Rebel Seoul

The Tower’s searchlight circles the Gangnam district of Neo Seoul at a
uniform rate. At the center of the district, a band calling itself C’est La Vie
gives a regulated concert: four guys on lead guitar, bass, keyboard, and
drums; one girl on voice.
The light is yellow as it searches the grassy park where the concert’s
being held, yellow as it searches the food and promotion carts forming a
broken wall between the park and the blue-lit streets of the Grid. It rests for
a moment at the front of the stage, fake sunlight in the night, illuminating
pale faces in the crowd.
Suddenly, the searchlight turns from yellow to red, a jarring, hitch-in-the-breath switch. It’s a warning.
Twenty minutes until midnight. Twenty minutes until the trains stop in
the sky, until the magnet of the Grid shuts down, until the Dome closes.
Twenty minutes until curfew.
Red. The color of fear. It makes everyone look harsh and inhuman,
bloody and faceless. And then it’s gone. The light passes. It moves on to the
rest of the district.
Nobody at the concert seems to notice its arrival and departure.
Nobody but me.
I reach into my pocket and pull out a couple of square pills, popping
them quick. Bright lights give me headaches, loud noises irritate me, but I
have only myself to blame. I’ve been to concerts before.
There’s a momentary lull after the last set, enough time for the Tower
light to sweep over the crowd. The lead singer of C’est La Vie, her heartshaped face enlarged on the holo-screens behind her, lifts her microphone to
her pink-stained mouth. I can see the puffs of breath that fall from her lips.
No instruments accompany her, not for these first words, spoken as if
they’re her last.
“Please tell me,” she sings, “Please tell me why people hurt one
another.”
A bitterness creeps through me, familiar and irritating. “Such is life,” I
mutter.
I lean my shoulder against a nearby food cart, feeling the coldness of
the steel through the thin fabric of my shirt. I had a coat tonight, but lost it
sometime between the beginning of the first set and this last one, to a girl
with soft lips. She traded a kiss for warmth. I can’t say the same for me.
My phone chirps in my pocket, and I take it out. The number fifteen
flashes red across the screen.
Fifteen minutes until midnight. Fifteen minutes until curfew.
I haven’t forgotten. I wouldn’t forget something like that.
I glance to my right. Civilian cars are lined up on the back streets of the
Grid, waiting to zip concertgoers safely away to the residential areas of Neo
Seoul, to the skyscrapers full of the loving parents who will welcome them
home.
Open doors.
Open arms.
Fourteen minutes, forty-two seconds until curfew.
It takes a little less than ten minutes to reach the nearest bridge, which
means I have four minutes, forty-two seconds before I have to leave.
My sneakers squish against the wet grass as I step away from the cart.
Something sticky attaches to the sole of my shoe — a discarded piece of
gum. I sigh and lean down to pluck it off.
I hear another squelch. The toes of two studded boots enter my line of
vision. I straighten and pocket the gum. Trash receptacles get taken away
every night at 2200, and fines for littering go up fifteen percent after they’re
gone.
“Ay, Lee Jaewon, that’s disgusting,” Bora says, her voice light and
cheerful. She checks beneath her high-heeled boots to see if she’s suffered
the same fate.
She hasn’t.
“I just saw a girl in the crowd wearing your coat. Daebak! You work
fast. I’d say color me impressed, ’cept you’ll probably die from a chill.”
Tonight Bora wears a heavy coat entirely of blue feathers that puff out,
making her small torso appear larger. The coat falls to mid-thigh,
accentuating her long legs, poorly protected from the cold by a pair of black
tights. She adjusts her wig — one that I haven’t seen before, black with
dark blue streaks. Shiny stars pasted over the rims of her cheeks flash silver
as she smiles.
Bora’s last accessory is Minwoo, his own ruddy cheeks pasted with
stickers of hearts and diamonds. His mop of curly hair falls across eyes
hidden behind dark sunglasses. Bora’s got a strong hold on Minwoo’s
sleeve, and I can see the seams of his sweater breaking at the shoulder.
“She’s so cute!” Minwoo yells, trying to make himself heard over the
music. It’s been gradually picking up instruments as it gains momentum.
I nod at Minwoo’s compliment, thinking he’s speaking about Bora.
“Really,” he continues, “if Sela were my girlfriend, I’d just die from
happiness.” Minwoo grabs a handful of fabric at the front of his sweater and
rubs the area in a circular motion, as if pained. “And her name. It’s the
prettiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Bora releases him in disgust. Minwoo stumbles, clearly intoxicated, and
falls to the grass.
“It’s her stage name,” Bora says, rolling her eyes. “Her band is called
C’est La Vie. It’s, like, French or whatever. She’s just called Sela ’cause
she’s the lead singer and it rolls off the tongue.”
“Don’t belittle my goddess!” Minwoo shouts from the ground.
I listen as the instruments drop, one by one. Now it’s only the singer,
her voice somehow quiet even with the microphone pressed against her lips.
“Please tell me. Why do people hurt one another? Why do people kill one
another?”
“This song is depressing,” I say.
“No, it’s not!” Minwoo jumps off the ground, surprisingly nimble, and
grabs me by the front of my shirt. “It’s goddamn poetry!”
I shrug him off, along with his alcohol- and cigarette-tinged breath. I
gave up smoking two years ago. They don’t tolerate the stuff at the
academy, not for scholarship students. The pungent tobacco wafting from
Minwoo makes me infinitely aware that I’m better off without it.
“Jaewon-ah . . .” Bora takes me by the arm. I glance at her hands circled
around my shirt. If she tears it, I really will die from the cold. “You nervous
about the new school year? Minwoo says he bribed the members of the
school board. We’re for sure going to be in the same class again this year.”
I nod slowly, somewhat amused. Bribing a group of corrupt old men to
get into the same class as your friends. It’s a different kind of bribery than
that conducted in Old Seoul. In Old Seoul, bribery isn’t just about money.
C’est La Vie’s song heads into the second chorus, gearing up for its
grand finale. Some of the lights in the stage-rafters shatter in a coordinated
explosion of pink-and-blue pixie dust. Heavy fans blow the dust into the
crowd, and the way people are gulping in the air, I wouldn’t be surprised if
the band added stimulants to the glitter.
“Song Bora,” Minwoo squeals in excitement, “hurry up! We don’t want
to miss the finale.” He rushes back into the crowd, swallowed up on either
side as he pushes his way through.
Bora hesitates, glancing back at me. “You coming?”
I shake my head.
She watches me another second. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll see you
tomorrow.” She follows Minwoo into the crowd.
I resume leaning against the abandoned food cart. I have about one
minute and forty-nine seconds in the park before I’ll be forced to leave.
Cars registered to the Grid are allowed out later than curfew, but taxis
aren’t, especially taxis heading for one of the few bridges leading out of the
city. I need to be gone before I’m taken in, accused of and convicted for
something illogical.
I imagine how it’d go down. They’d ask me why I was out so late —
inside the Dome, when my Citizen ID says I should be outside it. I’d say, “I
got caught out.” I’d say, “I’ll call a friend.” They’d tell me I was out late
planning something treasonous against the state. I’d say, “Bullshit.” They’d
put me in prison.
When I walk away from the cart, I watch where I step. The grass, coated
with a combination of rainfall, melted sugar, and glitter, sticks to my shoe.
I check the time once more: one minute, twenty-seven seconds.
I’m heading out to the main streets when I see someone.
A girl.
The lights of the stage only reach so far across the grass until it blends
to darkness, and that’s where she stands, completely still, her eyes riveted
on the stage.
I don’t know what stops me; maybe it’s her stillness. Maybe it’s the fact
that we’re the only ones not packed in front of the stage. We’re a couple
meters out, nothing around us but abandoned food carts and grass, and the
blue-lit streets of the Grid behind her.
I’ve seen girls like her before, middling height with long black hair,
some falling over her shoulders. She wears a loose, long-sleeved gray shirt
and pants of the same color. And yet there’s something arresting about
her — the way she stands, as if she’d run across the city and just arrived,
her chest moving slightly as she breathes; the way she hasn’t blinked since I
first laid eyes on her.
She takes one step and she’s in the light.
The look in her eyes is fierce and warm and full of longing.
I inhale sharply and feel the cold sweep through my mouth.
I have exactly one minute left before I have to leave. I can talk to a girl
in a minute.
I take another step, smoothing my shirt over my stomach, and a
shattering of wind blows me back. A police droid descends from overhead,
a shaft of light issuing from its projectors and exposing the girl. She doesn’t
even glance up. Nor does she blink when airborne police trucks slide onto
the grass, leaving the organized streets of the Grid, their sirens raging red
like the searchlight of the Tower. Each truck releases four soldiers carrying
standard-issue electro-guns, their sighting-lights trained on the girl. She’s
covered with a dozen neon red dots all focused on fatal parts of the body —
her long neck, her pale forehead, her beating heart. Her eyes never leave the stage as the soldiers drag her away, and when
they jolt her with the electro-gun, her eyes remain open, only the fluttering
of her lashes showing she felt it at all.
Through the whirring noises of the droid’s engines and the wailing
sirens of the police trucks, Sela breathes the last words of her song.
“Even if I’ve never heard you, I hear you. Even if I’ve never seen you, I
see you. Even if I’ve never known you, I miss you. I wait for you, my love,
my land of the morning calm.”
Something about the words makes me flinch.
I watch as the soldiers drag the girl’s limp body off the grass and into
one of the trucks.
They’re gone in under a minute.
A cheer goes up behind me, and I quickly turn around. The members of
C’est La Vie are bowing on the stage. The small figure of the lead singer
blows kisses into the crowd with a bubble blower. Blue and pink roses fall
at her feet, and a chant rises up out of the tumult.
“Sela! Sela! Sela!”
Nobody seems to have seen the police take the girl. And if they had,
they wouldn’t care.
She’s just another lost soul in the city of Neo Seoul.
The city of tomorrow’s dreams.
I have zero minutes and zero seconds until I have to leave.
There’s a feeling in my chest that feels something like disgust, but
whether for the police or the crowd or myself, I can’t tell.
I walk onto the street and call over a cab. I open the back door, then
slide into the soft interior. It smells faintly of smoke. “Can you take me
across the nearest bridge?” I ask the driver.
I wait, expecting him to charge me extra — it’s almost midnight, after
all — but he just nods.
I cross the Han River from Neo Seoul into Old Seoul with three
minutes, thirty-eight seconds to spare. I don’t wait to see the Dome
solidifying as it closes behind me.
Midnight shuts the old from the new.