By Soo Young Yun

The kkachi [1] watches the girl, admiring her ebony tresses as dark as his own tail. She peels off her shoes and lays them daintily behind her, much like every time she enters her home. The kkachi blinks as the streaks of the cold morning sun paint the girl’s silhouette onto the cement. Her shadow is the same colorful grey of the sunlight, her eyes the same hue of everyone else’s in the city. The city is full of pleasantries and scripts, of malleable noses and always lit hagwons, and the kkachi notices the same question hanging by the girl’s head, saying, sadness is the minority, is it not? How can anyone be sad when everyone is wrong in the head?

The kkachi admires the grace in how the girl’s shadow leaps and soars from the ledge. He flaps to the glittery studs on her sneakers, cawing in pleasure to see another lovely pair of ivory shoelaces. Another pair for his collection.

Soo Young Yun is a writer from Seoul, South Korea, and the author of Sixth Grade Stories from Young Hoon. Yun’s writing has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, Aerie International Journal, Writing for Peace Organization, Skipping Stones Youth Honor Awards, Yonsei University, Oxford Youth National Writing Challenge, among others. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Burningword Literary Journal, Emerald Coast Review, Hawai’i Review, Watershed Review, among other journals and anthologies.