She turned her mind into a garden.

“What is your name?” Min asked the young woman.

The woman flinched, as if the question itself was an act of violence. “I… I’m just a technician.”

At first, she screamed. She clawed at the walls until her fingernails peeled back like orange rinds. Then, she counted. Each breath. Each step from the cot to the waste slot. She calculated the volume of her cell in liters (51,200). She calculated the probability that any molecule of air had once been breathed by someone who loved her (vanishingly small). And then, on the 1,847th day—or what she guessed was the 1,847th day—she stopped counting.

Min stared at him. She had imagined this moment a thousand ways. A riot. An apology. A quiet execution in the night. But she had never imagined this: a simple admission, delivered like a weather report.