Tani Eno Michi

Tani Eno Michi

It was one of many possible picture perfect endings to a grand and stimulus filled life, to have a small cottage on the exact west coast of a small island province. It faced the sea and gave spectacular sunset views. All the old couple ever did was, sit on a little veranda to wait for the flaring ocean colours each night, at a minute earlier than the last. It was possibly the dullest time they both endured in a decade, but the damply sweet smell of salt water kept it blissful.

By all accounts, they have lived a good life together. Many travels to many places, with not many concerns over how things were, went, and will be. That might be the best way to put it; I’m sure there is a more accurate way to explain such feelings, but I – like them – can’t articulate it any further than that. They saw their fair share of troubles and suffering along the way, and they viewed it with the most discord that things had to be that way; but with the acceptance of that truth came the first stage of nirvana – showering leafless in that truth giving away to an eventual blissfulness and happiness as they await their own curtains to fall – however long that was going to take.

And yet, because of it, something still caused the tiniest bit of unrest.

‘What good is talking about that now?’

‘I’m not too sure myself,’ he defended, ‘but it was just something that crossed my mind.’

‘Even then,’ the woman pushed back, bearing her grayness, ‘it is a little more than just “late” to be talking about it.’

‘I just brought it up really. That’s all. No need to…’

‘… even bring it up in the first place?’

‘Well, no, of course not. But -’

‘- nothing.’

‘…’

‘Sorry to put words in your mouth, and I do know that you are regretting this, but we missed our mark for it.’

‘I know.’

‘Besides; if we did, things would have ended up extremely different.’

‘I know.’

‘And don’t say “we always could have…” because “no, we couldn’t”, got it? Ri wouldn’t even be ours anyway. As sad as it is to say, it wouldn’t have been that worth it.’

‘I know.’

‘Good. Now I’m going to fetch us some drinks. You won’t bring this up again will you? Not after we talked about it this much?’

‘I won’t,’ he said to her as she left.

He was left alone on the veranda with little else to do but watch the peaceful sea lit up by the pastel blue sky above. The colourful serenity completely rejected him and his angst.

‘I guess it’s funny that you’re the one not regretting it. After all, you were the one who almost wanted it.’

What else was there to do? It was just him, her, and no one else. That was how they got to this place in the start, but he couldn’t help but think what it could have been like if there was that someone else here with them.

He tried to remember what it was like for him during the times when he would have otherwise been that someone, and what the person who was otherwise in his shoes was like to him. It reminded him of his many travels, oddly enough. That person always talked about trekking the Earth to see how grand and lively it was. That was why he traveled to many places in the first place; once to an impoverished nation with suffering masses, and not long after to a beautiful jungle area that was actively threatened by expanding farmlands. The nostalgia was readily welcomed, but as he remembered the truth and what happened to that other person, the sad bliss he was in only became greater.

He only wished he could have returned all the inspirations and favours owed, somehow.

Then they came.

‘Leave me alone!’

‘Why the heck should I? It’s your fault anyway.’

‘H-How?!’

‘Because it is.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘That’s why you’re so lame!’

The tall - albeit little disgusting mannered – kid, threw a big shove at the perfectly gentle and sorrowful faced child, over on a patch of grass not far from the sea sands in view of the cottage.

‘This isn’t right – what you’re doing…’

‘You think I care?’

Another swing threw the child into the sand face-first. A little blood could be seen from the distance.

‘Honestly, you make me sick. Look at yourself; weak, pathetic, miserable.’

The other one was on his knees, coughing up too much sand to even talk back.

‘Don’t come in my sight. Stay off my beach.’ The standing one demanded of the public beach. ‘The next time you mess up anything of mine, I’ll tear your freaking guts out. I can do that, because you’re freaking worthless and no one will care if I do. You know what? I think they’d even want me to!’

‘B-But…’

‘That’s right! No one cares about anything!’

He kicked him while down.

‘Get off my beach!’

The little one struggled to get up, muttered a few cut-off sentences. Why he bothered to restrain himself was only known to him. He ran off with a limp, sobbing loudly.

‘That’s right! You’d better run!’

The idle-mannered one reached to the sand, scooped up a few seashells, and threw them at the runaway straggler. Some hit, some missed, all filled with something seldom understood.

‘Goodness! What was all that?’

The woman stepped back onto the veranda and leaned over the handrail.

‘Hrm? What is it dear?’

‘I heard some distant talking, and I thought we might have had company come. What was it?’

‘A couple of kids got into scuffle onto the beach. It’s already over.’

‘You mean those two?’ She pointed in the two directions in which the two kids were already off in.

‘Yeah, them. It was pretty rough too.’

‘My word… especially so for that young one over there. What is with children these days?’ She let out a quick sigh and remembered the subject that was supposedly dropped. ‘How ironic – but it is still a good thing. Aren’t you glad we don’t have to hear about that sort of thing every other day?’

‘Speaking of that,’ the man began, ‘while they were out there, I made every possible attempt to help.’

‘What?’

‘I tried my best to help out.’

‘Dear, you haven’t even moved from that spot since I left, and didn’t even so much hear you scream at them.’

The man tilted his head. ‘What’s your point?’

‘The both of them are off alone, and one of them is crying. If you really helped at all, they’d be making sand castles together like nice children.’

‘But I didn’t help that way.’

‘Then you didn’t help at all.’

The man faced the child and then towards the ocean. ‘You really think so? I helped in the best way possible.’

‘No you didn’t.’

‘Yes I did.’

‘You didn’t do a thing.’