2
/in the morning light/
Nana lay on her bed, watching dawn light streak across her ceiling.
She'd been doing that a lot lately, she noted. Sleep was hard to find most nights. Dark circles were forming beneath her eyes, making Shin Eun-ah and Lee Kyung-hee worry. They both brought her food most days. Food that often went to waste.
But it was hard to eat when you felt like a soldier who'd just come through a battle, covered in scars that still bled whenever you moved.
Funnily enough, it wasn't just Yoon-sung's death that was keeping her awake at night. She could see the prosecutor—her Daddy Long Legs—whenever she closed her eyes, and Lee Jin-pyo. Her parents were there too, in the dark space between sleep and wakefulness she couldn't seem to remember how to cross.
Soo-hee had been by, with her own dark circles and heartbreak, but more quiet, moving like a star that had lost its orbit—drifting, but determined. Unbroken, yet. She'd taken Nana's dog for a few days, just while Nana found her ground again she'd said. Nana had been thankful, but too exhausted to do more than smile her gratitude.
But this morning, something felt different. Nana probed at the difference, like a kid poking at a sore tooth, recoiling just as she remembered that pain inevitably followed. But this time, the wash of pain had been muted. Maybe partly by the sheer weight of her exhaustion, but it felt like something else was there too.
A decision.
Before Nana could follow that train of thought any further, there was a knock on the door.
If it had been yesterday morning, Nana might have rolled over, closed her eyes, and gone back to her semi-coma.
But it was this morning, and things were shifting in subtle ways. So Nana sat up, slowly against the disorienting spin made up of hunger and tiredness, stuck her feet into her slippers, and shuffled her weary way to the front door of her little room.
When she saw who it was, Nana felt something around her heart relax. Unbeknownst even to herself, this was the person she'd most wanted to see—her troublesome charge, her little sister. Someone who needed to be taken care of even more than Nana did at that moment."Da-hye." She said, and the pleasure in her voice was unfeigned.
"Unni." Da-hye said, subdued for Da-hye. In fact, everything was subdued for Da-hye, her clothes a muted navy, her hair tied back in a quiet ponytail. Her bodyguard—someone Nana didn't recognize and placed as a new hire by the Blue House—was a tall muscled man in sunglasses who glared at Nana as if she posed a national threat. Nana wondered how anyone could think that in her present state she was a threat to anybody.
"Please come in." She backed away, opening the door wider.
Da-hye entered, then paused, holding up her hand. "Wait here." She told her guard authoritatively. To Nana's amazement, he obeyed, although his scowl told her he didn't like it.
It was with a certain amount of satisfaction she closed the door in his face.
In her small living room, Da-hye curled up like a defensive kitten on a couch, cuddling a pillow close. Nana sat next to her, finding that Da-hye had managed to arouse a sluggish curiosity in her. That was a good sign, right? "Da-hye—" she started.
Da-hye interrupted her, her face turning into a pout as she examined Nana's face. "Unni. You don't look so good. Have you been feeling alright?"
Nana felt a rueful grin forming. "Not yet. But I will. Soon."
Da-hye studied her. "How do you know?" She asked, brusquely. "How do you know you will feel better? What's it like?"
Nana's brow furrowed. "When I lost my parents, I learned it. You feel like you're as dead as the person you've lost for a while, but then eventually your body realizes it's still alive. That's the hard part, when body and mind fight. When the body wins, when you give into the unavoidable pull of life, you feel like you're betraying them at first. But then you start to remember how happy they were when you were happy. That they'd want you to live. You still feel guilty sometimes, but that fades. Until one day, you wake up and it doesn't hurt just to breathe. Maybe a corner of your heart will always ache, but you learn to enjoy life again." Realizing how she'd rambled, she shut her mouth abruptly.
Da-hye had nodded, following along intently. When Nana finished, she sighed. "Good. Because I thought I was being a bad person, waking up today and not crying. And I've been trying and trying for hours, but I can't make the tears come."
"You've been crying?" Nana said, touched.
"Of course! For oppa, I'll always cry. Forever."
It sounded like a silly schoolgirl declaration, but Nana nonetheless heard the hurt behind the words. It made her want to smile, against all reason. Da-hye was growing up into a woman. And what a woman she would be.
"You don't have to cry, forever." She said, feeling her way through what her instinct told her would help this woman-child. "He wouldn't want that. Just…remember him. He was a hero."
Da-hye nodded again. "I can do that." She cuddled the pillow closer to her, staring down at her hands as if they held the secret to some great mystery. "Unni?" She asked in a small voice. "When are you coming back to work?"
Nana opened her mouth to tell her Soon, next week maybe, when my heart feels less like touching it will make it crumble into dust. But what came out was "I'm not."
Both equally surprised, she and Da-hye stared at each other. "Never?" The younger girl asked, disbelieving.
"Never." Nana affirmed, realizing to her shock that this was the decision she'd made that morning without realizing it. The thing that had begun to numb the pain of Yoon-sung's death.
"Why not?" Da-hye's fingers worried the pillow's fringe. "Is it…me? I thought we were friends."
"It's not you." Nana hastened to reassure her. "It's just…" What? What is it? "It's that Lee Yoon-sung made me realize something. That this…it's not my dream. Putting my life on the line for people who don't necessarily deserve power. Protecting corruption, instead of rooting it out. I don't think I can do this job, any more. Not with a clear conscience."
She more than half-expected Da-hye to jump to her father's defense, angry and offended. But this new Da-hye, so oddly grown-up, just nodded, eyes downcast, lip bitten. "Are we…still friends?" She got out around something that sounded thick in her throat.
Nana lunged forward, wrapping her up in a warm hug and feeling Da-hye's immediate response, an urgent need for reassurance and affection. "We're always friends." She reassured her. "I'm always here, whenever you need me."
Da-hye's sharp little chin nodded into her shoulder. They stayed that way for a moment, before Da-hye disentangled herself. "I have to go." She said, somewhat reluctantly. "I need to be there for father's press conference this morning. But I'll come back and visit?" It ended on a slight high note, a question.
Nana nodded, fierce. "Of course. You'll visit me, and I'll visit you. Don't worry."
Da-hye exhaled, the tense line of her shoulders relaxing. "Next time, I'll make Eun-ah unni bring me."
"It will be just like old times." And from somewhere, Nana dug up a rusty smile.
It must have been just enough, because Da-hye smiled in response and opened the door to go, letting in a shaft of bright morning light. Nana winced, and then forced herself to open her eyes to the light.
"It's a new morning." She said softly. "A new day."