The Last Story of Mina Lee

by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

If one would experience joy, the other would feel not her own joy rising but a pang of jealousy rooted in a fear of abandonment that would cause her to strike the other down.

Some questions were never meant to be answered, yet ideally, pursuing them might at least shed light on how much you valued yourself, the need you might have to tell your own story, however fragmented it might be. It was okay to yearn for the impossible every now and then as long as in the yearning you discovered something about yourself.

But maybe only here in these pages, in these drawings, if Margot had shown more commitment to their relationship, if she had been unafraid of commitment, could her mother have understood: that Margot would never leave her in the end, that she would, despite the distance that separated them, never let go of her hand.

Choosing if and when and how to share the truth might be the deepest, most painful necessity of growing out into the world and into yourself.

Sometimes we wrongly guessed how much others could bear. It was in the curve of a question mark—should I or shouldn’t I?—in which we all lived.