1 Dangerous Survival - The Beginning

42 students remained as the bus entered the prefectural capital of Changwon, garden suburbs transformed into city streets of multicoloured neon, headlights of oncoming cars, and checkered lights of office buildings. A group of well-dressed men and women stood talking to each other in front of a streetside restaurant while they waited for a taxi. Tired, squatting youths smoked in the clean parking lot of a convenience store.

A worker on his bicycle waited for the lights to change at the crossing. It was chilly for a May evening, so the man had put on his worn-out jacket. Along with these other drifting impressions, the worker disappeared behind the bus window, swallowed by the low engine rumble. The digital display above the bus driver's head changed to 8:30.

Na Jaemin (Male Student No. 15, Third Year Class D, Gyeongna Suwon Junior High School, Yeongnam Town, Gyeongsangnam-do) had been staring outside, leaning over Felix Lee (Male Student No. 7), who had the window seat. As Felix dug through his bag, Jaemin stared at his right foot, which was sticking out in the aisle, and stretched out his Keds sneakers with his toes. It used to be that Keds weren't hard to find, but now they were extremely rare. The canvas of Jaemin's shoes was torn on the right heel, and the stray threads stuck out like cat's whiskers. The shoe company was American, but the shoes themselves were made in Colombia.

At present, in 2020, the Republic of Greater East Asia hardly suffered from a shortage of goods. It was rich with commodities, but imports were hard to come by lately. Well, it was only to be expected in a country with an official policy of isolationism. Besides, America—both the government and the textbooks called them "the American Imperialists"—was an enemy state. From the back of the bus, Jaemin watched his forty-one classmates, who were illuminated by dull fluorescent lights fixed in dingy ceiling panels. They were all in the same class from last year.

They were all still excited and chatting away since hardly an hour had passed since their departure from their hometown of Yeongnam. Spending the first night of a study trip on a bus seemed a little cheap. Worse yet, it felt like they were going on a forced march. But everyone would calm down once the bus crossed the Masan-Changwon Bridge and got on the Sangam-dong Highway and headed towards their destination, the island of Haeandero Ave in Changwon The loud students at the front who were sitting around their teacher Mr Shindong were girls: Yoo Jimin as Karina (Female Student No. 2), the class representative who looked good with braided hair; Heo Yoorim as Aisha (Female Student No. 12), her exceptionally tall volleyball teammate; Lee Seoyoung (Female Student No. 5), the preppy whose father was a town representative; Han Eunji (Female Student No. 17), the model student who wore wire-rimmed glasses which suited her calm, intelligent face; and Heo Jiwon (Female Student No. 19), who was always quiet and withdrawn. They were the mainstream girls. You could call them "the neutrals." Girls tended to form cliques, but there weren't any particular groups that stuck out in Gyeongna Suwon Junior High School's Third Year Class D, so categorizing them didn't seem right. If there was a group, it was the rebel or—to put it more bluntly—the delinquent group led by Lee Seungri (Female Student No. 11). Lee Seoryoung (Female Student No. 10) and Lee Chaeyoung (Female Student No. 21) rounded out that bunch.

Jaemin couldn't see them from where he was sitting. The seats right behind the driver were slightly raised and popping up above them were the two heads of Son Youngjae (Male Student No. 21) and Wang Yiren (Female Student No. 4), the most intimate couple in the class. Maybe they were laughing because their heads shook slightly. They were so insular, that the most trivial thing could have been entertaining them. Closer to Jaemin, lying in the aisle, was a large school uniform. It belonged to Han Jisung (Male Student No. 1). He was the thinnest kid in the class, but he was the timid type, the kind of kid who'd always end up the target of pranks and insults. His big body was crouched over, and he was busy playing a handheld video game.

Also in the aisle were the jocks Kim Yonghee (Male Student No. 3, handball team), Kim Seungmin (Male Student No. 16, soccer team), and Lee Jeno (Male Student No. 18). They were all sitting together. Jaemin himself had played Little League baseball in elementary school and was known as a star shortstop. He'd been friends with Jeno, but they'd stopped hanging out. Partly this was because Jaemin had stopped playing baseball, but it also had to do with the fact that Jaemin had started playing electric guitar, which was considered an "unpatriotic" activity.

Jeno's mother was uptight about that sort of thing. Yes, rock was outlawed in this country. (Of course, there were loopholes. Jeno's electric guitar came with a government-approved sticker which read, "Decadent Music Is Strictly Prohibited." Decadent music was a rock.) Come to think of it, Jaemin thought, I've changed my friends too. He heard someone laugh quietly behind thin Han Jisung. It was one of Jaemin's new friends, Hwang Hyunjin. Hyunjin had short hair and wore an intricately designed ring on his left ear. By the time Jaemin and Hyunjin became classmates in their second year, Jaemin had already heard of him.

Hyunjin was known as "The Third Man"—the team's first-string shooting guard. His athletic skill was equal to Jaemin's, though Hyunjin would have said, "I'm better, bro." Together on the basketball court for the first time in their second-year class competition, they made for a deadly combo, so it was only natural they'd hit it off. There was a lot more to Hyunjin than sports, though. His grades in subjects other than Math and English weren't great, but his breadth of real-world knowledge was incredible, and his views were mature, way beyond his peers.

He somehow had an answer for any question about overseas information that couldn't be obtained in this country. And he always knew the best thing to say when you were down, like, "You know it, I'm the man." But he was never arrogant. Instead, he'd smile and crack a joke. He was never full of himself. Hwang Hyunjin was a good guy. Hyunjin appeared to be sitting next to his buddy from grade school, Yoon Sanha (Male Student No. 12), the class clown. Santa must have cracked another joke because Hyunjin was laughing. Choi Bomin (Male Student No. 11) sat behind them. His tall, lanky body barely fits into the narrow seat. He was reading a paperback book. Bomin was reserved and studied martial arts, so he projected toughness.

He didn't hang out with the other guys much, but once you got to know him a little, he turned out to be nice. He was just shy. Jaemin got along with him. Was he reading that book of Chinese poetry he liked so much? (Chinese books in translation were fairly easy to obtain, not surprising considering the Republic claimed China as "part of our homeland.") Jaemin once came across a line in an American paperback novel he'd dug out from a used bookstore (he managed to get through it with a dictionary): friends come and then they go. Maybe that's how things were. Just as he and Jeno were no longer friends, there might come a time when he wasn't friends with Hyunjin and Bomin anymore.

Well, maybe not. Jaemin glanced at Felix Lee, who was still digging through his bag. Jaemin had made it this far with Felix Lee. And that would never change. After all, they were friends ever since they wet their beds at that Catholic institution with the bombastic name, "the Charity House"—where orphans or other children who, due to "circumstances, " were no longer able to be with their parents. You could say they were almost cursed to be friends. Maybe we should cover religion while we're at it. This country, under a unique system of national socialism, was ruled over by an executive authority called "the Dictator" (Hwang Hyunjin once said with a grimace, "This is what they call 'successful fascism.' Where else in the world could you find something so sinister?"), had no national religion. The closest thing to religion was faith in the political system— but this wasn't paired up with any established religion. Religious practice, therefore, was permitted as long as it remained moderate and at the same time wasn't guaranteed.

So it was only practised in private by dedicated followers. Jaemin himself never really had any religious inclinations, but it was thanks to this particular religion's institution that he managed to grow up relatively unscathed and normal. He thought he should appreciate that much.

There were state orphanages, but their accommodations and programs were poorly run, and from what he heard they served as training schools for Special Defense Forces soldiers. Jaemin turned around and looked back. The group of delinquents that included Koo Jungmo (Male Student No. 10) and Kim Junkyu (Male Student No. 17) was sitting on the wide seat at the back of the bus. There was…Jaemin couldn't see his face, but he could see between the seats the head with the oddly styled, slicked back, long hair poking out by the right window.

Though on its left side (well, it seemed Koo Jungmo had left two seats open in between) the others were talking and laughing over something dirty, the head remained still. Perhaps he'd fallen asleep. Or maybe like Jaemin he was watching the city lights. Jaemin was completely baffled by the fact that this boy— Jang Yoojun (Male Student No. 6)—would participate in a childish activity like a study trip. Yoojun was the leader of the thugs in their district, a group that included Jungmo and Junkyu. Yoojun was by no means big. At best he was the same height as Jaemin, but he could easily pin down high school students and even take on local jopok. His reputation was legendary throughout the entire prefecture. And his father the president of a leading corporation didn't hurt. (There were rumours though that he was an illegitimate child.

Jaemin wasn't interested, so he never bothered to find out more.) Of course, that wouldn't have been enough. He had a handsome, intelligent face, and his voice wasn't particularly low, but something was intimidating about it. He was the top student in Class D, and the only one who barely kept up with him was Park Jihoon (Male Student No. 20), who studied so hard he didn't get much sleep. In sports, Yoojun was better and more graceful than almost anyone else in the class. The only ones at Gyeongna Suwon Junior High who could compete with him seriously were, yes, the former star shortstop, Jaemin, and the current star shooting guard, Hwang Hyunjin. So in every respect, Jang Yoojun was perfect. But then how could someone this perfect end up a leader of thugs? That was none of Jaemin's business. But if there was one thing Jaemin could tell, it was a sense, almost tactile, that Yoojun was different. Jaemin couldn't say exactly how. Yoojun never did anything bad in school. He'd never bully around someone like Han Jisung the way Koo Jungmo did. But there was something so…remote about him. Was that it? At least that's how it felt. He was absent a lot.

The idea of Yoojun "studying" was completely absurd. In every class, Yoojun remained quietly seated at his desk as if he were thinking of something that had nothing to do with class. Jaemin thought, that if the government didn't have the power to enforce compulsory education on us, he probably wouldn't come to school at all.