Lieutenant General Hong Sa-ik of the Army
The night passed without incident. It wasn't the kind of atmosphere where anything could have happened in the first place. We shared a single blanket on a single bed, and that was all. Screaming or issuing formal warnings at someone who was, like me, human would have been pointless anyway.
I sent Hui-yeong a message of trust. We had known each other all of two or three days. I have no intention of opening my heart to you — but I believe you will not touch me against my will. That trust was also, at the same time, an ultimatum: the moment you break it is the moment I come to hate you. The bed was large enough that she could deliberately keep her distance, hugging a pillow, and fall asleep apart from me.
In the middle of the night, she reached one hand toward my side. I couldn't tell whether it was a movement made half-asleep or a deliberate attempt to touch my face. Quietly, I covered the back of her hand with my own. I worried, briefly, that I might be reading far too much into the act of holding someone's hand — but when I saw her expression, eyes still closed, only the corner of her mouth curving upward, I was reassured.
Letting go of her hand would have seemed too cruel. I drifted off with Hui-yeong's hand still clasped in mine. And so, without anything happening at all, the next morning arrived.
Though I woke in the small hours, she was already up. Hui-yeong, washed and prepared, was dressed in a suit and ready to leave. I rubbed my eyes, sat up, and asked,
"Why are you up so early?"
"I'm used to living like this."
And here I'd thought I was the one who could run on little sleep. When I fished the pocket watch out of the drawer, it seemed I'd slept about five hours. Not an impossible way to live — but if you slept five hours every single day, at some point your mind would start to come apart.
If she really had lived like this every day, I wondered — could part of the reason her mind was the way it was lie in this strange sleep pattern? Hui-yeong, apparently sensing I hadn't had enough rest, smiled and said,
"You can sleep more, Unnie. It won't be time for the ship to come in for a while yet. It's just an old woman's habit of mine. The harbor's visible right out this window anyway. When the ship carrying the Minister of Military Affairs arrives, I'll be able to see it."
"No, I'm getting up now. Can you get me a glass of cold water?"
"It's cold enough this time of year that there's no ice… but there's hot tea. I've got boiled water."
"Do you brew tea well?"
"The only countries I've ever been to are Japan and China — how well do you think I'd brew tea? It's just dropping a teabag into hot water, really."
"That's plenty. One cup, please."
She soon handed me tea in a suitable cup, and I sipped at it. Coffee would have been better, but there was nothing to complain about with tea. My mind cleared to a workable degree, and after washing up I felt properly put together. I changed into underwear that would sit comfortably under my uniform, then put on the ultramarine uniform that marked me as a police officer of Korea.
I didn't forget to twist my hair up at the back with practiced hands and tie it off with a mesh cord. Watching me finish my hair in a matter of seconds, Hui-yeong's eyes went wide.
"You tie your hair up so easily on your own. Hair as long as yours can't be easy to put up by yourself."
It wasn't so long as to cascade down my back, but it was fair enough for her to say so. I'd agonized over doing my own hair at first, too — and it had been even worse for me, since I'd been a man who suddenly woke up as a woman.
"You have to manage at least that much if you want to survive in the Police Bureau with this body, alone. Shall we head out? It'll look better to be waiting at the harbor than to leave after the ship comes in."
"It's still early, so it'll be a bit chilly. Are you all right with that?"
"I've never once caught a cold in my life."
"Ah-ha. Me neither."
I drained the last of my tea, emptied the cup, picked up my bag, and sprang up from my seat. Hui-yeong gathered her own things and we left the hotel together. After checking out and stepping out of the building, the harbor was remarkably close.
The Japanese policemen guarding Busan Port watched us approach with sidelong glances, then made way without a word. Apparently, when we'd been confirming the ship's arrival schedule at the port yesterday, the matter of our business had already been settled.
I swept my gaze over the harbor and the city draped around it, then spoke.
"There seem to be fewer Japanese around than yesterday."
"It's just early — most of them haven't come out yet. But you're right, Unnie. The withdrawal has definitively begun. Japan needs every soldier it can get right now."
"The police will be conscripted as soldiers when they go home, won't they?"
"Why? Does it weigh on you?"
I couldn't decide how to answer her question. Honestly — if I claimed it didn't weigh on me at all, what kind of person would that make me? I hadn't held much affection for my fellow patrolmen. I'd never stepped forward to rack up achievements, and at Jongno Police Station they'd treated me as little more than a propaganda panel, with no real interest in entrusting me with serious work.
It was an era when the treatment of women was unmistakably poor. I received what treatment I did receive only because I was more capable than most men — from another angle, I was simply a rare exception, like Jandark or Jin Yang-ok. My relationships with my colleagues at the station had been lukewarm at best. There wasn't a single officer I'd been particularly close to.
And yet… I found it hard to forget the faces of those men — torn between the joy of returning to Japan, to parents and family, from a Korea spared both bombing and the horrors of war, and the grim reality that the battlefield now awaited them instead.
That was clearly different from the world I used to live in — from the friends who'd shouted "Enlistment tomorrow!" as they downed their drinks, and from myself among them. In that other world, there'd been a certain unspoken comfort: even if we took up rifles, we'd never actually have to fire them at a person. That was why the liquor went down. But for the police packing their bags in Jongno that day, offering them a drink would have looked like something they'd only vomit back up.
Watching war stride closer to someone's private life from a distance was painful, even just to observe. I believed the fewer people who had to live through that, the better — even if they were the wicked people of a wicked nation.
And yet I couldn't clearly find an answer. If I told her now that I was thinking of my old workplace colleagues, it would sound as if I were saying I hoped they wouldn't withdraw from Korea at all. Hui-yeong interpreted my silence in her own way.
"There's the ship. That's the one we're boarding."
The ship she pointed to was a small one. I asked,
"It's coming from the Philippines, but it's quite small. Who else is on it? Even small as it is, it looks like it could carry a few dozen people besides the crew."
"It's almost certainly a ship dedicated to transporting General Hong Sa-ik alone. Though there will probably be a handful of Korean enlisted men who served in the southern campaigns. He requested that, in exchange for accepting the position of Minister of Military Affairs, he be allowed to bring the Koreans under his command home with him."
The Philippines…
"There's a great deal of tragedy unfolding there too, I hear. The local resistance is said to be fierce. I've heard various things — apparently, from that side, Korea is seen as effectively a belligerent that entered the war on Japan's side. It seems quite a few people who spoke Korean did terrible things there."
"They must have been swept up in it as a group."
I offered the hollow defense. Hui-yeong nodded, accepting it for what it was.
"That's what we have to say, even if the people on the receiving end won't let it pass so easily. In any case, they are our people. I intend to protect as many as I'm able. General Hong, returning home now — I imagine that's exactly the spirit he's coming back with."
The ship touched the harbor. One by one, Koreans of gaunt, slight builds began to disembark. I couldn't know what kind of lives they'd led in the Philippines, but they did not look as though they'd been fed properly.
Hui-yeong and I stood quietly by the water's edge, watching them come ashore. Last of all, a single man was descending from the ship. A man in the uniform of the Imperial Japanese Army, wearing the insignia of a lieutenant general. Like someone taking a headcount of the disembarked, he counted each person off on his fingers, then nodded once to confirm the number matched.
Hui-yeong approached him.
"Minister of Military Affairs, sir."
It was a greeting offered without a salute — unlike how she'd treated the Minister of Security. Hong Sa-ik turned his head, looked her over, and nodded.
"I've heard about you. So you're the deputy chief. Seeing it with my own eyes is more astonishing still. They say there are many socialists among you — do the communists truly have so little qualm about making use of women?"
"I have nothing to do with the left-leaning bureaucrats. If anything, they despise me."
At that, a hint of embarrassment crossed Hong Sa-ik's face.
"I didn't mean it as an insult. I apologize. I spoke carelessly. Word of your talent has reached me even from across the sea. I look forward to working with you."
"In that case, sir, may I ask one favor of you now?"
"Speak."
"Please change out of your military uniform. From this moment, we must attend to you as the Minister of Military Affairs of the People's Republic of Korea."
"That is… difficult."
I had been watching in silence, but I flinched slightly at the frown that creased Hui-yeong's face. She asked,
"Why is that?"
"I have not yet received my discharge orders. I was told to carry out my duties as a lieutenant general of the army until I receive my formal letter of appointment as Minister of Military Affairs of Korea. That duty was the command of the troops aboard this ship. It cannot be said to be finished yet. As a soldier, I must see my responsibilities through to the very end."
"Then why are those men not in uniform?"
Hui-yeong pointed at the Koreans gathered at the foot of the gangway. Hong Sa-ik answered,
"Because I could discharge them under my own authority. But the right to decide my own discharge is not mine to exercise. I'm sorry."
Hui-yeong let out a shallow sigh. Hong Sa-ik looked genuinely troubled, yet he did not bend from his stubbornness.
"Then I cannot offer you a salute at this moment, sir. Please come this way. Together with Investigation Squad Leader Ajisai Mizuko, we will escort you to Busan Station. From there to Kyeongseong as well, we will be at your service."
"Just as I was told in advance. I'm in your hands."