The Reply

1.

I’ve picked up a pen to write to you for the first time in a while.

But now that I have, I’m not sure what to say.

When I was your age, I couldn’t go to bed without writing a page or two in my diary.

My entries have grown shorter over the years, and now I just make a quick note of each day, like what I ate, what customers I met. I’m essentially jotting down proof that today was unlike yesterday, and will have been unlike tomorrow. You see, I’m afraid if I don’t record them my days will merge into one, a single lump that might disappear all at once. This is a feeling I started having in prison. That was when I wrote more than ever.

I wonder where you are and how you’re doing. Sometimes I wish I were still in your life, but I’m relieved we parted when you were young enough to forget me completely. You let me go at an age when scars could heal quickly, when you could cast all the hours you’d lived into oblivion.

x
I have no memory of my mom, who hasn’t been in my life since I was four. I have only my big sister’s stories to go on, for trying to imagine the person my mother was and the time we had with her. As a child, my sister held on to the hope that one day we’d be reunited. But her hope was crushed and crushed again until she spoke of our mother as if she’d never existed. I don’t remember anything about her, my sister said. That was the first time I recognized a lie. It hurt to listen to my sister’s lies, but part of me was honestly jealous of her memories of our mother, of the three more years she’d had with her.

For a very long time, I resented our mother for leaving us. There was even a phase when I cursed her for being the most shameless, heartless, depraved human being alive. Pinning all my problems on my mother must have been my way of making sense of my life. She was an easy explanation for everything that had happened to me.

Even in prison, I couldn’t shake off my hatred. I struggled with those feelings for many years. Only after I’d grown older than my mother was when she left us was I able to see her as a person. She was just twenty-seven when she took off, you know? She wanted a new life. She wanted to be safe.

When I think of her now, I see her as a girl much younger than me, someone awfully young, sad, and isolated, with no one to rely on, no one to take her side.

After she left, my sister and I were raised by our great-aunt. Dad worked all across the country, leaving for anywhere from a few days to an entire year. My sister and I liked our father. Although we were hesitant to express our affection openly, we would always play and joke within his earshot, often checking to see if he was listening or watching. We must have wanted him to think we were funny, lovable children. We craved even the tiniest hint of his interest. We’d double up in exaggerated giggles or pretend to be having a ball of a time while spying on his reactions. His rare chortle would make our hearts balloon.

Great-Aunt said my sister took after Dad and I after Mom. Anyone could see that my sister was Dad’s daughter: it wasn’t simply that her features resembled his—she looked like Dad in a little girl’s body. When we played, acting as if we weren’t hyperconscious of our father, I could sense how my sister wanted to appear to him. How she wanted to be seen as a good older sister who looked after her younger sibling, as a bright, cheerful child who liked to laugh. How badly she wanted Dad to love her.

Dad was fair in his indifference to us. Yet my sister often said I was his favorite. I understood why she thought that. Because it was always her he singled out and hurt.

One day my sister was singing a song, doing her best impression of a diva. I knew she was trying to catch Dad’s attention. I was enjoying her singing when Dad told her she was being vulgar. Where’d she learn to act so vulgar?

She was only ten at the time. I didn’t know what vulgar meant, and I doubt she did either. But by Dad’s tone and the look on his face, we understood the word in our hearts.

There was also the day we played Miss Korea. Standing on our tippy-toes, we struck poses, placing both hands on our hips. Then we crowned each other with paper tiaras. Dad called my sister’s name. He sounded angry. Wagging his finger at her, he said, “Do you even know what you’re doing? Look at yourself, aren’t you embarrassed? Is that who you want to be—an expensive whore?”

Her cheeks flushed scarlet. Did she know what whore meant? Even if she didn’t, she must’ve felt what our father meant by it.

I was just eight at the time, but I’d already heard the word. I was coming home from the bathhouse with Great-Aunt when we saw young women smoking in an alley. I stared, never having seen young women smoke before, but Great-Aunt told me to look away, cigarettes were only for whores.

I was a child who enjoyed asking about new words, but I instinctively knew not to ask about this one. I didn’t want to confront the strange, scary emotion that surged inside me the moment she said it. You see, I could not help thinking that the word whore, while very far away from me, did in fact concern me. And when Dad asked my sister if she wanted to be an expensive whore, I sensed the word taking one step closer. My existence, in its association with that word, suddenly felt uncomfortable and unpleasant. It was only later that I learned the name of that emotion. Shame.

So yes, Dad was pointedly cruel only to my sister. But that didn’t mean I was unscarred. I’d never thought of myself as separate from my sister. When Dad punished her, he was also punishing me. My sister stood for both of us.

I remember the look Dad would give her. The dissatisfaction on his face. Sometimes he gave her an odd sneer, which felt like a thin blade peeling layers off my heart. Yet my sister and I believed for a long time that his attitude would change if only we changed ourselves. So we went on carefully reading his moods, desperate to win his affections.

Great-Aunt liked to remind us there was no one like our father. He was traveling around the country to put food on the table, she said, and never even beat us when we made trouble. We ought to be grateful. And in our young hearts, we believed her. Dad, too, probably thought he was treating us with the utmost generosity a father could give.

At some point, my sister and I stopped trying to impress him. We realized our efforts were pointless and would only come back to wound us. Whenever he came home, we stopped chatting and clamped our mouths shut. We were always alert around him.

I know now that to Dad we were unwanted baggage. Before I accepted that fact—and even after I accepted it—I cared more about what other people wanted from me than what I wanted for myself, bending over backwards to be likeable without knowing what I liked. Perhaps from growing up with constant negative feedback about myself, I had the weird conviction that I could never be worthy of affection, that I deserved contempt. And that thought only made me work harder to please and accommodate. I let people make my decisions for me. My greatest fear was disappointing people. I never, ever wanted to be anyone’s burden.

Once she entered high school, my sister began to work part-time after school at a pizza joint. It was on a bustling street a twenty-minute bus ride from home. At times I’d spy from a distance, watching her work in her white blouse and black skirt. She chatted animatedly with her coworkers and looked so cheerful handing out menus and taking orders. In my eyes, my sister was already an adult.

I remember the nights she’d bring home pizza to share with me and Great-Aunt. With her paychecks, she bought me bus tickets and gave me pocket money, telling me to treat myself to pastries from the school snack shop. Every morning she packed my lunch along with hers.

The following winter, when I tried on the goose-down parka she’d bought me, I discovered I wasn’t actually sensitive to cold. I just hadn’t owned warm enough clothes.

x
When did my sister start seeing him? The man always dropped her off at the main street near the alley our house was on. He drove a black sedan—there was nothing special about it, but I could easily recognize it from its simple license plate number. I stumbled on them one day on my way home: my sister was just getting out of the front passenger seat; the man was peering up at her from the driver’s seat. That was my first glimpse of him.

My sister seemed to panic to find me there. Unprompted, she said she’d run into the school’s military-training teacher, who’d offered her a ride. I said nothing the entire way home, my gaze fixed on the ground.

“Why are you being weird?” she asked back home.

“It’s nothing.” I went into the bathroom and stayed there for a long time. My head felt hot and my mouth was dry. I splashed cold water on my face and drank several handfuls from the tap. But the heat wouldn’t go away.

My sister wasn’t good at hiding things. I saw through every lie she attempted. I was shrewder than her, quicker at catching subtle cues. Sitting numbly on the toilet, I recalled the face of the man I’d seen in the car. He was at least in his thirties, even by the most generous estimate. On many other occasions after that, I witnessed the same car pulling up in the same place and my sister getting out of it.

Now that I’m an adult, seeing uniformed schoolgirls on the street fills me with a sense of astonishment: how can anyone use such children? They’re just kids who need protection. But the teenage me didn’t think so. I thought, How slutty do you have to be to hook up with your teacher? Are you insane? Gross. I always blamed the girl. I thought only the dumb, reckless, senseless ones got up to that sort of trouble. And my sister could not be that girl. She simply couldn’t, she wasn’t. Despite my best efforts to convince myself, my sister was clumsy at covering up her tracks. She enraged me. You could at least hide it better!

Back when she’d started high school, my sister used to tell me she would go to university on a scholarship and become a personal banker. She was good at math and meticulous by nature, so I had no doubt she’d work for a bank. Then came the winter before her final year of high school. When I wistfully said she’d be a university student the very next year, she shook her head.

“It’s a waste of time,” she said.

“No, you’ll go to university and work for the bank, Unnie,” I said, suppressing a surge of dread.

My sister replied, “You think just anybody can become a personal banker? I’m not smart enough.”

“But you are smart, Unnie.” I felt my heart melt and blister.

After high school, my sister got a job selling clothes in a department store, and I started my first year at the same school. I grew a lot that winter. I even outgrew her, and my sister was on the tall side. I wanted to find a part-time job, like she’d done, but my sister talked me out of it. She said I could always earn money later, that she wanted me to enjoy school without having to worry about money. I lived off the allowance she gave me, constantly feeling indebted.

I knew she was still seeing that man. He transferred to another school after her graduation, but he wasn’t hard to find. He was fifteen years older than my sister. He had a solid reputation and was said to be kind to his students. I was confused, because stories about him were always like that. Clean.

My sister got pregnant when she turned twenty-one. I remember Dad’s expression when she told him. I knew this was the way you’d turn out, his faint smile seemed to say. Would it have been better if he’d yelled at her instead? My sister said the man promised to take responsibility and marry her. Great-Aunt slapped my sister’s back, shrieking that the girl had no shame—Oh, how was she going to hold her head up in this neighborhood now? Then she asked if the man had really made those promises. Only when my sister answered with certainty that, yes, they were getting married, did Great-Aunt seem to relax.

Not long after, the man paid us a visit. I still remember how he looked in the fluorescent light of our living room. He was wearing a gray sweater with a stretched-out neckline and beige cotton slacks, which hung loose over his thin thighs. Having just come home from school, I took off my shoes and stepped into the living room, but before I could even say hello, he asked, “Did you have your skirt taken up?”

It was the first thing he said to me.

“No, she just keeps growing,” my sister answered for me. My uniform skirt, which my sister had recently bought me, came down to my knees. His gaze rested on my legs. Even as I quickly bowed and went toward my bedroom to get changed, his eyes never left me.

He scanned every nook and cranny of our home—peering at the furniture, the wallpaper, the window frames—and even scrutinized our family. The way he cracked jokes and barked out laughs, he didn’t seem nervous at all around Dad and Great-Aunt. Whenever the subject of marriage came up, he steered the conversation away. Noticing his behavior, Great-Aunt pushed for the couple to register their marriage before the wedding.

“Oh, all right,” he reluctantly agreed. He proceeded to say—more than once—that my sister was walking into the marriage empty-handed, stressing that few men would take on a wife with no college diploma and no savings. Dad and Great-Aunt sat listening to those words without comment. How do you think I felt watching them? Struggling to hide my outrage, all I could do was inhale and exhale, not even understanding why I was so angry.

When he left, I withdrew straight to my room. My sister followed me. Casting me a searching gaze, she asked, “Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?” I replied, forcing a smile.

In an almost imploring tone, she said, “Seonsaengnim is good to me.”

I didn’t want to see her face as she said it, so I pretended to organize my drawer.

“No one’s ever been this nice to me,” she said, and left the room.

The instant I heard her voice, I understood that there wasn’t an ounce of dishonesty in her statement. For all my reliance on my sister, I’d been no comfort to her. I never filled even a small hole in her hungry heart. But then again, how much could I do as an eighteen-year-old? I had no idea how to help my sister, even as I felt her pain in my bones . . . I’d never felt so powerless.

When the parents met formally for the first time, his mother said that my sister was holding her son back, and while there was nothing to be done with the girl pregnant, this was a most regrettable situation. As his mother went on expressing open displeasure with my sister, he just sat next to her, nodding along.

Until then, I’d lived my life repressing and enduring whatever was thrown at me; I’d become adept at masking my emotions. Endurance was my way of survival. I knew fighting back would put no one but myself in trouble; I also believed that by not reacting, not even acknowledging provocations, I was guarding my pride. I learned that lesson from my sister—to grin and bear it.

And yet I couldn’t bear watching my sister being humiliated. If I’m being honest, I was angry at my sister for foolishly putting herself in that situation. No matter how much I told myself that no, I couldn’t blame my sister, I ended up resenting her every time I thought that.

Leading up to the wedding, my sister handed me a large sum of money. She told me it was my college enrollment fee, the tuition for my first semester, and money to last through my final year of high school. I suspect it was her entire savings. Knowing how hard she’d worked to save that money, I hesitated to accept it; but I wasn’t sure I could solve my future without it. I told her I’d get a job right after high school and pay her back. She said I didn’t have to repay her, but if I really wanted to, it should wait till I finished university.

After the wedding, my sister moved into his place, which was near ours. It was a cramped apartment with a living room, a small bedroom, and a larger bedroom. For as long as I could remember, I’d fallen asleep next to my sister every night on the same floor mattress. Brushing my hands over her side of the blanket, I gradually learned to accept her absence.

We didn’t meet too often. Although she lived a stone’s throw away, I was reluctant to visit when he was home. There was a sofa in her living room, and I remember him bending down to check the space beneath it, telling my sister to wipe that part again and make it as shiny as the rest of the floor. My sister made to pick up the mop, clutching her heavy, pregnant belly. But I stopped her and mopped the floor instead. From that day on, every time I visited, I did the cleaning that would be too strenuous on her body.

My sister’s house was always cold. Even in the dead of winter he insisted on keeping the heating off, so my sister had to bundle up in a parka, wool hat, and two layers of socks. She was only allowed to turn the boiler on when he got home from work. How do you think I felt after she told me that? The thought of talking to him or even running into him repulsed me, but one day I waited until he came home and told him: it was cruel not to let a pregnant woman turn on the heating. He shrugged, brushed past me as if he couldn’t see me, and flipped on the TV. He glanced over and said, “Cheoje, did you get your skirt taken up again?”

Before I could help it, I glanced down at my school uniform. I’d grown a few inches again, so my skirt was above the knee line. He turned nonchalantly back to his TV. Trembling with rage, I repeated what I’d said. It was wrong of him to keep the boiler off, my sister was pregnant.

He continued to watch TV without stirring in the slightest.

“Hyeongbu, are you listening to me?” I took a step toward him, but my sister intervened.

“That’s enough, you go on home.”

Her eyes were pleading with me. She was afraid. Seeing those eyes, I understood that my efforts were only making things more difficult. I left as she wished.

x
A few days later, my sister took me to an udon restaurant. I said nothing about our last exchange and neither did she. We made conversation, skirting around any topics even remotely related to that day. I finished my bowl of udon, and as I was taking my last sip of water, my sister said abruptly, “Your hyeongbu’s a good man.”

Avoiding her eyes, I said we should get going.

“He doesn’t earn a lot as a teacher, and I’m no good at anything, so he’s just trying to be frugal. But he has a decent heart.” She said this as though it was very important I believe her.

“If you say so, Unnie,” I said sarcastically.

“Don’t you think you’re being too harsh on him?”

“Unnie, that guy is—”

“That is not how you address your elder.”

I swallowed what I longed to say. It was clear she wouldn’t listen anyway. It would just sour our relationship.

“Forget it, Unnie. I’m tired. I’ll head home now. You should, too.”

I fished out two handwarmers from my pocket and gave them to my sister. Then I ran back home. If I stayed any longer, I was scared I might blurt out something hurtful. But that was the first of many times when my sister defended him. Your hyeongbu is a good man. Deep down he’s a kind soul. He’s good to me. I’d simply nod, fighting down my explosive feelings, but I couldn’t look her in the face.

x
2.

You were born on a clear, warm day in May. With your full head of hair, it wasn’t hard to spot you among the newborns in the hospital nursery. You slept and slept. What dreams is she dreaming? I wondered as I stood glued to the glass. I didn’t get emotional, but somehow I couldn’t turn away.

Soon you were heading home with my sister and crying nonstop. How could such a tiny body make so much noise? Watching you, I grew curious about many things.

When you twitched and smiled in your sleep, I wondered what world you were busily building inside you, and thought, whatever world that was, it had to be protected. What power were you drawing on to grow each day? How could a teeny thing like you hold up your neck, or flip yourself over? How were translucent little teeth sprouting from your gums? When you grabbed hold of my finger with that soft hand of yours, I knew I’d fallen in love.

Sometimes I think what it might’ve been like to have my own child. My emotions would’ve been fundamentally different, I suppose. I may have made an irritable, difficult mother. I’m not sure I could’ve handled being responsible for another person’s life for years—perhaps until my dying day—or glimpsing in my child the parts of me I don’t like. No matter how much I loved my child, the relationship would have been a heavy, complicated one.

I was not responsible for you, nor was it my job to wake up every two hours and bottle-feed you, soothe your crying, change your diapers, or to carry you on my back to the hospital if you were running a fever. All I had to do was to cook my sister a meal, help with chores that had piled up, and just watch you. So our relationship was very simple. I liked you and you liked me. We were glad to see each other and sorry to part. For the first time, I began to go frequently to my sister’s house.

x
The next year, I enrolled in the hotel culinary arts program of a university I could reach by subway. Having kept house from a young age, I thought I knew how to use a knife, but I had to relearn how to even grip one properly. Still, I did well in my classes. At home, I made the dishes I learned, and ate them with Great-Aunt, sometimes bringing a portion to my sister’s. I squeezed all of my classes into four days, Monday to Thursday, so I could work part-time for the rest of the week. I handled vegetables and cleaned for a buffet-catering service, a job I proved so good at that I had the approval of all my coworkers.

Unlike my sister, I’m built on the bigger side and have good stamina. These qualities were useful in making money. Not only was I not outpowered by any of my peers, but I could also execute delicate handiwork flawlessly.

Then your first birthday came around. Your doljanchi celebration was held in his hometown, which I’ll call Y. After taking the intercity bus to Y, Great-Aunt and I walked to the spacious buffet hall. There were so many round tables, yet his relatives managed to fill them all. We went over to say hello to him and his mother. They greeted us with a degree of courtesy, which I remember being strangely moved by—even though it was empty pleasantries like Thank you for coming, It’s good to see you.

My sister was wearing a cream-colored wool dress and heavy makeup. She looked thinner. She was sweating in her thick dress. As for you, you were in a white dress and tights, wailing in your mother’s arms. I sat watching you and my sister from a table in a corner, thinking you’d never seemed so far away.

The doljanchi began, and finally you stopped crying, but my sister failed to keep a smile on her face. At my table, his relatives were casually throwing out comments like: What kind of mother looks so glum on her child’s birthday? The best women are the unfussy ones, mind you. It’s bad luck for a woman to be so scrawny. She’s got bandy legs . . .

Yes. I had to grin-and-bear through that, too. For the doljabi part of the ceremony, you reached out to grab the hank of silk thread, the symbol of longevity. Only then did I see a natural smile on my sister’s face. You will have a long, healthy life, I thought. Nothing was more important than that.

When the festivities ended, I approached my sister as she was talking with her mother-in-law. I said I’d get going now and thanked her mother-in-law politely for the lovely party. When I’d turned around and taken perhaps one step, the mother-in-law said loudly, “Why’d your sister get so fat?”

I pretended not to have heard and slipped away. Twenty-year-old me hadn’t gotten a taste of real malice until then. My sister’s mother-in-law seemed to keep talking about me, but luckily I didn’t catch any of it, having walked away as fast as I could. A part of me hoped my sister would run after me. Maybe she’d at least offer something like, I was worried you might be upset. But when I reached the exit and looked back, they were still chatting as if nothing had happened. As if she couldn’t see me.

x
My grades from the first semester were good, winning me a half-tuition scholarship. When I told my sister the news, she asked if there was any chance I could pay back just that much in advance. I gave her my savings plus the money from my student loan. She’d been sincere when she’d told me not to worry about repaying her until I got a proper job. Yet here she was, asking for her money back so tentatively. I understood she was in financial trouble.

I went to her apartment not long after, only to find him sitting in the living room when he was supposed to be out fishing. He was on the sofa, staring at the TV without even switching it on. I said hello, but he didn’t look around. Thinking that you and my sister were in the master bedroom, I opened the door, but the room was empty. As I stood there awkwardly, he called me over. He pulled something from his pocket, placed it on his palm, and fixed me with a look. It was a roll of 10,000-won bills tied with a rubber band. I gazed back at him quizzically.

“Cheoje, explain this money, will you?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t even sure what he was asking.

“I found this in your sister’s drawer,” he added. Only his lips were smiling. I realized he was interrogating me. And it occurred to me that the wad of cash could be from the money I’d paid back to my sister. I wondered how much he knew, whether my sister knew this was happening, and if so, what she’d told him about the source of the money—but I was completely in the dark. I said I didn’t know, I had no idea what that money was.

“Oh yeah? That doesn’t add up with your sister’s story.” He withdrew his smile.

“What did she say?”

Before I’d even finished speaking, he hurled the wad of cash. It missed my face only narrowly, and I let out a hoarse, incredulous laugh.

I moved closer to him, stared down at his face. The wispy hair flat against his scalp, his sunken forehead, his protruding brow bones and the patchy eyebrows growing above them, his tired eyes and sharp nose, his grayish lips and small chin—all this I surveyed with the same scrutiny he’d subjected us to on his very first visit. With the faintest hint of a smile.

“If you’ve got something to say, get to the damn point.” My deep voice cracked. I thought it sounded like a stranger’s. He barked out a derisive laugh, but I could tell he was unnerved. Until then, I’d always tried my best to stay out of his way, enduring and avoiding him even when he grated on my nerves. He knew my sister was my weakness. But there was something he didn’t know: I’d never been afraid of him.

Standing up to retrieve the cash, he said he was done talking so I should get out of his house.

My sister didn’t contact me for a long time after that. When I called her mobile, I got an automated response saying the number did not exist. Worried, I called their landline and she picked up. She said she’d gotten rid of her mobile phone, thinking a stay-at-home mom didn’t really need one. She had to do what she could to cut her spending. We went on to have a normal conversation as if nothing had happened. I didn’t mention that he’d interrogated me and thrown the wad of cash, probably aimed at me, or that I’d stood up to him for the first time. I didn’t want to worry her. She also didn’t open up to me, lest I might worry. But I don’t think that was the only reason for our dishonesty.

Pretending a problem wasn’t a problem. Ignoring it.

That was how we responded to situations we couldn’t handle, as was our old habit.

It was also how we admitted our powerlessness to lend each other decisive support. In this way we deluded ourselves into thinking that everything was okay, this was no big deal. That poking at a problem would only make it worse.

x
While my sister and I strained to conceal many things from each other, you grew each day. After your second birthday, you began mimicking what grown-ups said and sometimes even spoke in sentences. When I visited your house, you would come running with your arms outstretched and cling to my legs, screaming in excitement. I’d sit on the floor and open my arms, you’d clamber right in and hug me. I still remember the look on your face whenever you sat on my lap gazing up at me, touching my face. You had so much energy that you couldn’t stay still. You’d prance around, shouting this and that. Even while you played with your toys, you kept turning around to check if I was watching. As though to make sure I didn’t disappear, as though you were worried I might forget you any minute.

How many times did I tell you I loved you? When I called your name and said, “I love you!” you told me you loved me too. We passed the phrase between us as if we were playing catch with a small ball.

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I love you.”

“Till when?” you’d ask with curiosity. That was when I knew your world now contained the distinctions of yesterday and today and tomorrow, along with the realization that over time people’s emotions could change. Your young heart had come to learn that anything could shift or disappear, anyone could leave.

“Till forever,” I said.

“Forever?”

“Yes, forever. Even when Auntie becomes a granny, then a great-granny, I will still love you.”

I didn’t know how else to explain forever to you. You weren’t aware of death yet. So I couldn’t explain that forever was beyond death, beyond time. Yet you stared into my eyes as though you understood me perfectly. After that, the phrase became our own little greeting.

I love you.

Till when?

Forever, forever.

You liked to repeat love and forever as if they were pieces of candy you were rolling around in your mouth. You knew exactly what those words meant, and I knew you knew. And when I promised to love you forever, I knew exactly what I was saying—that I would love you no matter who you grew into, how you treated me in the future, or what choices you made.

My sister was still trying to prove to me that he was a good person. If I didn’t react much, she’d say, “Your hyeongbu, he’s nice to the child, though. He’s a good father.”

She told me every little thing he did for you or said to you. She’d keep insisting what a wonderful father he was until I said, “Okay, Unnie.” I wanted to be persuaded. I wanted to believe he was at least kind to you, that my sister’s life was not, on the whole, as difficult as it seemed. Thinking that was easier. “Okay, Unnie,” I said again with a conciliatory nod.

x
3.

In my last semester, I did my practicum at a hotel restaurant. To get there, I had to change buses once. I had an afternoon shift that day, and was waiting to transfer when I noticed a girl in a school uniform standing across the street from the bus stop. She was a thin, small thing, so I assumed she was a middle schooler at first, but she was wearing a high school uniform. I recognized it right away because it was the uniform of the school where he worked. You know how shorter kids tend to get loose-fitting uniforms that they’re expected to grow into? The girl was in an oversized uniform, carrying an equally giant-looking backpack and staring down the road.

A few minutes later, a black sedan pulled up and the girl got in the passenger seat, glancing around. It had a license plate I knew too well. I saw his face through the window. It was a brief moment, but he stroked the girl’s cheeks. I stood rooted, dazed, then bussed straight to the hotel. Perhaps I’d been hallucinating. My sister had told me he’d recently begun supervising nighttime study halls. He must’ve been on some other business, I told myself. Ignoring my heart’s warnings, I forced myself to focus on work.

5 p.m. on a weekday. The bus stop. The thin, small child. The black sedan. How many times did I go on to witness the same scene? After several weeks of it, I sat down at the bus stop on the same side as the girl and waited for him. She waved to a black sedan approaching in the distance. Slowly, I walked over. When the car halted and she opened the door, I stopped her from getting in, grabbing her arm with one hand and holding the door with the other. I stared down at him. He gaped back at me, lost for words.

“What is this, Hyeongbu?” I said. I glanced over at the girl. Her face was flushed and even her neck was a blotchy pink. She resigned herself to my grip. I turned back to him. He still looked startled, but, quickly performing his composure, he said, “Look, I was just having a consultation with my student.”

A town bus honked loudly from behind. I had no choice but to shut the door, and he immediately drove off. It was just me and the girl I was still holding by the arm. Only when the car slipped completely out of view did I realize I was clutching the girl’s arm too hard. She was biting her lip, so I relaxed my grip and peered at her. Could she even be five feet tall? On such a thin child, her uniform jacket looked like it was draped over a coat hanger rather than a person.

“Your arm must hurt,” I said, to which she nodded. Her name was embroidered in yellow on her navy-blue jacket. She wasn’t even wearing stockings and stood barelegged in the late-October chill. We faced each other in silence. Her face, flustered at first, soon stiffened in fear. Her hunched shoulders were trembling.

I suggested we go eat a warm bowl of soup. Walking side by side for a long while, we finally reached a kongnamul gukbap restaurant. We sat on the heated floor and ordered two bowls of gukbap and one gamjajeon while we waited for the chill to dissipate.

“Unnie . . .” she said in a small, faltering voice. “You’re going to report me to the school, right?”

She didn’t give excuses or tell lies. She seemed to know they’d be pointless. When I didn’t answer, she said, “My mom and dad can’t know about this.” The rims of her eyes reddened.

“That man—don’t ever meet him outside of school again,” I said. “If I catch you, I’ll have no choice but to let the school know.”

The girl was silent for a long time before she spoke. “I’m just worried about my seonsaengnim. He’s a vulnerable man and he’s going through a rough patch right now. He can’t handle all that alone . . .” She paused, staring quietly at the water jug. “No one’s been as nice to me as he has.”

Feeling like rice was stuck in my throat, I scooped more broth into my mouth without tasting a thing.

“If he’s so good to you, why are you scared of me reporting this to the school?”

“Because people won’t understand.”

“Understand what exactly?”

The girl sipped her water and considered me. She said, “I’m not a child.”

The face that uttered those words looked so young it almost struck me as prepubescent. I had a sudden, terrible headache, as if someone had walloped my head with a brick. I broke into a cold sweat.

“You are a child. And that man is a bad adult. You’ll know that when you’re my age. In fact, you know it even now.”

She was staring at her palms. Blinking occasionally.

“None of this is your fault. But if you keep treating yourself this way, you really will let yourself down. You know that.”

Before I could finish speaking, she buried her face in both hands and stayed like that for a while.

“What about Seonsaengnim? What’ll happen to him?”

I took a small photo album from my bag and held it out to her. It was a pocket-sized one I carried around so I could look through it whenever I missed you. The ten or so photographs included one of you in his arms on your first birthday. The girl peered at it.

“Listen, this man is not vulnerable,” I said. “He’s old, he has a job, a house, a family. You have nothing to worry about. I don’t know what lies he’s told you, but he has a hundred—a thousand times more power than you. Don’t kid yourself. If you don’t end this, I’ll have to report it to the school.”

“Please, not the school.”

“I have pictures of you and him together. Just say it. Say you’ll end it.”

She sat still for a moment, then nodded. She promised to stop, to never meet him again in private. We left the restaurant without even finishing half of our food.

As I walked her to her apartment complex, I spoke frankly about my life. I might have been hoping she’d become more receptive if I shared my honest feelings. I told her I wasn’t giving advice because I was better than her or wiser—but just because I knew what it was like to be so lonely and hungry for love that the smallest sign of kindness and attention could throw open my heart. It was the first time I’d confessed that to anyone. Perhaps I was telling this girl what I’d always wanted to tell my sister.

“You can contact me anytime.” I gave her my number and blankly watched her walk off. Then I returned home and threw up everything I’d eaten.

No, I didn’t report him to his school. I knew he wouldn’t be punished even if I did, and the girl would shoulder all the blame. Reporting him to the district board of education, I believed, would also change nothing.

Every night I lay with my face pressed close to the wall, my eyes wide open, and wondered just how much I could grin and bear.

I didn’t go to my sister’s for a long time after that. I had no desire to see him and too little courage to face my sister. I took the occasional call from her but never phoned her first. She must have noticed the change. You, too, must’ve caught on that our relationship was different, because when I did finally visit you asked why I hadn’t come in so long. I said I’d been very busy with life, at which you simply looked at me. You peered into my face with eyes that seemed ancient. For years afterward, I often thought back to your face in that moment.

You stared for a long while before climbing into my lap and asking me to read to you. You giggled and played with me as if you’d clean forgotten why you were staring. Who will you grow up to be? I mused, which made me imagine talking to the adult you, as a friend.

x
I don’t know you as an adult. Nor do you know me. When I buy tickets at a movie theater, pick up something from a convenience store, or order a drink at a coffee shop and see a part-time cashier around your age, I wonder if it could be you. Complete strangers to each other, we say, “Paying by card?” “Yes.” “You can insert the card here.” “Okay.” “Do you need a bag?” “No, thank you.” “Do you need a receipt?” “No.” “Would you like me to register your vehicle for parking?” “No, thank you.” “Goodbye.” “Goodbye.” Without looking each other in the eye. If the person before me is you, it’s okay if you don’t recognize me, I think to myself—at least this way we get to talk.

Where are you now? What do you look like, and how are you carving out your life?

After university, I got a job at a big hotel in Seoul. I worked in the seafood section of their restaurant. Standing for ten hours a day, I handled all sorts of seafood. Luckily I was quick with my hands for a relative novice, but, maybe too eager to improve, I sped up my chopping and sometimes cut a finger. You see, I wanted to prove all those people wrong who said girls couldn’t last in this tough profession. After clocking out each evening, I ran five laps around the schoolyard of an elementary school near my house. On days that weighed especially heavy on me, I ran ten.

I swore off drinking and socializing during this period of my life. All I did was work, exercise, and rest at home. My seniors at the restaurant commented that I was like a bear. They meant I was an honest worker with a mild temper. Do you know what bears are like? I learned about them in a documentary once. Bears fear humans. Even when they’re frolicking and relaxed, the mere shadow of a human frightens them off.

The restaurant was on the top floor of the hotel. Standing in the hallway after my shift, I would stare absently at Seoul’s dark skyline. I couldn’t believe I’d been alive for only twenty-two years. It felt like at least a hundred, far too long already, but apparently I was still just twenty-two. The twinkling city lights seemed to sing me a soft chorus of You must go on, you must go on, as if pushing me to live though I had nothing else I wanted to learn or do, nothing else to be curious about.

Then one day, on my bus ride home after work, I received a call.

“Unnie, how could you? You said you wouldn’t report us.” It was the girl. In a low voice seething with rage, she lobbed her accusations. “My mom and dad were called in, you know. I can’t even go to school now. They’re investigating—and what will happen to Seonsaengnim? You promised you wouldn’t do anything.”

I told her I hadn’t, but she didn’t believe me. She seemed more worried about him than herself. Listening to her voice, I knew she’d failed to cut him out of her life. I’d suspected that might happen. I repeated that I hadn’t reported them, that I’d taken her at her word when she agreed never to see him again. The girl screamed that I was lying. I switched off my phone.

I got off the bus, and almost reached home when I saw him standing at the mouth of the alley. Casting him an impassive stare, I strode past. And then I fell forward. It took me a moment to realize he’d struck my head from behind. When I staggered to my feet, he was glaring at me with his arms crossed.

“Are you a dunce?” he spat.

I stood stunned, tears welling in my eyes. Not because he had hit me. That was nothing.

“Do you hit my sister like this?” I muttered, almost to myself.

“You think reporting me will change anything? If I get penalized for this, your sister’s the one who’ll suffer. I’ve been too easy on you, you little brat. Think you’re some kind of hero, huh?” he said, panting heavily.

“Do you hit my sister?” I repeated.

He left without answering. I no longer needed a guardian, but that didn’t mean I could guard myself. And I had no one on my side. He knew this, which was why he’d taken a swing. If I told my father, I was sure he would say to let it go. If I confided in my sister, she would ask why he had hit me, and eventually try to justify his actions. When my thoughts reached that far, I realized I no longer trusted her.

The school kept its investigation internal and let him off without punishment. The whole incident was chalked up to a deviant student’s inappropriate advances toward her teacher. The girl dropped out of school, and sometimes sent me resentful text messages. I didn’t reply. She probably hated me for a long time. That would’ve been the easiest, most convenient way to avoid seeing the terrible truth.

My sister came to visit. The dining table light shone down on her face, etched with clear discomfort. The sky was dark with clouds even though it was daytime. Rain drizzled silently, and a chilly draft blew in through the open window.

“Could you turn off the fan?” my sister asked, hunching over and hugging herself. I switched it off and went to my room for a cardigan, which I wrapped around her shoulders. Then I made a mug of her favorite instant coffee. She held it in her hands and just stared at it. She seemed to have something to say but was struggling to find the words. “Why did you do it?” she asked in a small voice, her gaze still on the mug.

“Do what?” I watched her, leaning against the kitchen sink.

“I know what you think of your hyeongbu . . . but you didn’t have to drag his name through the mud.”

I tried to answer casually, but my voice shook. “What are you talking about?” I hadn’t expected him to tell her about being investigated at the school, let alone tell her that I had reported him.

“He said you seemed to have a huge misunderstanding. Your hyeongbu is going through a hard time. Of course it all turned out to be false, but to be the target of gossip for something like that . . . The teacher community is a small world, you know. Reputation matters.” My sister didn’t take her eyes off the steaming coffee.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Unnie. I think Hyeongbu’s the one with the misunderstanding.” I began taking dry plates from the rack and putting them away in the cabinets.

“I don’t understand why you’re harassing us,” she said.

I stopped clattering around and turned to my sister.

“You don’t trust me anymore,” I said.

My sister looked at me, then away. That’s right, I don’t trust you. That was what she was saying with all her body. Two sides of me were at war: the me that so badly and frantically wanted to hurt my sister, and the me that was terrified of losing her.

“I heard the girl was a problem child. And your hyeongbu was trying to guide her and get her to see sense. You saw them together last year, didn’t you? Then got the wrong idea and reported them.”

“I did see him with a student from his school, but I never reported them.”

I wonder how things would have turned out if I had stopped right there. But unable to contain myself, I plunged on, “She wasn’t a problem child. She was just an ordinary kid.”

“That’s not true. I heard there was something wrong with her, that’s why she quit school. Apparently, she’s been pestering your hyeongbu for a long time.”

I pretended to organize my plates again until I said finally, “Okay, Unnie, let’s think of it that way.”

“What do you mean, think of it that way?”

“I don’t know why you came here to persuade me of something that has nothing to do with me. If that’s what you want to think, sure, you can just think that, Unnie. But don’t take out your frustrations on me—that’s not my job.”

“This has everything to do with you, that’s why I’m talking to you. You jumped the gun and reported—”

“Stop. I told you it wasn’t me.”

I strode into my bedroom, leaving my sister at the table. We were never good at fighting. If we sensed conflict on the horizon, one of us would slip away. That was how we did things. I stood by the window watching it rain. The streaks were so wispy I had to squint to see them. Moments later, I heard my bedroom door open.

“I’ll keep this short. Your hyeongbu, he would like you to apologize. All you need to say is you’re sorry. Come by this weekend.”

I spun around to look at her. It was like my body had received an electric shock.

“I didn’t do it. Why would I report him when that wouldn’t change anything?”

“What do you mean, wouldn’t change anything?”

“Unnie.” I gazed at her for a long moment before saying, “You used to be her.”

My sister blinked slowly. Then sank into the desk chair, hanging her head. I watched her ears, face, and neck redden in blotches. Gauging her humiliation, I felt a rush of twisted satisfaction. And I stepped on her crushed heart. “I’m not saying it’s your fault. Hyeongbu’s the one who ruined your life. Why should I apologize?”

My sister raised her head, gazing at me as she would at a stranger. As if she’d just realized that the person before her, who she’d thought was me, was someone she had never met.

She took off the cardigan, grabbed her bag, and left.

From when she was small, my sister wanted to be a grown-up to me. She volunteered to protect her younger, weaker sister. I think it wasn’t just that she had a high sense of responsibility. She also wanted to prove to herself that she was a strong, independent person. That was the version of herself she believed in, that gave her strength to carry on.

That faith was what I completely dismissed that day. I reduced my sister’s life to a life ruined by someone else. Convinced of my superiority, I tried to teach her. I ruled that her life was over.

That was how I repaid the sister who’d looked after me since I was born.

x
4.

We didn’t speak for a while after her visit. Then about a month later my sister phoned me. As though nothing had happened, she said I should come over if I wasn’t busy. She said you missed me a lot, and that he had gone fishing. I remember feeling relieved by the call. I made stir-fried kkwari-gochu peppers and steamed eggplant namul—her favorite side dishes—and went to her apartment.

You weren’t there. Instead, he was at the dining table. He beckoned me over. Looked me up and down. It was my first time seeing his face since he’d attacked me in the alley. My sister went to sit beside him and told me to take the opposite seat. So I did. Spread out before him were a stack of 10,000-won bills and a notebook that appeared to be a ledger.

“So, how much did your sister give you?” he asked me. I glanced at her. She looked resigned, as if to say the cat was out of the bag so I should just answer. I told him the amount my sister had lent me. I added that I’d paid her back in full.

“You sisters sure have a lot of secrets, huh?” he said, prodding my sister’s forehead with his index finger. She only stared down at the table, unable to meet my eyes.

“She had nothing saved up? Thought you two could fool me, did you?” He jabbed my sister’s head with a finger again, this time with enough force to make her teeter to the side. It happened too quickly for me to process; I just looked numbly at my sister. Seeing that inaction, he cuffed her hard across the head. My sister crashed to the floor, and that’s the last thing I remember.

When I came to my senses, I was strangling him from behind with one arm and yanking a wrist backwards with the other. It must’ve hurt, because he was yelling. The sound made me want to keep going until he passed out. I twisted the wrist harder. He put up quite a struggle. I hadn’t expected it to be so hard to subdue a man shorter and smaller than me. But he was no match for me. Die you bastard, die. Undiluted fury ran through my body and erupted.

Wrapping her arms around my waist, my sister tried to pull me away. She pleaded with me to stop, to please stop for her sake, but even as I heard her voice, I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t myself anymore but a sheer hunger, craving his destruction, lusting for his pain. I finally recognized those feelings inside me, and felt the desperation to act on them. For so long, I’d nursed the purest longing to break his bones, to tear through his nerves, and inflict pain so severe as to blot out his consciousness.

He begged. “Cheoje, forgive me. Cheoje, have mercy, it hurts so much.” After who knows how long, I let go, satisfied. He got to his feet and went right over to my sister, who was standing in front of the refrigerator. With his uninjured hand, he clobbered her head.

That moment played out in slow motion before my eyes. My sister could easily have dodged him. He was staggering and sluggish from pain. But she looked utterly defeated as she stood there taking his blow. It was her body language—as if his beating was just something she had to get through—that shocked me most.

He turned back to me with a triumphant expression. He seemed intent on showing me I would lose to him forever.

“Are you happy now?” my sister said to me quietly. “To see me like this?” As though I’d provoked him into hitting her. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Apologize to your hyeongbu.”

“Clearly she was never taught any better,” he spat, raising his hand to her again. With the briefest look, my sister warned me to stay put.

How would you have reacted in that split-second? To me, it didn’t matter what consequences followed. Even if I could turn back time, I would do the exact same thing.

I was placed in detention during my trial. The prosecution pointed to the severity of his injuries and the fact that this wasn’t a case of mutual combat, but assault. The defense admitted my guilt on all charges, but asked the judge to consider that he’d assaulted my sister before my eyes.

It was in court that I encountered my sister again. Sitting in the witness stand with her short bob and makeup-less face, she did not glance my way. During the questioning, she gave her answers gazing only at the judge.

“No, my husband didn’t hit me that day.”

“No, he has never laid a finger on me.”

“My husband is a hardworking and loving family man.”

“My little sister always had this hate . . . an inexplicable hatred toward my husband.”

“After I married him, she was furious that she was left all alone.”

“She has a violent streak in her that I could never control.”

I couldn’t look at my sister anymore either. Okay, Unnie. All right, let’s say that happened. I gave up.

“Is it true that the victim didn’t assault the witness?” the judge asked me.

My attorney looked taken aback.

“Yes, it was a lie,” I answered quietly. “Hyeongbu . . . did not hit my sister.”

Though acknowledging I was a first-time offender, the judge sentenced me to imprisonment, citing the seriousness of my crime and the injury I’d caused. After the verdict was read, my attorney asked me why I’d lied in court. She believed what I’d told her about him assaulting my sister. Many female defendants didn’t fight the false testimony given against them, she said. They simply accepted it as though giving up on themselves. She thought that perhaps I had done the same. “This has to be the last time,” she said seriously. “You’ve got to stop punishing yourself. You should be sorry for what you did to yourself just now.”

Never will I forget her face when she said these things in the empty courtroom, her eyes filling with tears—this attorney around my mother’s age.

In prison, what I wrote belonged to one of two categories: writings I kept, and writings I tore up. Whenever I reached a breaking point, on days I just couldn’t pick myself up, I wrote with abandon before immediately tearing the pages to nothingness. I used to think writing was just writing. But the choice to put certain words on paper, I came to realize, is a desire to convey the heart behind them.

And that heart is eventually felt. Whether the words are ever read or not.

That’s why my notebook from prison—lined, with a magenta cover—has certain pages ripped out. When I look at the tear marks from a single page, I can recall how I felt that day. My heart is recorded in the jagged edge.

I’m not saying that the writings I left in the notebook are deceitful or dishonest. I filled the volume with my experiences as though I were writing letters to you. Sometimes, twenty-two-year-old me wrote everything I could remember about you.

What the attorney told me in the courtroom stayed with me for a long time. Stop punishing yourself. When I heard it, I didn’t know what she meant. I thought I’d simply wanted to stop fighting with my sister, so I’d accepted her false statements as true. But was that really all there was to it?

I peered into my mind, at how I found the hard bunk bed of my cramped cell more comfortable than my own bed, how I ate the horrible food I was given with relish, how I let my cellmates rough me up. Being jailed as a criminal despised by everybody was, in fact, a welcome relief. Maybe I considered that the price I had to pay. The attorney was right. I wanted punishment that was greater than what I had committed.

I secretly hoped my sister might visit me in jail. I kept expecting her to come, right up to the day of my release when I was twenty-four. But she never did, and for a long time afterward I was deeply angry with my sister.

But with every year that passed, my anger faded. My resentment came from my denial of being abandoned by her. Yes, my sister had abandoned me completely. I still resent her a little and ache at our breakup, but now that’s just a small part of how I feel about her.

While I was in prison, and after I came back out into society, I cried a lot, thinking I’d never truly been loved. At the time, I believed love to be some perfect, flawless thing. And if that is love, then indeed I have never received it. But is that really true?

When I gave away the down parka my sister had gifted me, I discovered that her care—her efforts to buy me the warmest possible clothes with the modest wages she’d saved up—had not disappeared, but remained inside me. I tried to fathom the care she gave, standing and working in uncomfortable heels all day to pay for my college tuition. I had no right to think I’d never been truly loved. What kind of love had I given her?

I had considered my sister pathetic and stupid enough to be used, a coward pushed around by a trashy man. She was so passive she couldn’t even imagine escaping the misery she was squatting in. I believed that her very way of life humiliated me. Could my sister really have been oblivious to those feelings? I thought I was good at hiding them. I fancied myself different from my sister, whose heart was an open book. But I may have been the transparent one.

In my mind, I was the judge. I frequently sat my sister at the defense table of my imaginary court. Gazing down on her, I tried her for her crimes and attempted to cast her out of my heart. Not knowing that by doing so I was casting out myself.

In my mind, I was right and my sister was wrong, I was principled and she wasn’t, I knew and she didn’t, I could and she couldn’t, I was brave and she was spineless, I was independent and she reliant, I was dignified and she subservient, I was considerate and she selfish, I protected her and she abandoned me. Everything was so clear that I didn’t need to give it more thought. But now, after so much time has passed, none of these seem remotely close to the truth.

x
Sometimes, I wonder what kind of person she is to you, your mother. You know her in ways I never will, just as I know sides of her that you can’t. There are also things we both know. The furrow in her brow when she concentrates, or her low chuckle, her brisk stride, the yawning stretch she gives before going to bed, her face as she sleeps quietly on her side, her habit of preluding an important remark with a thoughtful mmm . . . her scrunched-up face when she bites into something sour, her expression when she swallows what she wants to say, her habit of walking with her hands behind her back . . .

What is in her heart now as she lives her life? I can’t begin to know the answer.

x
5.

Eight years after my release, I got to see my sister. It was at Great-Aunt’s funeral. Wearing a simple black pant suit, my sister lit an incense stick and bowed before Great-Aunt’s memorial portrait. She also gave a bow to me, the chief mourner.

I thought she’d leave right afterward, but instead she sat at one of the dining tables for guests. I was watching her from a distance when our eyes met. For a while we held the gaze. Then slowly I walked toward her and took the seat opposite. In a daze, I watched her scoop rice into her yukgaejang broth and eat it, taking sips of water in between. It was only when she shifted to get up that I addressed her. She tried to say something, but swallowed her words and left. I chased after her briskly retreating figure.

“Unnie.”

She looked back at me from the building exit. It used to be so easy to tell my sister’s feelings, but as she wiped the tears streaming down her face, I couldn’t read the slightest bit of her heart.

She stood looking at me, shaking her head. My body understood that she didn’t want me to come any closer. I could not follow her any longer. She crossed the parking lot, her distant figure awash in the spring sunshine. That was the last I saw of my sister.

x
When you were a toddler with quickly growing vocabulary, you asked questions about everything. You asked and asked, like a scientist breaking matter down to the atomic level. When I said, “Come on, eat up,” you asked, “Why do I have to eat?” When I answered, “If you eat you’ll grow taller,” you asked, “Why?”

Nothing was a given for you. Rain falling from the sky, sweat breaking out on a hot day, stray cats hiding under cars—you took none of it for granted. “Why?” you asked endlessly. I tried my best to keep responding, but in the end, I’d run out of answers. Then I’d say, “Well, Auntie would like to know why, too.” That always made you break into a smile.

We have similar conversations in my mind. When I say we can’t meet again, you ask, Why not? I answer, I was very violent to your dad, so your family cut ties with me. Again you ask, Why? and I say, I couldn’t stand watching your dad bully my sister, and I wanted to give him a warning. You ask why again. I reply: Because I wanted to protect my beloved sister; I wanted to show him that she was a precious being who didn’t deserve such disrespect. You ask me why. I reply: Sometimes, love can be unbearable for a person. Love makes it impossible to ignore the pain of someone you love. With your clear, wide-eyed face you ask, Why? I finally answer:

I’d like to know why myself.

So, Auntie can’t see me anymore for a reason she doesn’t know, you say, nodding. That’s right, dear. You’re absolutely right. Before we know it, we’re smiling at each other.

From the window of my cell, I was able to see the prison yard. Inmates would stroll around it clockwise at fixed times of day. I used to stand by the barred window, gazing out for long stretches of time. Except for the occasional guard passing by, the yard was mostly empty within its high concrete walls. I’d watch it get flooded by sunlight, shadowed by clouds, battered by rain.

On my twenty-third birthday, I rose much earlier than the official wake-up time. As soon as I opened my eyes, I glimpsed snow falling, so I got out of bed and went to stand in front of the window. Fine flurries were drifting down from the still-dark sky, sparkling in the white floodlights. Those illuminated flurries looked like a path leading up to the heavens, and somehow the place they were falling from felt forever out of my reach.

That was the moment I accepted I’d never get to see you again. That I had become a stranger forever out of your reach. Trying hard not to make a sound, I wept. Because even in that moment, I was being erased from your world.

And yet, and yet . . . I will love you always. Even if you don’t remember me.

I see now that emotions like these can exist, compelling me to write a letter I know I’ll tear up. After I write the last sentence, I plan to get rid of this letter.

Watching you, I had seen myself, and my sister. And I loved you. Because you are the child of my sister, whom I couldn’t wholeheartedly like but have, deep down, loved to pieces. I have prayed for you to be always safe, to bask in all the happiness you deserve. Even if we must brush past each other without recognizing one another’s faces. For all the time I had with you, and even the time I couldn’t have with you, I remain painfully grateful.

Today is a clear, warm day in May—your birthday. Happy twenty-third birthday.

x
Forever yours,

Auntie