Warning, may contain highly sensitive and triggering content. Reader discretion is advised.

Language

Minho tried to keep his cool while blood simmered in his veins, playing a strange game of tug of war between both temperaments. It kept him awake and present where he needed to be, where he needed to be a long time ago.

"I need you to tell me what do you see Mr. Kim so that I can understand what you're asking of me," the woman, Dr. Maria said, each line of a wrinkle in her face representing an age of experience in therapy and consulting.

When Minho met with the therapist signed to Kazimir for her mental health after the unfortunate happened, he politely declined her services and went to seek a more experienced doctor. He didn't intend to offend the younger doctor, but he had already taken enough risks with Kazimir and didn't want to add more to the pile. An experienced therapist versus a novice stood on different financial standards and according to his research, the experienced one was always worth the extra penny.

"Please call me Minho," he said, the difference in their age and the need to be transparent with her urging him to drop the formality, "I don't understand a lot of things about her, about Kazimir, I mean. But I know too much, most of which don't really make any sense to me. Maybe if I lay it all out for you, you could help her, not only with what happened," he gulped, pushing words like rape and miscarriage down his throat, "but so many other things too, like her parents and her illness."

The woman nodded, looking down at the papers laid in front of her, "I can understand what you're trying to say," she picked up one page, a photocopy from a handwritten letter, "These letters, she wrote them for you, I believe."

Minho nodded, "She stopped writing them when Naomi told her to, and then at the end, she wrote one after she moved in with my family. I don't know what to think anymore, I know her parents are gone now, and I know it shouldn't be pointless, but it feels pointless trying to fix something that can only be fixed with the presence of someone long gone."

Dr. Maria hummed and clasped her hands on top of the papers, "You need to understand healing is a personal choice. It does not depend on someone else deciding to finally apologize for the way they did you wrong. Once Kazimir understands that her mom has no control over her anymore, the rest of the way will be easier to pave hopefully. But," the woman paused, looking down at the letters, "It's not about her parents, not all of it." the woman removed her hands from the papers and stared at them some more, lost in deep thought. She had already gone through them several times and her intuition— one she built with years of experience— told her something was off.

"Something about this girl touched everyone around her," the woman looked up finally, "Something she couldn't put out there, it was always at the tips of her fingers, everyone she touched flinched away from the burn."

Minho didn't understand what she meant so he stared with a blank expression as the doctor continued.

"Poor communication is inherited from parents or family members. The same goes for over-sharing. If her parents overshared with her, she overshared with you in these letters. The thing is, her parents, especially her mom, overshared her emotions with her daughter, not the actions that caused those negative emotions. So these letters more or less tell us what emotions Kazimir was going through, not what actually happened."

"What actually happened then?" Minho asked.

"I have a vague idea but I am not sure yet. But whatever it was, it shaped her into who she is today, everything starting from her personality to her illness. Over time, a trauma in a person if left unhealed, starts looking like personality."

Minho nodded but Dr. Maria knew he was lost so she decided to elaborate.

"Let's look at it this way, Minho, you are head of your family after your father was diagnosed with PTSD from the war," the woman said, having already learned a little bit about him when they first discussed his family members and their roles, "But not everyone knows that. What everyone knows is this, Minho Kim, soon to be CEO of a big corporate company is very detailed and punctual about his work, he has always been a straight-A student, on the basketball team, star of the school, married to the love of his life and lives in Prague. Your habits, the pattern in your behaviors like the way you treat your wife, the way you spend money, the way you treat your family, they're all yours. They're all your identity."

Minho nodded, suddenly a little taken aback by how this turned from a session about Kazimir to a session about him.

"What do you think comes to anyone's mind when they hear your name? If I had to make a guess, they'd say something along the lines of what I just said, right? A co-worker would say you're punctual, a friend from school might say you were the best the school team ever had."

Minho nodded.

"What do you think comes to mind when they think about Kazimir Lee, let's say someone from her school, what would they say she was like?"

A reader, a writer, a slut, Minho thought but held his words back.

"If you keep your words to yourself in this office, then all of this is pointless. There's no judgment here, be honest with me."

"Uh- a reader, a writer, a..." he wondered why it was hard for him to say it now when he had been saying it for so many years, "a slut," He said lowly.

"Okay," the woman said, not a trace of hesitance or judgment in her tone and Minho realized Kazimir would be in good hands with her, "You needed to ace all your classes because you were the eldest," the woman started counting on her fingers, "you needed to learn how to manage time because you had to take care of your family while working part-time when your dad was gone, you needed the scholarship that came with basketball because you couldn't afford college so you learned to play better than anyone else, you married as soon as you graduated college because you needed someone to be there for you when you realized your dad will never fully come back from war and you were the responsible one now. You treat your wife the way you saw your dad treat your mom before the war, you spend money with ease because you always had a shortage growing up but now that you're financially independent, you let yourself and your family live a comfortable life. All your behaviors and patterns have something that shaped them. As years go by, we all forget what factors shape us, we only remember the shape and we continue to mold ourselves in it. And at the end, it becomes our identity."

Minho leaned back against his chair, he didn't expect her to be so good but she had already managed to hit the mark with him. He was everything he wanted his dad to be.

"Kazimir had reasons, factors, and when she forgot what they were anymore, she continued to be what had become her identity. The thing is, we don't know the factors yet, and maybe she had long forgotten them too. If she fits the slut mold, if it made her identity, then it was what it was."

"But that's not true. I only thought low of her because Naomi said so. Naomi could have lied about all those things to keep me away from Kazimir. Maybe she wasn't anything but a normal teen who had issues with her parents."

"Naomi," the woman said slowly, "She's... Kazimir hurt her the most, you know. Whatever was hurting her, she took it all out on Naomi," She shuffled the pages and pulled a few to the top, some sections highlighted on them, "Did you pay attention to how she mentions her sister in all these letters?"

Minho didn't say anything so the woman tapped her pen on a highlighted line on the pages, "There are obvious signs in these letters that lead me to believe maybe there's so much more that went down between the sisters than just the obvious case when you appeared in Naomi's life. I might have to talk to Kazimir about those in detail later. But one thing is for sure, there's a shift at some point. If you pay attention, she never bashes her sister for not being there for her all the way till the end. Even when she mentions dating Naomi's ex, she writes that she did it so that Naomi can realize Youngsoo is shallow, not because she hated Naomi. She also mentions she regrets it. But that's where the shift happened. Something changed beyond these letters, something big. There are more things we don't know."

"What more things?"

The woman looked down at the papers again and shuffled them around trying to look for something. Minho noticed that most pages had been highlighted at some points with neon yellow with some notes in the margins but one page, in particular, had three to four paragraphs highlighted in red and so many sentences scribbled in the margins that they overlapped each other and some post-it notes at the top that held more notes that didn't fit on the page.

Minho knew instantly that the therapist had found a crucial detail in the letters and he mentally braced himself for the unknown. He thought Naomi trying to kill herself just so Kazimir moved out of her way was the worst of it but apparently, there was more.

Minho waited for the answer to the riddle but the therapist placed another page on top of the red highlighted one and looked up to address Minho, "I can't reveal more to you, Minho, it's her personal wound. If you were meant to find it, you would have done so the first time you read the letters."

Minho couldn't tell why he was internally relieved to be kept in the dark. Maybe if he found what was the main cause of Kazimir's trauma and found himself unable to offer anything worth of value to heal it, his guilt would eat him up alive. Broken people often expected a tender touch, a listening ear, a shoulder to lean on and Minho knew he had already lost that part in her life. And so did Naomi. And finally Taehyung.

"God, no wonder she invested too much in her relationship with Taehyung," he mumbled to himself.

"What was that?"

"Since she moved in, there had been an air of unfriendliness around her. She rarely befriended people, but her relationship with Taehyung is the only thing I ever saw that made me feel like she genuinely had someone. That's why I was relieved when Jimin showed up in the picture. Because—"

"Because it was a sign that she was letting someone in."

"Yes."

Dr. Maria nodded and noted something on a page and looked up again, "There's also that," she pointed to the letters, "She mentioned she was cutting ties with her best friend and everyone she knew and that she was only going to stay in touch with you. But according to what you said, she never sent the letters so that means Taehyung really was the only friend she had in a long time."

Minho shifted in his seat, the heat from earlier winning out over his attempt at staying cool.

"Something shifted in their lives, and I know you like to believe it was their parents, but I don't know about that. I want you to know that Naomi had no hand in anything. The sisters talked to each other about things, but Kazimir never once mentioned that her parents never wanted Naomi to know. Kazimir was the one who never wanted Naomi to know. She had sort of a deal going on in her head, something like, if I keep Naomi in the dark, she will return the favor. As of now, we don't really know what that favor was."

"How can you say that doctor, Naomi was there, in the same house. How could you say she did not see the way her parents were breaking apart—"

"Maybe she did. Maybe she saw everything. Kazimir couldn't have known. She was only writing from her perspective, not Naomi's."

"But that—"

"Naomi knew." The woman declared as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "That's why she hates Kazimir around you. She knew what her aunt did, what her father did. And she thought since her dad and Kazimir are alike in a sense, that's why she..." the woman waved her hand around at Minho, "Sisters shouldn't do that to sisters. That's why Naomi gets triggered easily, not only by Kazimir but by disloyalty in general."

Minho opened his mouth but shut it again. The doctor had a point. He never realized, but after he read the letters and started giving Naomi the cold shoulder, his wife's first conclusion was that he was cheating. First with Kazimir but then she simply assumed there was another woman. Even though he was home all the time when he wasn't supposed to be working, and it was impossible for him to be cheating, Naomi reached the conclusion as if it was the definite answer. Maybe it was very common for women to think that, maybe not. But Naomi's jealousy and insecurity were on a different level. And he understood now where it stemmed from.

But just like that, another thought pierced through his head, She knew! Naomi knew her dad was cheating, she knew what was going on. And yet she left Kazimir to deal with it all on her own. And yet she tried to keep an obvious distance between me and her.

"But still, Naomi had no right to say awful things about Kaz to me. That's beyond crossing lines and I believed every word."

"Like what?"

"I don't even want to repeat them," Minho said, "But just so you know where Naomi stands in this mess, she said as soon as high school started, Kazimir moved schools—"

"Why?" The woman tapped her pen on the pages, her eyes spaced out as if she had already figured out the big mystery. She looked down and scribbled the detail with her pen.

"I don't know. That's why the stories don't make sense anymore. Because they're lies. Kazimir moved schools, and within a week, she was the talk of the building, the hot topic, not because she was a foreigner, but because of her uniform. And just like that, week one, people had already seen her throwing herself at a senior in the library. How even? First week of school? High school? She was what, thirteen or fourteen back then, and seniors were eighteen. That's the type of stories Naomi fed me."

"What makes you think the story is a lie?"

"I've been to a high school too, things like this don't just happen, and when she moved in with my family, she was still in high school. No trace of the slutty rumors in her behavior."

"Don't you think that might have been because she was mourning the death of her parents?"

Minho coiled back. His thoughts halted at once, but they started right back up.

"She mentioned if I would believe the rumors if I ever heard them. In the letters, after she wrote about dating Youngsoo, she asked if I would believe them. She called them rumors for a reason. If she wrote to me honest things, she would have asked if I would approve of her behavior, not whether I would believe the rumors or not. Naomi was her sister for God's sake, and she fed me the same rumors as if they were solid facts."

"You know, Kazimir could have said no to going out with Youngsoo. He was too old for her taste, she said so in the letters too. But she wanted to break Naomi. Why do you think she never mentioned how Naomi found out about them? She dated him secretly and then told Naomi just to rub it in her face. Kazimir did that, Minho, you need to accept it. She said she regretted dating him, she said she never dated anyone, said she was only willing to date you. She did it to rub it all in her sister's face. You need to start accepting the fact that no matter what her parents did wrong, Kazimir was the one who hurt Naomi to get her anger out, not the other way around. Stop blaming Naomi, alright?"

Minho stared but finally managed to speak up, "We're not here to discuss Naomi and me, we're here for Kazimir," he said.

"Are we really though? Minho you need to accept right now that Kazimir will never let anyone get too close to her. She's been closed off for years, the closest people to her were her parents, then Naomi. I can't promise anything unless she lets me in herself. We both know the sisters cut off each other a long time ago, and it might have been Kazimir herself who did this. She doesn't want anyone too close to her and subconsciously engages in self-destructive behaviors to push them away."

"I have no idea what all the mess is about honestly, doctor. I just want her to... I don't know, to just be okay, I guess."

"Let's hope we get to that point someday." Before she self-destructs herself when there's no one left for her to take her anger out on, Dr. Maria thought, staring at the big blob of red-highlighted text.

"About the current situation," she began after a moment, "You say she didn't say anything else yet?"

Minho shook his head, "No. I haven't seen her to properly talk to her yet. She's been sleeping ever since we brought her to the hospital yesterday morning. The nurse said they exchanged a few words and she asked about Taehyung, but that's it." He grimaced at the mention of his brother's name.

"Minho, you need to take a deep breath and clear away all the emotions from your system. Whether she decides to ever talk again or not, you need to keep a clear head. Because the way I see it, I don't think Kazimir would ever repeat what she said to you to the police or anyone else. I have a feeling that if she hadn't fainted that day right after confessing, she would have taken her words back right that instant. So, be prepared for that and try to stay calm, alright?"

Minho gently pushed the door open with his shoulder and stepped inside the room with a cup of tea in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He didn't know what Kazimir preferred so he brought both.