*Please be gentle with me, it’s my first time writing. :)*
She waited until the sun was well below the horizon before she crept out of her hiding place in the ruins of her house towards the firelight reflected from the shattered walls of the building nearby. Fear held her back; hunger and thirst drove her forward. She’d been almost four days without food, and one without water. Though she might be dead if she went ahead, she was certainly dead if she stayed where she was.
She crept silently up to the building and peered through a crack in the mostly-intact wall, taking in the soldiers that sat around their fire, eating food – real food! – that threatened to give her away as her stomach cramped at the sight – and the smells, oh the smells! – of thin strips of meat roasting on metal skewers. Vegetables simmered in a makeshift pot that looked as though it started out as an American helmet and kimchi – real kimchi, her stomach cramped again at the smell of it – sat in a jar beside one man.
Jeong-ja had smelled enough. She would take her chances with those men of the Korean People’s Army.