This Burns My Heart Page 0,9
if something happens to you?”
“Well, it’s not like my life is even worth that much,” he said ruefully. Min lowered his head heavily and stared at the bleacher below him, tracking its cold silver contours with his fingers. “Although, if you gave me a date, that’d give me a reason to stay here…”
Soo-Ja gave him a sideways glance. “I’ll think of you while you’re gone.”
“Well, that’s a beginning.” He got up excitedly and pretended to hug her. “And maybe if I do something impressive, you’ll marry me.”
“It would have to be very impressive,” she said, joking along, amused that he really had no clue that she’d been putting on an act.
You’re clearly in love with me. Would it be fair to you, though, if I married you? And used you to get me out of my father’s house, and on my way to Seoul? You, who seem to have no career prospects, would you let me earn money for us as a diplomat? You, who seem to flounder and meander, would you have any choice but to let me make decisions?
Min noticed the instructor making his way back to the court outside, gathering the men one last time before dismissing them. “I have to run back. What did you come here to talk about?”
“Nothing. I just came to see you,” said Soo-Ja, hoping to sound convincing.
As she walked away from the gym, leaving behind the voices of the men chanting, Soo-Ja wondered which one was Min’s. And the thought struck her then—she didn’t really know anything about the man she was planning to spend the rest of her life with.
My dear Soo-Ja,
My first week as a revolutionary fighter—how do you like the sound of that?—is over, and while the other students are upstairs on the rooftop, exchanging oaths of loyalty, I write here in the basement, with a bottle of makgeolli by my side.
What a long week it has been! We have gone on several protests already, and each of them is a miracle of logistical planning and precision. Have you ever yelled the same words loudly with a group of a thousand people? Try it sometime; it sends quite a burst of oxygen to the brain. I have never felt so connected to people I feel such disdain for. When we demonstrate, the police stand at a barricade, blocking our way, and there’s always a tense moment when neither party knows whose turn it is to push forward. The trick is to have both strong lungs and legs; I’ve been hit more times now than I can count, but luckily always manage to get away.
It’s hard not to come back for the next protest, however. The feeling is quite addictive. Afterward we go to secret meeting places. Yesterday we met at a political science professor’s house for drinks. This is, of course, the part that keeps me here. The others begin a long litany of criticisms of the regime. I pay lip service to all that, waiting for the bottle of soju to make its way back to me. I have to say I’m a bit of an outcast here. The others do not entirely trust me.
At times, I feel silly holding up some of the placards. They have such poetry as “Down with Fraudulent Elections!” and “Can Freedom Gained Through Blood Be Taken Away by Bayonets?” The other students have rejected some of my ideas for chants, as well as my suggestion that we simply wait for the President to die of old age. He is, after all, 85 years old. I cannot imagine he’ll live that long. If we’ve waited millenniums for democracy—as ours is such an old nation—I figure we can wait another year or two.
Sometimes I wish to tell my friends here about you, but I fear they would not believe me. I think of your beautiful, silky long hair. Your porcelain complexion. Your high cheekbones. Your big, pendant-shaped eyes. Your long-bridged nose. Your gorgeous smile, warm and wicked all at once. Your face, shaped like those mysterious stone statues on the ground in Cheju Island. We do not know how they came to be there, or who carved them, but we can wonder, and I wonder, at you.
Perhaps if you sent me a picture I could prove to everyone here that you are real—and prove to myself, too, that you weren’t just something I invented in my head. May your days be good, and they must be, if they’re filled with half the hope