After the doctor told her she didn’t think it was pneumonia she hugged Ji-woo again, bundled him into a taxi and was driven home in the rain. She hurriedly washed him, gave him rice porridge and medicine, and put him to bed early. There was no room in her thoughts for her missing sister. She hadn’t been able to sleep properly for the five days her son had been ill. And that night, if the fever didn’t abate, she would have to take him to be admitted to the general hospital. She was packing Ji-woo’s clothes and making sure she had his medical insurance certificate, just in case the need did arise, when the phone rang again. This had been sometime around nine in the evening.

“We’ve found her.”

“Thank goodness. I’ll come and visit next week as normal.” Her thanks were sincere, but subdued by fatigue. Only after she had hung up did it occur to her that the rain she had seen all day must have been pouring down on the mountain where Yeong-hye had been found too. An indiscriminate connection, their existences briefly aligned.

There was no way for her to judge the accuracy of the scene she saw then in her mind’s eye but had never seen in reality. She’d held a wet flannel to her snuffling son’s forehead all night, slipping occasionally into a sleep that was more like fainting, and saw a tree flickering in the rain like the spirit of some dead person. Black rain, black woods, the pale patient’s uniform, soaked through. Wet hair. Black mountain slope. Yeong-hye, an inchoate mass formed of darkness and water, standing tall like a ghost. Eventually the day dawned, and when she placed the palm of her hand on her son’s forehead she was relieved by the coolness she felt there. She got up, went out of the bedroom and stared blankly at the bluish half-light leaching in from the living room veranda.

She curled up on the sofa and tried to sleep. She had to get some sleep before Ji-woo woke up, even if it was only an hour.

Look, sister, I’m doing a handstand; leaves are growing out of my body, roots are sprouting out of my hands…they delve down into the earth. Endlessly, endlessly…yes, I spread my legs because I wanted flowers to bloom from my crotch; I spread them wide…