A Map for the Missing

by Belinda Huijuan Tang

Yitian owed so much of the person he was to these two people. It seemed to him that he had been accumulating debts all these years, and now he would never be able to repay them. This was the worst part of a death: that the dead could not collect on the balance they were owed, that they left all their burden to the living.

The years could easily accumulate when there was no change on the horizon, their numbers only becoming pronounced when you looked back and they surprised you.