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spread out so the Great General’s photo was uncreased and turned faceup, and the Great Leader’s and the Great General’s gleaming portraits prominently placed and dusted daily with a padded stick. All the necessary evidence of a loyal life.
    He smiled at me, a thin, sympathetic smile, and I saw that he was afraid for me.
    â€œWe have great love and respect for the Great General,” I said. “Our entire family does.”
    I began mourning what I sensed would be the end. Alreadythe house no longer felt like ours. When our lives were dismantled and taken apart, I wondered who would take my
abeoji
’s grand piano. Or my
eomeoni
’s movie projector. Which anonymous bureaucrat was eyeing which appliance? What else had the stranger burned? I had so many questions that would never be answered. I could only trust him; I had no choice but to trust.
    â€œOf course, of course,” the man said. “I know all about your family.”
    I didn’t like that. A blanket of silence fell over us. I looked outside at the street, still icy where our building’s shadow fell, and wished my parents were home.
    â€œLook, I have a few questions for you. Again, no one’s in trouble. When is your sister coming back?”
    Had he read in a file that I had a sister, or was that something he had already known?
    He continued. “I’m sure you have studying to do. My son is a good student, he has a head for numbers. You?”
    I nodded, and some words fell out of my mouth as terror spread like alcohol through my body. All the abstractions I had seen as someone else’s life became real to me.
    He cracked the window open, letting the smoke and bitter embers and the scent of burned paper out. A trickle of cold crisp air entered, a girl’s thin high call.
    He asked me rote questions about my
eomeoni
and
abeoji
as if he was reading from a script. Then he wrote on a notepad and held it up. I’m here to help you, it read. Before I could besure that I had seen it correctly, he rested the note in the still-smoldering ashes and it shrank and disappeared.
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    I ran past all that I knew and all that I would forget, past the security guard who suddenly seemed there to keep us in more than to keep others out. I ran, coatless, my fingers icy without gloves, fleeing the image of the man who had left before me. I ran from my brightly lit neighborhood and into the darkness of tram stops and building-size portraits of the smiling Great Leader, past the city’s statues and hotel towers, stopping only for a random checkpoint. Ran, feeling a giant beast bearing down on me, though when I turned back there was nothing there. I was afraid of staying in Pyongyang, afraid of leaving. I wished for a power outage to pitch the city into a great unfurling darkness. This was my home, the center of my world, and I couldn’t imagine myself banished from it.
    Dusk became evening, the time my girl and I had planned to meet at the Pothong River.
    I waited for Myeonghui. The wind chilled my sweaty skin as I watched the few out by the riverbank striding back and forth for exercise. This daily life was something that might no longer be mine. My hands knotted tightly together. I was impatient to see Myeonghui. I thought I loved her.
    I waited by our designated weeping willow and hummed a few bars of “Whistle,” the entire time listening for her. I heard her before I saw her, the way her school uniform made a fine woolen rustle, and her bob swished as she laughed a mild, honest laugh,and shook her head my way as if to say, Not tonight. Though tonight might be all I had left with Myeonghui, whose family had left Japan years ago to return to our homeland. I pulled her closer to my side before the moon could peek out from the clouds and illuminate us to the others.
    She swiftly put an arm’s width of space between us with her habitual modesty. “You’re usually so