She Looked Just Like Her
They told me my sister was dead.
The most perfect woman I had ever known had left this world. The one who always left me yearning. The one who always filled me with sorrow. My indelible mark. My sister.
Sister.
Looking back, there had always been exactly twelve years between us. As the spoiled late-born child, I was always under her care. Even though it must have been tiresome, she looked after me like a mother would. Without ever frowning, with such tenderness.
Sister.
She left my side on the day I turned twelve. Before she could even finish university, my sister suddenly confessed her love to the entire family. She said she was truly sorry to all of us. That she had met a man she wanted to marry. Was it because our mother had lost her husband so early? Mother could not easily accept her daughter’s marriage. Especially not one so soon. To a man so much older than herself. Even dropping out of the university she attended.
Both families fell into chaos at once. A thief stealing their daughter. A woman blocking their promising son. While everyone opposed my sister’s love amid the turmoil, I remained strangely calm. Because there was no way my sister would betray me. The sister I loved would never abandon her little brother. This uproar would soon end and she would return to me. That was all I believed.
But she...
“Sister.”
I call her name quietly, almost in a whisper. A bitter taste fills my mouth. The smoke from a cigarette I never even lit seems to rise. That unpleasant scent I had caught somewhere while walking the streets or living my life now lingers beside me like a shadow.
Sister. Sister. If you were going to leave us, you should have at least been happy. With the person you loved. Just the two of you. Forever. As if Mother and I meant nothing at all. A love so beautiful it was blinding. Leaving me like this for eternity. Saying we could never meet again.
When my sister returned one day, the glory I had built to offer her would now...
Who is there left to offer it to?
My hands gripping the steering wheel trembled violently. Grief surged up and I wanted to collapse where I stood, but there was someone I had to meet. The voice that had told me of my sister’s death. I had to see her.
When my sister left our family, she had already been pregnant. That child would be nineteen by now. Perhaps twenty.
In the end, that child is the one who took my sister from me.
For some reason, I felt no resentment toward her. It seemed ridiculous to be angry at a niece whose face I didn’t even know, and the weight of emotion she and I had to carry was on completely different scales. What I had lost was the sister in my memories, but what she had lost were the parents she had lived with every day.
I prayed I could at least console her sadness. And just the same, that I would not collapse with her. That I could somehow help my niece suffer even a little less.
The hospital appeared in the distance. I parked and walked inside. The smell of disinfectant struck me. It is a place everyone visits at least once in life, yet I could never grow used to hospitals. A terrible gloom lay thick everywhere. No one here knew how to smile. There was nothing worth smiling about.
When I gave the deceased’s name at the information desk, they asked my relationship. Upon learning I was her brother, they offered light condolences and explained the circumstances. She and her husband had been in a traffic accident. They were brought to the hospital immediately, but unfortunately they could not be saved. The extent of their injuries, the fatal wounds that claimed both their lives. They pointed toward the funeral hall attached to the hospital.
Their tone was polite, but nothing more. They showed no particular consideration for the bereaved family. Of course, I wasn’t expecting much either.
“......”
One step. Then another. I walked to confirm my sister’s death.
One step. Then another.
The funeral hall was filled with flowers. Yet every brightly blooming blossom looked sorrowful. All of them white. All of them flowering toward the afterlife.
After listening to the funeral staff’s explanation, I walked the hallway again. And again.
“......”
I saw the girl from afar. She sat alone in her school uniform in an empty space. Like every grieving person here, her head was bowed low. Without a word.
For some reason, the girl I was seeing for the first time did not feel like a stranger. Perhaps because her posture resembled the one I had always longed for beside my sister.
Again. And again. I took another step.
We soon drew close enough to greet each other comfortably.
“Excuse me...”
When I spoke, she lifted her head. And there—
“!”
—was a woman who looked exactly like the face I had missed so desperately. They were so identical I almost wondered if my sister was playing a prank on her brother after all these years. Though it was only natural for a daughter to resemble her mother, in that instant I was left stunned and speechless.
Of all things...
Suddenly the image of my sister’s back as she left me rose in my mind. More than twenty years had passed, yet the memory was as vivid as yesterday. No—because I had never forgotten it and kept revisiting it, the memory had swollen on its own, haunting my nights and stealing my sleep...
I somehow crushed down the emotions surging inside me and forced out my voice.
“Hello. You contacted me, right? About my sister’s accident...”
She looked up at me with wide eyes. They brimmed with tears, as if she had been crying until just a moment ago.
“Ah, hello.”
At least the greeting she gave me was different from my sister’s. If even her voice had been the same, I might have grabbed her and broken down sobbing, demanding why she had only returned to me now.
She staggered as she tried to stand. I gestured for her to sit again. I sat beside her as well, leaving the space of one person between us.
“How did you get my number?”
“It was in Mom’s phone... saved under younger brother...”
“I see.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know who to tell or how.”
“It’s all right. Thank you for contacting me.”
“......”
“......”
After the brief exchange, silence fell again. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. Telling her it must be heartbreaking or wishing her mother well in the afterlife felt wrong when the person we had lost had left us with such deep wounds.
“Still, it seems my sister—your mom, I mean—didn’t avoid talking about me completely. Since she had my number saved like this.”
In case my sister ever reached out. I had never changed my number once from childhood until now, yet my sister was truly too much. How could she have gone all that time without contacting me even once.
“Mom mentioned it sometimes. That she really had to go and apologize.”
“You could have come a little sooner if you were going to say that.”
“I’m sorry...”
“What do you have to be sorry for? It’s not as if you did anything wrong.”
“Just... just...”
“Yes?”
“......”
“......”
The words broke off again.
We couldn’t stay like this forever. For now I would do what I could do immediately. Parting with someone you love is incredibly sad, but we could not simply sit and cry. We had to arrange the funeral and handle all the necessary procedures. There would be documents to file at the hospital and the district office.
I could not leave a child like her to manage it all alone.
When I stood, she blinked and rose to follow me. Her eyes asked where we were going.
“First I need to speak with the funeral director. We have to announce the news of her passing.”
We also needed to look into the insurance. It would probably be in my sister’s phone, but I wasn’t sure whether the girl had it.
“Ah... yes.”
“Do you have your mother’s phone? I need to call the insurance company.”
“Here.”
Only after seeing the contact name on my sister’s phone did reality truly sink in. That my sister had completely left me. That we would never meet again.
I turned away and slowly sank to the floor. The tears that had been sliding down my cheeks turned into sobs.
I could never tell her how hard I had worked or how I had believed she would return to me someday. That my sister had left my side. That my sister had completely...
“Sister...... Sister...”
Clutching the phone, I called out to her in a low voice. Even though there was no way she could hear, it felt like something I had to do.
Then, to me reeling in grief, “Samchon...”
She came closer, cried with me, and comforted me. Even though she must have been suffering the most, she gently patted my back, trying to ease even a little of my sorrow.
“I’m sorry.”
My voice cracked. I barely pushed the grief into a corner of my heart and offered a strained apology.
“It’s okay.”
“For now... there are so many things to handle regarding your mother’s affairs... Can I help you?”
I had wanted to be the uncle who took care of everything alone for his niece, but it wasn’t working. Perhaps while preparing the funeral, filing the death report, and sending my sister away from us, I would keep collapsing into grief.
I had vowed not to do this. I had resolved to lessen my niece’s sorrow... Yet I was the one being devoured by grief, unable to do anything.
“Yes...... Samchon.”
My niece quietly followed at my side. Her mature demeanor resembled her mother. The way she comforted me while I cried. The way she thought of others first even when she herself was in the greatest pain.