오빠 —
I was nine when you were born and I told eomma, very seriously, that I would be in charge of you. You proved, by the time you were about eleven months old, that you were in fact going to be in charge of me, and you have been, in your quiet way, ever since.
Twenty. I keep saying it to myself in our kitchen at home in Busan, on a Tuesday in March, while halmoni naps on the couch and the cherry blossoms have not quite started in the courtyard. She wakes up briefly and asks, who are you writing to, and I say, jihoon-ah, and she smiles with her eyes closed and says, ah — twenty. Twenty is a good age. Tell him.
So I am telling you. The four years in Seoul have changed you, oppa, in the way the people who love you knew they would. You are quieter, kinder, less afraid of long sentences. Soo-jin is good for you (eomma says it too — she just won't say it where you can hear). The boys from your second year — Minho especially — are good for you. The boys from the army are good for you, in a different way. You came home from service in October and slept for two days and woke up on the Sunday and walked into the kitchen and asked halmoni if she wanted tea, and she cried for ten minutes, and I had to leave the room.
Happy birthday, oppa. The cafe at Hongdae will be there next Saturday. I will be there next Saturday. Soo-jin will be there next Saturday. Bring your good camera. Let's have a soft one. — Yujin.