Chasing Liberty // Countryhumans North Korea fanfiction

Tear Your Pieces Off

   North and his provinces left with some of the first units. Despite his desire to stay and organize the retreat, Ri Kwon-mu had made the point that the Countryhuman and his divisions needed to reach Supreme Command as soon as possible. He had also given him a sober look that North knew the meaning of.

    He was right. The provinces would just get in the way of dispensing the correct information to their soldiers.

    Leaving the Raktong River felt like carving off a piece of his flesh and casting it off. He knew the others felt it, too, as they cast frequent looks over their shoulders.

    Every footstep away from it he took cut like a tachi. His soldiers had given their lives for each inch of this land as they had headed south. And now they were giving it up.

    But only the land. And only for now.

     They passed through the same villages they had on the way down, being met with fear and anxiety by those who had once lived in the ruined houses. Their anxious questions reminded North of when he had been travelling through the country after Liberation but before the Division, when rumours had circulated like blood through veins.

     “Is it true the People’s Army is retreating?”

    “My son joined the Volunteer Corps. Where is he?”

     “Are the Americans going to kill us?”

      North tried to reassure them as he could, promising that the retreat was strategic and only temporary, and that those in the People’s Volunteer Corps were still fighting for their country.

   He did not try to tell them that the Americans would not harm them. They wouldn’t believe it, anyways.

     The fearful look in all of their eyes killed him. He saw betrayal there. He had let them down.

   Stupid to think, considering they hadn’t been at the river when he had made the promise to free them soon. But they didn’t need to have been. As their country, it was intrinsically known that he needed to Liberate them. It was his responsibility to protect them, to save them.

    And he had let them down.

  ‘For now.’ The Korean People’s Army would be back. He would keep his promise, no matter what.

     Their forced march brought them near Taejon in only four days, moving mostly at night and heavily camouflaged.

    As they skirted down the ruined railway, catching any units from the Engineer Corps that hadn’t received the order to retreat yet, North froze.

    There was a sort of sense that a Countryhuman could get when something horrific had taken place in their country. A raising of the hair that told them they were in a spot where their people had suffered greatly in the past, passed down from those before them (so the books said- North had never actually spoken about this with anyone as it sounded too much like mysticism to him). He had received it in Nonsan, where Baekje’s army of five thousand had been annihilated; in Yeoncheon county, where Silla had gone to war with Tang; in Pyongyang, where so many wars had been fought over the old capital; and in many other places.

     And he was receiving it now.

    The hair on his arms rose further as they marched through the dark hills, and he soon knew why as he started to recognize the area around him.

    They were near Nogun-ri.

    He broke off from the column, heading towards the nearby rail bridge. He could feel the provinces following him.