There was no clarity in this.

Mirae lay in bed and thought about her life— peaceful was not the right word, but so wasn’t exciting. Yes, there was conflict, like every good story. But who would read the novel of her uninviting life? No, she craved something more. A sweeter reward than a principal’s word of encouragement. A swifter disaster than expensive rent, more immediate, one that struck like the forelegs of a praying mantis and split her life into a pre-world and a post-world, one that tore her identity down with no regard so that she would be forced to stitch it together again. In an inebriated haze, she thought of her mother’s hands that had carried her from soft womb to soft cradle, thought of the baby-pink wallpaper her father had put up for her and the glow of her grandmother’s incense, and thought: I never really escaped that. I never did.