Trigger warning: Suicidal ideation

 

María was glad she went with her sister. 

 

They made it just in time to watch police burst through the hospital doors. Dr. Kim directed them toward the twins’ father, who was still on the floor muttering, mostly to himself, but María overheard it. 

 

“If only it’d been her! If only it’d been María! It should have been her!” He caught sight of her and lunged at her, but the police grabbed him and threw him to the floor again. 

 

“IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU!” 

 

The police were struggling to get handcuffs on him as he tried to get back toward his daughter, but once he was cuffed, they wasted no time hauling him out of the hospital. 

 

María and Hwasa followed and watched the police shove their father into the back of a cop car. He was looking at them and yelling, but they couldn’t hear him. 

 

The police pulled away, their sirens off. 

 

Sirens don’t sound once a murderer has been caught, María thought. 

 

“María-ya?” Moonbyul came up behind her and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. 

 

María felt herself begin to sway on her feet. Before she could fall, Moonbyul caught her, and Dr. Kim helped her. 

 

Soon she was in the infirmary, lying on a cot with Hwasa staring down at her.

 

“What he said wasn’t true.” 

 

“Yes it was,” María said. 

 

“He’s evil. He never deserved to have you as a daughter. You’re too good and pure. You’re the best person I know, María-ya,” Hwasa said. 

 

“Nobody deserves to have me around,” María answered. “If he’d just killed me you…” She tried to imagine a world where it was her instead of Hwasa. “You would be out there happily living your life. Mom would have been upset, but she’d move on because she had to. Dad would be pleased, obviously.” 

 

María curled up into a ball, ignoring Hwasa’s attempts to get her to look at her. 

 

“This is ridiculous! María-ya, I’m glad it was me because I never could have lived without you. I’m dead and I can’t be without you.” Hwasa reached for her sister before remembering she couldn’t touch her.

 

“You would have moved on,” María mumbled into her knees. “Wheein would have helped you. You would have gone to university. You would have had a future, a life, a full life. I have life, but it’s wasted.” 

 

“No, it’s not.” She sat on the edge of the bed and pretended she could her sister’s hair. “You’re about to live a life outside these walls. Father just confessed. You’ll leave this place, live with Wheein-ie.”

 

“They’ll never let me out. I’m still crazy.” Tears leaked down her face. She hid her face from her sister, but of course Hwasa knew she was crying. 

 

“Oh, María-ya, you were never crazy. You’ve been hurt. You’ve been traumatized. But you’ve also begun to heal. And you’re going to keep healing.” 

 

“No,” María said. “I’ll never be able to heal.” 

 

“I beg to differ.” 

 

This time it was a different voice, one that caught María’s attention enough for her to lift her head. Dr. Kim stood in front of her, her hands in the pockets of her white coat. 

 

“You’ve already begun to heal, María-shi. You’re going to continue to, and then you’ll leave this place.” She smiled at María. “You’ll leave this place for good.” 

 

***

 

It took daily sessions with Dr. Kim for the next two weeks, but María was starting to understand it was her father’s fault. She was getting closer to valuing herself enough to value her own life. It was Dr. Kim who suggested their next step. 

 

“You can make a victim impact statement in court, you know,” Dr. Kim said. “When they sentence your father, you can speak about how his actions harmed you and the judge will take that into account as they decide on how long he’ll be imprisoned.”

 

“You think I can stand in front of a courtroom full of people and tell them how he made me feel?” María began to tremble at the thought of it. 

 

“I know you can,” she said. “And I think it’ll be an important moment for you.” She smiled her eternal smile at María. “Just think about it, okay?” 

 

That night, María and Moonbyul discussed it. Hwasa was silent, just leaning against the window, looking out at the parking lot. The lights prevented it from ever being fully veiled in darkness. 

 

“I think you should do it,” Moonbyul said. “It’s next week, right?” 

 

Her father had pled guilty. Even he knew a trial would only end in disaster for him. 

 

“Yeah,” María said. “It’s so soon.” 

 

“I can help you, Dr. Kim will help you, and I’m sure Hwasa-ya will, too.” 

 

María turned to her sister. 

 

“Hwasa-ya, should I do it?” 

 

When Hwasa turned to face her sister, there was a sad smile on her face. 

 

“I only want you to be happy, María-ya. I want you to take whatever steps you need to to get there.” 

 

María suddenly remembered a time when they were young, when Hwasa had said almost the exact same thing. 

 

“Oma and Apa are going to kill me for this bad grade,” María said. “My third one, and we’re only a few weeks into the semester.” 

 

She hung her head low and kicked some pebbles on the dirt path she and Hwasa were taking home from school.  

 

“Give me your paper,” Hwasa said. 

 

María eyed her suspiciously. “Why?” 

 

“Just do it.” 

 

María refused, but Hwasa found it in her backpack that night. She erased María’s name and replaced it with her own. She put María’s name on her own paper, which had earned her a 100%. They might not have been similar in academics, but they had identical handwriting. 

 

When their parents saw their grades, María braced herself for her father’s hand, but it never came. Instead her parents turned with wide eyes to Hwasa. They asked her what went wrong, if she was okay, how this could happen… She walked away unscathed. 

 

“Why did you do that?” María asked later that night as they lay on their cots, only the moon lighting their room.

 

“I just want you to be happy, María-ya. I’ll do anything for you to be happy.” 

 

María took a deep breath. 

 

She wasn’t sure she could make Hwasa happy, but she could offer her something else. 

 

“What do you want to say, Hwasa-ya?” 

 

Hwasa looked at her in confusion. “Say? Me?” 

 

“Yeah, tell me and I’ll say it.” She straightened her back and determination took over her face. “Tell me and I’ll speak for the both of us.” 

 

***

 

María was overwhelmed. She was out in the hustle and bustle of the world for the first time in three years, and even more than that, it was a courtroom in Seoul, a city she’d technically been in for three years, but had never seen. 

 

Whenever her breathing got shaky, Dr. Kim coached her. She helped her through each wave of panic and not only comforted her, but poured as much confidence into her as she could. María knew she had almost none herself, so she borrowed as much as she could from Dr. Kim.

 

Hwasa was next to her the entire time, but she was silent. While María was wearing dress clothes, Hwasa remained in her school uniform. María tried to not think about how she always would. 

 

The opening was a blur. Everyone rose for the judge. The judge said some things, and then Dr. Kim was guiding María to a podium. She stared at her father, who looked so much smaller in his prison uniform. His shoulders sagged. He looked… defeated. 

 

María took a deep breath and cleared . 

 

“My name is María, and I’m his––” She pointed to her father. “I’m his daughter. I’m one of his daughters, actually. There are two of us, but he murdered my twin, Hwasa, three years ago.” 

 

Hwasa stood beside María, also staring at their father who quivered under her gaze. 

 

“To cover up his crime, he told me I killed my sister. He placed me in a hospital and never looked back. I’ve been there for three years, haunted by a crime I didn’t commit. I missed my high school graduation, going to university with my friends… I’ve missed out on a normal life.” 

 

She looked at her sister. 

 

“But more than any of that, my sister was stolen from me. Her life was stolen from her.” She stared into Hwasa’s eyes. “She’ll forever be 17, and I’ll forever be without her.” 

 

She blinked away tears and took a moment to compose herself. Dr. Kim had told her to take her time, to breathe when she needed to. 

 

“My father meant to kill me. He told me when he last saw me in the hospital. I’m the bad daughter, and Hwasa is the good one. Killing Hwasa was an accident, but the murder wasn’t. He just murdered the wrong twin.” 

 

She looked at her sister, who nodded her head. 

 

“Hwasa can’t speak for herself, so I want to speak for her. She’s my twin. Even in death, we’re connected. I knew her better than anyone else, and she knew me so well she could tell by a sigh how I felt.

 

Hwasa was many things. A stellar student, a loyal friend, a good daughter, and the best of sisters. She was funny, kind, caring… She would do anything for someone she loved.” María’s eyes filled with tears. 

 

“Once she told me that she could never live without me. Living without her now feels like a crime. She would loathe our father for what he did, not only because it killed her, but because it was intended for me. She would be upset with our mother for turning her back on me, but she’d also forgive her, just like I have.”

 

María took another deep breath. 

 

“And if she could say one thing to our father…” 

 

Hwasa whispered in her ear and María nodded.

 

“If she could say one thing to our father, it’s that she wishes the insanity he tried to push on me for the past three years to overtake him for the rest of his life. She would say she hopes he lives a long life, haunted by what he stole from her.”

 

Hwasa settled back, satisfied with the message María had delivered for her. 

 

She didn’t know what her sister was about to say.

 

“But just like me, she would also forgive him. She would forgive him for herself, and eventually for him, because she was too good a person to really want him to suffer like that for the rest of his days. I’m not as good of a person. So while I forgive him, I forgive him for my own closure.” 

 

She looked her father in the eyes. 

 

“Live a long life, Apa, and let us never meet again––in this life or the next