IN THE STATES - BAY AREA, CA
"Sela, why are you so annoying? Stop putting your stuff on my stuff." Lianna's voice cracked. She yanked Sela's backpack and flung it across the hallway.
The bag hit the floor with a dull thump. Sela's hands twitched toward it on instinct, a practiced surge, the kind she learned to control in a roundhouse, but she let the reflex fade. She inhaled slowly, visualized a stance, steadied her hands, and scooped up the pack as if it were fragile glass.
"I'm sorry," she said, smaller than the word deserved.
Lianna groaned, clenching her open hands in the air.
"This is why I hate having you here. Annoying adopted child." Lianna slammed her door.
Sela set the backpack by the back door and padded out to the yard. Yasmine stood at the grill, sleeves rolled, a ladle in hand.
"Sela, come help."
Sela tugged on her slippers. When Yasmine glanced at her face, her hand tightened on the ladle for a fraction of a second, a small, human pause that said the words had landed.
Sela locked eyes with her and swallowed hard.
"Omma… am I adopted?" The question came out thin.
The ladle clanged against the pot. Yasmine's hand jerked. Steam spat and sizzled.
"Who told you that?" she said, too loudly.
"Lianna…"
Yasmine wiped her palms on her apron.
"No one should say that about you. You are my child," Yasmine said, as if firming the word into place. Sela nodded, but something inside her stayed hollow, like an empty room behind a closed door.
Sela stood at the table helping pass dishes. Nathan barely looked her way. His attention lived on Leo the way a coach's eyes live on an athlete. Lianna pushed her plate away and stared at the ceiling, and Paula hammered at her food like she'd been given a race.
"Leo, what did you learn today?" Nathan asked.
"Geometry," Leo said, breathing like he'd carried the grade up a hill.
Nathan gave a small, satisfied sound. Then he glanced at Sela.
"And you?"
Sela swallowed.
"Abeoji… Sir. Classes are—are fine. After summer, I'll start Algebra."
Nathan said nothing.
Yasmine's voice tried to fill the silence. "That's good to hear."
Nathan's jaw tightened. The silence grew teeth. Sela slid back from the table as if the air itself had become sharper.
"I'm done eating. I'll go to my room now." She didn't wait for a reply, moving as fast as her feet could carry her. She closed her eyes, sighed deeply, and lay on her bed.
"Why do you act like that to her? What did she do wrong?!" Yasmine screamed.
Nathan's hands pressed flat against the table. He let them fall with a heavy thud.
"Everyone… head to your rooms."
Lianna, Leo, and Paula nodded and slipped away.
Once the door closed, Nathan turned his glare on Yasmine. Sela stayed beside the door, listening.
"She's not my daughter," Nathan said. His tone was flat, the words sliding away like a blade.
"Don't say that." Yasmine's voice snapped.
"Why should I accept her? For all I know—" Nathan let the sentence trail. The insult hung in the air like smoke.
"If she isn't yours, she's mine," Yasmine said, too loud, too proud. "I'll raise her."
Nathan's knuckles whitened on the table. "She can't stay here. I won't have her under my roof."
He swept the utensils from the table and stalked away. The scrape of his bedroom door felt like an aftershock.
Sela stayed frozen by the door until footsteps died away. Her palms were damp with tears. She pressed them hard to her face until the sting dulled. Her knees wanted to give. Her thoughts were small, jagged things. Am I adopted? Omma…
She curled into bed like someone folding a letter shut, muscles slackening as exhaustion finally claimed her.
Each breath came in shallow, uneven pulls, the faint smell of garlic clinging to her pillow as the house's noises thinned into a soft, distant hum.
Her eyelids drifted closed, and the edges of the room shimmered and blurred. Sela drifted into sleep…
The floor seemed to melt beneath her, tilting gently, and the quiet stretched wide like an open sky. The next thing she knew, her feet were on clouds, soft and endless, a white road that swallowed sound. Panic tugged at the edges of her training instincts. She moved the way she'd been taught in TKD: short, efficient bursts, one foot in front of the other, until the burn in her thighs was a conversation she could ignore.
"I'm not dead," she told herself, but the clouds offered no answer.
Sela panted, pausing. She took a deep breath, steadying herself.
Suddenly—
Two slow chords trembled across the night. The sound pulled at something under her ribs.
The clouds thinned into a meadow under a rack of stars. Moonlight lacquered the grass and the ocean beyond it, and an old oak cast a black silhouette. Beneath its branches sat a piano. A boy's shoulders moved with the music.
Sela moved without deciding to, each step measured, breath steady as in sparring. The music made her throat ache. She couldn't look away.
The playing stopped. The boy looked up. For a breath, they simply regarded one another.
"How did you get here?" he asked.
Sela found her voice like a small thing.
"Is this… real?" she whispered.
Should I be answering him? Can he hurt me? "Am I… not allowed here?" she asked, glancing at him.
The boy paused, looking around.
"I'm surprised to see anyone," the boy said. "It's usually just me."
"How long have you been here?" Sela asked. Her mind snagged on several things at once.
He shrugged.
"Long enough." Then he offered a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You're not dead. This is a dream, but it's still a place."
Sela let the words settle and found, oddly, that they did not make her feel safer. Sela bit her lower lip.
"How do you know if we are dreaming? What if I'm just imagining you talking to me… and I'm already dead?" she asked.
The boy froze, staring at her to see if she was serious. She was dead serious and concerned.
"I mean, why would anyone want to kill a young child like you?"
"I'm not that young… You're also young," Sela argued.
"I think I'm quite older than you. You look like you haven't even started junior high yet."
"But I have…" Sela mumbled.
They both stopped and looked at each other. He smiled gently.
"Then I guess you're alive."
"How?!" Sela asked.
He returned to the bench, and the keys answered like a memory. Before he began, he tapped the piano's wooden rim twice, an almost nervous, unconscious tic, then his left hand brushed the lower register in a pattern that made Sela's throat tighten. The melody fit the hollow inside her chest.
A single tear tracked down her cheek. She moved to sit beside the bench and kept her hands in her lap, listening as if the sound might assemble the pieces of whatever she'd lost.
The dream split like paper. She woke with a single hard intake of breath. Yasmine knocked and then opened the door.
"Were you sleeping?" she asked quietly.
"A little." Sela wiped her palms on her pants.
Yasmine came in and sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing Sela's hair with fingers that smelled of garlic and soy sauce.
"Ignore them tonight. Everyone's frayed." Her voice was steady where it needed to be. "Okay?"
Sela searched Yasmine's face.
"Do you love me?"
Yasmine's hand tightened on Sela's shoulder.
"Every day," she said. "I love you every day."
The soft words lingered in Sela's heart, breaking her as tears glimmered at the corner of her eyes. Yasmine wiped Sela's tears and hugged her tightly. Yasmine closed her eyes, taking a deep breath.
You will always be loved, my child. Don't think about anything else other than you are my daughter… Yasmine swallowed hard.
The night was long. Sela took a shower and returned to her room, avoiding any possible clashes with any other family members. Paula stopped by Sela's door and looked at Sela.
"Yes?" Sela asked.
Paula slipped in, whispering like it was a secret. "Do you think Daddy hates you?"
Sela forced a small laugh that sounded like a break. "I don't know. Maybe he's just… tired. He's not gone."
Paula's bottom lip trembled. "Everyone's mean to me except you."
Sela held out her hand. Paula took it without thinking.
"We've got each other," Sela said. "I'll look out for you."
Paula looked relieved enough to sleep.