Someone Loved You in Spring

One day, A Zhao and I were walking beneath a tree when he looked up at a bird and asked me, "Do you think people turn into birds if they end up in a tree?"

I didn't understand what he meant. I thought people were always people, so I joked that he'd turn into a birdman.

He said he'd read a book a few days earlier. There was a man in it who lived in a tree for ten years without ever leaving. He said he wanted to try it too.

I thought it over carefully. In the southwest, the trees were either short or tall and spindly. Finding one where a nearly grown man could live would be as hard as reaching the sky.

I told him there wasn't a tree that could give him enough room to survive. He only shook his head and said I didn't understand.

Many years later, A Zhao did move into a tree and become a birdman. He stopped speaking and no longer responded to me. He just swayed quietly in the wind.

One day, I went to see him beneath the tree, but the necklace I'd hung up there was gone. In its place was a bird.

I named it A Zhao, and named the tree A Mu.

"A Zhao is a bird who lives in a tree. A Mu is a tree where a bird lives."

That's what I wrote in the afterword to Birdman.

A Mu x A Zhao

Bad ending / first person / short story

* The male lead dies in an accident.

* This is a novel written to resemble an afterword. The entire story is the afterword to Birdman.

Birdman is a novel written by the female lead, A Mu, using the male lead, A Zhao, as her inspiration. Someone Loved You in Spring is the afterword to Birdman.

Theme: Be happy every day!