Chapter 6

“Tou-ji, I would like to ask you a favor.” Saburou pleaded with his head down on the wooden floor.
“Put your head up, young man,” Tou-ji murmured. His voice was the most soothing thing Saburou had heard in a while and he just felt like going into the old man’s arms and crying his heart out. “What is it you want to ask me?”
“It’s about Sampē,” Saburou began, “could I ask you to keep him by your side when I’m gone?”
“Ah, Jirou’s little kid?” Grandpa Tou thought for a moment. “But isn’t he asking you to take him along?”
“Tou-ji?!” Saburou gasped. “H-how could I?!”
“Hm.” The old man stroked his beard. “In that case, the boy will have to find the way there on his own,” the old man concluded as though there was no issue at all in what he had just said. Saburou’s mouth opened and closed, too perplexed to utter a word.
“B-bu-but Tou-ji,” Saburou at last managed to say, “t-th-that is no logical conclusion t-t-to what the boy s-s-should d-do! He has lost his father very recently and his mother died before he could form any memory of her!” Saburou had begun to pant by the end of his statement.
“But Saburou, that is no logical reasoning either as to why the boy cannot go to the Ryūgū.” The old man’s voice was as soothing as when he would console a baby. “In fact, it is all the more reason as to why he would want to look for his parents as he can’t find them in the places that he is familiar with.”
Saburou could not, for the life of him, fathom how the old man could talk so nonchalantly about sending a little kid like Sampē for a journey to the Ryūgū. He began wondering whether Grandpa Tou was being serious with him at all. There was a moment of silence. Saburou’s mouth quivered but no words came out of it. A sweat trickled down his temple and fell on the wooden floor making a dark spot on it. As Saburou didn’t rebut, the old man continued, “Sampē is the child of a fisherman and an ama diver. His mother was the best woman diver that the village has ever known. The boy has everything he needs to go to the Ryūgū palace under the sea.”
“But he’s a mere child,” Saburou muttered.
Tou-ji’s expression did not change. In fact it was always hidden behind his long white beard. “Sampē ‘s instinct is enough to guide him.”