As much as I tried, I couldn’t leave the memories of that night behind me. To say that it emotionally and physically scarred me was an understatement, an under-exaggeration. It had done much worse. No one around me could have understood what happened to me, never experiencing it firsthand like I did. And the General had forbidden me from breathing a word about his doings outside of his chambers. No one would ever know. 

 
When I returned that night, the tears had streamed down my cheeks uncontrollably. I’d cried myself to sleep in the darkness, tossing and turning restlessly, frightened that it could happen again. He was a monster, handsome on the outside, evil on the inside, with serious problems. The thought of all the girls in South  Korea who admired him, awaiting his return, left a sickening feeling churn in my stomach. It almost made me sympathise with them. They didn’t know how much of a bastard that General was, being led to believe that he was doing good, bringing peace to the two countries, instead of bringing innocent people harm and trepidity. 
 
 

The scars he had caused took weeks to heal, my back covered in blisters that only brought me searing pain. I couldn’t bathe without crying out as the scars burned in my back, and the clothes, whose sole purpose was to keep me warm and comfortable, only brought much discomfort and even further pain. Pain that couldn’t even match the pain I felt in my heart.

I began to think that we had no chance of escape from that hell-hole. No chance to pursue my dreams in an attempt at real happiness. From a young age, I knew I wanted to be a dancer. Despite my mother’s commands of wanting me to follow in her footsteps, I longed to be something of my own. It was my passion. It set me free. 

 
When I danced, I left Earth and headed to a beautiful world, perfect in every way, only for me. Cherry Blossoms bloomed each day on the shores of the vast lake which expanded across the horizon without an end. The water gently washed over the surface of its banks, my reflection clear under the ripples of water as I twirled across the lush vegetation beneath my toes. It was a world so peaceful and calm, where I could feel my dreams come to life but long forgotten upon my arrival. 

 
Not being able to dance made me feel as though I was stuck in a world of darkness. There was no longer any light in my life, and it felt like part of me had faded away and died. My heart hurt because of it. Things weren’t ever going to get better for me, for any of us.
 

*****


“Sak, can you pass me that knife?” Sulli asked, rubbing her shoulder against mine as she leaned towards my side.

The kitchen was eerily silent that day, everyone working hard without rest ever since my incident. The other girls were afraid that the same would happen to them if they weren’t careful, but with soldiers everywhere around the camp, in pursuit of prey, it was difficult not to fall under their radar and suspicions. Soldiers looked for any faults they could find. Make the slightest mistake and you could be punished. Or dead. 


A few days after my incident, another had been picked on by them, scolded for dropping the pot of soup as she carried it across the kitchen. She hadn’t been as ‘lucky as me’. We didn’t know the truth about her punishment but we assumed she’d been killed due to her sudden disappearance. She never returned. Days later, her son died of pneumonia. He was 3 years old the day he died. It was his birthday. 
 

Death had become a part of our routine. 


“Oh, here,” I answered nonchalantly, handing it over with utmost care.


She murmured something I couldn’t distinguish before replying, “You seem quite distracted lately. A penny for your thoughts.” Her vision was focused downward as her fingers wrapped around the handle of the blade as she proceeded to cut some vegetables.

 
“It’s nothing. I’m just worried that something bad will happen to me,” I spoke, almost whispering, as I twisted my head in search of any prying eyes. 


“Don’t worry, Mei and I have promised that we won’t let anything bad to you. What does the General even do with you every night? I mean because he sends someone down for you every night I’m just curious as to what it is,” she asked curiously, the volume of her voice increasing slightly.

Everyone suddenly directed their attention towards the two of us as if they too were curious, and I could hear soft mumbles and murmurs in the background. I suppose they would be, especially if it was the General mentioned. Even if they knew they should have respected my privacy.


“Nothing. He does nothing with me. All I have to do is few errands,” I lied through my teeth, following his orders just as he’d asked. 

 
“Well, if you say so then okay. The General has you do ‘a few errands’,” She quoted me as she and the rest returned to their work as quickly as possible, in the event that a soldier came strolling through the door in search of a possible target.


From what I’d learned of Sulli in the amount of time I had of known her, she was shy and worrisome, but very intelligent. She had intent instincts, knowing whenever anyone was feeling upset or had a lot on their mind. Sulli’s mother died when she was age 3, after her sister had been born. From then on, she grew up under the care of her grandmother and distant father, but despite this she tried to remain happy and cheerful. All she could do in the camp was worry, worry about her grandmother, sister and father, who she hadn’t seen in the months we’d been there. On occasion, she would crack a joke to cheer up Mei or prank one of the others in the resting area, but nothing like she’d said she used to..                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Hours passed easily as we slaved away in the kitchen, soldiers patrolling once an hour. I brushed a hand through my coarse, cropped locks as the warmth increased drastically, the steam from the pots escaping into the air. The other girls snuck sly glances at me every few minutes, breaking into a giggle, whispering loudly as they turned back to each other. Once a freak, always a freak I suppose. 

 
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” one said in a sarcastic tone as she shoved me out of her path, causing me to fall backwards onto the ground. Sulli rushed to my side, hoisting me up back to my feet, the others laughing hysterically at the sight of me in shock. 


“I don’t know why you let them do this to you,” She said as I brushed the dirt off my dress, resting her hand on my arm in reassurance. 

 
‘I don’t, Sulli’, I wanted to say – I couldn’t fight back in a place like this, I had learnt that from my experiences with Nichkhun. I would just get myself hurt, get myself burned, and I already had so many scars – mentally and physically.

 …..

Dark orbs clashed with emerald. A sinister smirk clashing with blank emotion on the surface of fear and anguish. I forced myself to look back down, to avoid his mesmerizing, beautiful eyes, eyes which were hiding so much beneath them. I didn’t know what he would have been thinking behind them. I didn’t know if he would have been thinking about me, replaying the events that occurred the week earlier in his mind – hearing my screams and pleas as he forced the leather down onto my back.

Blisters ran along the length of my spine, the pain soaring through me every time my clothes clung onto my back. The scars stung. I couldn’t sleep at night, the tears pricking in my eyes each time I turned. I wanted to cry, but there were always too many people surrounding me. I wanted to soak myself in cold water, as if it would have been able to soothe my scars. Many a time, I even wanted to lie in the snow, my back bare, and the coolness of the ice numbing my skin.

I still couldn’t understand why he did what he had. I couldn’t understand what had made him do it, how he could have enjoyed it. What I did understand through the ordeal was that he enjoyed inflicting pain on others – that fact had been made clear before, through the rumours and stories that flooded the camp about the things that General Nichkhun had done, and the people he had killed or hurt.

He was cruel, sick and twisted.

“Look at me.” His words broke through the silence that surrounded us.

I didn’t want to obey him. Not after what he had done. I didn’t want to obey someone who was just going to hurt me when I did. But not obeying him was still going to bring me pain, it would cause even more pain. My heart couldn’t deal with any more. It was just going to shatter.

My lack of obedience to that point that it bothered him. It bothered him in a way that from the corner of my eye I could see him fidgeting in frustration. He wanted to do something to me, I could sense it. Inflict more pain? Showcase more of his sadistic qualities? He was trying to restrain himself.

“Look at me, Victoria.” The tone of his voice was harsher, firmer, with an indefinite quality of superiority.

The wind howled past the windows, the sounds flooding into the room. The cold air around us was still bitter, my fingertips dark and numbing. I lifted my head slightly as he shifted his weight towards me, what was left of my hair falling in curtains around my face. My eyes met his, his features expressionless while the anger within him was suppressed inside.

The coldness seemed to be affecting him too, I could tell from the way he crossed his arms over his chest and the tips of his ears reddening. He pressed his lips together in a straight line as midnight black locks fell into his eyes. For a while, he didn’t say anything. Nothing. He just stared at me, blank and expressionless, as if he was trying to read into me, see what was behind the surface.

I hated him.

He started to walk towards me, his shoulders back, arms hanging by his sides. Thunder roared outside – a storm was brewing. His face was still expressionless and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. He was such a complex individual, an enigma made up of millions of miniscule pieces.

He stood before me, and there were still no words uttered from between his lips. He never tore his eyes away from mine, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his either. I wanted to read into him. I wanted to know what he was thinking.

That bastard.

Sometime during my analogy, he had raised his hand from his side. His eyes still didn’t tear away. He lifted it and wrapped it around me. Dark orbs bore into mine. He pressed his hand firmly into my back, the fabric on my back sticking into the blisters and scars. The pain shot through me.

A cry escaped through my throat and I jerked forward, hoping he would drop his hand and the pain would subside. My skin burned and bled. Tears were threatening to fall.  His hand remained firm against my back, lips curling into a smirk.

“I want you…to beg,” He whispered, but his voice sounded so loud. I tried to suppress my tears, biting down on my lower lip as a lump caught in my throat. “I want you to cry and beg me to stop.”

He lifted his hand away briefly, the blisters and scars still stinging, the pain briefly subsiding. And for brief moment, I thought he still had some sanity in him, something that made him realise the mistakes he was making in inflicting this pain on me and the others. But I was wrong. There was no sanity in that monster.

His hand smacked against my back, the cry I had been suppressing tore through my throat and escaped into the air. I had never felt such pain – it was like venom was travelling through my veins and infecting every muscle in my body. My knees struggled under the weight and the pain and I dropped to the floor.

A second cry.

Tears dripped onto the floor beneath me. The fabric clung onto the blisters and scars. My heartrate increased, and the blood rushed through me. I wanted to tear my clothes away.

“Beg me, and I’ll stop.” The bastard spoke so calmly.

I wanted to kill him. I wanted to stab him and watch him bleed to death as he begged me to save him.

The pain rushed through me as I parted my lips, the words escaping with the third cry. “Please…” Tears flooded down my cheeks, the fiery rush burning. “Nichkhun…please stop.”

*****


“Aahhh! Mommy! Come back!” Mei screamed in fear, tossing and turning from side to side.

 My eyes shot open in shock as I turned to the little girl beside me, beads of sweat hanging on Mei’s forehead, her breaths short and heavy. In the dead of night, it would only take the slightest of sounds to wake me. Rays of moonlight shone onto her face, her distress and anxiety evident from the way she was curled up, hugging her knees, and the expression tugging on her features.

 Sulli peered into our bunk curiously, drowsily blinking her eyes open. She gently rose from her bed, dragging her feet across the floor as she sat herself down at the end of the bed. I could hear the annoyed grunts of encircling prisoners who had been awaken by Mei’s screams, sending angry glares in our direction as they attempted to drift into a deep slumber. Our energy was lost by the long days of work and we could only attain rest in our sleep.


I cradled her in my arms like a baby, rocking her back and forth until she was peacefully back to sleep. It had become a routine. Those dreams of hers were getting much worse by the day. It was apparent from her actions when she spoke about her mother that she desperately missed her. I too missed my own mother. I didn’t know how long exactly it had been when I last saw her. Many months? The images of her in my mind faded as the time passed and soon I wouldn’t even recognise her face.


“These dreams are getting really bad,” Sulli whispered as she gently her fingers through Mei’s hair.
 

“But there’s nothing we can really do,” I heaved a low sigh, laying Mei down peacefully by my side, tucking her beneath the blanket.


“Do you… do you think we could find her mother for her?” she asked.

The thought of finding her mother had already entered my mind days earlier when Mei had first been having these dreams. I considered going to look for myself but didn’t want myself or Mei to suffer from disappointment if I was unsuccessful. The population of the camp seemed to grow rapidly by day with more people arriving from China to North Korea and Kumo. The possibility of finding her was 1 in thousands.


“All we can do is hope that she’s somewhere around here,” I answered.


The next day as we continued with our normal routine of working in the kitchen, I couldn’t but ponder over the idea of Mei’s mother still being alive. Perhaps I’d been too skeptical over the idea that I had given the slightest thought over the opposing side. Whether she was alive or dead, Mei still deserved the right to know of her mother’s whereabouts – so she could put her thoughts about her mother to rest. The dreams may possibly have been a sign that she was out there and we just had to find her. 


Mei wandered the kitchen, back and forth between Sulli and me in boredom. Our days, like always, were long and strenuous, the seconds solemnly ticking away on the clock. Clean until our hands were filthy and wrinkled. Cook as our own stomachs grumbled in hunger. Avoid being the victim to the soldier’s cruel practical jokes, which could have killed us, as we tried to suppress our feelings of hatred towards them. 


“Mommy came into my dream last night,” Mei said, watching her feet as she stood closely by my side. 


“Oh, really?” I asked curiously even though I knew what the answer was.

 
“Yeah. She said she was worried but…but…  then she was gone. I screamed and I and I…” her voice was almost a whisper as her body began to tremble. The warm tears of sorrow spilled from her eyes, streaming down her once rosy cheeks as she slowly slid down to the ground, curling into a ball. I knelt down beside her, comfortingly patting her back as she cried. 


“It’s okay, sweetie. Don’t worry, your mommy should be fine,” I replied, trying to sooth the young girl.

 
“Saki, can you find my mommy for me?” she asked, brushing away the tear from the rim of her eye.
 

“I’ll do whatever I can.”

 

*****

 
I slowly crept forward, turning my head from side to side in search of any soldiers. Sulli squeezed my hand, in fear of being caught. The price of sneaking around the camp would have brought us both immediate death.  Beads of sweat ran down the length of my face, the hair prickling at the back of my neck.

I would never have imagined myself in a situation like this, in my previous life. I wouldn’t have imagined myself to be so close to death, to be so frightened for my life that I would struggled to sleep at night. I’d never have imagined any of it. That;s what made

The sound of footsteps grew closer. From the corner of my eye I spotted the shadow of a male figure. Steps away. 


Each breath grew heavier as I panted. With the urge of wanting to see who was coming, I leaned closer, sneaking a quick glance of the figure whose head was turned in the opposite direction. Before I could take a closer look at who it was, Sulli yanked me back, staring at me with raised eyebrows as if to say ‘Are you trying to get us killed?’.


“Commander Taecyeon, the General needs to see you in his office immediately,” a voice shouted from a distant.

 
“I’m coming,” he heaved a low sigh, his feet crunching on the hard grave below as he disappeared to the General’s office. Checking once more to see if he had finally gone, I turned back to Sulli, her back leaning against the wall as her, eyes wide, and gestured to keep moving on.


“Do you even know where we are going?” she whispered into my ear as she clung close to me.

I didn’t know how or what to reply. I knew my objective was to find Mei’s mother but where she would be was a mystery. I’d traced back my steps to the place where I had first found Mei, behind the building of one of the army offices on the outskirts of the camp, suspecting it would give me a clue to where she may be. 

 
“Mei said she last saw her here on the day we first arrived but when she turned her back, her mother had disappeared from her sight,” I replied as I brushed my hand across the dirt ground, scooping up some stones in my hand before letting them gracefully fall back down. No traces of blood stains between the dirt. Nothing. 

 
I wiped my hands of the dirt as I rose back up, shaking my head, watching the stones as they were swept across the ground with the wind. When I raised my head, Sulli was missing from my line of sight yet just seconds before I’d seen her there, watching me as I looked for evidence. Perhaps she’d run off in fear of being caught yet that wasn’t in her character, to leave a friend behind. Had she disappeared too just like Mei’s mother?

 
The idea of losing a grown woman was absurd, especially when Sulli was taller than I was, but if it had happened to Mei’s mother then it could have happened to her too. Urging to shout and scream her name, I clasped my hand over my mouth. The soldiers would only find me if I screamed.


 I Mei’s heart locket that she’d handed to me, pulling it out of my pocket as I observed it in my hands. The exterior was gold, which was slightly rusted at the corners, with a smooth glossy finish and a message engraved on the back reading ‘I love you’, the fine work of a skilled, experienced jeweler. Unfastening the clap on the side, I opened it to find two  pictures on both hearts, one of Mei and the other of a women, I expected to have been her mother. She was a very beautiful and young women, I could see Mei’s exact resemblance to her. It was a shame that she had gone missing.


“Victoria!” a familiar voice screamed from close by, calling out to me. I scanned my surroundings but could see no figure. “Victoria, I’m down here! Behind the fence!” It became apparent that it was Sulli. But I just couldn’t fathom a reason of how she managed to find herself beyond the fence which stood clear along the horizon, impeccably long in length. 


I crept towards it, inching closer with each step as Sulli continued to cry out to me in distress. Brushing my hand against the hard coated in layers of dark paint, I looked for any sign of an opening, pushing forward each plank with all my strength, only for it to stay firm in position. I sighed in defeat as each resisted, leaning against the last one, knowing that it couldn’t open for me. The only way I would have managed to free her was climbing over and that remained my last resort. Climbing was not my forte. 
 

“Oh my god,” my mouth dropped in shock as the last plank fell forward. Slowly stepping over, I couldn’t believe the sight before my eyes as Sulli ran forward to me, her face stained in tears. She dropped to her knees, tripping over the foot of one figure before leaping to her feet, panting as she reached my side and clung close to me in fear. 


“This is where they’ve all been going Victoria. All the dead people. The soldiers hid them here,” she cried, staining my dress with her tears as I enveloped her in my warm embrace. A massacre had occurred before our very eyes, figures cursed with death sprawled across the ground as far as the eye could see. The grass was hidden below us as the horrid, rotting smell lingered in the air. It was one place I knew I would return to in my nightmares. 
 

“I think I saw her. Mei’s mother. S-Sh-She…” Sulli hesitated to finish her sentence.

 
“She’s what?” I asked curiously, pressuring her to finish. I was just hoping she wouldn’t say what  had feared had happen to her the entire time.
 

“She’s dead.” 

 

 

*****

 
“What do we say to her? I mean, we can’t tell Mei that her mother is dead, can we?” Sulli threw questions in hesitation as we returned to the resting area.

I stopped in my tracks, dropping my head as I watched my feet. Sulli was right. There was no way we could tell Mei that her mother was dead. She was just a child, too young to worry about the idea of death. That form of news would break her little heart into pieces. 

 
“We don’t say a thing. And if she asks, we lie,” I concocted an excuse, trying to push the thought of death away. In a place like that, we had to be grateful that we were still alive. Even the slightest mention of death would upset us.


Heads turned as we pulled the heavy door open and snuck into the building, carefully watching our steps as we snuck past the crowds of prisoners surrounding us on all sides. The camp had turned people against each other, backbiting and bullying others as a means of making themselves feel better. I didn’t want to fall victim to one of their cruel jokes, avoiding their prying eyes and harsh glares. Finding all those people in that state was already a horrid experience for me.

 
Mei was waiting hopefully for our return, leaping up from her position on the bed as we appeared in her field of vision. Her lips curved into a smile as Sulli and I positioned ourselves on both sides of her. I could see she was eager to ask questions, questions which we would be unable to answer.
 

“Did you find her? Did you find my mommy?” she asked as I pulled the locket out and placed it firmly in the palm of her hand. 


“Uh, sweetie, isn’t it time for you to get some sleep?” I questioned as I laid her down on the bed, lifting the blanket onto her body. She shot up from her position and stared at me with curious eyes, knowing that I was trying to avoid her question. 


“Jie, did you find my mommy?” she repeated, clearly not backing down in her quest to know the truth. I couldn’t answer, not when her sweet eyes met mine. “You didn’t find her? She’s dead, isn’t she?” glistening tears formed in the rims of her eyes, threatening to spill. I nodded my head, unaware of a way to answer her comfortingly. Cradling her in my arms, I could only watch as the tears hovered in her eyes for a moment before they coursed down her face.