Myung-ho,
I did as you told me. I gathered only what I could carry, and I left before the walls could notice I was gone. My hands were shaking the whole way. I don’t even remember locking the door. Perhaps I didn’t. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
You were right. They would have erased me next. Already, I saw it in the faces of the neighbors, in the way silence spread when my daughter’s name was spoken. As if memory itself were treason.
I am destroyed. There is no other word. How can a state stage such theater, parade masks and call them heroes, while the real bodies lie in ash? How can they look us in the eye and expect us to clap?
I can’t. I won’t.
For now, I am safe—if safety is a word that still exists. I found shelter with Nam-kyu, the one who tends to his barrels in the old tunnels. He took me in without question. The smell of whiskey fills the air down here, heavy, sweet, unreal. I sleep beside the casks, listening to the drip of water and the hum of the city far above. It feels like exile and refuge all at once.
I don’t know what will come next. I don’t know where I will go when this hiding place is no longer enough. But I wanted you to know: I listened. I left. I am not erased yet.
Find me when you can. Or don’t. Just live. That will be enough.
Yours, in grief and in defiance,
Jin-a
Jin-a
Myung-ho
