Stop at Daejeon Station
The solitude was welcome, in a way — but at the same time, it was so oppressive I felt I might suffocate. The moment Heeyoung or I opened our mouths, it would turn into private chatter between two women. Two female officers gossiping in front of the nation's own Minister of Military Affairs was not a good look.
Hong Sa-ik seemed well aware of his own position as a Yamamoto appointee, a man dropped into office from above, and it made him almost tentative in our company. If he had known before leaving the Philippines that we would be serving as his guards, then he also already knew that the new cabinet was filled with people who had once waged armed struggle on the left, along with others who had devoted their entire lives to the independence movement even without ever taking up arms.
There were certainly figures who had spent the late forties in somewhat unsavory company — Kim Seong-su, the newly appointed Minister of Education, came to mind — but a man who had risen through the ranks of the Japanese Army to wear a general's star was a matter of an entirely different order.
Perhaps to break the suffocating silence, the Minister began to speak, his gaze fixed out the window.
"I don't know how you'll take this, but this manner of independence — it is what I prepared for, in my own way."
Neither Heeyoung nor I answered. Hong Sa-ik paid it no mind and continued.
"It may sound strange to say I prepared for independence. But tell me — what do you think of the proposition that the treaty of 1910 was, in truth, nonsense from the very beginning?"
"Do you mean morally, or practically?" I asked. Heeyoung showed no sign of volunteering a reply, and the general in his fifties turned toward me with a nod.
"In matters between nations, morality is rarely the issue. I mean the practical question. Japan and Joseon spoke different languages, held different cultures — the two lands were not even physically joined. And yet it was not as though Japanese settlers flooded the peninsula in overwhelming numbers, nor was Joseon a young nation with shallow traditions. And finally — was the Japanese population large enough to simply swallow the Korean people whole? No. It was not."
"If that is what you believed, then why did you remain in their army for so long?"
It may have been a discourteous question, but Hong Sa-ik was the one who had raised the subject. I sensed that this was a question he wanted to be asked.
"Because when one cannot digest what has been swallowed — one will spit it out eventually. And if not..."
"You wish to say you foresaw a day like this?"
"...I won't go that far. In truth, I may not even have expected the annexation itself to be undone."
It sounded like self-justification dressed up with its own reasons. But even if there was honesty buried in it, exaggeration and deception would be mixed in as well. Even if he had once held such thoughts, it would have been only natural to abandon them at some point — because until the situation of the Sino-Japanese War shifted dramatically, Japan had neither the readiness nor the will to treat Koreans as equals.
This man seemed to possess convictions of his own. But those convictions were fragile things, easily bent to fit the realities around him. I thought I understood why Japan had sent him back to Joseon. Handled with sufficient cunning, this kind of belief could be adjusted to serve the interests of the rulers...
"Even if someone understands what you are saying, Minister."
Heeyoung, who had kept her silence for a long while, spoke at last, her hands folded together.
"Someone else will have no intention of understanding you. There are many obstacles yet to cross. You must be resolute in front of Yamamoto."
"A navy admiral, isn't he? We've always been firm with each other."
Hong Sa-ik said it like a joke, but the corners of his mouth did not lift.
The train ground to a halt at Daejeon. We were no express; a stop at the great logistics hub of Chungcheong Province, through which the Gyeongbu Line ran, had been scheduled from the start. None of us rose from our seats, and none of us went to check on conditions outside.
It was only when the stop stretched past twenty minutes that Heeyoung abruptly began glancing around. A wrongness settled in my chest, and I asked,
"Was there separate cargo this train was supposed to take on at Daejeon?"
"I don't recall a freight car attached, so there's no reason for us to sit here this long. Minister, please move to the inner side of the compartment. I'll check the corridor."
"No — I'll go."
I pressed to the window to survey the platform. No suspicious movement, no shadows. An ominous premonition crawled up my spine, but Heeyoung stopped me and pushed me back into my seat.
"Unnie, you're still a police officer — if you clash with the station staff it could turn ugly. Let me handle asking what's going on. Besides, someone has to stay in here anyway."
Fair enough. Someone needed to watch the window in an emergency, and someone needed to respond if an attacker came down the corridor. Hong Sa-ik kept his mouth shut, apparently content to defer to our judgment, his eyes moving quietly between the two of us.
I agreed to Heeyoung's plan.
"I'll guard the Minister here. Conductor — go out to the corridor and ask the station staff what's happening."
"Understood. Though honestly, I'd be happy if it's something ordinary — a rowdy passenger, something like that..."
Even as she said it, Heeyoung did not forget to draw her Mauser from the waistband of her trousers. My instincts and hers had reached the same conclusion. The train had stopped far longer than scheduled, and yet outside was unnervingly, deathly quiet. If there had been an actual accident, some commotion should have erupted by now.
I gestured to Hong Sa-ik.
"Minister. Keep your head down. If anything comes through that window—"
Without a word of protest, he crouched low beneath the seat, tucked far enough down that nothing hurled through the glass could reach him. I had just lowered myself into a slow crouch to peer outside again when—
Gunshots rang out, not far away. Not from the corridor — from the window side.
"Not this car — the next one over!"
The hoarse shout came hot on its heels. I quickly confirmed a round was chambered in my pistol and swallowed hard.
The car behind ours was under fire. It was likely an empty car, so no civilians would be hurt — but there was no question that this was a terrorist attack. What was Heeyoung doing out there? I had no time to wonder. The attackers seemed to know exactly which car we were riding in.
Should I have drawn the curtains? It hardly mattered now. Judging by the voices and the gunfire, their numbers didn't look large. This wasn't a battlefield, and terrorists in a country with a functioning police force didn't travel in swarming hordes.
My pistol, at least, was a far better weapon than the ones I'd carried in the past. If they hit me, I intended to hit back. I could see Hong Sa-ik too, pressed flat against the floor against all eventualities, fiddling with his own sidearm.
Bullets came pouring through our window. Glass shattered with a crystalline crash, and shards rained down over our heads. I thrust my muzzle out the window and tried to return fire, but there was no chance to aim.
A couple of rounds spent for nothing. There was no way through — a terrifying ratatatatata hammered against the train as an enormous volume of fire poured onto us.
"They have submachine guns. We cannot win on firepower."
I made the report with my pistol clutched tight to my chest. By some mercy, their weapons couldn't punch through this train. If they'd carried an anti-tank rifle, the rounds would have torn through the window and the car itself, and by now someone might already be dead.
The fusillade cut off — they had likely emptied a magazine. I snapped upright, raised my torso above the windowsill, and swept my eyes rapidly across the scene outside.
Two attackers met my gaze. One, pistol in hand, had closed in alarmingly close; the other stood behind him with what looked like a Thompson submachine gun, swapping out a drum magazine.
Without thinking, I fired at the one who had closed to within fifteen meters. The machine gun behind him was nearly done reloading, and urgency gnawed at me — I aimed for the heart, but the round went wide.
I watched the man clutch his shoulder and collapse, then ducked back below the window. The machine gun opened up again, another twenty seconds of sustained fire. Where in God's name was the local police?
In truth, I couldn't blame them. Less than three minutes had passed since the first shots. But those three minutes felt like three years. One small mistake and I was dead. I was steadying my breathing, waiting for the gunfire to stop again, when something dropped through the window and landed on the floor with a soft thud.
No time to think. A black metal object. A cylinder, or a sphere—
I didn't stop to judge. I snatched it up in my hand and, pouring every ounce of strength from my shoulder, hurled it back out the window.
The instant I released it, the enemy's bullet came flying at me as though it had only been waiting for the chance.
Karma, perhaps. A single round buried itself in my shoulder. Agonizing pain lanced through me and my consciousness tilted. Clenching my teeth against a scream, I crashed down onto the floor of the compartment, among the scattered shards of broken glass.