(Bong bros) Brother.
And when I stand over the governor-general’s sleeping body, my blade one inch from his jugular, I do not kill him. I lean close. I let him smell the gunpowder and the ginseng. And I say, in a language he will never learn, the only prayer left to me:
Do you know what it feels like to have two tongues? One for the master’s whip. One for the mother’s grave. I am a schizophrenic nation. My left hand signs death warrants in elegant kanji. My right hand carves the same names into a prayer stick.
Until the mask.
I am not a hero.
And if I die tomorrow—if the bridge collapses or the bullet finds my lung—do not mourn me. Do not build statues. Do not name a street after my shame.
That is my real name. That is the Bridal Mask’s only truth. Bridal Mask Speak Khmer
No—not you, reader. The you that wears a uniform. The you that changed your name to Kanemoto . The you that forgot how to say “mother” without spitting.
I am a wound that learned to walk. I am the missing page from the history book. I am the scream that your governor’s son hears just before the lights go out. And when I speak now, I do not speak Japanese. I do not speak the tongue of the occupier. I speak the language of the knife.
I am the son of a traitor who taught me to bow. My father’s spine was a question mark carved by Japanese bamboo. Every morning, he would press his forehead to the floor of Gyeongseong and whisper, “Arigatou gozaimasu.” And I, little snake in a police uniform, would click my heels. I arrested my own people. I smiled while their ribs cracked. I was the Empire’s favorite pet—the Korean who hated Korea. (Bong bros) Brother
(Khnhom s’abt anak) I hate you.
They call me Bridal Mask because I wear my vengeance like a wedding veil. Because I marry the night. Because every Japanese colonel I gut is a bouquet thrown at the feet of a dead Joseon. But here is the secret they don’t tell you in the underground newspapers:
(Khnhom jea kon Khmer) I am a child of the earth. (The unbreakable one.) I let him smell the gunpowder and the ginseng
It did not come to me as salvation. It came as a cough. A blood-fleck on a white glove. My brother’s dying hand pressed a ghost into my palm. And suddenly, the Nihongo I spoke so perfectly turned to ash in my throat. I tried to say “Tasukete” (help). What came out was something older. Something from the rice paddies my father burned.
Now I speak only in acts.