Kapow!

(Let me preface that this isn't an entirely finished project - just a little activity. I quite like the idea already so I may extend it eventually. Enjoy)

"Appa! Where is the blue dress? It's not in my room."

"Yeonmi, you need to wear the dress they gave you. Come down and get it!"

The girl with a dark-brown bob trotted down wooden stairs into the arms of her father. Her face, burrowed into his chest, tilted to the side as she looked past his skinny side toward the table.

"Oi naengguk?" Yeonmi spat onto his liver-spotted cheeks. He grinned, using the remaining muscles left in his chubby face. Her father's jaw shut with a crunch, and she pulled the plastic chair from the corner of the room.

"Eat up, little one. You don't want to be hungry while you dance in the festival. I'll be there to watch, don't worry...I promise I will this time," He said to his daughter. She sloshed the cucumber soup in her mouth, making faces at her father and the paintings of Kim Jong Un and Il on the wall. They didn't make a face back.

"La...lalolali...baba..." The squeaky voice of Yeonmi Park rang in her father's head. Her dress, the pretty purple kind you'd find at a thrift store, hung loose on her body. Yeonmi's father couldn't afford to care about what she wore on her body. As her father pushed the gate open for little Yeonmi, the teachers separated the two before he could say goodbye. Pyongyang rarely felt lively, but on Children's Day, anything had life of some sort. Tress of poorly pruned branches whistled in hot wind, and the whine of Yeonmi's classmates turned into laughter – about what was no question.

"Anasayo! Help me chain these paper flags, quick, Yeonmi!" Another girl with skinny hands cried from the other side of the classroom. On the large table in the middle of the room, boys with small, shaved heads put together plastic rifles, instructed by Yeonmi's teacher, who flashed teeth like shards of grass. She manoeuvred between arms as skinny as her father's and pasted the flags on the arch of the door. Outside, that's where the real festival was taking place. Hundreds of the skinny-fingered workers pranced, some barefoot, on the asphalt and rubble beyond main classrooms. The rifles arrived, and the costumes were carried, delegated to the strongest, most proud children; Yeonmi and her friend among them.

"Be quiet! You put on the sleeves before the torso, and Yeonmi, get back in line!" A red-faced teacher spat onto Yeonmi's porcelain cheeks. Now, the girls and the boys were separated, ready to open the big red curtain to the crowd of crying mothers. Children's day was once a year, only celebrated in some schools, and for government officials to watch their own children represent the family name, it was an honour.

Kapow! Boys with biceps just larger than their forearms burst through the door with their hearts on their sleeves. The infamous white star splashed on rosy red cheeks melted in the Korean summer. The girls followed in plain dresses of blue, red and yellow, too big for anyone in the school gates, including the teachers. Yeonmi, in the middle of the group, didn't care about the music; her performance came from the heart on the sleeve whenever her face was star-spangled and pointed towards the crowd. La...lalolali...baba, rang in her head.

"Like this...no, push your hands higher," Yeonmi's teacher mouthed, standing upright against the school gate, swaying her fists softly.

Every girl straightened their bony backs from then on – anything for the vicarious voice of the Kim Regime.

"Yeonmi! Yeonmi! Hey, come here, the American wants to speak to a child, and nobody else is left..." The little teacher whispered to the even littler girl. Behind her, a group of blond and brown-haired men, much taller than anybody Yeonmi had ever seen in Korea, winced down at the bob on her shoulders. Their flashy shoes and short-back-and sides stepped closer, and their faces with pores like craters crouched to her level.

"Hey, what's your name, little one?" The man without a machine pointed towards Yeonmi spoke.

"Y-Yeonmi. That's my name," Yeonmi replied, assured in her answer.

Yeonmi's grass-shard teacher stood close, making sure she said the right answer.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" He continued. There are those shiny stump teeth, pure of impurity.

"I want to become a journalist, so I can show the world how amazing our leader is. He even came to my house on-," Her mouth spoke as a young boy ran around the camera crew with a toy gun.

Kapow!

The man propped up from Yeonmi's height and winked at his camera-man who grinned back.

"Keep rolling...keep that frame, just a second," He mumbled under his breath in a harsh American accent to his colleague. The boy frolicking behind Yeonmi began making noises as he lifted his rifle up to Yeonmi's forehead.

Kapow!