sol.ace_r

The place I called home is gone.
No—more precisely, it will soon be gone.

At the end of February, a notice was posted on the neighborhood wall.
It said the area had been designated for redevelopment.

When I first saw it, my reaction wasn’t anything special.
Just something like, I see.

The buildings were old anyway, and I had always thought that someday they would disappear.
The only difference was that it turned out to be my situation sooner than I expected.

The notice said the relocation period would last until the end of August.
Even when I saw that date, I wasn’t particularly surprised.

There’s still some time.
I wonder where the next house will be.

That was about it.

We moved into this house in 2024.
But at the time I was living in a school dormitory, so the time I actually spent in this house wasn’t very long.

Still, when I think of this place, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t the inside of the house, but the road leading up to it.

You have to walk up through an alley, a road just wide enough for a single car to pass.
There’s a CCTV camera mounted there, and while it isn’t particularly steep or full of stairs, you have to turn around a curve as you climb, which makes it more tiring than it seems.

There are many old multi-family houses and villas in the neighborhood.
Because the airport is close by, you can hear airplanes day and night.

That sound is the most noticeable inside the house, along with the noises from the neighbors next door.
Sometimes you can hear construction, and these days you occasionally hear the sounds of people moving out.

Since the redevelopment was announced, empty houses have slowly begun to appear around the neighborhood.
People moved away one by one, and one day I even saw the landlord calling my mother.

Even so, I don’t feel anything particularly special.
When I see an empty house, it just feels like that.

Even when the day comes to leave this house, I probably won’t say an emotional goodbye.

If a new building stands here in a few years, I think I might pass by once.
There may not even be any reason for me to come back to this neighborhood.

Still, sometimes people visit places they used to live.

Just like how my grandfather once went back to see the place he used to live, even after he moved away.