Amid the stifling, humid air, a chorus of shrill, rattling, and almost metallic trill resonated throughout the yard. The ceaseless, ear-piercing droning soon grew in intensity, but the two occupants of the house were apparently untroubled by it.
Shoukaku paused to listen, but Lieutenant Ohtori Kensaku rushed outside and began searching the trees for something.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm looking for cicada husks," Ohtori yelled back—even then, the cicadas' song almost drowned it out.
"You can really be a kid sometimes, you know?"
"Oh, be quiet and let me be nostalgic," Ohtori retorted as he raked the leaves to find the empty husks he sought, looking precisely like the insects that left them behind.
Shoukaku showed a subtle smile. She realized this would be the first time she heard the minmin-zemi singing in years—one of the many simple things the conflict had stolen from her, him, and countless others.
"You should've seen it. There were so many," Ohtori said as he walked back to the porch. Despite combing the yard for husks, he left them where they were and carried nothing back.
"I wouldn't doubt that. I imagine plenty of kids were looking for the same thing."
"Yeah...it's summer now, isn't it?" he replied, looking at the cloudless sky. Spring had passed, he realized. The cherry blossoms were no more.
But cicadas, the heralds of summer, were just as ephemeral as the heralds of spring. Deafening as their song might be, they will fade in mere days. They make good of what little time they have, calling out, reaching out to their destined mates, hoping to create a new life. For the more poetically inclined, their noise would be a love song.
He wished he could be like them—to just seize the day. Not waiting to tell someone his feelings as he did before—until it was too late.
"It's sad, isn't it? To think their song will wane before we know it?" he heard Shoukaku saying. The melancholy was palpable. She, too, was aware of their fleeting nature, that they would disappear as suddenly as they appeared.
"Yeah...you're right," he replied. "It is sad."
But to him, it was sadder that he couldn't be like cicadas, who sing their love song, honest and earnest, as if they realize their own transience. Should this summer pass by without Shoukaku hearing his, it would be sadder even more.