Rebel Seoul Read online

  “Song Bora!” Minwoo shouts, wide-eyed. “Are you going to eat all of those yourself?”

  “No. What do you take me for?” She play smacks him on the head. “One is for you and two are for Jaewon.”

  “So,” Minwoo says slowly, “you’re going to eat five hot dogs?”

  “Wow,” Bora drawls, “your high school education has really done wonders for you.” We share a large soda between us. Minwoo inhales his hot dog. He then slides down the booth to talk to two seniors from a different school.

  I finish off my first hot dog, one with the least amount of toppings, and then pick up another covered with a suspicious-looking pink dressing.

  “How’s your partner?” Bora asks. She takes a large bite of her cheese hot dog.

  I’d told her and Minwoo a simplified version of my role in the Tower, which may or may not break the NDA I didn’t read. They know I’ve been assigned a “partner,” and our role in the Tower is to test new weapons in the field. It’s more or less the truth.

  “We don’t speak,” I say. That is the truth.

  “Hmm.” Bora picks up to the drink to see that it’s all gone. She scowls at the back of Minwoo’s head, the last person to drink, then turns to me. “Refill, please?”

  I take the bottle from her and slide out of the booth. The restaurant is narrow but long. I make my way down to the fountain and condiment stand. A girl in a navy blue skirt and jacket is covering her hot dog with red beans. I step around her and reach for the drink pump.

  “You’re Lee Jaewon.”

  I turn to see the girl staring at me.

  “Uh, yes.” I check to see if I’m wearing my school name tag, but I’m not.

  “I saw your promotional footage for the senior tests. You were on a team with Alex Kim.”

  I’d forgotten they’d aired the test. “Did they show all of it?”

  “Only highlights.”

  “Right.” It makes sense for them to edit out parts to present an ideal image. I finish filling Bora’s drink and cap the bottle.

  “Did that boy . . . did he come back to school? The one whose brother died?”

  I turn to face the girl. Her head is turned down.

  “That was awful,” she continues in a low voice. “How could they? I know it was in the rules that if you were to die in the simulation, you’d die in real life, but is it so hard not to pull the trigger just because you’ve been given a gun?”

  The girl looks up, and her eyes widen. “Oh, sorry, you don’t want to hear this. Sorry . . .” She backs away.

  “Wait.”

  What she’d said is treasonous, as is any criticism of the state. She must be extremely distraught to speak of it in so public a space. There’s terror in her gaze; she must have realized her mistake.

  “It’s — ” I say. “It’s not hard.” It should never be harder to save a life than it is to take one.

  The girl holds my gaze, then nods. She makes her escape.

  When I get back, Minwoo’s sprawled in the booth and Bora’s on her phone. “What did that girl want,” Bora asks, “your autograph?”

  I think about telling them, but decide it’s better for them, and safer for the girl, if I don’t say anything. “Yeah.” I hand over the drink.

  “I’d be such a fabulous famous person,” Minwoo says.

  “Please.” Bora rolls her eyes. “I’m trying to eat.”

  Even after we’ve finished our hot dogs, we hang out in the booth. We have three more hours to kill before we have to leave for our assignments.

  Bora holds court from our booth. She belongs to several after-school clubs and charities as well as four different cram schools. Kids stop in to greet her and catch up. At one point, Kim Jobi comes in with his cronies, apparently skipping class. They stay away from our table.

  Bora sticks her tongue out at their retreating backs. “Who’d ever have thought knowing Alex Kim would be useful?”

  “Who is Alex’s partner at the Tower?” Minwoo asks.

  “Another student,” I say. It’s not technically a lie. Tera and Ama are students in a way. They take simulated classes during the day while Alex and I are at the academy.

  Bora leans forward. “What’s Tower protocol on hookups?”

  Minwoo laughs, pulling out his phone to play a game. “I like how thinking of Alex Kim immediately makes you think of hooking up.”

  Bora shrugs. “That boy is sex incarnate.”

  “Mhm,” Minwoo agrees.

  Bora turns to me. “What about your partner? Are you attracted to her?”

  I cough. “I’ve known her for less than week.” Not including the concert and simulation.

  Minwoo looks up from his game. “Is she hot? Or is that part of your NDA?” He snickers.

  I take a sip from the drink.

  “Well, is she?” Bora repeats.

  I think about Tera.

  “She’s not . . . hot. She’s cold.”

  “Harsh.”

  “Not in a bad way.”

  “How can she be cold in a good way?” Minwoo asks, not looking up from his phone.

  “Her skin is cool to the touch. She has thin lips and a long nose. There’s a beauty mark at the edge of her nose, and her eyes are dark. Everything about her is cold except for her eyes. The way she looks at things, I’ve never seen anyone look like that, as if she’s seeing the world for the first time.” I blink to see Bora staring at me intently. “What?”

  “Close your eyes.” Bora leans in.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  I indulge her.

  “Describe me,” Bora says.

  I picture the way Bora had looked sitting across from me. “You have short hair and brown eyes. You’re friendly and cute.”

  “That also describes me.” Minwoo laughs.

  “Open your eyes.”

  Bora’s staring at me, elbow on the table, hand cupping her chin. “I think you like her,” she croons, grinning.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You remember specific details about her.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true,” Minwoo says. “I mean, I probably can’t describe your face, Bora-yah, even though we’ve grown up together.

  Bora looks at Minwoo, then at me. “My point exactly.”

  We leave the hot dog joint at a quarter to four and say our good-byes.

  “How are you getting to the Tower?” Bora asks. “Want to share a cab?”

  “You’re going in the opposite direction,” I say. “I’ll take the Skytrain.”

  I part ways with Bora and Minwoo and head toward the station. I’m wearing a new overcoat that keeps out most of the chill air. Winters are long in both cities, long and cold and wet. Snowflakes start to fall from the sky. I hurry and take the escalator up to the Skytrain platform. I contemplate purchasing a hot drink off one of the vending machines, but the speaker overhead announces the arrival of my train.

  The tracks light up green as the train pulls into the station. The doors slide open, releasing passengers. I wait to the side until they pass before entering and moving to stand by the opposite doors.

  I only have one stop to go. I could have walked, but it’s a lot warmer and faster in the train.

  Halfway to my stop, the holo-screens in the train go static, the colorful commercials replaced by a man in a white hanbok wearing a wooden mask carved to look like a grandfather. The Proselytizer. I look over the shoulder of a girl sitting in a seat to my left who’d been playing games earlier on her phone. The masked figure appears on her screen as well.

  “In war, you are a commodity.” The voice blasts through the Skytrain speakers and through every electronic device in the train car, possibly the whole city. “How much are you worth?” The phrase and the question are repeated four times before the m
essage ends. The commercial resumes playing its cheerful melody through the speakers.

  “This is still going on?” a man farther down the train car growls. “I can’t believe they haven’t caught him yet.”

  “Honestly,” a woman in a business suit answers, “I don’t think he’s one person.”

  “Me, neither,” the girl in the seat beside me mumbles. She’s shut down her game, instead checking into various social media portals to discuss the Proselytizer’s latest slogan.

  The businesswoman explains her theory. “Masked man, synthesized, unidentifiable voice, purposefully inflammatory messages. Most likely a marketing team at work.”

  That’s a strange way to look at it: marketing a revolution.

  “Well, whatever he or she or they are,” the man grumbles, “it’s damn annoying. I was watching Sela’s new music video.”

  The Skytrain reaches my stop, and I exit. Outside, people linger on the train platform, peering at their mobile devices. There’s usually an upsurge on the portals after one of the Proselytizer’s media blitzes.

  The masked figure appeared for the first time about three months ago, broadcasting over every electronic device in Neo Seoul. He hasn’t directly admitted ties to the United Korean League, but everyone knows he’s their unofficial spokes­person. His slogans always have to do with war or some policy of the NSK. At first the government and the people didn’t think too much about the blitzes, beyond them being an extreme case of cyber hacking.

  However, that girl in the hot dog shop today is evidence that not everyone is content with the current order. Maybe the Proselytizer’s words are reaching more people every day.

  17

  The Burden of War

  I run into Alex in the lobby of the Tower. As he walks toward the elevators, something’s off. He’s limping.

  This is the second time I’ve seen him visibly hurt, and I’ve never heard of Alex getting into a fight inside or outside school. He’s a model student.

  “Hey.” I grab his shoulder after we’ve passed through security. “Are you all right?”

  He brushes me off. “I’m fine.” We continue toward the back elevators.

  “Did you fall?”

  “Leave it, Jaewon. I said I’m fine.”

  We enter the elevator, and Alex presses the button for B25. The elevator car begins to descend. I don’t know much about Alex’s life outside school and our assignments at the Tower. The news used to run bits about him, but not lately. Either he’s keeping a low profile, or he hasn’t done anything to interest the tabloids.

  He pulls out his phone. “Today’s a last-minute addition to our schedule. Did you hear the latest news from the war front?”

  “Yeah.” I’d watched a short video while at the shop. The NSK suffered a major loss in the Guangdong Province late last night, with hundreds of casualties. The official number hasn’t arrived yet, but it’s rumored to be in the upper eight hundreds.

  “The Director is putting pressure on the project because of it.”

  The Director, Alex’s father.

  The elevator slows, and Alex and I look up at the numbered floor. B12. Someone else is getting on the elevator.

  Alex puts away his phone and steps back to make room. The doors open. Tsuko stands outside, dressed in full military regalia. Behind him stretches a dark hall. Only the light of the elevator illuminates him, his pale skin and the heavy bags beneath his eyes.

  “General,” Alex says. We bow.

  Tsuko steps inside, and the lift once again begins to descend.

  What is Tsuko doing here instead of where he must have been hours earlier, at the battlefront? There’s only a small body of water between the Neo State of Korea and South China, but it’s still a fraught distance to travel during wartime, with multiple naval blockades up and down the coastline. There’s blood spatter on Tsuko’s left epaulet.

  In front of me, he shifts his stance as if he’s uncomfortable. He has a severe haircut, shorn at the base of his skull. I can see nicks in his skin and places where old scars have healed over.

  Like Alex, Tsuko’s life is well documented for the consumption of the public, although many believe his history is a fabrication, including his name. According to every news outlet, he graduated from an academy in Taipei at the age of twelve, a prodigy, an orphan who saved the Director’s life on one of his ambassadorial trips. Tsuko went on to become the Director’s bodyguard for a year before he was recommended for a lieutenancy. With the Director’s sponsorship, Tsuko rose to prominence, with a stellar record of wins in the war, and was promoted to second general only three months ago at the age of sixteen.

  In fact, it’s odd that the Director would elevate Tsuko yet give none of that attention or precedence to his own son. But if Alex resents Tsuko, he doesn’t show it. He leans against the wall, his attention focused on the descending numbers of the elevator.

  Again, Tsuko shifts in front of me, and then suddenly he pivots. Alex and I both straighten away from the wall.

  He looks us both up and down, a sneer curling his upper lip.

  There’s a short, tense pause. “General?” Alex asks.

  “The Board voted on whether to bring in outsiders for the project. On whether it would be wise to give responsibility to untested academy seniors who have yet to prove themselves on a battlefield.”

  I refrain from pointing out that both Alex and I are older than him.

  “It was a seven-to-one vote.”

  It’s not hard to guess who had the dissenting opinion.

  “Why?” Alex asks.

  At first I don’t think Tsuko will answer. He drops his gaze. But then he says, his voice low, “I wanted the Board to give me control of the project.”

  “That’s arrogant of you,” Alex says. “You’re already general of the armed forces in the Pacific. You can’t be in two places at once. Although,” he adds dryly, “maybe you can.”

  “They needed someone responsible to make sure the project yields results. The war is at stake.”

  “The responsibility of this war doesn’t belong to you.”

  Tsuko lifts his eyes, a dark glimmer in their depths like silver. Or steel. “Who does it belong to, then? You?” He laughs without humor. “A privileged, spoiled prince of the NSK. War isn’t a game, nor is it a pastime.”

  Alex growls. “You don’t know me.”

  “No,” Tsuko say scathingly, “I don’t.”

  I look between Alex and Tsuko. I take back my previous opinion. There’s resentment here, on both sides.

  B25. Finally.

  “This is a warning,” Tsuko says. “If either of you should do anything to screw up the success of this project, I will kill you myself.”

  The doors to the lift open. Tsuko pivots and strides through them, his military coat whipping out behind him like a goddamn cape.

  Silence.

  “He has great timing,” I say.

  “God, I hate him.” Alex limps out, and I follow.

  We’re in a small waiting room. A man at a desk buzzes us into a larger viewing chamber. Cushioned seats and lounge chairs circle a platform at the center of the room. Men and women in civilian clothes mingle around the space, holding flutes of champagne. These must be the sponsors.

  There’s no sign of Tsuko. He most likely went through the door at the back of the chamber. Alex catches sight of Dr. Chung and makes his way over to the machinist. He’s doing a good job hiding his limp, but some of the sponsors shoot him curious looks.

  “Jaewon-ssi?”

  I start, not realizing someone stands so close beside me.

  “Sela,” I say, turning to face the pop star. “How are you?” She wears a black suit, her name printed on a card clipped to her jacket. Her hair is dyed red and falls to just below her shoulders.

  “Fine, thank you. And you?”

&nbs
p; “Good.”

  We stare at each other. I’m not one for small talk, and neither is she, apparently, because we both turn to survey the crowd of richly clad strangers. The men and women here must be representatives of chaebol groups, conglomerates that hold most of the wealth and property in Neo Seoul. Minwoo and Bora both belong to chaebol families, although Bora is one of many grandchildren while Minwoo is the sole heir to his family’s fortune.

  A prickle of awareness shoots down my neck. I quickly trace the source to a man standing in the shadows by the far wall, watching me.

  Park Taesung. What is he doing here? He’d said he had spies in the Tower, but I didn’t think he himself would be directly involved. None of the sponsors seem to care that an Old Seoul gangster lurks in their midst. They ignore him, nibbling on their hors d’oeuvres and drinking from their flutes. He meets my gaze, and I flinch.

  “Jaewon-ssi,” Sela asks, “are you certain you’re ‘good’?”

  “Sorry.” I shake my head. “I thought I saw someone I knew.”

  It’s the wrong thing to say. Immediately Sela’s eyes move in the direction of Park Taesung. I doubt she’d recognize the Old Seoul boss, but I want to avoid any connection between us.

  “Wait.” I grab her by the shoulder.

  She blinks in surprise, her attention drawn back to me. “Jaewon-ssi?”

  I rack my brain for an excuse. “I heard you have a new music video.”

  I sound ridiculous, but she smiles brightly. “You saw it?”

  “Yes,” I lie.

  “I was worried it would depart too drastically from my image. I’m marketed as a pop rocker, not a pop singer.”

  I’m unsure how to respond. Is there a difference?

  The doors to the other side of the chamber open. Tera walks in, accompanied by Dr. Koga. She’s wearing a GM flight suit, a uniform that pilots wear inside God Machines to keep their body temperature stable at high altitudes. Hers is outfitted differently than the standard. It’s skintight and black, with a red design that zigzags up across her upper thighs and torso.

  “Jaewon-ssi?” Sela asks.

  I realize I’m still holding onto her shoulder. Quickly I drop my hand. “Excuse me.”