But even among all this confusion, the guilt I felt over the bun didn’t go away. At least not until that evening, when stomach-ache hit me, my body not used to the richness I’d given it, and I passed my share of thin noodle soup to my grandparents. My guilt then, to some degree, was assuaged.
I lay on my bed mat on that long winter night, watching the flames of the fire die, the embers fade and turn to black, and I felt the gradual leaking of cold from around the window frame and under the bottom of the door, felt it like ice forming across my face and cracking my lips, and I thought of Sook. I thought about meeting him, being with him, his face, his smile, his company.
He had given me a spark of light in my life of dark.
Yet his mother was the new Inminbanjang, and I did know what that meant, even though I had pretended not to, had suspected it as soon as Sook told me where he lived. She was the new head of our local neighbourhood group – a spy for our government.
Every few weeks she would have to report to an agent from the Ministry of Public Security. Inform on people who hadn’t worked hard enough, or had said something against our Dear Leader, or failed to wear the badge with His face on over their hearts, or let dust gather on His picture. An endless list.
Other people would work for her too, all reporting back to her, even if only gossip; they had to say something. Some of those reported would be sent to re-education lessons, some to prison, some executed in the fields. I had never known anyone accused to then be found innocent.
It hung over us as we tried to live, shaping everything said and everything done, not because of guilt – we had none, we were good citizens, working hard, doing our duty – but because of the power these people held. Even the most patriotic, the most innocent and best behaved and hardest working could be accused and found guilty of anything, if someone wanted it enough.
“Is anyone incorruptible?” my grandfather used to say to me as a warning. “If they’re hungry enough, or sad enough? Or need money to try to buy medicine?”
Or if they want to keep someone away from their son? I wondered.
I didn’t think for one moment, though, that the idea of a government spy was the truth my mother was trying to hide from me. There was something more going on in my home that I was not deemed old enough, or sensible enough, or trustworthy enough to be allowed to know.
But as I lay there in the cold, my thoughts again strayed back to Sook, and as my eyes grew heavy with the image of him, a warmth spread through me, sending me to sleep with a smile on my face for the first time I could remember.
Yet not for one moment did I think I was being naive.
As I walked alongside the fields the next day, my feet stumbling across the frozen earth, heading for the trees on higher ground to look for firewood, I saw a boy moving towards me, his frame slightly bigger than most, his walk slightly faster, his arms swinging, his legs marching.
So obvious he wasn’t like the rest of us. Not as hungry, or as weak, or as worn down by tiredness.
My stomach lurched and I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks and my mouth go dry. I looked up to him, and down again, away to the distance, and back to him just as he looked at me. Our paces slowed as we approached, staring at each other. And we stopped.
“Tonight?” I whispered.
“I thought you didn’t…”
I shrugged.
“All right.” He nodded. “After dark. When everyone’s asleep?”
I stared at him, so nervous, so excited.
“Where? On the corner near your house?”
“No,” I replied.
He nodded. “No, you’re right. At the end of the path then, where it splits in two. Next to the tree?”
I knew where he meant; it was quiet and secluded, away from any houses. I agreed before I could change my mind, and I walked away with a smile in my eyes. I wanted to be with him, spend time with him, find out about him. I knew how dangerous it was, but I didn’t listen to that voice in my head questioning why I was doing it, when I’d already turned him down, when it could cause so much trouble if anyone found out, when we could not possibly have any future, the two of us, in this society.
My mother asked me if I was ill that evening, my grandmother said I was quiet, my father mentioned that I looked preoccupied. After each I replied I was fine, a bit tired, a little hungry. My grandfather, though, I caught watching me every now and then – across the table as we ate our maize, as I looked back from watching the sun setting through the window, or when I was pulling out the bed mats and unfolding the blankets. But he didn’t say a word.
Darkness came early in wintertime, and the nights were long and cold. We would be sleeping by seven thirty, keeping warm under blankets and duvets rather than using firewood and fuel so precious to us.
I waited that first night, and waited, for what felt like hours, lying under my covers, trying to stay awake while tiredness consumed me and sleep pulled at my eyelids. I listened to Father’s breathing turn slow, turn heavy, turn to snores, and I whispered Mother’s name, watching her shadow in the darkness to see if she turned towards me, or lifted her head, or muttered a reply. But she didn’t.
They were asleep. Yet I lay there still, a bit longer, waiting for something, I didn’t know what. Maybe for my nerves to subside, or to talk myself out of it, for my indecision to go, or to find the courage to pull away those blankets and step out into the cold.
This wasn’t the kind of thing I did. I was a good girl. I worked hard at school and on the fields, I obeyed my parents, I respected them. I had no secrets and told no lies. I was straightforward and honest. My life was uncomplicated.
But this? This thing presenting itself to me, this made my chest hot and my breath short and my skin prickle. This made me feel excited, alive.
I stretched my legs out from the warmth of the blankets and into the cold air, and I rolled my body out on to the floor without making a sound. Quickly and quietly I pulled on my clothes, and with my eyes peeled, trying to make sense of the gloom in front of me, I bulked the blankets up on the bed, hoping that if Mother or Father should wake, they’d presume it was me.
The wind bit at me as I walked to meet him, the skin on my face tightening and the air freezing inside my lungs. There was no electricity in the village for lights, and that night only a sliver of moon lit the sky, jumping for ever in and out of clouds, plunging me one moment into blackness complete and engulfing, the next allowing me the tiniest piece of glistening light to try and find my way.
And so I moved carefully, shuffling at first, then stepping, then striding; walking by memory with the crunching of gravel or the softness of mud under my feet, the touch to my fingers of a farm building made of wood to my right, a bush with nothing but spiky branches to my left.
I approached with footfalls silent on grass, and my breathing slow and controlled and even. When I could sense he was there I stopped, closed my eyes, hearing the whistle of his breath and the steady scratching of one nervous fingernail on another.
I could turn round and go. Head back home and he would never know, I thought. He would never say anything and it would be forgotten. My life would carry on steady and simple. And boring.
I opened my eyes and took those final steps towards him. “Sook,” I whispered, and I heard his breathing change and could imagine a smile reaching across his face.
“Yoora,”