There was a Japanese man. He took his dog for a walk. And then he was nowhere. For the people who knew him, he’d forever be nowhere. That’s how Jun Do had thought of boys selected by the men with Chinese accents. They were here and then they were nowhere, taken like Bo Song to parts unknown. That’s how he’d thought of most people—appearing in your life like foundlings on the doorstep, only to be swept away later as if by flood. But Bo Song hadn’t gone nowhere—whether he sank down to the wolf eels or bloated and took the tide north to Vladivostok, he went somewhere. The Japanese man wasn’t nowhere, either—he was in the hot box, right out there in the drill grounds. And Jun Do’s mother, it now struck him—she was somewhere, at this very moment, in a certain apartment in the capital, perhaps, looking in a mirror, brushing her hair before bed.
For the first time in years, Jun Do closed his eyes and let himself recall her face. It was dangerous to dream up people like that. If you did, they’d soon be in the tunnel with you. That had happened many times when he remembered boys from Long Tomorrows. One slip and a boy was suddenly following you in the dark. He was saying things to you, asking why you weren’t the one who succumbed to the cold, why you weren’t the one who fell in the paint vat, and you’d get the feeling that at any moment, the toes of a front kick would cross your face.
But there she was, his mother. Lying there, listening to the shivering of the soldier, her voice came to him. “Arirang,” she sang, her voice achy, at the edge of a whisper, coming from an unknown somewhere. Even those fucking orphans knew where their parents were.
Late in the night, Gil stumbled in. He opened the fridge, which was forbidden, and placed something inside. Then he flopped onto his cot. Gil slept with his arms and legs sprawled off the edges, and Jun Do could tell that as a child, Gil must’ve had a bed of his very own. In a moment, he was out.
Jun Do and Officer So stood in the dark and went to the fridge. When Officer So pulled its handle, it exhaled a faint, cool breath. In the back, behind stacks of square blood bags, Officer So fished out a half-full bottle of shoju. They closed the door quickly because the blood was bound for Pyongyang, and if it spoiled, there’d be hell to pay.
They took the bottle to the window. Far in the distance, dogs were barking in their warrens. On the horizon, above the SAM bunkers, there was a glow in the sky, moonlight reflecting off the ocean. Behind them, Gil began gassing in his sleep.
Officer So drank. “I don’t think old Gil’s used to a diet of millet cakes and sorghum soup.”
“Who the hell is he?” Jun Do asked.
“Forget about him,” Officer So said. “I don’t know why Pyongyang started this business up again after all these years, but hopefully we’ll be rid of him in a week. One mission, and if everything goes right, we’ll never see that guy again.”
Jun Do took a drink—his stomach clutching at the fruit, the alcohol.
“What’s the mission?” he asked.
“First, another practice run,” Officer So said. “Then we’re going after a special someone. The Tokyo Opera spends its summers in Niigata. There’s a soprano. Her name is Rumina.”
The next drink of shoju went down smooth. “Opera?” Jun Do asked.
Officer So shrugged. “Some bigshot in Pyongyang probably heard a bootleg and had to have her.”
“Gil said he survived a land-mine tour,” Jun Do said. “For that, they sent him to language school. Is it true—does it work like that, do you get rewarded?”
“We’re stuck with Gil, okay? But you don’t listen to him. You listen to me.”
Jun Do was quiet.
“Why, you got your heart set on something?” Officer So asked. “You even know what you’d want as a reward?”
Jun Do shook his head.
“Then don’t worry about it.”
Officer So walked to the corner and leaned over the latrine bucket. He braced himself against the wall and strained for a long time. Nothing happened.
“I pulled off a miracle or two in my day,” he said. “I got rewarded. Now look at me.” He shook his head. “The reward you want is this: don’t become me.”
Jun Do stared out the window at the hot box. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“The dog man?” Officer So asked. “There are probably a couple of Pubyok on the train from Pyongyang right now to get him.”
“Yeah, but what’s going to happen to him?”
Officer So tried one last push to get some urine out.
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” he said through his teeth.
Jun Do thought of his mother on a train to Pyongyang. “For your reward, could you ask for a person?”
“What, a woman?” Officer So shook his umkyoung in frustration. “Yeah, you could ask for that.” He came back and drank the rest of the bottle, saving only a swish in the bottom. This he poured, a dribble at a time, over the dying soldier’s lips. Officer So clapped him good-bye on the chest, then he stuffed the empty bottle in the crook of the boy’s sweat-soaked arm.