novelAbuy Chapter 485 Differences? There must be differences!
Chapter 485 Differences? There must be differences!
"How long will it take?" someone asked.
"It takes about three hours to get to Kumagaya," a veteran-looking man replied. "Then there's three months of training. After training, some go to Germany, and some go to England."
"How do we divide it?"
"It depends on results, and also on luck." The veteran lit a cigarette. "This is my second time going. Last year I spent eight months in France, got injured, and was sent back. This year I've recovered, so I'm going again."
A surprised gasp rippled through the carriage. Koji sized up the veteran—he looked to be in his forties, with a scar running from his left eyebrow to his right cheek, and two fingers missing from his left hand.
"Senior," Koji asked respectfully, "Is Europe... really that dangerous?"
The veteran exhaled a smoke ring and laughed: "Danger? Kid, you think this is child's play? My company, 120 men went, and less than 30 came back alive. Two of my fingers were sliced off by bayonets in the trenches."
The carriage fell silent.
"Then...why go?" Yamaguchi asked softly.
"Why?" The old soldier stared at him, something flashing in his eyes. "Because if I don't go, my family will starve to death. If I go, at least they can live. And—" He stubbed out his cigarette, "dying there is more dignified than dying here. At least my tombstone will say 'died for the country,' and my family will receive a pension."
The train sounded its whistle and slowly started moving. The crowd seeing them off on the platform gradually receded into the distance, eventually becoming blurry dots. Koji looked at the receding Tokyo street scene through the ventilation duct and suddenly felt a strange pang of unease.
But he quickly suppressed that feeling. He couldn't waver. It was an honorable choice, the right choice.
He took out the book "Soldier's Guide" from his bag and began to read it carefully.
At the same moment, on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, Incheon Port was shrouded in a leaden gray sky.
Jin Shuntai's hands were bound with hemp rope, and he was strung together with nine other young men like livestock to be slaughtered. They were driven across the concrete ground of the dock, their feet marked with dark red drag marks left by the previous group when they were dragged away—the bloodstains had been washed away by the seawater and were now almost invisible, but the rusty, fishy smell still lingered in the air.
"Hurry up! What are you dawdling for!"
The whip lashed Jin Shuntai's back, stinging painfully. He staggered, nearly falling, but was pulled back by the ropes binding him. The escorts were Japanese military police, dressed in tan uniforms with white armbands, their faces always bearing an impatient expression.
There were about five hundred of them in this group, all of whom were arrested from the Pyeonghyang area of Seoul. Kim Soon-tae remembered that he was arrested three days ago—he was picking up rotten vegetable leaves in the back alley of a rice shop when two military policemen came over, asked him nothing, and directly pushed him to the ground and tied him up with ropes.
"Why are you arresting me?" he shouted in Korean.
The military police replied in broken Japanese, "The Imperial Army needs laborers. Go overseas to work; you'll have food and wages."
"I'm not going! My mother is at home—"
A rifle butt struck him in the stomach, and he curled up in pain. When he awoke, he was on a train bound for Incheon. The carriage was crowded with young people like him, the youngest looking only fourteen or fifteen years old, and the oldest no more than twenty-five or twenty-six. No one spoke, only suppressed sobs could be heard.
Now, they stood at Incheon Pier No. 3. Before them stood a massive cargo ship—the "Huang Hai," its hull rusted and black smoke billowing from its smokestack. The cargo hold doors were wide open, like the gaping mouth of a monster.
Name! Age! Place of origin!
At the registration desk, a Japanese official, dressed in cherry blossoms, didn't even look up. Kim Soon-tae reported the information in broken Japanese.
"Press your fingerprint."
A document was pushed towards him, covered in dense Japanese text, not a single word of which he could recognize. In the corner was a line of Chinese characters: "Voluntary Overseas Work Contract".
"This...this is..." he wanted to ask.
"Press!" The military policeman's rifle butt pressed against his waist.
Jin Shuntai trembled as he pressed his thumb, stained with red mud, onto the designated spot. The red fingerprint spread across the paper like a drop of blood.
"Next!"
He was pushed up the gangway. The cargo hold was already crammed with people—three tiers of bunk beds, each less than a meter high, requiring people to climb in to lie down. The air was thick with the smells of mildew, sweat, and… urine. In the corner were a few wooden buckets, which served as the toilets.
"Go in! Hurry up!"
Kim Soon-tae was shoved into the lowest spot. He'd barely crawled in when the people behind him pushed in, almost flattening him. He was surrounded by unfamiliar bodies, their sweaty skin sticking together, their breaths mingling on each other's faces.
"Make way... there's no room to move..." someone said in Korean.
"I'm going to throw up..."
"Mom...I want to go home..."
In the darkness, suppressed sobs spread like a tide. But soon, the cargo door slammed shut and locked. The world was plunged into complete darkness, with only a few slivers of light filtering through the ventilation vents.
The engine started, and the ship shook.
Kim Soon-tae's eyes widened in the darkness. He remembered his older brother, Soon-sik. Months ago, his brother had been taken away in the same way. Their mother had fainted from crying then, and when she woke up, she kept murmuring, "He'll come back, Soon-sik will come back..."
But now, he's here too.
"Where...are we going?" a boy next to him asked, trembling.
No one answered.
The ship slowly sailed away from Incheon Port. Through the ventilation duct, Kim Soon-tae could see the dock getting farther and farther away, and the port's cranes, like the skeletons of giants, stood under the gray sky.
He thought of home. That dilapidated thatched hut on the outskirts of Seoul, drafty in winter and leaky in summer. His mother washed clothes for others every day until her hands cracked and bled, and the money she earned in a day wasn't even enough to buy a liter of rice. His father had died long ago—in a mine collapse. The mine owner was from Japan, and he paid twenty yen in compensation, saying, "That's more than enough."
The older brother, Soon-sik, apprenticed at a rice shop owned by a Japanese man. Soon-sik worked fourteen hours a day, slept in the rice warehouse, ate leftovers from customers, and hadn't received a single penny in wages for three years. The owner said, "Food and lodging are wages. What more do you want from a North Korean?"
And now, they don't even belong to their own bodies anymore.
The ship began to rock, entering the open sea. In the darkness, some people began to vomit, and a sour stench filled the air. Some people couldn't hold their urine, and the wooden buckets quickly filled, the urine overflowing and soaking the floor.
Jin Shuntai closed his eyes and clenched his fists tightly. His nails dug into his palms, drawing blood, but he felt no pain.
Brother, where are you?
Are we still alive?
Can I... still go home?
Tokyo, late October
The Kumagai Training Camp was situated on a barren plain, surrounded by bare hills. In late October, the cold winds had already begun to rage, making the tin roofs of the camp creak.
Koji has been here for three weeks.
Every day is as strict as clockwork: get up at five in the morning, wash up and tidy up your personal belongings within ten minutes; gather for a morning run at five-thirty, running ten laps around the training ground; breakfast at six-thirty, brown rice with soy sauce soup; training begins at seven—drill, bayonet fighting, shooting, crawling.
The instructor was a sergeant named Kobayashi, in his thirties, who had participated in the Russo-Japanese War. He always had a fierce expression on his face, and during training, the slightest mistake would result in a kick or a slap.