Hair of a Maiden

In the mornings, Unni sat by the window to braid Seunghee’s hair.

Dawn spilled through the translucent paper shutters, soaking the room in a pale gold dust that trembled through the air. Unni braided her own hair first, before tugging at Seunghee’s ankles that poked out from underneath their shared sheets. Dragging Seunghee to the mirror where she slumped half-asleep, Unni combed through her dark tangles, her touch both efficient and gentle. As the wooden teeth of the comb scratched her scalp, Seunghee squirmed.

“Hold still,” Unni chided. “You’re old enough now. No more two braids — just one.”

Separating Seunghee’s thick, unruly hair into three stands, Unni’s fingers were deft and sure as she twisted and crossed the braid tight, until it fell between Seunghee’s shoulder blades like a slim rope. When Unni tied the daenggi around the end, she smoothed the red silk once, then twice, as though sealing a promise.

Unni’s own braid was perfect, her dark strands glistening like wet ink underneath the light. Her glossy black hair parted to reveal skin like moonlight and eyes that curved into crescents when she smiled. She would be seventeen next spring, and the neighbors called her the type of girl to cause fish to sink and geese to fall.

Seunghee didn't really understand what that meant, only that when Unni walked through the marketplace, heads followed like reeds chasing the wind.

After school, Seunghee often walked past the teashop where Unni worked. The shop sat by the port, where the smell of brine salted the faint sweetness of roasted barley and steamed rice cakes. Its paper screens had yellowed from years of steam and light, the edges curling like dried petals. Inside, the air shimmered faintly with heat, and the wooden walls were stained the color of steeped tea.

If the shop wasn’t too busy, Unni would slip out from behind the counter and walk Seunghee home, hand in hand. But those days had grown rare. The teashop now brimmed with shy peeks and glances, as starry-eyed schoolboys took turns ordering green tea and sticky rice cakes from the pretty waitress with the long braid. Sajangnim, the owner of the tea shop, adored her. She said Unni was good for business.

On most days, Seunghee would sit at the left corner by the door. Spreading her notebooks across a wooden stool, she practiced hiragana, tracing the strange characters into careful rows. Seunghee didn’t mind waiting. She liked to watch her sister at work, her figure tall and graceful as she poured tea with a fluid flick of the wrists.

The officer came to the teashop when the cherry blossoms had just begun to fall. Petals blanketed the ground in the purest white, not yet trampled into the muddy grey pulps that dirtied the gutters.

Seunghee knew he was different from the moment he walked in. His uniform was a deep indigo, finer than the dull khakis that marked the local constables. A silver emblem gleamed on his left sleeve, and squinting deeply, Seunghee could just make out the characters reading Keijō Ken heitai. The Gyeongseong Gendarmerie.

The officer was young, no older than thirty, and with his tall nose and sharp jaw, he might have been handsome, if not for the unnatural, almost cruel twist of his mouth.

He chose a seat by the window, balancing a porcelain cup between his gloved fingers, and an unlit cigar in his other hand. When Unni approached the table, he looked at her as if he had never seen a girl pour tea before.

Unni did not notice his stare at first. She bowed, her gaze trained to the filling cup, and when she looked up, just for a heartbeat, their eyes met.

“Arigatō,” he said, his voice unexpectedly gentle.

Unni nodded, her eyes wide. The officer paused, before adding, “My name is Lieutenant Sato.”

Unni blinked, pinching her lips into a polite smile. “Welcome, Lieutenant. Would you like more tea?”

He nodded. “It’s very good. What is your name?”

Seunghee stopped writing, anticipating Unni’s answer. The answer every Korean had been taught to give since the new edict: Japanese names for Japanese tongues.

Still, Unni said quietly, “Suhwa.”

The sound rang foreign in the room, a sound reserved only for the privacy of home.

Seunghee glanced up from her notebook with a quick breath. For a moment, Unni looked surprised too, as if she hadn’t meant to say it. “Suhwa,” The officer repeated, rolling over each syllable.

“A beautiful name.” He remarked.

When Unni bowed again, her braid slipped over her shoulder, catching the light like black silk. The officer’s gaze followed the movement, slow and intent.

Outside, a single blossom drifted through the open door, landing beside his boot. He glanced at it but did not move. Instead, he lifted the cup to his lips, eyes now fixed on her. “Thank you,” he said, his tone too polite, too smooth.

For a long moment, the shop turned silent. Only the faint tap of rain started against the paper screens. Seunghee suddenly wanted to leave, like a sparrow that startles at thunder it cannot yet hear.

That night, when Unni came home, her fingers smelled faintly of roasted barley and rain-soaked blossoms.

On Unni’s seventeenth birthday, Appa came home from the market cradling a parcel wrapped in butcher’s paper —- a thick cut of beef brisket, marbled with white streaks of fat. Seunghee hadn’t tasted meat for almost a year now, and Umma spent the afternoon tending the pot, skimming and stirring until the broth turned dark and rich.

When the stew was set on the table, steam rose in clouds that smelled of soy, garlic, and slow-boiled marrow. Seunghee’s mouth watered, her stomach curling in a pleasant ache, and she watched as Unni’s cheeks glowed as she laughed at one of Appa’s clumsy jokes. Even Umma, for once, didn’t scold anyone for talking with their mouths full.

Reaching across the table to plate the fattiest pieces of beef onto Unni’s bowl, Appa announced casually, “Suhwa, tomorrow you will quit the teashop,”

The room went still.

Unni ’s chopsticks paused mid-air. “Why?”

“You know why.” His voice cracked, though his gaze stayed firm. “We’ve survived by being invisible. You will not bring attention to this house.”

Unni’s smile faltered. “Don’t listen to rumors, Appa.”

Umma’s voice shook. “The cabbage seller told me a Japanese officer comes every day. She said he sits only at your table. Is it true?”

Unni didn’t answer. She set her bowl down carefully, the chopsticks resting across its rim. “If I stop working, how will we eat? Where will we live?”

“Answer Umma’s question. Is it true?” 

“He sits there,” she said at last. “But that’s all he does. He’s polite. He pays well.”

Appa’s jaw tensed. “Men like that don’t pay for just tea.”

Unni’s lips parted, but she didn’t argue. Her voice came out quiet. “We’ll go hungry, Appa. Truly, I can take care of myself. You don’t have to worry so much. It makes me happy to see the family full, to have a sturdy roof.”

“We won’t go hungry,” Umma hesitated, “if Seunghee stops school and starts working.”

The room turned quiet, and Seunghee’s mouth went dry, any conversation she could have added shrivelling in her throat.

Umma rushed to fill the silence, a tense smile forcing up the corners of her mouth. “This may even be a good thing. It would be nice to spend more time with Seunghee at home. She could start mending clothes with me, or maybe she could even work with you in the tea shop. She’s always there, anyways.”

Unni wrapped a protective hand around Seunghee, and for the first time, Seunghee realised that her sister’s fingers were shaking. “Appa, Umma. When you asked me to drop out of school, I obeyed. I started working. I never complained. For the first time, please, let me do what I want.” 

“I will not have someone from my household disgraced,” Appa snapped.

“I’m sick of all this shame, all this hiding,” Unni inhaled sharply, her shoulders rising and falling, as though swallowing words she had carried for years. “You want to pretend we don’t exist so no one will touch us. But hiding doesn’t make us invisible, Appa. It just keeps us small.” 

Umma looked away. “Better to be hungry than shamed,” she whispered.

The stew still steamed between them, fragrant and barely touched. No one moved.

Then Unni rose from the table. The gleaming broth and pearly white rice remained before her, a small luxury gone cold. Without a word, she stepped into the room she shared with Seunghee, and the paper door slid shut behind her with a sound softer than a murmur, yet sharper than any cry.

The summer before Unni left school to work at the teashop, she and Seunghee would sneak out to play by the remains of the old palace. The city’s surveyors never bothered to demolish the former queen’s garden walls, trusting that the moldering walls would succumb to wind and rain on their own. 

The air was heavy with the hum of cicadas, and sweat clung to their necks as they climbed the ancient walls, racing to the top. With her short, childish limbs, Seunghee was at a disadvantage, but at the last second, Unni’s grip fumbled, allowing Seunghee to grab onto the top of the wall first. She knew that Unni had slowed down on purpose, but Seunghee relished her victory nonetheless.

“The world looks so small from up here,” she exclaimed, breathless as she swung her small feet.

Unni beamed, amused by Seunghee’s amazement, and replied, “Be careful, don’t fall.”

Seunghee grinned, defiant. “I won’t!” She kicked her legs back and forth, loose and wild.

“Seunghee, don’t,” Unni said again, her tone shifting to warning. “People have died on this wall.”

“What do you mean?”

Unni’s eyes drifted toward the horizon. “During the early invasions, noble families sent their daughters into hiding. Some of them… didn’t survive hiding. They say that the good maidens, the unlucky ones, climbed this wall to hang themselves rather than be taken.”

Seunghee frowned. “Why would they do that?”

Unni was quiet for a moment. “Some say death is better than disgrace.”

The wind caught the ivy, and the leaves shivered.

“Would you have done it?” Seunghee asked.

Unni smiled faintly, her eyes still reaching out to some far away place, “I don’t know. I’d like to think I’d be brave enough to live on.”

Then, with a small laugh, she leapt down from the wall and opened her arms. “Come on, jump. I’ll catch you.”

Seunghee hesitated for a second, before launching herself off the wall, weightless for just a second, before landing into Unni’s safe, warm embrace. 

Unni chuckled. “See? You always think you’ll fall, but you never do.”

Weeks passed. Seunghee was no longer allowed to visit Unni at the teashop, and Unni returned home a little later each night.

One evening, long after curfew, the door slid open with a soft scrape. The house was dark except for the thin blue light of the moon slipping through the shutters.

Unni stood in the doorway.

Her braid was gone. Her hair, neatly tied only this morning, hung tangled and loose over her shoulders. It looked as though someone had unpinned it in haste, a disarray that Seunghee had never seen on her sister before. Unni didn’t move for a long while, only standing there with her hands clasped tightly before her, as if holding herself together.

Seunghee stirred in her bedding. “Unni?”

Unni turned toward her. Her voice was gentle. “Go back to sleep.”

“Are you okay?”

Unni smiled. An uneven, fragile curve, as if her lips had forgotten how. “I’m fine. I just needed some air.”

She crossed the room and sat beside Seunghee, smoothing the blanket over her shoulders, her hands betraying a slight quiver.

“Go to school, Seunghee,” she murmured. “Don’t work in a teashop. Learn to read and become a teacher, or a poet.”

“Unni?”

But Unni didn’t reply. Her eyes had drifted toward the window, where the moonlight touched the edge of her hair.

Unni laid down and wrapped her arms around her. Seunghee rested her head in the crook of Unni’s neck, just as she had a thousand times before. Under the familiar scent of barley and sweet rice cakes, Seunghee swore she could smell the faint but unmistakably bitter trace of tobacco.

Three days had passed since Unni had last come home.

After school, Seunghee waited outside the teashop, watching for the hint of Unni’s shadow or the flash of her ribbon among the crowd, but the doorway remained empty. Unni had disappeared from work, and with her, so did the gaggle of boys and the young officer. 

The shop was so quiet that for the first time, Seunghee could hear the waves striking the port beyond the wall. Sajangnim lamented over the loss of customers, and when the sun began to slip behind the shoreline, she placed a gentle hand on Seunghee’s shoulder.
“Go home, child,” she instructed, “Your sister will come when she can.”

But when Seunghee reached home, the house was too still. Without the sound of her sister’s voice or the communal clatter of the kitchen, it felt empty.

As Seunghee prepared dinner alone, the meager grains in each bowl seemed to mirror the vacancy of the house, each small scoop a rationed act of survival.

Suddenly, two sharp knocks echoed from the doorway, startling the silence. Appa, Umma and Seunghee all perked up eagerly, flickers of hope and dread rising between them. Could it be someone with news of Unni? A neighbor? Or worse? Seunghee ran to the door, flinging it open, her parents a few paces behind her.

Two men in brown coats stood right outside the door, their shadows looming across the floor. Seunghee stumbled back into Umma. Preoccupied with adjusting his glasses, the officer didn’t seem to notice. Clearing his throat, he began to read from a paper clipped neatly to his ledger.

“A notice has been received by the keisatsusho regarding an unusual death near the palace walls. Please confirm if this report concerns your household.”

Umma gasped, crumpling to her knees. “Is this about my daughter? What—what are you saying? Where is she?”

The officer’s mouth thinned. “Already handled. Cremated.”

Appa stepped forward, his voice shaking. “Please, this cannot be!”

The officer looked past him, already turning away. “The remains have been disposed of according to public health code.”

He bowed again, mechanically. “A small mimaikin, from the officer himself,” he maintained. “He held your daughter in very high esteem. Please accept it as proof of his regard, and of the government’s concern.”

Umma’s hand clutched at the officer, but he stepped back, his brow furrowed in annoyance as he shook her off without a word. The two men marched out. The heavy sound of their boots echoed down the street, even after they shut the door, leaving Umma’s ragged whimpering and a crumpled Appa with his knees on the floor.

For a long time, no one moved. Seunghee couldn’t even summon tears. The envelope sat right by her feet, pale against the dark wood.

When Appa finally ripped it open, several crisp banknotes slid out, folded between two sheets of paper. He stared blankly at the typewritten characters, unable to read the Japanese, and passed the letter to Seunghee.

She read it aloud, each word slicing the inside of her throat, as if she was swallowing broken glass.

Official Notice of Incident — Keijo Police Bureau

Date: 12 April, Showa 16 (1941)
To: Head of Household, Kimura Takeo
Subject: Report of Unusual Death
A female body, provisionally identified as Kimura Masako, was discovered at the northern perimeter of the former palace grounds. Cause of death: self-inflicted asphyxiation. No evidence of disturbance or external involvement.
A sum of five yen has been issued as condolence for the household’s loss. Acceptance will be regarded as acknowledgment of closure.
No public rites permitted.

Respectfully,
Inspector Yamamoto
Keisatsusho, Gyeongseong Prefecture

Later that night, Appa burned the letter and the money over the kitchen stove. The three of them watched as the embers consumed the paper, the red seal curling and blackening until only flakes remained. Seunghee could still make out fragments of the text as it crumbled: Kimura Masako.

That wasn’t even Unni’s real name, but some foreign, Japanese label that a nurse had stamped onto her birth certificate years ago. The language Seunghee had studied so diligently had deceived her, turning Unni into a stranger even in death.

Closing her eyes, Seunghee sat motionless. She tried to picture the clean line of Unni’s braid, her red ribbon catching the morning light, but the image curled into smoke. She moved to the window where her sister once braided her hair, where the comb still rested on the sill. She picked up the daenggi, the same one Unni had wound around her hair just weeks ago. The ribbon was frayed now, the silk speckled with dust.

She raked her fingers through her scalp, letting her hair fall free, and began the braid again, slowly, clumsily, pulling until each plait held firm. Then she undid it and started over. Again. And again. And again.

That night, Seunghee learned to braid her own hair so tightly that nothing, not grief, not shame, not love, could ever come undone.