I don’t recall much what occurred after my mother’s announcement. I guess I was hysterical or something because I woke up later on from what seemed like a drug-induced sleep.

My parents explained to me about the accident when I have come around and was sensible to talk to.

It happened just before our 17^th birthday. Dad gave us a car for the occasion and we have both just gotten our student license. Dad was unwilling to let us use it until our actual birthday but Byul was persistent so he let us.

They said I told them we went cruising around, taking turns on the wheel. Until on the way home, it began to pour heavily. The rain was like a thick curtain and we could hardly see. The road was likewise slippery. Then there was lightning followed by a great boom of thunder. Byul was the driver and she panicked. The car skidded on the road and we crashed.

When we were seen and taken out of the crash site, Byul was on top of me. She took the worse injuries. All I have to show for it was the scar on my right hand like a crescent moon and a few cuts from the broken glass.

Byul died on the spot from a puncture to her heart but the autopsy report also said she had an undiagnosed heart condition. Dilated cardiomyopathy, her heart was bigger than normal. But even if no crash occurred, she was still prone to die suddenly anyway the medical examiner said.

I don’t know what the gibberish is all about but it sounded to me that my sister died of a broken heart. Her heart was broken literally.

But maybe she died because of the thunder, how it scared her and made her crash.

No matter how hard I try, I could not remember what happened.

I fell asleep that night thinking of her.

I dreamt of Byul, when we were kids and we would play, of her brushing my hair, the way she applies her lipgloss when she’d go out, her perfect backflips during cheer, how she cries when she has laughed too much, how thunder storms scared her, of lying in the grass on our backs at night waiting for shooting stars, catching fireflies in the summer  and drinking hot chocolate with mallows during winter, how she was my bestfriend and I was hers.

All of these and more, repeating in my dreams in flashes until I woke up.

How could I have forgotten that my sister died?

I’ve never felt so inadequate and so incomplete. Not just for losing my memory.  We used to be a pair. I was half of a twin.

Without her, who am I?

Then it occurred to me that Byul will just be a person from my past, a memory. She will never grow old, never get new experiences. It was unfair that I was already older than her.