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“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. God, you didn’t make a wish or anything like that, did you?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t have time.”
“Oh good!” The lines on her forehead disappeared, and a really sweet smile came across her face. “Please don’t tell anyone about the shooting star. It’s just too embarrassing. It’ll be just our secret.”
What would other guys do in this situation?
I wanted to touch her. Anywhere would have been fine. If I could reach out and she didn’t spurn my touch, I knew that I could make this restless feeling that was consuming me go away. I don’t want to lose this girl smiling in front of me. I felt something strong for this girl I barely knew. And I believed that maybe she would let me touch her.
While I went back and forth about whether to reach out my hand, she jumped to her feet. “We should be getting back.”
Feeling both relieved and heartbroken, I nodded and stood up.
When we got to the gate, she said, “You go first. I want to see you jump from behind.” I jumped over the gate in one motion. I waited for her on the other side. She beckoned me back. Assuming she needed help getting over, I reached across the gate with both arms, when suddenly she grabbed hold and drew me in. My body pressed up against the gate. Sakurai’s face came closer to mine. “I knew you were a great jumper,” she said and pressed her lips against mine. What soft lips. Whatever it was that Sakurai knew about me, I didn’t give a damn. At that moment, I couldn’t care less.
We stood there with the gate between us and kissed for a while. That restless feeling from earlier had completely vanished.
3
That night, Sakurai and I ended up walking to Tamachi Station.
I bought a newspaper and pen from a kiosk, and we each tore off a piece of the newspaper and wrote down our phone numbers.
“What are you doing next Sunday?” Sakurai asked.
“I’m seeing a friend.”
Sakurai’s forehead wrinkled. “Are you going out with another girl?”
I hastily shook my head. “I’m just seeing a guy.”
She stared into my eyes—hard. “I don’t like lies, okay?”
After a short silence, I nodded. Although there were lots of things I hadn’t told her yet, I hadn’t lied.
We passed through the ticket barrier, and before we went to our respective platforms, Sakurai asked mischievously, “What would you do if I said I really wanted to see you Sunday?”
“I’d go see my friend. He’s someone I need to keep my promises to.”
“Sounds like he’s a really good friend.”
“He is.”
Now let me tell you about when I was going to Korean school.
Like I said, I received my elementary and junior high school education at North Korean school. I learned Korean, North Korean history, and all about the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. I also learned the kind of stuff they teach in Japanese school, like Japanese, math, and physics.
The Great Leader Kim Il Sung.
If you’re going to talk about Korean schools, there’s definitely no avoiding this guy. Ever since I was a kid, I’d been given an earful about just how great and honorable he was.
A communist society like North Korea doesn’t recognize religion but needs something resembling one to unify its people. Kim Il Sung was that something—the charismatic founder of a religion.
As much as I can explain it now, I definitely couldn’t understand it back then, so despite thinking how weird it was to be forced to swear blind loyalty to Kim, I simply accepted it as normal. I had spent my entire childhood in a North Korean school, which, after all, was really an organized religion.
Then one day in the third grade, I came to a realization.
It happened during a lecture titled “Kim’s Early Years.” The focus of the lecture that day was about how young Kim Il Sung used a slingshot he’d made to attack a Japanese official who’d come to his home to arrest his father for inciting the anti-Japanese movement. The moral of the story was how great Kim Il Sung was—even as a child—but what I thought was this: we’re greater than this guy.
I was thinking about how the year before, when I was in second grade, I was walking home from school with some friends and a police car came up behind us. Seeing some of us spilling over into the road, the female officer yelled into the megaphone mounted on the police car, “Walk on the side of the road, you pieces of human garbage!”
None of us were particularly hurt by this. There were always right-wing propaganda trucks coming around the school, hurling much worse insults, so we were used to the abuse. We were used to it, sure, but it still pissed us off.
So the next day, we quickly got together a bicycle squad and began a series of guerilla-style attacks on the police. Our mission was simple: patrol the neighborhood on our bicycles, our baskets loaded with water balloons, and when we found a cop car, bomb them and run.
We succeeded in pulling off one attack after another. We carefully planned our escape route down side streets beforehand. Not once were we caught.
About two weeks into our campaign, a water balloon landed on the windshield of a police car and broke. The kid who threw it had filled the balloon with water mixed with black, green, red, and brown paint. Deprived of a clear view for an instant, the car drifted across the road like a Formula One race car and crashed into the guardrail. After safely escaping the scene, we climbed up onto the roof of an apartment building and watched the aftermath of the accident. One of the two female officers involved in the crash was in tears. We didn’t want to be bullies, so we decided to forgive and forget and put an end to our attacks.
By the way, we were never told what happened to Kim Il Sung after he attacked the official with the slingshot. Did he get away with it?
All kidding aside, if Kim Il Sung could walk on water like that other charismatic religious leader guy, I could see myself being so taken with that incredibly tall tale that I might pledge my loyalty to him. But to me, all the stories about the legendary Kim Il Sung were lacking. There was nothing appealing about them. Or exciting. And that’s how I came to this realization that day in third grade:
Our stories are better.
After that, my teachers started calling me “the biggest dumb ass since the school’s founding.” I quit studying, my grades went down the toilet, and I started making up all kinds of ridiculous excuses to stay home from school.
I hated school with a passion. Especially what took place at the end of the school day: general review and self-criticism, the communists’ favorite pastime. A typical review or soukatsu went something like this. The teacher would single out one student for speaking Japanese in school, make him own up to this offense, and then force him to rat out another student who was guilty of the same. If you refused to talk, you might get smacked. We never blamed anyone for ratting someone else out, though. After all, we were only doing it so we could be dismissed and hang out together after school. As long as this practice of general review and self-criticism continued, I had no intention of accepting communism.
Practices leading up to the annual athletic festival consisted mostly of group exercises. In fourth grade, military-style foot drills were added to our practices. A perfect military march. The practices continued until our rubber-soled shoes could produce the same sound that military shoes made. And before any of us knew it, we had become youth members of the Kim-led Korean Workers Party and were told we’d fight for Kim Il Sung one day. I wanted nothing to do with it.
At school, there was this feeling of being repressed, of being kept under constant and strict control. So around the start of the fourth grade, I began to make up excuses like “the left side of my head hurts” or “the backs of my eyes feel hot” or “I have a splitting tongue-ache” and stayed home from school.
While my father, who was still an enthusiastic member of Chongryon back then, wasn’t exactly thrilled with me ditching school, he didn’t force me t
o go either. And since my mother was happy to have me around the house, I skipped school with my parents’ approval.
One day, soon after I started fifth grade, my father, who’d seen me watching movies all day, asked, “Isn’t there something you’d rather be doing?”
After some thought, I said that I wanted him to teach me to box. I had just watched Rocky the other day. The pachinko business allowed my father to keep pretty flexible hours, so my training began the very next day.
The first day, we headed for the big neighborhood park, the one with the running trails. Once we arrived, my father walked straight into the grassy area in the middle of the park. I followed him. When we got to the middle, my father and I faced each other, standing some distance apart. He stared at me for a while, saying nothing.
Just what kind of training did he have in store for me?
I was a little nervous. Then he finally opened his mouth.
“Hold out your left arm,” he said. I did as I was told. “Now turn around once.”
“Huh?”
“Just turn around once in either direction. Like a compass.”
The look on his face was dead serious. I turned around counterclockwise with my arm extended in front of me. When I came around so that I was looking at my old man again, he said, “The circle you made with your fist is roughly the size you are. If you stay inside that circle and take only the things within your reach, you can go through life without ever getting hurt. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nodded slowly.
“What do you think about that?”
“I think that’s lame,” I answered without skipping a beat.
The old man cracked a smile. “Boxing is the act of breaking through the circle with your own fists and taking something from outside it. Outside is crawling with tough guys. And while you’re trying to get something, someone else might come inside and take something of yours. It hurts to hit and hurts to get hit. Fighting is a scary thing. Now do you still want to learn to box? You know you’re safer staying inside that circle.”
I answered without the slightest hesitation. “Yes.”
My father cracked another smile. “Then let’s get started.”
At first, he forced me to run and then run some more.
“The boxing happens above the torso, sure, but a strong punch is generated from strong footwork. A house built on a bad foundation will easily collapse. That’s why you run.”
After I was able to run the trails without losing my breath, he taught me how to throw a punch. In the beginning, I had a habit of lifting the heel of my pivot foot when I punched.
“Plant your foot. Don’t make an enemy of the ground.”
Next came footwork. During his fighting days, my father was your typical swarmer—he stood and traded blows with his opponent. So naturally, I expected him to teach me in-fighting techniques. I was wrong. My old man began to move right and left, backward and forward with easy, flowing steps. As I watched in wonder, he stopped and cracked an invincible grin. “Out-boxers don’t play well to the crowd. I needed the money. Sometimes you have to lose something to get something back.”
At first I kept my knees straight and stiff, so my footwork was leaden.
“Bend your knees a little and keep them moving. Keep your knees loose, and they can absorb the force of a punch. A tree that is unbending is easily broken in a powerful storm. But not grass.” Scratching the scar at the corner of one eye he added, “Or so says some guy named Lao Tzu.”
His conscience must have nagged him for plagiarizing the Chinese philosopher.
On nontraining days, such as when it was too rainy or when my father had to work, I went with my mother to Ginza and watched a movie. My mother loved watching Hollywood movies on the big screen; afterward, she’d always look at me with her eyes twinkling and say, “Wasn’t that good?” I always smiled and nodded no matter how boring the movie.
After the movie, we usually went to Sembikiya or Shiseido Parlour and got something sweet to eat. Although I wasn’t exactly a fan of sweets, my mother would look at me with a cherubic smile and say, “Isn’t it good?” And I’d smile and nod.
Sometimes I’d think I didn’t need school as long as I had my mother and father in my life. Unfortunately, this honeymoon with my parents didn’t last. In the middle of the sixth grade, I abruptly hit a rebellious phase.
My last day of training with my father was July 7, the day of the Star Festival. I dragged my feet all the way to the park. My father and I entered the grassy area and stood facing each other.
“Today I’ll teach you how to duck into a right-left combination.” He smiled. “Ready, Luke?”
The night before, my father had come into the living room where I was watching Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back on video and began to watch along with me—something he almost never did. While he watched the training scenes with Luke Skywalker and Master Yoda, he kept nodding with this look of satisfaction. I had a bad feeling. When the movie ended, my father said, “Luke, you may call me Yoda.”
You’re Darth Vader, any way I look at you.
And so, there was already an ominous air on this last day of training. And then just as I was about to totally lose it for being called Luke a third time, thick blue clouds began to cover the sky. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Looking up, my father said, “Doesn’t look good. Let’s get out of here.”
Too late. The heavy rain came down upon us as we reached the park exit. My father and I ran back into the park and took cover beneath a great ginkgo tree that looked about three hundred years old. We squatted near the foot of the tree and stared idly at the rain coming down in thick strands. Then my father said in a voice barely audible above the rain hitting the ground, “What do you want to be in the future?”
After a long pause, I answered, “Castro.”
The old man gave me a look as if to say, smart aleck, and turned his gaze back on the rain. His eyes slowly traced the thick strands upward until he was looking up at the sky. “Seems connected all the way up to heaven,” he said in a small voice. “I wonder if heaven really is a good place . . .”
All I could think then was that he must’ve been knocked in the head one too many times, but in retrospect, I think I understand what he might’ve been feeling. My father had suffered the loss of one of his exchange booths only a short while before.
The old man dropped his head and inhaled deeply. Then he looked at me and grinned. “Well, my mind’s made up,” he said. “I’m going to make like a carp climbing up a waterfall and climb right up to heaven. You can come with me if you want!”
He ran out from under the tree, into the hard rain, into the grassy area, and began jumping up and down, jumping toward the heavens. Again and again, beaming from ear to ear. At times, he went into some odd dance steps. Every move was like nothing I’d seen before.
Anyway, seeing as how I was in this rebellious phase, all I could think was, What is this punch-drunk old man doing? But his moves might have looked a little like Gene Kelly’s dance from Singin’ in the Rain. That scene never fails to lift my spirits no matter how many times I watch it.
Soon the thick clouds moved on and the rain stopped. The sun appeared and bathed the grass in its warmth. Standing on the grass carpet, my father looked at me with his head crooked a little to the side, as if he were asking a question.
Why didn’t you come with me?
After I entered junior high school, I started to go to school regularly again.
I still hated school with a passion. I only went because my friends were there. They were all like blood brothers to me. We expected to go through school with more or less the same students up until high school. It was like going through a long, extended training camp together, which created a bond beyond friendship. And what caused this bond to truly blossom was a nutrient called—you guessed it—prejudice.
This is going to sound like a joke, I know, but every year on April 29 on Emperor Showa’s birthday, Japanese studen
ts from sports clubs and conservative student groups all over came to our school on a so-called Korean hunt, so we had to walk home in groups. We had to stick together whether we wanted to or not.
Spending every waking minute with this bunch was incredibly comfortable. Not to mention a blast. Though we never said it out loud, none of us believed that we would amount to much, so we might as well live it up while we were in the cradle of school. Although I’ve never been to Carnival, I understand why the working people of Rio cut loose during Carnival season. In the swirl of Carnival, they were the center of attention. The others couldn’t even dance the steps.
My friends and I invented all sorts of games, roughhoused until we hurt, and laughed until we couldn’t breathe. “Stop laughing like a bunch of idiots,” our teachers told us. “Show some awareness and self-respect as North Koreans!”
Sure, I hated school, but surrounded by my group of friends, I had a sense of security. I felt that I was protected by something. Even if that something drew a tight, complete circle around me and choked me to the point of suffocation, leaving that circle required a fair amount of courage.
My parents’ trip to Hawaii and Tawake’s disappearance turned out to give me the courage I needed.
So now I’ll tell you about Tawake’s disappearance.
Tawake was a senpai—an upperclassman—two years my senior, who ran the 100-meter dash in 11.2 seconds as a third-year in junior high school. He had short, bristly hair that was unbending in the wind even when he ran at top speed. There was a rumor that he’d head-butted someone in a fight and made tiny holes all over the guy’s skin. His hair was as coarse as a scouring brush. Tawashi (scouring brush) + ke (hair) abbreviated became “Tawake.”
I called him “Tawake” and in turn he called me “Crazy” and looked after me like a brother.
Right after entering junior high school, a bunch of us first-years were rounded up on Tawake’s orders and roped into fighting a motorcycle gang. There was a strict hierarchy in Korean schools, owing to the influence of Confucianism, and a senpai’s orders were absolute.
We glared at each other from a distance. Tawake ordered me, “Go.”