At some point, MyungBo was strong enough to stay awake for the arrival of his caretaker and to ask whether he could get some paper and a pencil. To his surprise, the guard brought those things the next day with the water and food. After drinking some water and leaving the porridge untouched, MyungBo crawled to his mat and began to work on a letter.
In the flashes of consciousness that were allowed him during his incarceration, MyungBo’s thoughts had turned to his two mistakes. The first one was that he was wrong to resent his wife’s pragmatism while falling for Dani. For months leading up to the protest, he’d longed to see Dani and to talk to her about almost anything that came to his mind. At first, he’d chalked this up to simple admiration for a beautiful and intelligent woman, but his jealousy upon seeing SungSoo by her side forced him to admit that he was in love with her. Since he had long looked down on his friend’s womanizing, he had been all the more confused about his attraction to Dani. But it all felt so faded and tarnished now. Upon thinking of her for the first time since his arrest, he only felt ashamed. Love was defined by how much one could suffer for another, by what you were willing to do to protect this person. It was a question of choosing the person with whom you’d like to hold hands on your last train ride. Now he knew the one he truly loved.
“To my beloved son HyunWoo,” he started writing.
How have you been? How is your mother? I hope that you two stayed warm and healthy over the winter. It’s colder here, but thinking of you and your mother makes me feel better.
You just turned four, so you must be getting bigger now. I wish I could watch you grow up. I think often of the days when you were very little, and we three were together every night. You probably can’t remember anything, but we were very happy back then. HyunWoo, listen to what your mother tells you. And when you’re older, be the kind of person who is courageous in the face of the powerful, and generous toward the weak. That’s all I wish for you.
I miss you both very much. I’m always watching over you.
—Your father
MyungBo had started writing in small letters, thinking that he would fill up the whole page. In the end, however, he could fill no more than a third of the paper—it was too hard to say all that was in his heart. The guard, who had been under new orders to attend to the inmate’s needs, mailed the letter to MyungBo’s father’s house, where it was forwarded to Shanghai by his younger brother.
The second and worst mistake of MyungBo’s life was that he had put his faith in unarmed resistance. Like the other signers, he’d believed that they would gladly die if that could bring them closer to independence. But he now saw that the death of so many people was wasted. With both the leadership and civilians annihilated, progress had not only stalled but even taken several steps backward. Nothing could change without force in the face of such inhumanity. MyungBo didn’t know if he could get out of jail alive; in addition to his wounds, which kept reopening and festering, he had contracted tuberculosis. But if given another chance, MyungBo vowed he would win back their freedom at any cost—life for life, blood for blood.
When MyungBo’s conditions stabilized against all odds, he was called into trial for treason and received a light sentence of two years. In prison, MyungBo was sometimes favored with a warm comforter or better food. He was even allowed to read a few books. Oblivious to the true reason for his special treatment, MyungBo now recalled Dani as he did SungSoo and his other schoolmates—infrequently and with a vague sense of embarrassment.
SUNGSOO ALSO DIDN’T SPEND MUCH time pining for his old friend after the March. He had been arrested in the late afternoon that day as he was taking coffee in his office with his publisher. He’d been arraigned on the charges of associating with MyungBo, but the raid into his publishing house had turned up no evidence. In fact, the deeper the investigators searched, the more evidence they found of his enduring friendship with the Japanese. The very next day, his father paid ten thousand won in cash for his bail and SungSoo was released, tired and in need of a bath but unharmed.
Neither SungSoo nor Dani reached out to the other afterward, and they both understood that their mutual silence was the end of their relationship. SungSoo was conscious that his intense desire for Dani had been fulfilled; there was something neat and deeply satisfying about its completion after all. Besides her splendid beauty, there was a passion and a mystery about her that would always entice him. He thought he may even miss her in the future. But for now, he was only glad of the natural end of their affair, which saved him the enormous headache of untangling feminine emotions. (And of apologizing when he didn’t feel like it, just to appear to be a gentleman—women had such a desperation for apologies.) After all the chaos and uncertainties of winter, he felt as lighthearted as the parents of Gregor at the end of his favorite short story. His yearning for a woman was replaced by that for industry and progress, and he congratulated himself on this positive new direction. He decided that in the spring, he would look into expanding his bicycle shop and then go for a long ride down in the countryside.
*