08

perception

According to Mijin, the weekend had come sooner than anticipated.

The two of us spent the first free day precisely as we spent the other free days: seated in her room, engaged in practice sessions to test my magical expertise. Of course, Mijin was incredibly delighted to feast her eyes on what she liked to call my ‘powers’. The notion was laughable… or rather, at some point it was.

The moment I realized, however, that there was a lot more to my ‘powers’ than creating floating carousels and rotating galaxies of pens and pencils and Mijin’s glittering, oversized plastic bracelets from her arts and culture class than I imagined, I had become more pensive. Complex thoughts had taken refuge in my once empty mind. The barren contents of the white room filled with questions. Speculations. And the majority of them – as of late – were unmistakable concerns for Hayoung.

Grazing the little girl’s forehead with the back of each floating felt pen as I drew them back and forth in a dancing circle in the air, such thoughts failed to leave me even during our more leisurely hours. Was there some way she could get out of this situation? How long did Mijin live with an abusive father? Did Mijin know her mother was subject to such vile acts on a (debatably) regular basis? Did Mijin never see her mother’s body—

‘Ahjussi, can ya cut stuff?’

‘Huh?’

The girl snorted in response; her features twisting horrendously to accommodate the large… monstrosity in her leaking nose before waving a chubby hand in my direction with little to no coordination.

‘It’s a secret.’

I frowned; the pens now stagnant overhead, much like my thoughts that had – moments prior – been processing a mile a minute. ‘What does a secret have to do with asking me to cut stuff?’

I could have cringed at how Mijin-like I sounded simply quoting her, yet the girl did not give me the chance to. It was at that point that I realized she looked terribly invested in the brown-papered book she often worked with during her hours away in the play school. I recalled peeking into it on a number of occasions when she wasn’t looking (for an unknown fear of being caught out for doing so without her permission) and spotted animal stickers that looked like glitter from afar with their bright green and indigo reflections. Beside them was often illegible hieroglyphics of a five-year-old attempting the creation of their own language for fame to come, sickly emerald scrawls, and inky brown patches that at the thought of touching, was enough to make me shudder.

‘It’s a secret,’ she repeated, now looking as stern as her snotty nose and dry skin and crumb-infested cheeks would allow as she held a folded brown page against the front of her jumper like her life depended on it.

‘Ahjussi, can ya cut stars for me?’

As usual, the question wasn’t exactly a question. I was given no choice in the matter despite the fact that she asked for my permission. She glanced uneasily into the page close against her chest and with her top lip folding over the bottom, and her thick eyebrows upturning, and her crooked pigtails coming undone at the very top of her head, Mijin placed the paper on the ground.

‘I wanna make something for momma.’

Jagged, uneven, terribly-plotted stars were scattered all over the page. A number of fat, caricature flowers were scrawled in in a foul magenta felt pen I couldn’t understand why she still used, however, the flowers were smothered with more and more stars… or rather, what I imagined were intended to be stars.

‘Ahjussi, you’ll help me, right?’

I should have been revolted. The past me certainly would have been in a heartbeat.

And yet staring at the stars and at a Mijin who stared at me looking as if she couldn’t bear the thought of my rejection, the only thing that crossed my mind was that this was all incredibly cute. I smiled. A smile that made Mijin smile too. A smile that made lightbulbs flicker and brighten and turn hot in the white room, and made tendrils of the girl’s dark hair lift at the corners, and made her messy pigtails look as if they were in the process of redoing themselves.

We soldiered on with the cut-outs in no time. Of course, with the exception of Mijin’s much-needed tea break despite her best efforts to not give away her most precious secret by confronting her mother in any way. As well as the bouts of playfulness where we threw the paper charms in the air and I stuck them in several places on the girl, earning her the name Julia, which was apparently the name of a star-infested princess she claimed looked like her mother.

‘Ahjussi, one day I’ll make ya a crown too.’

‘It had better be gold.’

‘OK! I’ll ask momma for some gold.’

‘Because she has a lot in her hair?’

‘Mm-hmm.’

I stared at Mijin twirling around in her pajamas from last night on the little white rug. Her small, stubby feet clumsily stepping around each other in circles, and her arms spread out beside her where the long dusty blue sleeves followed the slow-spinning motion.

‘I’d like that.’

I smiled, watching as the stars twirled slowly on an axis of their own around her small frame.

According to Koo Mijin, Sunday had approached sooner than she anticipated, much like the weekend as a whole.

Waking with bed-ridden hair, remnants of poor piping that was her nose which had crusted against the left side of her face, and sporting a terribly dazed expression to top it off, the ghostly entity melted through the door just in time to witness her rattle out the slumber in her puffy eyes.

Hoseok stared at the childish stars stuck on her head – something he’d done the night before whilst the girl was far too engrossed in her own little work, tongue out and all – and needn’t say much to beckon her to the breakfast table. A table where her mother and he sat at, watching