But I don’t have a map for whatever world lies beyond death. I don’t know whether there, too, there are meetings and partings, whether we still have faces and voices, hearts with the capacity for joy as well as sorrow.

the force of the slap had already burst the capillaries in her cheek, and the man’s fingernails had broken her skin.

Mine, on the other hand, crushed out of shape beneath a tower of others, was shameful, detestable.

After scraping through the second year in this on-off fashion, she finally gave up on the idea of graduating. When her professor recommended her for the publishing job, she took it. For her mother this was all a source of regret, but she herself thought differently. Regardless of their financial situation, she knew she would never have been able to

If we’d been given a little more time, might we have arrived, eventually, at a moment of understanding?

I thought of my sister, only of her. And I felt an agony that almost broke me. She was dead; she had died even before I had.

Who killed me, who killed my sister, and why? The more of myself I devoted to these questions, the firmer this new strength within me became.

Tell me where that bastard is.”

Should I have gone there, right then? If I had, would I have been able to find you, Dong-ho, to ease the terror you must have felt at having just been knocked from your body?