The sun rises on a brisk morning. Ha-neul awakens first, realizing she had pulled out a blanket at some point in the night. They still have their backpacks, so she pulls out a piece of bread. Hye-jin is sleeping, so Ha-neul wraps the rest of the blanket around Hye-jin before looking around the bog as she munches on the bread. They're both still hiding in the patch of grass on a small islet surrounded on three sides by water. The water looks quite beautiful as it shimmers in the morning sun.

Ha-neul starts to remember the events of last night, and is sure her parents were killed. She starts to formulate a plan, and figures they must be in China already since they crossed the Yalu river. It might be safer to wait a little bit and listen for movement before heading west. She looks for the morning sun and gets her bearings. With the sun to her left, she estimates south must be roughly in the direction across from the bog. She resolves to find the Yalu river and follow it to the west, and make for the coast.

The terrain surrounding the bog is quite mountainous. She figures they will not survive long on their own out in the mountains, so their best bet is to stay close to the river and hopefully find a port somewhere. From there, she remembered overhearing Secretary Hwang talk about how there are plenty of fishermen that were part of the brokering network in China smuggling defectors across to South Korea.

He explained that if you didn't use the fishermen, then if you were lucky enough to find a genuine international refugee organization, they could fly you to Thailand to seek asylum there. Otherwise, the unlucky ones might find themselves in the hands of human traffickers posing as international aid workers and sold into slavery, or worse.

Ha-neul decides the fishermen are the safest option. She figures she can use her knowledge of a few names of people in the brokering network to find someone willing to take them across. The real problem would be the money.

Just then Hye-jin stirs from her sleep and emerges from underneath the blanket. She stretches out her arms and yawns, before returning to reality and realizing the desperation of their situation. She suddenly starts to tear up. Ha-neul hands her a piece of bread. Hye-jin munches on it, the tears gathering above her cheeks stuffed with food. They eat together silently for a few minutes, each one reflecting on what just happened.

When they finally finish, Ha-neul speaks up, "Let's go."

"Where are we going?" Hye-jin asks.

"We'll make for the river, and follow it west to the coast," Ha-neul answers.

"Huh?" Hye-jin says, surprised. "What about mom and dad?"

"Didn't you hear the gunshots?" Ha-neul replies. They pause and look into each others' brown eyes for a brief moment, Ha-neul's resembling her father's eyes, Hye-jin's her mother's.

Just then Hye-jin hangs her head and starts to breathe in deep, staccato breaths, before weeping uncontrollably.

"It's going to be alright," Ha-neul adds, as she reaches over to hug her, but Hye-jin parries her arms and rejects it.

"They would want us to move on," Ha-neul says reassuringly.

"They're not dead," Hye-jin replies.

"Hye-jina," Ha-neul says, exasperated.

"I'm not going until we look for them," Hye-jin says in a stubborn, childish tantrum.

"Hye-jina," Ha-neul says with a sigh. They each are sitting on their knees amidst the grass, Hye-jin rubbing her eyes as she cries, Ha-neul biting her lip and watching her helplessly as they wait each other out in hopeless stalemate.

"Okay, we'll look first," Ha-neul finally concedes.

They pack up the blanket into their backpack before they back out of the patch of grass on the side attached to dry land. Ha-neul takes a quick inventory: they have a couple more pieces of bread, two small tumblers of water, two blankets, and an envelope of pictures. They work their way out of the bog, Hye-jin in the lead. In her youthful optimism, Hye-jin seems to snake around in all directions, hoping to see any sign of their parents, as if their mother and father were behind every boulder and behind each patch of grass. Ha-neul is concerned, since as the sun climbs closer to the top of the sky, she steadily loses her sense of direction. All the surrounding hills look the same, and she quickly concludes they will get lost if they don't find the river soon.

"Hye-jina, walk straight and find the slope downward," Ha-neul calls after her. "If we keep walking downhill, we'll reach the river."

As if just to disobey, Hye-jin takes a sharp turn to the right.

"Hye-jina!" Ha-neul calls out in anger as she follows her sister through the endless patch of grass.

They walk on for fifteen minutes, then take a break sitting on a rock to eat some bread. Ha-neul makes sure to ration their food as she is unsure how long it will take for them to find their parents. They then resume their walk, unsure of where to go. They repeat this multiple times as the sun starts to finally creep downward towards the horizon. They seem to be walking in circles, searching first all the areas around the bog, before working their way down the slope closer towards the river. Ha-neul sees how quickly they are going through their limited supplies and knows this has to stop. Just then, she sees Hye-jin kneel down off in the distance. Ha-neul quickly approaches and sees their parents' backpacks piled next to a rock, their contents spilled out on the ground. There is a bullet hole in one of the packs. It's easy to spot, since the hole is soaked with blood.

"No, no," Hye-jin whispers to herself pitifully as she starts to cry once more.

Ha-neul walks behind her but realizes she should leave Hye-jin alone at this moment. Instead, Ha-neul stares down at the most cherished possessions of their parents' - a grade school valedictorian medal for Ha-neul, a picture of their father holding up Hye-jin as a baby in the palm of his hand with one arm, a bible, two rosaries, a bottle of soju, and a family photo. Ha-neul kneels down and stuffs most of it into her backpack before rising up and placing one of the rosaries around Hye-jin's neck, then putting on the other rosary herself. "Let's move on," Ha-neul says to Hye-jin.

"Why did you have to see that man?" Hye-jin asks pointedly, still holding her tearful eyes.

"What?" Ha-neul asks, annoyed.

"We had to leave all of a sudden because you saw that man!" Hye-jin yells back at her.

"You don't know a single thing," Ha-neul replies sternly. "Don't talk about what you don't know!"

"Now they're gone because of you!" Hye-jin yells.

Taken aback, Ha-neul grits her teeth before finally responding, "Yes, they're dead because of me!" she yells. "Because I got raped you brat! Do you even know what that means? Huh? Do you know what that means?"

Hye-jin turns and looks at her sister, shocked by her yelling.

Ha-neul continues, nodding her head, "What do you know? Yes, they're dead because of me. Maybe I should die too, maybe you're better off without me!"

Ha-neul starts to cry herself. She hadn't cried at all up to this point. Perhaps it was a survival mechanism, for up to now she didn't really feel anything, neither pain nor sadness, and could only think about how to get her sister out of this situation. But after seeing the relics of their idyllic past littered amongst the rocks and dust, deep, dark clouds of sadness had finally caught up to her.

Ha-neul hangs her head as she cries. Just then, little Hye-jin stands up and hugs Ha-neul's waist, and they cry together, the one resting on the support of the other.

"Let's go, Hye-jina," Ha-neul whispers. "There's nothing left for us here."

The two of them silently move down the hill. After some time they finally spot the river. It's starting to get dark. They make a turn towards the west, in the direction of the setting sun, and walk on until they find a clump of trees nearby. They decide to spend the night there, under a tree with their blankets.

The next day they rise early to another small breakfast of bread and water. Ha-neul is annoyed, as they spent the day before searching and eating up most of their supplies. They journey onward, following the rolling hills parallel to the river, searching for the sea. Just then they see a group of people also walking parallel to the river but further down the hill. It is about five or so men with as many women, the men walking at the front and at the back of the group. The men are dressed in regular clothing. They don't look like soldiers, but are holding guns. The men immediately spot them. Ha-neul tells Hye-jin to run.

They make their way up to a higher elevation away from the river towards the hills. They turn to see two men chasing after them, quite a distance away below them. The kids make their way up high enough to reach a forest and immediately enter to avoid detection, running deeper and deeper before finally finding a good hiding spot behind a very large tree. The forest is oddly silent, as they can hear the two men enter in after them. The men seem to be speaking a foreign language in an exasperated tone, perhaps Chinese. It takes a few minutes before their voices fade away.

The girls instinctively know not to trust anyone out here in the wilderness. They look at each other relieved, with each of their rosaries dangling over their blouses. Ha-neul tucks hers back into her blouse before doing the same for Hye-jin. She then resolves to follow where they last heard the men's voices to leave where they entered. It takes fifteen minutes before they finally leave the forest again, but exit in unfamiliar terrain.

"Didn't we enter here?" Ha-neul asks in confusion.

Hye-jin shrugs her shoulders. They look up at the sky - the sun is directly above them. They decide to follow a path downhill, and hope to find the river. They walk on for most of the afternoon down rocky slopes, but instead of finding a river at the bottom, they find themselves in a rocky valley. With night soon approaching, they huddle together next to a boulder and have their dinner - their last morsels of bread and final sips of water. The weather is already starting to get cold, as summer is quickly passing. With their supplies gone, and their direction lost, their situation had suddenly become dire. Ha-neul knows they can only last another couple days before they have to find provisions. They fall asleep that night uncertain of what to do.

The next day, they wake up to no breakfast. Instead of turning back towards the forest and backtracking through rough terrain devoid of any resources, Ha-neul decides to guestimate a heading directly south based on the position of the sun, hoping to find the river again. And so they trek onward out of the valley, to the crest of a hill just to find more hills in all directions. Undeterred, Ha-neul plots a course due south and follows it unswervingly all that morning. They walk on and on all afternoon, with hill after hill revealing no sign of the river until night finally approaches.

Tired and hungry, with no food or water, no berries or streams or anything in this endless expanse of barren hills, they huddle together next to a rock, not even bothering to take out their blankets. Hopelessly lost, they know it's pointless to go on any further, and so they resign themselves to their fate. Hye-jin quickly falls asleep, malnourished and completely exhausted. Ha-neul, unable to sleep on the last night of her life, takes out their family photo and studies it intently, her father and mother sitting together on a row of chairs in front with Hye-jin in the middle, herself standing behind them. How ironic, she thought to herself - to live a life full of love and joy in possibly the most oppressive regime in the world, only to die in the wilderness, full of darkness, hunger, confusion, despair, but in complete freedom.

Closer to midnight, Ha-neul notices some lights moving behind a hill. She can hear voices of some men, along with the clanging of metal, and notices they are speaking Korean. Not even hesitating, she stuffs the family photo into her pocket and wakes up Hye-jin. They immediately make for the lights. After a couple minutes they come across a group of people walking in the darkness, with two men in the lead holding flashlights and conversing.

"Wait! Help us!" Ha-neul pleads as they stop them from moving further. There are about eight others aside from the two men in front. "Help us!"

"Korean?" one of the men asks as he flashes the light in Ha-neul's face. Ha-neul nods, as the man assesses her with a blank expression.

"Mm, good," the man adds, as he hands Ha-neul a granola bar.