He doesn't know anything:
where they're taking him, who is taking him, or why him of all people on earth.
All he knows is that it'll be a long time before he can see his family ever
again. And he knows that ever is a long time.
Thunder wakes up in a damp
cave, how much later of which he isn't sure. There’s a fire at one wall and
shabby furniture looking as if piled at the other wall. He turns his head
to an odd crinkling sound. A girl, hunched over and wearing dirty rags, kneels
next to a chair and crumples up a small wrapper. Food.
He’s suddenly aware of his
hunger; it sneaks up on him like a serpent and strikes him when he should be
expecting it but isn't; it frustrates him to see a small pile of granola
bar pieces stacked on a piece of cloth, which looks as if it came from the
girl’s clothes, sitting next to his hand. He tries to sit up and clutches his
head when he flops back down involuntarily, shutting his eyes. Something pokes
his lips.
“Here.” He parts them and
opens his eyes to see that the girl is holding a straw and a can of some sort
of soup in her outstretched hands. “Drink,” she encourages him in a hoarse
rasp. “Not poisoned. Try. Had some crackers.” She shrugs. “Gone now.”
He doesn't know what to
make of her broken English, but heeds her order anyways. Although the soup
tastes watered down, he sips it slowly and blatantly watches the girl. When he
finishes, she doesn't go away. Instead, she sets the can and straw on the strip
of cloth and picks up a chunk of granola bar. She feeds him with her own hands,
completely disregarding his normal need for personal space.
“Where am I?” he asks when
he swallows the last piece.
She doesn’t make a noise
as she stands up to put the can and straw on a rickety table. He begins to think
that she doesn't know what to say until she speaks once again. “Don't know.”
“How long have you been
here?”
“Don’t know.”
He holds her steady gaze
and feels a sense dread creep into his chest. “Do you have a name?”
She tilts her head at the
sturdy metal door. “Kid. They call me ‘kid’.”
“What do I call you?”
She shrugs hopelessly.
“Anything you want.”
Time passes and passes and
passes. Thunder, not used to not having anything at all to do other than
survive, resorts to categorizing bits of dirt, gravel, and sand. In the corner he
sits in, he reaches the conclusion that there is less dirt than gravel and less
gravel than sand. He brushes off the particles to the best of his ability and
twists his upper body around to see what the girl is doing.
She remains by the fire,
tending to it with a long metal rod as if her life depends on it, and never
fails to blink twice on every count of six as she does so. Even with the light
cast from the fire, parts of the cave are still submerged in semi-darkness.
The metal door swings open
noisily and the girl stands quickly, motioning to him to do the same. A man strides
in and smiles smugly with a dirty mouth, showing stained yellow teeth and blackish spots
near his bleeding red gums. His stiff wool shirt pulls tight over his
protruding stomach and his starched pants drag along the dusty ground of the
passageway.
Thunder shudders from his
stance and copies the girl’s position with his hands behind his head and knees shoulder-width
apart.
The man begins to yell in
a mix of languages Thunder’s never heard of before. He watches in unmasked
horror as the man jerks the girl up to her feet and drags her away while she
screams at Thunder not to move. He stays there paralyzed in fear until the door
closes behind them. Too late to do anything, he lowers his head in shame.
Much later, the door opens
again and someone tosses the girl into the room. Thunder rises from his spot
and cries out indignantly as he wrestles her hands from her face. Bruises larger
than the size of his own fists discolor her pale arms and a series of five cuts
each about the length of his index finger mars each side of her face.
“No worry. Not
cri-ti-cal,” she stumbles over the pronunciation as Thunder retrieves a first
aid kit from underneath the table. “Careful. Very little dis-in-fec-tant.” He
tears off the cuff of his sleeve and folds it so that he can use the clean side
of it. Slowly, he dabs at the cuts with a few drops of disinfectant.
“Does this happen often?”
A nod.
“By that guy?”
A shrug.
“Multiple people?”
A nod.
She sits up, supported by Thunder’s
arms. “They won't get you, promise.”
“Promise.”
Thunder protests when the
girl offers him three-quarters of a can of beans, their second meal since Thunder
had woken. They compromise finally on the girl eating half but it does nothing
to atone Thunder's guilt. She teaches him how to tell when it is day or night
with the dampness of the cracks in the walls. He teaches her English by
emptying an old sandbag and using a broken chair leg to write in the sand.
They start keeping track
of how long Thunder has been in the cave. Every night adds another strike made
by a sharp piece of glass on the floor. It takes him seven tries to sharpen the
glass enough to make a noticeable strike, but the girl tells him it's worth it,
and just like that, he stops to smile at the ice-cold stone floor as warmth
flushes across his face.
"How long has it
been?" he croaks as he pushes himself up on weakening arms and makes a
grab for the water canteen. He hears some shuffling at the other end of the
cave.
"Rain." The girl's
voice holds so much despair in the single syllable that it makes Thunder choke
mid-swallow.
"What rain? You can
tell the weather from the inside of a cave?"
She shakes her head
frantically, hands clamped over her mouth and despair reflected in her clear
blue eyes, and as Thunder stands she looks down at the spot near the cave wall
where the strikes are carved.
"Gone. All
gone."
Thunder doesn't know when
the last time he's truly cried but he does know it's been a long time since
then. He doesn't mind though, soothing the girl through his own tears and
hiccups as she blames herself for never doing a good enough job for anything.
He hushes her and strokes
her hair with a steady hand. "I shouldn't have chosen somewhere that is so
vulnerable to being washed away. I should have done better."
"My fault," she
repeats.
"No, it's not your
fault. Nothing is your fault. I promise," he continues as she finally
stops crying. "It's okay."
She tilts her head up and
looks at him with a broken expression. "Promise?"
"Promise."
That night, he stays by
her side singing and whispering as she sleeps with her head resting on his lap.
"I'll keep my
promises. I promise. I really do, Jin-sok*. I really do."
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