Chapter 69 homecoming

I'm back, and I'm striding across the hall, looking around.This is my father's old house.In the middle is a small puddle.Old and useless utensils were piled up in a mess, blocking the way to the stairs to the attic.Cats lurk on the railing.A tattered piece of cloth—that had been wrapped around a stick in an old game—was blown high in the wind.I am coming.Who will receive me in the future?Who will be waiting in the kitchen?Smoke rose from the chimney, and coffee for dinner was being made.Do you feel mysterious?Do you feel at home?I don't know, I'm very uncertain.This is my father's house, but everything stands there coldly, as if each one is busy with its own business, half of which I have forgotten, and half of which I have never known.What am I to them, and what am I to them, though I am the father, the son of the old manor.I didn't dare to knock on the kitchen door, I just listened secretly from a distance, just stood there and listened secretly so that I wouldn't be caught as an eavesdropper on the spot.As I was eavesdropping from a distance, I heard nothing but a soft chime of the clock, or I thought I heard it, which had been passed down from my childhood.Everything else that happened in the kitchen was kept a secret from me by the people sitting there.The longer one hesitates before this door, the stranger one becomes.What if someone opened that door now and asked me something.Hopefully I myself won't look like a guy who wants to keep his secrets.