North - South

The Ri brothers

Pyongyang, Spring

"Ya!"

Se-ri ran to stop the four childrens who, cowards, were bullying a single and tinier one. "Ishhh, what do you punks are doing?"

They disappeared before she could end the question. Again: cowards, ishhh.

"Here, let me check you," the girl bent to help the child getting up, and patted on his uniform to remove the street dust with small pats. "Don't let them do this to you. Those who punches don't know how much it hurt. Only those who get punched know. Next time punch them for first."

"You did it?"

"Oh."

"And what happened then?"

"They stopped bothering me." They hadn't, yet maybe the child would have been luckier.

It was a late afternoon of a random Thursday, and Se-ri was finding herself roving aimlessly around the city due to a series of unfortunate circumstances.

On Thursday her mom's new friend came home for their bridge, she has forgotten it until it had been too late to self-invite at Myeong-sung's place – nor she couldn't stay at hers, all the ahjummas would have complimented and questioned her, her mom didn't like it -, the library only was open for the locals, and in the bar where she had stopped to study and wasted part of her precious reserve, after two hours, they had started looking at her with the "are you minding to order something else or do you think you can occupy a table for hours with just a coffee?" face. Plus, it was getting dark to go to the park.

As a consequence of it, Se-ri was conceding herself her first real tour of downtown Pyongyang.

The city offered more shops than what she was initially expecting. Most of them didn't allow strangers, so she only could watch the windows, but it was ok like that. It wasn't as if she was minding buying something, anyway.

Her attention was caught by a sort of thrift store. Or maybe it was a pawn shop. She couldn't say, it was the first time for the girl to see something like that. On the windows were exposed what clearly were the best pieces of the shop, and it surprised her, how many international luxury items were alternating with jewels and other products which had to be surely local. It wasn't as if it happened every day, to see a coat, a Chopard watch, a leather belt and an engagement ring, all in the same window.

As enraptured as she was in studying the window, it took her some seconds before registering the presence of someone else who had stopped at the same spot, and move to a side to give the man some space.

"Yoon Se-ri."

"Oh? Ri Jeong Hyeok. Sorry, I haven't seen you." Damn, now he would have surely thought that she had just pretended to not see him. Well, who cared? After that night at his parents' place, they were pretending they didn't hate each other, but just pretending. The mutual feelings hadn't really changed. It was more like a non-aggression pact. "What are you doing here?" She asked before he could ask to her.

"Looking for a gift. My brother."

"Ah." Everybody at school were talking about the Tchaikovsky prize that Ri Jeong Hyeok had just won – of course, she had pretended to not know it, complimenting with weird Jeong Hyeok? No way -, was he maybe buying a gift to Mu Hyeok with the money of the prize? The idea moved something inside the girl.

"Do you already have an idea? Otherwise, I'm an ace when it comes to shopping," she said trying to sound sophisticated – and succeeding in this – and detached – this time less successfully, since the boy thought that she was just looking for the nth occasion to tell him something harsh.