Sun’s Story
Sun was my neighbor. Her flat was right next to mine, i in the rusty apartment complex I had been living in for the past few years. Sometime after moving in, I met her mother, Aunt Cho, in the hall. She asked about my age, my job—all the usual questions that arise when people meet each other for the first time.
“Why don’t you live with your parents?”
I answered instantly: “They’re dead. I’ve never seen them.”
“Oh…” She nodded her head slowly, looking ill at ease, and let me pass by.
Whenever Aunt Cho stopped by my house after that, she would look around my kitchen and then disappear. Several minutes later, she would come back with dishes in her hands, and one of them always held kimchi.
“I worked in the Nutrition Department before I had Sun, so I know how to handle cooking. You can trust my food, and you should gain at least five kilograms.”
I couldn’t decline her kindness — her kimchi was the best I had ever eaten. With each bite of the pickled cabbage, I felt my stomach grow so clean and cool. I brought any cookies or snacks I could get in the hotel to her house, and though I insisted she try them, Aunt Cho always put them aside, saying, “Sun might like these more than me; she’ll be back next week. I’m sure she’ll like you a lot—she always wanted a sister.”
Sun was 19 years old, with white skin and red lips. When I finally met her, I couldn’t believe that she had just returned from three months of volunteering in the countryside before graduating from a teaching school; it seemed her skin had special protection against the sun. She was a giddy girl, and she followed me around, talking about everything she saw and heard. We liked to go to the street market to look at cosmetics. We couldn’t afford to buy anything; we just went to be together and enjoy the uproarious atmosphere.
Sun’s favorite topic was her boyfriend, Gun. She had met him while walking with her friends in the Kaeson Youth Park, on a Saturday. Sun said the day was brighter than usual, or maybe the significance of her first encounter with Gun made her memory of it brighter. She and her friends enjoyed walking there more than in any other park in Pyongyang because it was usually full of young people. A dark-skinned man with thick eyebrows had approached the group and smiled at Sun. She said she liked his bright and even teeth. Most young girls didn’t like guys with swarthy skin, because it reminded them of laborers, but Sun said Gun was different. He had great, sharp eyes, and he worked in the dancing and singing propaganda unit of a big factory. When I saw him the first time, I couldn’t help but understand why Sun praised him.
Sun was happy and dreamed of a future shared with her boyfriend. When she became a teacher in an elementary school, she loved talking about her students. She devoted all her energy to then and recorded each student’s characteristics in a notebook.
“You know what? I heard such a funny thing from my students today,” she said, sitting in my apartment one afternoon. “They said they like middle-aged female teachers the best. You know why? Because young single female teachers like me don’t have to cook and take care of their own children and husbands. And we don’t wash our clothes, because our mothers do it. In the morning we have only to do our makeup and eat the breakfast prepared by our mothers. So we have a lot of energy left when we come to school. But middle-aged female teachers have to do these chores every day for their families; their hands are never dry of water. When they beat the students, it doesn’t hurt, because they don’t have any energy left. But we have a lot of energy, so our palms are the harshest. You can’t imagine how cute they were when they said that.”
Sun’s family was not untouched by the famine of 1995: her students started to skip school to go beg for food at the market. She and the other teachers searched the markets after class, trying to persuade their students to return to school. She came home every night bone tired. I loved her. I watched her tenderly, as my sister had watched over me.
In the summer of 1997, I didn’t see Sun for several weeks. I missed her, but I decided not to begrudge her time with others. Then, one night, I heard her call my name, and when I opened my window, she was standing outside, like a ghost.
“What happened, Sun?”
“He’s gone. He disappeared without saying anything to me”
She wore a thin shirt, though the night was cool, and her face was practically blue. I took her hand and led her into my room. I watched her as she cried quietly with her legs folded under her and her hands on her knees. I thought it must be the worst time in her life. I didn’t say anything; I just let her cry.
At length, she told me that Gun and his family were gone in one night, and no one knew where. No!—everybody knew, but no one would say. The steps Gun’s family took one day might be what other neighbors were driven to the next. Sun said that the shoe factory where Gun’s parents worked had closed several months before, and Gun was trying to sell their household goods in the street market. Gun’s older brother had died at age 21 in an accident while performing military duties, and his death had driven Gun’s parents to despair. Since then, his parents’ health had been Gun’s priority.
Sun couldn’t understand why Gun hadn’t mentioned leaving. A couple of days earlier, he had asked for a picture of them together. She was devastated that he hadn’t shared his plans with her.
I didn’t see Sun much after that night. I couldn’t offer consolation, and I couldn’t blame Gun: such was our situation and our lives. Time for despair could be better used looking for a way to survive. All I hoped for Sun was that she would forget about Gun as soon as possible. As time went by, Sun would learn what I already knew too welclass="underline" the more you miss people who have already left you, the more pain you feel.
Several weeks later, I ran into Sun in the hall of the building, and she smiled at me. I asked her to come by my apartment whenever she had some free time. She didn’t seem to have changed too much—she was still cheerful—but as we chatted she sometimes lost her train of thought and grew silent. I thought time would solve her problems.
Late one night, she came over, and I noticed that she had become emaciated.
“Can I stay with you tonight?” Sun asked with a low voice. Her eyes were unusually shiny.
I pulled her into my room with delight; I had been afraid she was avoiding me, and it was wonderful to have her in my apartment again. We didn’t sleep much—I just held her hand under the blanket while we talked, as my sister used to. Sun talked a lot, laughing unnaturally hard, and told me about how she and Gun had dreamed of their future together, with a house and children.
Suddenly, her eyes filled with fear. “I’m afraid, sister. Nothing seems sure in this world. I still don’t understand why Gun didn’t discuss anything with me. Before he left, he even talked about our wedding. We were going to take pictures on Mansu Hill—we thought the gold of Kim Il Sung’s statue in the background would make the pictures more colorful. But he left the next day. Do you think he left because he didn’t want to marry me? Did I pressure him too much? I really didn’t care about the wedding; that wasn’t important. He misunderstood me.”
I smoothed her hair. “Sometimes people can’t be together forever, even though they would like to be. Don’t blame him too much. There must be some reason he had to leave that way.”
We cried together. I cried for my grandparents and my sister. Since the night before Seunggyu had left for the countryside, I couldn’t get them off my mind. In my dream, I saw their bodies drifting on filthy floodwater. Seunggyu and his soldiers pushed them away, cursing then with cold eyes.
Sun cried for Gun. She couldn’t stop blaming him, but she prayed for his safety. I consoled myself with the thought that everyone in this world had their own sadness to contend with, and ours might not be the worst.