The Bird That Brought Them Back
At the airport.
People streamed busily through the departure gate, and among them, the back of a tall man came into view.
It was Kim Si-woo.
What drew the eye most was the special case he held carefully in both arms.
Inside that transport case for artifacts was the Frere Rocher Singing Bird Box.
Watching it on TV, Miyako muttered to herself, "He’s handsome."
The other friends, who had been crying, burst out laughing at that.
"Miyako, there goes the real you!"
Miyako’s face went red.
She had already blurted out what she really thought without meaning to, and there was no pretending otherwise now.
"He is handsome."
"Yeah. Really amazing."
Then the screen changed.
Clouds drifted past outside the airplane window.
Appraiser Kim Si-woo was heading to London. In his arms lay the Singing Bird Box, which had gone without an owner for more than eighty years.
England, London.
Appraiser Kim Si-woo arrived at a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of London. Someone was waiting for him there.
The door opened.
A woman in her early fifties stood there.
Short brown hair, gentle eyes.
Sophia Howard.
Anna’s granddaughter.
"Mr. Kim?"
"Yes. I’m Kim Si-woo."
"...You really came."
Sophia knew they had come after enduring a great deal of hardship.
They were the people who had tracked down her grandmother’s forgotten past.
That was why she had agreed to the documentary filming.
The two sat facing each other in the garden. Warm steam rose from the Earl Grey tea Sophia had brought out. Sophia began speaking about her grandmother’s condition.
"Her dementia has progressed a great deal. There are many days when she doesn’t even recognize me."
Sophia spoke quietly.
"She can hardly speak anymore. She has no strength in her body, either. She sits in a wheelchair all day long... and she hardly makes eye contact."
Kim Si-woo’s expression grew heavy.
"But there’s something strange. Sometimes... really only sometimes, there are moments when she clears up. At most, for a few minutes."
Sophia’s eyes turned red.
"And during those moments, she always says the same thing."
"What does she say?"
"A bird. That a bird sang. That the bird her father gave her sang."
Sophia wiped away her tears.
"I thought it was just the dementia. That she was seeing things. But when I got your message, I realized something. My grandmother has never told us stories from her childhood."
...
There was nothing he could say to comfort her.
"Would you... like to meet her?"
Kim Si-woo gave a heavy nod.
Sophia’s son pushed the wheelchair out.
Along the garden path.
Si-woo rose from his seat.
A person sat in the wheelchair.
White hair, thoroughly gone to gray.
A face carved deep with wrinkles.
A warm blanket rested over her knees.
Anna.
Her eyes were fixed somewhere far away.
Kim Si-woo knelt in front of Anna and brought himself to her eye level.
"Grandma Anna. My name is Kim Si-woo. I came from Korea."
Anna did not respond.
"Today is... one of her bad days. She hasn’t said a word since this morning."
Sophia whispered softly.
Kim Si-woo took out the Singing Bird Box and lifted it with both hands.
He began winding the mechanism.
Then a small bird rose up.
Golden feathers.
Ruby eyes.
The bird began to sing.
A clear, beautiful sound.
The sound of a promise echoing once more after more than eighty years.
Only then did something in Grandma Anna’s gaze change, and she slowly stretched out her thin arm.
Si-woo carefully placed the bird box into Anna’s arms.
* * *
Miyako, watching that scene, covered her mouth with both hands.
On the screen.
The moment the Singing Bird Box began to play.
Anna’s eyes changed.
Light flickered in pupils that had been empty just moments before.
Her head turned, very slowly, toward the source of the sound.
A hand as thin as bone lifted from beneath the blanket.
Her trembling fingers reached toward the bird.
The movement was slow, but it held everyone’s attention.
Watching it, Miyako stopped breathing.
Her fingertips touched the surface of the golden case.
The cameraman’s hand shook, causing the frame to quiver slightly.
Anna’s two hands enclosed the box.
And the bird kept singing.
Anna’s expression said it all.
She remembered this bird’s song.
When the Singing Bird’s song ended, Grandma Anna seemed to have used up the last of her strength and soon drifted off to sleep.
And yet she looked so peaceful.
No sound effects had been added in the documentary footage.
Anyone else might have thought the broadcast had glitched.
But the people watching knew.
That Grandma Anna was more deeply at peace than she had been at any other time.
The screen slowly darkened.
A piano melody began to flow softly.
- He waited for his family in front of New York’s Empire State Building for twelve years.
- Without missing a single day, he waited in rain or snow, always and forever.
- She passed away one month before the end of the war at Stanley Internment Camp in Hong Kong.
- Because Maria worked as a nurse in the camp and cared for so many people, many lives were saved there.
- Lost her memories to the trauma of war, but at last met the Singing Bird Box she had longed to find.
A warm piano line began to carry through the silence.
The screen went completely dark.
The ending credits rolled.
- The original letter from Joseph Weiss is currently housed at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.
- The Frere Rocher Singing Bird Box has been entrusted to Anna Weiss.
The credits climbed all the way to the end.
And then.
The screen brightened again.
After the credits.
There was an epilogue scene.
It was Sophia’s mansion garden.
The world was utterly still.
Anna sat in her wheelchair.
She held the Singing Bird Box in her lap.
Beside her, her granddaughter Sophia was reading Joseph’s remaining letters aloud.
The wind brushed softly through Anna’s white hair.
A gentle breeze was blowing.
The scent of the rose garden drifted along with it.
Pale pink petals trembled faintly.
Sophia began to read.
"Do you remember when we ate the lunch Maria packed on the park bench when we were little? It was delicious. A sandwich with ham tucked into the bread. Anna, you used to tear off the crust and throw it to the pigeons. Maria told you not to toy with food like that. Do you remember what you said? ‘The pigeons are hungry too.’ And then you stole Father’s sandwich as well and tossed it away. Father went hungry at lunch that day. But it was fine. Because you were laughing. Just hearing your laughter was enough to fill my stomach."
Sophia paused to catch her breath.
"It snowed for the first time in New York today. Every time that happens, I think of you, Anna. You loved the snow. When it snowed, you’d run around the garden with your mouth open, trying to catch snowflakes on your tongue. When Maria shouted that you’d catch a cold, you would laugh and laugh. I miss those days."
She kept reading letter after letter.
Sophia tried her best to hide what she was feeling.
If her emotions slipped just a little, she was sure she would start crying.
Grandma Anna, listening, looked outwardly as though nothing was happening.
But.
A very faint, very peaceful smile rested on her lips.
At the same time, the screen slowly went dark.
In Yu’s living room.
No one said anything.
Hina was crying.
She was trying to muffle it, but she couldn’t hide the trembling in her shoulders.
Sakura had both hands over her face.
Tears leaked through her fingers.
Yu sat there in a daze, as if the afterglow still hadn’t faded.
Miyako had buried her forehead in her arms and was sobbing into them.
"Huuuuh... huuoooo..."
She cried for a long time.
Miyako, still folded over, spoke.
"At the end... when Grandma Anna... listens to her father’s letter, did her memories come back?"
"They must have. There’s no way she would’ve smiled like that while focusing so hard if she hadn’t remembered."
* * *
Si-woo sat on the sofa, staring blankly at the TV screen.
When all the footage ended,
it returned to Nutflix’s opening screen.
The final scene.
Sophia reading Joseph’s letter beside Anna.
He had known nothing about that scene at all.
It had been filmed after he left London.
The letter Joseph had been unable to send for so long.
It had finally reached Anna through her granddaughter’s voice.
The bridge of his nose stung.
Before he knew it, tears had begun to fall.
He wiped them away with the back of his hand.
They kept coming anyway.
Then he felt a soft weight on his lap.
It was Kkamangi.
The black ball of fur had climbed up there at some point.
Kkamangi licked the back of his hand where the tears had landed.
As if telling him not to cry.
"Thanks, Kkamang."
Sniffling, Si-woo stroked Kkamangi’s head.
Kkamangi purred and rubbed its head against his hand.
Then it looked up at him with round eyes, as if asking whether he was all right.
When he slowly ran a hand down Kkamangi’s back, he finally began to calm down.
Then he heard loud sobbing from beside him.
His mother had buried her face in a cushion.
Her shoulders were shaking.
"Huuuuk!"
She had wiped away tears when they watched the previous episode together, too.
But not like this.
It was the first time he had ever seen his mother, who always seemed so formidable, lying face-down on a cushion and bawling her eyes out.
Si-woo reached out and patted her back.
"Mom, are you okay?"
His mother lifted her head.
Her eyes were swollen shut.
"Your father waited twelve years and wrote those letters... and then someone saw them decades later."
She burst into tears again.
"And her granddaughter read them for her... while Grandma Anna was listening..."
Si-woo kept rubbing her back.
His mother looked at him with swollen eyes.
"...Si-woo."
"Yes?"
"You did well. You found it. I’m so proud of you."
Kkamangi climbed onto his mother’s lap.
She sniffled and stroked Kkamangi’s back.
"I think we were right to film with Nutflix."
His mother nodded.
"Yes. The world needs to know stories like this."
She looked at the TV screen.
"When the next season comes out, let’s watch it together too."
"Sure."
Only Kkamangi’s purring remained in the living room.
* * *
Brrr. Brrr-brrr-
The smartphone left on the sofa vibrated.
It was his secondary phone.
A number reserved only for people very close to him, or very important ones.
He kept a separate number for work.
Not many people knew this one.
The vibration didn’t stop.
In the end, he picked up the phone.
He stared at the screen in a daze.
"...What is this?"
Notifications were pouring in.
Texts, K-talk, missed calls...
They kept coming without end.
Representative Shin A-young, Representative Kim Young-soo, Reporter Han Ji-yeon, Advisor Jeong Hae-won, Executive Director Yang Dong-seok...
Everyone he had ever formed ties with had reached out.
And then.
Even Chairman Lee Jae-yong had sent a text.
Si-woo’s eyes widened.
He opened it.
[Appraiser Kim Si-woo. I have just watched Singing Bird. It was a truly moving documentary. I shed quite a few tears after a long time. Thank you, Appraiser Kim Si-woo, for allowing me to see such a moving documentary. I would like to treat you to a meal someday. Please contact me when it is convenient for you.]
He stared blankly at the screen.
Chairman Lee Jae-yong wanted to buy him a meal?
"...I didn’t see that coming."
Si-woo read the messages one by one.
They kept pouring in.
They were arriving faster than he could read them.
On a whim, he opened Byeolstagram.
It took a while for the screen to load.
Too many DM notifications made the app lag.
His follower count caught his eye.
"...?"
Si-woo rubbed his eyes and looked again.
Fifteen million.
"...Fifteen million?"
When he had checked before the documentary aired, it had been around 8.5 million.
Now it was 15 million.
Hundreds of thousands had been added in just a few hours.
The number kept climbing in real time.
That’s insane.
But there was no time to be surprised.
For now, he would have to spend his time replying to each message one by one.