Haruka (はるか) and Uisaeng Choi (崔醫生)
This work is based on true events; however, all names of places and individuals have been reconstructed as fiction for the development of the novel. I deeply miss my mother, who used to tell me stories of her childhood while immersed in old memories.
I dedicate this book to my mother.
Haruka (はるか) and Uisaeng Choi (崔醫生)
* (Note: 'Uisaeng' refers to a licensed medical practitioner during the Japanese colonial period)
Readers who believe Haruka died while covered in blood are those who do not truly know how tenacious a human life can be.
No one wondered what had happened to Haruka. Because there were too many spectacles—the Lady’s desperate tyranny, the blood-stained newborn, and the scene of the shaman Cheong-ah being beaten—not a single person asked where Haruka’s body had been taken.
Dr. Choi Jun moved Haruka’s body, which appeared dead, to the closed Wonsan Labor Hospital, for which he held the keys. The Wonsan Labor Hospital in Gangwon Province had already been shut down in 1929, but modern medical instruments and examination tables remained inside the building. Since 1928, Dr. Choi had frequently volunteered at this hospital, providing free medical care to the laborers of Gangwon Province. Having received the latest medical education at Tokyo Imperial University, Dr. Choi had been dispatched to Wonsan as the primary physician for high-ranking Japanese officials and generals; however, because he also cared for laborers for free, he possessed the keys to the Labor Hospital. The building, forcibly closed by the Japanese Empire in 1929, was a mess of scrambled documents and furniture, but the necessary medical instruments were still preserved in the drawers.
Dr. Choi laid Haruka’s limp, death-like body onto the examination table. He disinfected the incision made on her and sutured it in the operating room. The cut was so clean, having avoided the arteries, that it was hard to believe a mere midwife had made it; it looked as though a surgeon had performed the procedure. As time passed and the bleeding stopped, a fever slowly began to rise in Haruka’s seemingly lifeless body, and she moved slightly. Lifting Haruka’s feather-light frame with both hands, Dr. Choi placed her in a cart waiting outside and took her secretly to the study of his home. He spread a blanket in a corner of the study and laid Haruka down.
Dr. Choi knew that the state of affairs was turning ominous. During that period, as the Japanese military displayed increasing madness, Wonsan—a port city—was under a strict surveillance system to procure military rations, and even young girls were being dragged away under the pretext of "comfort women" recruitment. Dr. Choi thought that he should escape this dangerous era by going down to his hometown, Cheongju, to live in hiding as a farmer in the mountains. However, at that moment, Haruka’s fever was rising sharply, and her entire body was becoming as hot as a ball of fire.
In this era, before antibiotics were properly distributed, countless women lost their lives due to childbirth complications. A memory flashed through his mind from his days studying Western medicine in Tokyo, specifically a journal article about "penicillin" being developed in the West. "…If only I had penicillin, I could bring down the fever and catch the infection." He sat beside Haruka, who lay as if dead, and gazed slowly at her face. Her distinct features, like a statue, and her long, slender neck made his heart ache even more.
"…For such a young girl to become a mother."
Dr. Choi knew that if it became known that Haruka was alive, the Lady—who had lost her ability to reason—would surely kill her. Ever since the shaman claimed she would "give birth to a son," the Lady had forced her husband, Lord Go, to sleep with Haruka every single day for over three months. She was a woman from a famous Joseon noble family, a tangle of jealousy, envy, ambition, and obsession. Dr. Choi knew there were many women born as daughters of noble houses who sought vicarious satisfaction for their unfulfilled ambitions and the lack of respect they received as women by "giving birth to a son." Furthermore, it was a distorted era under Japanese colonial rule, where Korean women were treated as inferior to Japanese women. In such times, the Lady harbored the ambition to obtain her husband’s 'son' by using Haruka, and her psyche was a mixture of complex inferiority, hatred toward her husband, and a desire to be loved. The moment it was revealed that a son had not been born, it was only natural that the Lady, who held absolute power within the household, would try to kill Haruka. Gazing at Haruka, who slept like the dead upon the blanket, Dr. Choi felt a powerful sense of calling leap in his chest:
"I must save this girl."
In the midst of political chaos, human life was lighter than that of a fly. Protecting this girl, who had not a single guardian in the world, felt like proving that he himself was "alive." Haruka had always cooked delicious food without losing her smile. He had always thought it a blessing from God that she lived so brightly, despite losing her mother at birth and her father at the age of ten before becoming a kitchen maid in a noble house in a foreign land. Although the Japanese Empire was committing atrocious acts as it ruled Korea, the distinction between Japanese and Korean held little meaning for the poor and fragile common people. To them, what mattered more was today’s food, a place to sleep, and warm clothes.
Dr. Choi, who had moved to Tokyo at the age of sixteen to begin his medical studies, understood that human tragedy stemmed not from national differences, but from political power struggles created by ambition. Before she was Japanese, Haruka was simply a young girl who had lost her parents and become an orphan in a foreign land. He knew well how easily such a child could be hurt, and that even if she died vomiting blood on the street, no one would so much as look at her corpse. Whether in Japan or Korea, a ten-year-old orphan girl had to live without any safety net. Nevertheless, watching Haruka work in the kitchen and produce wonderful food, Dr. Choi used to think:
"This is the true strength possessed by a human being."
On the first day Haruka prepared a table at Lord Go’s house, he had thought she was a Korean girl. This was because her Korean was more fluent than that of a local. It was only when he saw Haruka speaking Japanese with the Lady that he realized she was Japanese. He had also watched intently as Haruka hid behind the large jars to carve the faces of girls into firewood. Haruka, who was gifted with her hands, would carve the faces of every woman she met into the wood; it looked like an act of prayer to God, searching for the image of the mother whose face she could not even remember.
Dr. Choi wrote a request for a transfer, folded it, and placed it in a large envelope. After putting the envelope into the leather bag used by medical practitioners, he let his exhausted body rest beside the blanket where Haruka lay. It was nearing four in the morning. In that hour, as the morning energy rose and the cool air brushed through the room, Dr. Choi closed his eyes, thought of various futures, and fell fast asleep.