Chasing Liberty // Countryhumans North Korea fanfiction

Gaksichum Of Hope

1919

    “How was work?”

    South Hamgyong’s question was an innocuous one, one that many sisters might have asked their brothers after the latter had returned home from a long day in the steelworks. They might even have asked the question over a table full of food that they had lovingly prepared, perhaps while improving their needlework, while in the background their parents bickered.

    But the Hamgyongs had no parents, no kitchen, and South Hamgyong wasn’t allowed needles or any other sort of item that could be turned into a weapon, no matter how small. All she had was her little two-room home in Kanggye, the small sitting room that held nothing but a low table with cushions set around it, and the smaller bedroom that she spent as little willing time as possible in. And all North Hamgyong had was his job at the steel factory.

    And she already knew the answer to her question.

   “Shit,” her brother replied bluntly, swigging his green tea roughly from the cup. South Hamgyong hadn’t made the tea, of course. She couldn’t make much of anything. She had only poured it. "Japs beat the man next to me on the conveyor belt to death.”

    “Why?”

   Her brother shrugged. “I don’t fucking know. Something to do with stealing scrap to sell on the side.”

    It wasn’t the first time he had brought a story like that to her. Perhaps South Hamgyong should stop asking, but she had no other way to hear what was going on in the world outside. Her guards had used to chat with her, before Japan's overseer had realized how friendly they were getting and found newer, colder men to keep her trapped in here. Now her brother’s weekly visits were the only way to keep up to date with current events.

     Well, those and her ‘clients.’ But she could never quite hear what they told her when she was in that place deep inside of herself, pouring tea and smiling mechanically.

    She shuddered and her brother misinterpreted it.

   “Before you say anything,” he huffed. “I didn’t get involved this time.”

    His misinterpretation suited South Hamgyong just fine. “I can tell by your lack of bruises.” At his glower, she sighed. “I’m sorry. It must be awful to just stand by while that happens. But you can’t go to jail, North Hamgyong. Japan is just waiting for you to slip up- you know what they’d do to you in there.”

    “I’d like to see them try,” he grumbled, avoiding her eyes.

    “And I need you here,” she finished. When she even considered not seeing her brother again, the one bright spot in the dark slog of week after week after year that was her life, she felt like she would start screaming and wouldn’t stop.

    Even if she knew he could do better elsewhere, without her.

     North Hamgyong growled in frustration, draining the rest of his tea. “It wouldn’t do shit anyways. Kill one Jap, another ten take his place, and then they kill ten of us. Nothing ever changes.”

    “One day something will.” South Hamgyong tried to keep her voice bright, an optimistic counterpoint to her brother’s grimness. It got harder every week as the clouds drew closer over them both.

   He didn't respond, leaving them both in a heavy silence. Words lurked under that funerary shroud, but none could ever be spoken or everything would fall apart.

   Against her will, South Hamgyong’s eyes went to the clock high on the wall. Her lips thinned as she raised her tea cup to her mouth. “You should leave. My client will be here soon.”