Cursed Bunny

by Bora Chung

Partly because she had nothing else to do, but more so because she thought if she concentrated hard enough on the screen, she might decrease an odd-feeling little space that had appeared in her heart. The space felt empty sometimes, full at others, and bitter or aching at still other times. This strange little space, if she ever let her guard down, could suddenly blow up in size and consume her.

“When we make our cursed fetishes, it’s important that they’re pretty.”

“That evil company’s purpose was to sell lots of cheaply made spirits and earn piles of money, not come up with new and better products,” explained Grandfather. “And if they’re not going to make their products better, they’ve got to prevent others from doing so if they want to stay competitive.”

“Cursing others leads to two graves.” Anyone who curses another person is sure to end up in a grave themselves.

Not the cries of someone driven mad with fear, but the tears of someone who understood and was saddened by their own loneliness—the tears of a human being.

In order to survive, children come to their own understanding of their place in their world. It looks as if children are limited in what they are conscious of, but they comprehend very quickly the intention of adults and the trust given to them, better and more precisely than adults themselves do.

I didn’t believe in any bright future for me. I didn’t know if I would even be able to make a living. Therefore, “a moment ago” was always the best moment, and the present was always better than the future.

I didn’t believe I’d ever be back. As much as I loved the place, life doesn’t give such opportunities so readily, and I couldn’t continue this state of hovering between reality and unreality forever.

. . . If I could make a wish I want to be just a little happier If I become too happy I will miss sadness

I could finally understand the horrific and cruel clarity of what he considered to be meaningful. The desperation and immense fear that your life, as well as the future to come, hinged on a moment. I could also understand how, in a situation where there was a single person who could kill you but also save you, all your survival instincts would be used toward satisfying that one person.

Once you experience a terrible trauma and understand the world from an extreme perspective, it is difficult to overcome this perspective. Because your very survival depends on it.

For some people, their lives are ruled by one shocking event reverberating through their survival instincts. Life shrinks into a trap made up of a shimmering moment in the past, a trap where they endlessly repeat that singular moment when they were surest of being alive.

Those who are unaware of their lives slipping away while they are ensnared in the past—him, his grandfather, his mother, me—are in the end, whether alive or dead, ghosts of the past.

No one asked us, when we were still nameless Whether we wanted to live or not Now I wander the big city alone Looking in doors and windows Waiting and waiting for something . . . There was nothing left for me to wait for.