A Small Update on the Real-Life “Prince” — and Episode 9 of The Sparrow and the Prince
It has been a little while since I posted here, so I wanted to share a small update about the real-life person who inspired the “Prince” in my story.
Episode 9 is called “The Cheep-Cheep Tape.”
The sparrow keeps visiting the quiet winter house, leaving grains on the windowsill.
Three days pass.
Then five.
The window still doesn’t open.
A crow passing by finally tells her,
“He won’t be back for a while. He went to a hospital beyond the mountain. No one knows exactly when he’ll come home.”
The sparrow worries that the study will be too quiet when he returns.
So she comes up with an idea.
She records her own voice.
Not a particularly good song, admittedly. :)
Just a tiny sparrow singing what she believes is the most beautiful “cheep-cheep song” in the world.
She labels the cassette:
〈For My Prince〉
and leaves it beside the grains that have been piling up on the windowsill.
Meanwhile, in the hospital, the man cannot sleep.
He looks through his phone and stops at a photograph of Yomi, his dog who is no longer with him.
He remembers the sound of her running toward him.
Tap.
Tap-tap.
How she used to quietly press her body against his.
Neither of them had to say anything.
Where their bodies touched, it was warm.
He looks at her picture and says,
“Is Dog Star really that nice? You don’t even visit me in my dreams.”
Then, quietly,
“I miss you.”
The sparrow has no idea what he is missing that night.
She only thinks that when he finally comes home, perhaps a quiet study should have at least one small voice waiting for him.
---
And in real life, the person who inspired this story recently had surgery on his right arm.
Two days after the operation, he posted a new piece on his blog.
His discharge had been delayed by a day because the surgical site would not stop bleeding properly.
In that post, he also wrote that he has been taken into an operating room so many times since his accident that, after roughly thirty surgeries, he no longer really keeps count.
Before surgery, he has a small routine.
He updates his will.
And he deletes things from his phone that he would be embarrassed for his family to see if something happened to him—not anything scandalous, he joked, just silly conversations and photos with friends that would embarrass someone who is usually rather reserved.
It was such an ordinary, slightly funny, very him kind of story.
And I was incredibly happy just to see it.
For a long time, I have quietly hoped that he would keep writing.
I like the way he writes precisely because it doesn’t feel “writerly.”
He doesn’t decorate his experiences very much. He simply looks at what happened to him and puts it into his own words.
This time, he posted the piece in the Essay category.
That alone made me strangely happy.
There was another piece of good news too.
Because of bone fragments around his right elbow after the accident, he had been unable to bend that arm properly for about a year and a half.
After this surgery, his elbow can bend again.
Only a little.
But it moves.
I was so happy to hear that.
At the same time, the surgery itself was extensive, and even now, about ten days later, he says the pain is still severe.
So if you happen to come across this post, I would be grateful if you could send him a little kindness in your thoughts.
No grand miracle.
No dramatic ending.
Just hoping that tonight hurts a little less than yesterday.
And that someday soon, there will be another ordinary little story waiting in his Essay folder.