Hayi was already breaking into cold sweat a few minutes in after they picked up her brother from Kansai airport. It was 4 o clock on a beautiful golden afternoon, and the air around them was bright, light reflecting on all the mirror surfaces of the car. They were going 80 kilometers per hour, passing on blurred images of the ocean outside and she felt like she was a blurred image as well.

 She hasn’t seen her brother for a year.

The last time they were supposed to—on their decided monthly meeting, he didn’t show up. There was an “I’m sorry, I can’t come today” call and then there were no more meetings afterwards.

The only contact he kept with her was the monthly allowance she has never spent a cent of, just letting it pile up at the bank, and the vacation packages and pocket money equal the cost of it she received every two months—she gets lucky if she gets a note with it. 

For Switzerland: a “Hayi, please stay warm.” came along with 4 pairs of winter coats and 2 pairs of snow boots.  (He can’t tell her anything, how dare he tell her what to do when he didn’t even know what size her shoes were.) 

For Naples: “Enjoy. xx” came along with a Nex-3 camera and Stendhal’s travelogue.

She didn't get anything for Brunei, Amsterdam, Greece, Phukhet.

For a year, she gets these and carts herself and Joohyun to a wonderful, different place for a week and she had thought before, I wouldn’t even mind if he doesn’t see me again. But now that he’s here, she remembered those times when she would be attacked with a terrible loneliness—when she felt like she had hidden something vital to her life and forgotten about it, and realized that it was, because, partly, partly, it was because, she had missed him then.

“Hayi, how many times have you driven?”

The big jerk.

“Why?”

“You’re doing well.”

       Jerk. I’m crashing this car. You can’t tell me how I’m doing.

She bit her lip and tried not to raise an eyebrow. “Obviously I am. We’re not crashing into anything.”

“H-how are you?”

“Just”—her chin jutted out—“dandy”—saying it as if she had bitten into a crunchy apple, if she didn’t like apples.

“Et vous? Oppa, et vous?”

“Not so good, you know. I’m trying to be better.” He paused. “I’m so sorry, Hayi...I have a lot of things I have to confess to you, and you’ll be ashamed of me. I couldn’t bear it before.”

Seunghyun was now leaning his head back and pressing it hard against the carseat like one might do to ease a crisis of drunkenness.

She continued on before he could say anything. “Your newest sculptures are amazing. I’ve learned so much from them. Wherever do you get your ideas from?”

s

He said quietly, “From you, Hayi.”

“Well, of course, I could see some of them were the things we talked about,” she said.  “But they were terribly muddled, as words are, especially from me. Most of those reflect Joohyun’s mind, at that time of course. But she admires your sculptures as well. She said they were very clear and powerful and she had learned some.”

He was quiet for a while.

“I was very ashamed about them, Hayi.”

“Because they were done without irony on your part?” She smiled quietly. “ We notice, you know.”

He smiled. “Really. You think far too well of me. I am mostly sincere.”

“You’re marvellous. Really, you can’t not love someone who doesn’t fail to give you vacation packages every quarter of the year. But oppa, you haven’t told me why you just cleared off like that. Did I do something to offend you?”

“No. I did something to offend you. But I see now it was a misunderstanding.”

She looked at him intently for a moment, her hands steady on the