He Did Not Come
"There are marks."
As if he had sensed her worry, Thomas pointed to the faint scratches scored at intervals along the trees. They were so slight that, unless he named them, they would have been nearly impossible to make out. Somewhere, water was running. Jiyeon wondered if she was hearing things. Too much had happened through the whole of the dawn, and she was worn thin, strung tight with nerves.
But it was no illusion. The closer they drew to their destination, the louder the water grew, until a small cabin, a modest clearing, and a creek opened before them.
"We've arrived."
Jiyeon sighed and, on instinct, searched the ground around the cabin, a thin hope rising that Louis Kane might already have come ahead of them. The man she had hoped for was nowhere in sight. Her heart dropped without a sound, into a long, hollow fall. Despair was not an emotion she knew well.
Then, as if the world refused to leave her in it, the cabin door opened and someone stepped out. The moment Jiyeon saw her, tears broke loose and a sob tore out of her before she could stop it. She stood as if nailed to the spot, able only to cry, and the figure from the cabin came running up the mountain path toward her. The body that caught her in a sudden, fierce embrace was small and gaunt.
Ella Yu. Her younger sister, Yu Jihye.
Ella said she had spent a little over a month in the cabin. When the operation failed and the rebels were being rounded up, Thomas, under Louis's orders, had gotten Ella out ahead of them and left her here. The place was a hideout Thomas's father had built during his years as a wanderer.
Once a week he brought supplies, and on the promise that Jiyeon would join her, Ella had endured the month. Every time Thomas stopped by the cabin, he told her in detail how things were progressing. She had known the exact date of the operation: October 15.
"I heard people coming, so I went out to look. I was told you'd be moving at dawn. If nothing had gone wrong, I was sure you'd be here right about now."
The cabin was snug, and roomier than she had expected. Kitchen tools and furniture were arranged so that keeping house would not be difficult. Ella chattered without pause as she laid out breakfast, and Jiyeon watched her every movement, searching for any injury, any change.
At the same time her senses stayed keenly turned outward. Thomas was the same. Both of them were waiting for their commanding officer. If nothing had gone wrong, he ought to arrive within the hour.
But Louis did not come—not by the time Ella set down tomato soup and roast chicken, and not by the time they had eaten it all and finished the washing up.
Neither of them let a thing show. When Ella said she would see to the bedding and climbed up to the loft, Jiyeon muttered under her breath.
"We should have gone back for him."
The joy of seeing her sister again was immense, and yet in equal measure a hole had opened through one side of her chest, and a cold wind blew through it. The food she had forced down twisted in her stomach. She hated feeling this way about his absence. He was supposed to remain nothing more than the hateful, loathsome Dog of the Bunker. She hated the Louis Kane who could make her feel like this.
"He may be taking a roundabout route on purpose. He's a very cautious man."
Thomas still could not bring himself to give up hope. It surprised her that he did not resent her. He also seemed to have grown quite close to Ella; in front of her, he was clearly trying not to let his gloom show.
Jiyeon had been about to say they should go back and look for him even now, but when she saw Ella coming down from the loft, she closed her mouth. She did not want to wear her pain in front of the sister she had only just found again. Unable to bear the time as it kept slipping past, she used the excuse of keeping watch and stepped outside the cabin.
Before she knew it, the digits on her electronic watch read 07:00. The forest waking under the morning sun was beautiful, and solemn. Clear creek water ran with a brisk, bright sound. Now and then a bird called. The scene of only hours ago—lying prone with a gun in her face, balanced on the line between death and life—felt like a dream.
Even the time she had spent locked in a cell where no thread of sunlight entered, waiting only for Louis, seemed impossibly far away. Only now did each minute and each second of waiting for a man burn like a brand pressed into her heart, scorching her throat with pain.
Thomas had warned her not to go far, but she could not stand it, and she circled the ground three hundred meters out in front of the cabin, ears strained for any voice calling for help, any sound of footsteps. Under her breath she cursed him without stopping.
Only a few days ago he had made her wait until she was wrung dry, and now he was doing it again. He was a man she could not bring herself to love, no matter how she tried. Until the watch read 09:00, Jiyeon circled the cabin like someone out of her mind.
She had not slept a wink the night before, and yet, strangely, sleep would not come. Once it was past nine she went back down to the cabin and called Thomas out. By then Ella seemed to have grasped the situation as well; she kept her mouth shut and did nothing but clean. She had always been quick to read a room, raised as she was amid her older sister's constant missions.
"I'm going back to that rock where we could see the battalion. If there's anything to read from the situation, I'll read it."
Thomas said nothing. Hours had long since passed the rendezvous, and she could see him slowly losing hope as well. Jiyeon, by contrast, burned hotter, determined to find some hope anyway.
The two of them climbed the mountain again. The way in had been long and exhausting, but with a purpose in front of them they reached the spot at speed. The rock was exactly as Thomas had left it. Through the telescope they had brought, they studied the battalion. The distance was great enough that even the glass could not give them a precise picture, but the rebels were still there, and smoke rose without end, as if they had set the whole battalion ablaze.
Even a rough look showed armed rebels running everywhere. It was nothing short of chaos. Some of them seemed to be spreading out to search; a few peered toward the mountain. It looked as though a number of the soldiers still at headquarters had fled into the hills.
It was hardly a hopeful picture.
Having confirmed that bitter reality, the two of them came back down to the cabin without a word. They did not exchange a single sentence the whole way. Thomas's face was set hard. Even so, he did not suggest they go down and look for the Major. To descend without a plan was to walk into a useless death.
The chance of those people reaching the cabin was next to nothing, but going down themselves and being discovered was another matter entirely.
"Think rationally, Lieutenant. We have to wait one more day. Think of your sister."
Thomas said it quietly, just before they went inside. There was no telling what he had read in the set of her face.
"If the Major hasn't come by tomorrow, we'll search the area. But we won't go near the battalion. Even if we don't find him, we move on to the next destination. We can't stay here indefinitely."
Reason and feeling collided violently, but in the end Jiyeon agreed. They would have to allow for the time Louis Kane might need to stay hidden from the search parties and then begin to move—wait out the day, and only then act. Jiyeon decided she would rather sleep. Every waking hour was nothing but pain and torment, one after another.