or bulky camouflage and body armor strapped to his chest. Of all the secrets Dae-Ho kept in his heart, the gravest one now lay next to it. He never believed he’d end up here. Here, somewhere between Kaesong and the South Korean border. A border that he once guarded like a jealous husband, Dae-Ho was now trying to cross himself. Sometimes he felt he committed some infidelity of ego and the irony almost made him smile but didn’t. His cheeks didn’t quite rise high enough, the single dimple on his left cheek didn’t quite fall in deep enough, and his expression lingered between a smirk and nothing at all. He just couldn’t seem to completely smile anymore since his fiancée died about six months earlier. Had it been that long ? He began to think; then he tried not to. His face had become the same as the peasant farmers or the occasional local pedestrian he sometimes passed on the passenger side window of whatever military van or truck he rode in. Their barren expressions seemed so unmistakable even as he sped by. Their eyes would hook and swing dance like a Doppler for the eyes. But in that moment or less DaeHo could see a face narrowed into an expression that hadn’t seemed to change in years, and it wasn’t until now that he understood why. The forest green fatigues with ruffles on the shoulders and matching hat with a rim that always lined his eyes with an ominous shadow drew the line between him and the average North Korean citizen. He felt it immediately, this peeling sensation then the eventual separation, during his daily marches along the near empty streets in uniform. He always heard silence throttled to the very last breath as he strolled by the swarms of loiterers around makeshift markets and food stands. Smiles and nods even the occasional salute would skip from person to person in the most unnatural way. It wasn’t a willing motion or even a reflex but almost seemed a sort of twitch. The type of twitch that crooks the neck when a prickling drizzles like raindrops down the spine. And as Dae-Ho would continue past them he always heard whispers burst out in exhaustion as if they had been holding back their words like their breath. He couldn’t remember what had caused it. Why he split from the common man like an asexual cell. Though he believes it might have been the propaganda that sounded so repetitive it began to echo through his mind, resounding between every thought, fromwhere did I put my keys towhat should I have for lunch . Eventually it became a quiet conscience in the back of his head that talked him out of empathy and cooled the burning sensation that stuck to his chest when he executed men for stealing for their families or glanced down at the desperation of the prostitutes underneath him. The feeling remained, the love for his country and people, that sense hadn’t left him and one could say it grew even stronger. Though thinking back on it now he feels the sense of love mixed and muddled into other senses and ideas like staring into a kiss or trying to touching a whisper. And from other’s point of view it seemed that Dae-Ho ignored the suffering that spilled out from his rifle. As an executioner he put to death men and women by the hundreds and orphaned countless children. But in his logic, silencing one or two or more for the stability of millions saved the 110 theMeadow
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