綻びの行く末（英語）

I used to believe that running away was something to be ashamed of.

As a child, a single moment of hesitation — when I couldn't raise my voice in time — left me with a regret I could never undo. From that day on, I vowed: I will never run again.

Years later, cornered in a dead-end job at an IT company, I was lured into the trap of a rip-off bar one night. And I ran. Through the crowds of Shibuya, where not a single soul answered my cries for help. Abandoned even by the police. Still, I ran.

That choice was where everything began.

I lost my job. Betrayed by a partner I had trusted with everything. I lost even a place to call home. Nights spent on park benches. Hunger kept at bay with oden from the convenience store. And yet — I never once broke the promises I had made to my language students.

In time, with nothing but a single bicycle as my companion, I pedaled out into the world.

In Germany, my belongings were stolen. After walking a hundred kilometers, I met an elderly gentleman. A father and his child, their dreams in ruins, sheltering together at a campsite. A day spent chasing a tenant who had vanished in the night, driving through the snow toward Niigata.

What I finally understood, at the far end of all that traveling, was this: running away is not defeat. Beyond the place you run to, there are still people. There are still landscapes. There is still salvation. And when you offer whatever you can with what you have right now — that small act can become the very moment that holds up someone else's life.

It is okay to run. There are things that can only be protected by running. There are views that can only be seen from the place you have run to.

This is the story of one young man who fell countless times, rose each time, and came to know the vastness of the world and the warmth of its people — a story of rebirth, and of setting out anew.