But they told him at the hospital that they always had to report patients like his mother to the police.
This is a very poor situation - if you are not lucky to be dragged into the addiction once, you are never going to get out of it, because no one is going to help. A drug addict officially becoming marginalized, without a chance to recover
Child, have pity on your poor mother. You have to save me. Just get me one shot. If you don’t, your mother’s going to die!”
This is the typical behavior of an addicted person - first, aggressive attacking, after - chaotically changing the tactic to begging, going back and forth. She's severely traumatized and a very little is left from her original personality.
One of the guests at the inn had lost his wallet. Still, Tori shook his head: no, it couldn’t be so.
Tori slowly realizes that his mother stole a wallet from that customer and tried to buy the opium with it.
He had heard some time ago that the older boy’s father had suffered a stroke and was an invalid. The image of the boy’s father appeared before his eyes, even though he had never actually met him. What he saw was the image of his own father before his death.
The character of Tori stays mostly blurred all the way through, we only know that he still misses his mother and doesn't give up on waiting for her, even though I suppose he is not a small child anymore. But this the first passage that actually tells us that Tori has an empathetic and kind personality.
When they were through, Tori’s new father handed her a bundle of money.
I wonder how the pockmarked lady and Tori's new parents are connected
Just then, two or three cranes, their huge wings spread, went soaring through the clear autumn sky.
I enjoyed the parallels between the feelings/aspirations of the lyric heroes and the nature. It nicely reflects the relationship between the memories of the old friends and what they are dealing with in the present moment.
“You son of a ! How many people have you killed so far?”
I wonder if this comment has a sarcastic tone to it, since Songsam is mad at Tokchae for not being able to quit the farm and go to war; I believe this comment can be explained by a frustration of Songsam with his unfair destiny, where he had to kill a lot of people, whilst Tokchae tried to avoid that.