Meeting with the Minister of Security
When an adult woman with nothing but a single brown bloodstain on her knee was led away in custody, even the Korean guard looked visibly startled. He wasn't a professional jailer by trade, either — ever since the new government had gained actual administrative power, this was the first prisoner the state had ever produced, and he had simply been assigned to the role.
The guard kept sneaking glances at me as I crouched quietly on top of a rice-straw bundle, and eventually struck up a conversation.
"Well, I'll be. How does a young lady end up locked up in a place like this? And it's not even an ordinary holding cell — it's the Government-General building, of all places..."
"I, um... there was a minor dispute..."
I mumbled something evasive. The guard clicked his tongue.
"What's your name, miss? You're the first prisoner ever to come down into this basement, so let me at least get your name straight."
"...Ajisai."
"Wh-what was that? Jirangi?"
"Ajisai. Ajisai Mizuko."
At that, the guard's face registered a flicker of shock. My Korean was completely fluent, without a trace of awkwardness — he apparently hadn't suspected for a moment that I was Japanese.
"Wh-what, you were a Jap? Haya, you could've fooled me. Ah — no offense, calling you that, I mean... Anyway, so you're Japanese. Fascinating. Japanese people always give themselves away when they speak Korean, but you don't show it at all. You must have lived here a long time. The Government-General banned teaching the Korean language, calling it extermination and whatnot — how on earth did you come to speak it so fluently?"
For one thing, he had enough patriotism in him that he'd taken a jailer's job for the newly founded Korea. Calling Japanese people "Japs" was probably closer to habit than malice. Even so, he didn't strike me as the type who couldn't keep public duty and private feeling apart. I answered as coolly and lightly as I could manage.
"I made an effort to communicate with Korean people as much as I could. As much as I was able, anyway."
"So — Ajisai, was it? Hmm. Your Korean is so good... did you stay behind here intending to settle down in Korea for good?"
I had nothing prepared and couldn't answer. Just then, the guard seemed to remember something and clapped his hands together with a snap.
"Ahh, of course! Ajisai of Jongno! Now I remember, now I remember. That famous policewoman from Jongno Police Station. Ah, I never would have guessed — you're nothing like I imagined from all those terrifying stories about you! You're that legendary detective Kim Jwa-jin's own son bows to as his elder sister, aren't you?"
"No. There is no such thing."
Kim Du-han hadn't so much as treated me like an elder sister — I'd never even met him. This was the first I'd heard that such a bizarre rumor was circulating.
"Wow, meeting you like this is an honor. I don't usually go around telling Japanese people it's an honor to meet them, but with a woman whose exploits have passed into legend standing right in front of me... ah, I see it now. The reason you were arrested today. The Japanese are gone now, and the constables have shed their uniforms — so you came to finally settle old scores with the Korean independence fighters you never got to finish things with, and fought a fair, honorable duel, and got hauled in for it. Am I right?"
"Ah. Yes. Um..."
Wrong — but I couldn't say it was a hundred percent wrong, which was the funny part. It wasn't as though I'd come here sharpening a blade of vengeance, spoiling for a duel over some grudge. But in the end, I had been fighting someone who, if nothing else, wanted to devour me — a rival of sorts? Either way, it was true I'd been arrested mid-brawl with someone very much like that.
"Even the Ajisai of Jongno should have minded her time and place, tsk. Well, they'll let you out before long anyway. As they say, a fight between warriors is something even national law can't hold back."
"Warriors?"
"A woman with a burning heart is a warrior too!"
I couldn't decide whether to call that an open-minded outlook or an absurd set of values. The guard and I were in the middle of this far-from-boring chatter when someone came clacking down the stairs. It was Kim Hong-il.
"Minister!"
The guard snapped his right hand up in a salute. The Minister of Security returned it with practiced ease and patted the man on the shoulder.
"The two of us need to speak for a while. Give us the room."
"Yes, sir!"
The words of Korea's most experienced veteran general carried weight. Kim Hong-il — as far as I knew, a master commander who had built the fullest military career any Korean could have amassed: the Chinese civil wars, the Russian Civil War, the Sino-Japanese War, and even service with the Korean Liberation Army.
In the history of the world I came from, this man fought in the Korean War, rendered great service, and stopped the communization of the Republic of Korea. It seemed the Korean civil war wouldn't happen in this world, but it was obvious that the freshly independent nation would need this man.
And yet — Minister of Security. For Korea's foremost military expert, it struck me as an odd post to hold.
"Minister of Security."
"Senior Constable Ajisai. I apologize that the cell is cramped and the floor is cold. I have no particular intention of mistreating you — it's simply that ours is a small, young government with very little prepared."
"Japan's treatment of its lowest-ranking prisoners was no better. There's no need to apologize."
Without realizing it, I was speaking with a voice that carried genuine respect for the general before me. The Minister seemed to notice, raising an eyebrow with a faint look of surprise.
"You don't feel wronged? Surely our chief prosecutor charged at you in a fit of temper first."
"How do you know that?"
"Because if it weren't for her, I might not be standing here at all."
"Now that you mention it, it did strike me as strange. Your fame reached even me. They said there was no battlefield you hadn't walked for Korea's independence — that you fought your way back and forth between China and Russia. So why are you the Minister of Security? Chief of the General Staff or Minister of War would seem the fitting post."
At my words, Kim Hong-il gave a dry laugh.
"It's an embarrassing thing to admit, but I think so too. I've handled logistics, I've commanded men in battle — but counterintelligence is the one field I've never studied in depth. Still, the Chairman has his own reasons. 'I refuse to be pushed around by Japan's demands' — that's what he said as he took my hand, and so I accepted this post."
"'Refuse to be pushed around by Japan's demands'?"
"That's a sensitive matter. Are you prepared to hear it?"
I couldn't answer. The Minister of Security glanced at me, looking amused by the sight, and smiled.
"You don't seem the type. Of course, I'm aware your country has a culture of respecting worthy enemies. When you invaded Korea in the year of Imjin, they say that when the lord of Dongnae fortress fought to the last without losing his composure, your people killed him — and then raised a monument in his honor. I was there myself, at the bloody battle of Wuhan, where your army could advance no further and dug in. I was a colonel then, serving as a division staff officer. However much you revere a worthy enemy, I doubt a man like me looked pretty to you..."
"Ah..."
"An act of survival? Or were you never truly loyal to the Rising Sun in the first place?"
There was a blade inside that heavy voice. The man claimed he was unfit for the post of Minister of Security — but if someone like this held me in custody and interrogated me for long enough, I doubted I'd keep my sanity intact for very long.
"I... always treated war as someone else's affair."
I answered as honestly as I could. Kim Hong-il's eyes widened once, as if he hadn't expected that answer — then, quickly, he nodded as though it made sense.
"That may well be true. Keijyo was safe, I'm told. The American bombers flying out of Australia never reached this far, and the Japanese garrison in Korea was never dragged off to China. A constable least of all — and a woman, least of all. War as someone else's affair. I never imagined such a thing was possible, even for a Japanese person..."
To a man who had thrown himself into every battlefield with the passion of someone hunting down the fight, it might have sounded strange. But for me, it had been the truth.
Three years from now, Japan would collapse alongside two nuclear detonations. A war that would leave nothing behind but slaughter and misery. I had always considered it someone else's problem — thought it wisest to step back with my hands behind my back and remain as an icon of Jongno. That was how I'd seen it.
Korea had won its independence, and Japan was still fighting the Pacific War. And now a world had arrived in which nothing could be dismissed as someone else's affair anymore.
"Well, the questions can wait — we'll get to them in due time. For now, I suppose I owe you some explanation. Perhaps it's best to begin with how a man like me came to be appointed Minister of Security."
"Ah, yes... please explain however is most convenient for you."
"Yamamoto is a greedy creature. Plenty of rumors are floating around out there, but the plain fact is this: Prime Minister Yamamoto demanded that Chairman Yo Un-hyeong hand him two key appointments, to fill as he pleased. He wants Hong Sa-ik seated as Minister of War, and Kim Seok-won as Chief of the General Staff."
"Hong Sa-ik... Kim Seok-won..."
"Both fine officers. The very men Korea would have to recruit if it intends to rebuild an army. But from our Korea's standpoint, Yamamoto's demand leaves a very bad taste."
"I... suppose it would."
It had to. There was no other way to feel about it.
Hong Sa-ik's current rank was lieutenant general in the Japanese Army. Kim Seok-won was a colonel. Yamamoto — who had crushed the Army faction left in disarray by Tojo's death and climbed all the way to the premiership — had pointedly left every other post alone and demanded these two men by name, and the reason was obvious.
"He intends to keep Korea's military affairs under Japanese jurisdiction, and it reveals his desire to drag Korea — a nation that has formally declared neutrality — into America's war as Japan's ally. This matter leaves me in a considerably foul mood."