The well-known streets of Seoul, commonly a colorful mosaic of life and movement, had never seemed more foreign, more deeply strange. Even as the city pounded on around her in its familiar relentless beat—traffic lights flashing in their bored, predetermined pattern, pedestrians rushing by with downcast faces, neon signs throwing their gaudy light on the gathering dusk—Seo-yeon moved through it all as if through a strange terrain, the pressure of some long-buried, timeless truth bearing down upon her shoulders like a second, intangible spine, a weight that threatened to bend her to its heavy load.
The frayed journal in her backpack weighed more than its thin pages deserved, each page a silent witness to an agony she was just starting to understand. The dusty cassette tape, tucked next to it, was colder than it ought to have been, a cold metal feeling seeping through its plastic exterior, a sign of secrets waiting to be unearthed.
