“Next time, then.” The young tennis player bowed to him and hurried out of the courtyard.
JungHo followed him out a little more slowly. The Provisional Government was housed in a dark, three-story building accessible through an alley; once outside the courtyard and on the main road, the restless light and sounds of the French Concession took hold of him more fully. JungHo had the impression that the red brick buildings here were redder, and the plane trees lining the boulevards greener. The long-limbed and slender-hipped women strolled in skintight cheongsam, saying something unintelligible in throaty Shanghainese. There was a kind of music in their steps, and in the air scented with cooking oil and tea. In spite of the Japanese flags fluttering ominously on the buildings, people here seemed far less tormented. MyungBo had said that the Chinese were accustomed to war and dynastic changes, much more than the Koreans were. They had less concern over which master they served, he’d explained. Within the boundaries of the French Concession at least, the impact of the Japanese occupation was less felt than in the rest of the city.
The cobbler was located just a few blocks east, on an alley even darker and dingier than their own street. The Chinese owner greeted JungHo in Korean and took away his shoes to the back to be resoled. JungHo sat on a chair and waited in his socks; those were the only pair of shoes he’d brought to Shanghai. He even played tennis in them.
After a while, the cobbler brought back the shoes, resoled and shined.
“These look as good as new,” JungHo said, lacing up his shoes.
“Ya ya. See you next time.” The owner smiled and bowed to him. JungHo bowed back.
JungHo let his feet lead him to the dock, thinking of those words next time. It occurred to him that he probably wouldn’t ever need to resole his shoes again. His shirt, his trousers, his hat—everything he owned was all he’d ever need. But how much more tender were those words, next time, knowing that there won’t be one? How much more did he look into people’s faces with compassion and forgiveness? The slow-burning rage he’d felt in Seoul had been washed away and all that was left was a sense of being free.
He slipped past the cars lined up by the dock and walked along the wharf alone, watching the seagulls float like skilled sailors of the sky. Every day he came here and every day, he saw something different in the color of the sky, in the crying of the birds, in how the light glittered on the Pacific Ocean. It was achingly beautiful how new the world was each day, and he only wished that he could have realized it a little earlier.
JUNGHO HAD GONE TO SHANGHAI with three other men. One of them had shot and killed a Japanese general at a train station and then was tortured to death in prison. Another had walked into a police station and thrown a bomb hidden inside a lunch box, and was shot on the spot when it failed to go off. In January, the third comrade—the young tennis player—disguised himself as a cook at a military banquet, opened fire in the ballroom, and screamed “Korean Independence manseh!” on the rooftop, before getting swarmed by dozens of soldiers, his entire body perforated by bullets. JungHo hadn’t seen this, as they strictly adhered to their own assignments; instead, he had heard about it from others who read the Chinese newspapers. JungHo tried to imagine his comrade in death, but he could only picture him laughing breathlessly after scoring the match point.
It was now JungHo’s turn.
His assignment was to assassinate the deputy governor-general as he made a stop in Harbin, a thousand miles north of Shanghai. The governor was touring Manchukuo, a puppet state ruled in name by the last emperor of China but de facto a Japanese colony. Swallowing such a large territory was proving thorny: the Han Chinese and ethnic Manchurians had formed a guerilla army in Harbin, and Koreans for their own part had been attacking there for decades.
The security, therefore, was seemingly impenetrable. In the weeks leading up to the governor’s arrival, there were Japanese soldiers stationed at every place of note, from squares, banks, and post offices, to even large shops and popular restaurants. JungHo was to shoot the governor while he was making a speech in front of thousands of spectators and hundreds of officers. There was no question of whether JungHo would survive; the only question was whether he would succeed in his mission before getting killed. In case he missed, JungHo would be accompanied by a backup sniper who had just recently joined his group. He was twenty-six years old and spoke slowly with a bad stutter. JungHo had never seen him hit the bull’s-eye during target practice.
The night before the mission, JungHo took his backup out for a walk.
“It’s fre-fre-freezing outside,” the younger man said quietly.
“It will clear our minds, Comrade Cho. Better than sitting in that tiny, stuffy room,” JungHo said, clasping Cho on the back encouragingly. They crossed the town center and made their way to the little clearing by the Songhua River, a popular spot for lovers seeking to hide from prying eyes. There was no one there now, however. Cho’s teeth were rattling as he tried to retract his neck into his coat collar like a turtle. JungHo was also shivering, but the formidable cold in Harbin reminded him of his childhood in PyongAhn. It invigorated him and soothed the restlessness from being cooped inside the overheated room. Even all these years later, he didn’t like being indoors for very long.