Chapter 12: Enigma (Pak)

It hurt. It hurt wretchedly. The nauseating smell of blood and the acrid fumes of ammonium nitrate assaulted my olfactory nerves, exceeded in intensity only by the sharp, piercing pain in my chest. The seatbelt had saved my life, but it also broke a few ribs and my clavicle. One of the fractured ribs punctured my right lung. It felt like Quincey P. Morris was driving a stake through my chest. My lung had collapsed, along with the steering column and all my previous beliefs about safety and security outside school grounds.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and was immediately sent hurtling into steering wheel. My back slammed against the door and knocked it open. I fell out onto the rocky hillside and rolled downhill like a barrel. Do a barrel roll, they said. It would be fun, they said.

A prickly shrub brought me to a stop. I steadied myself and looked back at the wrecked SUV. It was still upright, but the front end had been obliterated by the impact. The trailer was upside down and resting just a meter away from the engine compartment, which was billowing out thick smoke and emitting an orange glow... The engine compartment was on fire!

I rushed back up the hill to rear of the SUV. Yim opened her door and struggled to climb out. I grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her out.

"Are you okay?" I asked, carrying her away from the wreck. I felt that I should have been screaming, but little sound came out. The sudden surge of adrenaline had masked the pain in my chest, but it could not heal my lung.

"I'm… okay. Help Yuri. She's still… still inside." Her response was weak and faint. More likely, my eardrum had ruptured again. I set her on the ground. The lacerations on her legs were bleeding badly.

"Take my jacket!" I tossed her my dusty uniform, "There's a pocket knife inside the inside. Make yourself some bandages."

I didn't have time to hear Yim's response. I dashed back to the SUV. The small flames that I saw earlier had morphed into a blaze enveloping the entire engine compartment. The fire was also spreading to the trailer, which was packed with munitions. I had to act fast.

I pulled on the front passenger door, but I only succeeded in tearing off the handle. I grabbed a rock, smashed the window, and pulled the handle on the inside. Throwing the door open, I pushed aside the curtain airbags and reached out to Yuri. She did not respond. A moment later, I saw why.

Yuri's neck and chest were covered with blood. Pieces of plastic and metal were still stuck in the folds of her neckerchief. She did not seem to be breathing, but there was no time for me to check. I quickly unbuckled her seatbelt and dragged her out of the burning vehicle.

"Let's get out of here!" I shouted to Yim, who was tying up a tourniquet on her leg, "We need to get away before the trailer explodes."

Yim stood up but immediately stumbled down. She was still too badly hurt. I rushed to her and kneeled.

"Get on my back. Hurry." Yim climbed onto my back and put her arms across my chest, her right arm digging into my broken clavicle. I had to support her weight with my left arm, while dragging Yuri with my right.

I dashed downhill for the safety of some boulders. I barely made it before an explosion knocked me down. If my eardrums were not ruptured before, they certainly were now. The ammunition in the trailer cooked off—pop-pop-pop! It sounded absurdly cheerful, like firecrackers on Wondan.

A bullet struck sparks at it deflected off the boulder next to me. I ducked behind the rocks for cover. A few more whizzed overhead, but we were safe for the time being.

"That was a close one," I muttered, still trying to catch my breath, "Better keep our heads down for now. There might be more to come."

In the meantime, Yim had begun to check Yuri for a pulse. She waited a moment before shaking her head. I let out a curse, followed by a fit of coughing and gagging.

Yim smiled weakly at me and placed a hand on my shoulder, "You did a good job, Pak. That was very… courageous of you..."

The complement did little to alleviate Yuri's death. I couldn't do much for Yuri, but I could stop Yim from joining her. I tightened the makeshift bandages around her legs. The jacket sleeves were helping, but not very much. I used my belt on her right leg and my tie on her left; those did a little more. Her right side seemed to have borne the brunt of the shrapnel. I had to roll her on her side and use the remainder of my shirt as gauze.

"Ow… It hurts," Yim complained, "I can't feel my right leg though."

"Don't worry, you're doing well," I hastily reassured her, "The bandages are working."

The bandages were indeed working. Injuries healed very quickly in the afterlife, and even primitive first aid measures worked to save lives. Otonashi would have done a much neater job, but Yim was going to survive. Yuri, on the other hand…

"I don't know what happened to Yuri," I muttered, adjusting my grip on the bandages, "How did we get hit by shrapnel from two different directions? Did we hit another mine on the way down?"

"Yuri wasn't hit by the mine…" Yim replied shakily, "She was killed by the airbag."

"Shrapnel from airbags? Aren't they supposed to be full of… well.. air?"

"That's what they're supposed to full of. But sometimes, they explode with so much force that parts of their steel casing break off. It happens a lot in wet climates like here and Thailand. It happened to me back..."

Yim did not finish the sentence, but I was too exhausted to ask. My adrenaline rush was beginning to fade, and the pain in my chest became more pronounced. My grip grew weaker, but the makeshift bandages held. Yim later helped me dress the scrapes and bruises I suffered on my downhill misadventures.

"Thanks for the help," I cringed as she pressed her neckerchief around a gash on my cheek, "You should focus on Yuri, though. We need her to revive before Operation Riptide starts." Reviving the dead in the afterlife was an unpredictable affair. Sometimes, it took just half an hour. Other times, it took up several days. The time needed was roughly proportional to the severity of the injuries, so even the dead benefited from medical treatment.

"Let's get you bandaged up first," Yim replied, moving on to another gash on my arm, "There's no use in rushing it. The guys back at school can start without Yuri, but they definitely need you there."

Yim and I turned our attention Yuri, but there was not much we could do. The big chunks shrapnel cut deep into her chest and neck, and we could only remove the metal fragments at the surface. Ironically, the airbag designed to save her ended up killing her.

Yim seemed to be able to read my mind. "These airbags are just as bad as a landmine, and they always explode near your head."

The thought of being shot in the head by a single bullet was bad enough. The thought of having my head pelted by hundreds of pieces of sharp metal was even worse. "That must be a terrible way to go," I commented haphazardly.

"Oh, I know-kah," Yim replied quietly, "I took a few pieces to the eyes before I died back in 2009. Some lodged inside my brain, and the surgeons could not remove all of them. It killed me in the end. And that's why I avoid sitting in the front seats now."

"Oh… I… I am sorry to hear that..." I was shocked and not too sure how to respond. Yim had always been rather hesitant to talk about her personal life, and most of the SSS, myself included, did not know how she died. Death was still, for most, a taboo topic. The burden of death is just as hefty in the afterlife as it is in life. Was that why she teared up when she saw the bomb designs? I did not ask, but she continued to speak.

"The accident itself wasn't bad, but the exploding airbag was. I made it to the hospital, but the doctors could not do much. The fragments were too deeply embedded. My mother stayed by my side for weeks, and my father had to fly in from Germany to see me. But I couldn't even see their faces anymore. I was in surgery so often that I hardly spent any time with them, and when I wasn't, I was in so much pain that we couldn't do anything together. It was all useless in the end though. Things got so bad that I was deaf, blind and paralyzed for the last two days…"

"Mein Gott…" I could not formulate a proper response. There was nothing that could express what I felt at that moment. It was so tragic that my eyes started to well up.

"But even then, I never lost the will to live. I desperately wanted to live-not just for myself, but for my family. After my brother died, I became the only child in the family. My parents had so much hope in me, and there was so much that I wanted to see in the world. All it took to destroy everything was a careless driver and a defective airbag-kah."

Tears were rolling down her cheeks, leaving behind clean trails on her grubby face. I wanted to hug her, talk to her, or at least tell her it was alright.

But it wasn't alright. She had already experienced so much tragedy in her life, and death slowly and painfully separated her from her loved ones. It was not fair at all. I tried to speak, but I could not find the right words. We could only sit there, thinking about how unfair life was.

My pain and Yim's bleeding subsided roughly proportionally to the intensity of the fire. After a few more minutes, we were ready and able to limp around again. The raging fire had destroyed everything inside the SUV, including our radio sets. We had no way to call for help, and Yuri still needed urgent attention. The only option for us was to limp back to school. Yim and I made a makeshift stretcher for Yuri, and we started traversing up the rocky slopes leading back to the road.

"We need to keep our eyes peeled. Whoever planted that mine could still be waiting to finish us off." Yim immediately looked around, but we saw no movements. We were in the open, no one fired at us. The small part of my mind not occupied with pain and fear reasoned that if the attacker-most likely the Major-was still around, he could have easily shot us when we were dressing our wounds. Still, it was safer to be vigilant.

Yim handed me my pistol. "I also found this in your jacket, Pak," Yim said, handing over a small wooden box, now covered with blood,"I know this is probably very important to you-kah. I hope it is not damaged too badly…"

It was the box. It was the box that the Major gave me. To add insult to injury, he carved a picture of a log onto the box. Inside was a box was a simple piece of paper. What was on it was anything but. It was a series of numbers, obviously some sort of code. The way it was written-a series of five digits, separated by a space, was reminiscent of the Japanese book ciphers used by the Imperial Japanese Army during the war. It was a lot simpler than the Enigma machines used by Germany during the same conflict, but without a cipher book, it was still virtually impossible to decipher. I had already given up on it. Yuri had a copy of the codes, and she had ordered the newest member of the SSS, Takamatsu, to run a frequency cipher on it, with no success.

Yim, apparently, did not know about this, and she had mistaken it for a prized possession, "It this a charm or something? I'm sorry there's so much blood over it…"

The Major's "gift" to me was of no practical use, but it was an insult and a challenge. He knew who I was. I was still amnesic about most of my past, so he knew my past better than I did. He knew me. He was making a mockery of my stupidity and helplessness.

I had wanted to destroy the box, but I could not. I kept it close to me, as a reminder to me vigilant. I had failed, and Yuri was dead because of that. I grimaced at the thought.

"You can probably wash it off." Yim whimpered. She had misinterpreted the source of my frustration, "But I really don't think whatever inside is damaged-kah." She began to open the box.

"No, it's fine…" I stuttered, "Don't worry about…"

The piece of paper dropped out of the box and was swept away by the wind. The diminishing flames were still consuming a lot of oxygen, and the paper was headed straight for them.

"Grab that! Quick!" Yim and I both rushed towards the paper, but we were too injured and tired to run quickly. The paper circled the column of flame in the engine compartment. For a moment, it looked like that our paper would soon be consumed, but a sudden updraft caught the paper, hurling it skywards. It came to rest near the road at the top of the hill.

Fortunately, Yim and I made it to the paper just before as it was caught by another gust of wind. Yim snatched it out of the air.

"It's a bit singed, but you can still read it-kah," she said, examining the paper, "But I can't seem to make anything out of this…"

She continued, switching from Japanese to flawless English, "East is East, and West is West?"

"What are you talking about? It's just a bunch of numbers."

"It's written right here, see?" She switched back to Japanese and pointed to a row of Roman letters at the top of the page: "East is East, and West is West". The letters were small and faint, but I had no recollection of seeing them before. How did I not see such an important detail?

The answer struck me like a ton of bricks: The letters were written in heat-sensitive ink. The heat from the fire had made the ink visible. Why had I not thought of it before?

I did not know what the new sentence meant, but it seemed cryptic enough to be important. I quickly placed the paper back inside the box, excited to share it with other members of the SSS. It could mean the next breakthrough for the SSS, but it would have to wait until Operation Riptide ends.

Barely managing the weight of the stretcher, Yim and I staggered back onto the road. By this time, the sun had already set, and the road was virtually deserted. We made our way to a nearby gas station, hotwired a kei truck, and resumed our journey back to the school, more melancholic but wiser.

Jargon Dictionary

Quincey P. Morris:

In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Quincey P. Morris is a young American, from Texas. Portrayed as a honest, dependable and rugged fellow, he is close friends with Dr. John Seward and Arthur Holmwood. He assists his friends and Jonathan Harker in tracking down and killing Count Dracula, who is stabbed in the heart by Morris's bowie knife.

Wondon:

More commonly known as Korean New Year, Wondon marks the start of the a new year and is considered one of the most significant traditional holidays. People visit relatives, exchange gifts, and launch fireworks.

Enigma:

Developed by Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I, Enigma machines were a series of electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines designed to protect sensitive communication. They were widely used by Nazi Germany during World War II and were initially unbreakable. Alan Turning and other researchers exploited a few weaknesses in the implementation of the Enigma code to create a Bombe machine, which helped crack the Enigma. Using information decoded from the Germans, the Allies were able to prevent many attacks.

Closing:

Dima: Fly, Eagles, Fly!