They let me go four days later. They opened the cell door and told me to get out, like I was just a piece of trash they had finished using. I didn't have any papers, or any money, or anything at all. Just the pain.

​My left eye was swollen shut, a big, throbbing purple balloon that didn't belong to me. My right leg dragged, a heavy, disobedient thing. Every piece of me ached from the police's lesson.

​I didn't go back to the bridge. If Mina-noona saw me like this—scared and beaten—her own heart would break, and that would hurt more than my leg.

​I walked to the Han River. It was cold, so cold that the air hurt, but I sat on the bank and lowered my face to the water. The river water was freezing, but it was also clean, cleaner than the station's dirty floor. I let the cold soak into my throbbing eye. The water was my only doctor.

​Then, I took out the black glasses. They were bent and scratched from when I fell.

​I hated them. They were a lie, and the lie had led me to the beatings. They were cursed. I thought that because of the glasses, my eye had been taken from me. I was afraid if I kept them, the bad luck would spread and take the other eye, too.

​I threw them as far as I could, right into the grey, moving water. They sank quickly. Good riddance to the cursed mask.

​I sat there, waiting for the cold to take away the pain, when I heard the clean, small sound of voices on the path behind me.

​It was her. The Girl in Blue.

​Today, she was walking with a different person. Not the angry mother, but a tall man in a suit that looked softer and less starched than the police uniforms.

​They stopped when they saw me. I tried to look away, but my swollen eye was too heavy.

​She crouched down next to me, her blue skirt not touching the dirt. She looked at my face, tilting her head, and her expression was not sneering, only curious.

​"You're the boy from the bridge," she whispered. Her voice was like the softest part of the melting popsicle she used to eat. "You always wore those black glasses."

​She pointed to my swollen eye, the one that was closed and purple.

​"Did you wear them because you had an ugly eye?"

​I stared at her. Her question was so small, so simple, so completely wrong. My shame and my anger flared up, hot and quick, like cheap oil poured on a tiny fire.

​"What is it to you?" I scoffed, the word raw in my throat. I used the meanest, coldest voice I could find. "Go away. Go eat your sweets. Why do you care what my eye looks like?"

​I scorned her in my heart. She thought my biggest problem was having a bad face. She thought I wore the glasses for my looks. She didn't know that the bad eye was a gift from the police, a receipt for asking too many questions about fairness. She knew nothing about the fear that gnaws your gut, or the cold that never leaves your bones.

​She pouted, her mouth drawing into a small, offended knot.

​"Well, you don't have to be so mean! I was just trying to be polite, you beggar," she shot back, using the word the police used. "You look like you need a doctor!"

​"A doctor costs money, little girl! Go on! Go back to your big robber house where you don't need money for anything!"

​"My house isn't full of robbers!" she protested, standing up quickly. "My name is Y/n. And my mother says you people are the lazy ones!"

​"Your mother is a liar!" I shouted, the volume making my head throb. "She uses a shoe to steal my chance at one piece of toffee! And the police use a stick to steal my money for bread! Your whole world is a giant lie that smells of soap and expensive perfume!"

​Y/n’s father—the man in the suit—cleared his throat then. He had heard all of it.

​"Y/n," he said quietly, "That is enough. Go wait by the car."

​Y/n, still pouting, walked away. Now it was just me, the injured beggar, and the big, clean man.

​He crouched down, just as his daughter had, but he kept a respectful distance. He didn't touch me. He just looked at my eye and my dragging leg.

​"My daughter... Y/n," he said softly, "told me about her mother kicking you a few days ago. I was... I was very sorry to hear that. My wife did not handle the situation well."

​Sorry? The word was alien. No one had ever said that word to me before, not after a beating, not after an insult, not after losing my home. I just stared at him, suspicious and silent.

​"My name is Mr. Han. And I know an injury when I see one," he continued, looking right at my swollen eye. "And I also know that money for 'free rations' sometimes doesn't reach the people it's meant for. I apologize for my wife's actions and for the shame you carry."

​He was looking at me like I was a human being, not a piece of trash. It was confusing. Was he one of the good, non-robbing Government people?

​"Come with me," he said, holding out a hand that was clean and pale. "I can't fix the world, but I can make sure that eye doesn't go bad on you. I will take you to a hospital."

​I didn't take his hand. I just stared at it—a clean hand offering help for the very first time. I didn't trust him. I didn't trust anyone. But the pain in my leg was screaming, and the throbbing in my eye was terrifying.

​My simple, innocent thought was this: Maybe... maybe he is the one person in this world who hasn't been paid yet to lie to me.

​I struggled to my feet, ignoring the hand, and started limping towards the direction he pointed. The hospital. It was a new kind of terror, but it was also the first small glimmer of something that felt like escape. The first time the logic of the robber had been challenged by the quiet logic of kindness.

—

The hospital smelled too clean. It smelled like the perfume the rich foreigners wore, only sharper and more clinical. I hated it. It made the dirt under my fingernails feel even dirtier.

The doctor, a man with gentle hands, said something that made the fear in my chest grow cold and heavy. He said I was lucky. If the infection from the beating had spread more, I could have lost the sight in my eye forever.

​Lost my sight. The cursed glasses had almost made me truly blind.

​Forever. That was a long, terrible time to be blind for real.

When the doctor left, Y/n was still there. She was standing at the edge of the cot, holding a strange, shiny, clear bag with a little piece of cartoon art on it. She looked at my face, which was stiff and sore, and she smiled.

​Y/n smiled at me. It was a bright, quick thing, like the flash of a nice car's headlight. "See? Your eye will heal now! My father is very good. He fixes things."

​​I glared at her with my one good eye. She was so happy, as if this whole nightmare was just a simple story where the good hero (her dad) fixed the broken thing (me).

​"You come to give me wounds, and then you come to heal them," I scoffed, my voice rusty from shouting and crying. It was the only thing I could think to say. I had to push her away. I had to remind her that her world had struck the first blow.

​Y/n’s smile vanished. Her eyes got wide. "I didn't give you the wound! And I didn't ask you to be mean to me just because I said hello!"

​"Your mother kicked me!" I shot back. "Right where I told her I was hungry! That is a wound! And you just watched and ate your sweet, perfect toffees! Go away! You don't know anything!"

​Y/n stamped her foot, making her clean school shoe squeak on the floor. It was a loud, impatient sound.

​"You are just being awful! I was worried about you!" she insisted. "My dad said the police beat you up because you were pretending to be blind! You are a cheat!"

​"And what are you?" I shot back, the words flying out without fear. "You have so many sweets you can't even eat them all, and you don't even know that the police are the biggest cheats in the whole city! They steal the poor people's soup money and use it to protect their friends! That is the real lie, not my glasses!"

​She crossed her arms, mimicking my posture. "My dad works hard! He doesn't steal soup money! You are just jealous because you don't have anything!"

​"Yes, I am jealous!" I admitted fiercely. "I am jealous of your clean socks and your stupid blue umbrella! And I am jealous that your life is so easy you think a black eye is the worst problem in the world! My worst problem is that I am a proxy for a rich boy who killed a man, and the police beat me because I asked them to stop robbing! So don't you dare come here and talk to me about my measly lie!"

​I was breathing hard, shaking with the leftover rage from the station. The beautiful, terrible thing was that I wasn't afraid of her. I could shout at her, and no one reached for a stick or slammed a door. It was the first time I had ever felt safe enough to be truly, honestly angry.

​She didn't run. She stood her ground, her face red with frustration. "You are just a bitter, sad boy! And you are rude! My dad is helping you, and you call him a robber!"

​"Because he is! Everyone is!" I insisted, exhausted. "Now go. I don't need your clean pity!"

​"Well, you don't have to be a rude ass about it!" she retaliated, her voice getting higher. "I was trying to be nice, and you're just a freeloader who thinks the whole world owes him bread!"

I froze. Rude ass. It was a childish curse, the kind of crude, harmless thing Minho would say on the playground. It was so small compared to the police's profanities.

​"The whole world does owe me bread!" I yelled. I wasn't scared of her, and that felt both terrifying and strangely warm. "The Government steals the money for my bread with the tax, and your mother kicks me away from a single piece of sugar! You people take everything and then call us lazy!"

I turned my back to her on the cot, willing her to disappear. I heard her sharp exhale, and then the quiet sound of her walking toward the door.

​"We don't take anything!" Y/n insisted, crossing her arms. "We work hard! My father works very hard so I can go to school! You should go to school instead of sitting on the street, acting all miserable!"

​"School costs money! And a bus ride costs money! And the bus driver throws me out when I don't pay! You think I don't want to learn the big words so I can understand the police when they lie? You think I like sorting garbage?"

​I was shouting now, and the effort hurt my ribs. She looked stunned. I had never spoken so much, so freely, about my life to a clean person. They usually just look away or throw a coin. But she was fighting back. She was treating my words like they mattered, even if she disagreed.

“Rude.”, she muttered again.

​I​ turned back to look at her. "I'm rude? You are the one whose mother kicks little boys! You should be locked up, not me!"

​Y/n looked genuinely frustrated, and then, slowly, she deflated. She walked back to the cot, her fierce anger gone.

​"I said sorry for my mom," she repeated, looking down at her clean, perfect hands. "And my dad apologized too. And I called you a rude ass, so I'm sorry for that, too. I don't know why you are so angry at me."

​"Sorry doesn't fill my stomach!"

​"It doesn't cost anything to be sorry!"

​"Being poor costs everything!"

“But kindness doesn't cost anything! Not even to the poor.”

​I was taken aback. She was backing down. She was offering me peace, a thing that had no price tag.

​"Why?" I muttered, lowering my gaze. "Why are you being like this? You should just walk away. You have nothing to gain from me. I have no coins to give you."

​She looked at me, and her big, brown eyes were suddenly mature, holding a wisdom that didn't belong to a girl who still ate popsicles.

​"My dad says you should be kind to everyone," Y/n explained simply. "Even to those who aren't kind to us. It doesn't cost us anything to be kind."

​It doesn't cost us anything to be kind.

​I lay there, the doctor's bandages tight around my head, listening to those words.

​Cost. 

That was the only word I understood. Everything in my life had a price: bread, safety, silence, a lie, a beating. I knew the exact cost of half a loaf of bread (100 won), and I knew the cost of talking back to the police (a broken eye and four days in a cell).

I didn't know why I was doing this. Why was I letting her see the fire inside me? I was supposed to be silent, small, and scared. But with her, the words just tumbled out, honest and raw.

​I realized, with a shock that was stronger than the pain in my cheek, that this was the first time I had talked to someone who wasn't drowning me in debts or beating me up. She was only fighting with words. And for the first time, I felt like my words—my poor, angry, uneducated words—were just as strong as her rich, clean ones.

It was a strange, easing feeling, like a knot in my stomach being loosened.

​I just stared at her, waiting for her to get bored or to call the police like the other rich people.

​But Y/n seemed to calm down. She dropped her arms and let out a small, quiet sigh. She looked at me, not with anger, but with a strange, tired acceptance.

​But she said kindness cost nothing.

​It was the first time in my twelve years that I felt like I was the wrong one, not just the wronged one. I had been given the first gift without a hidden charge, and I had thrown back scorn and curses in return. I had fought her with all the fury of my starved, dirty life, and she had countered with a gentle logic I couldn't beat.

​If kindness is free, I thought, touching my swollen cheek very gently, why did I have to pay so much to get it? And why did I fight the person who gave it to me?

​My throat closed up. The police had stripped me bare, taken my money, and beaten the simple truth into me: I was worthless. But Y/n's clean, simple honesty had done something much more powerful. It had made me ashamed of my own darkness.

​I couldn't answer her. I just put a shaky hand on my growling stomach and sighed. The bickering, the yelling, the pure, honest anger—it had felt easier than anything I'd done in a long time. For a moment, I had forgotten the police, the garbage, and the hungry feeling.

​But she was right. I was a "rude ass."

​I looked at the girl in the blue uniform, the one whose mother had kicked me, and I felt a strange, new, small seed of hope. Maybe the world wasn't entirely made of robbers. Maybe there was a logic that didn't involve sticks and taxes. Maybe, just maybe, I could learn to be kind, too, because it cost nothing.

​It was the biggest risk I had ever considered.

​I looked up at her and swallowed the lump in my throat. I couldn't say I was sorry. The word felt too big, too clean for my dirty mouth.

​I just mumbled, my voice suddenly small again, "Your father... he paid for my leg and my eye. Thank you."

​It was a weak answer, but it was the best I could do. I had met the enemy, and the enemy was telling me to be good, and that being good was free. It was a terrifying, wonderful thought.

—

I limped back to the under-bridge.

My eye was bandaged now, and my leg felt tight and heavy, but at least the fear of blindness was gone. I had carried the hope of that small, clean room back with me, thinking I would show Mina-noona the bandaged eye and my newly fixed leg, and tell her about the girl named Y/n, who said kindness was free.

​But Mina-noona was not there.

​Her thin, grey blanket was folded neatly in the corner where she always slept. Her chipped tin cup was gone.

​Instead, my Father was there. He was sprawled against the cold concrete pillar, drinking from a bottle wrapped in a greasy paper bag. He was in his soju mood, which meant he was a mess of loud, slurring anger.

​I stumbled over to him. "Father! Where is Mina-noona? The police let me go, but my eye—"

​He squinted at me, his face bloated and wet. He didn't look like he recognized me. He just looked like he saw a disturbance. He spoke in a thick, wet gibberish that rolled off his tongue and pooled uselessly on the ground.

​I tried again, desperate. "Father, tell me! Did she go find wood for the fire? Is she at the church for the scraps?"

​He giggled. A horrible, wet, bubbly sound that made the hairs on my arm stand up. He took a long drink from the bottle.

​Then he looked at my bandaged eye, and a slow, ugly smile spread across his face.

​"She went for a long, long, long walk, little Kook-ah," he slurred, waving the bottle vaguely toward the darkness. "A very long walk."

​I didn’t like the way he said it. I knelt down beside him, my heart beginning to hammer against my ribs. "What walk? Tell me, Father! I was in the jail! Where is my sister?"

​He smacked his lips, satisfied with the liquor. Then he leaned in, his breath sour and hot, and whispered the words that killed the last bit of clean hope in my chest.

​"I sold her, Kook-ah. Fifty thousand won."

​I did not understand the words at first. Sold. Fifty thousand won. It was too simple a number for the life of my sister. Mina-noona was my protector. She was the only thing I loved. She was the one who explained the meaning of hampered and robbery and who made sure I always had the biggest share of the thin rice soup.

​"No," I whispered, shaking my head violently. "That's not true. She's not a cup or a piece of plastic. You don't sell people."

​He laughed again, louder this time. He held up the bottle like a medal. "She is thirty bottles of this, little beggar! She is a good price! You bring home measly ten-won coins! She is a fortune! A bride price, they called it. She is married now, to a nice old man who wanted a young cook and a slave. Fifty thousand won!"

​Fifty thousand won. It was a number that was less than what the politician paid the police to lie about the accident. Mina was worth less than a lie.

​I felt a dizzying, suffocating fury. My clean hand, the one Mr. Han had offered to shake, balled into a fist.

​"I was bringing money home!" I protested, tears finally blurring my sight, making the world look as useless as it did through the broken black glasses. "I was getting good money from the bridge! I was going to be a big robber so we could get a house! You lied! You robbed her!"

​The word 'robbed' snapped something in him. He grabbed the empty bottle and swung it. It didn't hit my head, but it struck my shoulder—the same shoulder the officer had hit—and the shock of the new pain sent me sprawling onto the cold, damp ground.

​"Your money is measly!" he roared, stumbling over me. "It isn't even enough to buy me one cheap drink! Mina was good for one big drink! You are useless! A burden!"

He kicked me in the ribs, a hard, painful jolt that stole my breath. I lay there, choking, my chest burning. He wasn't finished.

​He knelt down, his awful, drink-soaked face inches from mine, and he grabbed the collar of my shirt.

​"You like that hospital, eh? You like the clean beds?" he spat, his voice low and menacing. "We are going back today. You will sell your blood. And then, tomorrow, you will sell your kidney. I need more to drink, and you have two of them, you useless boy."

​My eyes, the one that could see and the one that was swollen, were wide with pure terror. My blood—the blood that had just been saved from infection by a kind stranger—was now currency for my Father’s thirst. My body, my small, pathetic body, was to be dismantled, piece by piece, for his liquor.

​I tried to push him away, crying now in deep, gasping sobs. "No! I don't want to! Mina-noona said my body is all I have! She said I have to be strong!"

​His face hardened into a cruel, empty mask. He knew exactly what to say to break me.

​"If you don't go," he whispered, his voice dangerously soft, "I will find out where that old man took your precious sister. And I will tell him that the wife he bought is useless and damaged. He will beat her. And he will make sure Mina is dead. Do you want to kill your sister, Kook-ah?"

​I stopped fighting. I stopped crying. The threat of Mina being hurt was the only lever he needed. He had taken my home, my money, and now my sister. All he had left to take was my body, and he was using Mina's life as the price.

​I lay there, utterly defeated. I was a proxy for the politician's son in jail, and now I was a proxy for my sister's safety. My life was not my own; it was just a set of replaceable parts for the powerful and the selfish.

​I closed my eye, the single good one. I did not want to see the ugly truth anymore. I will sell my blood. I will sell my kidney. I will do whatever the robbers tell me, until I am strong enough to buy Mina back with a bigger robbery than any of theirs.

​My small, injured body, saved for a day, was already sold again. The cost of living under the bridge was everything I had.

—

The car that took me away this time was not a police car, just a dark, dusty van. My Father held my arm so tight that I didn't have to limp; he just dragged me along on my bad leg.

​He was drunk, but he was excited. He was singing a terrible, off-key song about a rich man and a river of liquor. I was just the cargo.

​The place we went was not white. It was dark green, hidden behind a high metal fence, and the air inside was still and heavy. It was a terrible, quiet place where the lights were yellow and seemed to cast long, cruel shadows.

​We went into a room where a man in a grubby, stained white coat was waiting. He looked like a tired robber, not a doctor.

My Father shoved me forward, pointing at my skinny frame with a shaking finger.

​"Take the boy! Take the blood first! And listen up, you shady bastard," my Father slurred, accepting a small roll of crumpled, dirty bills from the man. He counted them once, twice, his eyes gleaming with greed.

​"Fifty thousand won," he crowed, swaying on his feet. He laughed—that high, desperate giggle of a man who has sold his own soul for cheap heat. "This is just the start! Keep him! Keep him! Take his kidney, take his lung, take his worthless liver, whatever away! I'll be back tomorrow to take the rest of the money, if he’s still breathing!"

​I heard that last part. Worthless liver. If he's still breathing.

​Then, my Father leaned close to the doctor and winked a wet, knowing wink. "And the sister? The poor idiot thinks I spoke the truth to him. I lied to that poor idiot son of mine. I don't know where that old man took Mina, I just told him that to shut his pathetic mouth. You can take all his parts! He has nothing left! I'll finally have enough money to drink for two whole years!"

He just laughed and stumbled out the door, leaving me alone with the quiet, greedy man in the stained white coat.

​I didn't protest. I didn't beg. My body felt heavy and slow, like it was already made of stone. The truth was too big to fight. I realized that my Father was not just a robber; he was the biggest, ugliest lie in my life. He hadn't just sold Mina; he had used her name, the most sacred word I knew, to make sure I surrendered without a fight.

​They strapped my arm down. The needle that went into my vein was thick and cold. I watched the blood, the dark, rich red stuff that Mina-noona said kept the dreams alive, flowing out of me and into a clear plastic bag. Every drop that left me was a drop of my Father’s new liquor.

​I stared at the ceiling, feeling the coldness spread through my chest, and I thought about the simple arithmetic of my life.

​I tried to beg honestly, and I starved.

I tried to beg with a lie, and the police beat my eye half-shut.

I got kicked for asking for a piece of free candy.

I asked about justice, and I was thrown in jail as a proxy for a rich boy's crime.

​There was no right way to live here. Every path led to the same end: pain, debt, and betrayal.

​I thought of the other beggar children in the tunnels near the river. Sometimes, when the cold was too bad or the food too spoiled, one would die. Nobody came. The other children just dragged the small, stiff body away from the sleeping area. And the grown-ups who walked past would just hold their noses and make a disgusted face at the stink, hurrying away so they didn't have to spare a cloth for a coffin.

​I did not want to die like that. I did not want my body to be a stench that made the clean people frown. But what choice did I have?

​I didn't want to live here anymore. Not in this filthy, lying world, and certainly not now that my sister wasn't here. My one little flame of hope—the thought of saving enough money for a house with Mina—was gone. The house was gone. The sister was gone.

​I felt the fate of resignation coming for me. Until I heard the girl in blue uniform….

“Jungkook!”

And my eyes snapped open.

My silver bird……

—