The fear of hospitals seemed to be a fear of death. Even a cockroach was afraid of death and so to be afraid of such a thing, thought Sang Huin, was natural. And yet death itself was natural. It might well be liberation instead of annihilation. It seemed absurd to prejudge such a natural occurrence that living creatures knew nothing about. It might be as beautiful as all the flowers that surrounded the bed of the boy, Seong Seob, who was playing with the board game that he had unwrapped and opened from the box. What did a cockroach know? For it perceived nothing outside of its own physical survival. What did a dog know? For it perceived hospitals as containers of human suffering instead of deliverance from illness? Sang Huin understood that Seong Seob was pursing a relationship that was more than a bit at odds with the world in even the most libertine culture. He also acknowledged that Saeng Seob was visiting a suffering boy whom he wanted to run away from. Sang Huin could not do much of anything to fill in the crevices of time and in awkward moments of not knowing what to say he just stood there uncomfortably but with a degree of appreciation for Seong Seob. Sang Huin had empathy as deep as the gods. Chapter Nineteen Had it not been for her youth that allowed her to engage in prostitution, she would have been at the welfare office every month. Each month she would have spent a day slowly making her way through the queue to that ultimate goal of staring through a translucent partition and into the faces of intake workers. Necessity would have compelled her, each time, to submit her documentation of a driver's license, social security card, and statement of approval through a hole within the glassy wall. As a reticent and less than proud potential recipient of food stamps and Aid for Dependent Children, she would have silently deposited her artifacts depicting the reality of her existence and watched these worker bees document her documentation and re-scrutinize what had already been scrutinized and approved. Monthly she would have been in a situation of needing to minimize her imperturbable haughtiness so as to give cordial answers to questions without being a formidable foe. She would have been in a situation of needing to be sociable enough to give gentle but feigned smiles that might have a hope of expediting the process of gaining benefits. In front of the intake personnel her eye contact would have needed to be constant but not so much so that it would have intimidated them. Poised and courteous, but with the intelligence of her eyes aimed like lasers for the incineration of the layers of their hearts, she would have wanted them to quail without realizing that she was the culpable one causing them to quail.