The door suddenly smashed open and I could feel both myself and Colonel Wan jumping from the shock.
“General Roh,” Colonel Wan almost shrieked. “I… w-what do I owe this honor?”
CHAPTER 19
“Colonel,” the Demon of Yodok greeted him composedly. “I heard you arrested another pretender.”
“Y-yes, Sir… it’s… one of the new ones… one of those arrogant snobs from the Capital,” Colonel Wan stuttered.
“Well done, Colonel,” General Roh said. “Now, would you be so kind to remove the bag?”
Colonel Wan hesitated a moment but did as he was told without arguing. Everything went painfully bright and I had to squint.
“Good evening, Miss Kim” General Roh greeted me.
“Good evening, Sir,” I sobbed.
“I see you finally got your hands on her after all,” General Roh chuckled and patted the shoulder of his subordinate.
“I caught her putting pepper in her eyes during the mourning ceremony, Sir,” Colonel Wan’s tone had changed entirely.
“I see… I see,” General Roh said. “And she did this out in the open, for everybody to see?”
“Well… she tried to hide it, but I knew… I tasted her fingers, they were still full of pepper.”
“I see,” General Roh said again. “But you know, Colonel, girls can have pepper on their fingers for many different reasons… I presume you’re the one who cooks at home, am I right?” he turned to me.
“Y-yes, Sir… I… I cook…”
“And do you use pepper when you’re cooking?”
“Yes, Sir… I mean… we don’t have much left, but we put a little in every day… just to make it taste more. My family doesn’t know, but I bring a little to put in my lunch soup as well.”
General Roh laughed.
“Well, I can’t blame you… plain cabbage and that repulsive corn sludge every day become tiresome after a while. Wouldn’t you agree, Colonel?”
My eyes had now acclimatized to the light and my eyes went back and forth between the two men in front of me. They had a tense and unceasing eye contact, but Colonel Wan’s eyes were blinking rapidly and his face looked like it was about to explode.
“General,” Colonel Wan cleared his throat. “With all due respect… why exactly—”
“Well, Colonel… the fact of the matter is that… Miss Kim here and I have… an arrangement of sorts,” General Roh put his large fatherly hand on my shoulder. “You could say she works for me… and… as I’ve gotten to know her during these past weeks… well, I just find it hard to believe this girl would be anything less than genuine in her feelings towards our sadly departed Father - the Great General. And now that we’ve learned she’s responsible for cooking in their household… and she even sneaks some pepper for her lunch… well, I think that clarifies why she would have pepper residue on her fingers.”
“But General—”
“I believe this matter is settled,” General Roh cut him off firmly, “and there is no need to hold Miss Kim any longer… wouldn’t you agree, Colonel?”
“Yes, Sir… of course, Sir,” Colonel Wan’s inability to mask the fury and resentment in his voice was more than obvious even in my hazed state.
“Great,” General Roh smiled. “Then it’s all settled. Miss Kim, I will walk you out.”
He suddenly noticed the nail still inserted under my fingernail. He strolled over to me, and without any warning, pulled it right out. The pain I experience now was almost equal to when it was inserted in the first place, and again, I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“There, there,” General Roh patted my back. “It’s all over now. Colonel… please remove her restraints.”
As soon as my wrists and ankles were free, I jumped up from the chair on unsteady legs and hid behind my unexpected savior. I held my throbbing and bleeding finger tightly pressed against my chest. Colonel Wan shot fire from his eyes at both of us.
“Colonel Wan, I’m certain you have other offenders to attend to… so please don’t let us keep you from your duties.”
General Roh took me under my arm and led me out from the cell and down the dark corridor toward the stairs I was dragged down just a few hours earlier.
Or has it been days? How long time has passed?
As we walked, my mind stopped blocking out the sounds from the other cells, and I was once more immersed in a symphony of agonizing screams. I was immensely relieved and grateful to have been set free, but deep down, I feared this wouldn’t be my last visit to this horrendous place. The entire time until we reached the stairs at the end of the long corridor, I felt Colonel Wan’s burning stare on the back of my neck.
“I see you have cut your hair,” General Roh said in a low voice. “I’m glad you are making an effort to blend in… it will help you stay safe.”
I didn’t answer. Safe was the opposite of what I was feeling, and the screams around me made my head throb almost as hard as my finger. Once we were outside in the fresh night air with a million stars glistening down at us, General Roh turned to me as the horrid screams from below were silenced by the heavy entrance door closing behind us.
“So, Miss Kim, I would advise you to be careful from now on… it seems the good Colonel has it out for you,” he smirked.
“T-thank you, Sir,” I whimpered in a broken voice. “I d-don’t know how to express my gratitude.”
A cold breeze swept over my face. It felt good on my swollen eyes, so I closed them just for a moment.
“Don’t mention it… and that arrangement I told Colonel Wan about,” General Roh cleared his throat. “Let’s say it starts from tomorrow.”
This made me open my eyes so quickly a stab of pain made my head jolt backward. I look at him, completely dumbstruck.
“W-wha—?”
“As you probably know,” he continued as if he hadn’t noticed my reaction, “we are grossly understaffed here, and there are a lot of prisoner transgressions that go unpunished. Therefore we rely on the astute eyes and ears of those of the Strayed who are the most committed to redeeming their crimes. Those people are extremely important for this camp to function properly.” He looked down at me with his silvery ghost eye. “From now on, Miss Kim, you will be one of those important people. I trust you to find out about all the transgressions around you and immediately report them to Private Gang, who will be your officer in charge. I’m counting on you, Miss Kim.”
“Yes, Sir,” I blurted out, even though I in my fragmented and exhausted state wasn’t sure exactly what I was agreeing to. And it didn’t matter… whatever it was, saying no was not an option. I didn’t even have enough strength to protest against having to deal with Chul.
“Very well then, Miss Kim… I bid you good night,” he tipped his officer’s cap and set off in the direction of the Chrysanthemum Garden - the village where the officers live.
“Sir,” I said hesitantly.
He turned around with a surprised look on his face.
“Why… why did you—?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that, Miss Kim,” he smiled. “Let’s just focus on the future… I’m certain we have a long and mutually beneficial cooperation ahead of us.” He tipped his cap at me again and had already turned around when he remembered something. “Oh… and since you won’t be able to get much information about transgressions from inside that watermill you’re working in now, from tomorrow, you’ll be reassigned to the cornfields. Your sister as well, of course… I understood the two of you want to stay together, which is fine by me. So, as I said… I’m counting on you, Miss Kim. Get to know as many of the other prisoners as possible, and find out what they’re up to.”
With that, he turned around and disappeared into the night.
I stood paralyzed for a while, processing everything that had happened, once more being reminded of the pain in my finger, my nose, and the rest of my body. I suddenly realized Colonel Wan could appear from the door behind me at any moment, so I set off in a sp
urt and ran home as quickly as my weakened legs could carry me.
I had barely made it through the door as my entire family gasped in relief and threw themselves into my arms. Mina and Mrs. Choy were also there, but they stayed on the side, smiling at me.
“Oh, Areum… I can’t believe you’re here… we feared the worst,” mom sobbed. “What happened to you? How did you…?”
“It was… Colonel Wan.” I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. “He… he took me… down to the Center of Truth… he talked about… Grandpa… he said they knew each other…”
The arms holding me suddenly let go, and as I stumbled backward, I saw the whole room staring at me in shock.
“W-what are you talking about, Areum?” dad asked in a whisper. “He talked about… my father?”
“Yes,” I sobbed. “He said Grandpa Hyun Woo was the reason he’s here… that Grandpa sent him here… around twenty years ago… and now he wants to exact vengeance on him… by hurting all of us…”
The tense silence that fell over the room was only interrupted by my quiet sobbing. Shock and surprise were written on all the faces around me. Nari’s eyes looked enormous behind her thick, dirty glasses as she stood there with her mouth wide open.
“And how… how did you get out?” mom finally asked.
“G-General Roh came… he set me free… I don’t know why…”
“Okay, Areum,” mom said and pulled me into her arms once again. “It’s over now, everything will be fine.”
“No, it won’t,” I sobbed. “It really won’t…”
Mrs. Choy cleaned my wounded finger and tied it up with a clean cloth. Then she left together with Mina, who hugged me for the second time in my life. As soon as we were alone, mom put me in bed and tucked me in. I took out the Great General pin and squeezed it in my non-aching hand. Even though the agonizing screams of the dungeon were gone, they still echoed inside my head, and maybe because of that, I still wasn’t able to detect the spirit of my Father - the Great General. Either way, I was too exhausted to worry about that now. I was too exhausted to worry about anything.
Nari lay down next to me and hugged me for a long time.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything, Areum,” she sobbed softly into my ear. “I tried to stop them, but—”
“It’s okay, sis,” I whispered. “You did everything you could.” Then I suddenly remembered what General Roh had told me in front of the Center of Truth. I turned my head and looked at Nari with distraught eyes. “I’m also sorry, Nari.”
“For what?” she asked, startled by the change in my face.
“W-we’re no longer working at the watermill, Nari… from tomorrow, we’ll be out in the fields… General Roh told me so… I’m sorry… it’s all because of me!”
Nari lay silent for a while before she spoke, her head pressed against my neck.
“We’ll manage,” she whispered half-heartedly. “Somehow we’ll manage.”
I knew, of course, what we’ll manage really meant. It meant I would have to do most of the work for her as usual. But right now, I didn’t have enough energy to worry about that.
Nari’s right… we’ll manage… somehow we’ll manage!
As I slowly drifted off to sleep from pure exhaustion, despite the still pulsating pain in my finger, I heard mom and dad talk about my grandfather in the background. The last thing I registered was dad saying that Grandpa had made a lot of enemies over the years.
Then it all went black.
The next moment, I woke up inside my dream. This time, I was not standing in the street of death in Hamhung or tied to a pole in the Bloodyard. Instead, I was tied to the metal chair down in the dungeon with one of Grandpa Hyun Woo’s sworn enemies towering up in front of me as a monstrous smoldering shadow. It had an enormous needle in his hand and it was leaning down toward me.
CHAPTER 20
By the next morning, my index finger had grown to twice its normal size and pulsated with excruciating pain. My eyes were also swollen, and so was my nose. I think it was broken.
The atmosphere during breakfast was tense. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in Colonel Wan’s chair with a never-ending pin being slowly thrust into my finger. Every time, a sharp pain shot through my entire body. At least it helped me ignore the repulsive consistency and moldy aftertaste of the lukewarm cabbage soup.
Dad looked like he had the weight of the world on his hunched and bony shoulders. Our family was now targeted by both General Roh and Colonel Wan, and his oldest daughter had been tortured in the dungeons of the Center of Truth… only one step away from being tied to the poles in the Bloodyard. He had lost even more weight since he started working in the mines and now resembled one of the starved prisoners of war that our heroic soldiers liberated from the horrid enemy prison camps at the end of the Great Fatherland Liberation War. Our history books back at school were filled with those photographs, which used to haunt me at night when I was growing up.
But could those prison camps have been much worse than the one we’re in now?
Nari looked pale and gray under her short messy hair. In the middle of breakfast, she had to run out to vomit. At least she made it to the other side of the threshold this time. Mrs. Choy had examined her again the other day, and even if she still couldn’t find what was wrong, she was almost certain it was the assault in the mountains that had shocked her system, and that it wasn’t a reversal of her heart condition. She said it should only be temporary and that she would recover as long as she got enough rest and nourishment.
I shook my head at this.
From now on, Nari will have to spend every day outside, doing hard labor under the burning sun. How will she be able to rest? And from where will she get enough to eat?
Mom was the only one of us who looked relatively healthy, but her face became distorted by motherly concern whenever she looked at Nari… and me, which somehow pleased me.
Mostly, however, we did our best not to look at each other, and with the silent tension building in the room, I was startled when dad suddenly cleared his throat.
“I think I’ve heard about him,” he mumbled without looking up from the crackling fire. “I mean, about Colonel Wan… from my father… back when I was at university. He told me there was a man who had raped and killed several women… and even young girls. He used to go outside the city with his car and just grab one he liked… then took her away and raped and tortured her… and when he was done, he’d kill her and leave her in a ditch somewhere. Didn’t even bother to hide the body. People around him knew about it, but they covered it up because he was from a respectable family… very high Regime Loyalty Classification Level. But when my father found out about it, he didn’t care about the status of his family. He sent him away… far away, so he wouldn’t be able to hurt anybody else.”
We had all stopped eating and just stared at dad.
“I… I never knew his name, and… I had nearly forgotten all about it… it was such a long time ago… but… it must have been him. And it seems he’s been holding this grudge against my father this whole time.” He sniffled loudly. “I’m so sorry for… for what we have done, my father and I. All we wanted was to make Choson prosper and to feed the people, but it seems we have brought nothing but problems and sorrow upon our family… and the country. I’m… I’m truly sorry.”
We all looked down at the ground as the man of the house sobbed like a scolded schoolboy. I had a strong urge to run over and hug him, to tell him it was alright… that I forgive him. But I had an equally strong urge to scream at him that he was right… that he and Grandpa had ruined my life… that they were the reason for the nightmare we were in right now. They had created this mess, and now all of us had to pay for it.
I once again felt my deep-seated hatred boiling up inside.
It’s all his fault! Why do I keep forgetting? EVERYTHING IS HIS FAULT!
Mom observed us with an expression that combined worry and guilt into one. When she opened her mo
uth, I was sure she was going to tell dad it’s okay, that it’s not his fault… but she didn’t.
“I have been given a new work assignment,” she said instead.
We looked at her with surprise. That was the last thing I had expected her to say.
“I found out last night. I’m going to be a maidservant in the officers’ village… in the Chrysanthemum Garden.”
“Oh,” dad’s teary eyes widened slightly, but other than that, his facial expression remained unaltered.
“I think… it could be a good opportunity for us,” mom continued nervously. “I think I might get extra benefits, but… it also means that I will come home very late every day since I need to help serve dinner and clean up at night… and attend the bar.”
She let her worried look leap from one of us to the other, fearing our reactions.
“What kind of benefits?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Dear… we’ll have to see… but I’m sure there will be some… hopefully extra food rations… for all of us.”
“Good,” dad said firmly, wiping away the tears from his cheeks. “That’s good… it’ll be good for us.”
He nodded and threw a feeble smile toward mom. He handed his empty bowl to Nari, stood up on trembling legs, and got ready to leave for the mines. He hesitated a brief moment on the threshold, looking back at the three of us with an expression as if he was saying goodbye for the last time. Then he left.
Mom didn’t know what to say after he was gone, and after a moment of awkward silence, she also departed for her new work assignment. Left alone to clean up were Nari and I, although Nari had to do most of it since I couldn’t get my injured finger wet. Seeing Nari barely being able to handle the cooking pots, however, my worry for how she will manage a full day out in the fields resurfaced.
The Weeping Masses: A Young Adult Dystopian Survival Saga (Juche - Part 3) Page 16
