Once her husband had fallen asleep, the bedroom was still and silent again. She picked up Ji-woo, who had been sleeping on his side, and put him back down so that he was lying on his back, seeing as she did so how pitiful they must appear, mother and child faintly outlined in the darkness.

There was nothing the matter. It was a fact. Everything would be fine as long as she just kept going, just carried on with her life as she always had done. In any case, there was no other way.

She left the bedroom and looked out of the dark blue veranda window. The toys that Ji-woo had been playing with last night, the sofa and the television, the black door flaps underneath the sink and the splotches of grease on the gas range; it was as though she were seeing these things for the first time, walking around the house as though she’d never been there before. A strange pain gripped her chest. It was an oppressive, constricting feeling, as if the walls of the house were slowly closing in.

She opened the wardrobe door and took out the purple cotton T-shirt. Its color had faded, because Ji-woo had liked it when he was nursing and so she’d worn it often in the house. It was the kind of thing she liked to wear when she was ill or just not feeling her best; even though she’d washed it countless times, that milk-and-newborn-baby smell still gave her a sense of security. But this time it didn’t work. The pain in her chest got worse. Her breathing grew shallow, and she had to make an effort to try to breathe more deeply.

She sat down on the sofa. Her eyes followed the second hand on the clock as it ticked around, and she made another effort to regulate her breathing. To her surprise, there was still no improvement. A feeling of déjà vu crept up on her then, a feeling of having already experienced this same moment countless times. The proof of her internal pain had been set in front of her as though this were something she’d spent a long time preparing for, as though she’d been waiting for just this moment.

All of this is meaningless.

I can’t take it anymore.

I can’t go on any longer.

I don’t want to.

She took one more look around at the various objects inside the house. They did not belong to her. Just like her life had never belonged to her.

Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance, no more real than a television drama. Death, who now stood by her side, was as familiar to her as a family member, missing for a long time but now returned.