The Neighbor's Secret
The quiet woman downstairs was hiding something
Below us lived an old woman whose footsteps we almost never heard.
Mrs Tanaka, whose door was always closed, rarely spoke to anyone in the building.
Luka often wondered aloud what she was hiding behind that silent door.
"I want to know why she never says hello," he whispered one evening.
Every night, a soft light appeared under her door, and nobody knew what it meant.
Luka, who loves a , decided that we should quietly .
I asked him whether spying on a neighbour was really a good idea.
"She is a woman who clearly has secrets," he insisted, ignoring my worry.
We met a man whose van stopped outside her flat every single day.
I asked him what he was bringing, but he only smiled and stayed silent.
Luka wondered whether she was a , an artist, or a retired queen.
One rainy night, we finally saw the neighbour whose secret we longed to learn.
She was carrying a huge box whose corners were wrapped in bright paper.
Luka could not stop asking himself where all those parcels were going.
Bravely, he knocked and asked her directly what she did every night.
Mrs Tanaka, whose eyes suddenly filled with warmth, invited us both inside.
Her flat was full of toys that she had been making for sick children.
She explained how she sent gifts to a hospital whose young patients had little.
"I never told anyone," she said, "because that is shown too loudly feels false."
Luka, who is rarely quiet, said nothing at all for a long moment.
I finally understood why her light had glowed so gently every single night.
The woman whom we had treated as a was simply, quietly good.
We asked her whether we could help, and her tired face lit up completely.
From that day, our strange little building held a warm secret that three of us now shared.