The Lost Boys Of Gyeongju

Rain poured down on a dim afternoon. From a building tucked away in a back alley came the metallic smell of blood. The only thing still faintly legible on the worn-out sign was the trace of a telephone number. On the gray cement wall, its paint peeling away, the words “Stationery Store” had been traced over several times with a marker.

Inside, my friend Doyun had his spear leveled at a man covered in blood. Drops of blood fell from its trembling tip and pooled on the floor. Our other friend, Taeseong, was bent over in a corner, retching repeatedly.

The man looked at his companion, who lay crumpled with an axe wound in his neck, and pleaded.

“Please, sp… spare me…”

My bowstring, drawn all the way back and aimed at him, began to tremble.

“Hey… what are we supposed to do?!” Doyun shouted.

I hesitated. Then, finally, I let the string go. As the arrow flew, the taut pull against my fingertips vanished in an instant.

Blood flowed out of the stationery store, mixing with the rainwater as it ran into the sewer.

One day earlier, a wooded hill on the outskirts of Gyeongju

On a summer day when the dense trees barely held back the heat of the sun, Doyun, Taeseong, and I were out hunting.

Walking in front, I held up an open palm to stop the other two. Up ahead, beside a thicket, a wild rabbit sat with its ears pricked up, watching its surroundings with black eyes. I reached over my shoulder, pulled an arrow from my backpack, nocked it, and quietly drew the string until it touched my face. Just as the rabbit, blurred beyond the arrowhead, came into focus—

A sneeze.

Then a fit of coughing behind me. The rabbit jerked its head toward us and vanished down the slope.

Taeseong clutched his throat, hacking and making a show of it. A face that looked at least five years older than ours.

Doyun sighed.

He stood up, unfolding the long limbs he’d awkwardly crammed into a crouch. The words “Munhyeong High School Track and Field Team” had faded across the back of his shirt. His deep-set eyes, above the sharp bridge of his nose, silently reproached Taeseong.

“What? I can’t help it if I have to cough!”

Without the slightest sign of remorse, Taeseong sprawled on the grass and stretched. Then he blamed me for our failed hunt.

“Even our ace marksman Hyun isn’t doing so well today.”

“…”

Hyun. My name. My father, a classical music enthusiast, had named me Hyun—the Korean word for the strings of instruments like the cello—hoping I would become a musician. Now all I did was draw a bowstring every day…

“We practically had it, and you scared it off,” I shot back, sitting down beside him.

“Doyun! Come sit over here. Let’s rest a little before we go. Aren’t you tired?” Taeseong called.

Doyun came over without a word, set down his gear, and sat beside me. The three of us sat on the hillside, silently looking down over the city of Gyeongju.

The flash and shock wave of the nuclear explosion two years earlier had transformed the world I lived in within minutes.

Apartment buildings with peeling paint, a derailed train, a leaning radio tower, cars scattered across the roads with their driver’s doors left open, and Hwangseong Park Municipal Stadium, which had become our home. People had named it the “Fortress.” The planks and rusted steel plates patched over the stadium’s broken concrete walls made it look like a steel beast.

Taeseong pointed toward our old school. “If we’d gotten to take our college entrance exams, what would we be doing now?”

“I don’t know, college? Studying, dating.”

Nothing else really came to mind. College life was like something I’d only heard about in rumors, a shadow without any real substance to me.

“Doyun here was on the track team, so there was no reason we’d ever have gotten mixed up with him. Big beanpole, always asleep in the back row.”

Taeseong made a face, like he’d gotten tangled up with someone he never should have met.

“Well, yeah.”

Doyun’s gaze lingered on the empty athletic field of our old school for a while before turning toward the sky.

“Still no word from your parents?” Doyun asked.

I lay back on the grass without answering and closed my eyes.

The day the nuclear bomb fell, my parents had been away on a trip to Gangneung. A text from Mom asking whether I’d eaten properly. Nothing since. For two years, the first thing I asked anyone new I met was whether they had any news of Gangneung. But not a single piece of news had made it across those few hundred kilometers. I didn’t even know whether the roads leading there were still intact.

“At least you’ve got parents to wait for. Me, since I left the orphanage, I can barely remember my parents’ faces anymore.”

Without a word, I reached out and rested my hand on Taeseong’s knee.

“We’ll be late,” Doyun said shortly. He stood up and gathered his gear.

Taeseong and I brushed the dirt off ourselves and followed him. After we’d walked for some time, I stopped them again.

“Shh! Hold on.”

I immediately nocked an arrow, drew the string, and aimed between the dense leaves. The green leaves of the broadleaf trees occasionally trembled in the wind.

“What is it? I can’t see a thing.”

As Taeseong narrowed his eyes and muttered under his breath, Doyun reached over and clapped a hand over his mouth.

I breathed out deeply and held my breath. I could feel my heartbeat all the way down to my tensed stomach.

The moment a pheasant kicked off a branch and took flight, I followed it with the tip of my arrow, then released the string. The arrow left my hand with a whoosh, followed shortly by a dull impact.

The pheasant fell through the leaves onto the fine soil below.

“Living up to your nickname, ace marksman! I seriously couldn’t see a thing.”

Taeseong whooped beside me. Doyun silently tapped my shoulder and went to retrieve the pheasant. I checked the Hamilton watch on my wrist and wound it. It was time to return to the Fortress.

[Elevation: 2 0 m]

One of the zeros had fallen off the old sign we always passed on our way down the mountain. I stopped for a moment and touched the spot where it had been, feeling the rough texture of the peeling vinyl.

When the three of us returned from the mountain and stopped in front of the Fortress’s main gate, a guard looked down from above. “How many?”

“Three!” I called back, holding the pheasant high.

The guard in the watchtower gave me a thumbs-up. Soon, with an ear-splitting scrape of metal, the bolt was drawn and the main gate opened. I proudly waved our catch at the man guarding the gate as I entered. The interior of the Fortress, built from the old stadium, came into view.

In the middle of the grassy field, a generator ran without pause. Buildings pieced together from steel sheets and wooden planks surrounded it, while rows of tin-roofed houses lined the running track beneath the spectator stands. A little over two hundred people lived inside the stadium.

On one side of the open ground stood an outdoor kitchen covered by a blue tarpaulin. We called it the mess hall. When we headed straight inside, people preparing potatoes and sweet potatoes looked up at us, then returned to their work.

“Here come the three musketeers! Did you catch much today?”

One of the kitchen ladies approached in her apron and took the pheasant, its neck hanging limp.

“This is all we got today.”

I scratched my head, and Doyun glanced sideways at Taeseong.

“Hmm, one pheasant.”

She weighed it on a scale, wiped her hands on her apron, and put a hand into her pocket. For a moment, she seemed to weigh something.

“Three meal tickets for this. I can’t give you any more than that.”

“Aw, come on, gorgeous… We’re hungry. Couldn’t you give us just one more ticket? Please?”

As Taeseong began flattering her, she slapped him on the shoulder and laughed heartily. Her eyes, tired from spending all day over steaming pots, seemed to brighten for a moment.

“Too many mouths to feed, so I can’t do that. But I’ll tell them to give you a little extra at the next meal.”

“You’re useful sometimes,” Doyun said.

Taeseong started saying something back behind me, but I didn’t hear him. I had spotted Hyeseon approaching from a distance.

“Hey, it’s Hyeseon. Hyeseon.”

Taeseong whispered with his mouth so close to my ear that I could feel his breath.

“I know.”

I pushed him away and turned my head, pretending to be calm.

The wind blew her black hair across her pale face before lifting it into the air again, and her double-lidded eyes narrowed into a smile. Whenever I saw Hyeseon, a strange feeling—longing or happiness, I couldn’t tell which—settled over my heart and then disappeared. That afternoon smell from high school, when I used to walk out through the back gate with my friends after Saturday classes. The smell that seemed to hold motes of sunlight. Whenever I saw Hyeseon, I could smell it again.

“There you three are!”

She kept her hands in the pockets of her black trousers and thrust one foot out toward us.

“Huh? Us? Uh, well. We’re here.”

When I looked into her eyes, I felt a strange itch behind my own and lowered my head to stare at the gravel. The back of my neck grew hot for no reason.

Behind me, Taeseong mimicked my voice, saying, “Huh? Us?…” I saw Doyun pinch him in the side.

“People have been talking about you guys a lot lately. Saying you’ve been doing well with the hunting. Especially the girls. They’re really interested in you, Doyun. They say you’re handsome.”

When Doyun didn’t react, Taeseong pointed to himself and stepped forward.

“What about me? Hyeseon, don’t the girls ever talk about me?”

I edged in front of Taeseong and spoke to her again.

“How’s teaching the kids going these days?”

“Same as always. Teaching, preparing lessons, teaching again… Oh, right. Actually, that’s why I wanted to ask you guys a favor.”

She opened her already large eyes wide and cautiously brought up the subject.

“What is it?”

“We’re running short of teaching materials for the first graders. I’ve been making some myself and teaching them with those, but it’s not enough.”

For a moment, a trace of fatigue entered her eyes. Then it disappeared.

“So… I was wondering if you could find some for us. I’m sorry I keep asking you for things. You don’t have to get them right away. I know you’re busy enough already.”

“I’ll find them!” I blurted out.

“We’ll,” Doyun corrected from behind me.

“We’ll find them! The three of us have tomorrow off anyway, so we can get permission and go out for a bit.”

I said it like it was nothing.

“Okay, thanks… Then I’m counting on you guys. Come visit the school whenever you’re bored.”

After watching Hyeseon disappear into the school building beyond the open ground, Taeseong slapped me on the shoulder.

“Hey, how can you just go volunteering us like that, Hyun? Why are you dragging us into your love life?”

“Come on, man. Education. Don’t you know how important education is? We’re contributing to education here at the Fortress.”

I rambled on, kicking a pebble on the ground for no particular reason.

“Then let’s go to the map room first.”

Following Doyun, who had taken the lead, we climbed the metal stairs to the sound of the generator. Mr. Jeon had spread a map across a large table and was busily marking something on it.

“Ugh! Sir, have you been day drinking again?”

Taeseong covered his nose and went over to look at the map beside him. Mr. Jeon had been one of our teachers back in high school. Even then, he would sometimes drink during the day and slur his way through geography class. I remembered him chasing a student from another class across the schoolyard in his slippers after catching him trying to skip mandatory evening study hall. A faint smile spread to the corners of my eyes.

“You brat! It’s an IV drip. An IV drip for grown-ups. How many times have I told you?”

Mr. Jeon smacked Taeseong on the back of the head.

“Ow! Sir, you’ll make me dumber!”

Taeseong grumbled as he looked at the teacher. Mr. Jeon ignored him and turned back to the map.

“So, how far did you get today?”

“We didn’t take any new routes… Just the mountain we usually go to. But that family we always saw along the way was gone. I wonder where they went,” I said, worried.

“Who knows? I certainly don’t… Anyway, you boys be careful out there. The people in charge are worried about sending you kids outside on your own.”

“We can take care of ourselves,” Doyun said, trying to reassure him.

“Take care of yourselves? You little brat, don’t talk back when your teacher’s speaking!”

Mr. Jeon smacked Doyun on the back of the head too.

“Uh, well… Sir, actually, Hyeseon asked us for a favor,” I said quickly, before I could get smacked on the back of the head myself. “She said she needs teaching materials for the first graders. Do you know anywhere we might be able to find some?”

“Teaching materials… Dongcheon Bookstore. You boys know the place. If there’s nothing there… You’ll have to try the stationery store across the river.”

“Do stationery stores sell textbooks?” I asked, puzzled.

Mr. Jeon put both hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall.

“They used to. Didn’t you boys buy educational supplies from stationery stores when you were little? The last time I went there was before the nuclear explosion, to buy workbooks for my kids… So I can’t make any promises. Anyway, start with Dongcheon Bookstore. If there’s nothing there, cross the river to… the stationery store. Going across the bridge will be the easiest way.”

I took out my map and copied the route Mr. Jeon had pointed out.

“Get permission before crossing the river… You know that, right?” he reminded us.

We said goodbye to Mr. Jeon and left the map room. Then we went straight into the Fortress’s administration office next door, where we obtained a reconnaissance permit form from a staff member and filled it out.

The Fortress’s hunting and reconnaissance unit consisted of seven teams of three, twenty-one members in all. Their main duties were hunting, reconnaissance, scavenging, and escorting water carts into Banwol Gang territory.

And as a rule, team members were rarely switched around. Doyun, Taeseong, and I made up one of those teams.

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RECONNAISSANCE PERMIT — BANWOL GANG TERRITORY SOUTH OF BUKCHEON (ALCHEON) RIVER

-Purpose: Reconnaissance and collection (workbooks)

-Date: June 22, 2007

-Destination: Dongcheon Bookstore and nearby stationery store

-Personnel: Sunwoo Hyun and two others, three in total

Note: Within Banwol Gang territory, personnel must carry out only authorized duties and must not provoke unnecessary conflict under any circumstances.