This Burns My Heart Page 0,17
He chanted with enormous conviction, and part of Soo-Ja felt self-conscious, watching him. It reminded her of being in church, in the middle of a group prayer, and opening her eyes before the others did. It seemed terribly intimate, to see the parishioners like that, with their lips still moving. Here was Yul, too, unaware of Soo-Ja’s gaze lingering over him.
Soo-Ja wondered if he sensed the same thing she did—that in spite of their momentary closeness, they would probably never see each other again after that night. There were boys being killed, and generals authorizing massacres, but all she wanted was to grab Yul’s hand and have him turn around and look at her. Would the night, with all that still had to happen, stop for her?
By the time they reached city hall, there were more than a thousand people behind them. Up on the steps of the building, rows of policemen wearing helmets and body armor stood with their rifles pointed at the protestors. Behind them, soldiers stood guard with their own guns. With their outlines traced faintly by the light of the lampposts behind them, they looked like perfectly still marble statues—an impenetrable line surrounding the entire perimeter of the building.
“Join us,” said Yul, speaking to them as if they were all brothers. “Be on our side. We have room for you. This is a cause worth dying for, but it’s not worth killing for. Drop your guns. This march is for everyone, including you.”
The police officers pointed their guns at Yul, who started walking up the steps toward them.
He smiled, shaking his head, as if bewildered that they were at this standstill, when they could be playing hato cards together in a bar. Soo-Ja’s heart began to beat faster. She wanted him to turn around and come back. But instead she saw him emerge farther and farther into the light, his body drawn like a magnet to the steel and metal of the rifles.
“You are our friends. You want the same things we do. You want freedom and democracy. This boy—he could’ve been your brother. Your son.”
Most of the officers looked impervious to his words, though one or two of them—the youngest-looking ones, the ones in closest proximity to Yul—seemed to waver, and Soo-Ja could see how hard they were trying not to look at Yul, not let him inside their bodies. His words had already shaken some of their conviction.
But then, a sudden yell came from the crowd. Soo-Ja could not make out the words, until others joined in the chant, and it became clear they were screaming, “Killers! Killers, all of them!” Yul turned and tried to stop the shouting, but the crowd had suddenly taken on a life of its own. In a matter of seconds, the men and women grew bold and powerful, like the ravenous foxes of folk tales, unaware that they were ravenous for the entrails of their own brothers and sisters. Soo-Ja had never seen such force descend upon a crowd before, and she began to fear it.
“You killed an innocent boy! You spilled the blood of our children!” they shouted.
Yul started shaking his head at them, waving his arms in front of him for them to stop.
The officers pointed their guns in the direction of the voices, and Soo-Ja saw what sounded like an order coming from the lips of one of the officers. Amid the chaos, she could not tell whose mouths the yelling was coming from, and she knew the officers could not, either. In a matter of seconds, Soo-Ja watched as the officers pointed into the night and looked about to pull their triggers. Yul signaled to her a fraction of a second before the officers started firing, and Soo-Ja fell to the ground at the same time he did, pulling Chu-Sook’s mother down with her. The three of them hit the ground as the rain of bullets flew around them.
Soo-Ja looked up in shock to see the bodies of the other protestors being shot. Seconds before, they had been alive, standing next to her, chanting in unison.
The police were firing indiscriminately at them, and they crumpled down, lifeless, arms and hands waving in the air one last time before coming to rest. Men, women, students—some of them with their backs turned away, trying to run—paralyzed by bullets, pools of blood gushing from their mouths. Soo-Ja remained on the ground, almost being trampled, as people around her tried to flee.
The sound of loud screaming pierced the