Tell me what kind of person you are. And I will tell you what kind of god you worship.
– Nietzsche
There were two other boys at our mother’s house, three and four years older than Eunsu and me. Our stepfather was quiet most of the time, but whenever he drank, the house would be turned upside down and smashed to pieces. What was wrong with our mother that she couldn’t free herself of the fetters of violence and alcohol? Her face was as black and blue as ever. The one good thing was that our stepfather got up every morning, strapped rolls of wallpaper to the back of his bicycle, and went out to wallpaper houses. But that was just the beginning. It was as plain as day that the two boys, the ones who had been living in that house from the start and who were now our mother’s so-called stepsons, did not like us. And I was already like a wounded porcupine, my body bristling with electricity, quills rippling like ears of rice in an autumn field at the slightest touch. Our mother started hitting us, too. Even when they beat up Eunsu, she hit us, and when I punched them back, she hit us some more. One day, our stepfather packed up our things. We were tossed back into the orphanage.
We were taken back, as crushed as empty cardboard boxes. The morning we left, I watched the way our mother shoved Eunsu toward me and stalked off into the kitchen as he cried out for her, flailing his arms around, trying to find her through his blind eyes. We were abandoned again, and this time, it was different. It was, in a word, irreversible. Now we had nothing left to wait for. All of the light in the universe blinked out, not just for Eunsu, but for me as well. No sun would ever rise for us again.