Beasts of a Little Land

by Juhea Kim

but after a few steps he turned around, without understanding why. Sometimes the human heart was like a dark forest, and even a man as rational as Yamada had mysteries within.

THE DAWN CAME without a sunrise, and illumined by the cinereal light the woods materialized around them once more. The absence of sun and shadows made everything seem weightless, as if the trees, rocks, and snow were all made out of soft silver air. It seemed a halfway world, a world between other worlds.

She ran outside to greet the air, like a new bee emerging from its cocoon in warm weather. The day was full of early-June vigor. The trees were singing their notes of green, and their freshness could be heard by the eyes.

that looking at the sky could make you fearless against anything.

Summer dawn in Seoul was electrifying but short, almost nonexistent. The scorching sun hurled itself above the horizon, drying the dewdrops in seconds, and the city rose up as if obeying its commands.

EVERY HUMAN BEING FUNDAMENTALLY BELIEVES IN HIS OR HER UNIQUE and inherent significance, without which life would be unbearable;

“I can’t, in good conscience, continue to benefit from a system that every part of my body and soul knows is immoral.

The rain was falling softly, casting everything in indigo. The three girls crawled back into their cots after lunch and listened to the downpour in a state of melancholy.

was putting on a record—a paper-thin, polished black disc that shone deliciously in the candlelight. It started spinning slowly on the turntable, filling the room with the warm syncopation of strings and trumpets. Jade closed her eyes, willing the wave of sound to sweep her out to sea.

He did truly regret that the meeting with his old friend hadn’t gone as he’d hoped; that instead of reminiscing about their old adventures over food and drink, and reveling in the discovery that someone else remembers you as you once were, and vice versa, they were each shocked at how different the other had become. It was far worse than meeting someone new and failing to like one another.

IT IS A CONDITION OF YOUTH TO HAVE AN UNQUESTIONING BELIEF that life is a steady progression.

The world pulled at her, irresistible and real like the first hot day of summer.

He was like an empty vessel, but in the best way: it was true he didn’t hold a lot of knowledge, but his mind was free to flow in whatever direction, and he didn’t nurture pain. Whatever he did keep permanently, Jade was certain that he would protect firmly in the bottom of his jangdok pot. He might never fling himself far from where he’d landed, Jade thought, but he would nonetheless be happy for the simple reason that he refused to be caged.

It had appeared to him then that no matter how much he gave, he would always have more than enough. As he grew older, he even relished the struggles brought on by his sacrifices. There was a soaring awareness that illuminated his soul whenever he did the right thing, which also cost him something. This euphoria, however, was balanced by the utter terror he felt when he looked around and saw so many others to whom this consciousness was not only absent, but unknowable and abhorrent.

The purpose of our movement isn’t simply to avoid extinction. Its purpose is to do what’s right. And you see how we’ve come back to that point where neither of us can convince the other? It is truly outside the realm of logic to determine what is right or wrong. Without any expectations of making you see things the way I do, I can only tell you what my soul insists on.”

She turned around and fixed her bright eyes on me and it was like when on summer nights I used to lie down by the canal and look up at the sky. The dizziness of stars. I didn’t know looking into another person’s eyes could feel like that.

Now that I’m older I know that life is not about what keeps you safe, but what you keep safe, and that’s what matters the most.

Her voice reached all the way to the back of the theater, caressing each listener with the haunting melody; the memories of the deepest heartbreaks and losses were laid bare, both the things one had forgotten and the things one wished to forget but could not. Under the cover of the darkness and her voice, it was possible to let their tears come out. No one could fail to be mesmerized by her or fall a little in love with her.

Though he had spent the previous fifteen years traversing through foreign lands, MyungBo was not a born traveler. But like all those who have poetry in their hearts, he was mesmerized by the wild stretches of the Mongolian steppes, dotted with shaggy ponies grazing upon the frosted grass. The nameless purple and yellow flowers swayed in the windswept moors, raising their plain little faces up to the open sky, and nothing could have been more glorious. As the train snaked around the shores of Lake Baikal, its unfathomably ancient and azure waters lapping against the cliffs, and the mountains rose with the pink sunrise and bowed into darkness at evenfall,

MyungBo had long been fascinated by how nearly everyone considered themselves honest. People were wonderfully clever and subtle when they needed to rationalize their actions, and so quick-witted that they didn’t even realize they were fooling themselves.

He wasn’t even interested in knowing these windy words and cloudy ideas; he liked to reserve his thinking for Jade, his friends, food and shelter, and other tangible things that made his heart warm, stomach full, and feet firm and heavy on the ground.

Love felt to him like a distant and mysterious mountain, which was potentially real only because others spoke of it with reverence and conviction.

They didn’t tell each other much, and yet understood each other so well. So many words could be exchanged between people without any real desire to know one another. But with the right person, one could speak much or not at all, and feel completely connected.

“Do you love me?” she asked. “Yes, I love you,” HanChol said simply. “I really do.” “Why? Since when?” “Since I first saw you outside the theater. Why? Because you were you, standing there, and I was also standing there . . . It’s that simple and that complicated. But it couldn’t have been otherwise.”

She now felt so well adored that her soul itself had transformed, and her features had shaped themselves to reflect that.

JungHo let these thoughts roll through his mind in waves—they sometimes roared and clashed, and sometimes quieted down into a narrative that made sense.

She was buoyed by the voluptuous pleasure of being perfectly dressed for a certain kind of weather.

Those ship horns made me happier than I’d ever felt in my life. If I could bottle that sound, I would pour it little by little when I’m sad and drink it like whiskey.”

JungHo stared at the smooth green pebble and felt all the ways people keep each other in their lives through material and immaterial means—words, memories, gestures, meaningless objects that become tokens and then turn back into meaningless objects—resting snugly in the palm of his hand. It was both unfathomably heavy and light as a feather.

EVERYONE DREAMS, BUT ONLY SOME PEOPLE ARE DREAMERS. THE NON-DREAMERS, by far more numerous, are those who see the world as it is. Then there are the few dreamers, who see the world as they are. The moon, the river, the train station, the sound of rain, and even something as mundane as porridge become something else with many layers. The world feels like an oil painting rather than a photograph, and the dreamers are forever seeing hidden colors where others just see the top shade. The nondreamers look through glasses, and the dreamers through a prism. This is not a quality determined by intelligence or passion, two things most often conflated with dreaming. Dani, the most intelligent and passionate person Jade had ever known, had a vision that was as crisp and sharply outlined as her mannerisms and principles. Dani was not interested in the unfathomable when there were wrongs to be righted, preferably with utmost grace and aplomb. When Jade stopped dancing and acting, she felt as if all the colors had gone out of her life.

For all her faults, Lotus had always had an inspiring appetite for life. Whereas others thought of the world as a vast insidious sea or some such field of battle, Lotus took the approach that it was all just a game or a basket of fruits—to be played and to be tasted.

Everywhere around them, life was happening without their knowing, and their lives were also happening in the presence of all else. All existences were touching lightly as air and leaving invisible fingerprints.

“I loved and ached for you every single day, all these years. You know this is true because you feel it, this constant warmth and light inside your heart, everywhere you go. But I will try my best to stop loving you now. One day you’re going to realize that the sun isn’t shining inside you anymore and you’ll know I no longer think of you.”

Every day he came here and every day, he saw something different in the color of the sky, in the crying of the birds, in how the light glittered on the Pacific Ocean. It was achingly beautiful how new the world was each day, and he only wished that he could have realized it a little earlier.

This softer light was shimmering on the surface of the green grass, and far away the peaks of the Khingan mountains loomed blue. There was nothing that showed that a tremendous event had taken place—the instant death of an entire city from a single bomb. Only in the late afternoon did they receive the radio message about Hiroshima, and Yamada still couldn’t make sense of it. How was it possible, to have these light purple flowers swaying in the wind, the turtles swimming lazily in the lake, the trees spreading their branches and straining to grow as much as possible during this heatless summer—and then at the same time, have blinding white light, charred and melting flesh, faceless people in a city of ash? It was utterly senseless, this world—and to act as though it did make sense was the greatest crime.

Strangers were no longer strangers, recognizing souls in one another’s faces.

She cried with abandon, with determination. She cried like a woman who needed to dissolve in order to be remade.