authors note:

salut. it's looking like at my current rate this story will update weekly which might violently change due to independent circumstances beyond my control, such as papers, work, and my current head cold.

chapter title is from no children - the mountain goats (on a moral orel binge)

anyway please fav and review it keeps me goin

Thankfully, by the time I reached the beach, with aching, dirty feet, no soldier had suddenly arrived to inspect it, probably because it was the middle of winter, and no one would be by the water if you weren't crazy or trying to die.

I quickly rushed to pull off the tarp cover, and flung it on the sand. I quickly tore off the cover of the container, grabbing my hiking boots and socks, quickly putting them on. I grabbed my backpack and quickly checked for my pokemon, and breathed a sigh of relief when i found their pokeballs unharmed. I crawled in the boat, and reached for another large box wedged in the very tip of the boat. I managed to slide it free, while also ripping my sleeping bag out of the boat, and I eagerly opened the box.

The box contained emergency biscuit rations, matches, tinder, a first aid kit, a Swiss Army knife, what appeared to be a large space blanket, three tins of water purification tablets, some canned food, a flare gun, fishing kit, other things that had absolutely no value to me, and an actual, disassembled pistol, mostly black but with a brown grip, with live ammunition close by. I stared at that pistol for a minute, feeling mixed emotions of shock and confusion at the fact there was a real gun stocked in my boat. I tried to muster up memories of when my American uncle took me out to a shooting range to show me how to shoot a gun, and then promptly got yelled at by both my mom and grandma at the same time, but I couldn't remember how to reassemble it for the life of me, only how to shoot. Thanks a lot, Uncle Rich.

After another minute of staring at the disassembled weapon, I managed to reassemble it without killing myself, and clicked the safety off, and kept it nearby. I grabbed the emergency box, and stuffed it in my bag, before grabbing a change of clothes, which was a long sleeved dark shirt, dark pants, and my jacket from before, and flung the tarp over me and changed clothes. I packed my clothes, the emergency box, my sleeping bag, curled up into a ball and the tarp, also rolled up. I sat down on the beach, and tried to think of something, anything, that could help me. I remembered what Mr. Moreau said, about going to the British embassy in Pyongyang. Pyongyang could be anywhere from barely a day's walk to nearly a week away. I'd have to walk for a long time, with potential contraband on my shoulders. However, I knew I had to do one thing before I went anywhere.

I looked back at the boat, looking for those distinctive red letters. Before I did anything, I pulled out my camera, a gift from my mother to chronicle my journey, from my bag, and took a picture of the boat, to preserve it in case anyone said I was a liar. I put my bag down, pulled the pocket knife, and started to chip away at the "C" in "CANADA", until the "C" came off. It took a long time to remove all the letters, but it was worth not getting my home country tangled in North-South Korean political nonsense in the end. After I removed the letters, I pushed the boat out into the ocean, and watched as it floated away, until it was out of sight. Now with the fear of accidentally starting World War 3 because of a single mistake off of my shoulders, I picked up the gun laying in the sand, and began my trek north.

Even for someone who lived on the coast of Canada, where the summers were always chilly at best and the winters were nearly unbearable, North Korean winters were pretty cold, even barring the fact that I was right by the ocean, making it even colder. After trekking past the sign from before, I found myself blowing on my hands to keep warm. When I reached a small clearing a few meters away, I sat down and pulled out my pokeballs and some biscuits from the box. I sat cross legged on the dead grass, took a deep breath in, and released my pokemon, who simply sat and stared at the food that I gave them. Varaha even seemed uneager to eat, for the first time ever, and Nina looked straight at me, unflinching.

"This is all we have for now." I said over the cacophony of growls and indignant squeaking from Jessica, who looked ready to bite my hand off. "Let's eat."

"Eat it, Jessica." I said, pushing the biscuit towards her, causing her to turn away. I felt my throat constrict, and I swallowed. I'm not going to lose it right now, I'm going to be calm and collected, and think this all through logically.

"Please." I begged, but none of them ate, merely staring at me if I had lost my mind. I swallow again, don't lose it, don't lose it, you are calm, don't lose it, don't-

"I'm sorry, okay? I'm lost in a dangerous country, and I can't just parade you around here!" I snapped, and the pokemon stopped. I rarely raised my voice at them, not wanting to be like the trainers in my school who screamed at their pokemon at high volumes after losing. "I don't know how long it'll be until I can buy us food, and I don't know when we'll be where we're supposed to be! Just eat the biscuits, please?"

Nina was the first to reluctantly eat the biscuits, and the two other ones soon followed. I decided to eat the biscuits too, because I hadn't had any breakfast either, and I needed to eat something before I walked. The biscuits were small, white little things, and one bite yielded a stale, rancid taste, and I wondered how old these biscuits were. I pressed forward, and was able to down two before nausea prevented me from eating anything more. My pokemon had finished before me, and were watching me as I coughed, covering my mouth as I did.

"I'm sorry for yelling." I said quietly, shoving the biscuits back in the backpack. "I'll get you all something nice when we get to the city. Some nice apples for Nina, some toast for Varaha, and some sweets for Jessica." I let them back into their pokeballs, and I sighed, wiped my eyes, and continued forth.

After about 10 whole minutes of walking, I spotted the city ahead, and I moved slightly faster, but not in a full dash, to avoid attention if someone walked by. As I climbed the hill, I looked around for some form of crowd to blend into, but I ended up just trying to make myself as small as possible while crossing the road. stuffed my firearm in my pocket, and walked through the city.

If I had stayed behind and looked for crowds, I would've been standing in that spot forever, because, as I found out walking through the run down city of "Nampo", there are apparently never any crowds in North Korea, or maybe just Nampo. There were men on bikes, passing me by, groups of women chatting with each other about what movies were on TV, children, or food, children running around, and stopping to look at me with an odd expression on their faces, but no crowds of people. I stared right back, and they ran away from me, quickly looking back at me. I snorted quietly to myself, but almost immediately regretted it. What if they snitched to their parents about the "weird girl with the backpack" who stared at them, and I hadn't left the city yet? What if their parents snitched to the police, and I had the army tailing me? I could see the headlines now, "Canadian Spy Executed, Death to Trudeau and the West!". I shook it off, blaming my paranoia for making me irrational. I needed to stay rational, stay calm, so I didn't mess up and end up executed in a horrible manner.

As I followed the road, which had no cars on it for whatever reason (probably why so many people were biking), I passed through an open air market on the walkway, filled with stalls with meats, fish, street food for the commuters, and produce. I went over to the produce stand, and bought some lettuce, and a couple of tomatoes for Nina, and the rest of the pokemon, and grabbed the yuan I had exchanged a few days before. The older gentleman, with his thin frame and tired eyes looked at me, shrugged, and took the money, and bagged my produce.

"Thank you, comrade." I said, with a fake smile, and left as quickly as possible without looking overtly suspect. I felt eyes turning to me with an offended look in their eyes, probably because of my accent or something, crawling all over my back, and I moved faster, trying to outrun them. I managed to free myself of them, shaking my head lightly. I hated this place, I hated being looked at with suspicious eyes, my mind scream hysterically, I want to go home! Calm, I told myself, stay calm, being irrational will be the end of you. Kim Jong-un doesn't care if you're innocent and scared out of your mind, he only cares that you're Canadian, that you have contraband on you, and how many things he can get you to confess to under torture. So stay calm, I repeated, being calm will get you out of here.

Soon, after repeating my "stay calm" mantra 3 more times as 3 more people stared at me, eating a snack made up of rice, rolled up in seaweed, that vaguely resembled a dish I frequently saw people in Koreatown in Vancouver eating, which I bought, and procuring a English-language map from the trash, the city of Nampo was behind me, and I was facing the "Youth Heroes' Highway" (which garnered a quiet snort from me), which, according to the map, was one of the main paths to Pyongyang. I'd have to walk on it for a indeterminate period of time, and dive into the woods whenever I saw a car pass by. I sighed quietly, and walked towards it, darting to the shoulder, where I was less likely to get hit or spotted by someone.

Surprisingly, throughout my 3 hour journey, I only had to dive off of the road one time. It was when I was halfway to Pyongyang, and I was listening to music as I walked, with one earbud in, one out. I was humming along to a Chinese song that my mom used to sing to me, before I suddenly heard the deep roar of an engine, and I jumped from the shoulder and I rolled down the grassy hill before I caught myself, feeling and hearing the contents of my bag rolling about. The rickety, white truck filled with soldiers roared past, not noticing the girl who flung herself off of the road. Other than that close call with capture, I managed to make it to Pyongyang without getting run over or spotted by the North Korean military, which caused me to walk through the woods to avoid a checkpoint populated by two soldiers, until I reached the sidewalks of Pyongyang. By the time I reached Pyongyang, the sun was setting, and there were actual lights in the skyline, instead of darkness, which was what I honestly expected.

Pyongyang isn't a stunning, commercial center city like New York City or Toronto is, and isn't a government city populated by monuments and history like Washington D.C. or Ottawa, it's somewhere in between, straddling the line between the two. There are tall skyscrapers climbing up to the sky like streamers in a parade, actual crowds (small) of people walking about, actual buses driving past, a bit old and rusted, but still buses none the less, and what appeared to be train stations, and then there are large monuments to "Sogun ideals" scattered around. It was like, after the Korean War, Kim Il-Sung didn't know what city he wanted, New York or D.C., or fought with his personal architect over plans before executing him and his family in a stadium as hundreds of people watched. Basically, Pyongyang was a mess.

But wherever I went in Pyongyang, I was always followed by the gaze of the chubby smiling face of either the graying Kim Il-Sung, or the pompadour of his son, Kim Jong-Il, and their ridiculous slogans. Their faces were plastered literally everywhere, monuments, storefronts, murals, all covered with their faces, looking down at their citizens, or in some cases, leading a gaggle of soldiers, somehow providing leadership by smiling and pointing. At least in Ottawa, I didn't see gigantic pictures of Justin Trudeau staring down at me, proclaiming to me that I should work to show glory to him, or bronze statues of Obama leading people to victory in Washington D.C. Anyway, any chance I got, I took pictures of my surroundings, and hid my camera in my coat when I passed by a soldier, who would almost always stare at me. Pyongyang was positively teeming with them, and I found myself in a constant state of anxiety, monitoring myself for any signs of suspicious or 'western' behavior. I watched the kids my age interact, and I began to imitate them, which seemed to garner me less stares.

After a little wandering, I found myself in front of the British Embassy, which wasnt just British, but German and Swedish, and I walked towards it with a smile, rehearsing the speech that I would give the person working the counter. The speech would go smoething like "Help my boat washed up on North Korean territory and I had no intention of going here to spy or overthrow the Kim dynasty please just drop me off in Macau I'll be fine there". I was only a few strides away from freedom, and seeing my family again. However, as I walked forwards towards the embassy, my smile dropped off my face. On the front of the embassy compound, there was a massive sign written in both German, Swedish, French, and English. The sign read:

"ABSOLUTELY NO CONTRABAND IN OR OUT OF EMBASSY BUILDINGS.

VIOLATERS WILL BE IMPRISONED"

I was screwed. Absolutely screwed. If I entered that embassy, I would have my bag searched, my pokemon would be found, and I would be almost immediately thrown to the government to do whatever they pleased with me. I'd have to stay in North Korea until I could find some tourist group to blend in with to take me home. But that could take days, month, years! What if they test missiles or nuclear bombs again? What if I'm trapped in the next Korean War? What if I'm framed for passing out religious documents. What if I live here for the rest of my god forsaken life, and I marry some dude, have his kids, and watch as they're permantly indoctrined into the North Korean personality cult?

Hey, my logic asked, can't you just cross the border into China?

That's it! China! I already had a visa to train there, so it technically wasn't illegal. I could just walk all the way up the border, camp out for a few days, and then end up in Beijing like nothing ever happened. I'd have to stay in Pyongyang for about a day to look for extra supplies, but it's still worth a shot! All I had to do now, was to find somewhere to stay for the night

I walked around, trying to scope out a place to sleep for the night or feed my pokemon, that wouldn't lead me to get caught, before my feet lead to me to a large amusement park, with bright lights and screaming people. The sign at the front read "Runga People's Pleasure Park", which was a pretty interesting name for an amusement park, I guess. Maybe there were some worker's quaters that were unoccupied, so that I could sleep a little tonight. I tried to get into the gates, but I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to make direct eye contact with a soldier, causing my blood to turn cold. He was about my age, potentially younger, with a scrawny build, tan skin, short height only reaching to my mouth, and an uniform bigger than him, his eyes peeking out of his hat with a glare.

"What are you doing?" The soldier asked firmly, and I quickly jumbled a bunch of excuses from my head, hoping to get one good one.

"I'm going to get my aunt from the amusement park, comrade." I stated, and instead of just leaving me alone to find somewhere to sleep, he simply just stared at me, eyes boring into my skull, like he could see every single scared thought.

"Are you a foreigner?" He asked, and I froze for about a minute. Calm down, calm down, calm down, calm down. Just be calm, be collected, respond coolly, and this will all be over, and maybe you'll have something nice for dinner.

"N-no…" I responded quietly, and then internally screamed at myself for stuttering. I'm doomed, doomed, doomed, doomed! I quickly darted my head around, looking for the quickest escape route. The soldier looked at me with squinted eyes, peering over every inch of me.

"You speak pretty weird for someone who lives here." He replied, and I began to shake. I thought of my parents, how devastated they would be that their only daughter accidentally landed in North Korea and was executed due to circumstance. I closed my eyes, and tried to think of some excuse.

"I uhhh…. emigrated from Macau a few years ago!" I said, forcing myself to smile. He stared at me, with a unimpressed look in his eyes. Macau was where my grandmother lived before she left to America in the 80s, after a job offer forced her to move, so I wasn't too far off.

"Come with me." The soldier said, grabbing my shoulder, and I reluctantly followed as he led me through the streets of Pyongyang, as people, men, women, families looked away from us. They knew that I was being led away to my death, and didn't want to associated themselves with me, so they wouldn't die too. They had family to feed, and couldn't be bothered with a girl who had obviously done wrong. By the time we reached the park, and he lifted his hand from my shoulder, I was violently sobbing and shaking with every breath. I watched as he removed his hat, revealing his shaved head, and I only cried more.

"Do you know about Pokemon Trainers?" He asked me, and I nodded through my tears. I was ready for him to shoot me in the face, or break my neck, but he didn't. All he did, was reach into his jacket pocket, and hand me a worn color photograph.

"Do you know this man?" He pointed to one of the two young men in the picture, which was of a pokemon battle. The man he pointed to was a younger version of my dad, battling the Miami gym, the final gym of the American League, battling the leader with his Emboar. I stared at it in awe for a while, having been confused enough to stop crying.

"How'd you get this picture?" I asked him, handing back the photograph.

"My friend's older brother got them off of the black market when we were kids." He replied, scratching his face, and I was shocked by the revelation that pictures of my dad were on the North Korean black market. "I always thought this one was the coolest out of all the ones he got, and he gave it to me before I went to the army. I don't know, I just always thought that Pokemon Trainers were cool, even though the imperialists used them against us." I raised my eyebrows at that line, but ignored it.

"He's my dad." I replied, and the soldier looked up at me in shock.

"He's your dad?" He repeated, and I nodded, sitting down. A wide grin grew on his face, and that was when I gained a little bit of confidence that I wasn't going to get shot or executed.

"This is so cool! I never thought this could happen!" He shook my shoulders excitedly, and a small smile grew on my face. "But, if you're his daughter, how'd you end up over here? Isn't he American? And you two don't look that much alike!"

I explained my predicament to the soldier, and showed him some pictures of my dad on my phone. He seemed genuinely amazed, and not faking it to lure me into a trap. I mean, it would be a pretty intricate plot to get me if he already had a picture of my dad on him, so I shrugged it off.

"So, you came to Pyongyang to try to return home by going to the embassy?" He asked me, and I nodded, putting my phone back in my bag.

"Honestly, I doubt it's going to work." I said sadly, and sighed. "I have contraband on me. I doubt they're gonna let me through, just hold me hostage or execute me. I think I'm just gonna end up like, going across the Chinese border."

"Contraband?" The soldier asked, and I pulled out a pokeball, causing his face to light up again.

"You have pokeballs?" He asked, walking over to me. "Do you have any pokemon?"

I let Nina, Varaha, and Jessica out, and grabbed the bag full of produce, placing it out on the ground for them to eat, and all three of them seemed more than eager to chow down. The soldier watched in awe as the three of them ate, and as Jessica looked up, and flew into my arms in fear, digging into my chest.

"He's fine, Jessica." I reassured her, petting her softly, and watched as Varaha walked over to the soldier and rubbed his head against his knee, wanting to be pet. "Varaha wants you to pet him."

"Oh! I, uh…" The soldier stammered, reaching his hand to pet the pig pokemon, who snorted softly in reply. I laughed at the two of them, as Nina came over to me and sat down, watching the two of them.

"You're lucky, you know?" The soldier smiled sadly, as Varaha climbed into his lap, and I stopped laughing. "Ever since I was little, I wanted my own pokemon. It just always seemed so neat, that people could work with them as partners."

"Well, I would be more than happy to let you travel with me, I mean, if you wanted to." I said, smiling slightly, and the soldier looked up. "I know from personal experience that it can get pretty lonely out there." The soldier thought to himself for a minute, frowning deeply.

"I'll go on one condition." He replied.

"Throw it at me." I said.

"'Throw it at me'?" He repeated, furrowing his brows. "Excuse me?"

"Western speak, I mean, go ahead and tell me." I corrected myself, and his face relaxed.

"We have to go to my home village and tell my parents that we're defecting, and that they need to join us, otherwise…" The soldier trailed off, looking down and covering his mouth.

"Otherwise?"

"Otherwise… they'll be executed in my place." He looked up to meet my eyes and my blood froze.

"Yeah, I'll do it." I replied quickly, nodding profusely.

"Alright. Are you leaving tonight?" He asked, and I shook my head profusely.

"No way. I walked all the way here from Nampo, and walking to China will take several days at best. I need one day's rest, and then we can set out." I said, cautious of his reaction, anticipating him to beg me to set out tonight. Instead, his body lifted up slightly, as if a large weight was off of his shoulders, and smiled.

"Good idea. I get paid tomorrow, so we can spend it on food for the journey." He said, and I retrieved my pokemon, put them in my bag, and slung it on my shoulders.

"Well, let's meet here tomorrow at the same time, and set out then." I said, and began to walk out of the park, before the soldier stopped me.

"Wait, where are you gonna sleep?" The soldier asked, with concern painted on his face, and I turned to him and shrugged.

"No, no, no. You are not going to just go out into the cold, and find somewhere to sleep." He said, walking towards me. "You'll just walk around, maybe lay out on the street and freeze to death! Besides, I know somewhere you can sleep."

"You could've told me that first instead of nagging me." I snorted, crossing my arms. "Well then, show me where I can sleep."

He again walked me through the streets of Pyongyang, this time not by holding my hand and threatening me ominously, and the streets had no one on them. Pyongyang seemed to have turned off all of their lights, leaving all of the city in inky black darkness. Slowly, snow started falling from the sky in little flutters, and I watched as they danced to the ground. It was kind of nice, actually, walking amongst the glittering snow.

"Hey." I said, and the soldier looked over his shoulder at me.

"What?" He replied.

"What's your name?"

"Lee Joon-Ho." He said, looking forward briefly, before looking back again. "You?"

"Marie Jones."

"Marie." He said slowly, trying it out. "Huh. Interesting name."

"Thanks." I said, huddling into my jacket. Joon-Ho was right, it was seriously cold out tonight, and I probably wouldn't have made it very long without collapsing in an alleyway and dying of frostbite.

We arrived at the building Joon-Ho was leading me to, and he turned to me again, looking me dead in the eyes, very very serious.

"Listen, Marie." Joon-Ho said, placing both hands on my shoulders, causing me to sweat nervously. "Do not make a sound inside here, okay? Any sound at all could get us caught."

I nodded, and the two of us walked inside softly. The blast of heat was a relief from the unflinching cold, but I didn't show it. The room we were in was near impossible to decipher because of the lack of lights. All I could make out was a long, wide hallway in the front, and a shorter, thinner hallway close to my right. I could assume this could be some sort of army barracks, and even then it would be hard to hide in the rooms with the soldiers, because of how many soldiers lived in one space, but I assumed that Joon-Ho had a better idea than I do, probably because he lives here. We tiptoed across the concrete floor of the thinner hallway, until we ended up in front of the stairs, climbing onto the the stairs, with Joon-Ho holding me to make sure I didn't violently fall on my face, and onto the second floor, which proved to be a more dangerous beast to tame, with the flooring being wood instead of concrete, before he led me to the first door on the right side.

"Do not leave this room at any point until I tell you it's good to go. I'll bring you food for you and your pokemon, so don't worry, alright? I'll knock three times to tell you that I'm the one at the door." Joon-Ho whispered, waited until I nodded, and then began to slowly walk away, towards the stairs.

"Good night, Joon-Ho." I whispered, causing him to stop. He turned to me, appeared to smile, and replied:

"Good night Marie." And with that, he tiptoed down the stairs.

I slowly opened the door of the room, walked into the room itself, which was also on wood, and carefully shut the door behind me and locked it. The room was also almost impossible to decipher in the darkness, only the mattress on the floor was visible. I lightly set my bag down, and practically crawled into the bed. I threw the thick comforter with no cover on it over me, and fell straight into a dreamless sleep.

notes

-the reason why people were offended by marie at nampo was because marie used the wrong honorifics with the older man at the stall. she said 동지 (implying high status) instead of 동무 (implying equal or low status) to a obviously lower status man causing the people around her to notice that either she was not a natural korean speaker or that she had no knowledge of honorifics and was raised in a barn. korean is hard lol

- in the same vein, the reason why joon-ho is so quick to notice that marie's a foreigner isn't because of her foreign accent. marie was taught to speak south korean korean, which is a lot more modern and different sounding than north korean korean, because of the fact that both countries have been seperate for over 50 years.

this chapter mutated from its original course as i wrote, which turned out to be ok, because this seems to be a bit more plausable than what it was, and wouldnt involve filler of a character that would appear once, and never again, which isn't the best idea for characters.

but anyway one of the companions has been revealed! woo. there's still a few more characters to be revealed, and all have very interesting personalities... ooh

and before someone messages me about protraying a single member of the north korean military, which is like, 1 million people on any given day as sympathetic, please note that north korea has a conscription age of fucking 17, and they stay in the military for ten whole years. they have literally no choice to go into the military or not, and just last year a soldier about joon-ho's age defected by walking across the dmz (btw props to him that shit's fortified by mines), so its perfectly natural that he's ok with defecting so dont come for me for protraying one individual as a human.

thanks to:

vice's guide to north korea, which is a real great video series and almost got everyone involved imprisoned so watch it

every single defector story i've read and watched who have provided insight into my world building

elliot from earth nutshell's pictures, which are incredible,

and the people on youtube posting north korean media news reports, and music, even though some of those accounts are definitely pro-north korea

marie's team

varaha, tepig M - nina, nidorina F - jessica, clefairy F

joon-ho's team

n/a

anyway please review and fav. this keeps me going. also the new pokemon look neat. i really like oranguru and now im kicking myself for preordering sun instead of moon. at least i get techno lion...

au revoir