I'm 15, and I can't sleep. I just moved in with my grandmother. We're strangers in many ways, but family is family, and she never asks questions. My room is bare except for furniture that was donated to me. I took what I could fit in a suitcase and a backpack. Their outlines in the corner cast a weird shadow, as if he's in the room with me. I'm 15 and I know what it means to leave. I'm 15 in a new house, in a room with three walls, no door, a scream, and the silence that lingers.

It settles like dust before I'm out of my bed. I'm in her room. I bump into the outdated, scratched wood furniture meant for a room double this size. Photographs cover every inch of the dressers, but the walls are bare. The yellow comforter is a reminder of my childhood and the frequent visits I used to make to her house. It covers the bed and spills onto the floor, a shield. She's mumbling the language I'm supposed to know. But the tone of pleading is unmistakable — I realize she's 15 again.

She's 15 in South Korea, where the air smells of salt and pine from the mountains meeting the coastline, and the maemi hum endlessly when the snow melts, and the sun reigns. She's 15 and being told she needs to leave. She's 15, fleeing to her family home by the sea, in the cave that is to be her home, clinging to her mom, her dad hovering over them both for as long as he's able. She's 15, the bombs are so loud, and her mom pulls cotton from the top of her beoseon, pressing it into her daughter's ears. She's 15, hiding, watching, and waiting. They are eating her food, sleeping in her bed, taking what they want, destroying her dresser with all of her clothes and shoes, her rugs, her curtains, her books, her blankets made by her mother and her friends, her photographs of people she loves, conquering— nothing left behind.

When I wake her, and I tell her it's alright. It's alright, and I am here. She grabs my arm, her hold firm, as confusion fades into recognition. It takes her a second to realize: she's not there. It takes me a second to realize we're here. We are here in this room that we don't have to leave. We've found something we can keep. We can sleep.