I turned fourteen the year the cardboard house in our backyard started falling apart.
The tape that once held it together was loose and peeling. The edges, once sharp and proud, bent and curled in the rain. It was no longer a castle or a dream. Just a tired box, sitting forgotten beneath the old tree.
Sometimes, I felt like that house.
School was different now. The chatter and laughter that once seemed like background music were becoming a storm I couldn't find shelter from. Hallways were crowded with faces I didn't know and whispers I couldn't ignore.
I tried to blend in—to be invisible. But sometimes, invisibility feels like a heavier silence than any shout.
Areum was different. She didn't laugh or shout or try to be noticed. She simply existed in her own quiet world, a sketchbook always in hand. After school, she would sit beneath the willow tree near the playground, drawing something only she understood.
I began to join her there. Not to speak, but to be near her. Sometimes, I'd watch the clouds drift lazily across the sky while she sketched the world in pencil lines and shadows.
One afternoon, she turned her sketchbook toward me.
It was a drawing of a boy and a smaller child building a cardboard house. The lines were rough, uneven, but the glow of light shining down on them was gentle—soft, like a memory made of warmth.
"Is this us?" I asked, my voice barely louder than the wind.
She looked at me then, a small smile playing at her lips. "Maybe."
That moment was the start of something new, something I didn't have a name for yet.
But the world around us was less forgiving.
At school, some kids whispered and pointed when they saw me with Areum. "Why do you hang out with her?" they sneered. "She's weird."
I wanted to ignore them. But one day, when a group of boys mocked Areum's quietness and drawings, I couldn't stay silent.
"You don't understand her," I said, louder than I planned. "She's better than all of you."
The classroom fell silent.
Areum didn't look at me after that. She stopped sitting under the willow tree. She stopped talking to me.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I wanted to explain. But the words tangled in my throat and refused to come out.
The silence between us grew heavier every day.
At home, things were changing too.
Dad's cough grew harsher, rattling through the nights like a constant reminder. Mum tried to smile, but her eyes looked tired—like she was carrying the weight of a thousand worries.
Seojin, now almost nine, seemed to understand more than he should. Instead of asking to play, he would sit quietly beside me, watching, waiting for me to fix what I couldn't even see clearly myself.
One night, I pulled out my old notebook, the one filled with dreams and promises.
"I wanted to be a light for my family," I wrote carefully.
"But maybe I've become the shadow instead."
The words blurred on the page as tears filled my eyes.
I wasn't sure who I was anymore—or if the light I wanted to be was still inside me.