Taesung
Hanil and I are standing at the shooting range behind the house. This long, dusty range is homemade, and you can smell a mixture of burnt gunpowder and freshly cut grass. I take aim at a distant target with a black human silhouette at the other end of the lawn, holding a gun that I took apart and reassembled about four times a moment ago as part of a test. Out of ten shots, I missed six times, hitting empty space, twice I grazed the silhouette, and once I hit it in the shoulder and once in the shin.
Pathetic. I can't identify with the weapon. I don't like holding it or using it. I dislike the cold, impersonal metal in my hand and the feedback it provides after each shot. It's as if it pushes me away every time.
I relax my arm and let it hang down by my side. My shoulder feels heavy and sore, and my palm is still vibrating slightly.
The hollow sound of gunfire echoes in my ears, mingling with the summer song of crickets. The contrast is strangely unsettling — nature versus weapon.
„Better than last time," Hanil snorts, heading for the target with a new poster. His tone is crudely amused, but at least he's not completely disappointed.
„I can't get used to this piece of metal. It goes against my grain." I explain to him as he returns to me. „Is it really necessary to have it? Can't I have a different weapon?" I rub my fingers along my palm, trying to shake off the unpleasant, foreign weight of the gun.
„It's you or them, Taesung. Nothing more, nothing less. Kill or be killed — that's how it works in this world. Here," he says, handing me a new stack. I don't take it. Sometimes my stubbornness gets the better of me, and right now, I've decided to resist.
He keeps his hand outstretched, fingers clenched around the metal, and I just shake my head. The tension between us thickens. I hear him snort and, for a moment, I feel like he's going to shove the stack into my chest just to make me take it.
„I refuse!" I say, raising my voice slightly, as I pull one of the throwing knives from the case on the table and throw it at the target. Perhaps it's because I'm angry, or maybe I'm just good at it, but I hit the figure on the target right between the eyes.
Hanil walks over to the case, pulls out another knife and approaches me so quickly that I flinch and take a step back. I'm terrified that he's going to stab me with it — and why wouldn't I be, given what happened with the knife last time? Instead, he holds it by the blade and offers me the handle. His movement is quick, fierce and predatory, and my stomach clenches for a split second.
„Again!" he commands. His voice is short, hard and military. I take a breath and try to calm my racing heart. I take the knife from him and look at the target. Exhaling, I swing and throw the knife at the figure on the target. It lands next to the first knife, between the eyes of the silhouette.
„I want to throw knives." I say it as if it's obvious. I feel much more confident doing this than I do holding a gun. It's intuitive. Natural. There is silence before the throw and after the impact. There's no bang or explosion in my ears. Just a precise trajectory.
At that moment, I feel a strange calm, as if all the voices in my head have fallen silent and only me, the target and the knife's trajectory remain. The silence is addictive.
„Tomorrow, we'll try moving targets. We'll go to the shooting range. Now, keep practising, you still have eight left." I take the knives in my hand and slip them onto my fingers. They are special knives with a ring in the handle to make them easier to hold. I throw them one by one at the target on the other side of the garden. Head, heart, groin. I repeatedly strike the same places. A standing opponent should be no problem. I'm curious to see how the moving targets work tomorrow.
I can feel every throw in my shoulder, elbow and forearm tendons. It's pure, focused physical work, not frantic shooting into thin air.
The more I throw, the more everything around me — the house, the garden, Hanil — fades into a blurry background. All that remains is rhythm and breathing. Target. Inhale. Throw. Impact.
I'm now interested in another weapon that I long to use, one that I haven't shot since school. A bow. I pick up the bow and draw out some arrows from the quiver.
It's a smooth, heavy bow that feels beautifully balanced and comfortable in my hand. The only difference is its weight compared to a pistol. A pistol is just a tool.
There's something archaic and honest about a bow. When I use it, I feel like someone who fights fairly, not like a killing machine. Maybe that's why I'm drawn to it.
„Hey, hey, what do you think you're doing?" Hanil stops me, putting his hand on my shoulder. His grip is firm and warning.
„I'm going to shoot."
„Do you know how to use it?" Since he asked so nicely, I decide to show him.
„Excuse me?" I tell him to move out of my way. I take my stance, spreading my legs wide with my heels firmly planted in the grass. I place the arrow on the string and pull it back as far as my arm will allow. I grip the arrow between two fingers, aim my elbow backwards at a right angle to my body and place the string against my cheek. I feel the cool touch of the string on my cheekbone and the tension in my body.
For a moment, everything stops. I can feel the quiet thumping of my heart in my chest, the tension in my stomach and the strength in my shoulder. In that single moment, I am perfectly present.
As I exhale, I release the arrow and listen to its whistling as it flies through the air. The string burns my forearm on its way back to its starting position because I am not wearing a protector, but I don't feel any pain. I am so bruised and exhausted today that perhaps my pain threshold has ceased to function. The arrow flies through the black silhouette on the target's head like a knife through butter. I released the arrow with such force that it flew right through the target and disappeared into the hedge beyond.
The grass behind the target shakes for a moment as the arrow disappears between the hedge's branches. The sound of it piercing the hedge is wonderfully satisfying. A smile spreads across my lips. For the first time in a long time, I experience true satisfaction — pure and quiet, without fanfare. Just calm.
„To answer your question, yes, I know how to use a bow." I stand in position, my arm still tense, and let him take it in. Hanil stares at me for a moment. He has that distrustful, narrow-eyed look as if he's sizing me up again. This time, though, it's not as an annoying American kid, but as someone he might – just might – have safely by his side in battle one day.
And perhaps, for the first time since they brought me here, I sense that he is beginning to respect me, to.
... ༺༻ ...
BLOOD DEBT (피의 빚)