"Please think about this," he said.
She chuffed and he imagined what she was saying. You don't have to worry about me.
"I'm worried about my job," he lied.
He unbolted the door with unsteady fingers.
"Be careful," he whispered.
He swung the door open and she slipped through, her tail rubbing against his legs as she passed. He wanted to close the door behind her, but he didn't want to lock her inside with Kaesong. That felt cowardly. He tightened his grip on the gun, palms sweaty and knuckles white.
Chon-ji bowed her head, tail slack, while Kaesong circled her curiously. She looked tiny beside the other cat. Kaesong sniffed at her then growled.
Chon-ji rolled onto her back and exposed her neck. Bong-hwa raised the barrel of the gun and looked through the sight.
When Kaesong went for Chon-ji's throat, Bong-hwa aimed at the larger tiger and flexed his finger on the trigger. Chon-ji turned her head to him and roared. The force of her animal voice cut through his body and he froze. She stared him down until he lowered the gun.
Kaesong tightened his jaws around Chon-ji's neck, but Bong-hwa didn't see the sickening spray of blood he expected. Kaesong put one paw on her flank, claws spread, and still Chon-ji didn't move, her eyes closed and her chest rising and falling with steady breaths. Bong-hwa stood in the open doorway of the cage, a foot on either side of the threshhold, wondering what he should do.
Then Kaesong let Chon-ji go. He walked away from her and made a wide circuit of the cage. As the massive cat approached, Bong-hwa considered whether Kaesong could reach him before he slammed the door. He decided to stand his ground, both unwilling to abandon Chon-ji to her brother's anger or show his fear.
Kaesong ambled slowly, yellow eyes unblinking and a low rumble in his throat. He held his tail high as he stalked past Bong-hwa. As he rounded the far wall he leaped to the entrance of the outdoor enclosure and left Bong-hwa alone with Chon-ji.
She was a woman again, lying motionless in the center of the cage. Bong-hwa rushed to her. There were no signs of any serious injuries, just a few scratches on her neck and stomach.
"He let me live," she said.
"Why did he want to kill you in the first place? I thought he was your brother. You were trying to help him."
"He refused. He was jealous," She looked at Bong-hwa.
"Oh."
She put a cool hand on his arm. "He was also disgusted. Our kind... We're not supposed to do what I did. What we did. It hasn't happened in thousands of years."
"Those old stories... They're true?" he asked.
"What do you think?"
"If the punishment is so severe, then why did you risk it? Why did you sleep with me?"
"Tigers are dying off in Choson too. The only males in my territory were my brothers, so if I had stayed home I would have been forced to mate with them. But I left before my cycle began, hoping I could find another option. I ended up here, when it was almost too late."
"I guess you didn't have much choice," Bong-hwa said.
"I made the best possible choice." She smiled. "I chose someone who loves Korea and its tigers."
He helped her up and out of the cage then locked it firmly behind them.
"You knew this would happen," Bong-hwa said. "And you came anyway."
"I still had to try. My brother is stubborn, but I didn't think he would stay here rather than leave with me. I'll never be accepted by my kind again, no matter where I go."
Bong-hwa wrapped his arms around her. He caught their reflections in the glass of the empty cage. A trick of the light made it unclear which side of the transparent wall they were on, inside the cage or out of it.
"The park's opening soon," he said.
"Where do I go now? The rest of my family will kill me if they ever see me again. I don't think they'll be as forgiving as my brother."
"I have an idea."
"I can't stay with you, Bong-hwa. This isn't my life either."
"I know. But there may be another option."
*
Bong-hwa had never visited Daeseong-dong. It was a small community of government-subsidized farmers, the only South Korean settlement allowed inside the DMZ. It had taken a couple of weeks for his contacts in the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement to get him and Chon-ji passes to the so-called "Freedom Village," as representatives of the DMZ Forum. Though Chon-ji had been anxious as they waited, the time had passed more quickly than Bong-hwa liked. And now here they were, and he wasn't ready to let her go.
Chon-ji had dyed her hair black to make her stand out less. She'd worn a pair of jeans and a blouse for the same reason, but he pictured her the way he had that first day. He realized with a pang that he'd never taken a photo of her—as if he could ever forget her.
"It's beautiful here," Chon-ji said.
Bong-hwa had lived in cities his whole life, and the natural wilderness here showed how small and insignificant he really was in the world.
On either side of them, away from the rice paddies and crop fields, were 250 kilometers of virgin forest and marshland all along the 38th parallel. Here the separation between South and North was even more pronounced—the North Koreans had long ago stripped the forests on their side, leaving a barren wasteland just beyond the Demarcation Line.
"In Choson they say there's an impassable wall dividing the Korean peninsula," Chon-ji said. "I suppose they spread the lie to keep people from trying to escape to the south. But there may as well be a real one here."
"Those kinds of walls cause more harm than good," Bong-hwa said. South Koreans might feel safe and free for it, but the North Korean people were prisoners in their own country.
Chon-ji closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. "It smells like home."
"Choson is just a couple of kilometers that way. You could make your way there if you wanted. Soldiers wouldn't stop you." The sight of a tiger crossing the border would give them something to talk about though. Bong-hwa could make out another small village across the fencing and barbed wire: Gijeong-dong. It was dubbed the "Propaganda Village" because the North Korean settlement was unpopulated—just for show.
She shook her head. "That's just where I grew up. This is where I'll raise my family."
Bong-hwa studied her in surprise. Now that she was out of the loose-fitting gaeryang hanbok, he noticed her belly was slightly rounded.
He did the math. The normal gestation period for a tiger was about three months, so in her human form, the pregnancy would already begin to show.
"Chon-ji—"
"This doesn't change anything. Tiger mothers raise their cubs alone. You've done your part."
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"You wouldn't have brought me here if you knew. I'm sorry, but it's what I had to do."
He nodded. During their brief time together they had settled into an almost domestic relationship, while keeping her presence a secret from his intrusive parents. It was hard enough for Bong-hwa, since he'd had a taste of the life he couldn't have. But it also showed him that things couldn't go back to the way they were before he'd met her.
"I'll have even more reason to work to keep this area safe," he said. "Once there's proof that Korean tigers survive here, we'll have more support for preserving the DMZ. You represent the strength of the Korean people, after all."
"No, I think that you do," Chon-ji said.
She kissed him again, for the last time. Chon-ji didn't need him anymore; she'd used him, but he'd taken something from her too: a new purpose in life.
"You're sure you won't get into trouble?" she said.
There would be a lot of trouble when the woman he'd arrived with had disappeared, but it wouldn't matter once she made it to the forest and cast off her human shape.
"Don't worry." He looked around, as though he could really spot any soldiers in hiding. They were already much farther into the DMZ than they should be, and it was only a matter of time before a patrol found them. "Once
you get out of sight and change...just shred your clothes and spread them around so it'll look like a wild animal got you. No one will look hard after that, not in there."
"I guess this is good-bye, then," she said.
"Just, uh...watch out for landmines, will you?"
"I can—"
"Take care of yourself. I know."
She bowed to him. "Farewell, oraboni."
She picked her way through the underbrush and disappeared into the trees. She didn't glance back once—she was looking forward, finding her own path as she always had.
Bong-hwa headed for the village, preparing himself for the role of a distraught boyfriend whose girlfriend had disappeared into the forest—a part he could play without much pretense.
Then the soldiers caught up with him. Three of them emerged from the undergrowth, appearing as if from nowhere in green and brown camo and surrounding him quickly.
"Halt!" one of them barked, leveling his gun at Bong-hwa. "What are you doing out here after curfew?"
A distant roar reverberated through the night air. A flock of birds scattered above them. Bong-hwa paused to listen to the sound echo over the trees.
"What was that?" the soldier asked. The man was younger than Bong-hwa, and obviously frightened.
Bong-hwa grinned. "It sounded like a tiger."
"Nonsense," another soldier muttered. He waved his gun at Bong-hwa, gesturing for him to march ahead of him, back to the village. Bong-hwa wondered if the man had always been this tough, or if his time in the armed forces had changed him.
Bong-hwa had already decided he would not be going back to work at the zoo. Probably detention and questioning was in his immediate future; if the price of Chon-ji's freedom was his own, he would accept it gladly. But after that...
He couldn't go back home. He would follow Chon-ji's example and leave his family to create a new destiny for himself.
Before they'd left for the DMZ, Bong-hwa had signed up for his mandatory military service. He had been pushing it off as long as possible, to his thirtieth birthday, but the duty would give him the perfect opportunity to sever his ties with his parents once and for all. That, and it might help him out of his current predicament, if they decided to imprison him for wandering into a restricted area. There were few exemptions from conscription and they would rather press Bong-hwa into the armed forces than keep him behind bars. If he were lucky, they would even station him with the DMZ patrols.
The Tiger Man would come back here one day, hunting myth with his cameras. When he did, Bong-hwa wanted to be waiting for him. He would convince the man to let him join the quest to share the spirit and beauty of the Korean tiger with the world.
And he hoped that when that day came, he would see his tiger woman again.
What Is Being Erased
Tiffany Tsao
There many ways Tiffany Tsao (Singapore/Australia) might have turned out. For example, if her parents had believed in corporal punishment and used books for their beating implements, she would have never grown to love reading. If she hadn't met and married Justin Hastings, she might have met and married someone named Milford Kwek (who is a complete stranger to her and died in an unfortunate blender accident last year). Most of the time, she's grateful that things are as they are. Her fiction and poetry has seen publication in Mascara Literary Review, Transnational Literature, and Collateral Damage: A Silverfish Collection of Short Stories.
The day I received my Scholar's tweeds was the proudest day of my life. Even after all these years, the event has remained as fresh and crisp in my mind as a spring day. Or so I infer from what I've read about spring days in books.
Our tweeding ceremony was held at 11am on a Saturday morning in the auditorium of the Ivory Tower. We six initiates were only allowed to invite two people each, so our audience was small: twelve friends and family members, extant Scholars, the Tower Authorities, and two Government officials. After making a brief speech, the reigning Head of Tower awarded us our blazers one by one. And at a nod from him, we slipped them on. We did so eagerly. The chilly air in the auditorium confirmed the Tower's reputation for having the most powerful air-conditioning on the island, and the goosebumps on my arms were on the verge of taking wing to seek warmer climes. As I pulled the sleeves over my arms, adjusted the collar, and watched my peers do the same, it suddenly struck me that these were the garments we would wear every day for the rest of our lives. They were beautiful: made of the finest quality Harris tweed, close-woven, moss brown in colour, and heavy—made even heavier with the weight of responsibility and honour that had just been bestowed upon us.
Some closing words from the Head ended the ceremony. Everyone adjourned to a reception of canapés, cakes, and fruit punch, we took photos with our family and each other, we said our goodbyes, and then the six of us were ushered into the lift to be shown around our new home.
It was perhaps only then, as the glass-panelled lift climbed up the Tower, shooting us past the surrounding skyscrapers, then leaving them far below us, that the magnitude of what had just happened truly and finally sank in. We grinned at each other, smiling so wide that our cheeks ached the morning after.
We had made it. We were Scholars.
Long had we admired the Tower from afar—its spindly frame, the austerity of its white stone exterior, the distinctive single turret with the crescent moon and stars fluttering proudly from its mast. Even then, only ten years after its construction, the Tower had become as much a part of Singapore's skyline as the Flyer, the Gardens' Supertrees, and the three-pillared spaceship silhouette of Marina Bay Sands. It symbolized all that Singapore had accomplished in its relentless pursuit of excellence in education—its complete overhaul of existing systems and practices of learning, the breakthroughs it had made in knowledge technology. And now, finally, the Tower was ours to enter, ours to inhabit. How many late nights had we spent in the pre-Scholar common rooms dreaming out loud about this day? Drowsy with the knowledge that we'd been imbibing since daybreak, sprawled out on the brown imitation-leather sofas we knew were only poor shadows of the ones to which we aspired, we shared round what scraps of information we each possessed, piecing together, like a magnificent and rich patchwork tapestry, our future lives. Exams willing, of course.
At that point, there were eight of us—the elite few that had successfully made it to the final year of the pre-Scholar stage that annum. Edwin, the most cautious and the most thorough pre-Scholar of us all, would only contribute what he absolutely knew was true—what he'd managed to uncover in the news archives during study breaks. Incapable, in all good conscience, of speculation, his descriptions made up the framework of our collective vision, for we knew that what came from his lips, we could be sure of. We could be certain of expansive, yet cosy, sitting rooms and studies furnished with solid oak, mahogany, and rosewood furniture, overstuffed leather sofas, velvet divans and ottomans, and carpeted in rich Persian violet, crimson, and lapis lazuli. We could each expect our own set of rooms—a bedroom with a four poster king-sized bed, a bathroom, a living room with a study enclave, and a small but serviceable kitchen. We could put our faith in the finest facilities: soundproof film-showing rooms; indoor areas for lawn tennis and croquet; glass-panelled conservatories with fine botanical specimens from every continent; a modest but tasteful menagerie specializing in the fauna of Oceania, South and Southeast Asia; and of course, the famed World Library—the most comprehensive paper library in existence, the official international repository of paper material for every digital library in the world, the keeper of all the original books, manuscripts, newspapers, journals, magazines, pamphlets, and folios upon which all digital copies were based.
Marianne, Ravi, Fatima, and Bee Eng excelled at adding sensory embellishes and flourishes to the world of Edwin's recounting. Permit to waft into your ears, they would tell us, the delicate notes of the music they play in the mornings to gently wake Scholars from their slumber: perhaps the flute or the violin, perhaps the koto, the pipa, the sitar, or
the lovely droning harmonium. Walk through the conservatory to the evergreen wing and feel the tang of fresh pine smack your nostrils with the force and sting of a saltwater wave. Amble to the library and slowly run your fingers up and down and back up the leathery spines of the library books; gently spread apart their covers and inhale that intoxicating "old book" smell. Musty vanilla and dying grass.
Koh Meng and Ismail, more cunning, sociable, and daring than the rest of us, spent much time—far too much time—actively gathering impressions and rumours from the dormitory staff, like magpies snatching up shiny bits of overheard chit-chat and the odd glimmering tidbit that one of their sources would accidentally let drop in the course of an ingeniously distracting conversation with the wily pair. They spent too much time on their "research," and eventually, they paid the price; but how we missed them afterward. What characters they were! What colour they provided during that stage in our lives! And what information they brought back to us, even if we suspected that three-quarters of it would come to signify nothing. (Though after we entered the Tower, we found it was all true! Every bit of it!) Koh Meng's voice—already so melodious—would drop lower, richer, each word the jewel-like peal of a miniature church bell, each sentence the rippling phrases and cadences from a human cathedral tower, ringing, shimmering, soaring through a Sunday morning sky. Ismail's voice provided a curious contrast—a sonorous oboe whose notes liquefied upon contact with the air into warm pools of molten gold.
Truly, the two were born storytellers. From their gleanings, the world within the Ivory Tower sprang to life. It had people—real-life people like us. They spent most of their time reading, analysing, and writing—the joyous lot of a Scholar's life. But in the time they had to spare, they wandered the conservatories and the arboretums; they formed community tennis and polo clubs; they held evening get-togethers, music recitals, and poetry readings. Inevitably, they grew old and lived out the remainder of their lives in the Tower as retirees; but not before they had enjoyed the life of the mind to the fullest.
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