Nowhere to Be Found

by Bae Suah

After the years had passed and my little sister was grown up, would she too inherit the cynicism and apathy toward the world that enabled our family line to endure poverty and maladjustment, just as my brother and I had?

But perhaps after more time had passed and Cheolsu had matured and grown older and sprouted a few white hairs and wearied of time, and I too had wrinkled lips and ruined looks and had reached an age where there was no longer any trace of a flirtatious smile and no one would find me pretty, then maybe we truly would end up married.

In truth, I was not me. The me that was born into an animal body and lived as a slave to poverty and insult was nothing but the emptiness that had been momentarily bewitched out of me by an evil spirit. That distant me is precious and beautiful. No matter how decadent and corrupt my body becomes, I will, like a desert orchid that blooms once every hundred years, come to you bearing this frigidness toward life.