At two in the morning.
Seo-ah woke to the sound of the front door breaking down. More precisely, it wasn't the sound of breaking. It was someone kicking it in, a man's shouts cutting through the gaps, and the shriek of metal as the lock twisted apart. Seo-ah could distinguish each sound. They weren't the kind of sounds a ten-year-old should have been able to recognize, but this was the third time.
Beside her, her younger sibling stirred.
"Sis?"
Seo-ah covered her sibling's mouth with her hand. The seven-year-old's lips trembled against her palm. Seo-ah shook her head. Don't make a sound. Her sibling's eyes widened in the darkness. Seo-ah tried not to look at them. If she did, she felt like she would start crying too.
A shout erupted from the living room.
"Where's Han Soon-young? Where is she?"
There were two men. No, three. Seo-ah had a habit of counting things from beneath the blankets. The number of footsteps, the number of voices, the number of objects knocked over. Counting made her less afraid. Numbers had no emotions.
Her grandmother's voice rang out.
"Please, please. It was my daughter-in-law's fault. We'll pay it back. Please—"
The sound of someone dropping to their knees. Seo-ah knew that sound. The dull impact of joints hitting the wooden floor. Her grandmother was over seventy. The sound of a person over seventy hitting the floor was different from a young person's. Heavier, and it echoed longer.
"Pay back what? The interest alone is thirty million. Thirty million. Where is an old woman supposed to get thirty million?"
Laughter. Seo-ah hated that laughter. The sound of someone laughing while another person knelt before him.
Her father must have been standing with his back against the wall. Seo-ah knew without seeing him. He was always like that. Whenever debt collectors came, he pressed his back to the wall, lowered his head, and said nothing. The first time, Seo-ah thought he was too scared. The second time, she thought he didn't know what to do. The third time—today—she understood. Her father had given up.
Crash. Something shattered. It might have been a dish on the dining table, or the glass in the living-room display cabinet. Seo-ah stopped counting and covered her sibling's ears. With both hands. Tightly.
Her sibling grabbed Seo-ah's wrist. Small fingers trembled over the bone.
"Where's Mom?"
The voice that slipped between Seo-ah's palms was so quiet she could barely hear it.
Seo-ah didn't answer.
Mom wasn't there. She had left three days ago. She had left before that, too, and before that. Every time she left, Seo-ah sat by the front door and waited. At first, for a day. Then three days. After that, a week. Mom always came back. Every time she returned, she stroked Seo-ah's hair and said, I'm sorry, Seo-ah. Mom was wrong.
Seo-ah believed her. Every time.
But this time was different. After Mom left, the debt collectors came. A property-seizure notice arrived from the bank. After Grandpa went to the local community office, he went into his room and closed the door. Grandma cried alone in the kitchen every night.
Seo-ah didn't sit by the front door. Not this time.
The commotion ended around four in the morning. After the debt collectors left, cold air blew in through the broken front door. Once she confirmed that her sibling was asleep, Seo-ah opened the bedroom door.
The living room was a wreck. The dining table had been overturned, and Grandma's pill case was rolling across the floor. The family photo frame that had hung on the wall was shattered, its glass scattered everywhere. Seo-ah was barefoot. She stepped carefully around the shards.
Her grandmother was sitting on the kitchen floor. Still in the same position she had knelt in. Seo-ah crouched down in front of her.
"Grandma."
Her grandmother raised her head. Her eyes were swollen. Seo-ah took her hand. It was cold, the knuckles thick, and trembling.
"It's okay, Seo-ah. It's okay."
Seo-ah knew it wasn't okay. Her grandmother knew it too. In this house, saying it was okay while both of them knew it wasn't was their language.
Seo-ah looked at the broken front door. The door panel was twisted and wouldn't close all the way. Fluorescent light from the hallway seeped through the gap. Seo-ah watched that light for a long time.
A sentence was taking shape in the mind of a ten-year-old child. A sentence that had not yet become language. An emotion that had not yet become an emotion. It wasn't anger or sadness. It was something close to resolve.
I will get out of here.
Out of this pit. This house. This life.
Seo-ah picked up a shard of glass. She placed it on her palm and looked at it. It was sharp. She could bleed. Seo-ah didn't put it down. She held it for a moment, then threw it in the trash.
She still couldn't do anything. She was only ten.
But Seo-ah remembered. The sound of her grandmother's knees hitting the wooden floor. The shape of her father's back pressed against the wall. Her own silence when her sibling asked, "Where's Mom?" and she couldn't answer.
She remembered all of it.
Twenty years later.
Yeouido. The forty-third floor.
Seo-ah was looking down at the Han River through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The three-o'clock afternoon sunlight shattered across the surface of the river. Today's portfolio report lay on Seo-ah's desk, and real-time market indicators streamed across the monitor on her left. Seo-ah wasn't looking at them. She was looking at the river.
The phone rang.
"CEO, there's a visitation request."
"Who?"
"A woman named Han Soon-young. She says she'd like to see you in the lobby—"
Seo-ah's hand stopped. The hand holding her pen. 0.3 seconds. In that span of time, the dawn from twenty years ago passed through her. The broken front door. Her grandmother's knees. Her sibling's trembling lips. The fluorescent light in the hallway.
"I don't know her."
Seo-ah hung up.
She set down the pen. Turned her chair, and looked at the river again. The river was still flowing. There was no expression on Seo-ah's face.
Han Soon-young.
Seo-ah couldn't remember the last time she had said that name aloud. It wasn't that she had chosen not to remember. She truly couldn't. At some point, that name had been erased from Seo-ah's world. Not erased, exactly. It had worn away. Like writing on stone disappearing under wind and rain.
Seo-ah stood up. She had an afternoon appointment. She put on her jacket and opened the door.
She didn't look back.