Park Sua… used to have a brother.

Despite living in the last slum of Seoul—an orphan without so much as a birth record to prove her existence—Sua’s early years were full of more light than they had any right to have.

She learned to pick pockets before she knew how to write. Got used to sleeping on dirt before she’d ever had the chance to touch a bed. With no experiences to compare to her own, not even so much as a cell phone to scroll through, Sua hardly knew any better than the life she had.

Life may have been hard, but there was still happiness to be found.

After all, not everyone had the security that Sua did in having a protector.

Eight years her senior, and just old enough to remember flashes of what their mother looked like, Jae-sung never let Sua starve: even in the dead cold of winter, even if the cost was his own meal.

Barely more than skin and bones himself, armed with nothing more than a tattered coat, a rusty kitchen knife, and sheer stubbornness, he would go for a week without food if it meant giving Sua a small bite to eat every day.

As a child, Jae-sung was her entire world.

Sua would dig extra hours in the trash to try and keep him fed too, her incredibly small frame making the climb to the lid perilous, but never daunting.

Her sheer determination to look out for her brother the way he looked after her made her stupid at times.

At five years old, Sua’s stumpy legs made the trek through the field of grass that separated the slum from the rest of Seoul, running towards the lights of the rest of the city in an exhausting journey.

By the time she reached the edge of the highway, her legs were shaking dangerously, but the reminder of Jae-sung’s gaunt cheeks pushed her forward.

Forcing her tired body to move, Sua stumbled onto the blacktop.

“Wait!” 

The terrified scream came as a scare, Sua staggering backwards before landing flat on her behind. What had looked like two specks of dust off to her right solidified into bright lights, and she picked up her arm to shade her face.

A hand grabbed onto the back of her worn shirt, tugging Sua off of the highway and back onto the grass. Her squeak of surprise was drowned out by a loud honk as a car sped past them, driving right over where Sua had been standing.

“You idiot! Didn’t I tell you not to come this way?”

Now that they were closer, Sua immediately recognized Jae-sung’s voice, the anger it in jolting her to movement.

Scrambling to her feet, she dipped into a bow, staring at the ground as she tried not to cry, “’m sorry.”

Jae-sung never managed to stay mad at her for long—a relief, considering that making her brother mad was one of the most upsetting things in the world for Sua.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, he plopped onto the ground, chest heaving from racing across the field to find her. “You could’ve died. What were you doing?”

“… I heard one of the adults saying they found more food in the dumpsters that way. You haven’t eaten in a while, oppa.” Sua’s attention stayed fixed on the ground as she tried to will her eyes not to water. “I... I just wanted to get you something.”

That earned another sigh. Getting back to his feet, Jae-sung ruffled her hair gently, “They do have more food, but they also have security cameras, police, and dogs. You would’ve just gotten hurt. If more food means losing you, then I’ll keep starving as long as it takes.”

Jae-sung had most of the burden to carry. Sometimes, Sua felt like all she did was hold her brother back. The last thing she wanted to do—after already causing so much trouble—was to start crying, but the sniffle escaped before she could catch it.

All it took was one tear escaping before the rest started to drip down from her face, “’m s-sorry, oppa! I-if I was b-bigger-"

Before she could get the rest of her apology out, Sua was tugged into a tight hug, Jae-sung giving her a gentle squeeze, “Stop it. I like you just the way you are, Sua. Don’t start rushing to change things, we’ll be okay.”

Despite being exhausted, despite the pain from her fall on the ground and the way her heart was hammering in her chest when the car raced by, despite the way she sobbed into the tattered scarf Jae-sung had worn since she was born, Sua had felt confident that things would be alright if the two of them stayed together.

So… why did that end?

That question played over and over and over again in her brain just one year later.

Now six, Sua’s legs were still too short and weak to carry her far, body still too stunted and thin to keep her warm when the sun would set. Her stomach growled endlessly as she staggered around the slum, hands pushed together into a trembling cup while she asked the others for a drop of food.

They weren’t heartless.

Sometimes, a small chunk of stale bread, other times it was a few shreds of cabbage, on particularly lucky days, Sua would even get half of a boiled egg.

Curled up into a ball in the makeshift home of cardboard Jae-sung had made for them years ago, Sua would carefully pick at her spoils, teeth chattering so violently that it was difficult to take big bites.

Staring out into the darkness, she was never quite able to give up on the idea of Jae-sung coming back.

After all, he had said he would be back after he found a thicker piece of fabric for them to use. The upcoming winter was supposed to be colder than usual, he had told her. If they didn’t have extra supplies, Jae-sung thought they would freeze to death in their little hut.

“Be careful while I’m gone, try your best to take care of yourself for a bit,” Jae-sung’s voice was as gentle as ever; Sua had replayed their goodbye hundreds of times in the four months since he’d left.

She had dreamed about the warmth of his hand as he tousled her hair, the small smile on his face when he gave her a wave and slipped out of sight.

There was no way Jae-sung had lied to her. He wouldn’t do that.

He wouldn’t just… leave Sua.

… would he?

Crying wasn’t good. It would make her face colder, and it would make her feel weaker when it was done. Brushing angrily at her face, Sua stashed the last two bites of her bread for another day.

All she had to do was survive until Jae-sung came back. It wouldn't do to disappoint her brother just because he wasn't looking over her shoulder.

If he was going to come back—when he was coming back—he would find that she had done everything she could to take care of herself, just like he asked her to.

So, when winter came: Sua survived.

She slept in the middle of the day, when it was the warmest, and spent the night pacing in the open space in front of her home to stave off some of the cold.

Sua got more adventurous trying to secure food, secreting herself inside the tents and shacks that belonged to the others, squirreling away the tiniest portions of vegetables before she could get noticed and rationing them with an almost militant degree self-restraint.

It was incredibly hard.

Her stomach would hurt on the days when it was too cold to risk sneaking food away from someone else. She spent most of the night coughing and shivering, in so much pain by the time that the sun came up that it was almost impossible to fall asleep.

But Sua survived.

When the snow finally stopped for the year and spring came, Sua began to reinforce their home.

Ripping up patches of grass and moss, she stuffed them into the cracks between the cardboard. Digging through the trash cans she found tiny scraps of fabric, collecting enough until she could ball it into a pillow to help her sleep at night.

Then, Sua kept collecting for days bordering on weeks until she had enough to make Jae-sung a pillow too.

The smallest of smiles curled onto her face as she finished it. It was easy to imagine the soft laugh that would greet her when Jae-sung got to see what she’d accomplished.

And yet… spring passed without Jae-sung returning.

It was summer when Sua began to entertain the idea of going out to find him, fall by the time that she acknowledged that would be impossible.

Unlike Jae-sung, she had never actually left the slum before, and a child wandering the streets near the normal people would get attention. If the police found her and sent her to a children’s home, then she would lose Jae-sung for years.

So, she spent the rest of fall waiting.

Sometimes, Sua would stand for hours at the edge of the slum, staring in the direction Jae-sung had left, hoping to catch the first sight of him when he finally returned. Other days, she paced the entire outskirts on the chance that he might come from a different part of the city.

It wasn't until the winter cold returned, a full year after Jae-sung departed, that Sua was left with nothing to do but finally acknowledge reality.

He wasn’t coming back.

She didn’t know why, she didn’t know what happened, but she knew that Jae-sung was gone.

Despite doing her best not to cry all year, Sua couldn’t hold in her wails as she curled into a ball in their little shack, sobbing into the pillow meant for her brother.

How was she supposed to do this alone?

How was she going to survive another winter?

How was-

<Pitiful child, your tears cannot keep falling.>

A voice cut through the agony, making Sua’s head jerk up to catch a glimpse of the speaker.

No one was around. She couldn’t hear any footsteps either.

Had she gone mad?

It happened in the slum, sometimes. Sua had seen them scratching their faces and running into the darkness while shouting nonsense.

<Your struggle has been acknowledged.>

Now that it spoke again, Sua could tell that there wasn’t actually any talking. The voice was inside of her head.

“… I’m crazy…” Her voice was scratchy from her sobs, so hoarse that she barely heard it herself.

Amusement.

That was what happened next. Sua couldn’t tell how, or why, but she could feel amusement.

The emotion was different than the sadness and despair causing her heart to ache and her stomach to churn: it was lighter, almost as if the feeling came from the outside and was pressing into her skin.

<Do you want a new home, pitiful child? We can help you.>

If she was already crazy, Sua supposed there was little else to lose. The only thing worth keeping in her life had already gone, and the last year had been too hard for her to dredge up the previous hope that had been driving her forward.

After a long moment, she nodded. “Okay.”

Something dark and unsettling began to climb into her shack. It looked like shadows were crawling across the ground, growing faster with each second as tendrils of the darkness reached out toward her.

Sua was too weak to run away: there was nowhere for her to go and struggling to survive was exhausting. All she did was uncurl from her ball to watch better as the darkness swallowed her pillow, swallowed the empty can that she would use to stash extra food.

When it touched her, she let out a little gasp: the darkness was warm.

Warmer than anything she’d been able to scavenge for herself.

Warmer than the sun when it peeked through on cloudy days.

It was… almost as warm as her brother’s embrace.

Sua sat in complete stillness as the darkness climbed up her legs and her waist, as it crawled along her torso and brushed against her neck. She didn’t move until the darkness covered her face entirely and she was left consumed by it.

But… she didn’t feel dead.

… and she wasn’t alone.

All around her, everything was pitch black. Sua felt like she was sitting but she didn’t know what there was to sit on. She didn't know up from down or where the noise of the slum at night had vanished to.

Whispers flitted past her—just out of her range of understanding—and the same warmth as earlier brushed against her face and slipped around her legs.

<Welcome to the Abyss, child.>