13: What Happens When a Person Dies?

There were lots of pigeons in a park I used to have a walk when I was a university student. They were waking about, pecking on the paved ground as I wondered what they could find there. Especially, they always formed a group in one corner of the park where I sat on a bench while idling away. A group of pigeons repeatedly poked on the ground, pecking something.

 ――Someone might've fed them from this bench.

 I simply guessed so at that time.

 In spring when I was in the second year, we held a cherry blossom viewing combined with a welcome party for freshmen of our circle, occupying a part of the grass in the park.

Beautiful cherry blossoms bloomed there.

Though it was just an ordinary circle, there was a senior student who was recognized as 'God of Occultism'. I called him Master. I looked up to him while I treated him with contempt at the same time. Master looked sick, unusually getting drunk.

 "I wonder who the first person began to say that there's a body underneath a cherry blossom was." Someone said with a canned beer in hand.

 "We can't certain that the one buried underneath a cherry blossom should be happy," spouted Master with his twisted tongue, slowly sitting up. Other seniors quickly caught him. If they would let Master be, he would creep the freshmen out for sure. For me, it was a bit pity they shut Master up.

"I'll get him have a little rest over there," having told them, I took Master to the bench I usually sat on, then laid him down on it.

After a while, I sat down next to him with a bottle of water. "What were you about to say earlier?"

 "There're pigeons there," he pointed, panting. As I looked up, some pigeonish shadows were wriggling in the park grew dark. The pigeons raise their head in unison. I faced the heaps of a pair of tiny lights. "I am going to tell you something very important," It might be because he was drunk, he talked to me in unfamiliar tone. It got me stand ready. "Well, I've ever told you before though … Where do you think human beings would go when they die?"

 "Huh? The next world, I guess? " Master gave a deep sigh at my answer.

 "They can't go anywhere. They just disappear, or be there."

I didn't get any picture.

Master always taught me various things but it was unusual that Master said something philosophical or religious like that.

 "That's why we're next to them." It took a little while to understand he was saying about spirits or something like that for human. "You know, the one being eaten by pigeons there, will be being there, until it disappears eventually. That's all."

 ――What?

I rubbed my eyes, but nothing appeared.

"It's very feeble. Almost disappearing. Of course those pigeons don't know what they are eating, but the one being eaten understands he will disappear when the pigeons eat him up all. So, he'll disappear."

 "I don't understand what you mean."

 "Most of the birds can see human's spirits," Master muttered. Does he mean someone died in the past at where the pigeons always gathered?

 "It's only a little bit away though. I'd rather be nutriment for cherry blossoms than a feed for pigeons," Master fell silent there, giving a beery sigh. I could hear the horseplay going on across the grass.

 "Have you ever thought about when you die, Master?" I asked him what I had wanted to, but couldn't somehow.

 "Same as others. I'll become an awful evil spirits, be there to disappear, then, the end. "

 There was an extra phase but I mentioned nothing about it.