Two days before the big event Kim handed over two bombs he’d made over several sleepless nights. Choi promised to send him money and buy a passage to Manchuria after the bombing. But the bomb Choi lobbed into the crowd didn’t go off; he was arrested on the scene. The Special Higher Police caught up with Kim, who was wandering the Japanese islands without any escape funds. The prosecutor sought execution for Choi, but the Tokyo court sentenced him to life imprisonment. What they didn’t know was how tenacious Choi was in biding his time. Choi wasn’t angry at Kim. It wasn’t the man’s fault; it was the damn books he’d read. Inaccurate knowledge acted like a noose. If Kim was wrong, it was for the audacity of thinking he could change the world with a couple of books.
Choi’s glares intimidated even the guards. He reeked of the wild. He was poised to attack on a moment’s notice. Nobody knew what he would do next. When Sugiyama Dozan came to the prison fresh from Manchuria, Choi instinctively recognized his own untamed nature in the guard, and Sugiyama detected the Manchurian dust on Choi. The prison was a small, enclosed world and the two had to fight over this limited territory. Sugiyama called Choi into the interrogation room every few days. He had plenty of reasons — Choi had mumbled his answer to a question, he was late for assembly, he stared straight into the guard’s eyes. Sugiyama’s club would ram into Choi’s eyelid, crack open his forehead, break his teeth. With eyes swollen shut, Choi stared down the pain. He had only one weapon at his disposal — his endurance.
‘How would you like to die?’ Sugiyama would ask as he pressed his boot down on Choi’s neck.
Choi would grin, flashing his broken teeth. ‘I don’t want to die. If I die, I lose.’
Solitary confinement awaited him after each interrogation. It was as dark and quiet there as the inside of a coffin. Three days would pass. The cut near his eye would heal and the bruises would fade. Choi would go to the window, thinking he would suffocate from the stench. A weak wind blew through the ventilation window under the toilet. He would grip the bars as a wonderful scent wafted in — of life and hope, tender new shoots, overgrown spring grass, the scent of a young mountain bird’s feathers.
One day something occurred to him as he walked out of solitary into the blinding sun. It wasn’t enough simply to survive. He had to do something. First, he bulked up his weakened body. He began to do chin-ups on the bars of his cell and toned his muscles by doing squats and push-ups. When he was outside he walked around the yard to strengthen his shrunken heart. But his newfound focus only lasted a fortnight. He punched another prisoner and attacked a guard. What waited for him again was the smelly solitary cell. One week later he spat through his blood-crusted lips as he walked out of the cell. It was after this trip to solitary that he determined on new attempts at escape.
The first time he shoved the guard on duty and hurtled towards the wall. As he struggled to clamber up the high wall, a guard reached him and beat him. It was clumsy, an afterthought. It was too ridiculous even to call it an escape attempt, but the punishment was severe: ten days in solitary. The second time he volunteered for the night-shift work team and sneaked out of the workroom. He was caught climbing over the back wall of the prison. The warden was woken at home and rushed back to the prison. He viewed the entire incident as a challenge to his authority and personally interrogated Choi. Even a failed attempt deserved a summary conviction. But Choi wasn’t executed; his stay in solitary lengthened to a fortnight, then a month. The curious part was that while most people couldn’t make it out of their first solitary confinement alive, Choi walked out on his own two feet every time. Oddly, he tried to escape a third, fourth and fifth time, even though he hadn’t fully recovered his strength. His attempts kept evolving and were as entertaining as a well-choreographed play or an acrobatics show. The time he sneaked into a military truck loaded with bricks made by the prisoners, it seemed he’d made it, until the truck was stopped just before it drove out of the gates. He almost succeeded the time he crawled through a narrow, 300-metre-long sewer pipe, until he lost consciousness from poisonous gas with thirty metres to go. Soon he and the guards came to a silent agreement. When a fortnight passed after his last stint in solitary, the guards moved first. They sent him back under the guise that he’d violated some trivial rule, before he could do something more serious again. The guards could stop Choi’s violent behaviour and he could avoid the beatings. The solitary cell was occupied more often than not. So it was like clockwork; he and his gang went to and fro between Ward Three and the solitary cells like honeybees to a hive. Nobody thought twice about their trips, even though it happened at regular intervals. Until Sugiyama sniffed out the plot.
One day Choi was called into the interrogation room. Sugiyama held out a cigarette. Choi sucked on it deeply before hacking.
‘I see you’ve forgotten how to smoke. Don’t worry. If your plans go off without a hitch you’ll be able to smoke as much as you want.’ Sugiyama’s sunken eyes glinted.
An artery throbbed in Choi’s neck. This guard had a dog’s nose, he thought. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘I ask the questions!’ Sugiyama slammed his club down on the desk. ‘I won’t ask how long you’ve been at it. I don’t want to know why you’re digging the tunnel, either.’
Choi felt as though he had been dunked in cold water. But at least it was Sugiyama. If another guard had discovered the tunnel, he would immediately have pressed the emergency alarm. But Sugiyama thought the world revolved around him. Choi took a breath. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to press the emergency alarm or report the tunnel to your boss? Why make things more complicated?’
Sugiyama let out a long trail of cigarette smoke. ‘As soon as I do that, this incident leaves my hands. All the guards would get in on it. The machine gun on the watchtower would be aimed at the solitary cells and the searchlight would shine all around the prison. The guard dogs would chase after your scent. You’d be shot or mauled by the dogs and dragged back for your execution.’
‘Are you letting me live?’
‘No. I just don’t want you to die at another’s hands. We’re not done here,’ Sugiyama smirked.
Choi’s heart sank, as though he were watching a heavy metal bar being lowered over the door to freedom.
Sugiyama continued slowly, ‘You might think everything is over, but the battle has just begun. Fill up that rat hole with your own hands. You can’t leave even a tiny gap. If you do that for me, I’ll take your secret to my grave.’
‘It’s too late,’ Choi said. ‘The dirt from the tunnel blew away in the wind, so I can’t replace it.’
‘I’m sure you can figure it out. I don’t care if you vomit dirt or if you dig another hole. Otherwise I’ll have to send you and your idiot mole comrades to the cemetery.’