"Cheolsu. Have you been doing all right?"

An old briquette-grill place, set back in an alley in Sillim.

Back when the exam district was at its height, Halmae Fresh Meat had a line out the door.

Even on a day this hot Choe Yeonghui had not given up the leopard-print dress. She looked at the man across from her fondly.

"……." Kim Cheolsu says nothing.

Tsssssss.

With his chopsticks he turned one thick cut of pork belly on the rack over the briquette fire. Nothing else.

He was not using tongs.

Kim Cheolsu stared at the meat he had just turned and nothing else. The look in his eye says that the moment the red is gone he will put it straight in his mouth.

I never can get used to this one.

Choe Yeonghui is smiling fondly, and underneath it she is tense.

The Kim Cheolsu across the table from her is in his early thirties. She does not know much about him.

Two years ago he crossed into China, and with the help of a religious organization he settled in the South as a defector.

As far as she knows he is an ordinary former sergeant of the People's Army.

After that came the National Intelligence Service screening, then Hanawon, then a room rented on the state grant. Until recently he moved from one construction job to another.

Now he has a motorcycle license and runs deliveries.

He stands about a hundred and sixty-five, which is small for a man.

Average in the North. In the South it put him at the short end.

To anybody's eye he seemed to be living an ordinary life.

He worked steadily at deliveries, earned money, paid his rent on time, and lived like any other citizen of the Republic of Korea.

Then by chance she found out what he could do. What Kim Cheolsu actually is — which she would never have known but for that business.

Kim Cheolsu had been cheated by an organization that made its money off defectors still poorly settled in the South.

They came to defectors…