The Three Sages and "I,"

1920, Berlin.
Winter.

The wind blows across the cobblestones.
A gray sky.
Standing alone on the street, 9-year-old Clara holds an empty bread bag in her hand.
She no longer has the energy to stand in the bread line that has continued since morning.
Her mother is in bed, stifling a cough.
Her father returned from the front, but his heart did not.

Even though it is winter, there is no glass in the windows.
Newspapers flutter in the wind, and Clara stares only at the word "reparations" written within them.

"What did we do?"
Clara kept whispering that in her heart.

Suddenly, there are three people there.
I don't know how long they had been there.
But I wasn't afraid.
Each of them had a face that seemed to carry the weight of an era, and no one was angry.

The man with the scruffy beard sat down quietly next to Clara, who was sitting on the floor.

"Even if I don't want to see them, even when I wake up, it's all reality," she replies.

Freud nods slowly and takes an old mirror from his pocket.

"There is a mirror like this inside your heart, too.
It may be shattered, but the fragments are still within you.
Picking them up is what it means to live."

A woman with flames deep in her slightly older eyes stood by the window.
Every time the sound of military boots echoed from afar, Clara's shoulders would flinch.

Rosa said.

"I can't do anything."

"No.
Is there 'anger' inside you? A desire to ask 'why?'"

Clara nodded silently.

"Then you have already started walking.
Not looking away is the first step of a revolution."

He held a book.
But he didn't read a single word.
He simply asked Clara.

Clara whispered, "Always."

"But, you know,
a prisoner writing a story inside a cell can be a blow that breaks the prison itself."

"Who would read it?"

"No one needs to read it for now.
But by you writing it, someone might be able to 'get out.'"

Saying this, Kafka placed a small inkwell and a pen into Clara's hand.

Clara tried to thrust the pen into the ashes of the fireplace.
"Writing doesn't change anything.
It doesn't fill my stomach.
It won't bring back Father from those days."

But, just then.
A small voice came from her mother's bed.

"Clara, could you... read something for me again? The continuation of yesterday's poem."

Her mother had remembered the poem.
Even if she couldn't eat anything, the words were still alive within her.

Morning.

Clara picked up the pen once more.
She wrote these words on a scrap of paper.

"Even on mornings without bread, words can be baked."
"Even on days when it seems no one is there, a voice can resonate."
"I can still write."

The three sages said nothing as they watched Clara walk away.
And as her figure began to fade into the morning mist, Freud said quietly,

"She doesn't understand yet.
But that is fine.
For by writing, she becomes herself."