“We were playing hide–and–seek, and I’ve
been hiding here for a long time. She hasn’t
come to find me. I’m… a little worried.”
I vaguely remembered.
Jake’s father had become an alcoholic after
Jake’s mother died.
When I was 8, he would come home drunk,
searching all over the house for me and Jake.
If he found either of us, it was a mouthful of
alcohol, followed by a slap.
We were just kids and we couldn’t fight back.
く
We would run and hide.
Jake would always hide in the closet, which
was the easiest to find, and I would hide in
the attic, which was almost impossible to
find.
There was a hole in the attic floor, where I
could see what was happening down below.
If Jake’s father left, or if he passed out on
the couch, I would come down from the attic,
and knock on the closet door, and pull Jake
out.
We called this game – Hide–and–Seek.
Right now, 8–year–old Jake was looking up at
- me.
く
His eyes were shining brightly.
I reached out and took his hand, and led him
slowly into the living room.
8–year–old Jake was staring at everything.
around him, looking really confused.
For him, it was like waking up to find the
world completely changed: the empty living
room, all the furniture covered in white
sheets.
Even the father he was so afraid of had
disappeared.
“Big sister, where’s my father?”
“He’s gone.”
<
I looked at the clock in the living room.
It was forever frozen on the day that Jake’s
father had been sentenced.
The face was broken and the hands were
bent.
“He’s never coming back.”
8–year–old Jake seemed to relax a little.
“Then does little sister Amy still need me to protect her?”
I knelt down to look at him.
“No.”
“She’s all grown up now.”
<
“She has the strength and courage to face
those storms all by herself now.”
As soon as I finished speaking,
I saw 8–year–old Jake smile at me.
And in that moment, the living room was
empty.
8–year–old Jake was gone, too.
I went home, sat on the sofa, and put all the
documents together. I waited for 28–year–old
Jake to come back.
Around eleven o’clock, I heard my phone light
- up. It was a message from him.
“Amy, don’t wait up for me, go to sleep.”
<
I silently closed my phone without replying.
At one in the morning,
The front door of the house opened with a creak.
28–year–old Jake turned on the light, and was surprised to see me sitting on the sofa silently.
“Amy, you could have said something.”
Jake chuckled, putting down his briefcase.
He pulled a bouquet of flowers out from behind his back.
Creamy yellow roses, mixed with sprigs of
baby’s breath. They were
<
But not my style.
Ever since the day he confessed his feelings
when we were 18, and his flowers were
crushed, he vowed to give me flowers every
month.
At first, we didn’t have much money, so we
couldn’t buy them from a flower shop. He’d
buy loose flowers, pick up the ones that had
fallen, and bundle them into a bouquet.
Later, once his company went public, he got
even busier.
And now, he’d forgotten to buy me flowers
for three months.
Today, I received another bouquet.
<
It was huge, I could barely hold it without
covering my entire upper body.
Much bigger, more beautiful, and more
complete than the bouquet I had received
when I was 18.
But I didn’t like it.
The flowers I liked were small, delicate, they
could fit in the palm of my hand.
Like his love for me, something that he
cherished with such care.
In the end, I put the bouquet down.
Jake watched me, his smile faltering.
“Amy… what’s wrong? You don’t like these
<
flowers? Just tell me what kind you like, and
I’ll buy them for you next time.”
I pointed at the coffee table, where the
divorce papers were, the ones he should have
seen as soon as he walked into the room.
Jake sat down on the sofa opposite me.
He took out a cigarette, but he didn’t light it.
His hand was shaking. “You saw it?”
“I’ve been looking at it for two months.”
33
I took the cigarette from his hand and tossed
it in the trash.
“Smoking is bad for your health.
“I saw you arguing with her, accusing her of
<
setting you up. I saw you frantically answering
phone calls, going to the maternity ward in
the middle of the night.”
“I saw you give in, warning her to leave your
alone once she has the baby, and handing her
a big check.”
I stared directly at him.
“And I saw you kissing her in that coffee shop today.”
The scar on 28–year–old Jake’s face was so
faint it was almost gone.
“The road that took you and I 25 years to walk, she just walked in a single step.”
2
く
When I was eight, Jake’s dad’s craziness just
kept getting worse.
He’d yell and scream around the house,
saying I was a demon, that I’d killed his wife
and was now trying to seduce his son.
When he was sober, he would give us a little
bit of money, but it was never enough to buy
proper food. Ten or five bucks just wouldn’t
cut it. Even though we had a house, we were
always scrounging around outside for scrap
metal, just to feed ourselves.
A single bowl of instant ramen was dinner for
both of us.
Jake always gave me the only fried egg.
I’d chew on it slowly, savoring every bite,
<
because I never knew when I’d get to eat
again.
“Jake, do you ever feel like I’m holding you
back?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you believe those crazy
stories?” Jake would pat me on the head.
“You’re my sister, it’s my job to take care of
you.”
By the time I was twelve, things were even
worse.
Jake and I were always together.
We both looked the same, thin and pale, with
a weird kind of resemblance to each other.
