Chapter 2

If someone asked me what single moment in time I'd like to remember of my childhood, I would answer without hesitation.

It was the night of orini nal in our hometown of Guryong Village, Seoul. The picture is etched into my memory with a subtle haze around the edges, like a worn-out photo that's been thumbed over countless times with bittersweet fondness- my appa and I laying down on the lush grass, the cool spring breeze rustling our hair as he points out the bright stars and constellations above us that leave me in an awestruck trance. The sound of laughter rings through the night as my eomma chases my little sister nearby. The trees sway about, and from here the lights of the vast city below us can be seen twinkling and dancing serenely. It's almost as if they're a reflection of the sky above- a city that is a student to the eternal teacher that is the universe, always inspired and striving to appear even a fraction as bright as the other. Intense feelings of joy and love for the people around me warm my being and a content blanket of peace drapes over my beating heart. Everything is absolutely perfect.

Back then were the days of my happy childhood, when it didn't matter that we lived in a tiny, worn-down shack in the slummiest neighborhood in the city. It didn't matter that we had barely enough food to eat every day, it didn't matter that we had go to school a mile away and it didn't matter that the only form of transportation we owned were rusty old bikes we'd picked up from a dumpster. None of it mattered to me, because those were the days when we were all together. My appa, my eomma, Ji-yeon, and I. There was love between us, and I felt safe. I had friends who I enjoyed all my carefree childish fun with, I was at the top of my class in school with a ravenous hunger for learning that couldn't be quenched, and my family and I would even sometimes take our bikes and ride to the Han River as a special treat on the weekends. My world was perfect, and therefore I couldn't have known how quickly or to what extent it would change.

Looking back, it probably wasn't as perfect as I thought. Hell, it couldn't have been. But whatever struggle my parents must have went through in our impoverished state, however their problems must have started, I was never aware of. All that reached my bright, tiny world was the goodness, the innocence, the intense excitement and wonder of youth. I did not know the real world yet. To me belonged everything good and whole that I was too young to realize could suddenly disappear at any given moment as if blown by a sudden gust of wind. A child always lives in the present, is unsuspecting of the future, and therefore doesn't understand just how impermanent even the most substantial things are.

It's funny how when reminiscing on a younger version of oneself, one realizes how much smaller their universe once was. How we start out in life with the entire expanse of the world known to us not reaching farther than the few people closest to us. The world begins tiny, as tiny as a house and a few family members and friends. Over time it grows to accommodate what is learned in school, more people and a bit of a bigger understanding of where you live. But for a long while, even what you think you know remains vastly in shadow, mysteries in your own small world saved for another age. Then, once one reaches adolescence, it's like an explosion of the universe. New expectations, new responsibilities. Who are you? How are you going to work for your future? How do you compare to others in your society? Suddenly a whole new world of information is yours to explore, and in the adept mind, curiosity blooms like a flower in the spring. You want to know about your parents, about where you live, about the wider world, the future, the past. You are eager for a glimpse of adult life, which seems boundless, free, exciting. You are curious about yourself, and about how you measure up to those around you. You suddenly want to envision yourself in the future, want to do things, see places, be someone. The world is yours to explore, and your excitement is beyond belief.

And yet one doesn't realize that, in return for the expansion of their universe, they lose the carefree innocence of childhood. There will no more be simple fun and games just for the sake of it. There will be work to do and lessons to learn even when you'd rather play. There no longer are social interactions with peers without some sort of personal intention. Things are complicated, confusing, and difficult. You will have to deal with people, and politics, and finances, and goals, and decisions, and responsibilities, and mistakes, and failures, and just generally overwhelming chaos, and, occasionally, just general bullshit. And in my case, the expansion of my universe meant my witnessing the gradual unraveling of everything and everyone I called home.

I couldn't put my finger on a specific date when everything started to change, but I do remember the general time when I'd noticed the differences. Around the time I was nearly eleven was when I remember my father was staying later at his job. It grew to the point that sometimes he wouldn't even come home until long after we went to bed. I was worried about him, I recall, and couldn't fall asleep when he was gone. Late into the night and early morning, as I lay awake, he would finally stumble in the door. I was afraid of him, as he walked in uneven steps, his hands shook, and he smelled of something dreadful. My mother would usher him outside somewhere, and I fell asleep before they came back. No one ever knew I was awake to see what I then didn't understand.

A month later, his demeanor started to shift. No longer was there my smiling, intelligent appa who gave warm hugs and told us stories. Now something always seemed to bother him. He was easily startled and always in a bad mood, sometimes even angry enough to make me apprehensive. More and more frequently when I returned home from school, I could hear him shouting at my mother in our house. His voice was booming and loud and more aggressive than anything I'd ever heard, and it brought my little sister Ji-yeon to tears more than once. As appa yelled at eomma, I would hold her in my arms in the corner of our shack, shushing her reassuringly while struggling to hold back terrified tears myself. I was horrified and confused- where was my kind, loving appa and who was this scary man who had replaced him?

In return, my mother began to change, too. She became restless, nervous and timid. What I had known of my strong, independent eomma retreated inside of her and left behind a shell of the woman I'd once knew. The light in her eyes began to fade and she grew thin and frail. She grew to barely notice me or my sister, more and more absorbed in the turmoil inside of her. I remember once seeing her crying on the floor after my father had yelled at her, and that, if possible, frightened me more than anything. For the first time, I felt like there was no one to protect me. I was on my own.

Eventually I found the empty bottles of medication she left under the floorboards, and eomma became more distant than ever. Sometimes when my father was gone, she would walk out of the house and continue in a set direction. We wouldn't see her until the next day. I started to notice the bruises, which were always more prominent after appa had been particularly angry. All of this happened, and yet I could not understand any of it. I was terrified and desperate for things to return to how they had been. How could everything go so wrong when before it all had seemed so fine?

Things continued like this for about a year, and I lost more and more of the joy and the golden light in which my life had been filtered before. I forgot about my friends, about school, about the happiness of being a child, concerned almost completely with keeping my sister safe and as far from our parents as possible. I had to take it upon myself to find food for us. I would steal scraps from the barn of the farm nearby, search the dumpsters, beg at doors in all the surrounding neighborhoods. My sister would cry because of her aching belly, and though my belly ached too, I had to stay calm and act older than I was. This was no longer fun and games- it was survival, even if I barely understood what had put us in this situation. In truth, I longed for nothing more than our parents again, a warm set of arms to be embraced in that would take care of me and let me be a kid. I shouldn't have had to do it all alone.

Then one day when I had turned twelve, my mother was as crazy as she had ever been and my father as angry. For the first time, appa not only hit eomma, but slapped me across the face when he yelled incoherent phrases like "Disrespectful whore!" and "I work my ass off all day for you children and you can't even spare me a penny?!" I'd just sat in numb shock, holding my hand to my face where it throbbed ugly and red and tried desperately not to cry or run. She'd finally had enough of it, took Ji-yeon and I by our wrists and pulled us out the door. Eomma yelled at appa shrilly through the doorway,

"I hope we never see your fucking face again! Don't try to find us- we're going and not coming back!"

Then we walked right away from our house and I never saw it again.

The first new place we stayed was Daegu, where we found a tiny old apartment to live in. At first, I dared to hope that my mother would actually care for us now, after she had stood up to my father like that. Of course, my hopes were squashed. The light in her eyes never returned. Instead, eomma would leave us for days on end, only to come back for a couple of hours searching hurriedly for spare change. She was an unseeing madwoman, always in a daze and leaving behind her a trail of empty pill bottles and torn clothing. Except sometimes when she came home, gone was the craziness and all there remained on her face was a sadness so profound it seemed like there was no life left in the woman I had once loved so dearly. She just huddled under a blanket for hours, still as a stone. Some part of me shared her melancholy and wished for me to wrap my arms around her and cry too, but there was no time for that now. I had to make sure Ji-yeon got to school every morning and back home every afternoon. I myself went in search of work, getting all sorts of odd jobs in shops along the street, desperate for any small amount of penance I could earn as a twelve-year-old. I spent every minute I could during the time my sister was in school scraping together change in order to get us a decent meal for the night. And at every opportunity I saw, I read. Whether it was finding newspapers on sidewalks, old books in the stores I worked at, manuals in our apartment or magazines in window shops, I read in an attempt to give myself some sort of education. I read about local and global politics, mathematics, language, physics, medicine, literature, cooking, pop culture, and just about anything else you could think of. In reading, I not only attempted to keep myself sane and knowledgeable, but I shamefully found it an escape from my depressing reality. When I read, in some tiny way, I found again the wonder that I once had for the world back in the beginning of my adolescence. The future didn't seem quite so unimaginable and I didn't feel quite as incapable or desperate. A small part of me drew hope from my reading that I might one day find some success and be happy again. This moment in time, no matter how big it seemed currently, was really just a blip in the grand scheme of things. I was really an insignificant being. I could see it when I looked up at the stars- how vast, how endless it all was, the very concepts of space and time. And to some, that they will eventually fall into oblivion must be discouraging, depressing. But to me, it was the opposite. Knowing there was more out there, knowing that in some capacity life will always go on spurred me forward and gave me hope that there could be a future for Ji-yeon and I.

When I was fourteen and Ji-yeon ten, we moved once again, this time to Busan. My mother was much the same, but this time was different because I decided to go back to school. By now I knew that my only chance of getting away from the streets would be through a proper education. So, Ji-yeon and I attended public school together, the first time I had been in a classroom in three years. I could tell other students in my class judged me for my ragged clothes and somewhat lack of hygiene, even laughed at me behind my back, but I honestly couldn't care less. I was here for one thing and one thing only, and my circumstances caused me to be focused on my goals wholeheartedly. At first, I was quite behind on practically every subject, but I studied hard for hours every night in determination to make something of myself. Quickly I began to catch up and towards the end of the first year I even reached the top of the class. I took pride in my studies, finding that with each small success, my motivation to work for the future only grew.

The only thing that hindered me in my journey was my emotions. My stupid, goddamn emotions. You see, something was wrong with me. Every so often, even when things seemed to be looking up for us, my emotions became what I can only describe as weighted handcuffs. It would be an evening during which I was studying, or working, or preparing dinner for Ji-yeon, when all of a sudden it felt like everything from the past was catching up to me. I remembered my father and his anger, my mother and her weakness, the bad days and the struggles and the fear and the desperation and the uncertainty if we would make it through the night. I felt so far away from the world, so helpless and lost and hurt, and all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and melt away. At these times I realized the terror of it all, how all this rested on my shoulders and how I could easily ruin the future for both me and my sister. What it would take for a decent life seemed like an insurmountable task, and I was so weighed down by the emptiness that even taking another step, doing anything as small as opening a book felt exhausting.

Though my productivity was low during these episodes, as soon as I regained my motivation I was a machine, working and studying twice as hard as before just to make up for lost time. Ji-yeon helped me get back on my feet with gentle hugs and whispers of encouragement. Sometimes I had to remind myself that if nothing else, I would keep going for her. Occasionally she would point up towards the sky when she noticed me sad and I couldn't help but smile. She was reminding me of the stars. The stars were also helpful, a reminder of my purpose.

Once I was fifteen, I could get a real job. I knew exactly where I wanted to work- the library. This way between my shifts, I could study and also read simply for my enjoyment. I would even take books home to read with Ji-yeon. Our favorites included The Alchemist and Little Women. We laughed at how different our lives were from Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy's and marveled at Santiago's adventures. Overall, things were going pretty well if you excluded my mother's visits. Eomma would ask us for change, we refused, and after some half-hearted pleads, she would leave again. These I mostly ignored by now, but I still noticed my sister giving her sad glances every now and then and I gently reminded her that Eomma was not going to care for us anymore, no matter how much we wanted her to. She nodded softly in agreement. I knew by now that it was illness that had sickened her brain, probably instigated by my father whose anger had been due to alcohol.

One day, after another visit from our mother, Ji-yeon asked me in a tone barely over a whisper, "Jennie, are Eomma and Appa ever coming back?"

I knew what she meant. Our mother, though present physically, was not really there and I had a suspicion she never would be.

"No, Ji-yeon. They're not coming back. I'm sorry." I hugged her tightly and we sat together in silence for a while, tears rolling down her cheeks and silent hiccups escaping her lips. I couldn't help but hate our parents for what they did to us. What they put us through. What Ji-yeon had to endure. She was only eleven and hadn't seen her father since she was fair or okay. All we had was what we got, and we got what no child should have to experience. So as I held Ji-yeon in my arms, I told myself that we would make it through and leave the pain and the negligent parents in the past. I would no longer let their actions make my little sister cry. Their stain would no longer tarnish the canvas of our future. We'd got this far with each other, and we could conquer any challenge together. After a long while, we fell asleep there on the wooden floor, the waning light of day fading and leaving behind a starless black night.

That was a year ago. Now I'm sixteen, and something unfathomable has happened that caused my sister and I to move to Anyang. I'd been there for less than five days when I met Park Chaeyoung.