Daikan sits under the tree, on the hill, at the far end of town. once a week he takes the walk, to watch the sun set over the town, and the sea. The hill provides a spectacular view of both, and so it is here that Daikan comes, to consider the events of the preceding week. After he sets out from home, he makes only one stop, to visit his aunt, on the very edge of town. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement, since his aunt receives few visitors, having outlived most of those close to her, and she in return for the company, cooks for her nephew. They sit, each week, on her porch, looking up at the tree on the hill, while they drink tea and eat rice. This week though, Daikan arrives to find a parcel, with a note, and a distinct absence of aunts. He opens the note:
“Nephew,
“I am old. Soon I will no longer be able to walk to the store, to buy rice, or saffron, or tea. Before long I will no longer be able to walk to the yard, to hang my wet clothes. While I can still comfortably do both those things, I am going for a long walk. It will be my last, so I’d welcome a companion.
“I have left you food, as I know you will have arrived expecting to eat. I’ve wrapped it up, so that if you wish, you can take it up to the tree on the hill. There you’ll find details of the next part of my journey. You can then choose, with the town at its prettiest, whether you can bear to be parted from it for a while to humour your old aunt and her peculiar ways.
“If you choose to follow, I will see you whenever you catch me up. If you choose not to, please do me the kindness of returning my plates before you head home.
Your loving aunt”.
She has left the parcel on a square of cloth. Daikan takes up the corners, ties them together, and takes a staff from the corner. Hooking the bundle over the end, he rests the staff across his shoulder, and heads towards the hill. He nods to the guard on the city gates, and declines the over of a drink. He is unsure what is in the bottle, but suspects it would be unwise to find out before first tackling the hill.
After some twenty minutes have passed, he arrives at the top of the hill, and sits on the stone at the foot of the tree. He is pleased to find that the package is still warm, as he rests it on his lap, and looks down at the town. He unties the bundle, and then opens the package, Inside a sheet of thin paper, is a blanket, which is in turn wrapped around a small box, with a another note on it.
“Let us both try something new, even if you choose to go home afterwards. Contemplate the food I have made you, and then make your decision”.
the box is made of bamboo, and gives a pleasing and familiar scent as Daikan takes off the lid - a combination of the wood, and whatever his aunt has cooked for him. It doesn’t smell like rice. In the box is a thick wooden bowl, with a matching lid, and In the bowl are noodles.
As a child, his aunt’s soy noodles were his very favourite thing, and he asked for them regularly. So much so that his aunt warned him: if he ate them every day, they would become ordinary and boring, and he’d no longer take the same joy from them. As she had predicted, he eventually grew weary of noodles, and wanted to have rice, like the bigger boys had.
Few things make one yearn for a thing, more than its absence, and so it was that while Daikan largely forgot about soy noodles, in times of crisis and tragedy, his aunt would make them for him - a bowl of nostalgia to balm the wounds that ointment cannot reach. Even after he got too big to be held, they would sit side by side on the porch, her arm around him as the salt of his tears mixed unseen with the soy sauce. She would tell him how noodles were like a metaphor for your life line. You start out walking the same path as those around you, and then as life becomes more complicated you weave and wind through everyone else, sometimes crossing paths just once, sometimes finding yourself time and again following the same route.
He remembers his aunt helping him walk. When he first started walking, and was unsure on his little legs, she encouraged him, and held his hand when he needed it. When he broke his leg on his ninth birthday, and had to re-learn to walk again, her patience never wavered, even when his frustration inevitably was targeted towards her. When he was detained by the city guard for being drunk on festival night, his aunt paid his fine, and struggled home with the swaying Daikan leaning on her now quite delicate frame.
The sun has almost set now, half of it is still visible, resting on the waves of the horizon, the sky on fire. Daikan has almost finished the noodles, and as he reaches the bottom of the bowl, he sees a symbol he recognises. It is the logo of the Setting Sun Noodle House, in the city, some twenty miles from here. This, his aunt had told him as a child, was where she had eaten the best noodles in her life, and intended to eat them again, before she was too old to reach the city.
She can never ask for anything, it just isn’t in her. Small favours, everyday things, these she could ask for: fetch this from the store, clear the table, help me lift this, my old back is complaining I let it get too old. These she could manage. But something she wanted? She would never ask outright, she never wanted to be a burden.
But now she is asking. In her own way. “please do me the kindness of returning my plates before you head home”. The plates are from The Setting Sun. Very well, Aunty. I’ll meet you at the setting sun, and we will see where your last walk takes us.
Daiken carefully packs up the bundle and throws it over his shoulder. Turning his back on the sunset, and the town he has always called home, takes his first step towards the city, each subsequent step taking him further than he has ever been from home.
