Haenyeo awoke ravenous. The eggs left beside the bed had grown cold and congealed, but she snatched them up. They slid down like newfound heaven. She knelt on the floor beside the plate, worshiping the sweet fruit – biting and swallowing and until there was nothing left but the gnawing deep inside. It wasn’t enough. She needed more.

The other half of the melon had been left covered with clear plastic on the kitchen counter. Haenyeo tore into it, scooping out chucks with her teeth while she cradled the rind in her sticky hands. Still, it wasn’t enough. She had to have more.

Cold water, sour milk, sheets of stale seaweed, squares of dried out cheese, a bottle half filled with sesame oil; Haenyeo grabbed and ravaged and ate until there was nothing left, and then she swooned to the kitchen floor.

The apartment was empty. As the hunger subsided, she could sense the cool void of being alone. But then, she knew she wasn’t. Above the kitchen, in the dim room at the top of the staircase, she could hear a whisper, an echo that brushed against her mind and accused her.

Who are you?

Haenyeo pressed and twisted the silver ring around her finger. Seung-Bae had said that he wanted her to stay. He had said that he wanted to marry her. Didn’t that give her the right to be there? She wiped the filth from her face. I am the one he wants, her mind cried back.

What are you?

She rose from the floor and slowly walked across the apartment’s dining area to the staircase. A clock on the wall ticked, and the air conditioning hummed.

Haenyeo climbed, and when she pushed her way into the darkened room, the piano melody began, sluggish and distant. Her ears pulsed with a familiar pressure. But this time, she was ready for it, and she moved deeper until she stood in the center of the room facing the portrait over the bed. Seung-Bae’s mother stared back at her, smiling. Haenyeo inhaled, tasting the stale, dusty air and swallowing it.

What are you?

I am what he wants, her mind answered, pleading. I can everything. Yet, I am nothing. Haenyeo fell to her knees submissively. You are his mother, aren’t you? What do you want from me? What is it that you want me to be? She reached out and gripped the bed’s footboard. Please. Can’t I have him?

The air shifted, pushed against her, and then rushed forward as if pulling her into some kind of madness. A lamp flickered on, glaring the floorboards in yellow light, and Haenyeo let go and slipped into the sheen of it. And then she was not, and the room was in another time, and she was a nonexistent spectator. Her mind reeled.

A woman sat at the vanity. Her long, black hair hung loose down her back, and Haenyeo could see her face reflected in the silver mirror that hung from the wall. The woman was crying. But through the contortions, Haenyeo recognized Seung-Bae’s mother.

The woman lifted a glass tumbler to her lips and drank deeply. She sat the glass down and picked up a packet of paper, a document dense with black ink. Her hands trembled. The piano melody rose from the floorboards and grew louder. “Metastasis,” the woman read, her voice mocking. “Prognosis: three month life expectancy.” She laughed wildly. “Myung-Jung, you bastard. You’ll be rid of me after all.” She laughed and laughed. She laughed, shrill and staccato, until her hands and shoulders began to shake, and then she crumpled the paper into a ball, and with a single, breathless keen, hurled it across the room.

The woman turned to the mirror and slowly moved her head from side to side. Mascara ran black down her cheeks, and she reached up to claw at them. “Who are you?” she whispered. She yanked at her dressing gown until it fell down around her shoulders and exposed two red horizontal wounds, sutured over the flat expanse where her s had once been. “What are you?” she wailed. She reached for a plastic bottle and, ripping off the cap, poured a stream of white pills into her hand. She pushed them into , and then reached for a bottle of amber liquor. She threw her head back and drank and swallowed and drank until streams ran down her chin and over her chest. When the bottle was empty, she paused. Her shoulders heaved to catch her breath, and her head rolled. When she caught her own reflection, she stilled. widened, a cavern of black and red spilling out the sound of despair. “What are you?” she hissed. She hurled the empty liquor bottle at the mirror, and the bottle burst into a thousand shattered pieces.

The violence of the explosion startled the woman, frightened her, and her fingertips flew to her lips, and then to where a sliver of glass had etched a fine, crimson line. Her head swayed forward, and her eyes blinked slowly. With effort, she reached for the telephone that sat at the end of the vanity, and, with her thumb, carefully picked out the numbers. “Eonni?” her breath was labored, her voice hollow. “I … I’ve done something bad. I’m sorry. Tell him I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m not strong enough. But you’ll watch over him for me, won’t you Hye-Ok? You’ll take care of him for me, won’t you, Eonni? You were always the strong one.” The receiver slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor. A voice on the other end called out, first in confusion, and then in alarm. But the woman at the vanity was lost in her own reflection. She straightened her gown. Then she rose and, with slow, clumsy steps, went to her bed, laid down, and fell into nothingness.

Haenyeo knew she was weeping. She could feel the tight band squeezing her chest – the hot fluid flowing from her eyes. But she could also hear the music, and with dreadful suspicion she waited for it to stop.

The melody seemed to go on forever. When it finally did end, the women on the bed had been motionless for an eternity. A boy’s voice called up from below, “Eomma! Isn’t it time for dinner?”

Footsteps bounded up the staircase.

“Eomma?”

The door creaked open, and footsteps padded into the room.

“Are you asleep?”

Footsteps shuffled past her, and Haenyeo saw the boy in his navy school uniform and white cotton socks. His face was full of beautiful innocence.

“Eomma?” He moved to the bed and touched the woman’s shoulder. “Eomma?” He gently shook her. “Eomma!” He shook her harder, and then harder, and then Seung-Bae screamed and screamed and Haenyeo screamed with him.

And then James was there. His hands covered , and his eyes flashed with concern. Do you see now? Don’t be afraid. This is part of who you are. Don’t forget me. But she was too anguished to answer, too heartsick. She turned away from him.

The vision disappeared, and she was left in the cold, dark bedroom. Sweat poured from her skin. Her stomach boiled. She needed to expel the sickness. She needed to slow her heart. She needed the comfort of submersion.

She needed water.