My father’s boundless hopes are packed into that single pencil.

#nana56b


Synopsis

“Sorry, teacher. I forgot my pencil case.”
As I scratched my head with a wry smile, the teacher
laughed and said, “Not again,” then lent me a
pencil.

That pencil was a little unusual.
At the end of the grip—a spot that normally
wouldn’t be sharpened—the wood had been carefully
carved into a hexagon with a knife. It looked just
like a handmade die.
Looking closely, I saw three characters each—“male”
and “female”—scrawled there in crooked handwriting.

“…Teacher, what’s this?”
When I asked, my teacher—who was usually so
cheerful—narrowed his eyes, looking just a little
embarrassed.
“Oh, that. Actually, my wife is giving birth
today.”
“Huh, really?”
“Yeah. I haven’t found out the gender yet. I’m so,
so curious…”

Watching the teacher laugh with the tip of his nose
turning red, I thought to myself, even as a child,
“That’s kind of cute.” It felt as though that
single pencil was filled with the overflowing hope
of a father awaiting a new life.

But the next day, the teacher didn’t come to
school.
Even after two or three days had passed, the teacher
was nowhere to be seen at the front of the classroom.

Instead, the vice principal came to tell us a
reality that was far too cruel.
After a difficult labor, both his wife and the baby
had lost their lives.

A few weeks later, when the teacher finally returned
to school after a long absence, he was emaciated—he
looked like a completely different person.
His eyes were vacant, and his steps down the hallway
were somehow unsteady. Even when he made eye contact
with us students, his former radiant smile never
returned. It was clear to everyone that the teacher,
who had begun missing school frequently, was deeply
wounded.

“...I want to do something for the teacher,”
someone said.

After school, the whole class gathered in the
classroom to discuss it.

And we gave the teacher a pencil. Of course, we’d
shaped it like a dice…

Every word we wrote was “Hang in there.”

The teacher slowly raised her head and accepted the
pencil with trembling fingertips.
With every stroke tracing the carved sides, tears
welled up in her eyes.
“…Thank you… Thank you so much…” As she said
that,
I still can’t forget the sight of the teacher
crying, stifling her sobs.

The seasons passed, and the day of the graduation
ceremony arrived.

The teacher gave each of us in the class a pencil.
Written on all six sides of the pencil was “smile.”
It meant, “No matter how much you roll, always have
a smile.”

“In life, there are times when you just can’t get
back up. There are days when you feel like no matter
how much you roll, you’ll only get bad results,”
the teacher said gently, looking each of us straight
in the eye.

“But you know, I’ve made sure that no matter how
much your pencils roll, they’ll always show a
‘smile.’ No matter which path you take from here
on out, I want you to be smiling in the end—just as
you saved me back …