Tunnel, Goldfish and Peony

 There was once an old man, digging a tunnel beneath the earth.

An oil lamp hung behind his back, swaying gently with every strike.

Its light stretched forward, but never reached the darkness ahead.

Instead, it cast his shadow long across the wall—

and with every swing of his worn, damaged pickaxe,

he struck not only the stone… but his own shadow.

He kept digging.

And digging.

Before his hands grew too weak to continue,

he told his son only this:

“Keep digging. North.”

—

The son grew old enough.

He took the same broken pickaxe,

and another tool, already cracked from years of use.

He stepped into the tunnel his father left behind.

An oil lamp was lit…

but he did not carry it with him.

He hung it on the wall, just as his father once did—

and left it there.

Behind him, the path remained lit.

Ahead of him, there was only darkness.

Still, he dug.

Again and again,

his strikes echoing through the hollow earth,

his shadow dancing on the walls behind him—

always just out of reach,

yet always there.

And when his time came,

he told his son the same words:

“Keep digging. North.”

—

Generations passed.

Each son entered the tunnel.

Each one carried the same worn tools.

Each one hung an oil lamp behind them—

never to take it back.

The deeper they went,

the brighter the past became,

and the darker the path ahead.

The lamps they left behind remained—

a quiet proof that someone had been there before,

that the path was not born from emptiness,

but from countless unseen hands.

And still…

they dug.

—

Until one day—

far above the earth,

where a desert once stretched endlessly beneath the sun,

something changed.

The dry land softened.

From beneath, water found its way upward,

threading through the hidden veins carved by forgotten hands.

The desert began to bloom.

A vast field of peonies spread across the land,

soft and endless, moving like waves under the wind.

In a line across that field,

strange wells stood—

perfectly aligned, reaching down into the unseen depths below.

And beside them,

red flowers grew quietly—

Lycoris, blooming where no one remained to see them.

—

Then, a small goldfish appeared.

It swam gently through the shallow water that now covered the land,

its body catching the light as it moved—

unaware of the tunnels beneath,

unaware of the hands that made this world possible.

It kept swimming.

Through the field of flowers.

Past the silent wells.

Across a land that was once empty.

Swimming—

and swimming—

as if it had always been this way.