My father was famous throughout the surrounding villages for being a good man.
One freezing winter during a famine, he gave the last of our rice to a mother and child passing by.
After they left, they told everyone they met that my family still had grain.
The starving refugees, driven mad by hunger, came to our door to steal it, only to find an empty rice jar.
Humiliated and enraged, they forced my three-year-old sister into their arms and carried her away.
“If there’s no rice, then your daughter will do!”
I ran after them. In the end, all I found in the ruined temple was my sister’s mangled remains.
When I returned home, my father wailed through his tears, “I was trying to save people! It’s not my fault… That was just her fate!”
He saved someone else. In the end, my sister died, and I died too, in the bitter winter when I was fifteen.
When I opened my eyes again, I saw my father handing the freshly cooked rice to that mother and child.
I picked up the flower hoe beside me and stepped up behind him.
