Rehired
The uniform fit me so well it was unsettling. The color was a suitably deep navy—not quite as dark as the clothes I had worn before. There were epaulettes too, though mercifully none of that gaudy design with tassels. What unsettled me was the fact that whoever had procured this outfit had tailored it so precisely without ever once measuring my body. The actual feel of wearing it, I had to admit, was genuinely not bad.
Once I'd set the flat-topped service cap on my head, I felt—just a little—a genuine thrill of having become a police officer of a newborn nation. The name tag read "Jayanghwa," but instinctively I read it once again as Ajisai.
Ajisai. Ajisai Mizuko.
Even if I read it as Jayanghwa to deceive the people around me—or myself—the name was still Ajisai. The voice calling to me from outside the window proved it well enough.
"Mizuko-unni~ isn't it done yet? I'm dying to go inside and see it!"
"You may come in."
I opened the door of the house and let Hui-yeong back in. She evidently had some sense of decorum after all; when I had firmly refused earlier, she hadn't tried to sneak peeks inside. Now she stepped into the room, swept her eyes over me from head to toe, and clapped her hands together with a snap.
"Beautiful! Far more than I imagined! Ah, I suppose it's true that imagination can't keep up with reality. Even as I was knitting this stitch by stitch, I was picturing you in it…"
"Stitch by stitch?"
"Hm? What did I just say?"
"You're telling me you didn't just commission this with my measurements—you made it yourself?"
"Um… ah…"
Hui-yeong's eyebrows twitched. Her eyes, usually so deep and shadowed, wavered with flusterment in a way that was, frankly, rather endearing.
"Er… does that creep you out?"
"That's not the kind of thing you should apologize for. I'm simply surprised by your skill."
"I had occasion to sew some military uniforms back in Japan. 'Some' is understating it—loads of them. Plenty of practice, I suppose. Even so, this was my first time making one from scratch. Originally I meant to get hold of a uniform the Japanese police had used and just dye it a new color. But that hardly seemed right for something I was giving to you…"
"There's nothing strange mixed into the fabric or materials, is there?"
It wasn't food, so I didn't think there would be, but I asked just to be sure. Hui-yeong gave a wry smile and nodded.
"This is clothing for an investigator-captain of the Police Bureau. I wouldn't do anything strange. It's just—it was a bit embarrassing to admit I'd made it by hand. Anyway, I hope you like it."
Wasn't her sense of embarrassment a little warped? Still, pointing out every last oddity of a person who already looked strange enough would have grown tiresome. I smoothed the wrinkles from my sleeve, straightened myself, and nodded with a smile.
"Thank you. I like it. I played a few mischievous tricks on you today, but I won't speak ill of a gift you clearly put effort into."
"What a relief… Honestly, I was afraid you'd balk at the idea of an amateur making it."
Seeing her so uncharacteristically sheepish softened my heart a little further. Appearance really is a remarkable thing. A woman who had committed one outrageous act after another—acts that should have made me recoil in disgust—somehow looked cute when she grew embarrassed over something I hadn't anticipated.
Perhaps it wasn't only her appearance. Given that she had spent two years in Japan, and given her testimony of having gone as far as the battlefields of China, she might be a somewhat unusual person—but she didn't strike me as *merely* an odd one. A young woman young enough to call me "unni," whose abilities had been recognized by the Rhee Syngman cabinet... no, by the Lyuh Woon-hyung cabinet, and who was trusted by Kim Hong-il, would hardly be a simple public menace.
And the fact that someone who was not such a simple menace displayed that strange charm without hiding it, and showed active interest in me… I found an interest I didn't want to cast aside. In a situation that might be dangerous—where it might honestly be better to simply flee to Japan—I had accepted the clothes she offered because my eyes were drawn, against my own will, to those eyes of hers and her unfathomable humanity.
And then there was the bridge of her nose, which had bled twice in two days without bending in the slightest. Personally, when it came to a woman's face, I rather liked a sharp nose.
"Ah, and Unni—the gift I'm about to give you isn't something I made myself."
Saying this, Hui-yeong drew a German-made pistol from her waist and held it out to me. Naturally, being deputy chief of the Military Affairs Department, one would expect that of her—but even as she handed it over, she unconsciously and smoothly angled the muzzle toward herself, which suggested she was well accustomed to handling firearms. Her strength alone had already told me as much, but she was no mere desk clerk. It was the movement of someone who had handled a gun in real combat, or who had received police or military training.
I couldn't stop noticing these small details, because this woman fascinated me.
"That's a relief, actually. If you'd told me you made the gun yourself, *that* would have made me balk."
"It's not worth balking at. Mausers are already being unofficially copied at the Bupyeong Army Arsenal. If I had connections at the arsenal, I could have had one made myself."
"It clearly isn't one, though, even at a glance."
I couldn't judge the quality of a gun's craftsmanship any better than anyone. But I could be certain of one thing: this was not something manufactured domestically, or at the very least not something Hui-yeong had helped produce.
"Oh my, you can identify the factory a gun was made in just by looking at it? Where, exactly, is the limit of your abilities?"
"Because if you had been involved in its production, I suspect you'd have engraved my initials on it before giving it to me."
Hui-yeong laughed at my words.
"You already know me well enough to predict that. You're right—if there had been time, I would have had A.M. engraved on this pistol too. But since I'm making your name tag with the characters for Jayanghwa, I hesitated, wondering whether you'd really appreciate a Japanese name's initials…"
"This is fine as it is. I can check over the gun's maintenance gradually. Thank you. I've never fired this model, but it must be better than what I used before."
"A Japanese Nambu pistol? That thing is utter trash. Now, load it into the holster I included with it… shall we be going?"
"Going? Where, exactly?"
"To work, of course. At the Ministry of Security. You were hired as of today."
Hired? Ah—hired, as in, now that I've put on the uniform. Was that really how it worked? Come to think of it, if I hadn't intended to accept a post in the Police Bureau, there would have been no need to put the clothes on at all. The way she spoke as if I had already agreed wasn't entirely a leap.
"…Very well. I just go as I am, dressed like this?"
"Yes. Since you've been hired, for now, as a bodyguard agent, you won't be reporting to any assigned police station—you'll go straight to the government office building. Judging by where you live, it's about a thirty-minute walk to the building. Shall we walk? We can settle your salary and the specific details there today."
"All right. Saves us the fare, at least."
Hui-yeong seemed rather giddy at the fact that I had put on the uniform and would be going to work alongside her. I didn't have the heart to pour cold water on someone who looked so pleased. Following my usual habit, I made certain every last detail of my appearance was immaculate, then stepped out of the house onto the street and set off toward downtown Kyeongseong on foot.
The location of my house felt somewhat remote, but it didn't take long on foot to reach a street crowded with people. And yet nowhere did I see the figure of a patrolman—a *junsa*—walking his beat, a sight so common back under Japanese rule.
"That reminds me—how is the Republic's government managing public order across the country? When I asked earlier, you dodged my question about how many police officers there actually are."
"…Well, on paper, we've managed to assemble about ten thousand police officers nationwide."
"Ten thousand police to control a population of twenty to thirty million…"
"On paper alone, it just barely holds together. But the real problem starts there. Even scraped together as they were, it's hardly a comfortable number—and the vast majority of them are Korean men inherited from the junsa ranks who served under Japanese rule. Frankly, their level of training isn't high."
"The local People's Committees are operating in each province, I take it?"
"That's right. The local police forces are utterly beyond Kyeongseong's ability to control. But… honestly, I don't think things are going well. For one thing, aside from the small number of firearms we managed to squirrel away, the Japanese made off with every last piece of materiel that could serve as a weapon, hauling it all back to the home islands. It can't be helped, with the war still raging. The Preparatory Committee's plan had been to scavenge desperately, then raise an army and police force from whatever weapons the Japanese left behind after independence—and even that plan nearly foundered."
"So most of the local police…"
"Still carry clubs, or if they're lucky, a military sword—nothing more. There are even plenty of reports of unfair cases where returning Japanese police confiscated privately purchased pistols from Koreans on their way out. I suppose even a single gun is precious to a nation at war with America."
"Even so, that's a violation of their own citizens' property rights…"
At my words, Hui-yeong let out a long breath.
"What do you suggest—shall I lodge a complaint with Yamamoto? 'The withdrawing Japanese police coercively violated the property rights of Koreans; kindly rectify this.'"
"If we were a government with the strength to make such a complaint, we'd have already brought back the men and women who were taken from us."
Hui-yeong walked on in silence. Perhaps because the subject was so heavy, a deep shadow seemed to settle over her eyes once more. That… was a hard question to answer.