In early September, a video call came before dawn. It was her. Really her. She was crying, and keeping her voice down.
“Oppa, my goal is to go to that concert with you, no matter what. Just wait for me a little. It’s your birthday then too. I remember.”
The concert was the first Korean show by Night Lantern, the band she had loved since she was sixteen. She had told me once that she lived for the moment when every stage light goes out and only one lantern is left. It was the day after my birthday. The call cut off there. That day I thought something was going seriously wrong.
On her birthday we all got together. She was strangely elated, and said the same things over and over. On the way home, in front of her building, I asked H which apartment was hers. H gave me the number of the one next door. I found that out later.
I invited her to an event that started at 9:09 on September 9. Four nines. Back then I tried to read something even into that number. I was going to pick her up, but H said she would bring her. She came very late, with two men I didn’t know, and was gone within an hour. In the dark hall she kept glancing at H. And she said it again and again. “People know H’s face, so here, don’t use her name. Call her Sunny.”
Sunny. The ID she used on the messaging app instead of her name. She was telling me to call H by that name. A chill ran down my spine. Of the messages I had traded with “Sunny” for months, how many had been hers?
Two days later, in broad daylight, I got through to her. She said she had to sleep. Over the line I heard a rattle, like pills being shaken from a bottle into a mouth. Several times. She didn’t hang up. I heard that sound as a cry for help. After that I couldn’t reach her.3