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When Seyeon was in Kindergarten, a sparrow flew straight into her classroom’s window. It had made a loud thud against the glass, dazzled by the lights beyond, its tiny body smushed against the wall before it slid down pitifully towards the ground. The sight effectively derailed her teacher’s lesson on the alphabet and the curious class had filed outside the classroom behind her. They stood in a huddled crowd on the pavement as their teacher bent down, cupping the bird up into her palm. It had been a small thing, just barely fitting into her hand and she held it out, broken wing and beak twitching, out to them.
“Everyone,” she had said after each of them had drank in the sight. Seyeon’s eyes were wider than saucers. “Today I’ll be teaching you a different kind of lesson.”
The kids in her class watched as she set the wing carefully back into place. Throughout the next few weeks, they took turns bringing seeds up to the bird’s beak, approaching slowly until she got close enough to take them out of their palms. They took turns switching out her water bowl and bringing her out into the yard, where she hopped around on the grass for a few moments, her injured wing flapping behind her, before they ushered her back into the room.
Seyeon’s favorite pastime was to lie down in the grass and watch the little sparrow hop. Its wing often flapped once, twice, before it remembered and inevitably crashed back down against the ground.
When Seyeon was in elementary school, a girl tripped and stumbled into her life. The girl had been everything that Seyeon was not–needy and self-conscious, worrying over peoples’ judgements of her before they could even make them, and hopelessly kind-hearted.
Despite their differences, Seyeon had enjoyed taking care of her. One time when Wohn got sick, she took turns bringing up soup and medicine up to her mouth, approaching slowly until she got close enough for her to sip it from the spoon. She took turns with the two towels they had, switching each one out when it grew warm and brought her out to the orphanage’s backyard when the fever dipped low enough for her to walk. Even with her vision hazy, Wohn had smiled as she hid under the shade of a tree and turned her face up towards the sun. Seyeon had stopped believing in a god long ago but sitting under the tree beside her, tracing the curvature of her mouth with her gaze, she had thought she understood a little bit better the salvation that religion praised.
Two months after taking in the sparrow, Seyeon had noticed a date marked in red on their classroom’s calendar. Curious, she had pointed and asked her teacher about it, all while the bird flitted around the opposite end of the room. It had taken recently to swooping from table to table, angling its wings out to glide downwards in a slow, lazy spiral. The teacher had told them to be more careful with the door in recent weeks, checking the bird’s position before cracking it open and shimmying outside.
“That’ll be the day we release her,” the teacher had said, smiling and tapping the date with one painted nail. Seyeon had cocked her head at her, eyes wide.
“Release?” she echoed.
“Yes,” the teacher had replied, smile inching wider. “She’s nearly all healed up now and she’s ready to fly off on her own.”
“But how will we see her?” Seyeon had asked and the teacher’s smile had faltered a bit.
“We won’t be able to. She’ll fly wherever she wants but I promise she’ll be back to visit since you’ve all taken such good care of her.”
The teacher had patted her head and walked away, declaring the conversation finished. But Seyeon, even at the tender age of 5, had already understood what a fickle thing a promise was. So she hid in the bathroom until the sky grew dark and all the other kids and the teacher had left and then she had stolen back into the classroom, ever-so-careful with the door as she slipped inside.
The sparrow didn’t protest as she cupped it in her palms, having grown used to her after weeks and weeks of feeding it. She had pulled its wing out and examined it in the fading sunlight, studied it tip-to-tip. She had loved it and she knew it loved her too and holding that warm feeling tight in her heart, she had taken its wing in hand and–
Seyeon presses a kiss to Wohn’s cheek as she sleeps. In the dark, with the wrinkle lines ironed out of her face, she looks younger, calmer. Seyeon pulls Wohn’s arm out and she goes willingly–even in unconsciousness–and Seyeon examines it in the moonlight, studies her finger-to-shoulder, ugly yellowed bruises written across her skin and all.
She needs Wohn and she knows Wohn needs her too and holding that warm feeling tight in her heart, she takes her hand and places it in her own.