Taesu did not know an aunt on either his mother or father’s side, but he was excited to meet her. Perhaps she would let him out into the garden and tuck him in just like mother used to do. He was loaded into the carriage with a bag, and although he wished more than anything mother and father would tell him they’d collect him soon, once he was feeling well enough to come home, yet neither of them were even outside to see him off.

His governess was though, and she spoke to the driver in a hushed tone as she told that Taesu would be visiting his aunt for a long while, somewhere the air was cleaner so his lungs could heal. He had never felt sick and no one had ever told him he had bad lungs, but he’d been taught not to argue with adults so he settled into the corner of the carriage, ready for his adventures to begin. He remembered the journey mostly by its sounds: the wheels clattering over stones and gravel, the hiss of rain against the carriage because spring always brought a lot of them, and the muffled voice of the driver muttering to himself.

When the carriage finally stopped, Taesu blinked through the fogged glass of the carriage’s windows and stared at a building that did not resemble a house at all. He did not feel like this place was cleaner than his parents home and wished that he could return to them. The walls were pale and bare, the sides of the building a muddied mess instead of having a beautiful garden to walk through, and the wooden cross tilted on the roof made him uncomfortable. A bell rang somewhere out of sight. It wasn’t an unpleasant sound but it still made him jump.

A woman who was dressed strangely came out of the front door and hurried over to him. The carriage driver unloaded the luggage and Taesu before seeing himself off. Taesu stared at the strange woman – she did not resemble mother or father in the slightest and her accent was… weird. She also didn’t speak the language they used at home, at least until he stared blankly at her. She told him he’d learn English in time, as this was what they spoke here. She took his hand and squeezed his fingers tightly despite him not resisting, and Taesu wondered if she was apologizing for something she could not say aloud.

Inside the air was cooler than outside. A woman in a grey robe greeted them, her eyes darting between Taesu and his greeter. She spoke in the halting rhythm of a foreigner who had learned his language by rote. Her eyes were kind but distant. While the adults spoke, Taesu studied the floorboards. They were worn smooth by many feet. He thought of the polished wood of home and wondered if the children here were allowed to run. When he looked up again, the first woman he had greeted him was leaving. Taesu cried and reached out for her despite not knowing her, and although she froze mid-step, she did not turn around. She stepped through the doorway, and the latch clicked shut.

For the first time, he was truly alone.

The missionaries called this place his new home, meant for children who did not have families like him; Taesu wanted to argue, he did have a family. Mother and father would come for him once he was over this sickness. The woman just shook her head because he was wrong – his parents, for whatever reason, did not want him anymore. She took him on a tour of his new home, although he just cried the entire time, not caring to look around. She sharply told him to stop with the tears because they had no place here; whatever he had done to upset his parents to abandon him was over, and there was nothing he could do to change the outcome.

The home was run by a handful of foreign sisters who wanted to save children like him. Everything was scheduled: wake with the bell, pray before breakfast, work before supper. The food was plain and gross. He had to eat what was put in front of him or go hungry. Taesu often did the latter because he did not eat food he did not like.

The other children came from everywhere – street orphans who had been found wandering without a place to sleep, abandoned infants, and an occasional girl rescued from disrepute. Some of them were kind to him at first, offering him a place next to them as they played with toys and ate the disgusting food. Others avoided him, muttering that he was strange, that there was something off about him. He didn’t understand why. He only knew that when he smiled at them, they sometimes stared too long, or else looked away in shame, crossing themselves as if warding off temptation.

The matrons noticed, too. They began giving him extra chores that kept him apart from the other children: scrubbing the stone steps until his fingers ached, fetching water from the well that was further away from the school because the water was cleaner than the one closer, weeding the empty garden because hadn’t he said once how much he loved being outside with the trees? They never said why, but he could feel it in their tone. It was a cautious distance, the way one might speak to a dog they suspected might attack them at any moment.

At night he lay in a narrow bed crammed into a corner, the bed sometimes empty next to him because children didn’t want to get too close. Sometimes he could hear another child crying softly a few beds over, although the one time he had gotten out of bed to try to comfort them, Taesu was met with harsh rejection and told to go away, no one wanted him here. The sisters would come and whisper prayers, but the crying never stopped; it only became quieter, as if even grief had to follow the rules here, too. Taesu hated it.

He missed the gardens and the trees he used to walk underneath. He missed the governess’s perfume, the rainbows he could see through the glass, his mother’s smile and the way his father used to lift up to see the dragons painted near the ceiling. He tried to pray, because that’s what everyone did before bed, but the words felt heavy in his mouth. When he said amen, it came out like a question.

Weeks passed. Then months. Time blurred together when every day was the same shade of gray. The governess never came back. Neither did the mother who had promised he’d get better. The thought that they might never return came slowly, although Taesu refused to believe it. He had to hold onto hope for something. Mother and father had loved him dearly, so they wouldn’t abandon him without telling him why, right?

One afternoon, the sister who had first greeted him caught him humming to himself while folding linens. The woman’s expression tightened, and she said sharply, "Silence is obedience." Taesu nodded, lowering his eyes to stare at the linen he still clutched tightly in his hand. But as he walked back to his chores, he couldn’t help humming again, quietly, under his breath. The tune made the world feel less empty, even if no one wanted to hear it.

He learned that hunger came in more than one form.

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