Chapter Glossary

Uri ttal: Our daughter
Saengilchukha: happy birthday (informal)
Gomawo: Thanks (informal)
Eomma: mum
Appa: dad

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      Bora lives in Hapejong, with her parents, for the sake of being practical and saving money for her own place in the future, although during the academic year she lives in the university dorms. Getting your own place is too difficult for anyone in Seoul, especially without a good job. The deposits are outrageous and the options smaller than her room at their family home, so why bothering? Her parents have a spacious flat with three rooms, near the Han River and close to the metro station, so it's really, really convenient for Bora.

Once the girl gets off the train, she climbs the old stairs to get to the streets and then heads to the apartment complex where her parents are waiting for her. Bora walks slowly and calmly, the small wireless earbuds play a new song from a popular artist that's being acclaimed for the rich sound and old style of his song. Bora doesn't love music like others do, but her father does. Growing up, his father would just randomly start singing and dancing, dragging her along and making her stand on his feet to dance with him. He always sang those really old songs, which made Bora get used to them. Nowadays, she listens to music while she's doing things like walking or exercising because it's a habit, and it is pleasant. Bora has a taste for old music, entirely thanks for her father.

Bora's parents are the reason for many things about Bora. Instead of falling in despair because their daughter had been born partially void, they just accepted her and treated her as if she was just ordinary, loving her unconditionally. That constant expression of affection has never stopped in Bora's life and as someone who takes emotions from contact, she is a hundred percent sure of her parent's love.

As a kid, voids don't really know how to control their abilities, hence why they get trained and are kept away from non-voids until they can do it. During those early years, it's common they can take too much and children are too weak to endure that. However, parents are not, although they are told since the beginning to be careful and mind the skinship. But Bora's parents never did as such and always showered their kid with love.

That constant exposure to love can create stable links of affection, honest links of affection. For Voids it doesn't work exactly like it does for non-voids, but Bora can confidently say she loves her parents back. She doesn't need to take love from them to feel it, and it's solely because they have unconditionally loved her from the beginning so by now it's a sempiternal feeling in Bora's brain.

Some Voids develop that link with their parents, it's not an uncommon and unheard situation, but it isn't the norm either. It heavily depends on how the parents raise their kid and how loving they are. Bora is lucky to have been born in a marriage that was due to love and not just to follow the social pressure. Having parents that love each other so deeply even after so many years and that were able to love her fiercely for all her life have made Bora able to know what love is on her own.

Some Voids get married thinking they can develop such connection with their partner, but there's no register of success of such theory. Regardless, in a country where arranged marriages are still a thing, whether there's love or not does not matter in the relationship. It's just to fulfil the social expectations.

Without realising how long it takes her, Bora is at the door of her home. She presses her palm to the pad lock and the door opens for her, making a high and short noice that alerts her parents she's made it back. As the girl takes off her shoes at the entrance, she can hear her mother's rushed footsteps, running to greet her.

"Uri ttal!" the woman cries, calling for her daughter and immediately pulling the young girl in her loving arms. "Saengilchukha!"

"Gomawo, Eomma," Bora thanks her mother for the birthday greeting, still trapped in her arms but not minding it at all. Bora's mother always smells like home: cleaning products, food and that sweet floral smells from her shampoo. "I'm sorry for making you wait."

"It's okay, now you're home. Your father's inside, so come in," the woman sing-songs, finally stepping aside to allow her daughter to get inside the flat.

There's smell of traditional food, mixed with the sweet smell her mother makes sure is in the house. Bora's mother rushes to the kitchen again, babbling about all the things she prepared, while Bora catches sign of her father, sitting on the floor while looking a photo album.

It must be Bora's parents' fault that she is so "vintage," her father's mostly. He is a man of tradition and with a deep love for how things used to be. He keeps antiques in the house and is always talking about the past as if he had lived there, claiming that things were so much better when he was a kid. Bora always listened how her father talked with such endearment, so maybe that's why she also has that taste for all things "old," it's something her father passed on to her.

Although there are digital albums and hundreds of other ways to keep register of moments in life, Bora's father has always preferred physical pictures. He always prints out the best ones, and he dearly loves polaroids, having a collection of those type of cameras. Some don't even work anymore, and getting the paper for the others is almost impossible.

"That makes them more special," is what the man will always answer when Bora asks him why he bothers to do all that when there are faster and more efficient ways to do it.

Quietly, Bora sits next to her father while the man keeps taking a look at the different pictures. There are from times when he wasn't alive, passed from his grandfathers to his parents and then to him, pictures from old times Bora can't even imagine, in a different century. In a different millennium. There are also pictures of when their parents met and where young, in love like in old movies. Pictures of their marriage and then of when they started their family, with a tiny Bora who never smiled, but looked at everything with calm and intelligence. There are a few pictures where she's laughing, because she is being tickled. Her parents loved playing like that with her, always saying the sound of her laughter was the most beautiful sound in the house.

Bora learned how to laugh to make them happy.

"Look how tiny you were... yet so fat," her father comments, grinning while looking at her, so Bora mirrors the action. "And now look at you, so big and where did those chubby cheeks gone? My little girl is a grown up woman now. When did that happen?"

"Over twenty-two years, Appa," Bora replies, widening her smile as she watches her father's eyes getting glossy with tears.

"Twenty-two years of the biggest and best blessing in our lives. Thank you for being born, Bora-yah," her father continues, reaching out with one hand to hold Bora's.

Bora never closes up to the emotions from her parents, because it's a way to understand them and let them love her, so when her father touches her like that she feels the pride, the gratitude and that fierce love that has always been present. There's also a bit of apprehension that comes from the fear that time is going by too fast, she is growing too fast.

In that moment, opening the channel for borrowing emotions, Bora can see the many colours floating around her father, the warm tones tinted with a bit of cold ones. In her eyes it's like the dust floating in the air was coloured, and that's a talent only Voids have, able to perceive emotions by colours, which allows them distinguish which one they want to borrow.

"Thank you for raising me for all these years," Bora states and watches her father's eyes getting glossier. He blinks the tears away so she smiles warmly, in the way she was taught to be comforting, patting the man's back of his hand with her own hand, slowly and softly.

"Bora's appa, are you crying already? You cry every year for Bora's birthday!" Bora's mother cries out from the kitchen, walking towards them on the coffee table already bringing bowls with seaweed soup for the three of them. "Don't eat yet, let me bring the side dishes first," the woman instructs next, giving a pointed look to the man who wipes his tears away.

Bora stands up to help her mother bring the rest of the food while the woman chats happily, telling Bora how her father has been all morning watching pictures and crying because Bora is one year older. Bora chuckles as she is supposed to, because her father really does the same every year.

Bora sits with her family to eat together, having casual conversation. They ask her about university and how things are going, and they also tell her how things have been going with them. Slowly, Bora joins the happy mood through the interactions with her parents, their joy easily passed on to her even without much contact. Having grown up at home has created a channel between them that allows Bora to be included in the mood effortlessly.

Bora feels when she's with her parents. Bora is almost ordinary when she's with her parents.

However, nothing lasts forever and after spending a few hours with her parents, she needs to leave.

All Voids, on their birthday, have to go to the SIACAC for the yearly control. That is the only mandatory one that they can't miss, no matter what. They get schedules for some others from time to time, but those are arranged to fit their schedule. Yet, even outside those scheduled appointments, if a Void takes too much from anyone, they get immediately summoned to the centre.

It's just routine, to make sure her chip is working perfectly and that she has been responsible with her abilities, it also comes with a health check. Every few years they get the chip replaced for newer and improved versions. Bora got hers replaced just lat year, so this meeting will have nothing new for her.

The girl says goodbye to her parents and promises to come visit soon, and she knows the couple will hold her on to that. Voids tend to say many things without meaning them, a consequence of their training to fit in. They make promises, confessions or other things but never put their hearts to it. However, when Bora promises anything to her parents, she always means it.

That's the difference between a Void and their parents, and a Void and the rest of the world.

Once again, Bora heads to the metro station to go to Sicheon, where the SIACAC headquarters are. It's a short trip, but the girl still puts on her earbuds and continues listening to old music, some of her father's favourite ones, those that his father used to sing when he was a kid and that then he sang for Bora.

In no time, Bora gets to the station and then walks to the centre, calm as usual. Once inside, she registers as void for her annual examination. She's told to wait on the twentieth floor, so she takes the lift. The centre is for all people in Seoul, and it's a thirty-storey building, completely aimed for control of Voids in the city. Each province has a centre, but the one in Seoul is the biggest and the one that keeps control of all the Voids in Korea.

During the wait, Bora just checks her emails and schedule for the next week. The girl has an excellent memory, but as she doesn't care about almost everything, many things get discarded by her brain and thus forgotten, so she uses a planner.

Fifteen minutes later, her names is called.

"Park Bora, proceed to room twenty-ten, please," calls the polite voice on the speaker.

The girl closes all the apps and shoves the gadget back in her pocket, standing up from the comfortable sofa on the main hall and looks around for the sign to point her in the right direction. There are ten rooms in every floor, so she has to go to the last one.

Cracking her neck after looking down for fifteen minutes, Bora takes the first step towards the room, knowing that nothing will be different this time around. Like usual, she is just following the routine, doing what she is supposed to.

That's how Voids live.

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And there, I updated this story. It's very descriptive, more than I'm used to, but I guess it's because I'm writing in a scenery where I live this time... anyhow. More characters will keep appearing and I'm too lazy to make the profiles for Bora's parents now, so I'll add them later.

I don't know when I'll update again, but let's hope it's soon.

Bel, xx