A few weeks later, she left another line. “Don’t stop.”
This time I drew the two columns. On the left, her. On the right, someone holding her phone. The right column never emptied. I hid a question in the next story. A question I believed only she could answer. The moment she had said she was waiting for at the concert. Three days, no answer. On the fourth night a line appeared. “When only one lantern is left.” H still remained in the right column. It was an answer H could know too. I kept writing without erasing the column. The nights of writing without certainty were the price.
After that she left a line now and then. That she felt sorry for the hedgehog. That she wanted to try sitting in the giraffe chair. And one night, she corrected my story. “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 room every day 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 on the story. “The hedgehog says it’s going to try going out on its own.” To anyone in that room it was a cute comment. Not to me.
I nearly made another mistake. In the group chat, the room B read, I typed “I’ll come get you.” Then I deleted it, one letter at a time. She wasn’t the only one in that room who would 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 your stories, 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 months after that, I posted one every night. The first line was always the same. More nights than not, there was no 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 not to post. I refreshed the screen again and again, and after midnight I posted after all. What that night’s story soothed was not her night but my anxiety. That she had left that room, I heard only when the year was nearly over, from the woman in the messaging app.
What came after is hers. I wasn’t there. How she got out of that room, 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.