by Naomi Foyle
“I hope Older Sister can sleep tonight,” So Ra said into the semidarkness. “Imagine not praying for Su Jin.”
“Excuse me for saying this,” Chin Mee said timidly, “but a few of the sisters have been upset with Su Jin—because we missed her, and worried. Maybe South Korean cities aren’t the hellholes the Wise Young Leader told us they were, but still, anyone could tell that Pusan would be dangerous, especially for a North Korean farm girl. You can grieve for someone and still feel hurt by them; don’t you think so, Mee Hee?”
Mee Hee fingered the fold in her bedsheet. All day she had been trying to summon the right feelings, but she wasn’t angry like Older Sister, or indignant like So Ra, and she wasn’t guilty or afraid, either. No, she was sad, that was all. All day long it had felt as if it were raining, a heavy, slow rain inside her, but she didn’t blame Su Jin.
“No, Chin Mee, Su Jin didn’t hurt me. If she didn’t want to stay here, it would have been selfish of me to have asked her to. I’m just sorry that she couldn’t see how lucky we are to live here. Now she never will.” Her voice wavered. But, just as they had all day, her eyes remained dry. Maybe this was a sign of her “inner strength”? Surely Dr. Kim would want her to bear her sorrow with dignity?
The candle sent up a spark and Chin Mee blew it out. Mee Hee pulled her covers up to her neck. The ondul heating was on, but So Ra liked the window open a crack. Older Sister always said it was good to breathe fresh air all night.
“I hope they catch the murderer soon,” So Ra said into the darkness.
“Mr. San-duh-man will find him,” Chin Mee declared.
“Su Jin liked Mr. San-duh-man,” Mee Hee whispered. “I’m glad he’s coming to the funeral.”
Outside, an owl hooted. Perhaps it was carrying a field mouse away in its talons, Mee Hee thought. Across the courtyard, there was a creak: someone couldn’t sleep, was standing out on her veranda looking at the moon. Or maybe it was the sound of the ancestors drawing closer, waiting to greet Su Jin’s spirit.
Beside Mee Hee, Chin Mee stifled a sob. “I’m sorry,” she cried out, “but I feel afraid. Promise me you both will never leave the village . . .”
“Of course not!” So Ra sounded aghast at the very thought. “Not even if they move me in with Older Sister!”
Mee Hee slid her arm out from beneath her blankets and stroked Chin Mee’s shoulder. “No, I never will. This is our home, Chin Mee. We all love it here.”
33 / A Hard Place
It was the last Saturday of November. The sky was the color of a dirty dishcloth and the temperature was dropping like an anvil. Damien was in Chamshil, finishing his final class of the day with Yoon So and Young Ha. Outwardly he was reviewing English words for flowers; inside he was sizzling with excitement.
On Monday his savings had hit seventeen and a half million. He’d taken two point five and a passport photo down to Azitoo, where Jake had pocketed the envelope and promised to take it in the morning to the counterfeiter in Itaewon. On Thursday Jake had dropped round to say that the hacker in Canada had found him a ghost identity: a guy called David Harding, who had been dead for three years. If his family hadn’t yet reported the fact to the SIN bureau, they weren’t ever going to. Here’s to David, Damien and Jake had toasted with a shared Grolsch. Next Friday he’d get his month’s pay from the hagwon, another two and a half million, which would make up the twenty he needed for the Canadian passport and SIN card. He’d already told all his jobs he was leaving and would need his last pay on December fifteenth. His landlord had reluctantly agreed to give him back his key-fee a week early; all that money was extra, and would help him set up in Canada.
His plan was to be on a flight to Winnipeg three or four days before the Solstice. Jake had a mate there who’d said Damien could stay in his basement cheap—plus, the guy worked in films, knew Guy Maddin, might be able to get him a job. If not, there was a ton of other work in the province: the oil industry, mining—the Manitoba economy was booming. If the world hadn’t been flooded or nuked out of existence by the New Year, Damien fancied working in a music or DVD shop, like he’d done in Brighton back in the day. Or he could eke out his money until the summer, then go tree-planting. Either way, he’d be alive and on dry ground. If snow counted as dry.
So this was a weekend to celebrate. He planned to hit the nightclubs on Saturday, but this evening he was going to the flicks with Sydney. He’d seen her three times since Chusok, always on a Sunday. They’d go for cheap eats, then chat over cups of tea. He told her about his working day; she babbled on about her mad world of fashionistas and spa treatment meditation courses. She wasn’t a religious fanatic, exactly, but she did sometimes go off on strange spiels about forgiveness, higher consciousness, the “detoxification of the human spirit”—basically, it sounded like she spent a few hours a week wrapped up in mud and rose petals, listening to self-help tapes. Still, if it made her smell so nice, who was he to criticize?
At the end of their dates, they’d stand around on the street like a couple of nimbies. Sydney would pause and twirl her hair, he’d mumble something about needing an early night, then she’d swipe him a kiss and hop into a taxi home. Maybe she expected him to hit on her; maybe she liked knowing a bloke who didn’t. Whatever; his vow of celibacy was working for him. He had steady energy for his grueling schedule, and he wasn’t about to risk knocking everything sideways, especially not for some strange encounter with his own projections of Jessica. He’d decided that apart from that freaky time in the tube, there was something comforting about Sydney’s chance resemblance to Jessica. Since he’d met her, even when they weren’t together, he felt—well, more relaxed, somehow. He did worry about how she was going to cope when the Hammer hit, but she’d told him Da Mi was rich and lived in a gated property up a big hill, so that would give her a better chance of survival than most Seoulites.
Today they were meeting in Shinch’on at half-seven. It was ten to six now, and Young Ha was sprawling over the floor, whining “Finish class, teacher,” when he heard the doorbell chime. This happened countless times a lesson; usually it was Mrs. Lee or the household ajumma running errands; occasionally the Japanese tutor arrived early. He paid no particular attention until he heard strange male voices and the ajumma protesting; then a robotic panic began grinding in his guts.
“Yoon So, Young Ha,” he hissed, flapping Young Ha’s workbook shut and trying to wrest Yoon So’s from her hands. “I not teacher, okay? I Damien. Friend! Chingu, okay? Chingu.”
In the scuffle Yoon So scribbled a thick pencil line over her work. She emitted a wail of outrage as behind him, the door burst open. “Teacher not chingu. I hate Teacher,” she declared, clutching her copy of Longman’s English Workbook Level 3 to her chest.
“Teacher, who? Teacher, who?” Young Ha shrieked as two men in suit jackets and plaid Lacoste shirts surveyed the scene with grim satisfaction.
Damien dropped Young Ha’s book on the floor. He was awash in sweat and his whole body was shaking. For a long second, the only sound was his watch clattering against the edge of the table.
“We are from Immigration Office of Korea,” the taller man announced tersely. With his grooved face, jutting jaw and jerky movements he could have played a cyborg in a Terminator film. One that ran on Duracell. “May we see your passport?”
“Passport?” Like an idiot, Damien patted his pockets. “S-s-sorry, I don’t have it on me.”
“How long you teach here?” the short, stocky man demanded.
Damien tried to think. He could maintain he was a friend of the family, giving lessons when he came over for dinner—saying you did so because you were Christian sometimes worked, he’d heard—but the details were bound to be checked with Yoon So’s parents when they came home, and with Young Ha’s, whom he’d never met. He’d also heard that the severity of the deportation order and the amount of the fine depended on how long you’d been working, so he could say one month, but again, if that were found to be a lie, he might be dealt with mor
e harshly. So much rested on Mrs. Lee. Oh shit, what the fuck to do?
Acutely aware that his desire to fly out the window, powerful as it was, should not be mistaken for the ability to do so, Damien opened his mouth. “I have been teaching here”—he cleared his throat—“two months.” The actual figure was in fact closer to five, but he could always insist he had been misheard.
“Come with us now,” Cyborg-head ordered. Damien rose, with dignity, he hoped, though his legs were still shaking and he had to press both palms on the table for support. As soon as he was upright Young Ha dove for his knees, wrapping her arms around them and pressing her face into his thighs.
“No, Teacher, don’ go! I frightened, don’ go! I love you, Teacher, I love you!”
“I love you too, Sailor Young Ha,” he lied, trying to unclasp her fingers behind him with one hand, patting her head with the other. Where was this unswerving devotion when he wanted her to sit quietly and draw pictures of jungles?
The shorter officer took the girl by the shoulders and spoke to her in Korean. She released her grip, and burst into tears.
“Don’t cry, Young Ha,” he cajoled. “I come back soon.” He knew this was extremely unlikely, but better to let her think he had been arrested and murdered and bear a grudge against Korean officials forever; such dissent would do the country good.
“Goodbye, Yoon So. Tell your mother goodbye,” he said as the taller officer twisted his arms behind his back and clapped a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.
Yoon So was studiously erasing the pencil mark on her work. She didn’t look up.
Usually the elevator came right away and was empty. Today, because he was in handcuffs and sweat was streaming unchecked down his temples, it took ten minutes to arrive and was occupied by a respectable elderly couple.
Who knows, he thought, maybe they turned me in, and witnessing my abjection is part of their reward.
The officers were drilling their thumbs into his shoulders. In retaliation, he flipped his hair, hoping that his sweat would fling into the men’s eyes or spatter their shirts. But neither gave any indication of even having noticed.
Fuck, why had he lulled himself into believing the area was safe? All he’d ever done to protect himself was to occasionally vary his route to the building entrance—there were a laughable two to choose from—and to warn Yoon So’s mother that if anyone came to the door, not to answer it, or to say he was just a friend. She had giggled when he explained this plan, which he had chosen to interpret as meaning that she knew more than he did and the danger was minimal. Wrong; it actually meant she was a useless nincompoop: she hadn’t even briefed the ajumma not to open the door to strangers. Everyone knew that unless immigration officials had a warrant—which they never did on the first visit—it simply wasn’t necessary to let them set foot in the place.
Damien pressed his hands closer together so the cuffs would stop cutting into his wrists. The elevator juddered to a halt. He wanted to scream. Everything was fucked now, seriously, permanently fucked. It wasn’t like these guys would just fine him, let him renew his passport and kick him out of the country, no, he knew how this worked: you weren’t allowed to just leave. You were deported, which meant flying back to the UK, to a sea of nuclear radiation, to a big fat DING at passport control, a hairy-knuckled hand on the shoulder, a beige waiting room and an officer with an A4 file headed Damien Meadows.
The elevator disgorged him, his captors and the elderly voyeurs into the lobby. To compound his humiliation, Damien tripped as he passed the building manager, another likely stool-pigeon, who watched with an impassive air as the trio trooped by. With a brusque grip, Immigration Android steered Damien out into the parking lot, toward—not the anonymous gray Hyundai he had always imagined Immigration Officers sitting in, drinking from flasks and waiting for hapless foreigners to lope by—but a genuine regulation black-and-blue paddy wagon.
Every seam was reinforced with painted bolts. Metal grids covered the two small windows on the back doors. Shorty unlocked the back and Immigration Android roughly bundled him in. Five other foreigners turned anxious faces to greet him as the evening light briefly flooded the mobile prison cell.
“They won’t keep him,” Da Mi had said firmly. “When they pick people up they just register them on the computer and make them come back the following day with their papers. He’ll be out by seven-thirty at the absolute latest.”
But now it was gone nine, and Damien still hadn’t called. Looking up from the pair of jeans she was altering, Sydney glanced again at the clock.
The jeans were white hipsters, brand name nobody. She’d bought them from a stall at Tongdaemun Market, the all-night bargain-shopping district three miles wide and twenty stories high. Jin Sok had taken her, their first time out together since he’d ruined things with Jae Ho. He’d translated for her, and picked out the newest trends. You weren’t allowed to try anything on—how could you in the cramped aisles between the overflowing stalls?—but the salesgirl had deftly held the pair up to Sydney’s throat, wrapped the waist around her neck and assured her that they’d fit, and she’d been right. The only problem with the jeans was a long piece of red ribbon stitched on the inside of the waistband. It said nobody all the way around, the word printed over and over, upside-down—kinda cool, but the fabric strip irritated her skin. So she was unpicking it with a vengeance. At eleven minutes past nine, her MoPho rang. Damien at last.
“Yoboseyo,” she sang brightly, with just a hint of fake annoyance. Da Mi had said it would be good practice for her to use some acting skills. She would need them later, playing the Queen at the VirtuWorld banquets. They’d spent a whole session in the Chair preparing her for tonight’s little drama. She was still nervous—she hadn’t liked to tell Da Mi, but she’d got to like Damien lately. He was laid-back, kind and funny—and surprisingly into theme parks. In a way, it was a shame Da Mi couldn’t just make him the offer up front. Now that he and Sydney were getting on so well, he’d probably say yeah.
But Da Mi didn’t want to take any risks, and Sydney had to respect that. Also, this was her one chance to help Da Mi out, repay her for everything she’d done for her—and to help Damien out too, she reminded herself. Sure, being arrested couldn’t have been fun, but he was going to get a big wad of money out of the deal.
“Yo.Bo.Sa.Yo.” Damien’s voice was a grim staccato. “Sydney, sorry I stood you up, but I got picked up by Immigration today.”
“You’re shitting me!” That was a key line; she’d decided to use it, quite spontaneously, while she was in the Chair, and then Da Mi had programmed her unconscious to accept it as a trigger to genuine empathy. Now she’d said it, she wouldn’t have to worry about sounding fake.
“Wish I was.”
“Oh, Damien—what happened?”
“I was at my privates in Chamshil. They only burst into the playroom, handcuffed me and frog-marched me to a paddy-wagon. My wrists are killing me.”
“You’re hurt?” Sydney’s stomach contracted. She shifted in her chair. Perhaps the uncomfortable sensation in her guts was just part of feeling Damien’s pain.
“Yeah, well, apparently it’s a serious charge, offending the Korean economy.”
That was the old Damien poking through; she grinned in relief.
“I guess.” She pulled at one of the threads attaching the nobody strip to the jeans. “But what happened at the station?”
Damien sounded weary again. “They fingerprinted me and took mug-shots—then they came back to my place, confiscated my passport and downloaded my MoPho.”
“Downloaded your MoPho?”
“Contacts, phone-log, saved texts, the works. But don’t worry, if they phone you, just don’t answer. They’re really only interested in my employers.”
“Jeez, it sounds so scary. What’s going to happen next?”
“I have to go back in on Monday. Best-case scenario, they’ll fine me and deport me back to the UK.”
“Oh no—what are you going to
do?” Sydney cooed. As a friend, she just needed to support Damien through this moment of uncertainty, help him figure out a plan.
“I’ve got a Korean mate in Shinch’on. I’m going to see if he’s got any ideas.”
“You know,” Sydney said, pensively, as if the thought was just occurring to her, “Da Mi might be able to help you. I could phone her and see.”
“Da Mi? Oh yeah, right, your friend. Thanks, but I think it’s a bit late for me to be taking on new jobs.”
Sydney’s voice rose. Too much? “No, not that—she knows lots of people. I’ll call her tomorrow. Do you still want to meet up tonight?”
“I’m knackered, Sydney. I’ve just called all my contacts to warn them Immigration might get in touch. Now I have to go talk to Jake. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
They said goodbye and hung up. Sydney yanked the tail-end of the nobody strip off her jeans. She hadn’t expected that prickle of guilt while talking to Damien tonight, and she hadn’t been prepared for him canceling their date. She picked up the needle. Swiftly, her mind a white blank, she jabbed the tip into her palm, yelping as a hot bead of blood rose up on the mound below her thumb.
The brief stab of pain released the tension of the call. She sucked at the puncture wound, soothed by the taste of her own blood, and told herself not to be so stupid. Da Mi had said the conversation might be taxing; she had advised having a honey drink to hand. She had made one, but that had been ages ago and it had gone a bit cold. She reached for the cup anyway and took a sip. Maybe she was just upset because she would probably miss Damien when he left Korea—but hey, she could always fly out and meet him in Thailand or New Zealand later on; Da Mi hadn’t said they couldn’t be long-distance chums.
“Day, buddy—wassa matter?” Jake was behind the bar, a bottle of Red Stripe in his hand. He had twisted his straggly new goatee with hair wax and tied his dreads back with a strip of black silk: going for the kyopo Rasta Lucifer look. A hillbilly-goth-punk compilation CD was playing, swamping the nearly empty room with echoey voodoo guitars.
