The weather that day was perfect — all clear skies and wispy clouds — devoid of any sign of affliction or worry. There was something about the azure floating overhead that with its invisible threads drew people outdoors. Lee Joon-Hyung was no exception. Sitting in the packed dirt courtyard, Joon-Hyung wrapped a pebble in paper to make a jegi; he would have liked to a coin in place of a rock, but coins were hard to spare. The jegi could be used to play jegichagi, a game in which the jegi was thrown up and kicked at to prevent it from falling to the ground. Joon-Hyung was quite good at this game. His record of 53 consecutive kicks was undefeated by any of the village kids, with the exception of his sister, who had once gotten 56.
Joon-Hyung had approached his big sister earlier, to ask if she would be interested in playing with him. But Yoon-Hana — just barely fourteen — had recently taken up an avid interest in growing up, and responded only by smiling a shallow smile, and then turning back to her book. The elder child of the Lee family, though perhaps not selfish and certainly not uncaring, possessed a practical mind. This trait caused her to carefully weigh action with outcome, loss with gain, and, at least at the moment, trampling around outside in the dust and dirtying her clothes seemed far less pleasant than sitting indoors, soaking in the words of Kim Dong-In and Yi Kwan-Su. However, what made those words so appealing were not Kim’s aesthetic sensibilities or Yi’s succinct prose, it was the level of difficulty behind those readings. Yoon-Hana relished the looks on adult’s faces when they saw her, intently pouring over difficult classics or politically rich volumes. “My,” they would begin, their hands rising to their faces, “aren't you a clever girl! You’re reading far ahead of most children your age”, their voices full of curious delight and tinged with what Yoon-Hana took to be as envy that their own children weren't as clever as her. She took great pride in her ranking as number one in class 9-A, beaming at every full mark she received. She walked to school an hour earlier than everyone else in order to attend dance lessons and ran faster than any girl during school sports days. Although a small part of her did want to join her little brother in the yard, she, in her fourteen years, felt too old for such a thing, and most importantly, Yoon-Hana could not abandon her fundamental need to maintain a respectable image.
Joon-Hyung however, could not say the same, for as much as sharp precision and an insatiable drive made up Yoon-Hana’s nature, a peculiar imagination and sense of wonder made up his. He was a child who at all times seemed possessed by images and fantasies of a world far, far away. Many mornings could be spent daydreaming in the pale yellow light, weaving intricate tales that were the stuff of legends. A foolish hedonist rejects a his marriage to a sensible young girl, only to realize his true love for her after he has gambled away his fortune. A noble king, after losing his queen to illness, falls so deeply into despair that his tears collect and he is transformed into the Nakdong River. A poor son of a farmer falls in love with a beautiful maiden, with skin white as milk, only to learn that she is the moon, and she cannot love a mortal. The young man’s love is so deep that the gods take pity; they turn him into the sun. But alas! The moon and the sun can never share the same sky, and they are forced to gaze at each other, celestial hands reaching out from across the stars — a tragedy — all the best stories were. As varied as his stories were, Joon-Hyung’s fairytales always had one thing in common, and that was that he was the center of them. Although his protagonists were taller and stronger and at least several years older than Joon-Hyung’s twelve year old self, their thoughts were very much his thoughts, and through them he could live countless lives. He was a brave soldier in the morning, a fickle spirit in the afternoon, and a wise wanderer before the day was up.
Joon-Hyung’s mother took a particular delight in Joon-Hyung’s propensity for fantasy. She admired the young boy, her son, still very much a baby in her eyes. Ahn Ji-Eun found his earnestness charming, took delight in the way his eyes seemed to glow from within. But Joon-Hyung’s father did not share this same admiration. Lee Hwan-Kyung held the principles of a traditional Korean man, and in his values of utilitarianism and studiousness, he took his son’s fanciful nature as a sign of laziness. In his eyes his son excelled in neither academics nor athletics, lacked in both principle and initiative. He much prefered his daughter, whom was very much the same as him in almost every aspect except for the one that mattered the most. Oh, what a pity it was that she was not born to him as a son!
Hwan-Kyung had not known it, but he had created an unsurmountable wedge between himself and his children. For every child strives for the absolute love and acceptance of his or her father, and although the Lee children were indeed very different in many ways, the one thing they shared in common was this lack of a true, uninhibited fatherly love, and a constant want of his admiration. Nevertheless it was quite evident which child Hwan-Kyung prefered. For many children his age this would have been demoralizing, but for Joon-Hyung, through his shame this became a challenge. Like the brave characters in his stories he would have to accomplish a great task, overcome the great struggle that was long established every epic tale should have. Suddenly, he felt a sense of self satisfaction, maybe even excitement, bubbling up inside of him, nestled in the ideal that he had a goal — a quest, because at heart, Joon-Hyung was a protagonist.

War, Yoon-Hana decided, along with rivalry and sexual desire, had a certain palpability in the air. There was something about the disgruntlement of men that seemed to rise out of them and pollute the air with intensity. Perhaps it was just the precocious nature of a fourteen year old mind, seeking some sort of poetic symmetry, but the bullet gray sky seemed to parallel the weight of something heavy in the atmosphere. It was on such days that Yoon-Hana’s diligent nature seemed to leave her, as all she wished to do that morning was stay in bed. If she had learned anything from literature, it was that unpleasant events would be met with unpleasant weather. There was never a story where conflict and despair unfolded during a warm, sunlight, day in mid-June. Conversely, joyousness and celebration never met under a steel-colored sky like today’s.
It was near impossible to tell whether or not the sun had risen, which made Yoon-Hana not exactly displeased, but at least disoriented. By the time the first stirrings of activity began to appear of the village she had already swept the floor, beat the mats, washed the pots, fed the quails, weeded the potato plants, and began to prepare breakfast. For a moment she stood in the the yard, watching birds float across the cheerless sky. The clock on the kitchen wall across from her it was almost half past five. At this point she would already be leaving for school, but since she was on break there seemed nothing left to do except for stand there, taking in her surroundings. Far in the distance she could see the city, and if she looked very closely she could see little pinpricks of light. Electricity! Her teacher had told her about it, how it could bring light from thousands of miles away. To her electricity was a wild thing. It must have coiled and sprung and clicked and moved with animal intensity and machine precision. It felt too unreal, too complex for Korea, for her village, for 1948.
Yoon-Hana felt a wave of displeasure wash over her. She stared at three-roomed house surrounding their courtyard. The walls were made of wood and covered in peeling, white paint and the roof desperately needed to be re-done. No matter how much she cleaned and scrubbed, no matter how many wild mugunghwa flowers she picked and arranged around the house, there was no escaping reality — the Lee family was poor. Yoon-Hana knew this was not something to be ashamed of. After all, who in their village was not? Despite this every time she went to school with socks and hem caked in dust, shoes worn with holes at the toes and heels, every time she had to borrow a pencil from a classmate, a deep vermillion flush would crawl up her cheeks. But she had to attend school. She had to be number one in her class, because then maybe she could get a good job. She could work in an office building, the shiny and clean ones she saw in the city from her current perch. There would be hot, flowing water, and maybe even electricity to bring light. Her father would brag to the other villagers. “What became of your elder daughter?” they would ask, and he, with a proud expression would fondly proclaim, “My Yoon-Hana? Have you not heard? She works in the city now! Yes, she is very important.” Though of course this scene would never happen quite like that because she would invite her family to live with her. Her family, all bundled up and dreaming, slept deeply, soundly. But Yoon-Hana could not afford herself such a luxury. Sleeping lightly, after all was a sign of an active mind.
Yoon-Hana was incorrect about one thing, for her father was not asleep at all — in fact, he was quite awake and his mind was just as active as his daughter’s. Lee Hwan-Kyung lay awake as the sky turned. He usually prided himself on being a straightforward man. He had no alms to telling the truth, he could say exactly what he thought. Yet he found himself holding back. Guilt circled like a wild animal in his mind, pushing heavily against the back of his head, making it hard to think. What would he do? How could he possibly choose?
He heard a figure spilling in and out of the shadows of the house. Yoon-Hana. She was always up at this hour, as if she felt that she had to beat even the sun. She was too hard working, too determined, too concerned with filing off every imperfection. She would have been the perfect son. A true Korean gentleman, timely, courteous, and, at least on the surface, humble. But what of his actual son? No good, no good that habit of his was. No good was it to spend his days focused on clouds, focused on dreams. Hwan-Kyung let his thoughts slip, just momentarily, as he wondered if perhaps, he was too hard on the boy. He could hear Ji-Eun’s voice, like tin in his ear: “He’s just a little boy. Why, he could be a writer, with a mind like that he could be a writer!” This did not settle Hwan-Kyung; he did not trust writers. Spreading political propaganda and panic like wildfire. They were half the reason for the national tensions that grew ever more palpable.
A sharp screech of a quail outside drew his mind back to his dilemma. He was not a rich man, he knew this, for years working as a bricklayer in the small village. He better than anyone realized the value of education, for Hwang-Kyung firmly believed that if he had gotten a chance to attend school, he was sure he would be successful right now. He never had a doubt that if had gotten a proper schooling, he would have excelled in math and composition. How could he have not realized sooner that there would not be enough money to both feed the family and send both of his children to school? So how could he now rob one of his own children of their education?
The smell of cooking rice and fish soup mixed with his thoughts. Yoon-Hana was had nearly finished preparing breakfast. Hurried hands chopping vegetables, stirring soup. Guilt still pushed and prodded at him as he came to the realization that it must be his daughter. To choose to send a daughter to school rather than a son! It was almost unheard of. But the steady beat of Yoon-Hana’s knife on the wood of the cutting board reassured him. Yes, it must be done. It was his daughter, so noble in character, so free of faults that would continue the family legacy. As Hwan-Kyung looked over at his still sound asleep son the guilt pushed at him again, and he thought of how Ji-Eun would react to his decision. But now it was truly morning, and he had stayed idle for too long, it was a new day.

His father’s news at breakfast hit Joon-Hyung unexpectedly. That morning when then they all sat down for breakfast Hwan-Kyung  neither looked nor acted any differently. His tone was calm and even when he announced the news, but his black eyes were fixed on a spot behind Joon-Hyung. Joon-Hyung expected his mother to say something, to defend her son, but only a weary hand moved to her forehead. His sister did not respond either. She only looked down at her soup then up at the ceiling, then back again, and in a mix of shock, confusion, and dejection, Joon-Hyung imagined a story about a puppet, whose head bobbed down and up like his sister’s.
After silently doing his chores Joon-Hyung had a chance to sit in the courtyard and think. But instead of feeling hurt or betrayed at his father’s decision, he felt the same curious excitement inside of him, raising him up and filling him with air. He felt almost giddy. In his mind this was just another obstacle for the brave protagonist to overcome. He began to concoct the story, a wonderful but unappreciated young boy, spurned by his haughty family, credit stolen,  reputation slandered. There must have been a way to set things right, to pass the fates’ test. His sister had tried to speak to him, uttering out an odd combination of an apology and an attempt to comfort her little brother. As she spoke she felt a pang of nostalgia — they used to be so much closer. She wondered if their now apparent distance was her fault, if maybe she focused too little on her brother and too much on studies.
Joon-Hyung, barely received Yoon-Hana’s words. He was deep in thought, supplying the occasional nod of agreement. A flaw of a mind that revolved around fairy tales and romanticism was the tendency to generalize. The hero is solely good, the devious villain has only evil intentions. But Joon-Hyung understood that in order to create a good character, the storyteller must must consider the character's faults. Sometimes, he reasoned, even a hero must make questionable choices, sometimes even immoral choices. If a character never commits a mistake, then they can never grow. Looking back he would never quite be sure what had prompted him to make the decision that he did in that moment. To him it was the clear solution, it was a part of his story.

All day Joon-Hyung’s hands felt jittery, knowing what he was about to do. Only after his father had gone to work and his mother and Yoon-Hana had left for the market and the house had descended into silence could he properly carry out his plan. Joon Hyung opened a pulled open a kitchen drawer and felt around underneath a stacks of washcloths and rags until his fingers touched paper. He drew out a stack out won, almost 1,000,000 in total. The family savings. Many years of his father’s work, his mother’s prudent work. Holding it he felt a rush to his fingertips. He felt as if suddenly he had real power in his hands. The idea that he could spend it, he could buy almost anything he wanted with that stack of paper in his hands. But no — he would not. Instead he held the stack carefully as if it could shatter like glass. In an excited half skip he entered the bedroom. Every member of the Lee family slept on a mat on the floor together at night. Joon-Hyung’s parents on one side and him and his sister on the other. He thought back to night where he and his sister would lay talking in the shadows, facing each other, noses so close that they were almost touching so that their parents would not hear. They would do this every night, until one night Yoon-Hana did not speak. She faced the other direction and sunk into the shadows. It seemed that ever since then every night she disappeared deeper and deeper into the dark. Joon-Hyung carefully took the money, and placed it, half covered, half concealed on his sister’s mat. He stood back to view his work and he felt the self satisfaction of winning, the idea that he had defeated the mighty villain. Content, he left the room to wait for the climax.

The discovery was even more astounding and colorful than Joon-Hyung could have imagined. Lee Hwan-Kyung, weary from a particularly tiring day of work, arrived home and went immediately to the bedroom to lie down. He noticed, almost instantly the money — the money that he had so carefully earned and saved over the past twenty years nestled underneath his precious daughter’s sheets. Anger began to well up, fueled by what he took to be betrayal. To him Yoon-Hana was scarred forever, broken in image and face, and when he confronted her about the crime, seeing her confused expression, hearing her desperate protests he could only feel disgust. He could no longer bear to look at her nor hear her, it was as if he was suddenly blind from reason. In truth it was this perfect image of her that he held so dearly that caused the blind rage, for to exalt someone so highly is to condemn them to a certain death. Ji-Eun told her son not to watch, to go to bed and not get in his father’s way, but he could not help clinging on to his father’s every word, even while lying in the cool shadows of the bedroom. He fell asleep that night feeling immensely powerful in the idea that he could make the stories in his head come to life. Joon-Hyung had no way of knowing that this would be one of the last times he ever saw his sister, for the next morning his father would remove Yoon-Hana from school. Yoon-Hana would leave a few days later, now having no prospects for education; she would move to the Pyongyang in the north, where she would live with a relative and work in a factory that made Chinese ammunition. He could not possibly know that less than two years later the war would break out, and that Hwan-Kyung and Ji-Eun and him would flee to America. Yoon-Hana would be left there, for there was no way to cross the border, no way to get in contact once the war began. Yoon-Hana, in her never dying hatred of idleness, of complacency, would join the war as a volunteer soldier, running faster than any girl there, until, on a warm, sunlight, day in mid-June, she would set off a PMN-3 mine, and she would die an immediate, almost painless death. No, none of this was known to the sleeping boy who had no idea what he had set in motion. In his dreams he was still a hero, he was still the protagonist.