Fuku still hasn’t shaken off his birth-cloud, even at twelve. The neighbors call him a slowpoke, a lost cause, and honestly, that stings a little.
Every baby in this village arrives wrapped in a small cloud — soft, fluffy, warm. Whichever child blows that cloud away first earns the most respect. The freed cloud drifts off, flares bright, and becomes visible even from faraway towns. “That family’s kid has fledged,” people say, nodding.
Fuku’s older brother Kan blew his away at seven, the fastest anyone in town had ever managed. His cloud left a clean trail of light all the way to a distant harbor town. The people there named the glow “Kan’s Light” and use it to find their way home at night.
Kan never lets anyone forget it. “My name reaches farther than this whole town,” he likes to say. Funny thing is, he’s never actually seen Kan’s Light himself. His own glow raced ahead of him, out past the horizon, and never came back to where he could look at it.
Fuku, meanwhile, is still dragging his birth-cloud around at twelve. Someone’s tacked up a “Fastest Kids” ranking on the corner post, and Fuku’s name sits at the very bottom, taped on almost as an afterthought. Old Yone, for what it’s worth, never trusted that ranking to begin with. “The butcher’s boy is the one who keeps changing it,” she says.
Being called a slowpoke doesn’t bother Fuku much. If anything, the inside of a cloud is warm, and every time someone teases him, he can’t quite hide a pleased little smile. Maybe some part of him wouldn’t mind staying like this forever. Whatever wisps come loose, Old Yone tucks away, bit by bit, into an old basket under the shrine shelf. “Waste not,” she always says — though what exactly would be wasted, Fuku’s never been sure.
One evening, Kan comes home with a message from the faraway town. Chest puffed out, he heads straight for the warmest spot by the hearth, ready to settle in like he owns it.
Then someone knocks. It’s Yae, the midwife, poking her head in from the entryway.
“Yone. That basket’s full enough now. The next one’s coming soon.”
“Is it,” Old Yone says, rising slowly. She lifts the basket from beneath the shelf with both hands. It’s heavy, packed with cloud — almost all of it the wisps Fuku never managed to blow away.
Kan blinks. ”…Next one? Next what?”
“The next baby in this house,” Yone says, patting the basket. “Your cloud went off somewhere far away a long time ago. That kind never comes back, you know. Everything warm we’ve got left is what Fuku’s been saving up.”
Kan half-rises from the best seat by the fire, without quite meaning to.
Yone tugs the cushion out from under him and pushes it beneath Fuku instead. She presses the last sweet bun into his hands too. Then, to Kan, still standing frozen in the doorway, she says one more thing.
“Close the door, Kan. You don’t have a cloud left to keep yourself warm, do you.”
On Fuku’s lap, the cloud he never quite managed to blow away swells, just a little bit bigger.