A cafe to have a snack, frequented by girls like the one Soon will be in a few years—or months!—and parents with their children and coffees and fruit smoothies. Could Old Man play that role, the role of Soon’s father? No, he couldn’t. The relationship between them is conspicuously different. Lateral and suspicious. An old man who has nothing to hide doesn’t start to tremble sitting across from a teenager. And a teenager who no longer looks like a marshmallow doesn’t waste her time with a guy who goes around dressed like that, like Old Man. The waitress must be having thoughts along those lines. Luckily, she also has a lot of work, she’s the only waitress for all the tables; luckily as well Old Man’s expression has changed by now, he no longer looks forlorn but excited, and it’s all because of Nina Simone, or because Soon keeps asking him—avidly—about Nina Simone.

(If the waitress had to point out the guilty one in that relationship, she wouldn’t hesitate for a second: Old Man, with his outdated suit and the paper napkins rolled around his fingers.)

Her brother had returned from abroad. He rushed back as soon as he found out—as soon as they told him—about the mess his little sister had gotten into, about the man who had corrupted her, the retarded—mentally handicapped—old man who’d been locked up before for assaulting another woman, and who had encouraged her to skip school—or had forced her to skip under who knows what kind of coercion—the man who’d confused her and driven her crazy and isolated her from her friends, the one who’s made Soon, his little sister, so disoriented and strange. Her brother caught the first plane back and came straight home, worried, very worried. He hugged her fearfully. But Soon wonders about the sense of that return, now that it was less necessary than ever. He was different, Old Man, she tells him. It was like he wasn’t her brother, but an older man, much older than her, one who knew perfectly well what was good for her and what wasn’t. He didn’t come to give me support, says Soon: he came to give me advice. She heard him talking to her parents at night, after she was already in bed, the three of them conspiring against her, analyzing her feelings, her reactions, reversing how it was in the past—because it used to be them, Soon and her brother, who conspired against their parents, never the other way around. Not only had she lost her ally, but that ally had now turned against her, enlisted in the opposing forces. He spent three or four days at home, but Soon doesn’t know what for. He came and went, talking constantly on the phone. Soon suspected that he told the story—his version of the story—to everyone he could, to see if they could give his little sister a hand. Her adult brother had been corrupted and didn’t know how to keep a secret anymore. In other times Soon would have broken, she would have confessed about the diary and how unfair everything had been for Old Man because of her. But that was a different time. Now she had no choice but to keep quiet and comply. It’s okay, big bro, you can go back to your life feeling fine, it’s all under control, you’ve helped me a lot by coming. That man, visibly satisfied by a job well done, caught his plane home and left as hurriedly as he’d come. But this time, Soon bore his departure with indifference. I don’t blame him, she tells Old Man: he’s not the same, but neither am I.