She seemed to have once again become the bewildered girl she had been, the girl who understood nothing.
When she opened her eyes, their emptiness made it seem as though she had returned to the days when she was six.
She had forgotten many things.
The doctor told him.
She seemed to have lost the ability to speak once again.
That bottle of poison had nearly killed her, and her survival was already an unprecedented miracle.
But she still seemed to remember him.
She would always cling to his hand in bewilderment, seemingly unwilling to let go, just as he had held her hand decades ago, when he was still little, and brought that ragged girl home from the shore at sunset to their warm little house.
It was as though time had changed nothing.
Everything was just as it had been.
He still lay on the bamboo chair outside the door, beneath the sunshine over the pasture, watching the girl playing among the sheep with a lamb in her arms.
She still woke beside him.
Just as she had all those days and nights ago, when she would hold her cloth doll and quietly stand beside his bed at night, hoping for a hug.
But.
He felt the call of time ever more keenly.
And so, that afternoon, outside the door of their little house, he made her a bamboo whistle and hung it around her neck.
He told her.
If Grandpa ever failed to wake up one day, she should blow that whistle. As long as he heard it, he would surely wake again and keep her company.
She was very obedient.
She nodded with the same innocent bewilderment as back then.
Perhaps this was also the last comfort he could find in his twilight years. He fought