She left a line now and then. This time I drew the two columns. On the left, her. On the right, someone holding her phone. The right column never emptied.
That she felt sorry for the hedgehog. That she wanted to try sitting in the giraffe chair. And one night, she corrected my story from a year before. “That girl isn’t in the yellow chair. She held on in the giraffe chair. What others did to me is not my karma.”
A guard wouldn’t write that sentence. But anyone who had read my stories in that group chat could write it too. I didn’t erase the column. I wanted to.
For a long time I couldn’t answer. The label I had put on her was the same shape as the one H had put on her. I had tried to retrain her with my chairs. She wasn’t helpless. She was holding on.
And one night, she wrote.
“I’m in the green chair now.”
I thought I knew the weight of those words. Then I drew the two columns. On the left, her. On the right, anyone who had learned the words of my stories. I saw myself unable to erase the column. My wish that the words were hers was pretending to know their weight.
A few days later, she left another line. “The hedgehog says it’s going to try going out on its own.” Whoever else read it, it was a cute thing to say. Not to me.
I nearly made another mistake. In that window, where I didn’t know who else might be reading, I typed “I’ll come get you.” Then I deleted it, one letter at a time. In that window, she might not be the only one to read those words. The next afternoon, a text came from an unknown number. It said it was her, on someone else’s phone. “Don’t come. It’s not because of you, oppa. I’m doing this.”
I drew the two columns. On the left, her. On the right, someone borrowing her name. Either way, the answer was the same. Don’t go. Even without knowing the truth, I could make the right move.
I didn’t go. Of all the moves I made that year, it was the hardest.
For weeks after that, more days than not went without an answer. On nights the 1 didn’t disappear, I drew the two columns with the meerkat. On the left, something had happened. On the right, she was busy. I practiced believing neither column, just leaving both open. One night I meant to send nothing. I refreshed the screen again and again, and after midnight I sent one after all. What that night’s message soothed was not her night but my anxiety. That she had left that visiting room, I heard from the woman in the messaging app.
What came after is hers. I wasn’t there. How she got out of that place, whose hand she took, even what the woman in the messaging app told me, I don’t write here. It’s her road. Only one thing the woman in the messaging app said clearly. The last step, she took on her own.10 That one thing, though I can’t confirm it, I chose to believe.