On the first day of our village school, one of the boys was found missing.
He had hidden himself in a cellar in the schoolhouse. None of us knew him. He was dark and small. He looked different from the other students. He lived on the other side of the mountain. Because of his size, he was nicknamed Chibi, which meant ‘tiny boy’.
This strange boy was too scared of our teacher to learn anything. He was too scared to make friends with other children. So he was left alone at study time and play time. He was always at the back of a class and at the end of a line.
But Chibi found many ways to pass the time and amuse himself. He would just stare at the top of his desk for a long time. Sometimes he would lie gazing at the ceiling for hours. There were many things to interest him: the design on the shirt of a boy sitting next to him, or what he could see out of the window.
In the playground Chibi would just close his eyes and listen to the wonderful sounds that came from near and far.
And he could hold and watch insects and grubs that most of us wouldn’t touch or even look at.
Everyone called him slowpoke – even the children in the lower classes. But slowpoke or not, Chibi came trudging to school everyday. He always brought the same lunch, a ball of rice wrapped in a radish leaf. Even when it rained or stormed he still came trudging along. He would then be wrapped in a raincoat made from zebra grass.
Five years went by, and we were in the sixth grade, the last class in school. Our new teacher Mr. Isobe was a friendly man with a kind smile. It was Mr. Isobe who changed the way we looked at Chibi.
Mr. Isobe often took his class to the hilltop behind the school. He was pleased to learn that Chibi knew all the places where the wild grapes and wild potatoes grew. He was amazed to find how much Chibi knew about all the flowers in our class garden.
He liked Chibi’s black-and-white drawings and tacked them up on the wall for everyone to see. He also had no complaints about Chibi’s handwriting. Only Chibi could read it. Mr. Isobe tacked some of what Chibi wrote on the wall. And he often spent time talking to Chibi when no one was around.
When Chibi appeared on the stage at the talent show of that year, no one could believe his eyes. “Who’s that?” “What can that stupid do up there?” But they were astounded when Mr. Isobe announced that Chibi was going to imitate the cries of crows. “Cries of crows?” They had more surprises coming.
Chibi ascended the stage. First he imitated the cries of newly hatched crows. Then he imitated the cries of mother crow and father crow. He then went on to show how crows cried early in the morning. He also imitated the cries of crows which were happy or sad.
Everybody’s mind was taken to the far mountainside from which Chibi came to the school. Now they could imagine exactly the far and lonely place where Chibi lived with his family.
Then Mr. Isobe explained how Chibi had learned those calls – leaving his home for school at dawn and returning at sunset everyday for six long years.
Every one of us cried, thinking how much we had been wrong to Chibi all those long years. Even grownups wiped their eyes, saying, “Yes, yes, he is wonderful.”
Chibi was the only one in our class honoured for perfect attendance through all the six years.
Chibi still came to the village to sell the charcoal he and chis family made. But nobody called him Chibi anymore. We all called him “Crow Boy”.
Hi, Crow Boy! We still heard his imitation of a happy crow as he returned home along the mountain road.
