Chapter 1

–1989–

Year of the Earth Dragon

Seoul, South Korea

It is a dark, twisting alleyway of sinuous shadows.

Rain splatters on the tin-roofs and quenches the broken asphalt as I run and run, run from my pursuers, in a direction I know not where. The streets of the South wound over and across and into each other like a mass of writhing snakes, unlike the spacious boulevards of the North.

But those were mere complaints. The only thing I could think of was to find a place – a place to hide, and fast.

"JEOGI-DA!" ('Over there!')

"JAAB-AH!" ('Catch her!')

The three men holler on my tail, pointing at my lone fleeing figure.

Heavy coats ruffling, metaled boots crushing the snails that have come out for the autumn rain, they launch themselves off the railing and roll into the alleyway one by one, carrying their momentum without stopping for breath. A glint of thin ropes on two of the men's arms; two machetes on the third.

I hear an almost inaudible 'whiff' as an improvised lasso snares my leg and knee. I hurriedly grab onto the main rope and pull it instead, so it won't be tightened like a noose does – I've seen it a lot – but I abandon my right shoe as I roll to fling it away. One of the men curses.

I run unbalanced with only my school socks on the right, kicking away the base of a mountainous garbage pile with my shoed left. The men grumble and slow a moment to shove aside falling fish-bones and apple peels, but they do not stop.

No matter how fast I ran, I knew I couldn't last forever, even though I endured the passage through the Gobi. The men likely knew it too. The only place that could save me was indoors, where I had a chance to slip out from their sights, or at least ambush them, cripple their legs, but there was nothing at all for this stretch of the maze, all were boarded-up concrete shopping strips and sangas –

AHA!

I catch a glint of a locked glass door into what seems like an office building. High-rise, expansive, plenty of places to hide and then duck out when they're searching other floors.

Without hesitation, I crash myself through, ridding myself of the downpour; the three men chase expertly through the hole in the glass like some sort of formless snake, making no sound.

The lingering fragrance of tobacco pierces my nostrils, and so does the herb-like penchant of medicine shops. The crusty whiff of leather peeling off shoes by the emptied cobbler and the moldy smell of ventilation and air-shafts join in the fray. I hook a box of nails and tools from the cobbler's workbench in my sprint, throw off their lids, and hurl them back in my pursuer's direction. Rattles and clangs echo off floor and the narrow walls; one of the men yells Shibal! and seems to pause, likely because he stepped on those nails, but I don't dare turn to look for a second.

My hurried footsteps and those of the men disturb the eerie silence of the abandoned shops, with only blank mannequins in the dark to witness my desperation. None can offer me any help – the people have long gone home to sleep.

I fumble past a stairwell entry dimly lit in green and begin to climb as fast as I can. The higher floors would have plenty of places to hide, especially with their offices and all. The bottoms of most office buildings were shopping strips like this one; I'd hoped to lose them among the mannequins, but there wasn't a second I wasn't in their direct line of sight. If they had a gun, they would've already used it squarely on my scrawny back, so I could rule that out. But that also meant they wanted to bring me back alive, which was a thousand times worse: I would be sentenced to punishment beyond measure, methodically and tortuously re-educated in 'loyalty' camps, and forced to perform for the...

Climb, Reza, climb.

The stairwell floods with footsteps below that aren't my own. The men are climbing as well. I had to climb faster than them in order to be out of their line of sight, open an exit, and then duck into whichever floor could serve as my refuge. To do that, I also needed to be as quiet as possible, so they couldn't possibly surmise on which floor I decided to exit the stairwell.

No, to be accurate, I needed to be as noisy as possible, so that I could shroud my actual escape amidst the chaos of noise.

I throw my left shoe off and hurl it behind me, bouncing off the back wall and down the stairs. My wet socks make only a little noise as I hound up the steps, but they are still making wet prints upon concrete; I throw them off, only halting a brief moment, and scrunch them in my hand. I dig my pockets as I race up again, throwing a bag of marbles – just a few hours ago, I'd played them with my friends at school. The marbles clatter down the narrow staircases, their noises amplified; the men shout and curse. I hurriedly push open an exit onto a floor, jam and abandon my wet socks in the gap of those doors, and climb again, pulling the rail with all my might towards a chance at freedom.

The floor reads 6 now. Too close, way too close to my feint. 7 it is. I arrive at the seventh; I crane my neck to the skies, squinting my eye. 4, maybe 5 more floors to go. Okay. This was it. Now or never.

I open the stairwell exit as quietly as possible, the men just maybe 2 or 3 floors below – and I close it shut, running through the complete obscura of the darkened office, finding a small desk by a far corner of the floor, spying a dim shape of a box cutter knife among the cardboard heap and an abandoned pen. I snatch the two and hold them close as I curl myself up under the desk, heart racing, ears craning for the creaking open of the stairwell door about 40 meters away.

10 seconds pass.

20 seconds pass.

30.

60.

I peek my head ever so slightly to spy a different stairwell, different from where I entered, just 20 meters from me. A possible way out. The lights there were so dim that I hadn't noticed when I first entered.

I prepare to crawl out and make a run for it when a thin ray of dim green light pierces the darkness and illuminates the desks next to my figure. The ray narrows and extinguishes.

For a while, I hear nothing.

Then, soft footsteps upon the carpet.

They grow closer.

Ever closer.

I clasp my mouth shut.

The footsteps stop about five meters from me, when I realize I hadn't extended the box cutter knife. If he dared to look under here, I could stab him there and then, but I hadn't extended it... I curse myself for having wasted those 60 seconds.

The fabric of a man's overcoat squelches as he pauses to take in the surroundings. The steady drip-drip from the edges of his coat spatter the grey carpet in rhythm, slow and methodical as if in tune with the man. The footsteps begin anew, approaching and receding, the man's knees cracking and popping as he methodically checks under each desk.

I hear him to my right; he's already checked those desks. I wait for his footsteps to pass behind me towards the left, and I silently slip out from my refuge towards the desks on the right, and crawl under it, except at the last moment –

My leg hits one of the cardboard boxes.

Instantly, the man's footsteps stop. He cracks his fists and his neck and begins his approach.

Just 10 meters away.

Just 5.

Just 2.

It was now or never.

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Now or never.

Now or never.

Now or never.

I launch one of the cardboard boxes at his face from under the new desk. It tears into two with a shrill rip as the man brings down his machete.

I extend my cutter knife.

The man sights my formless figure in the dark. I hurl another box at him.

He makes a calculated swing, and cleaves it in two, and makes a grab for my throat.

I duck. My hair is caught instead and is pulled tight.

I slash my hair with the cutter knife to go under, and slice his wrist as I duck under him to roll away.

He drops his machete, but launches himself towards me and puts me in a chokehold.

I thrust the cutter knife wildly behind. It catches his coat in the struggle, but I pull it out, my head turning purple by the second.

I wait for a split second pause in our struggle, and thrust it backwards again, catching his spleen. Hot blood spurts from the wound.

The man in shock lightens his chokehold; I launch all my weight backwards, and crash the both of us into the corner of a desk.

He roars in pain; I duck out from under him, coughing, racing towards the machete. He grabs a cardboard box like a shield and runs full force at me. I make a wild swing with both of my hands, but he crashes into me before I can deliver the full force of the blow.

I fall backwards; he's on top of me.

He drives a vicious punch towards my face. It lands square.

For a full second, all is black. I cannot see; I can only taste blood.

But not yet. This isn't going to be my end.

I pull the pen I'd grabbed moments ago from my pocket, and drive it deep into the coat. It doesn't pierce the thick fabric.

I pull it out and drive it into his cheek. The man's grip loosens. I pull it out and then drive it in again, again, again.

He makes a garbling grab as I hoist myself up from under his weight, my vision swimming with stars. I sight the other stairwell and hurriedly limp there, only to hear unequivocal sounds coming from it. I rush to the other stairwell, only to hear the same.

I was surrounded.

The only way out was – damn it, now isn't the time to choose. I can only move, I can only do. That is and was always the choice given to me, Reza.

Without hesitation, I rush on a heavy swivel chair and kick it full force towards the window.

The window shatters. The swivel chair falls 7 storeys on top of a car, sounding off a shrill alarm.

If I can jump far, I can cover at least the 2 meter distance from this floor to the rooftop of another building next door. But it's a long drop; at least a floor. My knees were going to give way, but there was a reason to try. I will never go back.

I grab a spare cardboard box and sweep a stack of papers into it, and hurl it as hard as I can through the broken glass. By miracle it lands upon the rooftop of the other building.

The man I had struggled against was getting up again.

The frosty chill of autumn rain greets me as I stand upon the edge, ready to jump. If I mistime it, or fumble my leap, I'm as good as dead.

The doors of the two stairwells are kicked open. The other two men of the original three sight my lone figure, and sprint through.

Dead is better than being forced back to the North.

I leap –

A second seems to stretch into infinity as I fly through the air; I can see each raindrop suspended in their flight, the vertigo of seven storeys threatening to swallow me whole.

Then I land with a heavy thud on the cardboard boxes and paper on the rooftop of the building next door. I roll several meters, then get up to run again.

Though my landing was heavy, nothing has broken.

I hear two men land with a thud behind me, but I do not look.

The roofs are unlit; the rain comes down in sleeting sheets that drench me to the core. But no matter the rain that floods my eye or how my lungs feel like they will explode, I run, I run, I run; I run towards the South, towards the lights of central Seoul. That was the only choice given to me, to the girl named Kang Reza.

I leap from the rooftop I'm on onto a smaller building and race across.

I leap and jump and sprint and hoist myself over air-conditioning fans, ventilation pipes, and corrugated metal as fast as I can in erratic directions, the men growing more distant, looking this way and that to ascertain where I am through the frosty downpour.

I lose track of all time.

The rain begins to cease.

The rooftop landscape changes to that of wafting chimneys and empty laundry lines, and before I know it, I'm able to land onto a narrow street and alleyway lined by low-rising brick houses.

For a moment, all is quiet. The men are nowhere to be seen. But to stop here means death; worse than death come morning and I'm discovered out here. So I jog and jog towards the South, towards the Han-river.

Where to go from there? Make the river crossing? I don't know, but I have to find somewhere, anywhere, that I could be free from prying eyes. My parents once talked about immigrating to Miguk ("America") back in the day, and we had to do that through an embassy. South Korea was a launchpad, part of our great plan of escape from the North. But something prevented them from going further. My parents, they –

My parents...

My pace slows. I find myself limping by a quiet, dimly lit series of alleyways with tin roofs over my head and wide pink plastic pots lining the backstreets of houses and small shops. The occasional bark of a lone dog breaks the silence of the night.

It all happened so suddenly. Now that I lost my pursuers, the rush towards life and escape rolled out from me like receding tide, and grisly images of the evening before flooded my head:

"Mom, dad, I'm – "

I drop the plastic bags of groceries as I open the front door.

In the corridor of our little house – more a shack tucked away in a maze of other shacks – stands a man with machetes, wet with blood.

At his feet lies my mother. Her eyes, still open, stare into the open ceiling, mouth agape in a wordless scream. At my feet is my father, long gashes across his back, painting the floor red. My little brother lies slumped by the dining table, red blisters across his throat, his head at an angle disturbing to common sense.

The men's gaze snaps towards my lone figure standing by the frame of the front door. I freeze.

"Jae ddal?" ("The daughter?")

"Kang Re-za?" ("Kang Reza?")

"Jae-neun mo? Upsae?" ("What about her? Kill her too?")

"Ahni, jae-neun jaab-ah." ("No, bring her back.")

North Korean accents.

Another man emerges from the bathroom, leathery black gloves in hand.

I back away slowly.

"Agassi, iri-oshijyo – " (Young lady, why don't you come closer – ") he enunciates in serpentine fashion, but he cuts his speech as I break into a sprint, sprint away from home.

They would've caught me right away if not for my father who grabbed one of their ankles using the last ounce of his strength, tripping them over – they hacked his wrist away, his hand still attached to one of the men's ankles, as they began to give me chase.

And so in the span of a single evening, I lost my mother, father, and brother. Just like that. It all happened too quickly. I've found that faced with a shock like that, no tears actually come no matter how hard you try; perhaps it was also because all our blessings and thoughts of a better future away from the North, all the tribulations we endured in Mongolia and China, amounted to nothing.

Except me.

That's why I had to survive.

I closed my eyes and heaved heavy breaths, clutching the side of a concrete wall leading to one of the few public restrooms in the basement of a run-down shopping strip. It had been another hour or two, I didn't really care – from the time I'd finally lost the men. I had to wash myself, at least – not to look presentable, but to pass the bare minimum as to not draw suspicion when morning came; mud, filth, grime, and a tattered uniform, not to mention scratches and cuts that haven't closed. There was bound to be a network of such people out to get me, and these were obvious markers.

I turn the corner, but a figure suddenly emerges from the shadow and cups my mouth shut.

It is the same leathery black gloves.

I bite down on it hard, drawing blood, but the man is impervious. I flail my arms and legs, try to kick him in the groin, but he puts me in a chokehold, both of us crashing this way and that in the hallway, until I launch back with all my force, staggering him, and tumble us both through the door of a public restroom. I barely draw fresh breath when he puts me in a chokehold again, tighter this time.

"Gan-nah saekki, nuh da-dwenjul al-atji?" ("You wench, thought yourself so smart, huh?")

He was unbelievably strong. I could neither let out or let in a single whiff of breath, let alone a scream.

"Yeogisuh jukimyeon nugudo moreul-gguyha. Jaab-ah suh mo ha-gye," ("I'm gonna kill you here, and no one will know. Don't know why we waste our efforts on wenches like you to send to the North.")

I mouth help in futile silence as I try to break free.

But I can't.

I see the world lose its color. I feel the totality of blood pooled upon my bulging head, unable to make an inch down my neck. Starved, soon to turn purple, no, already purple.

Each of my efforts at a struggle only shuffle the both of us to different angles, the man heaving, his own veins bulging, to keep me in an iron hold. The world is fading to black. The only way out is if I have something, something sharp, a weapon –

A mirror above the sink. It reflected the image of the man and I. If I could break it, grab a shard, and drive it into his jugular –

Without thinking, I raise my left arm and smash it fist-first into the mirror at our reflections.

My fist meets the man's image in the mirror, cracking it, drawing droplets of my blood – and with a sizzle, a burst, a crack, a breaking like watermelon to a hammer – the man's head explodes behind me.