Once upon a time, in a small village beside an emerald-green lake, there lived a girl named Sai who loved gazing into the water.
This lake was so deep that no one knew what lay at the bottom. Some villagers said strange fish lived there. Others said there were gemstones at the bottom. But no one had ever dived down to see.
One day, Sai sat by the lake and saw a golden glow shimmering deep beneath the surface.
She dove in.
The deeper she went, the stranger it became. The water was no longer cold — it grew warm and bright, and once she was deep enough, she found she could breathe underwater.
The bottom of the lake wasn’t mud and stone at all, but an ancient city of beautifully carved stone buildings, streets paved with smooth stone, and trees with silver leaves.
The people of the city looked human but had translucent skin and blue-green eyes. They looked at Sai with delight.
“You’ve finally come,” an elderly woman said, in a language Sai understood as if she were hearing it in her own mind. “We have waited a hundred years for someone from the world above.”
“Why were you waiting?” Sai asked.
“Because our story will disappear if no one listens,” the old woman said. “Every city, every person, every life needs someone to remember it.”
The people of the city led Sai through the streets, telling her the story of each building, each road. This city had once stood above ground, wealthy and happy, but two hundred years ago a great flood came and the people sank beneath the water. They didn’t die, because they loved their home so deeply they refused to leave.
“But our memories are starting to fade,” the old woman said. “We need someone to carry our story up to the world above.”
Sai listened and remembered everything, then swam back up.
She wrote down everything she had heard in a notebook, and when she grew up, she became a writer who told the story of the underwater city to readers all over the world.
The lake remains there to this day, and the golden light still glimmers in the evening —
a sign that the people of the underwater city are thanking her for remembering them.
Moral: Every life has a story worth hearing. Being a good listener and remembering the stories of others is one of the greatest gifts we can give, because it tells them their life mattered.
