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Whispers on Paper
墨書 Inktalez
Emily first asked me to sing a lullaby when she had just turned three.
At that time, our family was still whole. Sarah would help Emily take a bath after dinner, choose a soft pajamas, and then it was my turn to tell stories and sing. Emily wasn’t very fond of bedtime stories, saying they made her “brain all jumbled.” She preferred songs, especially “You Are My Sunshine.”
Our routine was always quite regular. Bath at eight, in bed by eight-thirty, and then I would turn off the lights and sit by her bed, singing that old song in a low, gentle voice. Emily would place her little hands on my knees, close her eyes, as if to confirm that I was still there.
“Daddy, sing it again.”
The first time she said this was after I finished the second round.
“Aren’t you almost asleep?” I chuckled as I ruffled her hair.
“But that one was a little too fast,” she opened her eyes, her tone serious. “Can you sing it again, but slower?”
Of course, I obliged. That night I sang it four times before she softly said, “That’s enough,” and turned to snuggle under the covers.
It wasn’t a big deal. Kids often seek comfort in sounds far more than we realize. At that moment, I even felt a bit pleased—it meant she trusted me and believed my song could chase away the monsters of the night.
But Emily’s “again” quickly became a habit.
Four times turned into five, five into seven. Some nights it even exceeded ten times, and I didn’t pay much attention. After all, every child goes through a clingy phase. That was the excuse I told myself.
Until one night, when I reached the sixteenth round and my voice was starting to grow hoarse, Emily still softly said:
“Daddy, one more time.”
I paused for a moment.
“Aren’t you tired, Emily?”
She shook her head. In the dim light of the night lamp, her eyes sparkled with an almost unreal brightness.
"Not yet, we're not at that number," she said.
"What number?" I asked.
"I don't know, but... it needs to be a few more times."
A slight pang of concern hit me, but I followed her instructions and sang it again. Then again. In total, twenty-two times.
Finally, she drifted off to sleep, satisfied.
After that, I bought a small notebook and began jotting down the date in the upper right corner each day, recording how many times I sang that night. It wasn't because I thought it was important; I simply wanted to see if I was exaggerating.
The numbers kept climbing: on average, I sang fifteen to twenty times each night, sometimes even exceeding thirty.
Sarah couldn't take it anymore.
"Jack, you can't spoil her like this," she whispered during one Sunday breakfast, trying to keep Emily from hearing. "You've been singing for almost an hour; your voice is hoarse."
"What else can I do? She can't sleep."
"That's the problem; she needs to learn to fall asleep on her own." Sarah set down her fork and knife, frowning at me. "This isn't good for her or for you."
I nodded in agreement verbally, but that night I still found myself sitting by the bed and singing twenty-seven times.
That night, Emily was the first to lean her head against my leg, eyes closed as she softly said, "You sing really well, Daddy. They must really like it."
"They?"
"…It's nothing." She turned her head and buried it into her pillow.
I didn't ask much. At that time, I just thought she was speaking casually.
I gradually developed a strange habit: hiding in the conference room during lunch to practice singing. It wasn't for any performance, nor did I want to become a better father. I simply… didn't want to sing incorrectly.
Emily began to correct me: "You held that note too long in the chorus," "The pause between the third and seventh repetitions is different," "You went off-key in the fourteenth round"…
Her tone wasn't sharp; it was calm and precise, like a teacher correcting a student's dictation. She never lost her temper, threatened me, or threw a tantrum. But that quiet attention unsettled me more than any anger could.
She was listening; she was always listening, to every note, every breath. This three-year-old child was like a pitch analyzer.
A few times, I tried to shorten the process. In my imagination, if I just took a firmer stance, Emily would understand.
One night, I only sang ten times.
She didn't say anything; she just sat up and stared at me with wide eyes. It wasn't a pout or an outburst. She simply looked at me as if waiting for something to happen naturally.
I remember that gaze very clearly.
It reminded me of a summer during my childhood when I caught an injured sparrow with my cousin in the storage shed of our countryside home. We placed it in a small box, intending to give it water and care for it for a few days. It lay motionless in the corner, silent, just staring at me. That gaze filled me with an indescribable sense of guilt.
When Emily looked at me, it was that same gaze—but she wasn't injured or in pain. She was just… waiting.
I couldn't hold on any longer.
The eleventh round, the twelfth… until she nodded in satisfaction, pulling the blanket up to her chin and softly saying, "That's much better."
When I left her room, it was already eleven o'clock. Sarah stood at the end of the hallway, arms crossed.
"What are you doing, Jack?" she asked softly.
"I... she seems a bit tired today."
"You know that's not what I meant." Her gaze was not one of questioning, but rather of fear. "Shouldn't we... take her to see a doctor?"
I didn't respond. That night, we didn't say another word to each other.
From the next day on, Sarah no longer participated in the bedtime routine. After dinner, she would retreat to the bedroom early, lock the door, and turn on the white noise machine. From the other end of the house, my low humming melody would still echo over and over again.
I didn't blame her. She just... realized that something was off earlier than I did.
Meanwhile, I remained immersed in a kind of foolish loyalty, convinced that this was merely a temporary phase—just like how one falls many times before learning to walk.
I began to pay attention to the time. The moment I started singing, when Emily closed her eyes, and when the whole room fell silent. I even started to doubt whether Emily was truly asleep. She always stopped talking and moving "immediately" after the last round, like some mechanical device that switched off after a ritual was completed.
Sometimes I would intentionally leave the light on, wanting to see if she was really asleep.
But she always turned over correctly, pulled up the blanket, and closed her eyes right after the last round—her movements so perfect they seemed rehearsed hundreds of times. I had never seen her peek at me or heard her talk in her sleep.
Until one morning when I found a crayon-drawn doodle book in her room.
The cover read "Singing Book," accompanied by a row of crooked little figures. They stood neatly, each with their mouths open as if singing. Behind them was a gray wall with small holes that resembled eyes.
I flipped open the first page, which was filled with dense numbers. As I turned page after page, the numbers became more concentrated, each accompanied by a mark—some were stars, some were circles, and some resembled twisted symbols that reminded me of ancient musical notations.
On the last page was a line of text, curvy and somewhat scrawled, but I could still understand it:
"If you sing it wrong, they will be very angry. You must sing it right and finish singing to be safe."
I closed the doodle book and felt a chill run down my spine. This was not typical doodling for a three-year-old. There were no suns, no animals, no houses—only numbers, walls, and people.
The entire day, that line echoed in my mind: "You must finish singing to be safe."
That night, I sang thirty-four times, and Emily wore a satisfied smile. Then she said,
“Dad, you sang better today than yesterday. They say you’re almost there.”
I forced a smile. “Who are ‘they’?”
She didn’t answer, simply turned over and lay down, as if she had suddenly lost interest in talking.
I lingered by the bedside for a few more minutes, watching the nightlight flicker softly on the wall.
That wall separated us from our neighbor’s house, with a small space in between—a storage room that had been vacant for five years, according to the realtor. No one had lived there since.
Suddenly, I remembered hearing a faint sound one night while I was singing. It wasn’t Emily’s voice; it was another one, soft and mimicking mine.
At the time, I thought it was my echo. But now that I think back… it didn’t sound like my voice at all; it felt more like a child on the other side of the wall singing along with me.
But maybe I was just too tired.
I turned off the light, stood up, and closed the door. That night, there were no sounds from behind the wall.
Only my memory lingered, recalling how during the nineteenth chorus, I heard a barely audible echo from somewhere: “...you’ll never know, dear, how much I love you...”
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