that the idea of a government spy was the truth my mother was trying to hide from me. There was something more going on in my home that I was not deemed old enough, or sensible enough, or trustworthy enough to be allowed to know.
But as I lay there in the cold, my thoughts again strayed back to Sook, and as my eyes grew heavy with the image of him, a warmth spread through me, sending me to sleep with a smile on my face for the first time I could remember.
Yet not for one moment did I think I was being naive.
As I walked alongside the fields the next day, my feet stumbling across the frozen earth, heading for the trees on higher ground to look for firewood, I saw a boy moving towards me, his frame slightly bigger than most, his walk slightly faster, his arms swinging, his legs marching.
So obvious he wasn’t like the rest of us. Not as hungry, or as weak, or as worn down by tiredness.
My stomach lurched and I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks and my mouth go dry. I looked up to him, and down again, away to the distance, and back to him just as he looked at me. Our paces slowed as we approached, staring at each other. And we stopped.
“Tonight?” I whispered.
“I thought you didn’t…”
I shrugged.
“All right.” He nodded. “After dark. When everyone’s asleep?”
I stared at him, so nervous, so excited.
“Where? On the corner near your house?”
“No,” I replied.
He nodded. “No, you’re right. At the end of the path then, where it splits in two. Next to the tree?”
I knew where he meant; it was quiet and secluded, away from any houses. I agreed before I could change my mind, and I walked away with a smile in my eyes. I wanted to be with him, spend time with him, find out about him. I knew how dangerous it was, but I didn’t listen to that voice in my head questioning why I was doing it, when I’d already turned him down, when it could cause so much trouble if anyone found out, when we could not possibly have any future, the two of us, in this society.
My mother asked me if I was ill that evening, my grandmother said I was quiet, my father mentioned that I looked preoccupied. After each I replied I was fine, a bit tired, a little hungry. My grandfather, though, I caught watching me every now and then – across the table as we ate our maize, as I looked back from watching the sun setting through the window, or when I was pulling out the bed mats and unfolding the blankets. But he didn’t say a word.
Darkness came early in wintertime, and the nights were long and cold. We would be sleeping by seven thirty, keeping warm under blankets and duvets rather than using firewood and fuel so precious to us.
I waited that first night, and waited, for what felt like hours, lying under my covers, trying to stay awake while tiredness consumed me and sleep pulled at my eyelids. I listened to Father’s breathing turn slow, turn heavy, turn to snores, and I whispered Mother’s name, watching her shadow in the darkness to see if she turned towards me, or lifted her head, or muttered a reply. But she didn’t.
They were asleep. Yet I lay there still, a bit longer, waiting for something, I didn’t know what. Maybe for my nerves to subside, or to talk myself out of it, for my indecision to go, or to find the courage to pull away those blankets and step out into the cold.
This wasn’t the kind of thing I did. I was a good girl. I worked hard at school and on the fields, I obeyed my parents, I respected them. I had no secrets and told no lies. I was straightforward and honest. My life was uncomplicated.
But this? This thing presenting itself to me, this made my chest hot and my breath short and my skin prickle. This made me feel excited, alive.
I stretched my legs out from the warmth of the blankets and into the cold air, and I rolled my body out on to the floor without making a sound. Quickly and quietly I pulled on my clothes, and with my eyes peeled, trying to make sense of the gloom in front of me, I bulked the blankets up on the bed, hoping that if Mother or Father should wake, they’d presume it was me.
The wind bit at me as I walked to meet him, the skin on my face tightening and the air freezing inside my lungs. There was no electricity in the village for lights, and that night only a sliver of moon lit the sky, jumping for ever in and out of clouds, plunging me one moment into blackness complete and engulfing, the next allowing me the tiniest piece of glistening light to try and find my way.
And so I moved carefully, shuffling at first, then stepping, then striding; walking by memory with the crunching of gravel or the softness of mud under my feet, the touch to my fingers of a farm building made of wood to my right, a bush with nothing but spiky branches to my left.
I approached with footfalls silent on grass, and my breathing slow and controlled and even. When I could sense he was there I stopped, closed my eyes, hearing the whistle of his breath and the steady scratching of one nervous fingernail on another.
I could turn round and go. Head back home and he would never know, I thought. He would never say anything and it would be forgotten. My life would carry on steady and simple. And boring.
I opened my eyes and took those final steps towards him. “Sook,” I whispered, and I heard his breathing change and could imagine a smile reaching across his face.
“Yoora,” he replied.
For a moment we just stood, and I didn’t know what to say or do, and I didn’t know what I expected him to say or do either. My clothes were thin and the air was freezing and my knees and legs shook and my teeth chattered, though I was certain it wasn’t just because of the cold.
“Here,” he whispered, and I felt him wrap a blanket round me.
“W… what about you?” I stammered.
“My clothes are warmer,” he replied, and as he stood in front of me, pulling the blanket round my body and up under my chin, I could feel the warmth coming from him, and I could smell him close to me and on the blanket. I looked up at his face as the moon came out from behind a cloud again, catching its light flitting across his skin and showing the outline of his smile. My stomach tipped. I was so close to him, and his hands as they pulled the blanket were nearly touching me.
My life was so routine, so predictable and uneventful and monotonous. Excitement was our Dear Leader’s birthday, or the birthday of His father before Him, our Eternal President, Kim Il Sung. When we were allowed a day off school or work to lay a red flower at the feet of their statues and sing their praises.
Dread was a test at school, checking you could recite the details of our Eternal President’s life, where He was born, studied, the battles He fought in, the never-ending list of His achievements. And those of our Dear Leader. Knowing the punishment was at least the cane or a punch.
Fear was everybody else. Watching you, forming opinions of you, lying about you with words that could kill.
This? This was something else entirely. This was… exhilarating… thrilling. I felt awake. I felt alive.
