MB Short Story: Origin

Warning: Contains major spoilers for Mind Blind proper (link on its way). Part of this story is playable in final game, but this is the original version.

“You must hide!”

His older sister’s hands, cold as wet glass, press him deeper into the lacquered wardrobe's depths. The space is small, almost too small for his five-year-old body to fit, but his sister shoves him deeper inside until his ribs ache.

“Stay quiet,” his sister orders in an adult’s voice. “No matter what happens, you must stay quiet.”

“But I—”

“Promise me!” Ji-eun’s voice is shrill and scared like when she spotted a spider crawling up her leg. “Promise me, little brother. No matter what, you must stay quiet.”

A fat tear, hot and humiliating, rolls down his cheek. Father said that his children were too strong to cry, but Father has been gone for a long time. He doesn’t want Ji-eun to disappear as well.

Ji-eun presses a kiss to his black hair, cradling his cheeks with hands that are too thin to belong to a child and still too small to belong to a woman grown. “You must stay quiet, and you must stay hidden,” she whispers. “I love you, Ji-seung.”

He sniffs back the tears and glares at her, refusing to say the words back when she’s treating him like a baby.

Ji-eun yanks off her jacket, muscat green silk with elbows worn to reveal the crisscross of threads, and throws it over him like a shroud. Sounds filter in from the garden outside, heavy running footsteps and shouts in a language that he can’t understand. Ji-eun spins around with a gasp, slamming the wardrobe doors shut behind her.

It’s dark. He isn’t allowed to be afraid of the dark, but that doesn’t mean that he likes it. A tiny whimper escapes his lips, cut off by Ji-eun’s fierce backwards glare through the crack between the wardrobe doors.

“Keep quiet,” she hisses under her breath as the door to their mother’s bedroom is roughly slid open.

Those are the last words that Ji-eun ever says to him.

Through the crack between the wardrobe doors, Ji-seung sees a large man grabs his sister’s arm. She screams, childish fingers turning into childish claws to scrape at the man’s armored belly.

Armored like a monster’s scales, Ji-seung thinks.

The man says something, his tone questioning, but Ji-eun continues to struggle.

Tears cloud Ji-seung’s vision, blurring the scene to faded watercolors. He wants to burst out of the wardrobe, to grab the big man’s arm and climb his way upwards so that he can bite the man’s face. He wants to save his sister.

Ji-eun’s eyes briefly meet his through the crack in the doors, but she looks away. She doesn’t want the man to see him. She shouts insults, words that their father would have taken away her dinner for using, hurling them at the big man in order to keep his attention away from her little brother.

A woman enters, armored in heavy black identical to that of the man. She kneels down beside Ji-eun.

“What is your name?” the woman asks. Her Korean sounds wrong, like her mouth is stuffed full of cotton. “How long have you been here alone?”

His sister spits in the woman’s face. The woman sighs and stands up, wiping the spittle from her cheek. She says something to the man in the other language.

Ji-seung wants to come out. He wants to spit in the woman’s face as well, to defiantly yell that no dirty dog American has the right to be inside their house. But he’s afraid, and he’s obedient.

His sister said to stay quiet.

Ji-seung shoves his fist into his mouth to keep from crying out as the man grabs a struggling Ji-eun by her waist and hauls her over his shoulder. Ji-eun wails and batters his wide back with her fists, but the man doesn’t seem to even notice.

“We’re taking you somewhere safe,” the woman lies in her cotton-mouthed Korean. “You need to eat. How long has it been since your last meal?”

Ji-eun would rather eat poison than your food!

He wants to yell this. He wants to kick the woman. He wants to scream and bite and dig his nails into the big man’s eyes until the man drops his sister.

Instead, he remains quiet. Just like Ji-eun ordered him to be.

He remains quiet as the strangers drag Ji-eun out of the house. Once she’s gone, he pulls her jacket up over his head, pressing the fabric to his eyes until the silk is soaked through.

His sobs are soundless as he waits for Ji-eun to come back.

She never does.