When Kim Minseok’s little sister Najin turned six, he pedalled his bright red bicycle in quick, sure down to the local bookstore and bought her a thick and dusty leather bound book of fairy tales. That night he gave it to her underneath their makeshift tent of blankets and chairs, reading by flashlight so their parents wouldn’t notice that it was way past their bedtime. He told her that when she was upset, she should read it and it would give her hope.

On Najin’s seventh birthday, Minseok started feeling extremely tired, but that didn’t stop him from running into town and buying his sister a gigantic origami set to feed her new folding craze. Later, he sat at the kitchen table and laughed as she tried to fold a flower for the eighteenth time. He told her that giving up was for losers and girly girls. And he laughed when she stuck her tongue out at him. And he tried to forget the weird spasms that were coursing through his legs.

The year his little sister turned eight, there was no present from him. Because that was the year that running suddenly became difficult, and climbing the staircase was as Herculanean a task as clearing Mt. Everest. That was the year that his father screwed the training wheels back onto his son’s bike, and Minseok cried because it felt like the previous six years had never happened.

That was also the year that an elev