Perhaps Seon-ju is right; perhaps the soldiers took away Jeong-dae and buried him somewhere. On the other hand, though, your mother's still convinced that he's being treated at some hospital, that the only reason he hasn't been in touch is that he's still not regained consciousness. She came here with your middle brother yesterday afternoon, to persuade you to come home. When you insisted that you couldn't go home until you'd found Jeong-dae, she said, "Its the ICU you ought to be checking. Let's go around the hospitals together."

She clutched the sleeve of your uniform.

"Don't you know how shocked I was when people said they'd seen you here? Good grief, all these corpses, aren't you scared?"

"The soldiers are the scary ones," you said with a half-smile. "What's frightening about the dead?"

— Human Acts by Han Kang (Page 29)