No One Returned to the Village When the War Ended. Except for One.
In a war-devastated village, an old man lies broken until a newborn's cry offers an unexpected spark of life.
This is an English translation of a story originally written in Korean by the
Hwasee.bang community, one sentence at a time.
Each sentence was submitted separately and chosen by community vote before the next one could be written. Nobody knew how it would end.
Read the Korean original →
Each sentence was submitted separately and chosen by community vote before the next one could be written. Nobody knew how it would end.
Read the Korean original →
It was an old man with a hunched back. Prostrate upon the land where everything had ended, he wept.
No one will end me in this hell. The baby is the future, the young man is the present, but I—
The old man harbored no hope whatsoever. Yet his breath still clung to him.
The old man lay powerless on the ground, and only the futile passage of time had flowed until now.
Then a baby grasped the old man's hand and let out its first cry.
This is a finished translation and can't be continued here.
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Hwasee.bang's English edition runs its own separate relay stories that are being written right now — visit the English edition to read or join one.