XVI

Yongsun spends more and more time in the infirmary as more and more soldiers arrive. Steel is replacing flesh quicker than ever and the soldiers that Yongsun is ‘decorating’ are returning to get their steel plates adjusted and put back in place, only to be sent out to the frontier again by the government.

The war has escalated drastically, but less blood is shed, more steel is bent and slashed. This is a mechanical war, Yongsun thinks as she designs a steel plate that is supposed to go on a wounded soldier’s back. She drags the pencil across the paper, sketching a body, putting effort into shading the muscles in the back.

She forgoes the steel plate that she should be drawing and instead accentuates the body’s shoulder blades. This is the most human thing in the infirmary, Yongsun thinks as she runs a finger over her sketch, imagining how it might feel to touch someone’s back.

How long has the war been raging now? Yongsun thinks, more than a decade has passed. She realises that the conflict will never be solved (a fight between ideologies never ends) but she still clings to the hope of peace returning, so that she can go back to being a civil engineer instead of playing doctor.