XXXI

Yongsun leaves the frontier when the war is over but it follows after her: behind her eyelids, she still sees the steel, the ‘decorated’ soldiers, the flashbombs and the blonde doctor’s corpse on the ground covered by her own coat. Yongsun thinks about her parents, dreading seeing their names on a memorial. Her thoughts drift to Yonghee, Yongsun has not heard from her in a while and fears that Yonghee’s name has been engraved on a tombstone.

The train ride back is slow, Yongsun stares out of the window and watches the scenery change: there is more steel and metal at the frontier, and the further away she goes the greener it gets. She arrives at the rundown train station near her house, holding a textbook under her arm, having lost her suitcase and the rest of her belongings when the flashbombs dropped.

Yonghee is not there to meet her, and Yongsun suddenly knows. She sighs and mourns her sister’s passing when she sees that the house has been torn down. Yongsun thinks for a while, sitting on the ash-covered porch, chin in hand. This is what she wants to believe:

The beginning is the end, the end is the beginning. Everything in-between is an illusion, it must be a lie.