# Chapter 26: The Sparrows, the Secret, and the Grandmother Behind the Glass
Hello everyone, it's me again! How are you all doing? Today I will continue to walk with you and review Chapter 26 of "Honey in The Wound free digital audiobook." This is one of those chapters that begins with a small, almost ordinary moment and then quietly cracks the floor open beneath the characters. So settle in, because this chapter is about secrets, inherited shame, and birds that seem to know far too much.
The chapter opens in the restless noise of a train station. Rinako is trying to free herself from an old woman who has grabbed her arm and is speaking urgently in Korean. Rinako cannot understand her. The station swallows the sounds around them—brakes screeching, hundreds of shoes marching over tiles, overhead announcements blurring into one another. Rinako feels short of breath, as if the muggy air itself is tightening around her throat. Once she confirms the woman is not hurt, she wants only to escape. The old woman finally thanks her in accented Japanese, taps her hand, and lets go. She produces a ticket from her pocket and hobbles through the gate, disappearing into the commuter rush. It is a brief encounter, but it lingers like a splinter under the skin.
At home, it is nearing ten p.m., and Rinako's father is still not back. She flips through exam prep books. The university entrance exam is next year, and her father insists she aim for Waseda, his alma mater. If she does not make significant progress tonight, she will have to endure his usual lecture about academic achievement guaranteeing her future. But Rinako silently wonders: a future of what? A future like his? If success means working eighty hours a week, she does not want to be successful.
Still, the idea of university pulls at her. For the first time, her introduction to teachers would not be heavily mediated by her parents or her behavioral record. She could live on campus, away from home. She could choose any path of study, present herself however she wished, maybe even make friends. It would be easier to blend into a large university than her small private high school. She has learned to stifle comments about her invasive dreams, and for the past two years she has not attracted unwanted notice. She has even considered making light banter with classmates who do not look at her with fear. But she hesitates to risk the peace her anonymity has afforded her.
She turns on the TV, needing noise in the background as she studies, so she does not have to stew in the familiar emptiness of the apartment. A detergent commercial jingles across the screen. Then the phone rings. She mutes the TV and picks up.
A Korean voice speaks on the other end. Rinako apologizes and says she is Japanese and does not speak Korean. The caller laughs nervously and switches into Japanese, asking for a man by a Korean name Rinako does not recognize. When she says he is not there, the caller tries to explain: his mother. Hospital. Seoul. Rinako snaps still and asks who is calling. The voice says church. Friend. Rinako asks for a number so her father can call back. After some confusion, the caller reads out a phone number in stilted Japanese. Rinako writes down the figures and scribbles: Grandmother in hospital. Seoul. Return call.
After hanging up, she stands by the phone, exam books forgotten. Her mind whirls. A grandmother. Her grandmother. She paces the living room late into the night, anxious for her father to come home so she can ask questions, but exhaustion takes her before he returns.
That night, Rinako dreams of the old woman with the pink scar from the station. In the dream, the woman appears as a nurse attending to a bedridden old man wearing a military cap, administering drugs into his IV drip. There is nothing exceptionally odd about the scene—Rinako has witnessed many strange things—but she wakes in a feverish sweat as if she has watched something gruesome unfold. It is still dark outside. She settles her burning body back into the sheets until her heart stops pounding in her ears. The fuzzy outline of her room fades again into nothingness.
Then her father's voice cuts through: "Rinako. Wake up." He hovers at the foot of her bed, dressed for work, briefcase in hand. His shoulders are hunched as he rubs at his left eye. He tells her he is flying to Seoul tomorrow. He has work today, but he will take the first flight on Saturday morning. Rinako asks if he is going to see his mother. He pauses, then confirms it. She is ill. Rinako says she did not know he had a mother. He answers flatly, "We all have mothers."
She shoots him a look of annoyance and asks if she can come. He says no. He is coming back Sunday, so she will only have to take care of herself over the weekend. It will be quick. Rinako protests: it is summer break, and she wants to meet her grandmother. He tells her to stay home and focus on her studies. Then he walks out of her room.
Rinako hears the front door close and looks at the time. It is only 7:05 a.m., but the July heat has already made her nightshirt stick to her back. She sits up and scans the room. On her desk is the pile of exam prep books she bought at her father's insistence. The drawer below hums with the unopened envelope from her mother. Next to her desk is a full trash bin she needs to empty and a pile of clothes she needs to launder. As her burdens encircle her, she is overcome with the urge to flee.
She runs to the living room and strains to slide open its largest window. She sticks her head out of their sixth-floor apartment and waits for her father to emerge from the building's main entrance below. Then she yells into the parking lot: "I want to meet my grandmother!" Her father whips his head up at the noise. He hates when she makes a scene, when she brings attention to herself in any way. Rinako knows the expression skulking over his face all too well. It is the same blend of panic and disappointment that sours his eyes every time he is asked to pick her up from school because she has disturbed the people around her.
"I want to go with you!" Rinako screams louder than she has ever screamed before, startling a host of sparrows to flee from a nearby maple tree. Her father inhales as if to shout something in reply but instead turns back to his commute. He walks briskly and disappears around the corner. As if distance could make the aberration of his daughter go away.
The narrative then shifts into Matsumoto Shun's perspective, and we begin to understand the man behind the cold exterior. Shun had attained top marks in every class, enabling him to land a well-paying job at a prestigious company. He had also managed a respectable marriage and was blessed with a daughter for whom he hoped to provide a better life than his own. At his peak, he was confident of his success, having achieved everything his humble upbringing might have otherwise precluded. But he cannot pinpoint the exact start of his descent, the moment his loud internal assurances that he should be satisfied with his life were overcome by signs to the contrary. His wife left him a few years back, likely at the insistence of her family. They never liked him much and fanned her suspicions that he had been unfaithful. As difficult as it was to accept the stigma of divorce, he found it laughable that anyone thought him capable of an affair when he was averaging fourteen hours a day in the office. In the end, he understood. Shun and his wife spoke almost exclusively in arguments and had long stopped having sex when Rinako was in junior high school. This suspension was as much his preference as his wife's.
Rinako was always a cause for concern. To his great relief, his unusually perceptive daughter received excellent marks in school, just as he had. But unlike him, Rinako had neither a love for school nor the affection of her teachers. Instead, her failure to keep her observations to herself troubled everyone around her. Shun and his wife had desperately tried to teach her to hew to the norm, to be like the other children, though the girl seemed too lost in her own rhythms to understand the importance of social convention. He was proud to have bestowed on her this privileged upbringing: wealth, stability, an attentive family invested in her education. But now, sweating and packed into the subway car, Shun dreads the next time he might run into a neighbor in case they complain about Rinako's shouting that morning or any other behaviors they wished to dissect as parental incompetence.
He grasps one of the car's hanging rings to catch his balance when something zooms above him near the lights. A sparrow has gotten into the compartment and is flitting about over the passengers. Some eye the creature with mild interest while others duck under their briefcases or newspapers as if afraid the bird might land an attack. Shun ignores the winged disruption, hoping his daughter will be calm again when he returns home that evening. He has tried his hardest to give Rinako a normal Japanese childhood, knowing that any hint of foreignness might worsen her alienation in school. It is best if she—or those who might judge her—does not know that Shun is Korean, that he grew up poor and fatherless in the shadow of war, raised by a woman who did not seem to care for much in the world.
The last time he saw his mother, over seven years ago on a brief business trip to Seoul, he had taken her out to eat at the upscale French restaurant in his five-star hotel, hoping in part to impress her with his success, but also to treat her to something special she could not and would not have accessed on her own. She had barely touched her expensive canard à l'orange and only maintained stilted conversation. Shun's ears turned hot when she drew judgmental looks from the other patrons by requesting kimchi and rice with her meal.
Shun pushes down thoughts of his family with practiced ease as he enters the office. The clock reads 7:37 a.m., long before his team will file into their cubicles. He has just placed his briefcase on his desk when a drawling voice interrupts his introspection. His team lead tells him he is a little later than usual and asks him to review the Yonamine numbers again. Shun says accounting had already approved it. The team lead taps on his cubicle wall and reminds him that promotion season is coming up, so he should make sure everything is perfect.
Shun tenses. His well-connected superior is five years his junior, having been promoted twice since Shun's last tepid pay raise three years ago. The rest of the team likes to comment on how grateful they are to be working for such a charming team lead, but Shun's ears often catch a certain tone in the man's voice. He will need caffeine for this meeting. The breakroom's instant coffee will have to do.
As the oldest in his department, Shun keeps his head down and works hard, trying not to give anyone an excuse to reproach him for his age. While the other employees are civil, they do not offer him the same brightness they offer one another, and they will put out their cigarettes to return to work when they see him approaching with his own pack. Shun never declines the rare, trickling invite for after-work drinks in order to preserve the image of sociability, but he prefers not to advance himself through ingratiation. His exemplary work quality could carry him through. Just as it always had.
When he turns the corner, shouts erupt from the breakroom. One of his colleagues backs out into the corridor in a jittery clack of heels. Behind the door comes the screech of furniture legs dragged across the floor. When Shun peers inside, two men are swatting at something at the ceiling. A small brown bird chirps about, evading capture and refusing to go toward the open window. Another sparrow. He wonders if the city needs to do something about the out-of-control sparrow population and helps his coworkers shoo the bird away before making his cup of coffee.
Shun does not leave the office until past ten p.m. The discussion with his team lead had avalanched into rehashings of several closed accounts, none of which had the errors he had been accused of making. Infuriating as it was, the undertaking had at least kept his mind off his mother for most of the day. On his walk home from the station, he recalls what the chatty church office assistant had told him when he returned her call that morning. His mother had collapsed last evening and was rushed to the hospital. The assistant had not been told the exact cause of the ailment, but she urged him to visit, foisting on him the hospital's address and the promise to convey to his mother that Shun would visit on Saturday. He wonders how much older his mother will appear tomorrow, frail and disengaged in a hospital bed. Something coils inside him.
Even as the hour approaches midnight, the July air is pregnant with humidity. Shun opens his bedroom window in the hopes of catching a breeze while he unzips a small duffel bag and stacks some clothes inside. As he reaches for his sock drawer, something grazes the top of his head. He looks up, sees nothing, and slides his hand across the solid tracks of his gelled hair. He continues to pack until he hears a chirp coming from somewhere in the room. He swivels his head around for the source of the offending noise. A sparrow is perched on his nightstand next to his pager and a pile of coins, staring at him.
He rolls up a newspaper and waves it around to usher the bird back outside when another brown blur flies in. Then another. And another. Soon, a stream of sparrows pours inside his bedroom, swirling around in a frenetic, piercing chorus of chirps, knocking things over in loud crashes as they bounce off the walls.
"Father?" Rinako knocks on his door, no doubt startled by the sudden cacophony. She opens the door before he can yell at her to stop. The sparrows fly into the rest of the apartment as Rinako jumps back with a yelp. The birds fly onto the counter, into cups, under the kitchen table. They hop about on the TV and dive into the water in the toilet bowl. Bird droppings streak down all their furniture.
"Father!" Rinako yells from the ground, having fallen in shock. Her eyes widen as she looks to him for an answer. Shun runs around opening the front door and all the windows, trying to give the sparrows as many exits as he can. This only causes more to flap in and join the whirlwind intent on ignoring the way out. He reaches for the phone in a panic to call his landlady and the exterminator, but he cannot leave Rinako in the midst of this freak infestation. Shun will just have to take his daughter to Seoul with him while the pests are dealt with.
The chapter then jumps to Seoul, Republic of Korea, 1991. Foreboding trickles down Rinako's back as she follows her father out of the hospital elevator. She has not felt like herself since learning about her grandmother, and the morning's flight to Seoul has worsened the tightness in her lungs. As dizziness swirls behind her eyes, she takes a deep breath and blinks slowly to refocus her vision. This grants no relief. The harsh hospital lights only unsettle her further, bringing to mind the scarred subway woman and the dream in which she had appeared as a nurse.
It is surreal to watch her father speak with the medical staff so casually in Korean, as if it were not something he had kept from her for her entire life. Rinako observes these unfamiliar shifts in his mouth with some curiosity at first, but when the inscrutable discussion stretches on, she slips away from the floor's reception desk hoping to find a washroom and splash some water on her overheated face. Down the hallway, she notes with surprise that the Korean hospital she had pictured to be somewhat shabby is in reality well equipped and modern. Her roaming gaze continues to search for a bathroom sign until it stops at an open door that draws her attention.
Through it is a room that houses six occupied beds, in two rows of three. Rinako shuffles forward until her eyes lock with those of an old woman at the corner bed by the window. She has a round face, one Rinako feels she has seen somewhere before. Familiar cold eyes, tight lips that conserve their words. They stand regarding each other in silence when her father hurries in from behind her toward the woman's bed, speaking in rapid Korean. He gestures at Rinako to come closer. The old woman does not reply to what sounds like a scolding from her son and instead stares at his daughter. And in that stare, the chapter leaves us hanging, with generations of secrets pressing against the silence.
## Reader's Impressions & Star Rating
This chapter absolutely gripped me. It moves from a strange station encounter to a phone call, then to a swarm of sparrows, and finally to the stark, silent meeting in a Seoul hospital. The atmosphere is thick with dread, but it is also deeply human. Rinako's loneliness and her father's shame are both so painful to witness. The sparrows feel like more than a bizarre event—they seem to be omens, warnings, or maybe the return of something long buried. The father's hidden Korean identity and his fractured relationship with his mother add layers that make every small gesture feel heavy. I also loved how the chapter balances Rinako's desire for freedom with Shun's desperate need for control and respectability. The ending, where the grandmother simply stares at Rinako without speaking, is chilling and perfect. It promises that the next chapter will be a confrontation, not just between family members, but between truths that have been denied for decades.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.8 / 5 Stars
## Next Chapter Prediction
The next chapter will almost certainly take place inside that hospital room, where Rinako finally meets her grandmother face to face. The old woman's cold stare suggests she is not welcoming, and I suspect she may recognize something in Rinako—perhaps the same stubbornness, the same otherness, or even the same haunting dreams. Shun will be forced to confront the life he abandoned and the mother he left behind. We may also learn what caused the grandmother's collapse and whether the scarred woman from the station and Rinako's dream is somehow connected to the family's past. The sparrows may return as a sign of unrest, and Rinako may finally demand the truth about her father's Korean identity. Most of all, I think this hospital visit will crack open the secret that has kept Rinako and her father strangers to each other.
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