North - South

Song for brother

Content warning: mental disease, description of suicidal thoughts. Please stop reading when Se-ri reaches the ferry, and start again at the sentence which starts with "Jeong Hyeok."

Swiss, three years after Pyongyang

The freshly graduated high school Se-ri didn't know it, at that time, but the school of economics grad herself would have been grateful to her for many reasons.

She would have been grateful for the idea of the fake engagement. At least, now, she had a roof over her head and no rent to worry about.

She would have been for having brought in Swiss all the luxury and vulgar attires her mom had bought for her through the teen years. At least, now, with a little finessing, she had something to wear during the degree ceremony and would have had some acceptable attire for the following years. Now that she wasn't a teen yet a woman about to step into the job market, those attires weren't that inappropriate anymore, especially if she combined them the right way.

She was grateful, above all, for the first thing she had done as soon as she had arrived in Swiss. Checking if the school offered psychological counseling and making an appointment. Entering the room with firm steps, and introducing herself: good morning, my name is Yoon Se-ri, I got domestic abuse for as long as can be remembered, I'm suffering unbearable emotional pain, insomnia, probably eating disorders, panic disorders, and on some day, I feel I can't bear it longer, if you know what I mean.

She wouldn't have left for her family to affect her one minute more. She wanted to wash all of them away, and at school, in London, they'd been informed about mental health enough to know that someone like her needed help.

That one was the last day when Yoon Se-ri had a perception of herself as a strong person. Then, the fall.

The alarm rang early that morning. She had a class to attend. Se-ri woke up with a mixture of excitation and negative anxiety. It would have been the last class. In one month, there would have been the ceremony. And the next week she would have started her internship in one of the best banks in the country, with the opportunity of being hired within a month.

The freshly graduated high school Se-ri would have thought that she had done it. Five weeks more and she would have been independent.

Don't make plans, they say, God loves messing them.

On that morning, far from thinking that she had done it, Se-ri was just worried because, once the school would have ended, the free psychological counselling would have ended too. And she seriously needed to carry on with her therapy.

"I can't."

"But..."

"See this scrunchie? It's been my Christmas gift. Birthday? A sheet mask from Lidl. This is our situation now. We can't even sell the house, because we don't know if they would confiscate the money."

At the end of a long discussion made of many more topics of that sort, the doctor, a young psychologist, brown air always combed in a neat ponytail, and green eyes behind girlish eyeglasses, had lowered her head.

"Se-ri, it's very dangerous to interrupt like this. At least let me give you extra sleeping pills, they will help you with the insomnia for a while. And if you need more, you can come to me. In the while, I'll try to see if there's someone who offers free services."