Page 54 of The Last Tiger

Some people gave their everything, and they made it through.

They found a rare opportunity; they were lucky, or skillful, where others weren’t, and succeeded.

Most people didn’t. Entire generations spent their lives suffering under the Dragon Empire’s heel, or under other, more ancient oppressors in other eras.

Most of them never tasted freedom during their lives.

They suffered unimaginably, suffered lives that make everything I’ve experienced look like a walk in the park.

Did their lives have meaning? Even the ones who never found freedom?

They still lived. They still found their own moments of joy and love amid desperation, amid pain and fear.

They came and went; they saw the light of the sun.

They lived. They were .

And the realization dawns on me—

No one can take away your dignity, Seung.

The river fades away. The two of us are standing now in the black void from before.

Dad’s frame is lit from behind by a source I can’t see. The tips of his hair shine bright against the darkness.

I stand there quietly, absorbing my thoughts.

I think I get it now. I finally do. What my dad was trying to tell me all those months ago.

And yet, there’s still one last question I have. Something that’s been bothering me for a long time.

“Dad,” I ask—I have to, while I have him here. “Why did you save Officer Hiyoshi that night in the woods?”

His mouth curls upward into a smile. I see the glint of wetness in his eyes.

“If I’ve taught you well, Seung”—Dad winks—“you ought to be able to answer that one for yourself.”

A flash of green light bursts silently through the dark, filling my field of vision. I throw my hands over my eyes—

CLANG!

CLANG!

What is that—

I open my eyes. A dark metal ceiling looms low overhead; the dim lamp flickers in the hallway on the other side of the bars. I sit up, blinking; next to me lies the lice-infested cot. I’m back in the prison cell.

I look down at my hands, turning them over. Suddenly my head feels totally clear. My hands, thank the spirits, are just mine.

CLANG!

I turn to see Eunji slamming herself again and again at the iron bars of our prison cell. She grunts, grimacing as her shoulder collides with the metal. She takes a step back and hurls herself once more at the barrier, to no avail.

“Well, look who’s awake.”

I turn to look for the voice. Sitting with her knees tucked in, leaning against the wall of the adjacent cell, is Jin. She’s blindfolded, her hands bound tight behind her back. Her hair is a total mess, her face smudged and bruised. But she’s alive.

CLANG!

“You know it’s no use,” Jin calls. “Those bars are designed to hold back people with Dragon ki.”

Eunji shakes her head, slamming herself into the bars once more with a clang before turning away, dejected.

I try to speak but end up coughing; my throat is totally dry, my tongue scratchy and parched. My stomach feels like it’s shriveled down to the size of a pebble.

“H-how long was I out?” I manage, coughing.

“I don’t know. A day or two,” Jin says.

A whole day ? Two days?!

“Hard to say, since there’s no sunlight down here.”

Eunji brings me a small pail of water from the corner.

I scramble at it, nearly overturning the pail as I bring it to my lips.

Water pours out the side of my mouth, running down my chin and spilling over my shirt as I gulp down as much as I can.

The water tastes foul, as if it’s been lying stagnant for weeks.

Finally, I put the pail down. My stomach turns, and I bend over, trying hard not to retch.

Eunji helps hold me up, rubbing my shoulder from behind with one hand.

“Easy there,” she says. “You’ve been out for a while…”

I wipe my mouth and frown, noticing something. There’s a rumbling sound coming from somewhere beyond the ceiling. Like the distant roar of a waterfall, or a building rattling in the wind…

Or…

Or a crowd of voices. Shouting. Chanting. Screaming.

“What’s…that sound?” I whisper, a chill running through me.

Jin lifts her chin, grimacing through the blindfold.

“That’s our final destination,” she says. Her head hangs limp again. I can see a black ooze spilling out into the air around her ears. Not a ray of hope shines out through that cloud.

“Our what? I don’t—”

“It’s the final Tiger Slaying Ceremony,” Jin says.

And then I get it.

That sound I’m hearing…

“That’s the audience,” I whisper.

The roaring from above seems to grow louder, as if in response to my realization. It’s a thunderous, rolling wave of sound. There must be thousands of people up there.

We’re being held underground. Somewhere under Hannam City. Beneath an enormous arena, a plaza, or a stage, perhaps—

A shudder passes through me.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” I mutter, rising to my feet.

“You’re wasting your energy,” Jin says.

“If the Slaying Ceremony hasn’t started yet, that means the tiger is still—”

“Seung, it’s over,” Jin says. “All those people gathered overhead? That means the Slaying is about to start. And there’s no way for us to get out of here in time.”

Strangely, Jin’s attitude seems almost…peaceful. There was always a compressed energy to her, a relentlessness that never seemed to let up beneath the surface. Now it’s totally spent. She’s like a burned-up fuse.

“You know, I always sort of had a feeling that this is how I’d go,” she says. Her voice catches a little. “Maybe it’s for the best. Better to go down fighting than growing old and bitter and dying somewhere alone.”

Eunji and I trade a glance.

“Jin—” I begin.

“All this stuff that’s broken in me can finally be at peace now.” Jin cuts me off. “They broke it; fine, they can have it. At least now I can rest.”

“You’re not broken, Jin.”

“I am. You wanna know how I know I am?” Her chest rises and falls gradually, and I can feel her fighting tears back. I want to tell her it’s all right, that she can let them out, that we’re here for her. But sometimes with Jin, I’ve come to learn, you just have to let her be.

“Because,” she goes on, a strange smile floating on her lips, “I’ve never been afraid of losing. I’ve lost a million times before. Losing only fuels me further. The thing that really scared me is…what if we won ?”

Eunji’s brow knits. “What are you saying?”

Jin’s teeth flash in the dark. “What if we beat the empire, but this hole inside me, the emptiness that can’t be filled—what if it didn’t go away? What if I was just broken forever, and nothing could ever make it stop?”

Something echoes down the corridor—the metal sound of heavy soldiers’ footsteps clanking on the floor.

There’s several of them passing by on patrol, it sounds like.

Immediately Jin freezes. Her entire body goes hard as a plank of wood, and the blood rushes out of her face, leaving her cheeks pallid and green.

The black cloud over her shoulders evaporates in an instant.

In its place, a pulsing, red alarm flashes out of her with each heartbeat.

“No, n—” Jin shudders, overcome by some memory. “No, this can’t be happening—”

She begins to flail, kicking her feet uselessly against the floor, straining against the bonds tying her wrists. I feel my own heart pounding now as a poisonous, blood-red storm cloud rises out, surrounding her—

Taking the form of some memory, some terrible memory, forming wispy, ghostlike hands that wrap around her neck and squeeze, twisting—

“Jin! What’s happening?” Eunji says as Jin seizes, her wrists going red from where they’re chafing against the cuffs—

“I can’t,” Jin whispers repeatedly. “I can’t do this again, I can’t—”

“Hey. It’s just the patrol,” Eunji says. “They’re just walking past—”

And I know where Jin is now. She’s back in the Serpent Queendom, reliving every horror she ever experienced at the hands of those soldiers.

I have to do something. I rush to the bars between us.

As quickly as I can, I reach down into my memory, feeling the warmth and camaraderie of the Resistance members in the factory, Jin’s teen collaborators.

I summon that feeling, letting it grow into a golden beam of sunlight, which I wash through my hands over Jin.

The light settles over her shoulders, sinking into her.

Jin shudders another time before her shoulders fall. She sinks to the floor, lying down in a fetal position.

I can hardly move a muscle as Eunji and I watch her disappear into sleep. This fearsome, incredible leader—I admire her so much. Sometimes I’m afraid of her. But now…

I think of Jin’s story: her life as an orphan—the hardness that she had no choice to build up all her life—the utter solitude of a childhood without anyone looking after her but herself. I think of the terrors she went through.

I think of her cruelty. I remember the knife glinting in her hand, the darkness in her eyes.

And it hits me: the reason Dad saved Officer Hiyoshi that night in the woods.

All at once, I know why I can’t abandon Jin now—or anyone else, for that matter. I know immediately why I can forgive her. And from that, why I can forgive myself.

Maybe, even after all that they’ve done, I can forgive the Dragon Empire too.

It’s such a simple reason. The simplest of all. But it’s something more powerful than I ever knew.

We are all human.

For some time, Eunji and I fall into a silence punctuated only by the drip, drip of a leak from the ceiling into a puddle on the cell floor, accompanied all the time by the distant roar of the crowd waiting above our heads for the Slaying Ceremony to begin.

I look over to Eunji. She looks crestfallen and disturbed.

“I wish you guys could have started on a better foot,” I mutter. I don’t want Eunji to think badly of Jin, despite everything. “You’ve only ever seen the part of her that’s most in pain.”

“I don’t know,” Eunji says quietly. “I don’t know what they put her through…but maybe I’d feel the same way if I were in her shoes.”

She falls silent for a bit.

“She’s tough,” Eunji says finally. “She’s a fighter.”

“Like someone else I know,” I say. Her lips twitch, a slight smile. “I never thanked you, by the way,” I add.

“Thanked me?”

“For saving my life, back on the boat.”

“Oh,” says Eunji. “You don’t have to thank me. Of course I’d do that.”

A little lock of her hair has fallen out of place. I want to brush it aside, but something holds me back. There’s some distance between Eunji and me, after all we’ve been through apart. A gap between us that I don’t know how to bridge.

What can I say to her? How can I reach through to her—how can we find each other again?

Despite how much we’ve grown, I do feel that, deep inside us, we’re still the same kids who bumped into each other at that first Slaying.

Eunji hangs her head. I turn to look at her. She opens her mouth to speak.