Page 25 of The Last Tiger

Seung

I’ve been walking for nearly an hour down an underused path that meanders to the bottom of the valley. Yellow, parched grass and weeds encroach on the overgrown road; the drought has been back again this year with a vengeance. Dried-out twigs snap under my shoes as I make my way down.

Suddenly I hear a sound somewhere off the path—and freeze—

Squinting off into the woods, I swear I see something move…

Is it a soldier? Do they know somehow where I’m going—

A deer moves out of the woods and onto the path. It looks at me, ears raised, and stops—then continues on.

I let out a sigh of relief. My heart is crammed up into my throat.

What am I doing here?

When you’re ready, come to the abandoned factory at the base of the valley. Knock on the window exactly four times—no more, and no less—and show them this flyer.

There used to be a factory deep in the valley, I remember.

Men from the village worked there, making weapons for the war against the Serpent Queendom.

But it was abandoned years ago, when the government decided to relocate production capacity elsewhere, closer to the front lines.

I’ve never been there before; the bottom of the valley is way off the usual paths.

Just as I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve gone the wrong way, the woods clear out around me on both sides, opening into a meadow.

An unassuming, faded square building with peeling walls stands off to one side, where the forest peels away.

The wooden doors at the abandoned factory’s entrance are plastered with posters and other notices about upcoming events at the town square.

As I get closer, I bend to examine one of them. Looks like the date passed years ago.

I walk up to one of the windows beside the factory door. It’s opaque with dust. I try to peek in, but a black curtain hangs on the other side.

Suddenly my awareness heightens. I feel I’m on the edge of some threshold.

Once I step through those doors, I’ll be an outlaw with a secret. A rebel. An enemy of the empire.

Am I making a mistake? It still isn’t too late. I could leave, turn back now, walk until I get home. Return to my job at the mines. Resume my life as I knew it.

Once I take this step, that whole path will close to me. My life will never be the same again.

I raise my hand to the window.

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

I lean back, waiting, my heart slamming in my chest. For several seconds, nothing happens.

After a minute, I’m wondering if I should turn and run—when the black curtain behind the window shifts. I make out the top of someone’s face: a slim, aquiline nose. Their eyes narrow at me.

“I’m here to see Jin,” I shout through the glass.

The curtain falls back over the window.

I clear my throat, nervous.

“Hey!” I yell, pressing the flyer against the window. “Jin told me to come here—I need to see her—”

Behind the door, I hear the sound of a chain lock being undone. The wooden door slides open.

Standing in the archway is a teenager, maybe a couple of years younger than me. He looks me up and down, unimpressed. The guy wears an oversized combat jacket over a cotton shirt; his well-worn clothes seem to have been hastily assembled from other people’s closets.

I wave the flyer at him; the guy squints, looking it over. He reads the message on the back, inspecting the handwriting:

For Lover Boy—Jin Xx

He grunts.

“I’m gonna have to check on this.”

The teenager takes the flyer from me and closes the door behind him. Several minutes pass while I stand there, fighting the urge to pace back and forth. Finally, the door cracks back open, and he waves me in, handing me the paper.

“Make it quick. She’s not in a good mood today.”

The air inside the factory swims with dust.

It’s dark in here; the windows have all been covered from the inside with newspaper. A long conveyor belt flanked with benches runs horizontally down the middle of the wide, open room. The belt has a green tarp thrown over it that looks like it hasn’t been removed for a long time.

A series of walkways runs around the edges of the factory walls, suspended by steel posts from the ceiling.

A staircase at one end leads down to the main floor.

Hanging over the railing at the far end of the room is a white banner.

On it, someone has painted an animal’s head with its jaws open in red paint. A tiger.

I look down at the paper in my hands. It matches.

A dozen or so teenagers are seated on stools on the far side of the conveyor belt, sharing a meal of rice and soup broth. They look up at me as we pass. The guy who let me in leads me past the main area, down a hallway with an office at one end. He knocks on the door.

“Uh-huh,” says a familiar voice.

We enter. Opposite the door lies a wooden desk in an extremely cramped, messy-looking office. Two dirty black boots rest on the desktop, one ankle crossed over the other. Behind the desk, a large, open newspaper obscures someone’s face.

The guy beside me looks at the floor.

“Jin,” he mutters, “someone’s here to see you. Says you asked for him—”

The newspaper lowers, and a pale face I recognize flanked by magpie-purple hair peeks out over the edge. Jin stares at us blankly.

She has a strange expression on her face. The shadows under her eyes have deepened, and her skin looks even paler than before. The cocky self-assurance she was so full of last year seems to have evaporated.

Something shifts in her eyes. She waves the teenager off.

“Thanks, Jiseop. You’re dismissed.”

The teenager nods curtly and turns, glancing at me one more time on his way out. The door closes behind him.

“Took you long enough.” Jin’s voice cuts through the cool air of the room.

She doesn’t seem surprised to see me—vaguely amused, if anything.

I glance around. Jin’s office, like the main factory floor, is swimming with dust; I have to tamp down the urge to sneeze. Marked-up newspaper clippings and photographs cover her desk haphazardly.

A map of the Tiger Colonies is spread over one wall, with miscellaneous scraps and notes pinned over it; there are torn corners where other notes seem to have been ripped down. I can just make out the handwriting on a few of the bigger scraps pinned to the margins:

SECOND SIGHTING see below—

Empire removes reward from Gangneung province

Slaying Ceremony missing??

Jin takes her feet off the desk and sits upright.

“I was actually just thinking about you.”

She flips the newspaper around to show me, and I cringe, seeing the headline—

Governor-General Isao Endorses First Wedding Representing Intermarriage Between Dragon and Tiger Elite

Wedding ceremony, scheduled for today, is between incoming Dragon Army lieutenant officer Kenzo Kobayashi and youngest daughter of distinguished Tiger family, Eunji Yamamoto.

There’s a photo below the caption. Eunji stands in a kimono beside Kenzo in the courtyard, surrounded by their families. She wears a blank, unreadable expression on her face.

I know exactly which day this photo was taken. I recognize her dress, the decorations I hung over the courtyard the night of the Dragon Spring Festival. Just before Eunji’s engagement was announced.

Jin whistles. “Your ex-girlfriend moved on. Sorry, Lover Boy.”

I grit my teeth. Jin winks, looking like she’s enjoying toying with me.

“It’s Jin, right? You said I should find you when I was ready to take a stand,” I tell her. “Well…I’m ready. To join you. I want in.”

I straighten my shoulders, trying to look—I don’t know, fierce? Determined? Jin scrutinizes me, flicking a glance over my body.

“You don’t even know what we do here,” she points out slowly.

“You fight against the empire,” I say. “For an independent Tiger Kingdom.”

She raises an eyebrow at me.

“An independent Tiger Republic ,” Jin corrects me.

“Sure. Well…I’m here to help. You said you could always use an extra pair of hands, didn’t you?”

Jin sighs and looks away. “You’re too late, Lover Boy.”

“It’s Seung, thanks.”

“Okay, Seung . Like I said. You’re too late .”

Abruptly Jin stands and circles around the desk. And then I see it—a black cloud of despair hangs over the Resistance leader’s head—

Literally hangs over her. I blink several times, but it’s still there—a whirling, looming cloud of black smoke, shifting above her head. It’s transparent—I can see the wall and the rest of the room through it—but it’s hovering there as real as the desk by her side…

And just as I see that dark cloud, I feel in my heart what she’s feeling. I don’t know how, I just do. As clearly as if it were my own emotion. A hopelessness tugging down on her soul…

And something else, flickering, deep within that black cloud. Something hard and dark and red. Something seething inside—

“It’s over,” Jin says again, flatly.

She doesn’t seem to see anything strange. I shift my attention back to the Resistance leader, trying to ignore the odd vision. Jin’s gaze drifts over to the map pinned to the wall. I follow her line of sight, unsure what I’m supposed to be looking at.

“It’s been two years since anyone has last seen a tiger,” Jin continues. “They’ve declared them extinct. And if they’re right that the tigers are gone…then that’s it. Our search efforts are over. Time to go home.”

“You’re…looking for tigers?”

Jin’s chin juts out as she peers at me over the bridge of her nose. A consideration seems to pass through her mind, weighing her options, perhaps.

“Why do you think the empire has been so desperate to kill every last one of the tigers?” she asks. “And why do you think the Resistance gave everything we had to stop them? Do you think Governor-General Isao just has an animal obsession for no reason?”

She leans over her desk, pulls open a drawer, and slaps down a warped, decades-old book with its cover partially burnt in front of me. A History of the Serpent Queendom, the cover reads.