Remembrance & Departure

“Do you believe in the true blue sky?”

He stood with his back to me at the cliff’s edge, looking out to the river cutting through the valley. His untidy yellow hair was whipped about in the wind, and despite that strong wind and the noise of the river crashing upon stone tens of metres below, those words of his were clear as water, echoing like a bell in the recesses of my mind.

Tired and taken by surprise by his strange question, I did nothing but stand there, staring at his back. Although he was just watching the river run by, he held his hands intently at his sides, unwavering and austere. I don’t know how much time passed as we stood there, but he eventually turned around, and I saw his sapphire eyes.

“The true blue sky is all that is left of us.”

It was then that I became aware that my own eyes were flushed and swollen from crying. I quickly turned to hide my face, but the way he regarded me, solemn and quiet, gave me the impression that such a thing was useless. So I faced him. Tears had returned to my eyes. Stumbling over my words, I asked him what he meant.

“You... you are a runaway, are you not?”

I nodded, indignantly wiping my tears. Even back then he could already tell what kind of person I was.

“What is your reason for running away? Do you fear what you’ve left behind? Do you hate it? Or could you not bear to see what would become of you if you had stayed?”

Helplessly, I shook my head. There was nothing I could have done, I told him. There was nothing I could have done.

“Are you happy now that you’ve abandoned your past?”

Again, I shook my head.

“But now you are free.”

I looked up at him. He had the same solemn look in his eyes as ever.

“This is a choice that all people must make, sooner or later. A choice between happiness and freedom. You could’ve stayed behind with your family, gone through your years of adolescence and gotten a job. Find somebody you love, settle down and start a family, so on and so forth. At first you’d be lost and powerless, but so long as you kept applying yourself, kept toughing it out through the despair, you’d slowly find yourself in better and better places. That is happiness… is it not?”

Hesitantly, I nodded.

“The things you must sacrifice in exchange for happiness… Hopes, dreams, sins. All of them countless and beautiful. To choose happiness is to forget; to choose freedom is to remember forever. Freedom from expectations and obligations, and freedom from friendship and intimacy. Freedom… that is nothing more than exile. Do you know which one I chose?”

“Freedom?”

“Indeed. And, do you know which one you have chosen?”

“Freedom.”

He looked down at me, and in his eyes I sensed pity, and deep within that pity, a twinge of regret.

“If your decision is final, you may come with me. I was a monk once, though now I am but a traveller. A vagrant. If you wish to take me as your master, I will take you as my pupil.  If not, find someone else to take care of you. For your sake, I would choose the latter– But what will you choose?”

“Please, allow me to go with you.”

He shifted his gaze to the featureless horizon.

“I expected you would say so. But, let this be one last warning: This is not an easy road. You will suffer while you live, and you will regret as you die. You can look back all you want, but you can never return. Knowing that, will you still take this road?”

Adamantly, I nodded.

“So be it. My name is Kaiser. And you?”

“Hamlet.”

“Then let us be on our way, in search for the true blue sky.”