The first thing Jayeong did when summer arrived was go to the dance hall and talk everyone’s head off about her plum orchard. The venue was cramped, and tipsy patrons were dancing to Tempalay. The plum orchard that Jayeong was going on and on about was nothing more than an empty field, a destination for the neighborhood kids, lured by the smell of rain and pesticides, to spend a grand old time waving their hands in the air while staring blankly ahead. 

But that didn’t mean (just because it was a refuge for the unwell, where all sorts of smells intermingled and the fruit struggled to ripen) that Jayeong’s plum orchard was all bad. After all, it did produce fruit, though not much; clean water pooled in the numerous holes she’d dug around the property; and the land was expansive enough for any animal to race across it gleefully. 

“I’ve been taking care of the orchard this whole time,” Jayeong said.

Jayeong’s colleagues, who’d been listening to her with a burnt cinnamon stick in each of their mouths, nodded. “Yes. That’s right. You’ve been taking care of that orchard this whole time.”

Jayeong was satisfied with her colleagues’ response, and she was satisfied with her colleagues as well. They were all farmers. Every so often, they would meet at a restaurant or bar and order a variety of dishes to share. Cheeks full of food, they would sit outside and watch the shifting sunlight during the day or venture indoors and stare at the flat glow of an establishment’s neon sign at night.

It was six o’clock in the morning. Dawn was breaking. The weekend was still a long way off. Soon everyone in the dance hall would go home, splash some water on their faces, throw up a little, and head to work. The owner always saw off her customers one by one.

“Get home safe. And remember, we’re closed tomorrow. The water cooler is broken beyond repair.”

Everyone understood the owner’s plight.

Jayeong wondered: If a single malfunction could shut down an entire establishment, could something similar happen to her orchard as well? But it wasn’t as though the orchard had a thick curtain to block the entrance with or a heavy security shutter Jayeong could roll down from the ceiling. Most importantly, as far as Jayeong could see, her orchard never broke down past the point of repair.

A sturdy orchard. My sturdy plum orchard.

Jayeong smiled wistfully.

How to smile wistfully: Smile wistfully.

Jayeong wrote in her notepad as soon as she arrived home. She liked to scribble whatever words came to mind on the first line of each page (How to smile wistfully: Smile wistfully) and write out her to-do list underneath (Clear out sacks, pull weeds, open windows, watch birds, make money). This summer, Jayeong planned to bring in some income by holding a Pick-Your-Own event for customers. A thriving orchard could yield approximately twenty boxes of plums per tree, but Jayeong’s decidedly not-thriving orchard would likely yield, at most, four to five small boxes per tree (she guessed). Even that was a generous estimate.

“But that’s good enough,” Jayeong said.

And she was right. That was good enough.

Jayeong turned her head and peered out the living room window. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass, she could see the tall church steeple off in the distance, as well as the surrounding mountain ridges and her plum orchard. She had a clear view of the orchard from her house, a prefab home built on a raised foundation of earth and stones. It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It was also prone to the occasional wildlife attack—geese, a herd of goats, roe deer and the like—so Jayeong had to keep a hunting rifle outside the front door. She’d never actually shot an animal, nor did she have any intention of doing so. It was just an intimidation tactic. Hey! Get away! Far away, you hear? That’s my orchard, don’t you dare mess with it . . .

The one time she did try to shoot something, Jayeong was knocked back by the recoil. Her ears rang from the deafening sound and the billowing gunpowder caused tears and snot to stream down her face, and yet she was enthralled, a full-throated laugh bursting out of her.

What had Jayeong tried to shoot that day? The half-visible fog, or perhaps night itself. Why had Jayeong tried to shoot this that day? To prepare for an even greater darkness, or perhaps she was afraid?

She couldn’t be sure.

Jayeong pulled on her work boots and walked over to the orchard. She gauged that day’s wind speed by observing the shape of the clouds and the morning dew on grass. The wind was adequate. The sky was clear, the air pristine. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the weather would remain nice all day. Jayeong decided to weed and level the soil before the heat grew unbearable.

All the shaded patches under the plum trees were over-grown with weeds. Jayeong had learned that if left to run unchecked, weeds would rob the trees of the soil’s essential nutrients. The malnourished trees would then wither, no longer able to bear flowers or fruit.

“You can kiss the orchard goodbye at that point,” Jayeong’s mother had once said. “Not all fruit is created equal. You must snap off and throw out the ugly ones right away. Only then can you be a healthy farmer with a healthy farm.”

The plum orchard had been passed down to Jayeong by her mother. Her mother had passed down an orchard full of plum trees to her, then left. Jayeong had no way of knowing where her mother had gone—if on a whim she’d run off to manage some other person’s farm, or if she’d chewed her own wrists to death somewhere. From time to time, Jayeong imagined her mother out there in the world—dipping her fingers in holy water before making the Sign of the Cross, or sitting somewhere silently, or stumbling around in an inebri­ated state. Jayeong’s thoughts would sometimes reach all the way to a snowy winter day, and she would imagine her mother showing up out of the blue after all these years and walking toward her, saying, It’s snowing. White, round snow­flakes. Coarse salt. Silvergrass-shaped eyebrows. A lungful of air, a nativity scene, an owl’s hoots. “Sweetheart, you really mustn’t leave that area so disheveled. It’s been long enough. It’s black and ugly, what an eyesore.”

Jayeong walked with long strides around her property. Just as her mother had pointed out, the branches she had trimmed over the winter were piled dark and high like a burial mound.

“I don’t see the problem,” she muttered. “What’s so ugly about that?”

Jayeong rolled down the top of a burlap sack and pushed it around with her foot. Trowel in hand, she pulled the weeds. She leveled the soil. It was close to noon when she completed her tasks. She went to the shed and opened the window. Then, she leaned against the busted doorway and watched a nearby bird. She didn’t wonder what kind of bird it was. She simply picked up a fallen plum, split it in two, and gave half to it. The bird trod all over the soil, wandering near the ditch. One bird, one human. Dozing off, Jayeong accidentally stamped her feet twice. The startled bird flew eastward, but I won’t follow. I’ll stay right here, my hands are just so sticky . . .

A lukewarm breeze came blowing through, lightly sweeping away the bird’s footprints when, behind the brambly hedge that surrounded the orchard, eight Clover Soldiers showed up in formation.

They were white and resplendent.

The sunlight made Jayeong dizzy.

Before she could think, They’re back, she had the urge to feign ignorance and ask instead, Who are you? Then the eight Clover Soldiers would respond, We’re friends of Jayeong’s.

Then I’ll be able to start anything anew, as if it were fresh. Friends of Jayeong’s? How nice to meet you. So you’re my friends, I see. I’m Jayeong. I look after the orchard. See? All this land, it’s mine. With awe and fear, we would exchange pleasantries. It would be our first meeting, after all. We would be unfamiliar with one another. That’s what a first time is all about. Not knowing. Not being tired of each other. Being able to betray each other easily. But none of this is possible. To be honest, I don’t enjoy new things. Maybe my brain does, but my body is set in its ways. I already know you, and you already know me. Still, not well, right? I’ll keep taking what comes, closing my eyes each night, waking up in the morning. I’ll dream of crabgrass cutting up my arms and legs, and patches of soil coming alive.

Jayeong quickly put an end to this spiral by telling herself that they were back because, as always, she was having difficulty turning off her thoughts.

They’re back.

Jayeong didn’t let her mind go there again. Because she had to stop herself. That was why.

The eight Clover Soldiers were squat and stocky sentinels. They came up to Jayeong’s knees, but aside from that, they looked nearly identical to her. Their clover-shaped heads, which appeared as though someone had taken a bite out of each side, and their chlorophyll-green skin, however, were in stark contrast to Jayeong’s head and skin.

When Jayeong first discovered them by a tree stump, they couldn’t walk or run, nor were they carrying tree branch guns the way they did now—they were simply docile and two-dimensional, like, well, a leaf. They came into this world together, as a unified cluster, right where the white whirling butterfly blossoms bloomed and withered.

And now, the eight Clover Soldiers charged straight at her. They walked in formation, then ran, then scattered.

Nine is too many and ten is too few Then how about eight? Eight is plenty No that’s not enough either How about the firstborn lead the way up front Good, where’s the firstborn? Firstborn, go over there and stand tall Hold your head up high I’ll take your picture What’s with the tone, how rude Is now a good time to sing Goodness no, my mood will sour . . . Who did you just call Firstborn? The firstborn is me, myself, and I.

They all wanted to be the firstborn, but of course nobody knew who had been born first.

“Left foot, left foot, left foot, form a circle, mark time, halt!”

Each time the soldiers moved their feet to execute a close-order drill, the formation descended into chaos.

“If we go out to battle like this, we’re all goners!”

“I read about something like this in a book once. We’ll be dead meat, that’s for sure!”

“But we can act alive, even if we’re dead.”

“But we’ll still be dead. It’ll be all sorts of painful. I’m scared.”

“What do you think?”

“What are you asking that for? I’m scared. Of course I’m scared.”

“That’s it? What’s with the face?”

Jayeong often regretted teaching the soldiers human language. This was one of those times.

“Be quiet, for the love of God,” she snapped. “One more word, and I’ll kick you all out.”

The soldiers closed their mouths. And then, they started to laugh. Their low chuckles mingled with the sound of the wind blowing in from the woods and the water rushing through the four streams of the river down below the valley. Jayeong glared at the soldiers. Sweat trickled down her forehead, stinging her eyes. The soldiers swayed merrily in the breeze as they collected pebbles to place in their pockets to weigh themselves down, so they wouldn’t fly away.

“But Jayeong,” they said. “You can’t kick us out.”

Indeed. The clouds swept past the sun. The soldiers’ wide-open eyes soaked in the sunlight. They sparkled freely, and they were beautiful.

Jayeong’s muttered response of I know, the soldiers’ fleshy ears that didn’t hear her response, peach fuzz, eight heads. A hunting snare. Balloon string. A carrot stick. Bird traps. A bomb shelter. A dried-up well. Clusters of grapes in the vineyard across the street. Angels. Everything was bathed clearly and brilliantly in the scorching midday sun. The eight Clover Soldiers began marching along the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust. From one sunlit patch to another, their shadows, as sticky as tar, avoided being swallowed up by the shade of the trees, alive.

She could bear this. That was the only thought in her head. And that thought made her feel as though something was missing.

Shall I make things bad for them, Jayeong pondered. Bad, harmful, unbearable.

But how? she asked herself.

But as she well knew, Jayeong’s perspective had already been so accustomed to this set of conditions that there was nothing she could make worse. Her question waited for her briefly, then stopped in its tracks.

“No, there’s got to be a way.”

Jayeong hadn’t said a word, but the soldiers came over and responded. “There’s got to be a way, Jayeong. A way for you.”

A way for me.

When Jayeong was a child, she loved attending the Vacation Bible School her local church held each summer. She liked memorizing the books of the Bible in order, and she enjoyed the taste of the orange juice they handed out before morning calisthenics. She loved sleeping in the same room with all the other girls, lying there under the covers in the middle of the night, eavesdropping on people’s conversations and wondering what sorts of things lay waiting in her own future. Jayeong believed in a higher power, and she’d started attending church because someone had told her that was where God lived. But whenever she thought about this entity called “God,” she couldn’t help but think, Just one? Jayeong believed there were three or four gods, not one. Maybe it was similar to holding three or four feelings at once.

Perhaps that was why, when after many years had passed and Jayeong was now a VBS counselor teaching middle schoolers about the majesty of God, despite having been asked to start with His sublime sacrifice and deliver the short, simple, and predetermined message of the Gospel, oh wait, it had totally slipped her mind, and she instead went on and on about the concept of sublimity. “Sublime means lofty, grand, or exalted in thought, expression, or manner. It holds absolute value, so we humans can’t help but admire the sublime, to want to emulate it. It points to the sheer will of people to continue living, instead of taking the easier path of death. That’s what they say, anyway, and I agree. But these concepts of crudeness and nobility, good and bad, living despite thinking life’s not worth it—if we look at these things from a lens of absolutism, what could I possibly tell you guys for sure? Nothing, that’s what. Besides, it’s not like dying is easy. Dying is hard. So let me ask you, kids. What could it possibly mean for something to be ‘sublime’? Would we even be able to tell?”

“I think we can.”

“How?”

“Because someone told me so.”

“Who? God?”

“My parents.”

Just then, a golf ball came hurtling through the air and shattered the classroom window. What Jayeong could remember was that the window shattered because someone had shattered it, and in the hustle and bustle (thankfully no one was hurt), she could hear someone playing the piano. It was a plain walnut upright, and someone had scribbled “motherfuckers” on the rightmost pedal. In a dedicated area within Jayeong’s memory lived broken glass, a tiny “motherfuckers,” the sound of piano music, and the banner for that year’s VBS. The banner had always flapped peacefully in the wind outside the now-broken window, and Jayeong had gotten a good look at the Bible verse printed on it. Guard the good treasure that was entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

What had she seen next? Her memory was blurry. A few scenes almost reemerged, only to recede again.

But when it came to a Tuesday like this, or a Thursday or a Sunday, any day when the soldiers appeared out of the blue really, Jayeong remembered everything clearly. Enough for her to recall certain memories instantly, even through the shimmering haze of the past. Because that’s what Jayeong wanted. That’s what she wanted to want, and was able to want. Right. I wanted this . . .

“What are you thinking about?”

The eight soldiers’ specialty was appearing. Reappearing. Accomplishing the act of appearing. Also: Helping or not helping Jayeong, chasing off beetles, rearranging items, gazing at the sun, etc. Jayeong couldn’t say they did nothing, and one January they even brought her some homemade alcohol they claimed warded off evil, telling her to give it a go. This was why, though they were so tiresome at times that she wanted to pinch the palest and most delicate parts of their flesh, or even wished they would disappear altogether, she didn’t actually want any of that to happen, and sometimes she even waited for them to appear all the while thinking, Something doesn’t add up here about the way I’m feeling.

“Anyway.”

“We have to get going,” the soldiers said, playing with the wounds on each other’s hands and feet.

“Pay attention to your surroundings today, alright?”

“When did we ever not pay attention?”

The soldiers called protecting the orchard from outsiders “eyes front,” and this was the duty they took most seriously. It was very important to them that they stand guard, observing neighboring areas for suspicious boxes, plants, charcoal lumps, or rumors. They appeared ready to attack anyone who got in the way of this very important duty, but of course, nobody ever got in the way.

Jayeong joined them this time. She suggested she join them, and the soldiers agreed. Jayeong and the soldiers patrolled the area, drawing a circle around the orchard. The soldiers tried to walk in formation but this didn’t go well, perhaps due to this new variable that was Jayeong. The soldiers discussed the lovely weather and tried to fathom the severity of the hail or earthquakes or ocean tsunamis this long-awaited lovely weather was sure to eventually cause as they stroked the forget-me-nots that had bloomed along the side of the road. Their fingers turned bright blue. “If hail falls from the sky, if an earthquake occurs, if a tsunami strikes, we’ll secretly lay down our roots next to a kind-hearted tree. Hey, why isn’t this coming off?” As the soldiers perspired and rubbed at their fingers, Jayeong peered wordlessly at the sky. A little while later, the soldiers also peered up at the same sky that Jayeong was peering up at. “What are you looking at?” They stood under the clear and high sky and bared their faces.

A young traveler wearing a rucksack passed everyone just then, heading toward the forest, and Jayeong and the soldiers withdrew their faces from the sky and went on their way.

Patrolling the area around the orchard took approximately fifty minutes. Discovered a new toad. Saw people of yore (they were referring to elderly people) looking at the sun halo. They claimed to have lost their eyesight due to the sun. Premises secure. Neither good nor bad? Both good and bad. On the way back, the soldiers took out and unfolded a map. On it was a point marked with a mountain symbol (△). It was the area above the orchard, near the dried-up well.

“We didn’t inspect this zone earlier, so as not to rouse suspicion,” the soldiers said. “But there’s something there. We don’t know if it’s flora or fauna, but it could be lying in wait for the right time to strike. It’s a threat to the orchard, whatever it is.” They nodded, as if seeking assent. They proposed they return after nightfall.

“Alright, let’s do that then,” Jayeong agreed. She almost asked, But what’s the plan if we really do find something there? but didn’t. Instead, she asked if they could go back to the orchard and harvest the plums together, as nobody had signed up for the Pick-Your-Own-Plums event. “I’ll take the top area, you guys take the bottom.” Plums had to be harvested within a two-week window, starting right at the onset of summer. After that, the trees dropped all the fruit on their own.

“You want to go back to the orchard and pick plums together?”

“Yes.”

“But that’s your job. Why are you asking us to help? Don’t you see how hot it is?”

“You’re asking why? I’ve never thought about the why of it all.”

“We don’t want to. That’s not our business,” the soldiers said.

“You could make it your business,” Jayeong said.

“We won’t do it, we won’t. Just let us be. We’re allowed to not do something we don’t want to do.”

So Jayeong let them be. As soon as they returned to the orchard, the heat radiating from the layers of smoldering dirt hit them square in the faces. Jayeong mixed some fertilizer into a bucket of cold water, filled a sprayer, and hoisted it onto her back, adjusting the shoulder straps. She then went around to every corner of the property, drenching the plum tree branches and their fruit, the dead trees and their dead fruit, severed stems, bottles of vinegar, some tissue paper, a bag of bean chips, and the soil and atmosphere that had nurtured it all. This was Jayeong’s specialty, the work that had been ingrained within her. The strong and steady stream of water glimmered in the midday sun.

The soldiers chased the stream, basking in the cold drops that scattered in the air. Annoyed, Jayeong aimed the hose directly at the soldiers, sending them tumbling, feet entangled, into a puddle. “It hurts, it hurts!” they yelled. Jayeong blasted them again. “Stop that! You’re bigger than us. No fair! Stop bullying us.” The soldiers grimaced as if in pain, but there was a clear vitality to their wet faces. The soldiers showed Jayeong multiple flourishing life forces.

Jayeong stopped, her back to the sun. So . . . She stood, suddenly unsure of what to do next.

“Why did I do that? I have no idea myself. I’ll probably never know. My thoughts are fuzzy, and I don’t try . . . Why did I do that?” Jayeong repeated the same thing again and again, so as not to blurt out everything in her head at once. She figured out what she needed to do next and got to work picking plums, muttering, “What the, who knows.” She sprayed pesticides every season, so there weren’t many worm-eaten plums. Still, there weren’t many edible ones, either. As always, making her way from one end of the orchard to the other, Jayeong stooped and straightened, ascended and descended step­ladders, and gazed off into the distance, all in the sweltering heat. The midday heat returned day after day. Gigantic plums and itty-bitty plums and even the rare perfectly ripe plum mingled together in a plastic crate like balls in a ball pit. Yellow and red and green, they were Jayeong’s plums that Jayeong had picked.

Seeing them together like that, Jayeong smiled proudly. This time, the soldiers watched in silence. There was no hint of anything, no sadness. Just pride and joy. A bright smile. That was it.

Jayeong stacked the full crates on one side of the field, then grabbed a few thin glass bottles from the shed, washed them, and laid them out in the sun to dry. Each year, she gathered the edible fruit and threw together the correct proportions of plums, sugar, soju, vinegar, and flavor enhancers to make homemade plum wine. She kept a few bottles for herself, but she sold most of them at a local market whenever it opened. When the weather cooled down, she even sold some bottles out of her truck by the side of the road. Whenever a driver would roll down their window and pick a fight (usually a young woman or man around Jayeong’s age), she would pretend not to see them or move to a different location out of fear of being reported.

On one of these days, Jayeong was not with the soldiers and all alone. A man exited a sedan and approached her, calling, “Excuse me,” so Jayeong climbed down from her truck to greet her customer. But instead, he said, “Oh, I’m not here to buy. I bought a bottle from you earlier but it made me sick.”

“But I haven’t sold a single bottle today,” Jayeong replied, to which he said, “I didn’t mean earlier, I meant recently.” He seemed quite new to lying. Still, she didn’t want to accuse the man, so she stayed quiet. After a while, however, the way he was standing there, so stubborn, began to grate on her, and she said, “So what? You have something to say?”

“I’d like my money back.” The man showed no signs of backing down.

“There hasn’t been a single person who’s gotten sick from my wine.”

“Yes, there has. Me.”

Well that’s true, Jayeong thought. You say you did, and you’re standing right here. She decided to play along and gave him 10,000 won in cash. She waited for him to say something to the effect of, All this over a measly 10,000 won. Why are you selling this crap, anyway? Just give it up. It’s a waste of time. Nobody needs this weird homemade wine. At which Jayeong would, her hands trembling with rage, hit the man with her truck. She even thought of what she would say to him, this man who would be crumpled on the ground by then, as she took the 10,000 won note back out of his wallet: So what? I did my best, okay? Do you know what that even means? To try your best at something? But the man just took the money, climbed back into his car without a word, and drove off.

“A con artist for sure. A bottle is 15,000 won, yet he took the 10,000 won and didn’t say anything. He didn’t even know how much each bottle costs. I can’t believe I returned money that he’d never paid in the first place,” Jayeong muttered. More than anything else, she couldn’t forget the image of the man’s two hands as they politely accepted the money. Unlike Jayeong’s calloused, dirt-caked hands, his were clean and soft, with elegant fingers and clean nails. This son of a bitch, how much do you make conning people with those delicate hands of yours? Jayeong calculated the possible amounts in her head as she walked away from the road. She bought some gum and water from a vending machine in the underpass and strolled past a green barley field dancing in the breeze. After that, she returned to her truck and took a quick nap in the driver’s seat. In a dream, Jayeong learned that the man from earlier had just been released from prison.

“Everyone who meets me says there’s something ominous about me,” he said in her dream.

Was that true? Did he really hear that from everyone he met? Jayeong woke up and thought about this for a while. For starters, I never said that to him. Nobody could peek into her dreams, so she had to come to her own conclusions. Could go either way. Jayeong retrieved her notepad from her pocket and wrote down her conclusion. On the radio, which had been on the entire time, the DJ offered tips on residue burning and summer wildfire prevention. Jayeong started the truck. The fresh scent of greenery and the smell of hot asphalt wafted in and out through the open window. Three crape myrtle trees. Stone embankments. A faucet. The sound of footsteps tracking a flock of birds. The sound of a Coca-Cola can opening. The smell of dry ice. The smell of sulfur. Feathers. Bones. A shadow shaking its head.

A cluster of kids, who’d been waiting for a snake in the middle of the road to move along, fidgeted and looked at Jayeong’s truck.

After nightfall, the wind suddenly picked up and it started to pour. Jayeong brought the soldiers a tarp. Unfazed, they installed a tall tent and waited out the storm. They waited with their bodies bent awkwardly, as if they were prop chairs in a play. Being a small chair. That’s what Jayeong called this awkward slouching, and as always, she sat in each chair, one by one. The soldiers’ bodies were neither cold nor hot, just soggy. A lantern shone dimly on the wet soldiers’ forms. Nobody spoke; it was completely silent, making the rain and breathing sound like a lullaby. Unlike during the day, the orchard felt listless and drained. Jayeong leaned toward the chair soldiers and waved. Whenever she waved slowly at them, as if greeting them happily or seeing them off, she would feel them slowly drift off to sleep. Jayeong had never learned this but she knew how to do it, and she didn’t hate it.

The shower didn’t last long, but the wind was still strong so they continued to wait. Jayeong didn’t wake the soldiers, only sprinkled some powdered incense around the tent so unknown souls couldn’t enter without permission (not that she knew any souls to begin with). She killed the remaining time by drawing mountains on the ground with the leftover powder. A group of children big and small came rushing onto the field, dashing around but taking care not to step on the incense on the ground. They then whispered amongst themselves before running off. Am I happy? the children asked themselves. They answered themselves, too. I can’t sweat the small stuff.

“Why did they come here, anyway?” she muttered, watching them leave as quickly as they’d come. She recalled the map from earlier in the day. The area above the orchard, near the dried-up well. Her mother’s corpse could be there. There were always people who were attracted to black water, after all. People who, entranced by the black water, threw themselves into a deep, dark well only to find there wasn’t a drop of moisture within and cracked their heads open on the hard floor. Pop, their heads went. Whenever Jayeong heard rumors of someone being swept away in a strong current or someone’s small spark nearly causing a massive forest fire in this imagined small town, she would visit the place to confirm if these things really did happen or not. If they were real or not. This was important to Jayeong, and this importance was virtuous. And this virtue was what saved Jayeong from time to time.

“In that case, we should really go check it out. Don’t you think?” the soldiers said, waking from their slumber and rubbing their eyes.

It was so pitch black outside the tent that it looked the same whether they opened their eyes or not. The darkness buzzed around them, and they traversed the buzzing darkness and traveled upward. Jayeong adjusted to the absence of light quickly, listening to the soldiers’ footsteps draw nearer or farther as she imagined herself walking alone. She could now hear the crickets chirping, and though she could make out what was around her, there was nothing particularly interesting to look at.

“About earlier,” the soldiers said. They claimed that they’d had a dreamless sleep in the tent, but if they were being honest, there was a dream they’d wished they’d had. “It would’ve been an interesting one. It would’ve been about us losing you.”

“If we had a dream like that, we would stop moving, and time would keep flowing. Of course, you would have to keep moving. Because it wouldn’t be your dream. Then if we happened to have a dream about finding you again, we would start moving again, moving toward you, but by then you’ll have become a person of yore.”

Jayeong asked about the meaning of that dream.

“We don’t know. Meaning can just appear out of nowhere. If it does, we’ll know.”

Jayeong didn’t know what they meant by this, but she also kind of felt like she knew. There were simply some things like that in the world. Just as she knew how to put the soldiers to sleep despite never having learned, the soldiers knew how to rouse Jayeong without ever having learned.

Jayeong and the soldiers marched on, alternately taking the lead. No one would ever mistake them for just one person. The dappled shadows of nearby tree branches retreated from her face, and the full moon hung low in the sky, bathing the area in a fractured white glow. With the light and wind in her face, Jayeong watched as the soldiers’ heads bobbed with each exhale. Their spiral cowlicks bounced up and down, small and adorable. They were alive. They appeared alive.

“But what if we don’t find anything?”

“Then we don’t find anything.”

“I hope we find something. Anything.”

“I hope I’m the one who finds something first.”

“Boo! Boo! Boo!”

“Or I hope I’m the one who’s found first.”

“Alright, then. Clasp your hands together and say a prayer.”

Jayeong nodded halfheartedly, saying, Yes, yes, and walked with them for a long time. Yes. I hope she’s there, dead. I hope she’ll give me an ending. Then I’ll forgive her.