life-size hero.

The statue shone brightly outside the window, overpowering the surrounding buildings and the surrounding landscape. It was a statue of a giant. The people of the Republic would probably not be surprised if the giant suddenly sprang into action, grabbed the person in question by the scruff of the neck, and trampled him underfoot. The old man seemed to have a tragic atmosphere, more like that of an imprisoned former king than that of the owner of the tower.

The old man sat down in his chair, looking exhausted.

“When I saw the note, I realized for the first time that it was you who had written it. And then I knew that the story you told me at the time had moved me because it was a true record of the battle, not a piece of bullshit.”

“I haven't seen you in a while, and I'm surprised to hear you say such a stupid thing. I didn't write those notes for you to read.”

The grasshopper glared at the old man and laughed to himself.

“But if it has freed me from my own custody, I should be grateful for the note. It's a ridiculous story. Head of the Provisional Government of the Republic. With a title like that and a statue, I don't know if you're on the verge of a career or a coffin. But whatever magic trick you pulled, I have to believe it, even if I don't want to believe it, because you're here now. It seems you're the one who put me in jail.”

The old man stood up, turned to the window and said.

“I am grateful to you. I don't care what your intentions were when you told me the story. Whether it came out of your mouth to taunt me, or whether it was a story you told to mock your own past foolishness, it doesn't matter anymore. Thanks to your story, the residents of this town, who had been suppressed, have risen up for the first time. I am grateful to you for that opportunity.”

“I rather regret coming to this town.”

The grasshopper's mind replayed the scene he had seen from the hospital roof.

“I guess it suited me to wander around some peaceful town with just a guitar. I don't have the right to blame you for taking my whimsical lies and tales of the past and running out into the street. I have no right to do so. It's just like the note says. Once upon a time in this town, there was a miserable fellow who raised a flagpole to incite others to do the same, but the uprising failed and he abandoned the town and ran away. I am just like him. But let me say a few words to this wretch. This Republic. What on earth are you talking about? With its gates so high and tight, its chest covered with medals, its schools probably bearing the image of yours, its towns with huge bronze statues....if I saw the design of its flag, I would have called it a republic of ants and wasps. As we saw in the hospital after the fire, the ant and wasp, who had been at odds with each other until then, joined hands and got along well with each other. I am not opposed to that spirit of humanism. I don't blame you for having changed your mind when you were so eager to dance like a butterfly and sting wasps. You just said…”

The grasshopper was so frustrated that he walked up to the old man and said.

“You said earlier that you were grateful to me, that my story, my record of true struggle, had started a revolution in this town. You gave me too much credit. I don't think I'm responsible for everything that has happened in this town. As the doctor said, half of them are delusional. I don't care if those who are easily moved by the vague story end up painting a continuation of their fantasy, and whether you end up the master of a tower or a statue, it doesn't matter to me. The revolution in this town started thanks to art. You can believe that all you want, but why on earth did you throw me in jail?”

“I’ve always been a realist.”

The old man's eyes seemed to light up for the first time.

“You are an artist, aren't you? Since politics takes the form of a revolution, it seems that you must refine it with the ideology of ideals. But in reality, revolutions are so muddy and bloody that it is not unusual for an abacus account statement to be transformed into a people's charter. That is the reality of politics.”

At that moment, the grasshopper's mind flashed back to the words he had seen carved into the wall this morning when he left the prison camp. No, the words were not carved into the hard stone wall with a knife. They were probably written by someone who was trapped there, cutting himself and risking his life with his own blood as if he were branding it. The words were lined up, and the words were engraved with definite meaning, as if they were the words of some kind of song. They must still be there, huddled like insects, with no one to sing them to. There were probably countless small rooms in the camps with such inscriptions.

“I’m not the only one. How many people have you put in there so far? What happened to them?”

The grasshopper glared at the old man. Averting his eyes, the little hero remained still and silent, staring at the floor.

“I see what you're getting at. The secret of your blood-soaked People's Charter. How can people who just a few days ago were busy fighting on both sides suddenly be sitting in the Congress on good terms? It must have been very difficult. The people of a republic divided into ant and wasp, enemies of each other. The only way to bring them together, or to put it another way, the only way to bring the disparate people together, is through the appearance of a common enemy. You're probably not dumb enough to take a leisurely nap and wait for it to pop up in front of you someday. And if he doesn't show up, what do you do? What you don't have, make one. In other words, create an enemy. Of all the people in the Republic, the ants are the workers and the wasps are the soldiers, and so it was decided that this was a country of workers and soldiers. So, those who are neither workers nor soldiers, and who have fallen from the ranks, have been forced to accept the honorary titles of lumpen, artist, and political prisoner all at once? Is that the digest of the lousy revolutionary myth? Well, whatever brought that on, now that I'm free again, I have a place to go. I have no time to waste here. I beg your pardon.”

“Wait,” he said, was about to stop the grasshopper, the sound of shoes rushing up the spiral staircase echoed downstairs. Immediately, almost knocking down the door, a man who appeared to be a member of his entourage came running into the room, gasping for breath.

“Comrade Ant, I have just received a report from the People's Police that a line of people has started to move from the favelas in the back streets of the city.”

“Another demonstration? Let's arrest some of them on separate charges and have them tell us who is behind it. Even if the civil war is over, we must be prepared to fight against poverty for the foreseeable future.”

“This is no time to be complacent. The scale of the demonstration is too different from what we have seen in the past. The lines that have started moving from all over the city seem to be heading in the direction of the square in front of the Leaning Tower.”

“What are the People's Police doing? Block off all roads leading to City Hall.”

“There are too many of them, and we don't have enough men to control the traffic. They are gathering in front of the Leaning Tower to guard the square. By the way, some people in the crowd have seen Maria…”

“That's what I was afraid of. “

The old man groaned, clutching his head, and turned to the grasshopper.

“You see,” the old man grunted, turning to the grasshopper.

“The reality of my republic is falling apart. Laugh at this foolish man until you are satisfied. What will happen to the Republic when the crowds from all over the city gather in the square in front of the Leaning Tower? Save me. Do not abandon me.”

The grasshopper man understood. Maria must be the woman he had met in the basement of the hospital. The event mentioned yesterday was probably referring to the parade that was heading for the plaza. This would mean that the planned uprising had gone well. The grasshopper man thought about the baby entrusted to him by Maria. Seeing his reaction to the word “Maria,” the old man continued, as if he had misunderstood the meaning of the word.

“Maria is a woman who used to be a well-known popular singer. I heard that she was very popular among the people. But the day the town burned down, she disappeared and was never heard from again. People were so busy rebuilding the burnt town and rebuilding their lives that they probably forgot all about the singer.

After a while, I began to hear strange rumors. Rumors of seeing a woman who looked like Maria at underground shows held in various places in the city. Maria's popularity immediately soared, and her reputation in the town rose to the point where she became a symbol of recovery. However, according to other rumors, the underground entertainment business was traced back to some shady people who were trying to incite an anti-government mood. I had always assumed that rumors were just that, rumors, but it seems that Maria, who used to be a popular singer, has somehow turned into a symbol or a billboard for them. If Maria is now in the line for the Leaning Tower, then.... The government of the Republic is also in a messy situation, and it is not a monolithic entity. The People's Police have long seen Maria, who has turned into a billboard for the rebels, as a nuisance and have been pressuring me to eliminate her as soon as possible. But what do you think would happen to me if I laid a hand on Maria under the circumstances?”

Outside the window, in the distance on the streets radiating straight out from the tower, a dot-like crowd of people slowly began to gather, slowly close together, and then swirling like a river, eventually coming together in a mass, like a black cloud. As they approached, they were dressed in a variety of fancy costumes, and the lively music and singing of the musicians was different from a normal demonstration, and seemed to resemble a lantern procession at a festival. The old man slumped down on his sofa and groaned in despair.

“It is inevitable that the protesters will clash with the police. They are waiting for my order to kill Maria. But if I hesitate to give the order, they will shoot me in the back. ...I have an idea.”

The old man suddenly sat up and shouted.

“Why don't I just run away from here? I don't have to stay here. I can just kick this chair of power to the curb and fly away. Hey, get out of my way.”

As the old man pushed past the grasshopper toward the stairs, the sound of shoes rang out, and five or six uniformed police officers came rushing toward him. The old man was confronted by men with guns, and before he knew it, he had taken a step backwards.

“Comrade Ant. You must not forget that you are a hero of the revolution.”

The uniformed officer spoke sharply.

“To run away, Comrade Ant, is to deny and trample on the ideals of the Revolution. A republic of ants and wasps, a nation of workers and soldiers. How dare you, the head of the revolutionary government, turn your back on those who are threatening this ideal state and disturbing public order, instead of confronting them? Would the people of the Republic like to see their comrade in such a position? What will you do? Soon the demonstrators will arrive at the square. We have already arranged the men who will intercept them. Comrade Ant, you have your orders.”

Outside the window, a huge bronze statue stood staring at the old man. A statue of a revolutionary hero. Perhaps it is this gilded statue that the people of the Republic need? The old man would be lying if he said that he has never had the fear that his life will be sucked up and used up by the statue every moment, and that one day he will be tossed out on the street like a cicada's shell. No,t his seemed to be true. The old man may have been eaten alive by the statue. In other words, his contents are already empty, while the statue is full of flesh and blood, ready to start walking...well, one never knows. The people are now rallying to overthrow the statue, too. The idea of pointing a gun at the people who come to overthrow his statue. The old man shuddered at the thought. He looked at the grasshopper man for help, but the grasshopper man was just getting up, dusting off his knees.

“What on earth do they want? Do they want us to open up City Hall? Or release the people they've got locked up in camps?”

The old man's eyes were fixed on the grasshopper.

“What do the people of the Republic want? Don't you, the hero of the revolution, know best?”

The irony in his words was clear.

“I don't know anything about the world. Politics, economics, and so on are all gibberish to me. Even if you ask me for my opinion, I'm not going to be of any help. I guess you could call me a naive artist.”

At that moment, the grasshopper man seemed to have a clear realization. What is the reason why those with power, be they those who covet the power of money in their hometowns or the leaders of republics and the like, are so vindictive in their crackdown on the arts? Why do they throw him in jail for not being able to save a starving child, and point a gun at Maria and her people, who are unable to heal the sick and injured? The answer seemed to come to him naturally from the look in the old man's eyes.

“I stood up with my gun in my hand when I heard your story,” he said.

“That story moved me and changed the history of the town. The same way, the singing of Maria and the other people are now surrounding me and this tower, and they are coming closer and closer to me. …”

“How can you say that after you threw me in here yesterday? Besides, your art is not quite the same thing as my idea of art.”

“What do you mean by that?”

The old man turned away from the window and looked at the grasshopper.

“I don't care whether a politician like you listens to my tales or not, the value of art is always separate from politics,” the grasshopper said.

“In the town where I was born and raised, yes, in that little town called the capital of the arts, there was a strict code that had been handed down from generation to generation. It was a strict rule that artists should not get involved in politics. After losing the ‘imperial game’ organized by the mayor, I realized that art is nothing more than a puppet to be danced around in the palms of those who hold all the power in the world and play the tug-of-war. No, now that I think back on it, I must have made a premature assumption. Since the defeat in the revolt that I broke the law, I have lost faith in the value of art itself, and have lived my life like a miserable insect. But when I learned about what you are doing here in this republic, I realized that we are neither a thief nor a begger. Maybe I just happened to find some pride on the street that I had forgotten somewhere. Lucky me.”

“Art of resistance, is that what you want to call it? If the government of my republic tries to suppress and trample down art, you will resist. That is the true value of art. No way, it's ridiculous!. What about the scene outside the window? Maria and her fellow protesters are coming this way. Who the hell are these people who are storming into the hall of the revolution, carrying a singer as a portable shrine? Political use of art. Isn't it just like politics itself? No, it's the politics itself.”

“No, you're wrong.”

The grasshopper man said in a clear tone of voice. At that moment, a pair of antennae sprang up from a hole in his hat and waved in the air.

“The people will rise up one day if they are trampled by the powers that be. Art is no different. People who have lost their rights, freedoms, and everything else after being bullied by a political system that is full of nonsense have expression as their last remaining weapon of resistance. There are words, there are songs, and ultimately, there is art. Come to think of it, in this sense, the position of art and the people may be the same. Lumpen, or artists. That's a very clever word. You, who said such wise words, picked up a gun and founded this republic because of my story. But to you, art is like a circus animal that is kept in a cage for political convenience. And you would not allow it to escape its cage and run free in the city...you would not allow it to be roused by a song or a story. Because that's exactly what you were afraid of…”

“The thing I had feared, it had finally arrived. I will be defeated before it. Art. No, this is the victory of the people.”

The old man muttered to himself. He remained silent for a long time, nodding his head. Then, he sat down on the floor and seemed to have the dignity of an old warrior who had prepared to commit suicide.

“I know this Maria woman.”

The old man didn't even twitch. Looking down at the old man, who was as still and motionless as a sitting statue, the grasshopper man briefly explained what had happened at the hospital.

“I named Maria's baby Mohammed Ant. When asked about the origin of the name, I replied, ‘The name itself has no meaning.’ The name itself has no meaning. It is a name that can be proud or vile, depending on how one lives one's life.”

“If I give the order to shoot Maria, my name will become a vile name.”

The plaza surrounding the city hall was already swarming with people from all directions, and they were soon forming concentric circles at a certain distance from the tower. The reason for this was that even from within the ranks of the demonstrators, the people's police stationed around the tower could be seen at a distance, guns drawn and ready to fire. The leader of the uniformed police, who had been watching their conversation with a wry smile on his face, stepped forward and said,

“Now, permission to fire!”

“If I shoot them, it will not only make my name vile, it will even become a cursed name for that baby…”

Before the old man could finish his groaning, a shot rang out. It was not in the plaza, but in a room on the top floor of the tower. The old man was lying on the floor, sprawled out like a log or something. The uniformed man stumbled into the room and stepped over the old man like a dog in feces, and his command echoed around the room.

“Comrade Ant seems to have been hit by a stray bullet. I will authorize the firing on a temporary basis. All of you go downstairs and control the rioters in the square.”

The grasshopper stood there in a daze watching the series of events go by. When he came back to himself, the uniforms were nowhere to be seen in the room, leaving only the old man on the floor and the grasshopper alone. A coward. It was as if a voice was screaming directly into his head. Who was the coward? The old man still seemed to have a pulse. After quickly treating the old man, the grasshopper man went down the stairs as if rolling.

“They're shooting at us.”

“Oh, yeah, they're gonna shoot us.”

“I won that bet.”

“If they shoot and don't hit me, I win.”

Maria was in the middle of a group that was pushing forward under the banner of Cello. A crowd of people surrounded the tower, slowly closing in on it like waves lapping at the shore. A few shots rang out, and a cloud of dust rose in front of the first line. They were shooting at us after all. If it hit, it echoed; if it was shot, it retreated. That was the way it was.

The wave of people came and went like the ebb and flow of the tide, lapping against the shore and receding, like a great wave that gradually chipped away at the shore. But as they drew back, the gunfire became more and more intense, the range of the bullets increased, and a few of the figures in the ranks began to fall over.

“Go on!”

It seemed that someone shouted. The line did not move. Then the spot where the crowd had been moving suddenly parted as if the sea had split open, and there was the shadow of a man and a woman running headlong toward the tower. The gunshots came in thick and fast, and the bullets fell like arrows, luckily avoiding the two men and women. But just as they were about to reach the entrance to the tower, they seemed to have collapsed right on top of each other.

Suddenly, there was a stir among the crowd. The murmur suddenly flared up like a wildfire, billowing up a thick cloud of smoke and fury. As soon as it rose high, it was as if the power of a drawn bow was unleashed, and a huge flood of water struck the tower, shaking it, and then, with a roar, it swept over the tower as a swarm of beasts rising up from the depths of the earth.

When the old man stood up unsteadily, there was no one around him. It seemed that his injuries were not serious. However, he felt lightheaded. He could hear some noise outside. What is that? He turned his head to look out the window and saw the face of a huge statue staring back at him. The face was slowly approaching the old man's eyes. That's absurd. Just as he thought that, he saw the palm of the statue's hand break through the glass window and rush into the room.

…My statue grabs me. A statue that devours me and takes my place. That's fine, too. You are me now. I was defeated long ago before you, who have taken my place as the will of the people, took hold of me. Stand there forever. A statue.

When the floor shook suddenly beneath his feet, the floor, which had been a structure for living people, had already vanished. Desks, chairs, the flag of the Republic, and everything else, along with the shattered debris, were flying through the air in a fluffy, dusty mess. Roofs fell, walls shattered, and crumbling bricks bounced through the air like musical notes. For a brief moment, people thought they heard a voice singing along with it. The sound of voices could be male or female. It sounded like a single whisper or a powerful chorus. The song quickly soared through the town, across fields and valleys, deep into the forest groves, and even to the banks of a spring.

When the singing stopped, the plaza was as still as the surface of a lake shrouded in fog. Not a single shadow of the people who had been milling about was to be seen, as if they had suddenly changed their minds and gone somewhere else. The only thing to be seen was the head of a statue lying on its side in a thick cloud of dust, exposing a stupid figure.

…No, from behind the dusty head, a man staggered out. It was the grasshopper man.

“You're a hero for not shooting. I'm a…”

The man muttered something like that and staggered a few steps before falling flat on his back, his wings torn, his body crumpled, and his legs limping. He pulled down a fallen stick, which turned out to be the flag of the Republic. He took another few steps and fell flat on the ground. Then, almost miraculously, a shiny gourd-shaped object shone before his eyes. Strangely enough, not a speck of dust covered it, and it seemed to sparkle like a single jewel in the desert.

The grasshopper man jumped to his feet and picked up his guitar. A small creature was crouched nearby. It was a white dove, stained with blood. When it noticed the man, the dove cooed softly, flew up, and perched on his shoulder. At that moment, his mind suddenly flashed with the words of a song he had just seen on the walls of the camp. Fluttering like a butterfly, the lyrics drifted through the reverberations of the song, and like a haze, vanished into the darkness.

“Well, you're the one…”

The grasshopper man stood up, shaking. The dove had already flown high into the sky. Then he tore off his flag and staggered off, using the pole as a walking stick. Although his staggered steps seemed to wander aimlessly, he was surely following the flight path of the dove, staggering but steady on his feet.

☆

“Who is it? Do you still have business in this house?”

The woman opened the door to find a man with a shattered hat on his head, a tattered coat, and a guitar on his back, standing there like an outdated comedian at the gate.

“What are you doing? Come inside now.”

The grasshopper man was urged to go inside. In the corner of the room, a baby was sleeping in a cradle. The woman seemed to have gone to the back of the room to make tea. When she returned, she served tea on the table and began to continue knitting.

“When I first received your letter, I thought it was very selfish of you. At first, I was bitter that if you hadn't shown up, he wouldn't have run away. After that, my life changed rapidly, and I even moved to the city mansion as the wife of a hero, but in the end, it was all the same again. By the way, let me show you.”

The grasshopper showed wife ant the baby that had been entrusted to him by one of Maria's companions.

“I named him Mohammed Ant.”

“It's the same name as my husband’s.”

The woman put the baby down in the cradle she had newly purchased for him and looked at the two cute sleeping faces side by side with satisfaction.

“How's he doing?”

“Don't worry. According to the doctor, he is lucky that his wounds are not too serious, considering he fell from such a high place. But I wonder if he was hit on the head too hard. He occasionally says strange things. He sometimes mixes up the past and the present, and when asked who he was, he would say the name of a hero from long ago. Then he would start talking like a child, asking about giants. The doctor says he will get better when he calms down. Oh, by the way, he gave me this to give to you.”

What he received was the stained notebook. It was stained with blood in places and covered with dust, as if it had been held tightly in his hand amidst the rubble. The wife's husband might be strapped to a hospital bed right now, being forced by the doctor to write notes under the guise of medical treatment. The image of the man running a pen through the pages without seeming to be dissatisfied with the nurse's lecturing and so on is vivid in his mind's eye. The grasshopper flipped through the pages with a nostalgic look.

...The notebooks he wrote would be quite different from the ones I wrote. The notebooks are history...well, the delusional half-record should be far from history as it is. The right to write history has been reserved for the victors since ancient times. That said, here is the history of the losers. Whether you win or lose, there is a record of the delusional half. He will continue to write the continuation of my notebook.

No, it would be absurd. It would be like grafting a pumpkin onto a cherry tree, and a history full of such grafts would one day rot at the roots and wither before it bears fruit. No, that is not necessarily true. In fact, there is at least one miracle in which a rotting tree creates fertile soil and a poor seed sprouts vigorously... The grasshopper man thought as he stared into the face of the baby sleeping peacefully in its cradle.

“I wonder what he's going to become.”

“I don't know.”

“I’m not gonna turn him into a businessman or a politician.”

“Maybe, just maybe, he'll be a great one, just by a fluke.”

“I don't want to do that,” she said a little angrily. She then leaned forward as if to push the man away, and looked at the cradle with a fascinated smile on her face.

“Of course, I would never turn him into an artist. But I will take good care of this child as if he were my own.”

The grasshopper staggered out into the street. The town was once again in the midst of a feverish revival, with the sound of hammers pounding here and there, new stores opening up, and posters for the election of the next mayor in sight. The town, which had been in a state of turmoil due to a series of noisy events, seemed to be slowly coming back to life as the road to reconstruction was clear. The only thing that has been permanently erased from the town is the tower. The square had been swept clean, and the town's buoyant mood lured street vendors from all over the place, who were constantly busy selling balloons, shooting games, and some kind of dubious freak show. Children were everywhere during the day, and at night, men and women of some sort or other were seen here and there, making it a bustling place for any customer.

As he entered a side street, he saw a crowd of children bustling around the corner. It was the hut of a street performer. The magician takes his mountain-high hat in his hand, and a dove flutters out of it. Children applauded in delight. It was a common, uninteresting trick. As he glanced at the fallen man's profile, he thought he recognized the man's face.

No, it is an illusion. He must be a stranger. When the grasshopper stood in the middle of the street and looked around at the scene, he did not see a single familiar face. No one made eye contact with him, not even a single familiar face. Just as a river changes direction when it hits a rock, so the waves of people spontaneously diverged in front of him, avoiding him. Then, as if nothing had happened, they merged back into a single current and were carried off into the distance.

“I’d forgotten that I was a stranger.”

He sat down on a pile of bricks at the edge of the street, put down the guitar on his back, and held it in his hands. Yes, I was a musician. Standing on a street like this, playing my guitar, I was happy. No matter how much the world didn't approve of me...I didn't need to indulge in overstretched fantasies about turning the world upside down to relieve my sorrow. Here is a song.

Before he knew it, his fingertips were already on the strings, playing that strange tune he had heard just before the Leaning Tower came crashing down. The lyrics seemed to come out of his mouth, as if the words he had seen engraved on the walls of the camps were one with the melody that flowed of its own accord. However, the music he plays from hazy memory with his own hands bears no resemblance to the original melody. The words just glided along the surface of the tune and did not seem to fit.

The bustle of the town swallows the out-of-tune song like a leaf, and the music soon fades into the crowd. The grasshopper is not seen by anyone, not even a single customer who stops to give him some change. He was just like a small insect on a leaf, like a small boat bobbing in the waves. As the man in the little boat rowed his boat, slipping on the surface of the tune and tracing time upside down... the grasshopper man looked up with a sudden realization. The magician from earlier. The gentleman with the tall hat and the walking stick. It was that man. I have many questions I want to ask him. Why on earth did he behave in such a strange way to help me?

However, there is not the least sign of the burly gentleman in the shabbily clad street performer. Is it really him? Even though he has fallen on hard times...no, there is no doubt about it. It is him.

The grasshopper man suddenly stopped playing, got up, and ran off in the direction from which he had come.

He did not seem to notice that a large man in a dirty coat was hiding at a corner of a side street, looking at him from a distance. The big man bent down discreetly, hiding in the crowd to the left and right, and slowly approached his target, closing the gap between them. A child on the street gave a small yelp. The face that peeked out from under his hat was covered with numerous cuts and scratches as if he had been pecked by a dove, in addition to the horrific tattoos covering his eyes. He looked as if he had just been born out of a cesspool, a scavenger, or a ruffian.

“I thought I'd seen that face before, but it turns out to be the bastard who lost the imperial game, the philosopher of the Art Revolution. It's a good thing we met here, because now I'm going to make him pay for the shame he's caused me, you son of a bitch! ”

The ruffian pulled out a pistol from his pocket, aimed it at the grasshopper and pulled the trigger. In the midst of the city's festivities, however, people saw the pistol only as a toy. The sound of crackers and fireworks everywhere drowned out the sound of the gunshot, and no one heard it.

When the second bullet blew off his hat, the grasshopper man finally noticed his pursuers and turned around. The ruffian fired his gun at random. The man running away through the crowd looked as if he had managed to escape and hide, or had been hit by a bullet and fallen flat on his face in the crowd. However, the figure of the man who was difficult to distinguish from either of the two seemed to melt into the air, as if it was a lie that he had existed until just now.

At that moment, people heard the sound of cheering among the crowd. Looking up at the sky, they saw a number of white shadows fluttering and flying away. A swarm of doves?

The magician was just staring up at the sky with a dumbfounded look on his face. He saw ten, twenty, and then thirty white doves flying out of his hat one after another. The number of doves increased, flapping their wings on the ground and soaring into the sky, and then a sudden gust of wind blew the hat out of the magician's hand and sent it soaring into the sky.

Then, out of nowhere, another hat appeared, and the two hats came together, twirling and fluttering like two dancing butterflies, and with the flock of doves flapping their wings, gradually becoming a small, glowing dot in the distance, seemingly absorbed and disappearing into the light shining through the clouds.

The END