The journey to Seoul from Tokyo held a distance of about seven hundred and eighteen miles and took approximately about two and half hours to travel it on a regular plane. The drive from the Incheon airport to downtown Seoul may vary, depending on how you decide to travel; but the most preferable way of travelling was to take the Express train on the APEX line, the journey of which would last about forty minutes straight. And then from the Seoul city to Mapo dong would be a twenty to thirty minute long train drive; with an addition of reaching the right destination and finding the way through the maze of roads, the approximate time it would take for us to move from our last house to the new was about  five hours and thirty minutes. I did the calculation while I waited at the airport before even the journey began; it was just about four thirty five in the dawn at that time. And I suppose I had done my counting right despite the slight glitches then and that when we finally reached our rightful destination after a much tiresome drive, the clocks in Seoul had struck ten.

We decided to take a taxi straight from the Mapo dong station to save time and since we hadn’t much energy to switch from one tube to another. We were in the back, me, my younger brother my grandmother and mother huddled together while my father sat up front, sharing a hearty conversation with the driver; something about finally returning to his hometown after years. My brother was on my right, his twelve year old self showing very much and was complaining about having to die at a young age of severe hunger, whom my grandmother had to shush every now and then. It was right around at that time that we finally rounded the corner and reached a halt, and I promptly sat up and had a look outside.

It was in May, in the blossoming days of the spring. The street where our house was located was a much endearing expanse; it was beckoning there; the humidity, the calmness and the sense of belonging. I liked it, honestly; the feeling I got was no different from how it was from nine years ago. The only difference which immediately caught my eyes were the two police vehicles and an ambulance parked in front of the house across ours, yellow stripes bound around implying a crime scene. The entire family climbed out, curiously assessing the situation in front of us instead of paying necessary attention into what we were actually there to do; I suppose it was just natural that the scene completely caught our minds. It wasn’t every day that we’d be witnessing a crime scene, and it wasn’t every day that we’d do so in a surprisingly empty street. We watched it, nevertheless, being the sole spectators around; and after the Ambulance sped off, we were told by the policemen to head on our ways. We obliged of course, and my father paid the taxi fare while I helped my brother to take down the luggage from the trunk. And with the corner of my eyes I saw her, sitting on the front porch of that house, her head resting on her folded knees, there wasn’t a clue or an explanation in her deep empty eyes.

Later that day, after we had finally settled into our new home and had settled the disputes about who got which room, my mother came knocking on my door, with a mug of milk in her hand. I was sitting on my bed at that time, of which the mattress was still rolled up, and I was in a great mental argument regarding where the study table should be placed. I was considering the space near the window when my mother placed the mug on the table and looked down on me with tentative eyes.

“It’s a girl who had died” She told me, her voice low as though it was information which shouldn’t be spilled. “I just met her mother outside”

I turned to her upon hearing her and asked as I took the mug in my hands; “How had she died?”

“I didn’t ask” she told me, lowering her gaze to the carpet below. “I can’t bring myself to, of course. She looked terrible, her mother”

“I’m sure she did” I said, taking a sip of the milk. It was warm, but not very. “How old was the girl?”

“I didn’t ask that either” replied my mother. “Honestly how could I?”

I peeped out the window right below which was the steep red roof of the front porch. Right on the opposite was a balcony, its large pale-white framed French windows closed, and across the railing of the balcony was the same yellow police-stripes set. I assumed it was the room of the said girl who had died.

“Do you think she was murdered mom?” I asked, turning back to my mother, after putting much thought on the scenario. “I mean, why would the police take it a crime scene?”

My mother stared at me, like my face held all the answers and nodded as though to herself. “Possible, I don’t know, and I am really afraid to ask”

“Hmm” I nodded back, without really showing much enthusiasm on knowing things either. I was curious alright, but I suppose her vague knowledge on the incident wasn’t really feeding my thoughts much, so I stayed silent, drinking my milk. Thus supposedly realizing we really hadn’t much to talk about, my mother pressed a kiss on my cheek and left the room, closing the door softly behind her, leaving me to my silent thoughts. I thought of the girl sitting on the porch of that house earlier on today. I wondered if she was real or if it was one of my momentary hallucinations. I peeped down again to see if I could catch a glimpse of that front porch again but the red roof of ours wasn’t allowing me to. It was a pretty strange day for me, and the sun was burning terribly at that time so I blamed it all on the fatigue and finally opted to place the table facing the window which faced the balcony of the girl who died, rolled down the mattress and decided to go to sleep.

The next day after we had sat down for lunch, my mother announced to the family that we were to head onto the girl’s funeral and pay respect. It was way past noon at that time, and the lunch didn’t consist much; a few side dishes of radish Kimchi, omelets, and sautéed sprigs of leaves, rice and a pork stew. The smoke of the still bubbling stew wafted around the small area of the kitchen, through which I could see my father’s face, intently listening to her as my mother spoke of the funeral.

“Isn’t it quite strange? The first thing we get from new neighbors is a funeral” My grandmother stated after mother had told us to have our suits pressed. “I don’t think we should attend the funeral before everything”

My grandmother, who is my mother’s mother was from Jeonju-do, held traditional perspectives on most things. Her idea of a perfect life involved visiting the church regularly and having healthy diets and getting enough sleep, in addition to that she preferred to stick to her traditional believes. So supposing that it was another one of her customary outbursts, we all knew the best to ignore and keep our mouths shut. My mother tried to reason though, saying that it was a young girl who had died and that she had met her mother; but convincing my grandmother into things was as difficult as turning a mountain over; therefore in the end we decided to go to the funeral anyway, leaving her behind.

I took out my black suit, a thin black tie, a crisp white shirt, socks and a pair of leather shoes out of the still unpacked luggage, laid them down on the bed and sat beside them, realizing just how strange the entire scenario was. We had just moved back into Seoul, back into our old house and we were going to the funeral of a girl who died on the very same day we returned, a girl we had no idea about. I didn’t know what was worse, the fact that a girl had died on the day we moved in or that we were going to the funeral of a person we barely knew. I looked down at the suit which I bought when I obtained my diploma a year ago. It was creased but was in good condition; the shirt was crumpled and the tie had strings of cat fur stuck on it. I wasn’t sure if it was just coincidental or something that begged earnest attention; despite the traditional beliefs and such; it didn’t come as normal to me, attending a funeral of a dead girl we barely knew on the first day we moved in.

The funeral parlor was quite a drive away from home, so-clad in black suits-the four of us waited under the scorching sun for good ten minutes until the taxi we called arrived. The journey to the parlor was quiet, not even my father spoke to the driver like he usually does, as if the funeral had anything to do with us and we too remained silent, me watching the streetlights passing by one after the other like they were striving to keep up pace with one another. My mother was sitting between my brother and I, and once we had reached the parlor, which was a small run-down one in the vicinity of the Mapo-do city hospital, my mother reached out and squeezed my hand. I was surprised for a moment, wondering why she would even do that; but then the look in her eyes seemed to tell me more. She was a mother, I realized as we walked towards the surprisingly less crowded parlor. And we were attending the funeral of a person who had lot more to go ahead in her life.

Stepping inside, however, I realized, the funeral and the entire incident hadn’t been solely coincidental. As it happened, the family of the deceased, and the deceased herself were the same owners of the opposite house from nine years back, but only the man had remarried to someone mother hadn’t known. I didn’t know how to react, given that it was one of the two girls I had played with when I was still a child who had died. I knew I should be saddened and bewildered by it, shocked at least; but inside I was surprisingly calm, like I had known it all along. Maybe I had, maybe I had seen it and known it that one of them would die young though I didn’t know how. Upon entering the hall where they kept the deceased I realized, I had been wrong on assuming whom too.

*

I was only thirteen years old when we moved out from Mapo-do to Tokyo, my brother was barely one and we did so because my father had obtained a transfer and also because they supposed it was a good change. It wasn’t that we had any difficult time in Mapo-do, it wasn’t that we didn’t enjoy it there either; it was only because they both soughed after a change, what with us both being still young and maybe they strived some adventure; nonetheless we had moved.

We had befriended the neighbors of the opposite house of ours. It was a pretty ordinary family; the father worked at a construction site and the mother was a petite young woman who enjoyed patisserie; and then there were the two girls; I couldn’t recall their names even if I tried but I could still remember their ages, strangely; I can still picture their faces in my mind. In fact, the only thing I didn’t remember about them were their names. I suppose knowing their names was fairly superfluous as long as I knew who they were.

One was older to me, she was sixteen at that time and she was undeniably the most gorgeous creature I had ever laid my eyes on in that trifling silly age of mine. She had a long mane of straight dark hair, thin pale lips and a deep set of eyes; they were wider in comparison to mine yet unreadable. They quite remind me of a poem which you read, read and read million times but you still couldn’t understand what they tried to say. You couldn’t quite read between the lines of her emotions; whether she was happy, sad or angered. All you would see was a pair of deep set eyes, staring right into your soul through flesh and bones; and you had better believed that she knew you more than you knew her.  They were a pair of dark bottomless wells, nonetheless I liked them. I loved the mysterious aura surrounding her; like she was carrying the souls of kittens and the happiness of children within her. In fact, she was most possibly the person on whom I had my first crush on.

Then there was her sister, four years younger to me; cute and pretty with fluffy cheeks and nonexistence eyes. She was the one whom I played with; but you could tell her looks of cutesy were disturbingly deceiving. Despite being adorable, she was clueless, she was cruel; she would squeeze the life out of an innocent beast and claim that it was because she thought it was just the right thing to do. I couldn’t quite understand how her mind worked; how she could always see right in every wrong she did; how her smile could be charming and sinister at the same time, how her voice could be so cheery and sweet when she’d utter all the cruelty in the world, how her words could be completely clueless as would be of a child of her age and also menacingly decisive at the same time. She was more like the either ends of the rainbow bound together; the goodness and cruelty put in one body, making her the most hated and most loved. I couldn’t understand how such a person could even exist; but later on I came to learn that Satan too was once an angel in heaven.

The older one used to do magic on the streets; I knew this because she used to take the two of us with her to every one of her magic sessions which she’d do on the junction which led on four ways. We were the helpers, despite our ages, and I helped her anyway without thinking much of my hurting stubby hands.  She did these amazing tricks with play cards and hats and sets of colorful cloth. She had this box full of all sorts of items she used for her tricks; she called it the ‘chest of treachery’. ‘Treachery’ back then for the twelve year old me was a big fancy word which the grown up incredible people like herself would use. I always thought it might refer to something as equally incredible as herself’ eloquent and enigmatic, and I wouldn’t deny that I had quite a pride within myself to know that it I was whom she chose over her sister to carry the chest of treachery for her. I did so, constantly and wordlessly until the day that we moved out. But the strange thing was, moving out, I didn’t have a slightest feeling of despair. I was relieved, somewhat. You could say that I was relieved to be moving out from what could have been the ultimatum of witchcraft of the whole of Seoul; or at least that’s what I thought it was.

Growing up, I came to know that treachery was in fact, deceit, so I suppose, in assumptions that I wouldn’t be meeting the two girls again, I had put behind the twelve year old self of me and moved on.

The other one, the younger girl used to have a bowl with two pet fishes. We named them Ariel and Sebastien from the Disney movie little mermaid. They were both gold fishes and did nothing more than silently swimming round and round in the constrictions of the glass bowl. Around in the mid-summer after I had turned twelve, I remember finding Ariel floating lifelessly on the surface of the water. Her once golden body had lost its color and she wasn’t putting an effort to breath. I didn’t know what could have possibly happened there, nor had I an expertise in taking care of gold fishes, so hadn’t the other girl. We both called upon her older sister’s help, who entered the room with her long black skirt swishing back and forth behind her, her dark mane of hair, I remembered, was scented of jasmine. She silently peeped into the bowl, dipped a slender long finger into it and moved it around as I watched her in awe. Then she looked up and announced, as one would about the day’s weather; ‘Ariel had died’.

We buried Ariel in their backyard. I was the one to dig a hole on the damp ground with a plastic shovel; the younger girl wrapped the slithery little body of the fish in a food wrapper and placed it in a cardboard box which she had located in the bin. After the burial we sat on the grass together, silence engulfing us. I wasn’t sad; I wasn’t sure how I should feel sad for a fish who did nothing more than swimming in a glass bowl of water, I didn’t suppose she was sad either. I think what we did by sitting there was just deceiving one another on how we felt. Maybe it’s natural; how we react to someone’s death is almost always the same. However, by instinct I knew, the younger girl really hadn’t the same idea about the death of the fish. And I was right. I stood up after a while, thinking that it was my time to go home. The girl followed, standing up and brushing dirt on her back. Then she patted on the soil where we had buried the gold fish and said; “She’s finally free, she doesn’t have to swim circles in the bowl anymore”
I was skeptical about it, so I said, “But now she’s stuck in a box underground”.
She shook her head then, and looked up to the sky. “No. Ariel had gone away”

The next day I walked into her room and happened to find her with a few bottles of paint and a brush in her hand, the fish bowl in which Sebastien swam around kept on the table before her. I asked what she was doing as I took a seat on her bed.

“I am drawing Sebastien a gift” She said, the tip of her brush moving lucidly on the glass. Her eyes was fully focused on her doing, and the red blotch she had managed so far looked confusing to me.

“A gift?” I asked her, moving towards her.

“Yes, a gift. I am drawing Ariel. Sebastien is lonely”

“But they weren’t doing much”

“They were” she said, now dipping her brush into the pot of orange paint. “They were talking”

Then she drew a pair of what seemed like feet under the gold fish’s tail.

“Why feet?” I asked her, and she washed her brush in a bowl of water; the shade of orange mixed in with red.

“Because Ariel wished she had feet”

“How would you know?”

She looked at me, seemingly bored and not wanting to give explanations anymore, and said “Because she’s Ariel and Ariel wanted feet”

And then I realized that she was referring to the mermaid from the movie, so without saying anything anymore, I helped her to draw the scales on its body in white.

The next day when I walked into the room, the girl was dipping plastic human figures of divers and a Barbie doll with golden hair with a life jacket on, into the bowl. Sebastien was swimming hither and tither bewildered of alien items put into his residence, so realizing that Sebastien wouldn’t exactly fancy the company of a Barbie and two divers who couldn’t do much help either, I went to the bowl, dipped my hand in and tried to retrieve the figures.

“No!” The girl screamed then, scaring the wits out of me. She was persistent, holding back my wrist, my hand still under water, so I simply dropped the figure back in. Then she let go of me, I took my hand out and examined it as though the water would have hurt me.

“What are you doing?” I asked her as she stared into the bowl and the discomfort of Sebastien inside it; in her eyes was inflicted her rage.

“Sebastien is lonely!” She snapped, sounding as though I had committed a massive crime. “He has no friends!”

“But you drew Ariel the other day!” I said, pointing a finger at the drawing on the glass. “He isn’t lonely anymore”

“But this Ariel isn’t swimming anymore. She won’t talk”

“Oh, so these-,”I pointed at the figures in the bowl. “-Do they talk?”

“No” Said the girl, looking annoyed. “But at least they are in water with him!”

I didn’t say anything anymore, because I couldn’t stand her absurdity despite her being my friend. I blamed it all on her stupid age and naïve mindset she had and returned to my house to have dinner and sleep. The next day, however, the girl came to my front porch, the bowl tucked under her arm, Sebastien was floating on the surface of the water. He had died.

*

The older girl, whose name had been Kim Arae looked exactly the same as I remembered nine years ago in my younger days. I could see the same dark hair, the same pursed lips and the same deep set eyes through the scented white smoke of the incense sticks; the photograph, however didn’t exactly reflect her true self. Kim Arae the street magician wasn’t the girl on the photograph. She never really wore that smile she had on the photo in person, her eyes never glowed. Her skin was paler and her lips weren’t red. I couldn’t fathom why I was judging the photograph of her even, I didn’t think I even had the right to. But I suppose that this girl had been a significant part of me somewhere in the forgotten bits of my childhood, she had made an impact of some sort; yes, this was the girl for whom I carried the chest of Treachery with such a pride that I didn’t even think what it meant. This was the girl I thought I had a crush on.

I kneeled down on the polished wooden floor with my parents and my brother on my either sides. The hall was silent, only the sobs of her step mother sitting on the floor on the far corner was heard over the hum of our breath. I wondered where the sister was, the one who killed Sebastien, I wonder how she must be doing by now.

When I first came to know that it was one of my childhood friends (I’d put it that way though it probably wasn’t exactly the case) the first person I assumed to have died was the younger one who’s name I still couldn’t remember. I thought girls who had done more sins would be going down first in comparison to those who had done nothing but tricking people into believing things. Tricking people wasn’t quite a terrible sin if I were to judge it by killing an innocent animal; and the younger girl had done more, more than I could remember with her innocent little smiles and stubby little hands. I had thought the girl who killed the fishes would have died, the girl who had cutesy and cruelty combined would have seen the end-of-the-tunnel’s light sooner. But I suppose it wasn’t right for me to judge things and assume who would die first. I shouldn’t be thinking of them dying at all but I apparently had. I wasn’t sure if I should be feeling guilty for doing so or simply overlook it. I didn’t do either. All I did was thinking of Sebastien and the poorly drawn Ariel with two feet.

After we had paid our respect, the three of us headed out of the hall, past a set of college students and high-schoolers donning black clothes and pretentious sad faces. I knew they were pretentious for they’d only appear when they’d realize someone might be watching them. I wondered if anyone of them really knew this girl enough, knew the meaning of the depth of her eyes or the constantly straight-set lips. I wondered whether they knew that she had a chest of treachery even to be standing there, forcing out momentous cries. Then I remembered that time when the younger girl and I sat at Ariel’s grave. We didn’t know anything beyond her swimming circles in the bowl, but we too, sat at the grave, pretending to be in despair. So maybe it was something we all did because it was just the right thing to be doing at a funeral, no matter whether you knew the dead people or not.

Once we stepped out, my parents went to talk with the girl’s father and her step mother. They were talking and talking and nodding and nodding; my parents were pretending too; it was deeply disturbing because it wasn’t like anything they would do would take their grief away. My brother and I stood side by side, a few feet away from my parents, pulling off a face similar to the others. I was still wondering how the girl had died and if she was murdered, if so then who might have done so. My mind went back to Sebastien, and it made my stomach churn. But as soon as the terrible thought appeared, it went away on its own. I looked up, scanning the crowd, and then I saw her, the familiar face from the day before sitting in the exact same manner on the porch of the parlor, her black Hangbok crumpled, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her eyes were dark and empty, lips were in a thin line; it was the same face from that day in mid-summer after I had turned twelve. It was her.

I didn’t approach her though, because I felt that something was stopping me. Maybe it was my childhood memories, maybe it was the fish bowl, or maybe because I didn’t know how I should be approaching a friend who’s sister had died. I hadn’t many friends, not in Tokyo, not in Seoul either, and the few I had haven’t had their family members dying, so I haven’t ever attended the funeral of one. The reason why I didn’t approach her, I guess was the latter, because I didn’t know what I should say, because I knew whatever I would say wouldn’t change anything. But deep inside I had this one strange feeling, a feeling I didn’t want to have but had anyway, a feeling which deeply set the mark on me that I, for whatever the reason didn’t want her to remember me and take me back through those dark days of our past.

Two days later after the funeral I came to a blatant realization that my prayers to god to not to meet her again had gone to naught. It was a calm Sunday afternoon and both my parents had gone to the town for grocery shopping. Both my brother and I were at home, I was strumming tuneless bits on the guitar and my brother was playing Warcraft in his room, grandmother was having her customary afternoon nap after lunch when a knock sounded on the front door.

We still hadn’t fixed the doorbells since it’s been a few days since we moved in, and the silence inside the house carried the sound of the knock throughout. I was in the hallway, sitting on the staircase with my guitar resting on my thigh, and upon hearing the rhythmic tap on the door, I kept it aside and made my way towards it.

At first I was hesitant to open it for I knew we hadn’t many visitors yet and if it were my parents they’d unlock their way in. I tried peeping out the peep-hole, but all I could get was a glimpse of a top of a head. So assuming that it was probably a neighborhood kid, I unlocked the door and pulled it wide open. And you better believe it that my heart stopped for an instant in utter befuddlement, seeing the very person I wasn’t hoping to see, standing on the foot of my front door with a plate of some sort of a delicacy in her hands. I didn’t know how I should react first, and I was deeply considering closing the door on her face rather than actually letting her in while I was at home practically alone. I thought of Sebastian again, and looked at the girl from head to feet. She had changed. She was still cute, but her smile wasn’t that cruel, sinister one anymore. It was quite ordinary, and a little sad, like it was there against its will. Her hair was thick straight and long only down to her shoulders, and if I had guessed for her to sport the same dark mysterious aura around her like her sister did at that age, I was gravely mistaken. This girl only seemed like an ordinary seventeen year old girl. So I gave her a quiet nod and a smile and let her in.

She stepped inside, took off her shoes and shyly looked around the place like she was afraid to meet my eyes. She was probably too embarrassed to finally meet her childhood friend after years of his absence, and since I wasn’t exactly the young boy who played tag and buried fishes and carried chests of treachery now, I suppose it possibly came as a surprise to meet me again. She was still the adorable little girl I knew, though; it was like she hadn’t grown much at all. She was tiny, her height only reached past my upper arm, and her cheeks were still the fluffy pink that it was almost funny. She had a funny sense in fashion, I figured, which didn’t exactly matter to me. All in all, she didn’t seem very much like the girl whom I assumed had killed the two innocent fish and did cruel things like they didn’t matter.

She stood up straight then, her eyes hesitantly glancing up at me, and handed me the plate in her hands.

“It’s hotteok, mother sends as a welcoming gift” She said in a voice which sounded too ordinary for the girl I knew. This wasn’t her, she didn’t talk like this in the past. She didn’t talk like human. Maybe my assumptions that she’d be the one dying young was so blatantly so wrong.

“Uh...Umm…Thank you” I muttered, hesitantly searching for words and immediately gestured at the living room. “You can sit-,”

“Great” She said, forming out a smile, so I nodded, feeling totally disoriented and headed into the kitchen. While in the kitchen, all I could do was lean on the cabinet and get myself together first. It was an unexpected encounter, indeed, and given that her sister had died recently and I still didn’t know how she did, even since my parents had been too afraid to ask, I had no idea on how I should be approaching her. Without thinking, I pulled out a can of coke from the fridge and since we hadn’t any glasses, a paper cup, and headed towards the living room.

But instead of sitting there, I was surprised to find her sitting on the stairs, my guitar in her hands. It was strange, seeing her being so human like that. I didn’t think she’d ever even admire music but there she was, gazing down at the strings.

In order to get her attention I cleared my throat, she looked up, so I handed her the cup quite awkwardly and popped open the can for her. “Err…is this okay?” I asked, since what I was giving her wasn’t exactly very cordial. “We haven’t many things, since we just-,”

“I’ll take it” she interrupted me, gesturing at the can that I simply stopped talking and gave it to her. Then she kept the paper cup aside and patted on the spot beside her. “Sit, it’s been a while”

I wondered if she had forgotten that she was the visitor, and then I realized that the old she hadn’t completely faded away, thus I hesitantly sat beside her. She sipped from the can, its sweet scent wafted around, and then she spoke so naturally, staring ahead. “I remember you, do you remember me?”

“Uh, yes” I nodded and rubbed the back of my neck since I couldn’t recall her name.

“Good.” She nodded and took a sip. “My sister, she died…”

Maybe this was the topic I was willing to avoid at all costs, the talk about the dead, the funeral and the yellow stripes of a crime scene. I was curious, I was wanting to know the truth, but approaching the family of the dead was always leaving me with the question of how I should be doing it. The truth is, I have never had anyone close to me dying. Not even a pet. My grandfather died and back then I was young. I wasn’t born yet when my father’s parents died so I never felt it at all. I didn’t know what I should be telling them when people say that somebody close to them had died. It wasn’t like saying Sorry would help much and giving my condolences would make them feel any better. And I really hadn’t anything to feel sorry for, because we say sorry when we were at fault and I wasn’t. I wasn’t even feeling sad for her, which was even worse, so I opted to say silent. Silence, to me, came as the best response of all.

“Did you hear me? My sister died four days ago”

The question made me realize that it was indeed my time to verbally respond. I had no idea what would be the right thing to say, so I just nodded and said; “Yes…I heard”

“You mean what I said? Or the news?”

I was probably wrong again, and looks really could deceive. The girl hadn’t changed at all.

“Both”

She nodded, nodded and nodded; took a sip of cola and nodded again, muttering ‘Great, great’ to herself. I didn’t know if I should excuse myself and leave or apologize for what I did, but then again this wasn’t how we were. We were never really friends; we were enemies in the form of friends, our bond was never to be defined as one. I hated her, she hated me, and what we did at most times was fight. So I couldn’t fathom why I couldn’t go back to that now.

But of course; I wasn’t carrying the chest of treachery anymore. I couldn’t be so smug and arrogant now. Arae had died.

“You know how she died?” She asked suddenly, as though responding to the unanswered questions in my mind. “Did they tell you?”

“No” I said, and decided that this conversation wasn’t something that should be happening. So I turned to meet her eyes. The same eyes, the ones I remembered from back then stared back into mine. “Look, we don’t have to-,”

“She killed herself”

The fact came to me as a shock. The me who was expecting for it to be a murder or something that wouldn’t push me to the edge of believing what scared me back in those days. I didn’t expect it to be it though deep down, I knew that it was it. Maybe I was afraid to believe it and trust my instincts, but Arae never seemed like someone who’d love her life. The twelve year old me could understand that much. She didn’t love anything beyond magic and the chest of treachery, and that’s as far as it went. So for a moment I fell silent. I stayed silent and tried to feel as dejected and despaired as much as I possibly could. I should be saddened, angered at what could have led her to do it, but no. I wasn’t. Because at one point I had come to believe that she probably wanted it too.

“Oh” I managed at last and sniffed. “I’m sorry”

Then she proceeded to tell me this long indecipherable tale of how they found her body, struggling to live.

“Imagine it yourself; you wake up, you realize your sister isn’t there at the breakfast table, and your parents have no idea because they were busy making babies or whatever. You search all over the house, calling her name on and on and on, in hopes she’d hear it somehow but you wouldn’t find a glimpse of her. There’s the scent, there is the bed, there is the light in her room and water running in the sink but not her, not a slightest cluse in sight and then your neighbors call you up and tell you that there’s something hanging down the balcony; the ing neighbors, the ing balcony; out of all the places in the house you find your sister hanging down the ing balcony, she had killed herself outside the ing house and not so the case is. Do you get what I mean?”

“Wait” I said, putting up a hand, and I realized that my voice was low and breaking too, as much as hers was. Now, I was scared. “You mean…you mean she hung herself down the…down the balcony railing?”

The girl looked up at me, and for the first time in 21 years of my life, I was seeing tears in her eyes, actual, genuine tears in them. Her lips trembled, tears threatening to fall, and she nodded, slow and slight, like she couldn’t believe it all herself. “The ing balcony...the ing neighbors” she said in a whisper, and suddenly pressed her hands onto her face. “Oh god, oh my god, , , ” She was musing to herself again; she was laughing and crying, moving back and forth, the sleeve of her jacket brushing against the strings of the guitar, it making a slightest tune. Over that could I hear the sound of despair, confusion and fear. She was now so much like the girl I knew from my past, and for some reason I was glad, because this was the girl I had always known. But only, I didn’t know what I should do to help her now.

After a while then, she finally sat up, having herself straight and composed. The tears weren’t there anymore, but there was a slight smile, a smile, which implied to me that she was, for some weird reason, relieved.

“Wow, I let it all out…I’ve been wanting to do it, I ing let it all out”

“You certainly did” I replied, holding myself from patting her back. She was crouched down but her head was raised and then her eyes turned to me, gazing right through me like her sister used to.
“I’m so glad you’re back” She said to me finally, her voice low as a whisper and finally stood up, brushing down the wrinkles of her skirt while I remained seated, thrown for a moment. Then she turned to face me.

“I think I should get going”

“Uh, sure” I said, nodding hesitantly and tried to clear out the hazy awkwardness in my mind. “Sure, sure…umm, see you around”

“Okay then” She turned to leave and then I realized that I still couldn’t remember her name. So I said to her, loud enough; “I can’t remember your name”

When she turned to me then, there was that cruel little smile, the smile she gave when she came to the door with the bowl in her hands, the smile she made when she crushed the cricket under her tiny foot because she thought it was sad. That one smile I was so used to, and said to me ; “Well that’s better” before she disappeared out the door.