There’d been a fairly booming mining industry on Sodeshima about fifty years ago, which apparently increased the tiny island’s population by several orders of magnitude for a time. Once the tin supply dried up, though, a majority of the populace moved over to the mainland, leaving entire neighborhoods of empty houses in their wake.
When I was a little kid, every grown-up I knew tried to warn children not to go playing in this part of town, sometimes saying it was too dangerous, other times claiming it was haunted by ghosts. I’d always been a good boy and done as I was told, so this was actually the first time I’d set foot on these streets. The further in I went, the more obvious it became that all of these houses had been deserted. There were weeds poking up out of the concrete, and you could tell at a glance that most of these buildings hadn’t even been entered in decades, let alone lived in. Yet while I grieved for the island’s ever-decreasing population, I also couldn’t help but enjoy the streets’ eerily tranquil atmosphere. This kind of absolute peace and quiet always calmed me down, and even more so now that I lived in a place where I had to bump shoulders with people every day just to walk down the avenue.
I saw that the sun was now beginning to set, yet still I pushed onward, heading deeper down the labyrinthine backstreets. After passing through a particularly narrow alleyway, I came out into an open clearing where a small, abandoned park still stood. There was a rusty swing set, a jungle gym adorned with a big sign that read “KEEP OFF”, and a sandbox full of weeds; all these elements combined to exude a bittersweet aura of nostalgia as they sat there, forgotten, waiting for the day they’d be demolished. A day that never arrived. It had likely been many years since the laughter of children at play was heard here. In stark contrast to the sorry state of the playground equipment, the park itself was surrounded on all sides by strikingly vivid cherry blossom trees—along with a single, massive tree right smack-dab in the middle of the park—all of which were in full bloom.
“Whoa… This is crazy…”
The majestic blossoms were so overwhelmingly gorgeous that they seemed magnetizing, and my feet started moving toward the central tree of their own volition. Each step forward brought its majestic grandeur and radiant vitality into a sharper, clearer focus, to the point that I genuinely wondered if this single tree might be the true culprit responsible for sapping all the life from this area—it was that breathtaking. A shallow layer of fallen petals formed a moat-like ring around its trunk that crunched beneath my shoes with each successive footfall. As I drew closer and closer, a sudden gust of wind sent a flurry of fresh petals dancing and fluttering through the amber evening skies. For one fleeting moment, the park was draped in a soft pink veil, and the rich scent of cherry blossoms filled my nostrils. It was like several years’ worth of spring scenery, all condensed and refined into a single instant.
Man, I had no idea this place was even here. Talk about a hidden gem… Hm?
I stood there, marveling at the splendor of it all, and as I did, I caught a glimpse of a small wooden structure hidden on the other side of the tree. Circling around to get a better look revealed that it was an old miniature shrine, so small that the tip of its roof only rose about a meter off the ground. On its front face were a small set of double lattice doors, one of which was hanging open. Curious, I crouched down to take a peek inside, but all that lay within it was a single rock that was about the size of a rugby ball. A deep fissure ran right down the center of it. I could only assume this was some sort of sacred relic: a stone thought to hold spiritual power, or at least religious significance to whoever built this tiny shrine to house it. For whatever reason, I felt weirdly entranced by the little rock. I reached out a hand to feel the texture of the thin, dark crevice in the middle of it.
Just then, an unexpected burst of sound came blaring into my ears, and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. Even after reflexively pulling my hand back, it still took me a few moments to calm down enough to realize what it had been. A melody muffled in static. Greensleeves. It was the six o’clock chime that played out over the island’s emergency loudspeakers every evening. Still, I was surprised by how close it sounded, so I straightened up and took a look around. It didn’t take me long to find the source of the siren: one of the aforementioned loudspeakers was perched atop a telephone pole in a corner of the park. No wonder it was so deafeningly loud.
I always hated this melancholic melody when I was growing up on the island, and I still hated it now. I didn’t like how effortlessly it could pull at my heartstrings and put me in a bittersweet mood, even when I had nothing to feel sad about or to yearn for.
The mystery solved, I crouched back down and reached my hand out to touch the stone inside the shrine once more. The blaring loudspeaker had definitely shaken me up, but not to the extent that I lost interest in the strange rock altogether. As the loud melody continued to blare through my ears, I slowly brought my hand closer and closer…until eventually, my fingertips landed on the jagged crevice. The moment they did, something electric shot through my body like a static shock, and my consciousness shut off in a single blip—like my mind was a TV and someone had abruptly pulled the plug.