Having been called down by the receptionist, a strong-looking middle-aged nurse came and checked through their hospital bag. Underclothes, everyday clothes, slippers, toiletries. He spread the clothes out carefully, going through them one by one, seemingly to check that there weren’t any strings or pins. He removed the long, thick woolen belt from the coat In-hye had packed, and asked the two of them to follow him.

The nurse unlocked the door to the six-person ward and led them in. Yeong-hye remained composed as her sister greeted each of the nurses in turn. Eventually, she set the hospital bag down and went over to the window, which had a heavy-looking set of bars running vertically across it. Just then, she was discomfited to find herself struck by a guilty conscience, which she’d so far managed to avoid. Suddenly it was there like a lump in her chest, weighing her down. Yeong-hye walked up soundlessly and stood beside her.

“Ah, you can see the trees from here too.”

You will not be weak, In-hye told herself, her lips pressed tightly together. At any rate, she is a burden you cannot bear. No one blames you. You’ve done well to make it this far.

She didn’t look at Yeong-hye as she stood beside her. Instead, she looked down at the bright early-winter sunlight as it splintered over the larches, which had not yet shed all their leaves.

“Sister,” Yeong-hye said, her voice low and calm as if intending to comfort her. Yeong-hye’s old black sweater gave off the faint scent of mothballs. When In-hye didn’t answer, Yeong-hye whispered one more time. “Sister…all the trees of the world are like brothers and sisters.”

—

She walks past the second annex and stops in front of the door to the first annex. She sees the patients pressing themselves against the glass door and peering outside. They’re probably feeling a bit claustrophobic, the rain having kept them cooped up inside for the past few days. When In-hye presses the bell, a nurse in his late thirties comes out from the nurses’ room by the ground-floor lobby, carrying a key.

The nurse closes the door quickly behind him, inserts the key and locks it. In-hye notices a young female patient staring out at her, her cheek pressed against the inside of the locked glass door. Her two empty eyes scrutinize In-hye as though trying to bore through her skin; there was no way she could look at a stranger like that if her mind were sound.

“How is my sister at the moment?” she asks as they climb the stairs to the third floor. The nurse looks back over his shoulder and shakes his head.

“She’s stopped talking. She’s also been trying to pull the IV needle out, so we had to get her into the secure room and give her a tranquilizer before we could put it back in. How she has the strength to shake us off…”

“So she’s in the secure room now?”