DISEASE

2005. The world met Mun in silence. The cries that usually marked a new life didn't come immediately. Her mother had been in labor for over six hours after her water broke. There were no proper arrangements, no doctors waiting in white coats—just pain, panic, and poverty. Mun's father paced back and forth in the corridor of the local clinic, sweat pooling at his temples, hands trembling. He didn't have the money to pay for the delivery. In his desperation, he did something unimaginable: he offered himself as a trustee, a human assurance, so his wife could give birth.

When Mun finally arrived, her tiny body was soaked, wrinkled, barely breathing. So small that the nurses exchanged looks of concern. She was more fragile than most newborns. As if life had already weighed her down before she even opened her eyes. Her father's family—especially her grandmother—took one look and dismissed her with a scoff. "Too small. Too weak. Another mouth to feed," the old woman muttered.

But Mun's parents looked at her like she was made of stars. Her mother, even in her exhausted, blood-stained state, pulled Mun close to her chest. Her father, who had nothing to offer but love, promised her silently that he would protect her. That was the first time Mun experienced love—and perhaps the purest.

But love doesn't feed hunger.

As Mun grew, so did the weight on her parents' shoulders. Their one-room tin-roofed home echoed with silence, broken only by the grumble of empty stomachs. Her father's job paid little, just enough to keep them alive. And yet, they tried to give Mun everything they could—until her little brother Nix was born in 2012.

From then on, everything shifted. Her mother's arms, once always open for Mun, were too full. Her father's time, once devoted to her bedtime stories and spoon-feeding, was now consumed by sleepless nights and distant travel for work. Mun was only seven. She couldn't even tie her shoelaces properly, but she had to learn to feed herself, bathe alone, and hush her own tears.

They were so poor that even asking for new pencils felt like a crime.

She had dreams, though. Big ones. She remembered walking past a school one day—a big building with yellow walls and children in uniform playing on the field. She stared for so long the guard asked if she was lost. But she wasn't. She had just found her first dream. She wanted to be inside that gate.

And when she finally gave her first admission test, she failed. She didn't even understand the format of the questions. Nobody had guided her. Nobody had told her what to expect. She was just a seven-year-old girl who thought studying hard meant dreaming big. Her parents yelled at her. Compared her to neighbors' kids who had tutors, who had support, who weren't learning the world by trial and error.

They didn't see her effort.

But Mun kept going. She kept trying. In 2015, she passed the admission test on her second try. She walked into that school wearing her oversized uniform, eyes glistening—not because she succeeded, but because, for a moment, her parents looked proud. Just for a moment.

That's the thing about Mun: she never wanted the world. Just a small nod, a smile, a warm "You did well." But even those were rare.

Her body was still small, her hands still shaky, but her dreams were vast. Every time someone told her she wasn't enough, she stitched her broken heart back together with willpower and silence.

"Some are born with wings, some with wounds. But the wounded still try to fly."

Mun, the tiny girl with the heavy world on her shoulders, kept flying—however shakily, however bruised.

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