> "Some people break all at once.
I broke slowly — like a thread unraveling in silence,
until there was nothing left to hold me together."
Nineteen years. That's how long Mun had been breathing — if you could call it that. In truth, it often felt like survival was a quiet suffocation. Her lungs expanded, yes, but the air never seemed to reach her soul anymore.
Nevada was dry, flat, and cracked — like her hands, like the soles of her only pair of shoes, like the dreams she no longer dared to say aloud. She lived in the kind of place people passed through, never stayed. But she stayed, because there was nowhere else to go.
They didn't own a house. Just a room. One room in someone else's house. The kind that smelled like mildew when it rained, like sweat when it didn't. The walls were yellowed, the ceiling always threatening to collapse with the weight of time and regret. There was no space for privacy, no door to lock and cry behind. Just corners — corners where Mun would sometimes crouch when her chest got too tight, or when her mother's silence turned into something louder than screaming.
Mun used to be different. Not long ago, she had color in her cheeks, a lightness in her voice. As a little girl, she'd chase the wind through dried-out fields, laughing like the world couldn't catch her. She used to look at the stars and wish. Now she couldn't remember the last time she looked up.
Poverty had a way of draining you slowly, until even your reflection gave up. Mun still studied — every night, bent over tattered books lit by a flickering bulb that buzzed like a warning. She wasn't brilliant, no prodigy, but she worked harder than anyone she knew. She memorized formulas until her eyes blurred, filled notebooks until her fingers cracked, and still… still, it was never enough.
When she scored a 70, her mother wanted a 90. When she got a 90, her mother asked why it wasn't 100.
Sometimes the resentment came in words. Other times, in the sting of a slap. And sometimes, when her mother was too tired or too bitter to say anything at all, it came in silence — the kind that made Mun feel like a ghost in her own body.
She carried it all. Her little brother's shoes. Her father's medicine. The weight of failure that wasn't even hers. Everyone needed something, and Mun became everything. She was the breadwinner, the student, the daughter who held her mother when she cried and cleaned up after her rage. But no one ever held Mun.
She used to think hard work could fix things. That if she just kept pushing, something would change. But lately, her body ached in ways she couldn't explain — not just the kind of pain you get from being tired, but the kind that seeps into your bones, into your spirit. It was like her body and soul were slowly, gently, shutting down. A quiet surrender.
Each morning, she woke up praying not for miracles — but for strength. Just enough to get through the day. Just enough to not break in the middle of the street when someone shouted her name. Just enough to smile when Nix looked up at her, waiting for hope.
She had no room to cry. So she didn't. Not anymore.
At nineteen, Mun wasn't asking for a new life. She wasn't asking for kindness. She just wanted rest. A break from the constant proving, the constant pleasing, the endless feeling of never being enough.
She wasn't lazy. She wasn't broken. She was just tired.
So very tired.
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