Chapter 4 — The Password Without Me

When the plane touched down in Bergen, it was three o'clock in the afternoon local time. The sky was overcast, and the air carried a sharp, salty tang mingled with damp chill. Dragging my suitcase out of the terminal, I felt a mist so fine it was barely visible, yet it settled on my skin with a very real, biting cold. I switched on my phone and connected to the airport's free wireless network. The final message in our family chat group had been sent the previous night by my younger brother, a selfie taken right after his training session, accompanied by a caption:

"Ran three thousand meters under eleven minutes today."

My mother had replied:

"Don't just pose for pictures, go take a shower right now."

My sister had dropped an emoji. Not a single person mentioned me. No one asked where I was. Not one message had anything to do with me. On the first day, the chat was filled with mother telling my sister to come home over the weekend to pick up her seasonal blankets. My sister said she had a class on Saturday. Mother replied then come on Sunday instead. My brother asked what was for dinner. Mother answered that there were ribs left over from yesterday in the fridge. No one said: "Call your second sister down to eat." On the second day, our father, who rarely spoke in the group, forwarded a wellness article. Mother replied: "Cut down on the drinking." My brother wrote: "Dad, bring me back a pair of sneakers." Still, no one brought me up. That afternoon, I went out to buy daily necessities. The supermarket was massive, flooded with cold, white light. I bought the cheapest instant coffee, a bag of pasta, and a jar of tomato sauce. When I paid, the cashier asked me in English if I needed a bag. As she handed it to me, she smiled. She was the very first person to smile at me since I arrived here. On the morning of the third day, when I turned on my phone, my name finally appeared in the group chat. It was a message from mother:

"Why isn't Yu-du's room even tidied, and where on earth is she?"

Forty minutes passed without a reply. Then another message followed:

"She's not answering her phone, where has this child run off to?"

She brought up the unmade bed first. My brother replied:

"Hasn't sister always been in her room? I haven't seen her go out these past two days, I thought she was just sleeping."

Mother sent a voice clip. I tapped to play it. Her tone was not one of worry, but rather the irritability of someone newly awakened combined with lingering annoyance. She said:

"This girl leaves without a word of goodbye, just goes wherever she pleases, completely devoid of manners."

Not "Is she alright?" Not "Did something happen?" But rather, "devoid of manners." I laid my phone by my pillow and stared at the ceiling. The ceiling of the apartment in Bergen was white, cleanly white, without a single crack. The ceiling in my bedroom back home had a long, thin fracture stretching from the base of the light fixture all the way to the corner of the wall. I had stared at it for eighteen years. Now, I no longer needed to.

On the fourth day, things shifted. My sister asked in the group:

"Mom, has Yu-du still not come back?"

Mother said:

"I've called her six times with no answer, you try calling."

Soon after, my phone began to vibrate. My sister was calling. One call, two calls, three calls. I watched her name light up brightly on the screen over and over again, only to fade into darkness repeatedly. She sent me a private message:

"Yu-du, where are you? Mom says you haven't been home for three days, answer me with just one text."

Ten minutes later, another message:

"Don't scare me like this."

Another twenty minutes passed:

"I called your classmates, they said you never returned to campus after the final exams. Li Yu-du, what on earth is wrong with you?"

I read every single message. Setting the phone aside, I walked into the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee. Rain was falling outside the window. Bergen sees rain two hundred days a year. It was nothing like the heavy summer downpours of my hometown, but rather a persistent dampness that seeped into everything, ceaseless and quiet. My brother sent a voice message too, fourteen seconds long, with a noisy background, likely from inside the gymnasium.

"What are you doing, answer the messages already, mom is driving herself crazy."

Finally, father made an appearance. In the group chat, he wrote just one sentence:

"Everyone stay calm, I will handle this."

Then he called me. The word "Father" danced on the screen for thirty seconds before timing out automatically. He called again. Still, I did not pick up. He sent a single text:

"Yu-du, I know you might have your own thoughts. Are you safe right now? Just reply to your father with one word."

I paused for a moment. But in the end, I did not reply. It wasn't out of spite. It was simply the realization that I felt no impulse whatsoever to respond. This tether was not severed by my hand; it had rotted away entirely over the course of eighteen years, and I was merely the last one to brush lightly against it. On the fifth day, mother sent a very long voice message. I pressed play; her voice was different this time. It wasn't angry, but trembling.

"Yu-du, where are you hiding? If you still don't answer, I'm calling the police. What do you want from me? You've been like this since you were a child, never telling the family anything..."

By the end, she was crying. I sat by the windowsill and listened until the end. Outside, the rain grew heavier, drumming against the glass in a dense, steady rhythm. My heart rate remained perfectly even. I searched inside myself for any trace of guilt or a softening of heart, searching all around, finding nothing. It was neither hatred nor revenge. It was just emptiness. As if the capacity to soften within me had been utterly exhausted through those eighteen years of slow attrition. That afternoon, I went to the university to complete my enrollment formalities and collect my student ID card. The office staff member smiled and said:

"Welcome to the University of Bergen."

I said thank you.