When Japan surrendered, the Americans coming north from the Pacific and the Soviets coming south from Manchuria finally met on the little peninsula and drew a hasty line at the thirty-eighth parallel. The Koreans had wanted their country to remain one, as it had for the previous thirteen hundred years; their wish was ignored, and henceforth the peninsula was divided into North and South.
All her life, Jade had never concerned herself too much with politics; she had left that to people like Dani and JungHo. （They were both naturally contentious and obsessed with justice—and more alike than they could ever have realized.） But even Jade could see that this North-South division was leading to staggering chaos. Seoul had long harbored Nationalists, Communists, Anarchists, Christians of all denominations, Buddhists, and Cheondoists, many of whom put aside their differences and collaborated under the same goal of independence. Once that was achieved, however, some of them realized they were standing on the wrong side of the line. Several artists Jade knew from those jazz years left for the North. At first, it was easy to cross the border, just like passing from Seoul to InCheon. Eventually the border was closed and guard posts installed, and people disappeared without telling their neighbors and friends, walking across the misty field on a moonless night.
Jade didn’t have any real friends left in Seoul. She hadn’t heard from JungHo since he’d brought her to Lotus. Months later, she found out through the town gossip that he had married a seventeen-year-old girl, a daughter of a successful restaurant owner named Choi YoungGu, who was also apparently JungHo’s childhood friend. Jade’s stomach dropped when she heard the news, she hated every aspect of it.
The girl is twenty-five years younger than him. But it’s not my business—I am glad he has found his match, she said to herself.
Without Lotus, Luna, JungHo, and Dani, the only family she had left was Silver, who was still living in PyongYang with her faithful servant. Jade figured that her foster mother was in her sixties but that Stoney must be at least ten years older. Soon, he would die and Jade would become the only person who could take care of Silver in her old age. And yet, the house that she grew up in was in Seoul, and with it all the memories she’d made. She had her job at Koryo Arts School that the new government founded, and she liked the work. There were guard posts and checkpoints, but no barbed wire fence stretching from the East Sea to the West Sea. If Silver became ill, she could always go up to PyongYang to see her. Jade decided to stay in Seoul for the time being.
*
AS A BOY READING THE CLASSICS by Confucius and Mencius, HanChol had been taught that life was a road. Walk the straight line, go the way of the gentleman, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, they’d said. But now, he knew that life was actually a wheel. It could take you places if you were smart about it. If you were foolish or merely unfortunate, it could crush you. Between those two extremes, most people labored to push the wheel along. Even what they thought of as respite or pleasure, such as eating or sleeping or fucking or having children, was just rolling the wheel forward without being conscious of it. They only truly stopped when they died.
HanChol once had a dream of his old rickshaw, its oversize wheels spinning faster and faster. His heart was pounding because he had to run to keep the wheels turning. But also, the wheels were just behind him and he had to sprint to avoid getting crushed. Then he entered a cave at the foot of a mountain and the wheels disappeared. A bird appeared by his side and he knew it was a friendly guide. He followed it through the pitch-black underground tunnel, and when he came out on the other side, he was in a valley suffused in a halcyon glow. He woke up feeling as though he were still bathed in golden light, blessed by an unknown power.
Sometimes, when some extraordinary event occurred, the wheel turned on its side and spun in order to determine everyone’s fates. At the end of the war, it slowed down and eventually stopped, showing who would win and who would lose.
As HanChol sat in the crowded courtroom waiting for his father-in-law, he reflected on the wins and losses of his own life. Just before the war, he’d become the owner of the biggest auto garage in the entire country. Even after the war started, he had benefited from the influx of military trucks that needed repairs. But just a year later, the Japanese confiscated his garage overnight and melted down whatever metal that could be found inside. In the last throes of the war, HanChol had nothing to do except live off of his father-in-law’s seemingly untouchable wealth and privilege. He was mortified and ashamed of being so dependent, but SeoHee always reassured him that nothing made her father happier than seeing his children safe and sound. He, HanChol, was also a son, not a son-in-law.