He would rather die than admit it openly to his comrades now, but very early, in the beginning, as a little boy…
He had loved to firebend.
He had loved the ethereal, almost holy and sacred, look of the bright yellow light from a flame wafting in a dark room. Dark shadows, like spirits, playing on the walls.
He had loved the feeling of being able to create it from his limbs from almost out of nowhere, and watching something delicate, like a leaf, twig, or strand of hair shrivel up when it burned…turning into nothing, becoming 'purified'.
He loved the sensation of heat and excitement coming from his breath and body that filled him an indescribable power.
A power that almost frightened him.
His mind rewinds back to that time, a time before quiet seclusion, when he had turned his back on the FireNation army. Even before the proud era of leading his men to war, the chaos and the endless carnage, the loud voices, the blood-red flash of the flag of his nation, taking the lives of men, women and children of the other two nations he had been brought up to despise, hearing the booming cries of soldiers in battlefield.
…To a time even before being a young recruit and marching with his then fellow comrades and fighting for a grand ideal, for something he thought he could proudly believe in.
Rewinding all the way to a deeply buried memory, his old childhood home near the peaceful provincial region of Pyong Yu, a farming village near a valley. The summer of the 48th year since the beginning of Souzin's war. But the war was such a faraway thought to him then…
Walking on a yellowish sandy dirt road in the countryside without a care in the world, the sound of his wooden sandals clopping on the ground as he nears his family's old house, a humble place with a thatched roof and wooden beams with cobwebs slowly collecting on the ceiling.
These were such simple times.
But it seemed too simple to last.
He recalls an image of his father; Eun-soo, a tall, sturdy and honorable man. A father any boy would have been proud to have.
Eun-soo had once taken his son and daughter to a neighboring village for a Fire-Day's festival.
Jeong-jeong remembers being very young, about seven, and being enchanted by the burst and bright colors of the fireworks against the night sky, and his little sister, Hyeonji, by his side, also smiling and giggling at the display.
"They look like dancing spirits. Don't they?" She said.
And, he remembers proudly singing the youth anthem as he sees the red of his nation's flag being raised on a high pole:
As the sun sets in the horizon
A battle cry is heard
O' sons and daughters of our land
With fury like the phoenix bird.
Your voices hail our FireLord
Burning red and bright
He protects our people's borders
Fierce with all his might
The sacred flame he wields
For the glory of our Nation
The glory of our Nation!
HURRAH! HURRAH! HURRAH!
But then he remembers crying childishly in front of his father, when three days later, Eun-Soo is completely covered in red armor, his face masked as he mounts a rhino ready to leave his wife and children to go off, to war.
The soldier had been drafted to 10th division, the first into battle, against an undefeated Earth Kingdom army.
Eun-soo's wife, Sung-hae knows he is not coming back. She is pale but silent.
"Jeong-jeong," The man had said to his son before he left, " Listen to me, I want you to grow up to be strong, but also to be honorable and true. Do you understand?"
The little boy sniffed and nodded, rubbing his eyes. But it would be several years before he would try to grasp what had been told to him.
But he looks up at his father who rides off, and knows that someday he wishes to be honorable as he is.
For the glory of his Nation.