Pt. I. Joy

I gently reached for the door. Not knowing what I will see behind it. Crumpling the letter my brother wrote me a few weeks before he died.

I let out a long sigh before knocking three consecutive times, letting my fingers linger on the mahogany door for a moment when I heard someone scrambling on their feet on the other side. I anxiouslgy gulped.

I never met his wife. I wasn’t even able to attend their wedding because I was busy finishing my last year in college and we just skyped in the reception. I saw her in pictures though and she is really pretty.  She’s from Canada and went to Korea to teach English in a rural area where my brother was an attending physician. They fell in love and moved in the same city, in which I have to travel for hours.

The door opened revealing a petite woman in her late 20s, her hair was in a complete disarray despite her hair being tied to a bun with her bangs covering her forehead. She furrowed her borrows as if she was deep in thought and finally gasped when she saw me.

“You’re Joy?!” she asked, looking up and down. I was taken aback at how energetic she looked. It’s as if she never lost a loved one. Which was weird because her eyes were stating a different thing. They looked sad but still beautiful.
Nevertheless, I smiled at her and nodded with the same intensity. “Yes, hello, unnie..”

She quickly enveloped me in a hug which left me breathless for a while. I h