My homeroom teacher, on the other hand, lectured us to feed our feelings of curiosity and camaraderie to the dogs. Just study silently, we were told, because people who don’t go to college are “pieces of garbage.” Over time I started to sleep during class, face down on the desk, as though I had made up my mind to become that garbage, rotting and discarded. If I got tired of sleeping, I’d play Galaga on my friend’s portable video game player. When I got kicked out of class and was made to kneel in the hallway with my hands up as punishment, I considered going out at night to hang out with the boys like my friend suggested, but decided against it. My stepmom would’ve liked, even cheered me on, seeing me turn into one of those lost-cause girls, on the path to becoming my lowest self. I never even missed a single class. Instead, I went to the art room after school. I’d paint grotesque shit. The art teacher once caught me stabbing my sketchbook with a pencil knife.

On the other hand, my brother, Hyunwoo, really got into being a good student around the time Yonguk died. They’d been in the same class, and Hyunwoo studied like he’d die if he didn’t. The math genius that everybody complimented was born around this time. Calculus, confusing graphs, 3-D vectors filled his notebooks. One day I went to his room because I wanted to listen to his Velvet Underground tapes, but he gave the entire box to me. “They are yours now.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to listen to music anymore.”

“Why?”

“I’m tired of things that can’t be proved.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m tired of music and its unsolvable problems.” He walked out of the room holding a glass of water, and that was it. There was a thick book open on his desk.

“Please leave. I don’t want to see you.”

From then on, Hyunwoo stopped listening to music altogether, not even radio at night. He also acted like he couldn’t see me. He stopped peeking through the bathroom door while I bathed, didn’t ask through the door if I was constipated, and he didn’t blush when I stared at him. He stopped telling me, “Stop talking back at Mom,” or, “You have no talent for painting. Give it up and prepare for college.” He didn’t even say it half-heartedly.

* * *

“Yeoul, do you still paint?”

“Nope, I quit.”

“Quit?You make it sound like painting is the same thing as drinking or smoking. Don’t think about life in terms of closed-off segments, marked with quitting. Continue flowing with it.”