"You want to go?"
It was one thing to talk to him twice a week for half an hour, but she couldn't imagine spending a day with him. What would happen if someone saw them together? Sunja's face felt hot. What was she supposed to do? She had told him, and she couldn't keep him from going.
"I'll meet you here. I better go back to the market." Hansu smiled at her differently this time, like he was a boy, excitement beaming from his face.
"We'll find a huge bundle of mushrooms. I know it."
They walked along the outer perimeter of the island, where no one would see them together. The coastline seemed more glorious than it had ever been. As they approached the forest located on the opposited side of the island, the enormous pines, maples, and firs seemed to greet them, decked in golds and reds as if they wearing their holiday clothes. Hansu told her about living in Osaka. The Japanese were not to be vilified, he said. AT this moment in time, theyh were beating the Koreans, and of course, no one liked losing. He believed that if the Koreans could stop quarreling with each other, they could probably take over Japan and do much worse things to the Japanese instead.
"People are rotten everywhere you go. They're no good. You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let's see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants."
Sunja nodded as he spoke, trying to remember his every word, to hold o to his every image, and to grasp whatever he was trying to tell her. She treasured his stories like the beach glass and rose-colored stones she used to collect as a girl-his words astonished her because he was taking her by the hand and showing her new, unforgettable things.
Of course, there were many subjects and ideas she didn't understand, and sometimes just trying to learn it all without experiencing it was difficult. Yet she crammed her mind the way she might have overfilled a pig intestine with blood sausage stuffing. She tried hard to figure things out because she didn't want him to think she was ignorant. Jsunja didn't know her letters in either Korean or Japanese. Her father had taught her some addition and subtratction so she could count money, but that was all. Both she and her mother could not even write their names.
She was enraptured by his talk and his experiences, which were far more unique than the adventures of fishermen or workers who had come from far-flung places, but there was something even more new and powerful in her relationship with Hansu that she had never expected.