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The little sparrow waited for the young monk every day, spring after spring, winter after winter, until one summer day, after three long winters, the young monk returned to Fahua Temple.
The boy, who had been three or four years old, had grown much taller, and his skin, far from having whitened at the temple, bore numerous scars.
The monks at Fahua Temple asked him what had happened, and he said that no one at home wanted him.
The couple who took him in were indeed his relatives, who had adopted him because they had been unable to have children of their own; learning of a distant relative who was an orphan, they decided to take him in.
However, in the second year after his adoption, the wife became pregnant.
After the pregnancy, the couple began to resent him, making him do household chores and no longer treating him as kindly as before, when they had doted on him like a treasure.
Later, when the wife gave birth in the hospital, she died in childbirth along with the baby.
