North - South

Only at that moment

"You can do it, Se-ri. You can do it. And if you won't do it, then ok, at least you tried." Se-ri kept encouraging herself while moving the first, tentative steps off Jeong Hyeok's building. All her belongings were in the tote bag – God bless tote bags and minimalism -, the trolley would have drawn attention. Enjoy my Rinowa, Ri Jeong Hyeok ssi, take it as a goodbye gift. It would have cost her, to buy a new one, but still.

Maybe it was stupid. It surely was. Yet that was the only peace offer he'd been able to think of. He took the small object from the vendor and with a bigger, hot bag in the other hand, Jeong Hyeok started walking home.

The apartment was dark and quiet. All the lights off, and not the shred of a sound, he said to himself that she had to be in her room. And a sigh evaded off his lips, the heart growing heavy. It was his fault.

Though when he reached her room, ready to apologise, all he found was an empty, neat space. No trace of her belongings, and the blanket was rolled on the bed, like ready to be put away. 

On top of it was a yellow note.

"Thank you for what you've done for me. I don't want to cause you any more trouble. I will find my way to get out of here alive on my own. YSR."

The red handkerchief around their necks told to Se-ri that the two boys who were walking on her opposite walkway, heading in her direction, were members of that sort of paranoid guard corps that stopped the people on the street telling them that their hair was too long or their clothes were too short. She remembered them, weird Jeong Hyeok had been a member too. And she remembered the day when, scolded because of her skirt, she had replied to him to mind his business and his citizens, their rules not applying to the strangers.

Weird situation: her skirt was perfect now – mostly because she was wearing trousers –, though she couldn't protect herself by saying that she was a stranger. Strangers were forbidden to go out of their hotel rooms. Nor pretending to be Korean was an option. And not just because of her accent, yet because she wasn't wearing a pin. Damn.

A dark, narrow alley tempted her sight. Without thinking too much, Se-ri rapidly sneaked into it, starting walking as fast as she could. Another alley, and then another, and a fourth one, turning, turning, turning, her feet like flying, all her synapsis focused on staying away from the main streets where they could have seen her.

Until she realized that everything around her was dark. Too dark. Getting oriented in Pyongyang had always been easy, one only needed to find the Juche Tower to know where downtown was. Yet the modernity had to have reached the old North Korea too, because all she could see now were glass buildings and more glass buildings; tall buildings, and no trace of the ones she was used to. The tower, the Koryo, the Ryugyong Hotel, nothing.

"Focus, Se-ri" the woman tried to gather herself while the idea of her situation – illegal alien, lost in the dark, she couldn't say what was worst – was already freezing her legs.

"Focus, Se-ri," she repeated, stubborn. Inside her head, current images and past memories blending like in a circular, self-fueling nightmare which threatened to overtake, overwhelm the reality deleting what was around her, replacing it with other images. Imaginary, yet more vivid and real than the reality itself.

One... two... three... sounds of the wood, or maybe it was the street. Wild beasts, or maybe someone coming to take her.