Page 6 of The Last Tiger

I look up at the sky for help. A milky spread of constellations stares down at me, twinkling.

Once I’ve passed the Exam —I seethe inwardly— once I have ki, they won’t ever dare to bother us again.

The creek burbles cheerfully in the valley on my way up to the Choi household.

A week has passed since the policeman’s visit; a week since the day Eunji and I made our deal in the kimchi fridge.

As I round the last bend in the mountain path, the enormous Choi family compound comes into view.

The front of the house is ringed by a stately, ornate earthen wall with a huge traditional gate in the center.

The Choi family insignia is displayed prominently there on a giant paper scroll, written in fine calligraphy in Dragon script.

I slip through the carefully hidden side door for the help, nodding to the bored-looking guard who sits inside the gate on a folding chair.

After working here for a year, I could practically draw a map of this place with my eyes closed.

I pick up the cleaning supplies from the side closet in the courtyard, then make my way through the central garden to the western compound, where Eunji lives.

Inside the carefully landscaped courtyard, a collection of cherry blossom trees presides over a series of winding paths laid with sculpted stones.

Small bushes of mugunghwa flowers are planted subtly and tastefully along the path, in the shadows of the cherry blossoms. The garden is at its most breathtaking during the spring, but even now, in late fall, it’s still exquisite.

Behind everything, looming over the majestic sloped-roof buildings, the dark silhouettes of the mountains rise mutely into the sky.

I take in a long inhale, then let it out, mesmerized.

I walk under one of the carefully pruned cherry blossom trees, leaning close to it. The branch quivers and springs back as I lift my finger, setting the leaves fluttering.

Sometimes, when I come here, I can just forget about the world outside.

I shake my head slightly, caught up in the wonder of it all, before stepping up to the door of the western compound. I slip off my shoes there and step into the hall, carrying my cleaning supplies. Then I make my way to the drawing room—a seldom-used area at the far end of the manor.

I slide open the door.

Inside, Choi Eunji sits at a table by the window, facing away from me, hunched over as she furiously scribbles in a notebook.

Her seafoam-green skirt flows past her ankles to the floor; a light pink blouse gracefully cascades over her shoulders.

Her hair falls in a straight, long braid draping down her back.

Standing there in the archway, I watch her for a moment, hesitating to disturb the scene. Eunji’s mouth purses in slight exasperation as she focuses on whatever it is she’s working on. Her foot taps absentmindedly under the table.

Finally, I clear my throat, nervous.

“Oh!” She whips around. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Excuse me for intruding, miss.” I make sure to bow deeply, as servants in the Choi household are required to. “I just came to sweep the room.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Eunji says, wrinkling her nose. “The bowing, I mean. Or the cleaning, actually. No one ever uses this room.”

“Well, it is my job…” I glance back into the hallway, then out the window, for passersby. It still feels strange being in a room alone with her. This is Choi Eunji after all. Eunji follows my gaze.

“It’s just us two here. Don’t worry,” she whispers, a conspiratorial note entering her voice. “I had the servant who normally sweeps on this side reassigned to the eastern compound.”

“What? Why?”

“To…make sure we’d be alone.” Her grin drops. “Also, you can just call me Eunji, okay? You can speak familiarly with me.”

My heart skips a beat. I glance around at the drawing room, eager to look anywhere but straight at her.

The walls are made from a fine, expensive paper as warm and white as cow’s milk.

A huge metal chest, adorned with silver and jade handles, sits stately in the corner.

A painting on the wall shows two cranes, one with its feet stuck in the water, the other just beginning to take flight.

“I don’t mean to intrude…” I hesitate. “But…what if the other servant gets curious why you moved him? If we’re seen alone together…we’re going to seem doubly suspicious, aren’t we?”

“Then let’s not be seen.” Eunji crosses her arms.

“Right, since you have such a great track record of not being seen .”

She sticks out her chin, annoyance flickering across her face.

I kick myself mentally. I can’t mess this up. I need her; this is the only opportunity I’ve got. And we’re not off to a good start. I don’t want to push Eunji any further—not while we both possess enough incriminating information to effectively ruin each other’s lives as we know them.

Luckily, Eunji seems to remember that, too, because she drops the scowl and shrugs.

“Look,” she says. “We’re not doing anything wrong, are we? You just happen to be cleaning here, while I just happen to be studying in my own living room. Right?”

“Yes,” I agree, relieved. I set my bucket and mop on the floor. “I’m just cleaning here.”

“And I’m just studying.”

“Right.”

“Good.”

“Fine.”

I grab a rag and start dusting the outer edges of the room. Eunji splays a stack of books across the table, flipping through them.

“To start,” she muses, leafing through a textbook, “how much do you know already? How much prep work have you done so far?”

“Just consider me a blank slate.”

“Ah.” She looks up, aghast. “Then…we’ll have to move quickly. We have eight months until the Exam, which means two months each to cover all four sections. There’s History of the Dragon Empire, Classical Literature, Philosophical Foundations of Ki Practice, and—

“Mathematics,” I finish.

“I thought you said you were a blank slate,” Eunji says, amused.

“Remember back when you and your tutor were going over the math section last spring? You were having trouble with trigonometry, right? You kept breaking your pencil tips to buy yourself more time between each new question. I had to pick them up afterward.”

“Huh. Sounds like you picked up more than pencil tips.”

“Maybe I did,” I say, hope blooming in my chest.

“Let’s find out.”

Eunji opens a book and begins to read aloud while I continue cleaning the room.

“How many years ago,” she says, “did the Tiger Colonies become a part of the Dragon Empire?”

“Around forty, right?”

“Be specific,” Eunji pushes. “How many years ago— exactly how many?”

How hard could this be? I wonder, digging a rag-covered fingertip into the edge where the molding and the wall meet. I’ve grown up in the empire my whole life, after all.

“We have to know the exact date?” I ask, hesitating.

“The exact date. It’s very important, or you’ll get the whole question wrong. The examiners pay excruciating attention to detail.”

“I don’t know.”

“It was forty-three years ago. The empire liberated us from our so-called status as a vassal state to the Serpent Queendom in the twenty-first year of the one hundred twenty-second Dragon Emperor.”

“?‘Liberated’? You mean they invaded and seized Hannam City, right?”

Eunji lowers the book and gives me a meaningful look.

“Seung, you’re learning History of the Dragon Empire here—not the history of the Tiger Colonies, okay?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I grimace, annoyed for some reason.

“It means we study the empire’s version of history. That’s really important, okay? If you write down anything on the Exam that challenges the empire’s preferred narrative, you’ll fail for sure.”

I bite down my retort before it comes out. What I want to say is how stupid this is. But I really don’t want to look like an ungrateful student right now. And I don’t want to push Eunji’s patience any further than I have to.

Eunji turns the textbook around so I can see it over her shoulder. She reads aloud from the page:

The Eastern Seas have been home to three peoples going back into antiquity. The greatest of these was always the Dragon people: Mighty, beneficent, our extraordinary island nation was ultimately destined to rule the world.

The Dragon Empire is the origin of ki powers.

They are a blessing bestowed by the Dragon spirits as a gift to the Dragon people alone; no other nation has ki.

In the past, ki was restricted solely to the Dragon elites.

But through his great beneficence, the 122nd Dragon Emperor declared that we would no longer keep these ki powers to ourselves but would share them with the rest of the world.

The Dragon Empire began to spread over the Eastern Seas, sharing our values, modern technology, and culture with lesser, neighboring peoples. As other nations joined the empire as colonies, the most promising of their youth were selected by examination to learn ki and enter the ruling class.

The Tiger Colonies are fortunate to have such a fate.

In the past, the onetime medieval Tiger Kingdom was a backward, pastoral land of gentle farmers and shamans.

Due to their lack of ki and advanced culture, the Tiger people were always illiterate and impoverished.

For centuries, the enfeebled Tiger nation was a vassal state to the Serpent Queendom.

After liberation, the Tiger Colonies rapidly modernized, due to their acquisition of Dragon language and culture.

The Serpent Queendom, arch nemesis of the Dragon Empire, is a vast, evil land of depravity, backwardness, and crime.

After the dawn of the modern age, when their old imperial system was torn down, the Serpent Queendom descended into chaos.

Sensing that the time was right for the empire to bring justice and peace to their land, the 124th Dragon Emperor declared that a righteous world war would be waged against the remnants of the once-great Serpent Queendom to bring ki, liberty, and prosperity to this evil nation.