The Line I Can Carry

I keep coming back to the sentence on the yellow pad. Four words, and the last one pressed so hard into the paper it looks less like advice than a boundary. I want it to be true because it makes the problem smaller: not a person, not someone whose approval I still have to earn. I hate how much relief I felt reading it.

The envelope was addressed to Im. I photographed it before anyone could make the moment blur into something arguable. I am starting to distrust my own memory less than I distrust the version other people will prefer. That is an ugly way to live, but it is the way I know how to make a record.

I ate standing up again. Then I sat among my plants with the evidence photos open, as if staring long enough could turn them into certainty. The butterfly closure in the mirror made me look both fragile and inconvenient. I wanted to take it off just to stop seeing it; I also wanted someone to notice it without making me explain.

I will bring the tooth and the lock of hair to Bae Yu-jin myself. I do not want those things passed around without me there. And I will sit at the Chuseok table with the court order in my bag. I am afraid of being looked at as difficult more than I am afraid of being right. That is the part I am ashamed to admit.