Chasing Liberty // Countryhumans North Korea fanfiction

Of Memory

1924

     “Did you hear? They executed Nanba Daisuke last week.”

     “Jap name! Don’t care.”

   Hae giggled as Hwang pursed his lips at Pyo. “You should care. He is the one that attempted the assassination on the Crown Prince last year.”

    Pyo made a face. “He failed, didn’t he? Are we feeling bad for failures now?”

     Hae listened to them snipe at each other as she carefully practiced her handwriting, tracing over the characters Hwang had written for her on the thin paper with her charcoal stick. She was s’pposed to be readin’ what they said, too, but she’d rather listen to her family. When she thought about it, she was still learning how to speak Korean without an accent, and sometimes still heard things in Japanese. So listenin’ was kind of part of her lessons, too.

    Or so she said to Hwang whenever he told her to pay more attention to her page.

    Pyo musta got tired of arguing, since she called, “Hey Korea-“ raising her voice to where he was sitting with Chungbuk and SH, looking over their map. “That Jap kid who tried to kill that crown-whatever got executed. Do we care?”

    Korea looked up. “Nanba Daisuke?”

     “From the Japanese Communist Party.” Hwang held up the newspaper he got in the last village. Hae’s brother was always pickin’ up papers and stuff to write with wherever they went. But even though he saved the actual pencils for special occasions, he didn’t hoard them like a frog so much anymore. Which was good cuz Korea said hoardin’ was wrong.

     Korea snatched the page and scanned over it, his eyebrows lowered all scarily. He ‘tch’ed (Hae loved when he made that sound), then threw it back down.

    “I won’t tell you what to care about, but…” He trailed off with that look that meant he was thinkin’ about something real serious. “Don’t mock a revolutionary martyr.”

     Pyo’s brows shot up so fast it was a li’l funny. “’Martyr?’ He’s a Jap. You feeling okay, Korea?”

     He swatted away her attempts to touch his forehead. “Regardless of what he is, he bargained with his life to try and seek justice for the Kanto Carnage. That’s…” He made a face. “Clearly he was different then the rest of them.”

     “Or the Emperor and his family are who’s different,” Kang said, strolling over. “Considering all of the Japanese who were executed for protesting for us, or resisting the violence last year.”

    Kang was always sayin’ stuff like that. Hae didn’t think Korea wanted to hear it. It made him look squirmy.

     “The ‘Royal’ family, the Kempeitai, the entire Japanese government and their law enforcement and military,” South Pyongan listed, still trying to touch Korea. She was tryin’ to poke him now, though. "That's a lot of ‘different.’ I could probably go on.”

   “All of those people are corrupt here, too,” Kangwon pointed out. “And the majority of our people are against it. I doubt it’s much different in Japan.”

    Pyo made a face, and Korea said, “The ruling class is the issue… everywhere. Even Japan.”

    He showed his teeth as he said it. Hae always wanted to poke his fangs, but he wouldn’t let her.

    “Don’t touch me!” he finally snapped at Pyo, then the two of them were on the ground and rollin’ away.

     Korea said they had to learn fightin’ skills by ‘learning by experience.’ That meant you might get attacked all of a sudden and you had to defend yourself. Hae was good at the attackin’ all of a sudden part, but she never got a real chance to try the defendin’ part. Even though she had enough meat on her bones now (a phrase she got from Sang) and her legs didn’t shake, her cousins still ‘went easy on her’ as Korea said. He was the only one she got to wrestle against for real.