E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten
Chung Red Sword
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-915829-18-4
Verlag: Honford Star
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-915829-18-4
Verlag: Honford Star
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Bora Chung has written four novels and a whole lot of short stories. She has an MA in Russian and East European area studies from Yale University and a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University. She translates modern literary works from Russian and Polish into Korean. Among her works, Cursed Bunny, a collection of short stories, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022 and was a finalist for the National Book Award in the translated literature category in 2023. She currently resides in Pohang, South Korea.
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The young man was beautiful. It was underlit and stuffy inside the spaceship, and no one knew what the future would bring, and she, the young woman, was afraid. She spent many days crouched in the dark with the young man. The Imperials did not say much about the enemy, only referring to them as “white monsters” that had invaded the Empire’s territory. What these monsters really were, she knew not. The only certainty was that no answer would be forthcoming should she ask.
What the monsters were wasn’t important. The Imperials said that if they helped vanquish the monsters, the colonized would be given their freedom. She couldn’t believe everything the Imperials said. But freedom—that was a seductive word. A word that upon hearing exuded a whiff of hope. A wisp of a thing that persisted in the air around them once it was uttered, a strand of weak light they fixed their gaze on. A hope.
This was why, along with the other women, she had boarded the spaceship. She called these women “unnis,” for they were like older sisters to her. The unnis told her the Imperials could not be trusted. For all they knew, the colonized in this ship were being sold off to another planet, or even farther out across some unimaginable distance, to another galaxy. It wasn’t as if she didn’t suspect this herself; the thought had crossed her mind as well. But they had mentioned freedom. She had to at least try. And if she failed at the attempt, there was always her sword. The Imperials had not confiscated it, perhaps because they didn’t know what it was. The sleek velvet scabbard and the elaborately embroidered patterns on its surface, with the little mirrors sewn into it and the dangling flower and butterfly charms, had likely made them think it was some kind of decorative bauble toted by women. They couldn’t imagine the long and fiercely beautiful blade sheathed within. She had boarded the vessel gripping her red velvet scabbard, the sword hidden inside.
And then the young man had come to her.
Unlike the Imperials, who were rough and menacing beasts, the young man was quiet and gentle. His skin, which had darkened in the sun, returned to its light brown as they spent their long days in the dim bowels of the vessel. He had red hair on both his head and body. She had only known black hair and brown eyes, which made the young man’s red hair and dark hazel eyes surprising, as well as the red hair on his body when he revealed his nakedness, and the young man became shy at her surprise. When she wrapped his genitals with her hands, the young man closed his eyes and opened his lips. His penis was soft, and in her mouth it tasted slightly sour and bitter and soon hardened. The young man, as if enduring pain, screwed his eyes shut, grit his teeth, and gripped her shoulders. When she held out her hand, he grabbed it with his long and rough fingers and threw his head back. Long after those moments had passed, from time to time she would remember the sound of the young man’s quick breathing, and a heat would rise up from within her.
The young man’s language was inscrutable to her and he likewise knew hardly any of hers, which was why they eventually came up with a language that met in the middle. His situation wasn’t very different from hers. The Imperials had charged into his village and taken it over. When the young man was born, his planet was already in the hands of the Empire. His father was forced to work the mines, where he was eventually beaten to death by the Imperials, and when the young man’s mother was caught teaching him how to fire a gun, the Imperials had dragged her away to be executed. After witnessing her death, the young man was thrown onto the spaceship for the reason that he knew how to use a gun.
“Never be able to go back home,” the young man said. “No one and nothing for me there, anyway.”
Still, there was a glint deep in the young man’s eye, as if he had hidden a blade there.
Which was why she showed him the blade hidden in her velvet scabbard.
Like the Imperials, the young man knew of guns, but he didn’t know what a sword was. As the long and thin blade gleamed against the dim light reflected against the inner hull of the spaceship, the young man, seduced, held out his hand as if to touch it. Afraid he would injure himself, she grabbed his hand.
That had been the first time. His hand was hard and rough. And warm.
His lips were warm and soft.
Against that cold and dark hull, the young man was led to lay down next to the sword wrapped in velvet. He knew all of her wounds and scars and the imperfections of her skin, which was why when she opened her body to him he checked, several times, if he could, if she was really all right with it, and if she truly wanted it. Whenever he did, she smiled and said yes, it was fine, she wanted it. And she embraced him. The young man was passionate and desperate, and he grit his teeth as if the act of taking her was not one of pleasure but of pain. Which was why it was her turn to ask him if he were all right, and he answered that he loved her.
And as soon as the young man disembarked from the spaceship, he was killed.
The world the spaceship had landed on was white. The patch of sky above was an off-white gray, and white fog obscured everything else in sight. It even rolled over the ground, making it impossible to tell what the terrain looked like. Clearly there was an atmosphere, but could humans breathe this air? She took a few experimental deep breaths. Immediately, she started coughing. The fog tasted of iron, and every breath made her throat and chest constrict painfully.
It wasn’t just her. Everyone around her breathing the air as it came through the hatch was coughing. She heard murmurs of, Ugh, what is this, I’m going to suffocate.
“Get out!” shouted the Imperials. One of them came up to her and roughly pushed her back. She stumbled out of the hatch, almost losing her grip on her sword. The young man quickly came to her side and took her hand. She managed to regain her balance, and the two of them walked out into the white world outside the ship.
Their feet disappeared into fog. They couldn’t see more than an inch in front of them.
“I can’t see anything,” mumbled the young man as he looked around. He sounded worried. “I can’t use my gun like this …”
Those were his last words. In the very next moment, a white ray of light cut through the fog and diagonally sliced through the young man, from his shoulder to his hip. The right side of his body slid off his left and fell into the fog without a sound. The left side silently followed suit.
She screamed but even that sound was almost muffled in the fog. She dropped to her knees by the body of the young man, just before another white ray of light flashed by where her head had been. She ducked into the white fog.
The young man’s left eye was next to her. No blood flowed from the sliced body. The cross-section where the light had passed through him had been cauterized. His face was pale, his lips slightly open. She remembered the first time their lips had touched, the first time their hands touched, and the first time she accepted him inside her and how he had closed his eyes and thrown his head back and opened his mouth like it was open now. She remembered but felt nothing. Her mind and her heart were filled with the white fog. She shed no tears, and no more screams came forth. She slowly raised her numb body.
There was a white ghost in front of her. She realized that the form wearing white clothes, surrounded by white fog, was one of the “monsters” they had told her about.
But the monster did not seem anything like a monster. It was noticeably taller than most human men she knew. There were two arms, and while mostly obscured by the fog, two legs, and a head on a pair of shoulders, giving it the overall look of a human. But its head was completely wrapped inside something white and translucent, and through that she could not even see a trace of a face. She stared up at where its facial features ought to be.
On top of the white thing around its head was a third “arm.” The arm held a white wand, its intensely white and shining tip aimed at her face. Without a moment to think, she held up her scabbard.
From the tip of the monster’s white wand came a blinding white ray of light, which bounced off the scabbard and hit the monster’s legs. A thick, gray smoke wafted up. The monster looked down at where the smoke came from. And just like the young man had done before, it silently fell into the white fog.
She didn’t hesitate. She struck down at the third arm protruding from the fallen monster’s head. The third arm dropped the white wand it was holding. She snatched it up and leaped backward at almost the same time.
The monster, with its other two arms, tried to get up on its uninjured leg. She pointed the white wand at the monster. The monster froze.
Nothing happened. She didn’t know...
