Chung-Cha assured her that they would, which made Min smile.
They walked past a number of restaurants. While Min looked curiously at them, Chung-Cha kept her gaze straight ahead.
Then she led Min into the Samtaesung Hamburger Restaurant. They sat at a table. Chung-Cha kept her back to the wall.
She was surprised when Min noticed this and said, “You don’t like people coming up behind you, do you?”
“Do you?”
“No. But they do anyway.”
“Then you must do something about that.”
They ate hamburgers and fries. Chung-Cha let Min have only a few sips of her vanilla milk shake because she was worried the richness might make her sick.
Min’s eyes widened. “This is the best food I have ever had.”
“It is not Korean food.”
“Where, then?”
“Just not Korean.”
They finished eating and left. Chung-Cha and Min walked around Pyongyang and she showed the young girl as many of the sights as possible in a few hours. Min had innumerable questions, and Chung-Cha tried to answer them all as best she could.
“Is the Supreme Leader really three meters tall?”
“I have never met him, so I do not know.”
“They say he is the strongest person on earth and his mind is full of all the knowledge in the world.”
“They said the same to me about his father.”
They walked on in silence for a bit.
“You said you had no family at the camp,” began Chung-Cha.
“I have no family.”
“You were born in the camp, Min. You had to have a family.”
“If I did, no one told me who they were.”
“They separated you from your mother?”
Min shrugged. “I have always been alone there. That is just the way it was.” She looked up at Chung-Cha. “What about your family?” She nudged the ring on Chung-Cha’s finger. “Your mother gave you this?”
Chung-Cha did not answer. They walked on in silence.
After they returned on the train to the apartment, Chung-Cha settled Min into her bed on the sofa. Min studied her quietly. “Did I say something to make you sad, Chung-Cha?”
“You did nothing wrong. The wrong is all within me. Go to sleep.”
Chung-Cha went to her room, undressed, and climbed into bed. She lay there staring at the ceiling.
And on that ceiling there appeared images she had forced from her mind seemingly forever.
The guards had come for her that day. General Pak had told her that she could be free. Then Pak had left. And the woman had taken Chung-Cha aside and told her what she must do to earn her freedom.
“Your mother and father are enemies of our country. Your brother’s and sister’s minds have been poisoned as well, Chung-Cha. You understand this, do you not?”
Chung-Cha had slowly nodded. She could not remember loving her parents. They regularly beat her, even when not instructed to by the guards. They snitched on her. Her brother and sister were competitors of hers for food, clothing. They too snitched on her. They too beat her. She did not love them. They were evil. She assumed they had always been evil. She was here because of her family. She had done nothing wrong. It was they who had committed the wrongs.
“Then you must act, Chung-Cha. You must rid your country of its enemies. Then you will be free.”
Chung-Cha withdrew the knife and stuck it in him again. Then he stopped moving as the blood poured down his front. A guard stepped forward and removed the hood. It was her father. His face hung down, the gag balled in his mouth. His eyes were open, lifeless. He seemed to be staring down at her.
“The next one, Chung-Cha. Do it or you are lost,” screamed the woman.
Chung-Cha automatically turned to the next person and stabbed twice.
It was her sister.
“Do it now, Chung-Cha. Now. Or you are lost forever!”