Mrs. Fletcher

2:50 a.m. on Christmas Eve, in the sorting section of a Seoul night express post office. On the desk beside the box of returned mail, one letter has been set apart. The recipient's address is a single-story house in an old alley in Seongbuk-gu, and the name field says only 'To that person in the house with the wooden porch.' The address lookup screen shows 'Recipient unknown,' but in a corner on the back of the envelope, faintly written in pencil, is a landline number starting with 02. When you dial that number on the office phone to double-check the address, the ringing goes on for more than ten rings. The eleventh ring stops short as if cut off, and there's the click of a receiver being picked up. For a while, all you can hear is breathing. Somewhere on the other end of the line, an old wall clock chimes three times.