Page 22 of The Last Tiger

Seung

Clink! Clink! Clink!

A crack appears where I struck my pickax at the wall, fanning out in a spiderweb along the rocky surface. I bend down to examine it, but there’s nothing. No sign of the characteristic shine that would indicate the presence of gold.

If I’m aiming the ax as I swing, it’s just barely.

My brain is totally empty, filled only with the sound of metal striking stone.

I’ve been chipping away at this wall for hours today.

In fact, I’ve been working in this one tunnel for weeks, in this one gold mine all year.

It’s as if my life has come to a standstill, time itself ceasing to pass for me.

Clink!

The cracks gradually widen, spreading out from the point of impact.

Clink! Clink!

Finally, the stone crumbles, spilling to the floor in broken pieces. I swing again and again, working away gradually at the opening until the layer of rock fractures completely and falls away—

Revealing a glint of light.

I bend over, peering more closely. Could it be…?

I continue to chisel away at the stone surrounding the glimmering piece.

It’s hard work; the rock doesn’t give easily.

My breath fogs in the air as I go. Down here, deep in the gold mines, there is an elemental chill that never leaves this place.

It sinks deep into my bones over the course of the workday.

Sometimes, even in my dreams at night, I can feel the cold air of the mines surrounding me, kissing my skin, luring me deeper into sleep.

Finally, I carefully work away the last of the rock, removing a glittering, unformed lump that falls into my hand. It’s gold.

I half smile warily, holding the gleaming ore in my palm. It’s highly impure, so I’ll only get a minor bonus for it. Still, even that small bonus means food.

Tonight, I’ll be bringing home rice.

I stare down at the lump of gold in my hand.

This should make me happy. So why do I feel something else instead?

I force the tears down.

Since failing the Exam, I’ve gone straight to full-time work in the mines, like my dad before me.

For a year now, I’ve been working three jobs.

By day, I’ve taken Dad’s place in the gold mines.

Mornings and evenings, I lug inventory for a merchant association in the marketplace, helping vendors set up shop and clear out when the day is done.

And on weekends, I still go to the Choi household to clean under the stern gaze of Eunsoo, Eunji’s older brother.

It’s lonely work. Especially at the Choi house, which feels somehow…empty without her.

In my dreams, we still run through the village at night.

She smiles at me and takes my hand, furrows her brow in determination as she hurls pebble after pebble into the river, and sticks her tongue out at the dinner table when her father’s not looking.

We sit underneath the pine trees in the forest, caught in the rain, and she loosens her braid, her wet hair clinging to her shoulders.

I return to that palace rooftop thousands of times and imagine what would’ve happened if I’d made a different choice.

The floorboard under my bed is full of letters addressed to her that I never sent, knowing they’d only exacerbate the pain I caused her that night.

In the weeks after, I mused that we might become friends someday—but the months following revealed to me a hard truth: I don’t know if I’ll ever get over Choi Eunji.

The last year has passed in a blur, becoming one long wash in my memory.

For a while I saved my meager earnings—not much, just a few yen here, a few yen there—hoping that one day I might build up enough to get us out of here. I had this crazy idea that maybe I could move my whole family to the capital, Hannam City, and start a new life there.

Because, let’s face it, there was nothing left for us in Kidoh.

The only future open to me here was more of the same: working grueling hours for little pay, six and a half days a week, for the rest of my life.

And the cold air of the gold mines, sinking ever deeper into my skin all the while, making my teeth chatter.

So I saved up money, whatever spare coins were left here and there after buying rice and clothing for Mom and Hoyoung, even knowing deep down that I wasn’t being realistic.

Because how many years would I have had to save up for my family to be able to afford an apartment in Hannam City?

I might never have enough for even a cramped room in the outskirts of the capital.

Like the Exam, the promise of moving away was just one more elusive dream.

But I chased it anyway. I needed it. I needed to have something, anything, I was aiming toward…

But reality has a way of intruding on dreams. I’ve long since learned that the hard way.

Over the winter, erratic snowstorms fell over the valley with unprecedented wrath.

Tree limbs bowed under the weight of the snow, and the river froze solid overnight, trapping fish mid-swim so that children would stand over the glassy surface, gawking.

I had stupidly been putting off fixing up our aging roof because I thought we couldn’t afford the supplies.

But one day our roof finally collapsed under the heavy snow—nearly burying Mom, Hoyoung, and me alive.

Stupid…it was my own fault.

I just couldn’t bear to spend the savings I had accumulated, in the naive hope of moving someday from Kidoh to Hannam City. In the end, I had to spend the entire amount I’d so meticulously accumulated in order to buy straw for a new roof.

And so it was that I finally learned—finally vowed —never to waste one more breath chasing a senseless dream.

Hannam City. The Exam. Eunji…it was all hopeless.

But that wasn’t even the worst of it.

For the rest of that winter we stayed with a neighboring family down the valley while I repaired our roof into the late hours after midnight, once my final work shift was done. It was hard going. Then, one terrible, awful morning, we came back to visit the house…

And found the front door wrested off its hinges, the lock smashed on the ground. Thieves had broken in while we were away. Inside, our cupboards were hanging open emptily, the whole house ransacked. They had taken everything of value we’d still had left, even our dining table.

I sank to my knees in the snow that day, struck speechless.

I had never known until then how it feels to be so completely out of hope. I just knelt there in the snow, numb, until Hoyoung came and gave me a hug. I almost pushed him away, but I didn’t. I just let my brother hug me tight with his little arms.

After our things were stolen, the only stuff that my family really had left were the clothes we were wearing on our backs that day.

For the next several months, Mom washed that one shirt I owned at night after I came home, then hung it up to dry before I went back to work the next morning.

That shirt had a starchy, stiff feel in the mornings as I pulled it on.

Over time, it began to lose its firmness, fading in color as I wore it out.

Which brings me to today…

I turn over the unrefined gold lump in my hands, shaking off the memory of the empty house. Then I walk over slowly to the satchel I left by the mouth of the tunnel and slip the piece under the flap. I return to the tunnel and raise my ax.

Back to work.

Clink!

In these moments, with my mind so perfectly clear and empty, I become somehow hyper-aware of the world around me.

The rocks seem to gleam, blacker than black.

The cold air makes my skin shiver. I can almost feel the presence of the insects crawling carefully along the walls and floor of the tunnel.

Feel their single-minded purpose focused so intently on walking forward, one step after the other, going wherever it is that they’re going.

Feel the warm, beating heart, pounding with nervousness, of the boy standing in the middle of the tunnel behind me—

Wait a minute. The who…?

I pause, holding the ax in midair, and turn around, suddenly spotting a boy squatting close to the ground.

Whoever he is, he wasn’t there just a few moments ago.

His arm is deep inside the bag where I just put my gold.

“Hey!” I shout.

Immediately he leaps to run, the lump of gold grasped tight in his hand.

I jolt forward, dropping the ax, and catch up to the thief, grabbing him by the back of his shirt.

He yowls and writhes, trying to shake himself free.

I hold firm, wrestling him into a lock. The boy sinks his teeth into my arm—I yelp as he worms free from my grip.

He only gets a few steps forward before I tackle him from behind, bringing him hard to the ground.

The rock surface grits into my cheek and arms and knees as I wrestle with the gold thief.

I distantly hear the clink, clink echoing through the tunnel of other miners somewhere far away from us, in other corners of the mines.

I’ve almost got my fingers around the gold when I feel a rough hand pull me up by the collar.

“Hey—” says a gruff older man’s voice. “Break it up!”

It’s the supervisor. He has the two of us held up firmly by the neck, one in each hand. “What’s going on here?” he demands in a booming voice.

“He—he stole my gold.” I grimace, struggling to catch my breath. With ki, the supervisor’s grip is like iron.

“He’s lying,” the thief snarls back. “I found it. He tried to steal it from me !”

“I don’t care whose it is,” the supervisor grunts. “It’s property of the Dragon Empire, on whose behalf you’re working here. You two are wasting time. If you can’t work without making trouble, then neither of you deserves the finder’s fee. Got it?”

He throws both of us to the ground. I wince, hitting my pelvis hard on the rocky surface. The thief whines next to me, rubbing his neck. The supervisor picks up the lump of gold from the ground and pockets it.

“Please, sir.” I bow my head. “This isn’t fair—”