Oyako Day Essay Contest 2025 — Prize-Winning Entry

The Home to Which the Noise Returns

There came a day when I stopped going on family trips.
I had been glued to my desk preparing for university entrance exams… or perhaps, I had just come up with that excuse.
The truth was, I simply couldn’t find a reason to go to noisy places with my family anymore.

— In other words, I longed for silence.

My family silently accepted it. Gradually, the number of trips they took without me increased.
They must have sensed that I was yearning for “serenity.”

In my house, silence never truly existed.
The TV was always on, laughter shook the walls, the ventilation fan hummed, and the air conditioner groaned.
Even if I curled up in the furthest corner of the house, the noise would follow me.

— However, when my family was gone, silence would unexpectedly arrive.
A silence so empty it felt almost unnatural.
The body left behind in the stillness experienced a strange sense of liberation.
The air spreading from corner to corner of the room didn’t clear with a “shh” but instead carried a tension, as if it were on the verge of snapping. I tried to merge with it.

I wanted to live in that stillness forever.

…That was my feeling for the first three hours.

Soon, the silence turned into a ringing in my ears, summoning phantom sounds that gnawed at my mind.
I started feeling ill, and in the end, I turned on the TV and played music…

— Ah, please come back.

When the door opened, the noise rushed in.
Laughter bounced through the air, the clinking of dishes echoed, and the TV blared noisily.
I frowned, but deep inside, I felt relieved.

The stillness certainly comforted me.
But it was the noise that connected me to something.

I hear there is something called “OYAKO Day.”
I want to celebrate that day not as a day to give flowers or exchange special words, but simply—
as a day to truly appreciate the value of the noise.

The discomfort of being alone.
The disharmony born from the interactions between parent and child.
That disharmony is my life, my comfort,
— and the place to which I belong.

Nao Sasaki
Age: 22
Ebina City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

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