This Burns My Heart

Chapter two

“Hana, dul, set! One, two, three! One, two, three!” The instructor barked out drills at the young men filling the outdoor gymnasium.

The students were in their late teens and early twenties, all of them roughly the same height and build, wearing identically serious expressions. They moved in perfect unison—jumping up and down, squatting, and lifting their arms in the air. Soo-Ja sat on the bleachers a few yards away from them, watching. She did not know if Min had noticed her, so intent he seemed on the exercises. She wondered if the laws of gravity applied to sight, so that a look of interest—however weighty—would not land any quicker than an uninterested one.

When they finally finished, Min ran toward the bleachers, where Soo-Ja sat, and plopped himself down. His breath was still heavy from the effort, sweat covering his face and body. “I don’t have much time. I have to go back there.”

“Well, you don’t have to sit here with me. Why do you even assume I came here to see you?” teased Soo-Ja. Keep this up, thought Soo-Ja, and I won’t choose you. Some other boy will get me to Seoul.

“Did you come here to say good-bye?”

“Good-bye?” asked Soo-Ja, worried her plan would be over before it even began.

“I’m heading out to Seoul next week, with some of the other boys from my class. Didn’t you hear? Everyone’s talking about it. The students there are planning massive demonstrations on the streets.”

“In Masan, I heard.”

“Everywhere. Masan, Daegu, Seoul. I hope there’ll be fights with the police. If the pigs come after me, I’ll be ready,” said Min, pulling out an imaginary gun and pointing it at an invisible assailant.

“I hope you’re wrong. I hope there’s no violence. President Rhee should step down on his own.”

“I don’t understand why everyone hates him so much, by the way,” said Min, pretending to put his invisible gun away in its holster.

“Maybe because he takes foreign aid money meant for the reconstruction and lavishes it upon his cronies. Or because he throws people in jail for no reason, especially if they oppose him,” said Soo-Ja.

“Does that really sound that bad? I’d probably do the same.”

“How long will you be in Seoul?” asked Soo-Ja, trying to hide the envy in her voice.

“For as long as the excitement lasts.”

“Isn’t it going to be dangerous? Is your magic gun going to protect you?”

“No. But your thoughts of me will,” said Min cheekily, glancing at her askew as if to see how she would react.

Soo-Ja smiled at his flirtatious tone. “Just be safe.”

“I can’t. I’m going to march in the very first row.”

The wind grew stronger, blowing Soo-Ja’s hair in the air. She held it down with her hand, rearranging her headband. “Don’t be a fool. What if something happens to you?”

“Well, it’s not like my life is even worth that much,” he said ruefully. Min lowered his head heavily and stared at the bleacher below him, tracking its cold silver contours with his fingers. “Although, if you gave me a date, that’d give me a reason to stay here…”

Soo-Ja gave him a sideways glance. “I’ll think of you while you’re gone.”

“Well, that’s a beginning.” He got up excitedly and pretended to hug her. “And maybe if I do something impressive, you’ll marry me.”

“It would have to be very impressive,” she said, joking along, amused that he really had no clue that she’d been putting on an act.

You’re clearly in love with me. Would it be fair to you, though, if I married you? And used you to get me out of my father’s house, and on my way to Seoul? You, who seem to have no career prospects, would you let me earn money for us as a diplomat? You, who seem to flounder and meander, would you have any choice but to let me make decisions?

Min noticed the instructor making his way back to the court outside, gathering the men one last time before dismissing them. “I have to run back. What did you come here to talk about?”

“Nothing. I just came to see you,” said Soo-Ja, hoping to sound convincing.

As she walked away from the gym, leaving behind the voices of the men chanting, Soo-Ja wondered which one was Min’s. And the thought struck her then—she didn’t really know anything about the man she was planning to spend the rest of her life with.

My dear Soo-Ja,

My first week as a revolutionary fighter—how do you like the sound of that?—is over, and while the other students are upstairs on the rooftop, exchanging oaths of loyalty, I write here in the basement, with a bottle of makgeolli by my side.

What a long week it has been! We have gone on several protests already, and each of them is a miracle of logistical planning and precision. Have you ever yelled the same words loudly with a group of a thousand people? Try it sometime; it sends quite a burst of oxygen to the brain. I have never felt so connected to people I feel such disdain for. When we demonstrate, the police stand at a barricade, blocking our way, and there’s always a tense moment when neither party knows whose turn it is to push forward. The trick is to have both strong lungs and legs; I’ve been hit more times now than I can count, but luckily always manage to get away.

It’s hard not to come back for the next protest, however. The feeling is quite addictive. Afterward we go to secret meeting places. Yesterday we met at a political science professor’s house for drinks. This is, of course, the part that keeps me here. The others begin a long litany of criticisms of the regime. I pay lip service to all that, waiting for the bottle of soju to make its way back to me. I have to say I’m a bit of an outcast here. The others do not entirely trust me.

At times, I feel silly holding up some of the placards. They have such poetry as “Down with Fraudulent Elections!” and “Can Freedom Gained Through Blood Be Taken Away by Bayonets?” The other students have rejected some of my ideas for chants, as well as my suggestion that we simply wait for the President to die of old age. He is, after all, 85 years old. I cannot imagine he’ll live that long. If we’ve waited millenniums for democracy—as ours is such an old nation—I figure we can wait another year or two.

Sometimes I wish to tell my friends here about you, but I fear they would not believe me. I think of your beautiful, silky long hair. Your porcelain complexion. Your high cheekbones. Your big, pendant-shaped eyes. Your long-bridged nose. Your gorgeous smile, warm and wicked all at once. Your face, shaped like those mysterious stone statues on the ground in Cheju Island. We do not know how they came to be there, or who carved them, but we can wonder, and I wonder, at you.

Perhaps if you sent me a picture I could prove to everyone here that you are real—and prove to myself, too, that you weren’t just something I invented in my head. May your days be good, and they must be, if they’re filled with half the hope and joy you give me.

Min Lee

Soo-Ja sighed and closed her eyes. She was happy, but envious. She wanted to be the one far away, writing letters about her own adventures to some virginal bride who would ooh and aah at her courage. She wanted to be the one telling Min how much she was fighting to keep up her strength. If getting this letter was so sweet, imagine being able to be the one to write it.

But maybe I should just be grateful for what I have, Soo-Ja told herself. There was much to enjoy about living in Daegu. Yes, half the time it was either raining or snowing, but during the glorious fall and spring, she’d lose herself in the hilltops behind her house. There, she’d race past the gingko, pine, maple, bamboo, and persimmon trees, and count constellations of lilacs, tiger lilies, moonflowers, cherry blossoms, and red peonies. She breathed in wisteria and walked on chestnut leaves. She traced trellised grapevines and caressed silkworms in the mulberry groves. Soo-Ja drew imaginary rings around the ubiquitous mountains in the distance, and pretended to be in the Scotland she’d read so much about. And when the monsoon rains came, for days at a time, creating miniature pools on the ground, Soo-Ja and her brothers splashed around, kicking water into one another’s faces.

If Soo-Ja ever left Daegu, she knew she would miss its lavender skies and peach-colored sunsets; the fresh red bean cakes from the bakery, still warm from the wood-burning oven; the Saturday afternoons spent soaking with her mother at the bathhouse, the heat as comforting as the sound of gossip all around her; and above all, the innocence of her childhood, still free of secrets, lovers, and ambitions.

It is no good to want to stay. Getting these kinds of letters only made Soo-Ja want to leave more. She prayed for Min to come back safe and come back soon, so he could help her with her plans. And in the meantime, she had to make sure to keep her father from finding out about him.

Soo-Ja put the letter away. There were few places to hide it, since her room was entirely bare except for the large nong armoire where she kept her coverlets and comforters and clothes. She decided to go to the kitchen, where her mother stored empty earthenware kimchee jars. But when she got there and opened some of them, she found that they were already filled—with money. This was an old habit of theirs. Her father gave her mother a large allowance every week for household expenses, and her mother, not knowing what to do with the extra money, often placed it in jars, where the hwan bills took on the smell of spices.

Soo-Ja went back to her room, frustrated, and took her clothes off to go to bed. She considered simply leaving the letter inside her jewel box—a small treasure chest inlaid with shiny mother-of-pearl—but it seemed too obvious a hiding place. Then, as she folded her woolen shirt, she decided to place her letter inside it, wrapped between the folds of fabric of its sleeves. She’d have to find some other place before Tuesday, when the servants did the washing. But for now it seemed to make perfect sense to leave it there, ensconced between the clothes she had been inside all day and had just cast off.

Soo-Ja’s father sounded angry when he called her into his room. He sat cross-legged on the floor facing her. He did not speak right away, and she found herself staring at the screens behind him—four large ink paintings, one for each of the four mythical animals: blue dragon, white tiger, red phoenix, and black tortoise. She imagined her father as the dragon, and herself as the tiger. She wondered which would win in the end.

“This time you’ve gone too far,” he said.

“What did I do now?” asked Soo-Ja, her eyes rolling to the back of her head.

Soo-Ja’s father reached for a stack of letters and tossed them on the writing table in front of him. Soo-Ja opened her mouth, surprised. How had he found them?

“Is this the same young man who showed up at our door that night?”

“What night?” asked Soo-Ja innocently. She avoided his gaze, looking instead at the white tiger in the painting on the screen, its mouth open in a roar, one paw in front of the other. It looked as if about to charge, and only self-control held it back.

“You must have him come and introduce himself, so I can officially tell him how inappropriate he is for you.”

“He’s not in Daegu. He’s in Seoul. You shouldn’t have read my—”

“I didn’t. And what’s he doing in Seoul? He hasn’t finished college yet? Is he younger than you are? You cannot consider someone who isn’t at least a year older than you.”

“He’s in Seoul for something else. And appa, don’t make a scandal out of this. He’s barely an acquaintance.”

Her father flashed her a grim look. “Is he a member of a student group? One of those lazy bums, living in boardinghouses, who can’t get a job, and so wastes his time getting into fights with the police? Some fool dying for democracy?”

“He’s not dying for democracy,” she said, looking away. “Maybe getting bruised, but not dying for it. He’s there more for the social aspect.”

“How do you know so much about him? I thought you said he was barely an acquaintance.”

It was no use trying to lie to her father. Soo-Ja threw her hands up in the air.

“I can’t imagine anything I say is going to satisfy you, so maybe I should just sit here like a mute.”

“At least you no longer fight with me about diplomat school. I have that to be thankful for. You seem to have taken that decision rather well.”

“I have, haven’t I?” said Soo-Ja, using the back of her hand to wipe off the serene, mysterious smile taking residence on her lips.

My dear Soo-Ja,

I hesitate before writing you this letter, as I do not wish to involve you in anything dangerous. But the protests are moving beyond Seoul and are making their way to our own hometown of Daegu. You may have heard about this—or maybe not, as the government has been trying to keep this away from the newspapers—but a neighbor of ours has gone missing. He’s a young boy—a twelve-year-old middle school student—from our very own town of Won-dae-don. His name is Chu-Sook Yang, and he attended a demonstration in Daegu; in Jungantong, we believe. Group records show he called himself a member of our organization. Apparently, he never made it home after the demonstration. All of us here suspect some kind of foul play.

The leader of the Daegu Chapter of our group, a rather smart medical student named Yul-Bok Kim, has tried to contact the boy’s mother, but she refuses to provide any information, and won’t speak to any of us. (Have the President’s men gotten to her already, maybe?) Yul has asked me if I know her, and I laughed at him, since I don’t exactly spend my weekends with teenage boys from the slums. But then I thought, I may not know the boy’s family, but maybe Soo-Ja does. I know your father’s factory employs a lot of people in town—even if the boy’s mother doesn’t know you, I’m guessing she’d be willing to talk to someone of your stature. Yul lives in the Mangwon district, not too far from you. I’m attaching his phone number and address—he’ll await contact from you—should you decide to get involved in this.

Min Lee

“Excuse me, excuse me,” said Soo-Ja, making her way to the back of the bus. She wore a pink embroidered coat with a high collar, a red silk chemise with a bow over her chest, and a long cream polyester skirt. She also had a yellow headband on top of her head, accentuating her bangs. She looked as if she were simply heading for an afternoon stroll.

According to the instructions she’d been given, she was to take the Dalseo-gu bus at the Won-dae-don stop and sit on one of the last seats in the last row, making sure to keep the one next to her empty. As the bus sputtered forward on the unpaved asphalt, driving over stones on the road, its constant bumps made Soo-Ja lose balance several times, grabbing the metal handrail repeatedly to keep steady. Outside, wreaths of smoke covered the ground behind them, tinting everything she saw out the windows in shades of brown.

When Soo-Ja finally reached the last row, she sank into one of the hard cloth-covered seats, drawing the attention of an old man in a broad-rimmed black horsehair hat, the kind that had gone out of fashion in the twenties. He turned to glance at her, and Soo-Ja glowered at him until he went back to talking to his friends. They were a group of about four white-haired men in their sixties, sitting on the two rows in front and across from Soo-Ja. They talked like teenagers, touching one another’s arms and teasing one another over the supposed aphrodisiac quality of ginseng tea. Their laughter was raucous, almost ricocheting against the sides of the bus.

As Soo-Ja watched them, she was reminded of a Swiss teacher she’d had in high school, who had told her how surprised he was to see the physical expressiveness of Korean people. Indeed they moved their bodies extravagantly, used them like punctuation marks, with arms rising, and fingers freely pointing in the air for emphasis; they were like a country full of excitable preachers gesticulating to congregations of one or two listeners at a time. They weren’t quiet at all; in fact the opposite: temperamental, given to passions, sentimental to a fault. Their feelings and emotions flashed on their faces with the intensity of a close-up projected on a giant screen, and they weren’t afraid to weep or laugh in front of other people.

“Good. Their laughter will drown out our conversation,” she heard a young man say as he took the seat next to her. He had appeared out of nowhere, as efficient and unobtrusive as a comma. Soo-Ja swallowed nervously; she knew this was the leader of the student group.

They rode for a few minutes in silence, with Soo-Ja stealing occasional glimpses of him. Yul had on black rectangular glasses and a brown corduroy jacket. He was dressed casually, with no tie. His hair looked slightly unkempt, not in a disheveled way, but in the manner of someone who did not bother with mirrors or Vaseline. He wore it a bit long, like a European beatnik.

“I’m glad you came. I was afraid you might change your mind,” said Yul, looking straight ahead. “This is more than we have the right to ask of you.”

“You’re right,” said Soo-Ja, also staring straight ahead. She decided not to tell him how much she had enjoyed being asked to help. Everywhere she went, there was talk of the student movement. Now, she could carry with pride her own sudden, unexpected role in it. “Nevertheless, I’m just a woman riding the bus. You’re the one being chased by the police.”

“Good point,” he said. “But don’t worry about me. The police aren’t going to do anything to me. The last thing they need is to create a martyr; give a face to the movement.” He then lowered his head and spoke in the direction of her neck. “So, have you met Chu-Sook’s mother? Do you know her?”

“No, but Min was right. Her husband used to work for my father. She thinks I’m coming to talk to her about some back pay.”

“Very inventive of you to add that detail.”

“I brought some money, as well as a list of questions I want to ask her,” said Soo-Ja, looking into her purse.

“Don’t worry about the questions. I’ll handle that.”

“Damn it,” said Soo-Ja, going through her belongings.

“What’s wrong?” asked Yul, immediately looking around him.

“Once I memorized the questions, I reached in to throw away the crumpled piece of paper, but instead of the paper with the questions, I threw away the thousand-hwan bill,” said Soo-Ja, still digging through her purse.

Yul could not resist cracking a smile. He glanced at her directly for the first time in their conversation. “Maybe it’s still in there.”

“No, I tossed it out the window,” said Soo-Ja, returning his look. “Boy, that’s a lot of money to just throw away like that. I suppose I wouldn’t make a very good revolutionary, would I?”

“We’ll just make sure we never trust you with our secret plans,” said Yul, smiling.

He was handsome when he did that, thought Soo-Ja. She let her eyes rest over him for a moment, and she noticed his high cheekbones, alabaster skin, and eyes shaped like laurel leaves. She was surprised by how solid he seemed, and also by the fact that he smelled a little bit like cocoa. She felt the impulse to linger near his collar and breathe in his scent, though of course she held back.

Soo-Ja smiled to herself, the earlier tension now gone. The bus made a stop, and the group of old men rose to leave, as another group of people made their way in. Soo-Ja looked over at Yul again, noticing how the sun filtered in lightly through a half-opened window behind him, casting a warm glow on the back of his head.

“So, Min said you studied literature, but that you want to be a diplomat?” asked Yul, gazing out the window, paying attention to who got on and off the bus. Soo-Ja couldn’t tell if he felt a genuine interest, or if he was just trying to create an aura of casualness around them.

“The two are not so different,” said Soo-Ja, surprised that Min had shared that with Yul. She’d mentioned it to Min almost in passing, and was glad to see that he remembered. “With literature, you learn how people behave, and you learn empathy, a good trait to have as a diplomat.”

“Did you always want to be a diplomat?” Yul asked, still looking around.

“No, not always. When I was little, I wanted to be a waitress.” Yul laughed at this, and Soo-Ja smiled at him before she continued. The bus began to move again. “I liked the uniforms, and the idea of feeding people all day. Then I wanted to be a journalist. I liked arranging words on a page. It changed, though, with the war.”

Soo-Ja looked out the window, and she remembered the view from the car on the day they fled the city—the seemingly endless lines of refugees, walking the narrow roads above the rice paddies, carrying their belongings on their backs; some split their loads by each holding one end of a stick, their bags in the middle. They walked in a long line, Indian file, like prisoners in a chain gang, eyes looking down into the ground. Occasionally, someone would look up at her as the car went by, and she would nod slightly, as if she knew the person. If it was a girl, she’d even smile, as if to say, I’ll see you when we get there, I’ll meet you by the seaside. It’ll all be fine.

“My parents and I had to evacuate, like everyone else, and go to Pusan, at the seaside. We stayed with an aunt of ours, by Haundae Beach, and all through the fall and winter, we watched as the refugees came. I remember it very vividly, the guards squeezing all these women and children into these crowded camps. Their clothes were made out of recycled army uniforms, and a lot of them slept and went to the bathroom on the streets. There were rats everywhere. I remember little boys with shaved heads and tin cans in their hands running after army jeeps, begging for food. My family was lucky. My father had retrofitted his shoe factory into an army uniform maker, and the President was very grateful to him. We stayed in my aunt’s big house, and never went hungry during the war. In fact, we ate pineapples.”

“You shouldn’t feel badly about that,” said Yul. “Your father probably saved the lives of a lot of soldiers.”

“Well, every day I heard stories of people being killed, and bodies mangled, and found on the roads. It was terrifying. I was fourteen at the time.”

“Did anyone in your family get hurt?”

“No. No one. It felt like a miracle. I remember when it all ended, the day we came back home. It felt like everything was gone—buildings bombed, roads filled with debris. Only our house, still standing. There were some people living in it, mostly men—war deserters, vagabonds, idlers. They napped on the floors. Some played hato cards. They had these bored looks on their faces, like they didn’t care that the South had won Daegu back.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, my father started telling people to get out. He used his factory-owner voice—very firm, but also kindly. Like he was saying, Go now, before the real owner, who’s much meaner, catches you here. Nobody protested, the men just got up and started leaving. My mother gave each of them some money, enough for a hot meal, I think, and I remember everyone took the money, but nobody thanked her, or even looked her in the eye. When they left, I wondered where they’d go.” Soo-Ja paused and looked at Yul again. “Are you really sure you want to hear this?”

“Yes. Go on,” he said, his gaze encouraging her. The bus began to move faster now, over paved asphalt, and Soo-Ja could see the Geumho River rise beyond the windows; the sun’s rays rested languidly over its waters—as still as a lover’s outstretched arms.

“That night, we slept in the bare rooms. Everything we had was gone—they’d taken all our furniture, every single jar in the kitchen, every dresser and bookcase, all the lamps and writing desks. And what they couldn’t carry out, like the doors, they’d pulled out parts of with screwdrivers. The only things left were the floors and the ceiling.

“So the next day, we went to the open-air market to buy new clothes and furniture. It didn’t take very long until we noticed something funny about all the items on sale. I recognized a comforter I used to sleep under, yellow on top, with patchwork-like squares of different colors. I saw the armoire that used to sit in my brother’s room. The silver dagger that used to hang by the mirror in my mother’s room. They were selling our things! My books, from the fourth to eighth grade, the silverware we used at dinner.

“I looked at my father and he just smiled back at me and said, ‘Now we find out how much our things are truly worth.’ He gave my brothers and me money to go buy back our things. My mother wanted us to call the police and have all the merchants arrested, but my father shook his head and said, ‘These people need to earn a living, too.’ I’ll never forget that. I remember going from merchant to merchant, buying back my old clothes and ornaments, and each time I was amazed that I could do that, that I could welcome back my possessions. I felt so grateful to be alive, and to be safe, and to have all my things back.”

Soo-Ja smiled at the memory. She then wondered for a moment why she trusted this stranger so much. Maybe because he looked concrete, self-sufficient; he wanted nothing from her. Two, he simply let her speak, and never interrupted her.

“So that’s why you want to become a diplomat. You think diplomacy alone can prevent nations from going to war?” asked Yul.

The bus reached a rough patch, driving over potholes and rocks. As Soo-Ja lurched forward slightly, Yul caught her arm and steadied her. His grip felt electric, his fingers denting her flesh. He took her hand and guided it to the handrail in front of them. Soo-Ja swallowed, embarrassed, but as she sat back again, she let her body fit snugly next to his, shoulder to shoulder.

“You think I’m naive?” asked Soo-Ja, easing back into the conversation.

“Maybe.”

“Fine, so I’m naive. But I’d like to make a small difference. A small difference may not change anything, but it could also be just enough. I mean, you must have believed that as well, when you chose to become—well, what you are.”

Yul did not reply. Instead, he looked at her thoughtfully. Soo-Ja felt a bit foolish for opening up so much to him. How had he pulled it out of her? With him, she felt the ease of being around a friend who’d neither judge nor criticize.

He was older than she was; certainly he must have fought in the war? He must have been fifteen or sixteen at the time; how had he survived, when men older and meaner had perished? Soo-Ja liked this, liked that he made her wonder about him; made her want to make up stories about him, and pick at his serene smile as if it were a lock in the wall. She had not felt this with Min—Min won her over with flattery, wearing her down with his insistence. Yul, on the other hand, made her want to flatter him.

“I think we’re here,” said Yul, as the bus began to slow down. His face became very serious, and Soo-Ja was reminded of the reason for their bus trip. The missing twelve-year-old boy. “Wait till I’m halfway through the bus, then start making your way out. If you see me run, do not run after me. Instead, duck and take cover.” Yul rose, and Soo-Ja felt her body tense up. Seeing him stand, Soo-Ja noticed that Yul had the muscular build of a soldier, and an ex-soldier’s careful movements. Yul must have fought for sure, either volunteering or drafted against his will. The bus came to a full stop, and Yul began to make his way out. It felt like forever, waiting. As Yul reached the midpoint, the passage seemed clear, and he turned his head slightly and glanced over at Soo-Ja, signaling for her to follow him. She rose and began heading out. She noticed that the bus seemed a little quiet to her ears, almost too much, as if the other passengers could sense something was off. Soo-Ja watched as Yul continued to make his way out in front of her. But when he was almost by the door, a passenger in a row ahead of him suddenly rose, his back blocking Yul’s way. He wore a police officer’s uniform.

Soo-Ja gasped, then put her hand to her mouth, to hide her reaction. The seconds seemed to stretch into infinity, as the policeman stood in front of Yul, with his back to him, and Yul remained still. Yul did not hint at this as cause for panic, and did not make a sound, but Soo-Ja noticed that he’d discreetly placed his hand near his belt. She wondered if he had a gun; if he’d need to use it. It felt like a century, when only two, three seconds passed. Finally, the officer, who took a moment to gather his things from his seat, simply walked on, and left the bus, as if it were nothing more than just his own stop.

Soo-Ja let out a sigh of relief, and she could see Yul’s body release its tautness, too.

Yul started walking out. By the time he emerged, Soo-Ja had almost caught up with him, and the two of them found themselves out on the street at the same time. They did not speak, but when Soo-Ja glanced at the sign in front of the bus, she realized it had been heading not to Dalseo-gu but to Dalseong-gu; he’d made them take the long way to their destination, and made her talk the entire time while he studied her eyes and her voice. Why? It didn’t matter, thought Soo-Ja. By now he trusted her, but more than that, she trusted him, too.

Soo-Ja and Yul walked along a long row of shacks, all with the same thatched roofs and walls made out of stones of uneven sizes stacked together. They were perched precariously atop a hill, on a narrow, winding path inaccessible to cars, and only wide enough for oxcarts. Soo-Ja noticed that Yul let her set the pace, and he would slow when she did. Near the top of the hill, a man with a broken wheelbarrow attempted to pass them, and Yul subtly placed his body between Soo-Ja and the stranger. Soo-Ja glanced at him, trying to acknowledge the gesture, but he looked straight ahead as if he’d done nothing.

When they finally reached the address they had, Soo-Ja and Yul found a woman squatting by the straw door, pounding on clothes with rods, the way Soo-Ja had seen her servants do a thousand times. She wore a gray rolled-up long-sleeved shirt and a charcoal knee-length skirt; her hands were deep in dirty water, which ran in an uneven line from the tin washboard to the gutter.

“Mrs. Yang, hello. I’m Soo-Ja Choi,” said Soo-Ja, bowing to the woman.

Chu-Sook’s mother bowed back gravely. Hers was a moon-shaped face with no edges. Her skin was darkly tanned, her short black hair thick and wiry.

Soo-Ja tried to smile at her, then pointed at Yul. “And this is Mr. Kim.”

Yul bowed to her.

Chu-Sook’s mother began to bow back, placing both hands behind her, and remaining with her head down for a few seconds. In Soo-Ja’s eyes, the gesture seemed excessively submissive. She herself never chose to bow very long, making it almost a nod, a quick acknowledgment. When Chu-Sook’s mother finished her bow, Soo-Ja noticed a change on the woman’s face. She had finally gotten a good look at Yul and seemed to recognize him. Soo-Ja watched as the expression in her eyes changed from interest to fear.

“No, I cannot speak to him,” said Chu-Sook’s mother, shaking her head. “And for anyone who’s watching, you can see that I’m not speaking to him!”

“Mrs. Yang, it’s all right. He’s a friend,” said Soo-Ja, holding her arm.

But Chu-Sook’s mother could not stop waving her hands in front of her face, looking around for spies—real or imaginary.

Soo-Ja glanced at Yul, who seemed to stay calm. She wondered if he realized how much of a target he had become for the police. But Yul did not seem concerned about that. He came closer to Soo-Ja, and she drew her body in as well—theirs was an easy, unforced intimacy—closing the circle so they could confer quietly with each other.

“They must have shown her my picture,” Yul whispered. “Told her not to speak to me.” Soo-Ja nodded in agreement. She guessed that, if something had happened to the boy, the police and the government must have understood at once the importance of the situation. “If we can show they have the blood of a twelve-year-old on their hands, it’ll turn the tide of the demonstrations. It’ll prove the brutality of their regime.” Yul turned to Chu-Sook’s mother again, to try to make another plea. “I’m here to help you find your son. I want to help you. Don’t believe what the police told you. I’m not here to harm you.”

“I can’t, I can’t. Please go. I can’t speak to you. I can’t speak to anyone who participates in acts of rebellion against the lawful and righteous government!” said Chu-Sook’s mother, with her eyes closed, as if trying to remember the words she was supposed to recite. She started to wave more and more vehemently.

Soo-Ja began to fear that the woman would not speak to them at all. She stood closer to her and held down both her arms. When Chu-Sook’s mother calmed down a little, Soo-Ja looked straight into her eyes and spoke.

“Mrs. Yang, you know me. I’m not a member of a student group. You can speak to me.” Soo-Ja reached for her hand and pointed toward the house. “Let’s go in, Mrs. Yang. Let’s go in and have a chat.”

“Why would I speak to you? You lied to me.”

Soo-Ja grabbed her hand a bit more forcefully than she’d intended to and directed her inside. “I want to help you, Mrs. Yang. Please, let’s go in. Let’s go in before your neighbors see us out here and tell on you to the police.”

Soo-Ja glanced at Yul for help, but he seemed distracted, looking intently in the direction of the woman’s shack. His eyes were squinting, as if he was trying to guess its contents. He had to know it had no windows, and probably no running water or electricity either, with the only light coming in through tiny slivers on the edges of the straw door, keeping the place dark and stuffy. Soo-Ja was about to follow Chu-Sook’s mother into her house when Yul stopped her, reaching for her arm.

“Wait,” he said. Yul’s nostrils widened, as if he were sniffing something foul. He blocked Soo-Ja’s way with his arm, in the firm manner of a traffic officer. He pulled her back, away from the woman’s house. “What’s that smell?”

Chu-Sook’s mother looked away, staring down at the ground. Her body seemed emptied out of tears, with no more blood left to run through her veins. When she spoke, she did so matter-of-factly: “That’s my son.”

They held the boy’s body up in the air, and from a distance, it looked as if it were floating, though it was propped by a dozen hands. They had first wrapped him in a blanket, tucked in from head to toe, like a newborn, but somewhere along the march the blanket fell—his cold, decomposing skin rejecting the human comfort. It felt heavy, almost unbearably so, though in life the boy had been light, and not very tall. Chu-Sook would, in fact, have been surprised to see the effort it took to carry him; similar to the effort it took to find him, after a long search in the river. Were it not for the school uniform he wore, they would not have recognized him–with his face smashed out, bits of grenade still lodged in his skull.

They’d been marching from his mother’s shack toward Daegu city hall, starting with a group of about a hundred people, led by Yul in front, and Soo-Ja and Chu-Sook’s mother next to him. Yul had been expected in Seoul hours earlier, but he’d stayed behind to lead this extemporaneous protest. Night fell somewhere along the way, and the chants grew less angry and more mournful, turning the walk into a funeral procession.

Word spread quickly of the discovery of the body, and the crowd seemed to grow with each block; first the students from the nearby high schools and universities, then everybody else, until almost all the denizens of the town seemed to have left their homes and joined the demonstration. Along the way, Soo-Ja had to help Chu-Sook’s mother remain steady a few times. Her spirit appeared to leave her body, becoming a mere bag of tissue and bones, unable to walk or remain upright. Soo-Ja had to hold her with her arms around her back, until her strength returned. The other protestors glanced occasionally at them. Word had spread about Chu-Sook’s mother, but no one knew who Soo-Ja was, which made her glad; she did not want the presence of a woman of her social class to serve as a distraction.

Once in a while, Soo-Ja would glance over at Yul and wonder how his lungs never got tired. He chanted with enormous conviction, and part of Soo-Ja felt self-conscious, watching him. It reminded her of being in church, in the middle of a group prayer, and opening her eyes before the others did. It seemed terribly intimate, to see the parishioners like that, with their lips still moving. Here was Yul, too, unaware of Soo-Ja’s gaze lingering over him.

Soo-Ja wondered if he sensed the same thing she did—that in spite of their momentary closeness, they would probably never see each other again after that night. There were boys being killed, and generals authorizing massacres, but all she wanted was to grab Yul’s hand and have him turn around and look at her. Would the night, with all that still had to happen, stop for her?

By the time they reached city hall, there were more than a thousand people behind them. Up on the steps of the building, rows of policemen wearing helmets and body armor stood with their rifles pointed at the protestors. Behind them, soldiers stood guard with their own guns. With their outlines traced faintly by the light of the lampposts behind them, they looked like perfectly still marble statues—an impenetrable line surrounding the entire perimeter of the building.

“Join us,” said Yul, speaking to them as if they were all brothers. “Be on our side. We have room for you. This is a cause worth dying for, but it’s not worth killing for. Drop your guns. This march is for everyone, including you.”

The police officers pointed their guns at Yul, who started walking up the steps toward them.

He smiled, shaking his head, as if bewildered that they were at this standstill, when they could be playing hato cards together in a bar. Soo-Ja’s heart began to beat faster. She wanted him to turn around and come back. But instead she saw him emerge farther and farther into the light, his body drawn like a magnet to the steel and metal of the rifles.

“You are our friends. You want the same things we do. You want freedom and democracy. This boy—he could’ve been your brother. Your son.”

Most of the officers looked impervious to his words, though one or two of them—the youngest-looking ones, the ones in closest proximity to Yul—seemed to waver, and Soo-Ja could see how hard they were trying not to look at Yul, not let him inside their bodies. His words had already shaken some of their conviction.

But then, a sudden yell came from the crowd. Soo-Ja could not make out the words, until others joined in the chant, and it became clear they were screaming, “Killers! Killers, all of them!” Yul turned and tried to stop the shouting, but the crowd had suddenly taken on a life of its own. In a matter of seconds, the men and women grew bold and powerful, like the ravenous foxes of folk tales, unaware that they were ravenous for the entrails of their own brothers and sisters. Soo-Ja had never seen such force descend upon a crowd before, and she began to fear it.

“You killed an innocent boy! You spilled the blood of our children!” they shouted.

Yul started shaking his head at them, waving his arms in front of him for them to stop.

The officers pointed their guns in the direction of the voices, and Soo-Ja saw what sounded like an order coming from the lips of one of the officers. Amid the chaos, she could not tell whose mouths the yelling was coming from, and she knew the officers could not, either. In a matter of seconds, Soo-Ja watched as the officers pointed into the night and looked about to pull their triggers. Yul signaled to her a fraction of a second before the officers started firing, and Soo-Ja fell to the ground at the same time he did, pulling Chu-Sook’s mother down with her. The three of them hit the ground as the rain of bullets flew around them.

Soo-Ja looked up in shock to see the bodies of the other protestors being shot. Seconds before, they had been alive, standing next to her, chanting in unison.

The police were firing indiscriminately at them, and they crumpled down, lifeless, arms and hands waving in the air one last time before coming to rest. Men, women, students—some of them with their backs turned away, trying to run—paralyzed by bullets, pools of blood gushing from their mouths. Soo-Ja remained on the ground, almost being trampled, as people around her tried to flee.

The sound of loud screaming pierced the air, and Soo-Ja tried to keep her head covered with her arms. Next to her, Chu-Sook’s mother wailed in horror, letting out all the sorrow that had been trapped in her lungs before.

Soo-Ja then saw that the men who had been holding Chu-Sook’s body began to fall, too, like the legs of a table being knocked off one by one. For a moment, Chu-Sook’s frame seemed to hang in the air, on its own, and Soo-Ja imagined that it would fly to heaven. The moment suddenly felt very quiet and still—the body rising a few inches, as the last of its pallbearers pushed it upward toward the sky—but then its weight broke through the air again, and Soo-Ja watched as the boy’s body fell to the ground, making a thunderous noise. Chu-Sook would not make his way to his savior that night; he chose to stay with the others, becoming one more in a sea of bodies.