That morning again, there were many tadpoles in the paddies.
They swim and move their little tails in the water. She stays very still until her presence isn't foreign anymore, and once they recognize Uta as a part of their environment, they get close and acknowledge her, like how they would a rock or a plant. Even when they tickle her and graze her feet with their slimy skin, Uta remains silent. She stares down at the paddies where her only company lives, growing fewer by the day, and remains silent until the Sun sets and night comes. Then she's snapped out of her trance, no longer made of stone, and decides to go home only to come back the next morning.
She's been doing this every day for gods know how long.
One would wonder; why does Uta spend her day unmoving, looking at the tadpoles in the paddies?
It's not like Uta doesn't move at all. She eats some rice and mushrooms at noon and takes a nap if the nightmares didn't let her get enough sleep the night before. But the question here is why do her parents let her?
It's simple, Uta doesn't have any parents.
She doesn't have any siblings, cousins or aunts. Nor does she have any grandpas or distant relatives who, by chance, would turn out to be feudal lords that can pick her up from her place in the middle of nowhere and cover her in silk and golden threads.
There was a plague and she was the only one left. So now she goes to the paddies and becomes a rock and stares at the tadpoles that tickle her feet and grow fewer by the day.
Whoever knew of her routine would have thought that this was just the behaviour of a kid forced into insanity by the death of her only living family. But Uta knows better. Her parents knew better.
They were fervent devotees that danced under the sky and hoped for rain to come and grace them with its blessings. They preferred pleading instead of acting, they preferred waiting for the plague to reach them instead of running away, hoping it would never catch up to them.
"We're trapped by the cycle of pain, Uta," her mother whispered into her ear, as they both stared into the night. "This world's full of suffering and sadness, and we're condemned to live, time and time again, taking different shapes each time we die and get reborn again."
Uta had stared at the infinite blackness of the sky, the only thing shining in between such darkness being the little dots of light they called "stars."
"Is living really that painful?" Uta asked. "Are we really destined to suffer in this world?"
"No," she said. "Because if you learn to stand the pain, if you learn to ignore it, you'll reach Nirvana and finally break free from the pain in this world." Her mother smelled like earth and something deep. "But until then, we'll continue living and dying in different shapes. Until we understand."
Uta hopes that this way, she'll be able to understand. What led them to stay rooted to the earth, what led them to remain and what led them to die.
The tadpoles were born that same Spring, a winter away from the death of her parents that she had spent weeping and crying and cursing the gods for her misery, wondering why she was left and not taken too.
"This world is full of suffering," Uta finally understands. "And we cannot escape it."
She stares at the tadpoles, new forms but same souls, and calls out the name of her mother and father. They tickle her feet and swim away the moment she moves too much.
But these tadpoles now have other lives and other families and she can't take them away.
She wants to carry them back home and keep them in a bucket where they'll always be by her side, but she cannot, because she thinks that, maybe, these tadpoles have a daughter that will wonder why she wasn't taken away too.
So now she becomes a rock and hopes to understand, hopes to stop suffering and break free from the cycle of pain her life has turned into. She considers the idea of taking the tadpoles back home but can't. Day after day, she walks down the mountain and goes to the paddies, the tadpoles tickle her feet and then she goes back to an empty house she's not sure she can call home anymore.
And just like the living beings who are trapped in the cycle of pain and are condemned to suffer, she cannot escape, cannot reach enlightenment. She's a vengeful ghost that cannot go on, not until she understands.
Then a red headed boy appears.
Quietly, he asks her what she's doing. Uta doesn't know if it's because it's been weeks since she last spoke, but her family's deaths, her rituals with the tadpoles, all those things spill out of her mouth just like that.
After that, the boy stayed quiet and so did she. None of them moved for hours.
He doesn't intrude in her ritual, but he doesn't make any attempt to leave either.
Only when Uta left the tadpoles back into the paddies did he say, "you returned them back."
And as if starving for words, Uta replies, "I feel bad for the little ones." One of them swims in between her fingertips and escapes from her grasp. She watches it leave without a word.
"Then I'll go home with you."
She stays very still but not because she's trying to be a rock or a flower on the sideway. Her voice is trembling, as if fearing if she speaks too loudly, he'll fade away with the wind.
"Really?"
The little boy nods and his eyes shine with enlightenment.
And just like that, Uta's finally free.