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Wordlessly, they set to climbing the tallest tree, its large, lower branches welcoming them up, as they readied themselves for their roles: resistance fighters attacking the Japanese colonizers. This was their favorite game, and the only game they must play out of earshot of their mothers. For even the pampered and indulged Chulsoon was punished when his mother found him pretending to drive the Imperial forces out of their country. “Do you want to bring misfortune on us all?” she would beseech him and pull him away from his best friend. “Go,” she’d hiss to Kwan, “go away.” She did not want her son always with the son of such a poor family; especially when the Park family fortunes were rising under the order brought to Korea by the Japanese.

But today mimeographed leaflets bearing the Japanese Imperial seal were everywhere at the market, and the grownups were worried and distracted. The two friends easily made their escape as their mothers’ attention was diverted by fresh bad news.

“Okay,” said Chulsoon, always the leader, “here’s what we’ll do—”

“Chulsoon,” Kwan put one hand on Chulsoon’s arm as he gripped the tree branch tightly with the other, “Look,” he said softly.

Chulsoon followed Kwan’s gaze back toward the wide dirt path they had just traveled. There was a girl on a bike, a young woman, coasting along. She wore a white blouse, navy blue skirt and a tan cardigan—she could have been a student, or even a young teacher—a sturdy canvas satchel, which filled the wicker basket between the bike handles, suggested she was one or the other. She had a filmy yellow scarf tied jauntily at her neck. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail that hung down her slender back in a way that gave young Chulsoon a strange ache in his chest.

Embarrassed by his own unexpected feelings, Chulsoon lashed out at Kwan. “She’s too old for you, idiot!”

“No,” Kwan whispered, pointing down the road, past the pretty bike-rider. “There.”

Chulsoon’s first thought was a terrifying one: that the still, waiting figure, dressed in the white uniform of the Imperial Police and partially hidden from anyone on the path by huge azalea bushes, was waiting for them. For Kwan and himself. But the man didn’t see them in the tree, his focus only on the bicyclist, his intensity out of sync with the lazy heat of the ordinary summer day.

The fear that permeated the boys’ lives over the last few years, the overheard mutterings of the men, fearing conscription in the Japanese army, the palpable but suppressed fears of their mothers, all seemed to settle on the charged tableau before them: the young lady riding her bike, her scarf fluttering, the man’s white uniform glowing from the shadowy copse. Only one seeing the other.

The man revealed himself to the rider just as she came into the shade and nearly alongside him. She was startled when she saw him, as he held up his hand for her to stop, but his smile was friendly. Looking relieved but still uncertain, she did not get off her bike, but only put her left foot on the ground. She paused, balancing.

Chulsoon felt himself breathe again, and he glanced covertly at Kwan to see if he had been frightened, too. Kwan looked back at Chulsoon a little sheepishly. There you were. It was fine.

This all happened so quickly and seamlessly that when everything shifted, again, both boys felt the adrenaline of fear, more than the fear itself. The smiling man stopped smiling. He barked out something unintelligible, and the young women turned her body away, but kept her eyes on the policeman. She didn’t get far. The sheer suddenness of his attack would have probably been enough, but the man didn’t rely on that. He wrenched her arm violently, pulling her from the bike, which teetered and collapsed on itself. And then the man slapped the woman with such force that Chulsoon thought her neck had snapped. She hit the ground hard, and he was on her instantly. He straddled her, holding down her right shoulder with his left hand and tore at her shirt like he hated the body it covered.

“Aniyo,” she gasped, no.

This earned her an angry growl and another vicious slap. Now there was blood. On her lips, her nose—the sudden red was surreal to the watching boys.

“We need to help her,” Kwan said as he swung his leg over the branch, preparing to jump.

“No,” Chulsoon whispered. He tried to sound reasonable and not cowardly. “We must get help. We should go.”

“It will be too late,” Kwan said.

There was no arguing with this. Chulsoon wasn’t at all sure that it wasn’t too late already as the poor girl was now half naked and there was more blood, even on her small breasts, shockingly exposed. They were only a stone’s throw away, but it seemed too far to help.

But when Kwan jumped from the low branch and hit the ground running, Chulsoon’s instincts kicked in at last. He would not leave his friend, who Chulsoon now saw, was going to die. Chubby little Kwan had thrown himself at the woman’s assailant, pummeling, and had been immediately cast off. The man was screaming at Kwan in Japanese as he pulled his gun out from the holster at his hip. The woman grabbed for the man’s arm, trying to deflect the gun. The man became more enraged, backhanding her with the hand that had been holding her down by her shoulder. Her effort to keep him from shooting Kwan bought Chulsoon the little bit of time, the few moments that he needed.

Chulsoon could never remember how the rock got in his hand. It was there, and he brought it down on the man’s head with all his twelve-year-old might. The man fell hard. The woman scurried out from under the policeman’s dead weight with difficulty, extricating herself, panting but otherwise silent, without any assistance from the two boys who stood stock still. Chulsoon standing with the rock still in his hand, and Kwan remained on the ground.

The woman tried the cover herself with the pieces of her blouse. Kwan got up slowly. ”Do you want my shirt?” he asked quietly, eyes downcast.

“My sweater will do,” she said, her voice barely audible. She pulled the dirt-caked sweater around her, buttoning the front with shaky fingers.

“Is he dead?” Chulsoon asked.

The three looked at the policeman. He didn’t look good. He was face down in the dirt, his clothes oddly askew and blood seeping through part of his hair. But he was still breathing.

 “Should we get the doctor?” Kwan asked quietly.

Chulsoon and the woman looked at each other. Chulsoon turned to his friend “I don’t think so,” he said.

“He’s right,” the woman said. “We must tell no one.”

Kwan nodded his head, dazed, but understanding.

The young woman, not so much older than the two boys, looked from one to the other. “Do either of you have a knife?”

Kwan shook his head no. “I think he does,” Chulsoon said, nodding at the policeman.

The woman squatted down alongside the policeman and hesitated, as if even now he might attack her. She forced herself to reach under the man’s body, pulling the knife out of its holster in the unfastened belt.

“You should go,” she said, her eyes on her assailant’s body. “Now,” she said, as if she was angry at them.

The boys backed away, at first slowly, and then with more urgency. Kwan turned away first, so he did not see the woman grab the policemen by the hair and bring the knife to his throat, but Chulsoon did, and then he turned away too.

As it happened, Kwan told his parents, which was for the best. His mother cleaned up her son and his friend, whispered that they had done well and that she was proud of them. Kwan’s father quietly enlisted a fellow resister and together they made sure the body would not be found. Chulsoon never breathed a word to his parents, ever.

This was also for the best.