Page 5 of The Last Tiger

Seung

“This is all we can eat tonight?” Hoyoung asks in a small voice.

He looks down at the table, devastated. Mom has put the grainy rice we brought back from the marketplace in a teacup in the middle; there’s maybe a few spoonfuls in there for the four of us to split.

“We had to save the rest if we want to eat rice again this week, Hoyoung,” Mom replies gently.

Dad sighs heavily, the wrinkles in his face showing suddenly—he really can’t believe he’s worked so long for so little.

Sitting in front of each of us, to help fill up our stomachs, is a watery bowl of turnip soup.

Compared to yesterday’s feast at the Chois’, the thin, gruelly broth looks awful.

It’s prepared with love but isn’t exactly fare to make your stomach sing.

Earlier today, I was cleaning out our thatch roof when some bugs fell down into the boiling pot.

Since we couldn’t afford to waste the broth, I had to hold my nose and pick them out carefully, with a spoon.

Now my stomach rolls over a little looking down at it.

Just like it has been all day, my mind wanders back once again to the conversation in the kimchi fridge yesterday. Over and over, as I lay in bed last night, Eunji’s offer replayed in my head. A few words with the potential to change my life:

“Swear to me you won’t tell my father you saw me outside without a chaperone,” Eunji told me. “Swear it, and if you hold up your word…then I’ll teach you how to prepare for the Exam. I’ll tutor you. I’ll make sure you know everything you need to—you’ll have a fighting chance. I promise.”

I’ll teach you.

Would she really do it? Would she actually tutor me?

Could this be my chance?

Until last night, my future was always one of limited options. I would probably become a manual laborer in the gold mines, like my dad before me. I’d never have a shot at ki powers…nor at any job with access to upward mobility or a really livable income.

But all of that would change—if I passed the Exam.

If I were an Exam graduate, my life options would be utterly transformed overnight.

For starters, I’d have a guaranteed ticket to a lifelong career path in the colonial civil service, with a good, stable income.

What’s more, I’d be granted ki powers—and all the dignity and self-respect that come from being strong enough to hold your own against any member of the Dragon Empire.

It’s not an empty offer. The Choi family has trained their children extensively over the years, paying a premium for the best tutors money can buy.

Every one of Eunji’s older siblings passed the Exam with some of the highest scores in the province.

Clearly, if there’s anyone in Kidoh who knows what I’ll need to do, it’s Eunji.

I’m years behind her and the other students, though. Even with Eunji’s help, there are only eight months from today until the Exam.

I don’t know if that’s enough time for me to catch up. The amount of material I’ll have to learn between now and then is staggering.

Still, the dream began to swell inside me last night as I lay awake. As the full import of Eunji’s offer began to dawn on me. Suddenly I could feel a door opening, one that I’d always thought was closed to me.

What if there was a way out? A way through?

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t actually have any intention of telling Eunji’s parents that I’d caught her sneaking around outside. I really couldn’t subject her to the consequences, knowing what they would be for her.

But Eunji doesn’t have to know that.

Especially if thinking I might tell them means that she’ll give me just what I need: a golden ticket out of the trap my life would otherwise become.

“What is it, Seung?” Mom asks. “What are you smiling about?”

I snap to attention, breaking out of my reverie. Around the dinner table, Mom, Dad, and Hoyoung are looking at me expectantly.

Should I tell them about my new tutor? I wonder.

But no. I can’t. I need to keep my promise to Eunji.

Which means that no one else can know about our deal.

“I know that look.” Dad grins. “It’s a girl, isn’t it? Seung has a new lady friend.”

“Seung has a girlfriend?” says Hoyoung, perking up.

“Whoa, let’s not jump to conclusions.” Mom laughs, patting Hoyoung on the back. “If there’s someone special in Seung’s life, I’m sure we’d be the first to know. Right, Seung?” She winks my way.

“Um…” I falter, trying to think of an excuse. “I—”

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Everyone turns toward the door.

We all freeze; my throat clutches. There’s only one person I know who knocks that way.

No—not tonight.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Dad sighs, looking ten years older in an instant. He stands stiffly, then shuffles to the door and reluctantly slides it open.

Outside, a policeman in a black cap stands with his face an empty slate. He wears the ink-black suit of the Dragon thought police. It’s Officer Hiyoshi, the neighborhood head of the secret police. And the most feared person in our village district.

Hiyoshi has a slim, tidily trimmed mustache and blunted eyes colorless as coals. In a pair of soft, milky-white hands, he bears a single clipboard, a briefcase, and a thin black pen.

“Inspection time,” Officer Hiyoshi says.

“Hiyoshi-san,” Dad says, bowing immediately and switching to Dragon tongue. “Didn’t inspection day come already this month?”

“It’s inspection day again,” Officer Hiyoshi says, his voice as empty of emotion as his blank face.

A grave silence spreads over the room.

Dad grimaces and moves aside to allow the policeman into our home. Officer Hiyoshi steps gingerly over the boundary. As he passes Dad, he steps one heel slowly down onto Dad’s toes. Dad grits his teeth. The policeman takes another deliberate step forward, his shoe finally releasing.

Hiyoshi moves around our one-room home, slowly opening cupboards, rifling through our things. He’s painfully precise, leaving no square centimeter unturned.

There’s no point in asking what it is he’s looking for. The Dragon Police never explain their actions—they just enter whenever and wherever they please. With the full force of the state behind them, we have no choice but to comply.

Rumors tend to swirl in their wake. Lately, word has it that there are pockets of guerilla fighters, organizers for a Tiger independence movement, in the rural outskirts of Kidoh valley and scattered throughout the colonies.

The police have become desperate to sniff out any pro-independence sympathizers among the population and eliminate them before the movement can gather steam.

We don’t have any association with the rebels, so my family should be in the clear. Still, the thought police are dangerous, and they have absolute power. We can’t afford to get on their bad side.

Officer Hiyoshi is working at our kitchen cabinets now. He pulls out the ridiculously oversized burlap sack Hoyoung and I brought to the marketplace and peers inside. The policeman grunts, his mustache twisting slightly.

He ties the bag of rice shut—and sets it down beside his briefcase.

“Hiyoshi-san,” Dad protests weakly. “You…aren’t taking the whole bag, are you?”

The policeman simply holds up a pale white hand. Dad falls quiet.

Officer Hiyoshi continues implacably, opening up cupboards and peering inside.

He pulls down a pair of heirloom porcelain plates from a back corner—our only valuables, they were the parting gift from Mom’s family for my parents’ wedding.

Without a shift in expression, the policeman opens his briefcase and places the precious plates inside.

“Please, Officer,” Dad says. “I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve this. We’ve always complied with your—”

With an impossibly swift gesture, Officer Hiyoshi turns and grabs Dad by the collar—then twists, pushing him into the wall. The wood creaks as Dad gasps weakly.

Officer Hiyoshi has ki powers, of course; he can lift a grown man as easily as a rag doll.

Hiyoshi breaks his grip, allowing Dad to slump to the floor.

Then he picks up his case, shutting the plates inside, and turns clockwise precisely.

Our whole family watches desperately as he walks out the door into the night with our rice and Mom’s heirloom plates.

I sit silently at the table, burning up with resentment.

We can’t fight back. There’s nothing any of us can do but watch.

Finally, Dad stands up, rubbing his head. The wall behind him holds the memory of the impact where he was thrown into it. Dad ambles painfully back to the table and sits down. He hangs his head.

I feel the heat burning in my neck—I’m so angry I could burst.

“You know why they walk all over us, don’t you?” My voice shakes as I spit out the words. “They know that we’re weak. They know they have us cornered.”

Across the table, Hoyoung slumps down, looking scared.

“Seung—” Mom says.

I grit my teeth, clench my fists, stand up from the table.

“I’m going out,” I mutter.

And I follow in the officer’s footsteps, out the door.

I slide the front door shut behind me, fuming. Out here, the cool of night takes some of the heat off my neck. I tramp down the hill, wandering aimlessly, with nothing in mind except to go somewhere that isn’t here.

All our lives, we’ve been picked on by Dragon people—soldiers, policemen, even the petty businessmen who’ve moved here from their home islands to set up shop.

They walk around like they own the place, which I guess they do.

They know—and they know that we know—that at any time they can use their ki, their unmatched physical strength, to extract whatever it is from us they want.

They know we’re helpless before them.

And they use that power on a daily basis, to keep us frightened, to keep us second-guessing.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been beaten up the way Dad was tonight. The memories of broken ribs, bruises blossoming on my body, layer over one another, becoming one constant, unending injury.