She gets a thermos flask out of her bag and pours Chinese quince tea into the stainless steel cup.

“Try some, Yeong-hye. It’s infused really well.”

She brings it to her own lips first and takes a sip. The taste that lingers on the tip of her tongue is sweet and fragrant. After pouring some of the tea onto a hand towel, she uses it to moisten Yeong-hye’s lips. There is no response. “Are you trying to die?” she asks. “You’re not, are you? If all you want to do is become a tree, you still have to eat. You have to live.” She stops speaking. Her breath catches in her throat. A suspicion that she hasn’t wanted to acknowledge has finally raised its head. Might she have been mistaken? Might it be precisely that, death, which Yeong-hye is after, which she has been after from the first?

No, she repeats silently. You’re not trying to die.

Before Yeong-hye stopped speaking for good, around a month ago, she had said, “Sister, please let me out of here.”

She would often break off mid-sentence, perhaps because she found it difficult to keep talking for a long time, and her speech was mingled with the rasping sound of her breathing.

“People are always telling me to eat…I don’t like eating; they force me. Last time I threw it up…yesterday as soon as I’d eaten they gave me an injection to put me to sleep. Sister, I don’t like injections, I really don’t like them…please let me out. I don’t like being here.”

In-hye had held Yeong-hye’s wasted hand and said, “But you can’t even walk properly anymore. It’s only now that you’ve got this IV that you’re managing to keep going…If you come home, will you eat? If you promise to eat I’ll get you discharged.” She couldn’t fail to notice how the light went out of Yeong-hye’s eyes then. “Yeong-hye. Answer me. All you need to do is promise.”

Yeong-hye twisted away from her sister. “You’re just the same,” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

“What are you talking about? I…”

“No one can understand me…the doctors, the nurses, they’re all the same…they don’t even try to understand…they just force me to take medication, and stab me with needles.”

Yeong-hye’s voice was slow and quiet, but firm.

In-hye couldn’t hold herself back any longer. “You!” she yelled. “I’m acting like this because I’m afraid you’re going to die!”

Yeong-hye turned her head and stared blankly at In-hye, as though the latter were not her sister but a complete stranger. After a while, the question came.

“Why, is it such a bad thing to die?”

—

Why, is it such a bad thing to die?

A long time ago, she and Yeong-hye had got lost on a mountain. Yeong-hye, who had been nine at the time, said, “Let’s just not go back.”

At the time, In-hye hadn’t understood what she meant. “What are you talking about? It’ll get dark any minute now. We have to hurry up and find the path.”