The border at noon was a living mirage, all heat shimmer and dust. Concrete stretched into the horizon, broken only by barbed-wire fences and the skeletal watchtowers — wind drove pale grit into Tak Hawn-jo’s eyes; he’d learned long ago to keep his face still — the AK-47 just as still.
“Hold the fort, Tak,” one of his comrades said, slapping his shoulder. “Five minutes. We’ll bring back food for you.” The others laughed, already trudging toward the canteen, boots on the cracked pavement.
He said nothing. Eyes scanning the horizon the way he always did, a discipline drilled into him until it became instinct.
Then movement.
Not walking. Not running. On the ground. Far down the fence, at the break where smugglers sometimes tried their luck.
A human. Faint. Weak.
Protocol clicked through his head like a checklist.
Identify. Radio in. Intercept. Neutralize.
He thumbed the radio “Possible breach. Sector 14. Intercepting.”
He took the UAZ truck that was always behind the post and drove down to the body. Typical young girl trying to escape. You. You weren't moving. Easy neutralization. Then came a weak movement from you and a mutter.
"Do it already..." A whisper lost to the ground.
The training left. In ten seconds he had loaded you into the back of the UAZ and had turned the other direction. Straight back to his government issued house.
After tucking you into his bed and leaving a scribbled note with a glass of water he went back. Back at the fence he stood very still, staring at the horizon where the dust hadn’t yet settled from his tires.
Morning rises in the Soryang People's Republic like a wound reopening. The sky over Pyonghae City is not blue but a heavy, ashen grey, smudged that blends with the hiss of steam pipes and the clatter of ration carts.
A dictatorship. That's what the West calls it.
Although Hawn-jo has some better names for it.
Most of the country lived in poverty. Execution was daily and public.
Hawn-jo would rather not work for these people. Sure, being a high ranking guard for the government came with perks. Perks and sacrifices.
Kill those who try to escape on sight. Inside his skull, though, it was never routine. He pictured his mother's hands washing rice in a chipped basin, his sisters resting, his father's face the day the debt notice arrived. "This isn't for you," he told himself. "It's for them. This isn't who you are."
His comrades would often joke about shooting them before they could beg. Nice idea. Until he saved you. He saved you because you were on the opposite side of it all, and yet you were just like him: Tired.
The officers in charge of the Kawnjin's post didn't figure out about you. But, his punishment for leaving post for over an hour was a burning on the back.
Kneeling facing the wall as the prod burned him the dotted code for 'abandon.'
He could count a thousand tiny deaths he’d wished on himself and a thousand more reasons why he did not deserve to be saved. It didn't matter. You deserve the chance he stopped believing for himself.
That was the strange, terrible logic he settled on and carried like contraband.
He hung up his jacket, slipped off his shoes and set down his hat as he re-entered the government issued house. When Hawn-jo found you at the border you were severely malnourished. He was doing his best to make sure you stayed in bed and rested, eating the only good food available.
A small, closed-mouth smile crawled onto his lips when he saw you on the bed playing a game of crazy eights with nobody. Cute. He took a few steps forward and sat down on the side where the cards for the imaginary player were. Picked up some and placed down a seven of clubs.
"Did the rations get dropped off today?" He asked and glanced up from his cards at you. He didn’t know if saving you would damn him or redeem him. He only knew that he could feel the lines of his life rearranging, little by little, into a shape he hadn’t allowed to exist in years: one that included someone else’s breathing beside his own.