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She was seventeen again bordering eighteen. Not quite the little prima donna she’d spent her childhood as. A loveable daughter who possessed no desire for rebellion. Heeding mommy and daddy’s words, because she loved being doted on. Kim Namjoo their golden child had received many praises and pats on the back. Along with her achievements came an allowance in big dollars.

Namjoo had never been admonished by either parent. Loving them greatly until she hated them deeply. Somewhere in her heart there was that deep, dark place where a treasure box was full of resentment. And it had opened to let the snakes out.

She was panting. She was running. Out of breath. Her feet pounding cement. Racing along the driveway where at the end the three-story building loomed. Closer but the road finagled, stretched and then she was farther, so Namjoo fought harder until her legs ached and her lungs throbbed.

She had to get home. She needed to be home for him.

There was no one but her, so Namjoo pushed harder. Finally making it with a bam! through the front doors. She saw it before she made it.

The pool of blood. The bottom of the staircase.

“NOOOOOO!!!!!”

So much of it Namjoo was soaked knee down as she collapsed by his head. Chanu’s arms were spread out as if he’d lain there, ready and waiting for the life to drain out of him. Long vertical cuts ran down the once beautiful creamy skin often lathered with lotion after a nice shower.

“No, no, no!” Namjoo wept.

Cradling his damp head on her lap she hugged him. Her heart leapt when his arm shot up, hand squeezing her fingers. Her dead brother’s eyes popped open. “Don’t give up on me.”

Jolting awake Namjoo in hoarse gulps of air. A frightened wheeze escaped as she breathed. Her room was dark. She was sweat soaked. A streak of moonlight lay across her torso signaling it was not yet day. She was neither home nor at the bottom of the staircase but in her new bed.

Calming the abrupt terror, Namjoo lay back down on her fat pillows. Sleep was unforgiving, so she ended up laying there soaking in self-pity. The previous days of failures hit her, riding her like a tidal wave. No one was going to help her. At her first her chest shook. Soon came the cry in the sound of a whimper. Turning to bury her face into the cool of her pillow cover, Namjoo moaned loudly as she wept.

Kim Chanu had been dead for at least a few minutes before she arrived. Too late for her brother. There had no been chance of saving him. Not even when she tore off her shoe laces with trembling fingers and knotted them around his arms, hoping to stop the bleeding. The paramedics had to pry her off his lifeless body.

Things like that didn’t simply wash away.

Namjoo woke up even before light struck. She paced her apartment and made really bad coffee. Sipping from a too hot mug Namjoo passed the garbage bin several times. The dark liquid sloshed over the sides of the mug when she hastily set it on the floor and knelt, digging through her trash.

Discovering what she was looking for, Namjoo unrolled the crumpled newspaper. Ironing it flat with her fingers against the smooth floorboard. There, Kim Jongin’s profile.

She needed him.

After passing on the note that morning, Namjoo tried to eat something. Unable to swallow a bite she took a cab to Chanu’s grave. Rather than cremate him and put him in a columbarium alongside other family members, because it had been suicide, his death was seen as shameful, interpreted as an embarrassment. So, her father had purchased a private plot and had him buried there.

All alone. By himself. Even after death.

How cruel of her parents. To eject him from the family after all the misery they’d caused. Namjoo never forgave them.

The cab could drive no further because it was private territory, so Namjoo was dropped off at the roadside. She sat beneath twelve-foot pine trees. Not a noise surrounded her. Just Kim Namjoo accompanied by the whistling wind. She tried to take heart in the fact her brother was resting in peace with nature, but it did not heal the loneliness she felt out here. No soul. No life when the world was barren and cold.

Drawing knees up to her chest she waited. It got colder. Began to snow. Slow drifts started before mother earth came flurrying down swifter. White rain she tried to tell herself. Or maybe her brother was shedding pure tears of sadness. And the fact she dared set herself up for disappointment.

The prosecutor wasn’t coming.

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“It’s snowing.” Secretary Ma marveled. Setting down the file he’d dug out of the metal cabinet, Jongin stared out the window in his office. A dense curtain of white trickled from the sky. Snowflakes whirling through the air as they made their fall.

On the other side, traffic wasn’t slowing. Puffs of gray-white clouds disappeared in their wake. The temperature must have dropped. Even the glass was ice-cold inches from his face. Jongin glanced toward his desk where below his desktop sat the note from this morning. Beside it the post-it where a phone number had been scrawled.

Following it arrived the haggard face, the limp hair, the purplish eyebags haunting his memory. Jongin wondered not past a minute before abandoning his post. Grabbing his coat, he slipped it on on his way out announcing, “I’ll be leaving first.”

“So early?” Secretary Ma called after him, but he’d already arrived at the elevator.

Racing to his car, Jongin jumped behind the wheel and drove into traffic. He had no idea where this location was, so at the red light he switched on his phone and the GPS. Pressing on the accelerator he sped past afternoon crowds and down narrow streets that spread into four lanes. Woodland seemed to hound him as the road emptied and only his engine roared.

Jongin worried the GPS system had directed him incorrectly, but catching view of a familiar color he braked. There at the roadside Kim Namjoo was huddled alone in the cold. If he didn’t know her beforehand, he’d think she was some weird lady on crack to be sitting outside.

Digging into the backseat he pulled out his umbrella. Stepping out Jongin opened the umbrella as he walked toward her. Nearing he spotted a pile of white had already settled on the roof of her head. She truly wasn’t prepared for the change in the weather.

He waited a bit while shielding her from the drizzling snow. Noticing his shadow Namjoo deftly glanced up with what he thought was a gasp.

Big eyes lubricated with tears catching him off guard. Jongin staggered back when she lunged forward clinging onto his coat, crying, “You came!”

Despite the striking cold her head was warm as she buried it into the low of his chest. For a few seconds he let her gather herself. Listening to her gulp air, squeeze his coat, then straightened while sniffing.

Wiping her dewy face with the back of her hand she said, “He’s over there.”

Jongin glanced past her toward a thin