Who could offer solace when the conclusion of life as an evil and godless place had solidified into consciousness like Death etching her name in wet cement? Back then, it had been obvious that the trial, a pantomime of the mute for justice, could never be allocated to the dead under the best circumstances, and this particular trial was going nowhere. The conclusiveness of the evidence and motive had been defaced with time that had entirely decomposed her form. There had been theories. Plenty of circumstantial evidence had been presented. Her employer had done it to her as conclusively as a feeling could testify. Then and now there was plenty of indication that she had been pregnant with his child. Twenty years ago Sang Huin (Shawn then) had swung a golf club into her eye and the blood had splattered everywhere. On that day, as a boy, he had thought nothing could happen worse than that; but back then there was blood and back then there was composition. He woke up and once again knew that even in sleep there wasn't always repose. Sometimes, without finding a way of sealing memories in tidy body bags, one's inner voice was as active in sleep. He said to himself that he shouldn't be surprised by such restlessness when life's conundrums were so horrific. The passage of a few years, and the passage through a thousand times of falling asleep could not even restore one's equilibrium in something so horrific. He shook off his sleep like a dog its wetness. He tried to think of Yang Lin whom he had left: that mild voice so slow and deliberate in its intensity, the morbid and thoughtful eyes like an ocean containing its ecosystem, the muscular young body that had an orange hue like a Chinamen who had sucked up too much sun. After the revelation he had listened to him repeatedly talk about wishing that he had been born a woman; and except for once of saying, "Well...I understand, but" (and stopping not knowing what to throw in as the "but"), he had been silent with eyes of empathy. It was painful to see a perspective; and Sang Huin broke out of his skin like a reluctant and tortured snake but accepting the inevitability. He just stared at the fountain for many uncomfortable minutes hoping that the mouth of the fountain could articulate a statement that would solve the situation as well as ease his discomfort. At the fountain, in silence, he had thought of rigid Texan horses and the lazy meditative cows of his home state in warm fields at mid- afternoon--creatures of the gods with no sense of the vile practicalities behind their domesticated state. During his times of stress long ago they had often seemed to Sang Huin as so aesthetic that one could wish to slip within them for an hour or a bit of the day; and surely after having done it one might instantaneously wish for the freedom of whatever was beyond the fence. Maybe, he had thought to himself, something like this was how Yang Lin felt.