I'm on my Granddad's farm. It's July. The sun is beating down on my skin. I'm wearing a yellow top, with spaghetti straps tied on my shoulders, a pretty flowy skirt design that's confusing the bees.
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I'm alone in the strawberry beds, eyes closed, face lifted to the sun. I am free, but even better than that, I feel free. I was free before, but I never knew it, now I feel it.
I hear laughter and the flow of conversation in the distance, the smell of burning wood as the food is lifted from the cooking pit for all of us to share. The farmworkers, my family, Mila Cruz and her family, George Michael and his wife and their seven children, Lisa's family, too. My new friends, Niki, Jennie, Dae, Jessie, Joy, and Louis, are here. Cary and Ella are traveling; Cary is showing her daughter, the big wide world that she'd been forced to hide her from since her birth.
Jennie has been hovering exceptionally close to my sister, Jisoo ever since she laid eyes on her. Have I told you that they are together now? Their feelings are mutual pretty obviously; Jisoo hasn't stopped smiling.
Ms. Bennett and Jessica decided not to come. It's not as easy for everyone. It's not easy for anyone. It has been one month since the Society press conference that was to announce Ramirez' replacement of Dahee. Instead, that press conference announced something quite different: the dissolution of the Society. Appointed by the state, the Truth Commission will write up a report of their findings on the Society.
This while the private inquiry into Dahee's personal behavior still continues, alongside the legal investigation by police into her criminal activities. Everybody wants to be seen to be doing something, but there are no solutions and no punishments as of yet.
Nina Choi, on the back of her dramatic broadcast on the eve of polling day, was voted into power and is our new prime minister. The Reduction of the Failures proposal has very much been scrapped, no possibility of it ever coming to light, and Nina has commissioned a study, titled the Choi Report, separate from the Truth Commission, into the Society's proceedings, examining the roles of every politician, businessperson, and legal eagle who passed through its halls.
How exactly they are to be held accountable, I don't know. The findings from the reports are eagerly anticipated. Nina said that nothing could happen overnight, but it did. After weeks of debate, the government voted against the Failures court and anti-Failure decrees, and the Failure system was abolished at midnight on the day of the vote.
In a matter of hours, Failures were declared to have the same rights as everybody else in the country, no longer second-class citizens. The people, Failures and un-Failures, gathered in Seoul Citadel courtyard to celebrate. I was among them. The aftereffects of this decision have been enormous. George Michael's office grows steadily by the minute as he takes on case after case against the government for compensation for the damage done to the lives of people who were branded Failures.
