This Burns My Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

have taken that decision rather well.”
    “I have, haven’t I?” said Soo-Ja, using the back of her hand to wipe off the serene, mysterious smile taking residence on her lips.
    My dear Soo-Ja,
    I hesitate before writing you this letter, as I do not wish to involve you in anything dangerous. But the protests are moving beyond Seoul and are making their way to our own hometown of Daegu. You may have heard about this—or maybe not, as the government has been trying to keep this away from the newspapers—but a neighbor of ours has gone missing. He’s a young boy—a twelve-year-old middle school student—from our very own town of Won-dae-don. His name is Chu-Sook Yang, and he attended a demonstration in Daegu; in Jungantong, we believe. Group records show he called himself a member of our organization. Apparently, he never made it home after the demonstration. All of us here suspect some kind of foul play.
    The leader of the Daegu chapter of our group, a rather smart medical student named Yul-Bok Kim, has tried to contact the boy’s mother, but she refuses to provide any information, and won’t speak to any of us. (Have the President’s men gotten to her already, maybe?) Yul has asked me if I know her, and I laughed at him, since I don’t exactly spend my weekends with teenage boys from the slums. But then I thought, I may
not know the boy’s family, but maybe Soo-Ja does. I know your father’s factory employs a lot of people in town—even if the boy’s mother doesn’t know you, I’m guessing she’d be willing to talk to someone of your stature. Yul lives in the Mangwon district, not too far from you. I’m attaching his phone number and address—he’ll await contact from you—should you decide to get involved in this.
    Min Lee
    “Excuse me, excuse me,” said Soo-Ja, making her way to the back of the bus. She wore a pink embroidered coat with a high collar, a red silk chemise with a bow over her chest, and a long cream polyester skirt. She also had a yellow headband on top of her head, accentuating her bangs. She looked as if she were simply heading for an afternoon stroll.
    According to the instructions she’d been given, she was to take the Dalseo-gu bus at the Won-dae-don stop and sit on one of the last seats in the last row, making sure to keep the one next to her empty. As the bus sputtered forward on the unpaved asphalt, driving over stones on the road, its constant bumps made Soo-Ja lose balance several times, grabbing the metal handrail repeatedly to keep steady. Outside, wreaths of smoke covered the ground behind them, tinting everything she saw out the windows in shades of brown.
    When Soo-Ja finally reached the last row, she sank into one of the hard cloth-covered seats, drawing the attention of an old man in a broad-rimmed black horsehair hat, the kind that had gone out of fashion in the twenties. He turned to glance at her, and Soo-Ja glowered at him until he went back to talking to his friends. They were a group of about four white-haired men in their sixties, sitting on the two rows in front and across from Soo-Ja. They talked like teenagers, touching one another’s arms and teasing one another over the supposed aphrodisiac quality of ginseng tea. Their laughter was raucous, almost ricocheting against the sides of the bus.
    As Soo-Ja watched them, she was reminded of a Swiss teacher she’d had in high school, who had told her how surprised he was to see the physical expressiveness of Korean people. Indeed they moved theirbodies extravagantly, used them like punctuation marks, with arms rising, and fingers freely pointing in the air for emphasis; they were like a country full of excitable preachers gesticulating to congregations of one or two listeners at a time. They weren’t quiet at all; in fact the opposite: temperamental, given to passions, sentimental to a fault. Their feelings and emotions flashed on their faces with the intensity of a close-up projected on a giant screen, and they