O King! Do not weep. There are none who have not longed for death more than once in this short life.
– Herodotus, The Histories
Misfortune poured down like a sudden rain shower. One day, I came home from school to find Eunsu as white as a sheet and crying. I asked him what was wrong, but he suddenly started to gag.
He said, Father made me drink something weird. I keep throwing up. I went into the room, and a strange scent pricked my nose. The smell was coming from a bottle of farm pesticide that our father had spilled while trying to feed it to Eunsu. I screamed at our father, Die! If anyone should die, it’s you! I don’t know if it was the force of my wrath, but he paused in the middle of drinking and silently turned to look at me. To my surprise, he didn’t try to hit me. He just looked at me through bloodshot eyes—eyes that bore a strange mocking gleam. It might have been a smile, or it might have been a look of bitter agony. I didn’t know if he was going to change his mind and come after us with a stick, so I grabbed Eunsu’s hand and ran away. We went to the same place we always did, a barn behind an abandoned house near the entrance to the village, and we spent the night there. When I went back home in the morning, the person that I used to call Father was dead. The bottle of pesticide that he had drunk was lying empty beside him.