Short Story 75: The Big Landowner on the Outskirts of the Village

The sound echoes through the valley and fades away, and the vibrations shaking the road have become a constant state of affairs. This place is on the outskirts of the village, just off the highway. The village has a population of 7,000, but there are five houses on the hillside. The street is less than 50 meters long and faces the mountain slope. Below the hillside, you can see a first-class river, and many vehicles pass by on the highway that has long connected the neighboring villages.
Even in such a remote place, a major convenience store was built right after exiting the interchange. This news was surprising to the residents living here. After all, while shopping in the village used to take an hour, they can now get basic items in just a few minutes of walking.
A friend who decided to live there told me about it with great excitement. It seems a relative gave up the house and let him have it. For him, who had quit his job as a bank clerk and wanted to live in nature, it was a dream come true. He told me his detailed plan: 'I'll renovate it for soundproofing and vibration damping, and then I'll walk around the mountains.'
From my perspective, a place this far out on the edge of the village seemed like a total losing ticket, but I didn't dare say it out loud because of his positivity. While helping with the construction, I had occasion to visit the neighboring houses. Two of them were occupied by men in their 40s who worked in the transport industry, leaving early in the morning and returning late at night, each with their own house further down the street. Another house belonged to a woman in her 30s who worked at the first service area on the highway and was apparently raising two children on her own. When I visited, she was just about to send her eldest son off to school.
The last house was what you might call an ancient home that transcended mere age; a dust-covered sign read 'Yoneya' (Rice Shop). Even though it was daytime, the door was half-open, and the interior was dim. When my friend and I called out, 'Excuse me,' there was a clattering sound, and an elderly woman with a hunched back slowly emerged from the back. She said, 'Welcome.' A silence followed for a while, and then my friend said clearly in a loud voice, 'Sorry for the late greeting. My name is Hasuda, and I've just moved in.'
Then, she slowly took out her glasses, saying, 'Is that so? My hearing isn't that bad yet. It's just that my eyes are bad.' The house would occasionally shake periodically from the vibrations of the highway. As she took off her glasses with trembling hands, she mentioned the name of a relative's uncle, saying, 'I almost mistook you for Chiba.' Then, in the middle of the conversation, she went to the back of the shop and handed us two 30-kilogram bags of rice, saying, 'Here, eat plenty.' When she brought them from the back of the shop all by herself, it made my heart skip a beat. About 80% of the renovation had begun, leaving only the foundation of the house, but we never had to worry about rice, to the point where we could even cover the contractors' lunch expenses.
A car pulled into the 30-year-old woman's house, and only the woman got out. I was a little curious, so I asked about the elderly woman. It turned out that the one commonly known as 'Kiyo-san' was a landowner in the village who had once prospered from rice production. It seems that many trucks used to line up on the spiral old road to come and unload rice at Kiyo-san's house. However, even after production settled down and profits stopped rising, the shop's management remained stable as she was from a family of landowners that had continued for generations.
It seems it was Kiyo-san who suggested building a convenience store at the interchange, and the local government moved quickly. From the unusually large parking lot, you can see the scenery where the river and the highway intersect, which feels quite surreal. The area around the five houses, including Hasuda's, is strangely dark, but for me, coming from the outside, it is a feast for the eyes.
'It's precisely because we live in an era where you can work from anywhere that I decided to live here. It's great to be able to eat plenty of rice,' Hasuda told me. It was unexpected that he didn't mention the convenience of transportation. Rice farmers still supply rice to Kiyo's shop and bring boxes of sweets for one reason or another. Kiyo is in a state of passing them on, including to Hasuda's house. It might be a bad habit in essence, but I feel like it's okay to accept it.
I said, 'I've come to the place where you wanted to live, and it's been a series of surprises, but now I'm a little envious.' I had gotten used to the slightly shaking road and the noise coming from above. By the time I finished the renovation and got on the highway to head home, I was thinking about Kiyo-san, whose details I still didn't fully understand.
The convenience store, created by Kiyo-san's word, is the only one with a small building, but the parking lot is large and brightly lit 24 hours a day. On the outskirts of this village, the presence of a convenience store is so significant that it could be called revolutionary. But Kiyo-san's influence will likely continue to spread, even on the outskirts of the village.
Hasuda has regained his vitality since he started living there. It might be thanks to the rice.