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say,
I may have to hunch over to eat like an animal eating food dropped on the ground, but I am still a man
.
    I stupidly thought to myself,
I guess even death row convicts have their pride.
    “Wait a minute, Yunsu! Wait!” Aunt Monica anxiously called out to him.
    He turned to look at her. Tears were pooling in her eyes. He must have seen them, too, because I noticed that one side of his face looked contorted. It wasn’t so much a grimace as a kind of buckling, like one corner of his stiff mask had been torn away. But then it disappeared and the mocking look returned. Aunt Monica took something out of the bundle she had brought with her and handed it to him.
    “It’s almost Christmas, so I brought you a present. It’s cold in here, isn’t it? I brought you some long underwear. Since you went to all this trouble to meet with me, I can’t very well send you away empty-handed. This will only take a moment, so won’t you sit for a little? I told you, I’m very old, and my legs ache.”
    He stared at the package in her hands. A muscle in his jaw quivered. His brow was furrowed, and he looked irritated. He was probably thinking,
Why the hell are you giving me a Christmas gift?
But he sat down as if to say he would give her a chance since she was elderly and a woman.
    “I’m not giving you a Christmas present to make you feelobligated. I’m not telling you to go to church. I’m not here to talk about religion. Who cares if you believe or if you don’t believe? What’s important is that you live each day like a human being. I’m sure you don’t hate yourself, but if you do, then you’re exactly who Jesus came for. He came to tell you to love yourself, to tell you how precious you are, to tell you that if in the future you feel warmth from someone and think,
Ah, so this is what love feels like
, then that person is an angel sent to you from God. I’ve never met you before, but I know you have a good heart. No matter what your sins are, they are not all of you!”
    When she finished speaking, he smiled. It was a sneer. The look on his face said it was ridiculous to tell a person who has killed and who could be hanged tomorrow for that crime how precious they are. But then, a nervous energy unique to those with strong emotions passed over his face. To my surprise, I felt like I understood him. Whenever I got a phone call from Aunt Monica after yet another stupid fight with my family and she spoke to me in the same tone she was using with him, it made me angry. In a way, it was like the body rejecting a blood transfusion. Whether it’s different blood or different emotions, we are only at peace when there is just one type present. Right or wrong, life makes sense only when the bad guys are bad and the rebels are rebellious.
    “Don’t do this to me,” Yunsu said. “If you do, I won’t be able to die peacefully. Let’s say I do meet with you and go to Mass and obediently do everything the guards tell me to do to make them happy, and I sing hymns and pray on my knees, and I become a perfect angel. Are you going to save me then?”
    It was unexpected. He bared his white teeth like an animal and spat the last words out. Aunt Monica’s face paled.
    “So please,” he said, “stop coming to see me.”
    “Okay, you’re right, I want to save you, but it’s not in my power. But just because I can’t keep you from being executed, that doesn’t mean I don’t need to meet with you. I don’t know how you feel about this, but we are all on death row. None of us know when we will die. So why is it wrong for someone like me, who doesn’t know when she will die, to meet with you, who also doesn’t know when he will die?”
    Aunt Monica was no pushover. He stared dumbfounded at her.
    “Why?” she repeated.
    “Because I don’t want to hope,” he said. “That would be hell.”
    Aunt Monica did not say anything.
    “I don’t know how much more I can take,” he said. “I might go crazy.”
    Aunt Monica started to