I slam the gate behind me with a crash as I storm out onto the icy sidewalk in front of my grandparent’s home in Seoul and began to walk briskly down the street toward the park on the corner, my anger at a peak.

  After years of dealing with my secret in private, I had finally gotten up the courage to tell my mother about me. To tell her that I was trans. To tell her how since I was a young child, the reason I had always made friends with girls in our neighborhood was not because I was a player in the making, it was because I was a girl too, even if most people couldn’t see it. To tell her how, every night when I was younger, and even to the day, I would pray to God to just let me wake up one morning as the girl I knew myself to be. To tell her that I had finally made the decision that after years of being torn over how I felt, I wanted to transition and had even made calls back home to the US to speak to our local clinic to find out what steps I needed to do to start the process of medical transition once I turned eighteen later this year.

  Once I started telling her all of this, I knew I should have stopped. I could see the horrified anger in her eyes, but the words just kept coming out. They took on a life of their own, outside of my control, exposing every facet of my secret. It was almost a literal word vomit until she yelled at me to “Shut up this instant, Michael!” cutting off the flow of words as effectively as turning the valve on a water line. The silence between us felt as though it stretched on for eternity before she simple turned and walked away, leaving me alone in the room with nothing but my thoughts as I collapsed to the floor and began to cry. That was two days ago.

  Since then she had left me alone for the most part, not speaking one word to me. The only time I saw her was at meals, where there was an uncomfortable silence as we ate, until tonight that is. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, had decided I was to move in with my grandparents and live with them while she went back to the States to finalize some details after my father’s death a couple of years ago. Apparently, the original plan (that she never told me about) was for her, with me in tow, move back home to Korea permanently in the next year. But after my outburst, she decided I would be better off left behind here, in a country where I barely spoke the language and away from all on my friends, with no chance to even say goodbye!

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  I stop walking and stamp my feet to warm them, regretting rushing out in my slippers in the middle of the night in January. Abruptly I tilt my had back and yell at the sky, “G-god, damn you! Is my life such a joke to you? Is my p-pain amusing? You know how I feel and now that I finally start taking the steps to do something about it, both you and my mother conspire to prevent it. Fuck you, God! I bet y-you even g-gave me this stutter as a joke! All those wasted nights praying to you, begging… Fuck you!”

  Suddenly, I am blinded by bright lights shining on my face as the roar of a diesel engine fills my ears. I don’t even feel the initial impact as the white truck strikes me, though I do feel it when my body slams into the retaining wall behind me before crumpling to the ground. I feel something wet on the side of my head and see red spreading out on the ground about me. Looking up, I see the truck that has just hit me, it is white with a logo of a giant eye with English writing underneath that says “Truck-kun.”

  Did the eye just wink at me?

  A boot drops down into my line of sight, the driver I assume, as my vision starts to darken. Distantly, over the ringing in my ears I faintly hear a voice that I can't tell if it is a man or a woman speaking.

  “Well… messier than… would be… sick of her whining… shut her up… finally.”

  I gasp for breath, attempting to speak but the only sound I can make is a gurgling noise as blood fills my mouth with its coppery taste.

  Questions flood my thoughts, but thinking is getting harder. I can no longer see and the ringing in my ears, along with the voice, slowly fade into oblivion.