買った家に飽きてしまったらどうしよう

わたしがなかなか家を買えない理由

日本語版→英語版の順です。
For international readers: An English version is available at the end of this post.

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時々、同じ形の家が何軒か並んでいるのを見る。

いわゆる建売で、形は変わらない。

ここで色も同じならわたしは何も思わない。

でも時々、形は同じで色だけ違う家が並んでいるのを見る。

薄いブルー、ピンク、グリーンといった風に。

ああいうのを見ると、妙にドキドキしてしまう。

あれって、「やっぱり隣の家の色が良かったなぁ」と思ったりしないのだろうか。

わたしはかなり飽きっぽく目移りしやすい性分なのでこういうことがすごく多い。

ポケモンで例えると、最初フシギダネを選んだのにクチバシティまで行ったところで、急にヒトカゲが羨ましくなってデータを消す。そういうことを平気でする。

スマホの色も、黒にすれば白が眩しく映り、白を使えば黒が高級感たっぷりに見える。

そんな俗っぽさが嫌で、無関心を装ってみることもある。

ただ、人間の根っこはそう簡単に変わらない。

やっぱりわたしは形から入るうえに飽きっぽい。

坊主が見れば、すぐにあの棒で喝を入れたくなるような業を背負って生きている。

それでもポケモンやスマホならいい。

やり直すか買い換えるか、負担は少ない。

ただ、あれは家だ。

色が思ってたんとなんか違うな、で買い換えられるものではない。

それでも、3つのうち最後に残った一つを買う、という形ならまだいい。

ただ、もし最初に3色選べていたら？

この薄いブルーがかわいいな。でもピンクも好きなんだよな。

うーん、うーん……。

紆余曲折を経て「えいやっ」の気持ちでブルーの家を買う。

そして2年後、帰宅した時に、ふと気づく。

ピンクの方がかわいかったかも……。

もし、ピンクの家を選んでいたら、今より少し洒落た人間になれていたのかもしれない。

玄関には丸いリースなど掛け、休日には焼き菓子のひとつも焼き、来客に「どうぞ」と紅茶を出す側の人間である。

紅茶はもちろんマリアージュフレールだ。

ブルーの家に住んでいるわたしは、冷蔵庫に午後の紅茶無糖の2リットルを入れっぱなしにして「これいつから？」と見つめる側の人間だ。

だが、外壁がピンクならそんなことはなかったのかもしれない。

一度こう思ってしまうと、もうだめだ。

脳裏をよぎるのは常にピンクの家に住んでいる自分だ。

そのうち、いてもたってもいられなくなりSUUMOで家を探し始める。

検索で家の色のソート機能はない。なぜだ！

目を皿のようにして一軒一軒、見て回る。

あった！ピンクの家だ。今の場所からはだいぶ遠い町だ。

だがもうピンクの家じゃないとだめなんだ。とても耐えられない。

もう生活圏も学区もどうでもいい。ピンクなのだから。

一も二もなく、即日購入。内見すらしなかった。

でもいいのだ。ピンクなのが重要であって、内装などは納屋のようだとしても構わない。

しかし、子どもは転校することになり、二重に抱えたローンは返済の目処が立たず、一家は離散。

はたして、ピンクの家さえ選んでいればこうならなかったのだろうか。

いったい、どこで道を違えたのだろう。

色違いの建売を見るたび、わたしはそこまで考えてしまう。

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For those who made it this far, here is the English version.

What If I Get Tired of the House I Bought?

Sometimes I see a row of houses that are all the same shape.

They’re the kind of houses built as a set, so the structure itself doesn’t change. If the colors were the same too, I wouldn’t think anything of it.

But every now and then, I see a row of identical houses where only the colors are different. Pale blue, pale pink, pale green.

For some reason, that makes me strangely nervous.

Do people who live there ever think, “Actually, maybe I liked the color of the house next door better”?

I am extremely prone to getting bored and having my eye wander, so this sort of thing happens to me all the time.

To put it in Pokémon terms, I’m the kind of person who chooses Bulbasaur at the beginning, gets all the way to Vermilion City, suddenly becomes jealous of Charmander, and deletes the whole save file. I do that kind of thing without much hesitation.

It’s the same with phone colors. If I choose black, white starts to look bright and clean. If I use white, black suddenly seems full of sleek, expensive dignity.

I dislike this common little weakness in myself, so sometimes I try to act like I’m above it all. Like I’m not the kind of person who cares about such things.

But the roots of a human being do not change that easily.

In the end, I am still someone who starts with appearances and then immediately gets bored of them. I am living with a karmic burden so obvious that any passing monk would want to smack me with a lecture.

Still, with Pokémon or a phone, it’s fine. You can start over, or buy a new one. The damage is limited.

But this is a house.

You cannot simply think, “Hmm, the color isn’t quite what I imagined,” and buy another one.

Even then, if you bought the last remaining house out of the three, maybe that would be all right. You didn’t choose. It was fate. Or inventory management.

But what if, at the beginning, all three colors had been available?

“This pale blue is cute. But I do like the pink too. Hmm. Hmm…”

After much internal wandering, you finally buy the blue house with a feeling of “All right, this one. Let’s just do it.”

And then, two years later, coming home one day, it suddenly occurs to you.

Maybe the pink one was cuter.

If I had chosen the pink house, perhaps I would have become a slightly more stylish person.

I might have hung a round wreath on the front door. I might have baked something on weekends. I might have become the kind of person who says “Please, have some tea” when guests come over.

The tea, naturally, would be Mariage Frères.

Meanwhile, I, living in the blue house, am the kind of person who leaves a two-liter bottle of unsweetened bottled tea in the fridge and stares at it thinking, “How long has this been here?”

But maybe none of that would have happened if the exterior wall had been pink.

Once I start thinking this way, it is over.

From then on, the image that keeps passing through my mind is always me, living in the pink house.

Eventually, I can’t stand it anymore and start looking for houses on SUUMO.

There is no search filter for house color. Why not?

I stare at each listing one by one until my eyes nearly turn into saucers.

There it is.

A pink house.

It is in a town quite far from where I live now.

But at this point, it has to be a pink house. I can no longer endure anything else. My daily life, the school district, the whole idea of a reasonable commute—none of that matters anymore.

It’s pink.

I book a viewing without a second thought. I buy it the same day.

The children have to change schools. We are now carrying two mortgages with no realistic plan for paying them off. The family falls apart.

Would none of this have happened if I had simply chosen the pink house in the first place?

Where, exactly, did I take the wrong road?

Every time I see a row of identical houses in different colors, this is how far my mind goes.