Chasing Liberty // Countryhumans North Korea fanfiction

Sacrifice, Sometimes

1940

      North couldn’t bear the baffled, accusatory eyes on him, but he didn’t turn away, staring his provinces down on the crag high on the slopes of Paektusan.

    “So, what?” North Chuncheong said after a moment, the confusion clear in his voice. “We’re just… leaving her?”

     “We have no other option,” North replied heavily.

    Kim Hye-sun had been captured, taken by Nozoe Shotoku, the head of the Japanese Imperial Army’s ‘Tiger-Hunting Detachment,’ that squad formed specifically for hunting North and his General. This time, he and his hunters hadn’t caught a Tiger. But they had caught one of their comrades, and intended on using her as bait.

     Something that could not happen.

    “Screw that!” South Pyongan cried furiously. “Of course we have another option! We hunt them down, kill them, and take her back!”

    “We simply don’t have the manpower for that right now,” Hwang pointed out before North could. “With this latest hunt, the few thousand we have left are far too scattered. And after the incident with Comrade Yang Jingyu…”

    “Since when has lacking manpower ever stopped us?” the Pyongan demanded.

    North Chungcheong nodded vigorously. “And we can’t lose another comrade, especially not after Comrade Yang Jingyu.”

    “They’ll be expecting us,” Kangwon said, chewing on his nail. “We’d lose a lot of people. And w-we don’t have the medical supplies left to treat the ones that survive, either.”

     “We still have to try!”

     The provinces fell to bickering, talking over each other in fear, anger, and concern. North girded himself, moving to cut them off before their voices could float down to the soldiers below.

     “Enough,” he ordered, his voice slicing through their chatter like a blade, quieting them. “The decision has been made.”

    “But-“

    “Do you think I enjoy deciding this?” he demanded, cutting South Pyongan off. “I don’t want to leave her in the hands of those monsters any more than you do.” He took a breath, trying to stifle the fury in his own voice. “But we have to. We can’t trade a general for a foot soldier.”

    Because that was what the enemy wanted. For the General- either of them- to trade himself for Kim Hye-sun. And they thought that Kim Il-sung, at least, would. They were under the impression that the revolutionary woman was his wife, when she was really just a close comrade, like Yang Jingyu had been. That distinction would not have mattered to him- he had risked his life for enough of their comrades, after all.

     But not like this. Not when the only outcome was the loss of an important commander at such a decisive time in their war. When they had been being relentlessly hunted through both Korea and China, when their numbers were being wiped out, when they had been forced to abandon several of their secret camps, and already lost so many other leaders in their army.

    Kim Il-sung could not trade a valuable asset for anyone, even if Kim Hye-sun had been his wife.

     And neither could North.

    “They want us to come to them,” he explained heavily to South Pyongan. “They are ready, and they will kill our soldiers. We can’t risk the lives of hundreds for the life of one.”

    “Then we don’t risk them,” Chungbuk cut in, stepping closer. “We just send us. We can take the bastards ourselves.”

      North Hamgyong snorted at that. “If you want to take on almost thirty thousand Japs on your own, go ahead. I’m not getting dragged back to Japan today.”