The wind picked up again, my brother shrank into himself a little further, and the leaves rustled boisterously.

‘When I was walking near the sea, it sounded like the mountains at night,’ he said.

I could hear my heart thump loudly. The sound of the mountains at night. Had I known how they sounded? I tried to bring it to mind, but all I could picture was a night in the mountains that was still, so very still.

‘You know, like on nights when there is a gusty wind, like today, there’s a sound? Trees swaying in the wind make a moaning sound.’

‘Right.’

The sound trees make when they bend in the wind. The leaves tremble, the branches shake, tens of thousands of trees echoing each other. I remembered how my little brother, scared, would crawl under Grandma’s futon covers.

‘I heard the same sound by the ocean,’ he went on. ‘I looked around for the mountains, which didn’t make sense since I was next to the sea. “What’s that sound?” I asked my friends.’

‘Yeah?’

‘And they said it was the roar of the ocean.’

The roar of the ocean. I’d heard the term before. Although I hadn’t known it was like the sound of the mountains at night. ‘It’s strange that the mountains and the sea would make the same sound,’ I said.

Gazing up at the treetops, my brother chuckled as he pondered my observation. ‘Do you think that when people who grew up by the sea come to the mountains they’re surprised to hear the roar of the ocean?’

I looked up at the sky, which was now a faint purple. A pale moon peeked out from the edge of the mountains. Pretending to look at the view, I flashed a glance at my brother’s profile. Had he always looked this kind and thoughtful? It felt as though I hadn’t looked at him properly in years. My little brother, always blabbing about something. He’d been a handful and, being two years older, I always had to keep an eye on him. Before I knew it we’d conformed to a stereotype: me as the quiet, reasonable elder brother, him as the more outgoing younger brother everyone fawned over. I had never intended to be dissatisfied with that.

But now, looking at my brother’s face, I could feel something stir in my heart. For it to have such an impact meant there had to have been something lurking there, unresolved. At school, my brother was always a little better than me in class, and a little better at sports. Had I been jealous of that? And of how our mother and grandmother seemed to love him just that tiny touch more?