Scene 1. The Bunker
There was light at the end of the passage.
A kerosene lamp. Candles. Yellow light flickered on earthen walls. Lee Kang emerged from the passage and stepped into that light.
Wide. An underground bunker. The ceiling braced by earth and wooden beams. Cots set along both walls. People lay on the cots. The wounded. One with a bandaged arm. One with no leg. In a corner, people sat in a circle cleaning rifles. The smell of iron and oil.
Lee Kang crossed through the middle of it.
Blood-soaked. Half-naked. A girl on his back. Medicine bottles cradled in his chest. Ash and bloodstains caked on his soles.
Every motion in the bunker stopped.
The hands cleaning rifles stopped. The hands winding bandages stopped. Eyes turned toward Lee Kang. A murmuring rose. Low. Korean. Not Japanese. But to Lee Kang's ears, both held no meaning. Background noise.
Lee Kang walked through the murmuring.
He looked for an empty cot. In a corner. An empty wooden cot. He knelt before it. Unbound Yeonhwa from his back. Untied the bag strap, took Yeonhwa in both arms, and laid her on the cot.
Carefully.
Supporting her head. Straightening her legs. Folding her limp arms over her chest.
His hand arranged the hair beside Yeonhwa's face. Hair matted with dirt and ash. His fingers swept it back.
The people in the bunker were watching Lee Kang.
Lee Kang did not look at them.
He looked only at Yeonhwa.
Scene 2. Poison
The search party leader brought a man.
Middle-aged. Wearing glasses. An old leather bag in his hand. A physician's bag. The leader shoved the man's back. The man was pushed toward Lee Kang. As he was pushed, he saw Lee Kang's appearance. The man's feet faltered.
"This is the physician." The leader said. "He'll see to your—to that person."
Lee Kang stood.
He drew the medicine bottles from his chest. Onto the wooden table beside the cot. One by one. The ether bottle. Three opium tinctures. The catalyst. Last, the softened packet. The glass struck the wooden boards with a sound. Tok. Tok.
"Mix them."
Lee Kang said.
The physician looked at the bottles on the table. Read the labels. His eyes stopped at one bottle. The next. The next. The eyes behind his glasses grew steadily wider.
"This is..." The physician's voice cracked. "Where did you get this."
"I said mix them."
Lee Kang said again.
The physician lifted the ether bottle. Held it to the light. Read the label again. His hands began to shake. He lifted the opium tincture bottle. The catalyst bottle. The small bottle with the white label. He read the Japanese. The color drained from his face.
"This..." The physician set the bottle on the table. As if dropping it. "This is not medicine."
Lee Kang's eyes turned toward the physician.
"This is—" The physician's voice quickened. Trembling. "The ether is an anesthetic. And unpurified at that. This opium is a concentrate. This white bottle—do you know what this is? This burns the nerves. Mix these and put them into a person, and—"
The physician swallowed.
"They die. On the spot."
The bunker went quiet.
Lee Kang's expression did not change.
"Mix them."
Lee Kang said a third time.
The physician's mouth fell open. The face of someone who could not comprehend Lee Kang's words. The face of someone doubting whether Lee Kang had even heard what he had just said. The physician turned to the leader. With eyes asking for help.
The leader started to open his mouth.
"Listen to me." The physician again, to Lee Kang. More distinctly. As though speaking to a small child. "Hear my words. These materials don't save a person, they kill. I don't know who told you this was medicine, but that was a lie—"
"A lie."
Lee Kang seized the word.
The physician stopped.
Inside Lee Kang's head, that word turned. A lie. The physician said it was a lie. That someone had lied. But Lee Kang's brain caught the sentence differently. The one who had lied was not Doctor Jang. Doctor Jang was dead. The one who was lying was—
Lee Kang's eyes looked at the physician.
This one doesn't want to make it.
Something began to rise inside Lee Kang's chest. A cold thing. The thought that the physician was making excuses because he did not want to make the medicine. The word poison. The word die. That was the excuse of someone unwilling to make it.
Lee Kang's hand moved.
Scene 3. The Collar
Lee Kang's hand caught the physician's collar.
One hand. He gripped the lapel and lifted. The physician's toes left the earthen floor. His glasses tilted to one side. The physician's hands grabbed Lee Kang's arm. Grabbed and hung. Weight loaded onto it. The through-and-through in Lee Kang's shoulder pulled. He ignored it.
"Mix them."
Lee Kang said. Before the physician's face.
"They'll die!" The physician shouted. Thrashing. "Put it in her and that girl dies! I'm a doctor! Listen to my—"
"Doctor Jang made it."
Lee Kang said.
Low. Pressing down the physician's shout.
"That medicine. The yellow medicine. I drank it dozens of times. I didn't die. So it's medicine. You just have to make the same thing."
The physician's eyes looked at Lee Kang. The thrashing stopped. Still hanging. Something else surfaced in the physician's eyes. Not fear. Something laid over the fear. Eyes that had grasped this monster was bound to some terribly broken belief. Eyes that realized persuasion would not get through.
"Comrade!"
The leader cut in. Drawing close to Lee Kang's side. Raising a hand. To calm him.
"The physician will make it. Put him down. The physician—didn't he say he'd make it."
The leader's eyes turned to the physician. Fast. A glance only the physician would read. If you want to live, say yes.Just soothe this madman for now.
The physician's eyes received that glance.
The physician's mouth opened. Closed. Opened.
"...I-I'll make it."
The physician said.
His voice trembled.
"I'll make it. Put me down."
Lee Kang's hand set the physician down.
The physician's feet met the earthen floor. He staggered. Straightened his tilted glasses. His hands were shaking badly.
Lee Kang stood before the physician.
"I'll tell you the method."
Lee Kang said.
The physician looked at Lee Kang.
"Ether first. Then the opium. The small bottle—Doctor Jang added it last. And then the boiled water of the packet. It has to turn yellow."
Lee Kang spoke recalling Doctor Jang's hands. Less recalling than reciting what was inscribed. The motions of Doctor Jang making the medicine. What Lee Kang had watched dozens of times. The order. The proportions. But that was only the surface Lee Kang had seen. The true ingredient of the yellow medicine was not on this table.
The true ingredient lay on the cot.
Lee Kang did not know it.
"Yellow."
Lee Kang said once more.
The physician's hands moved toward the bottles on the table. Trembling. The physician looked at Lee Kang once. At the leader once. The leader nodded, faintly.
The physician took the ether bottle.
Scene 4. The Color Yellow
The physician began to mix the medicine.
In a bowl. A brass bowl the partisans had brought. The physician's hand opened the cap of the ether bottle. A smell rose. A vicious one. A chemical sweetness. It stabbed the air of the bunker. A wounded man nearby coughed.
The physician poured ether into the bowl. A little. His hands shook so badly that gauging the amount was difficult. The physician's eyes flicked toward Lee Kang. Lee Kang was watching. The physician poured only enough not to kill. Very little.
He opened the opium tincture.
Brown liquid. A dense smell. Over the ether's sweetness, something heavy settled. The physician dropped opium into the bowl. One drop. Two.
Lee Kang was watching it.
His eyes were watching inside the bowl. The liquids mixing. The two colors meeting. Lee Kang was waiting for it to turn yellow. Like Doctor Jang's medicine. Like the amber yellow medicine.
He opened the catalyst.
The white bottle. The physician's hand shook the worst here. A hand that knew this killed people. The physician looked at Lee Kang. Lee Kang's amber eyes were on the bowl. The physician pretended to pour the catalyst. He tilted the cap. But poured almost nothing. Blocking the bottle's mouth with his finger. So that not a single drop fell.
Lee Kang did not notice.
Because his eyes were only on the color inside the bowl.
The physician put the packet's softened herbs into the bowl. Licorice and peony steeped in muddy water. As they dissolved, a yellow color leached out. The liquid in the bowl turned a cloudy yellow.
It was yellow.
The corner of Lee Kang's mouth lifted.
Slowly. Watching the yellow liquid in the bowl. Whether it was the same color as the true yellow medicine, Lee Kang could not gauge. Yellow was enough. Yellow was the yellow medicine.
Lee Kang returned to the cot.
He knelt beside Yeonhwa. Looked down at her face. A pale face. Bloodless lips. Eyes closed. His hand touched Yeonhwa's cheek. Cold.
"The medicine's ready."
Lee Kang whispered.
Into Yeonhwa's ear. Into the unconscious ear.
"Now you just take it. You'll be all better."
A smile took its place at the corner of his mouth. The most saved face in the world. Over a blood-soaked face. Over the dried blood at his mouth. Over the flesh between his teeth. Over all of it, a tender smile settled.
His hand stroked Yeonhwa's hair.
The people in the bunker were watching the scene.
A blood-soaked monster stroking the hair of a dying girl, calling a poison that kills people medicine, and smiling.
The physician stood frozen, holding the bowl.
The leader watched the monster's back from behind. His eyes narrowed. How to take this uncontrollable weapon in hand. How to aim it. How to hurl it at the heart of the Empire. The calculation turned inside the leader's head.
The vicious smell of pharmaceuticals filled the bunker.
Lee Kang could not smell it.
In Lee Kang's nose, there was the smell of lilac.
From Yeonhwa's hair.
A smell no one else could detect.