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say something and then stopped. After a moment, she asked him calmly, “Yunsu, what is bothering you the most right now? What do you fear the most?”
    He looked up at her. A moment passed. His eyes were filled with animosity.
    “The mornings.”
    He sounded like he was being forced to confess to a crime before some final conclusive evidence proffered by a vicious prosecutor. His voice was quiet. He sprang up, as if he did not need to hear any more, bowed to her, and stalked out. Aunt Monica, who had been as stiff as a plaster statue, followed him.
    “Wait a second! I’m sorry. Don’t be mad. If it’s hard for you, you don’t have to meet me. You can just go. It’s okay if you go, but at least take this. The pastries aren’t fancy, but I brought them for you. They’re not so bad. Officer Yi,I know it’s against the rules, but please, let him sneak in a couple inside his clothes.”
    Aunt Monica held out a handful of pastries to Yunsu. Officer Yi gave her a look that said she shouldn’t. But Aunt Monica’s stubbornness was powerful, like the will of the Father being done on earth as it is in heaven.
    “He must be so hungry all the time, alone there in his cell. A healthy young man like him must need a lot to eat. Please, Officer Yi!”
    It was absurd: Who was the criminal and who was the rehabilitator? Who was pleading, and who was rejecting their pleas? I saw Yunsu look directly at Aunt Monica for the first time. His gaze seemed to quiver with the anxiety of being unable to grasp who she was and what she was doing. Aunt Monica stepped closer to him and shoved a pastry inside his shirt.
    He looked shocked. He lurched his head back as if to keep her as far away from him as possible.
    “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m glad we met today. Yunsu, I’m so happy to have met you. Thank you for coming to see me!”
    She stroked his shoulder. He looked pained, as if he were being tortured. As he quickly turned away, I got a closer look at him and saw that he had a limp. Aunt Monica watched from the door until he disappeared down the long hallway. She looked as lonely as a goat standing on a cliff above the sea. She pressed her hand to her forehead. She looked fatigued.
    “It’s okay. They’re all like that at first. That’s where hope begins. Saying he’s not worthy—that’s a good start.”
    Aunt Monica was not so much talking to me as mumbling to herself. My tiny aunt looked like she was going to wither away and vanish on the spot. She looked like she needed to reassure herself. I absentmindedlyglanced up at the print of
The Return of the Prodigal Son
hanging on the wall. In the story of the prodigal son, the younger of two sons brashly demands his share of his inheritance from his father. The son then squanders that fortune, and after being reduced to doing demeaning work on a pig farm, he returns home, even though he knows that he is no longer worthy of his place as his father’s son. Upon his return, he says, “Father, I have sinned against heaven.” He would have meant it sincerely. It was a Bible story. The painting depicted the love of the father forgiving his son and the son kneeling in repentance. I remembered learning in art history class that Rembrandt drew the father’s hands differently: one was a man’s hand, and the other was a woman’s, which represented the idea that God embodied both femininity and masculinity. But as for why that painting was hanging in this room, the reason was all too obvious.
    “Is he still causing a lot of trouble?” Aunt Monica asked the guard.
    “He’ll be the death of me. Last month, he started a fight in the yard. Grabbed the lid off of a charcoal brazier that was sitting to one side of the yard and threatened to kill one of the gang leaders. Spent two weeks in solitary and just got out yesterday. He acted up the entire time he was in there, too. If we hadn’t stopped him right away, he would have gone back to court. Not that it makes any difference. He’s