North - South

Friends

Warning: financial abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse.

Pyongyang, February

"Do you know her?"

"Oh?" Mu Hyeok was fighting with a book, in the middle of the bunch of students who crowded the main entrance of the Pyongyang University on that day of reopening after the winter holidays; the class of advanced political geography would have started before he would have been able to take it from his backpack, he was sure. "Who?"

"The girl you just said hi to in front of the high school," Cho Cheol Kang clarified, "do you know her? It's not the first time I see you doing it."

"Ah, that girl?" His back automatically stiffened at the idea that Kang could have put his eyes on Yoon Se-ri, "she's the younger daughter of my parents' friends, we met for some event." 

"Her brothers told me she's a pain in the ass."

"The fact that they talk like this about their sister says more about them than about her."

"As you please, but I have the sensation that they're right."

He had visited their place a couple of times due to some "business" with the Yoons, and that stupid brat with those sticks-skinny legs... she really had seemed hateful. But the truth was that they all were. Damn privileged idiots. One day they would have all been at his service, Mu Hyeok included.

"How do you know it?"

"Do you really have to ask?" Kang cast him a pity look before disappearing into the crowd.

It was enough for Mu Hyeok. Usually reflective to a fault, on that morning he had the confirmation that Kang was rather someone he had to do something soon about. "May we have a word?" He asked him as soon as the bell marked the lunchtime, placing a hand on his friend's – but can he still call him friend? – arm.

"'Course."

"Not here, the courtyard."

Again, Kang looked at him as if he was pathetic. As if he had lost yet. Again, it caused his back to automatically stiffen.

"Dong-mu, you're going too far." It wasn't just for what he had told him that morning. On the night before, during the party, Jeong Hyeok's friends were smoking again. And in truth it wasn't just because of it too; everything was becoming too much. 

Too big, too far, too dangerous. Kang was growing ruthless. They were the eldest among the university students of the Youth League. They had a role, a position, duties, damn!

Kang gave him a hard look. It was the first time for him to lose the friendly façade he had still bothered to keep till that moment.

"I can promise one thing to you. I, Cho Cheol Kang, will always be inflexible. No matter with who."

"Se-ri," Myeong-sung fondly placed a hand on her friend's arm, "you're limping, why don't you call home and ask for someone to come and take you?"

"It's ok, the driver is at the corner of the street, thank you."

Se-ri waited for her friend to be conveniently far before starting walking, direction home. She could have taken the bus, though on that morning she had gotten distracted for one minute and the money for the bus had disappeared from the pocket of her coat. There still was her reserve, of course, but she judged it better to not waste money on something as silly as a bus ticket when she could perfectly walk and also get some exercise.