Chapter 8

May 2, 2029

Refugee Camp 38, Korea

I was folding laundry outside my tent. Half-listening to the hum of morning in the camp when the loudspeaker crackled to life.

"Xu Haoyan. Xu Haoyan, report to the main gate with your belongings. Xu Haoyan, report to the main gate." My hands froze. The fabric slipped from my fingers and fluttered to the dirt. I didn't think. I just ran. The closer I got to the gate, the more I realised how many people had gathered. Faces lined the wire fence and the cracked sidewalk behind it. Whispers filled the air like static, but no one knew anything for sure. Then I saw him standing beside 3 soldiers, and a bag over his shoulder. It looked too small to carry a life. "Haoyan," I called out, breathless. He turned toward me, his face calm, too calm. One of the soldiers noticed me and stepped slightly between us. "You shouldn't be here," he said. "He's being deported. It's official."

"Why?" I asked. "What did he do?" The soldier's jaw tightened. "He was a soldier in the People's Liberation Army. We received confirmation from his former unit. He was directly involved in the initial landing during the Chinese invasion of Nagasaki." My heart staggered. The soldier kept speaking. "He personally raised the flag over a civilian structure used as a temporary command post. A school. One that a missile was supposed to hit, but it faltered and never exploded." I turned to Haoyan, my mouth suddenly dry. "Is this true?" He nodded, slowly. "Yes," he said. "It was me. They found out who I was. What I did. I was with the first wave that landed in Nagasaki. I planted the flag." Something inside me cracked. Not from anger. Not from betrayal. But from the sharp, sudden weight of the memory. I could still see it. That morning, the fire curled across rooftops. Screams echoed in the streets that were once filled with laughter and happiness. I was on the train and I looked back. Through the smoke, high above the school, a boy stood on the roof where the Japanese flag used to wave proudly. He drove a red flag into the charred pole. A soldier's silhouette. A boy's shadow.

Now that shadow was standing in front of me. I couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. "I didn't know," Haoyan said quietly. "I didn't know you were there. I didn't know what that place meant to you. I was just following orders." My chest ached. For my home. For him. "It doesn't matter," I whispered. And I meant it. "I don't care about the flag, or the school, or anything that you did." He looked at me, the way he always did when words didn't feel like enough. "I just want to be with you," I said. "Till the end. That's all." His eyes softened, and for a moment, the noise around us disappeared. It was just us again—in the quiet, in the space between belonging and exile. He reached for my hand, and I let him. "I'll find a way back to you," he said. And I believed him. Even as they led him away. Even as the gates closed behind him. Even as the camp swallowed the silence he left behind. Even as my quiet sobs were the only thing able to be heard.