He pushed Mrs. Choy and Mina to the side and barged into their house. All of us waited outside, listening to the emerging sounds of their possessions being thrown around the room. Now, it was only Mrs. Choy who looked furious. Mom averted her eyes. Her face had adopted a hint of terror and regret.
After only a few minutes, the guards came back out.
“Two cobs of corn,” the senior guard said, visibly disappointed. “That’s what we found… no rice. Did you happen to have a corn treasure as well, prisoner?”
“No,” mom said, blinking perplexedly. “But… they could have hidden it somewhere else… maybe you can—”
“You know what?” the guard interrupted her. “I don’t really care what happened to your little treasure, but I can tell you for sure that it’s not in there… unfortunately,” he chuckled to the other guards. “So, I think our business here is finished. And so is yours,” he poked his finger into mom’s ribcage, making her stumbled a few steps backward. “And for breaking up the peace on this otherwise calm and pleasant night, you have just lost yourselves half your family’s rations for the coming month… so, congratulations!”
Both mom and dad gasped, and so did Nari and I.
“Corporal Lee… please make the arrangements,” he then turned to Mrs. Choy, whose fury was further fueled by having been vindicated.
“As for these two cobs of corn…”
“Those were given to me as payment for helping a guard who needed medical assistance… I’m a doctor, Sir.”
“WRONG!” the senior guard bellowed, his face suddenly distorted by fury. “Maybe you were a doctor before, but in here… you’re nothing! And that’s something I’d advise you to remember, prisoner! But don’t worry, we’ll ignore this little contraband… just this one time,” He winked at Mrs. Choy. ”Boys! Seems like we got ourselves a little midnight snack!” he laughed and tossed the corncobs to Chang Min, who in his surprise dropped his cigarette on the ground. “Now, you all better be on your way now, prisoners,” the senior guard looked seriously at mom and Mrs. Choy. “Unless… maybe you have some objections to your punishment… do you?
“We’ll be on our way… thank you, Sir… thank you for your kindness,” mom said with a trembling voice as she bowed down deeply.
“Great… then I bid you all good night,” the senior guard smiled and left together with Chang Min and the other guard, cheerfully humming a song about the heroic revolution and the victory of the Juche principles that I used to hear on the radio back home.
How can a beautiful song of hope like that be hummed in a place like this… and by people like that…?
Once alone, mom and I stared at Mrs. Choy with open mouths, not sure what to say or do. Mrs. Choy, however, knew exactly what to do. She turned to her daughter.
“Mina… you will never go near that family again!” she pronounced every syllable with nothing but unadulterated disgust. “Do you understand me? That girl is no longer your sister… and she is no longer your friend. And you,” she abruptly turned to mom. “You and your whole family will stay away from Mina and me. If I ever see any of you near either of us again… you’ll regret it! I swear to the Great General!”
“You’re the ones who will stay away from US!” mom had enough self-control to throw one final glare before barging off down the street, dragging our helpless father behind her. “Girls… what are you waiting for?” she shouted at us without turning around.
Nari didn’t move. She looked at Mina and started crying. Mina cried as well.
“Get in the house,” Mrs. Choy ordered, pushed Mina mercilessly through the open doorway, and slammed the door behind her with a bang that echoed against the silent mountains surrounding our prison.
Nari remained sobbing in the street.
There was nothing left to be said, so I just took her hand and led her home.
We all went to bed as soon as we got home, but I knew none of us were sleeping. The room was filled to the brim with crushing unseeable tension. I tried to squeeze the Great General pin hard in my hand. I couldn’t feel anything, so I squeezed harder. Now I felt something, but it was not the feeling I wanted. It was just the pain from the lifeless piece of metal cutting into my hand, adding to the palette of pain from my bruised face and cracked rib. I squeezed the pin harder still, hoping the pain would distract me from the infinite hopelessness growing inside my chest.
It didn’t.
“Mom… Dad,” I finally broke the silence. “How will we do? We don’t have any rice… and the whole family has gotten cut rations. How will we survive?”
After a long and heavy silence, mom sighed.
“I’ll figure something out,” she said. “It’ll be alright.”
But there was no hope left in her voice, and we all heard it.
CHAPTER 27
The next morning, I woke up furious. Mom and dad had already left, but Nari was still sleeping. My cracked rib, as well as my swollen and bruised face, ached horribly, but I hardly even noticed it. Lying motionlessly on my quilt with my eyes fixed on the dark cracks in the ceiling, the overwhelming feeling that everything was against me swept over me again and again. Both General Roh and Colonel Wan were personally targeting our family because of what the men in our family had done at one time or another. Nari had been raped by Chul - who was supposed to be our friend - and now she was just as weak and sick as before the heart surgery. Yesterday, we were not able to fill our quota, and in addition to only getting half rations for two weeks, we got the crap beaten out of us by Mr. Ma and his posse. Finally, our last lifeline - the two bags of rice under our floor - was severed, leaving us with virtually no food… and no chance for survival. And on top of all this, mom decided it was a good time to lose her mind, which not only resulted in alienating Mrs. Choy - the only doctor available to care for Nari - she also managed to get a whole month of cut rations for her and dad as well.
Another wave of warm hatred swept through my body and into my head, where it merged with the warmth from the throbbing swelling and bruises.
How could mom have been so thoughtless? Because of her, we will starve… all the while she eats to her heart’s content in the Chrysanthemum Garden with the other privileged prisoners. And we still have no idea who stole our rice!
With dad growing weaker and more broken by the day, the entire burden of Nari and me surviving had ended up on my shoulders, and on my shoulders alone. An enormous weight pressed against my chest. The room was spinning together with the thoughts swirling around my mind, making me nauseous. I remained in bed, unable to get up. I just needed a little more time…
And who could have taken our rice?
It had been well hidden under the floorboards, so you wouldn’t have found it if you didn’t know it was there. In that regard, I understood mom accusing the Choys, and sure - they could have hidden it somewhere else - but personally, I had a hard time believing it.
Could it have been taken by the guards?
It’s possible. It was like the arrogant senior guard said yesterday - it was nothing short of a treasure that we harbored in our house… more than they get in two or three years.
But how would they know it was there? There are literally hundreds of houses here, and we would have known if they were searching all of them…
Whoever took it, the brutal truth was that the likelihood of getting our rice back was close to zero. The most imminent problem was rather how Nari and I would survive the coming four weeks with practically no food at all. Especially if the weather continued like this with excruciating heat and unbearable humidity every day. The likelihood of missing our quota again was astronomical, and this would trigger a vicious cycle that in the end would lead to our certain deaths.
Finally, I managed to gather all my strength and get up from my quilt. The stab of pain from my cracked rib made me shriek. I woke Nari up and started preparing breakfast. After a couple more stabs of pain from my rib, I learned how to move without engaging that side of my body.
&nb
sp; But how will it be in the cornfield?
We didn’t speak while we ate our tiny, flavorless portions - which at this rate was nothing more than hot water with some barely visible cabbage particles floating around - but I knew we were thinking the same thing.
We need to find another source of food!
I remembered seeing people in the cornfields catching frogs and rats… and even insects. It had revolted my stomach every time - I hadn’t been able to fathom how people could stoop to that level - but now I realized those people hadn’t had the luxury of two bags of rice under their floorboards. I put down my empty soup bowl and dreamed of a juicy and fleshy frog leg. My mouth watered.
I also remembered Hana’s offer that would solve all our problems but discarded it immediately. Apart from not saving Nari that night… there was something about her that I didn’t trust in the slightest. Furthermore, helping her instigate a rebellion in the Dragons would surely get us into more trouble than we were already in… and more than we could handle.
Can we risk adding Hyuk and the Dragons to our already too-long list of enemies?
When we arrived at the cornfield, there was a palpable tension between us and the others. With my senses on high alert, I observed them throwing angry looks at us and whispering among themselves. But they didn’t say a single word to us the entire morning, and every time either of us came near them, they dispersed like a flock of birds. Even though I was glad to avoid another confrontation, I wasn’t sure if their silence was a good sign. Their constant glares also made me feel self-conscious about my disfigured face, and I infinitely missed my long thick hair curtains to hide behind. Nari, however, was too exhausted to care about any of that.
The sun burned strongly as it reached its midday peak, but it was not as merciless as it had been the day before. The humidity had also decreased. Regardless, Nari could still hardly work, forcing me once more to work twice as hard… and this time on a completely empty stomach and with constant pain in my side. And then there was the smell. I don’t know if it was the heat, my hunger, or that the corn somehow had ripened overnight, but I could swear the newly harvested corn had never emitted such a strong and sweet scent, and it was taunting my senses.
The only silver lining was when we received the water ration that morning. It was like a gift from the heavens, and maybe it was because my stomach was empty, but the bitter liquid invigorated me more than it had ever done before.
Then it was time for lunch, and I prayed to the spirit of the Great General that my portion wouldn’t be affected, but the young soup guy had been well informed, so both us and our adversaries in the work unit got less than half of our bowls filled. My stomach protested violently by twisting all my internal organs into painful knots, but somehow I managed to keep going. Mostly it was due to my unrelenting stubbornness, but the other thing that kept me going was my anger - anger against mom, against dad, against Nari, against Chul and Chang Min and the rest of the sadistic guards, against Colonel Wan, against Hana… against this whole place that was doing everything in its power to crush me. That anger filled my body with energy, and that day, we were the first to fill our quota. This was met by silent hatred from Mr. Ma, but another confrontation had been averted.
As always, I helped Nari to the river, where we plunged our heads into the lukewarm water and drank until we were about to burst. It alleviated my thirst but did nothing for my hunger, which was increasing by the minute. We rushed home to cook our meager dinner, using our last strength to fight the enticing sweet scent that called us from the cornfields. My desperation had, luckily, not yet driven me to purposely break Sacred Rule number three - Do not steal! But it had driven me to spend the whole day looking around the ground to see if there was anything edible… anything at all. So far, I had found absolutely nothing. I heard the loud sound of the cicadas from all directions, which I knew were quite large and that other prisoners ate them whenever given the chance, but it was like they were invisible to me.
Dinner was cooked and eaten in less than ten minutes once we returned home. My stomach, convinced this was a cruel joke, screamed for more. I apologized silently to it as we went to bed without waiting for our parents, knowing full well that tomorrow most likely would be even worse.
Since I had failed to find even the tiniest insect to compensate for our drastically reduced diet, that night, I experienced true hunger for the first time. I had, of course, been hungry many times in my life… not least during the many months preparing for various gymnastics competitions. But this was different. This was real, merciless, agonizing, overwhelming, all-consuming hunger.
The following days came and went in a similar fashion. Somehow my body continued functioning despite being acutely deprived of nourishment, but I could never get used to the hunger. I still hadn’t been able to find even one of those infernal cicadas I was forced to listen to days and nights on end. I clung to the hope that one day, mom would manage to sneak something home from the Chrysanthemum Garden - even the thought of a few tiny breadcrumbs made my mouth water - but every night she came home empty-handed and went directly to bed. During the self-criticism session that Saturday, my desperate mind had created the illusion that maybe - just maybe - somebody would confess to having stolen our rice and return our treasure to us.
Of course, that didn’t happen.
I also tried to fish for information when I provided Chul with my made-up allegations against people I had barely met, but either he didn’t know anything, or he wouldn’t tell me. He did, however, tell me in not so many words that the information I was bringing was garbage and that I needed to step it up. As a reply, I just glared him down. Anyway, so far there had been no consequences, and I couldn’t bring myself to having more people disappear on my account if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
I carried on day by day through some sort of haze. I even stopped noticing the hateful glares of Dong Suk, Sang Jun, and the others in Mr. Ma’s close circle. The best days were when it rained because then I could just lean my head back and let the sweet water drops fall on my tongue and cool my steaming head. Surprisingly enough, Nari looked slightly better these days, although not by much. She was still weak and didn’t speak much - not even at night when we were alone - but she had stopped vomiting altogether. It had been over a week now, indicating that Mrs. Choy had been right that it wasn’t a reversal of her heart condition. I found myself indulging in a tiny hope that she might actually get through this.
And if my weak, pathetic little sister can do it, then I’ll be damned if I can’t!
Hardly seeing mom anymore, however, was harder on Nari than it was on me. She tried to stay awake at night just to catch a glimpse of her, but most of the time she failed. It didn’t make things easier that mom came home later and later every night without any explanation. For me, not having mom in my life was nothing new - that had literally been the story of my childhood - but it hurt me to see that same expression of abandonment on Nari’s face… she was experiencing this feeling for the first time.
One Sunday night in the second half of August, about a week before we once more could enjoy full rations of corn sludge and moldy cabbage, dad scared us half to death by stumbling through the door, his face covered in blood, and collapsed on the floor.
I almost dropped my half-eaten bowl on the ground.
“DAD! What happened?” Nari shrieked and rushed over to him.
I put down my bowl and hurried to moisten the least dirty piece of cloth we had to clean his gaping wound.
“It was… Colonel Wan,” dad mumbled feebly. “He—”
But before he could continue, the door slammed open with a bang, and in came Colonel Wan, followed by Chang Min and one more guard I hadn’t seen before. Chang Min winked at us and threw his almost finished cigarette on the floor without putting it out.
The three of us stared at them in horror.
“Good evening, Kim family,” Colonel Wan greeted with an eerie smile. “You have been randomly selected fo
r a surprise inspection. Please step outside.”
He nodded to the guards who started wreaking havoc in our little room before we had even reached the door, throwing everything around, even kicking what was left of our soup all over the floor.
“A lot of contraband around nowadays,” Colonel Wan commented, shaking his head theatrically.
“Colonel, we found some loose floorboards… there’s a hole underneath,” Chang Min said. “But it’s empty.”
“I see,” Colonel Wan tapped his chin. “So you did have some contraband here.”
“Sir… we didn’t use it for contraband,” Young Il said without daring to look at him. “We just kept the food we were allowed to bring from the Capital. But… it was stolen… a few da—”
“Stolen, you say? What an unspeakable tragedy!” Colonel Wan’s exaggerated theatrics was almost comical, which somehow made it even more terrifying. “Well… maybe it was a blessing in disguise… maybe now your little family can finally get down from your high horses and start paying for your treason like everybody else.” He spun around, scanning the room. “That seems to be all… you pass this time, prisoner Kim… but may the Great General help you if we find any contraband in that little storage of yours next time.”
He tipped his cap and said, “Good night, prisoner Kim… girls,” before turning around and leaving the chaos they had created together with Chang Min and the other guard, who hadn’t looked at us once during their brief, but intense visit.
“Dad… what’s going on?” Nari demanded once we were alone behind the closed door.
He looked at us and sighed deeply, holding the now red cloth firmly against his head.
“It’s… it’s just Colonel Wan’s new way of tormenting me,” he said while trying to save some pieces of corn and cabbage from the ground with his free hand. Nari put our quilts, blankets, and other things in order while I fixed the cooking tripod. “He increased the quota for our work unit again… by twenty-five percent this time, which is impossible to reach… and he told everybody they could thank me for that. So down in the mines, they jumped me, and… that’s how I ended up like this.”
The Weeping Masses: A Young Adult Dystopian Survival Saga (Juche - Part 3) Page 22
