the girl with the ribbons

Eight hundred.

Actually, we didn’t have eight hundred. It was half that number; all we had were four hundred troops and a whole lot of courage — or a whole lot of desperation. Whether or not that courage or desperation made up for our underwhelming number is up to you.

Three hundred.

Guttural cries rang from throats constricted with terror. The choir of agonized voices thundered collectively and shook the concrete bridge. With it, the precise whizz and crack of metallic death showered down on us, rendering us deaf of thoughts. A putrid fog of decay and gunpowder filled our nostrils, blinding our senses, suffocating us — we, the men with honor, yet now the men in retreat.

Now there were two hundred of us left on the bridge. Some of the luckier ones had reached the end of it, and some… 

The sickening whistles of souls ascending or of the bullets that claimed them were reaching a forte. The sight of my own feet passing over a fresh corpse brought bile up to the back of my throat. My teeth chattered. Sweat rolled down the gritty sides of my face. Skies, we had lost so many…

I glanced over to my right, where running alongside me was my childhood friend, my ride-or-die, and now my brother in battle. His veins were bulging with the strain of effort. Each step he took was a giant, desperate lunge towards freedom, towards life, towards a second chance. I was just like him, a slave to the next breath, a captive of a bitter, bitter hope.

One hundred. There were still a hundred sprinters on this runway to safety.

Xin Ning — peace and prosperity.

Growing up, not everyone could be neighbor to peace and prosperity, but for me, he was right next door. The rooster crowed, heralding the arrival of the still invisible sun. The chilly air grazed my skin as I bounded across a series of dirt mounds and towards Xin Ning’s house. The boy was already outside his door with a box of rice seedlings in his arms, and when he saw me he sent over a silly wave. I hurried to help him with the load and we carried it to the boggy field together.

We set the box down on the side and gathered bunches of the seedlings in our hands. Gingerly dipping our toes into the gooey mud of the rice farm, we bent over and stuck the seedlings into small, ordered rows. In our tacit way of work, the shallow marsh was gradually split into two sections, one for each of us.

I was done first and sat on the small ridge at the edge of the rice paddy, waiting for my feet to dry. Eventually, Xin Ning finished up his side of the field and joined me for a rest. The sun had now risen high enough to cast its light, but was still too low to provide warmth. 

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I asked, my breath instantly condensing into mist. Only boys then, we hadn’t often accounted for the future, so my question took Xin Ning by surprise.

“Dunno,” he murmured, kicking the loose sediment off the mound. Then he stretched, groaned, and crouched down beside me. “A farmer, probably. Like my pa. Then I’ll get to eat whenever I want.”

“Me too,” I said. And, shivering, I added, “But I’ll marry a weaver so I can wear anything I want, especially in the wintertime.”

“No fair, me too!” Xin Ning shouted.

I raised my fingers to my lips. “I’ll tell the folks it was you if you wake them up.”

“If the rooster can do it, so can I.” Xin Ning took a great yawn.

I looked up again, and I barely recognized the man running for his life. In his transformation from a farmer boy to a young conscript, he had seen things that would haunt even the most vulgar of men. He had been forced to grow up in the most twisted reality the world could conjure. He was broken beyond repair, and I realized I was no different.

Eighty five.

I was so close now. British Shang Hai was just a few paces away. From behind the neutral gates, searching eyes fell upon me, drawing me in, trying to protect me in vain. These were my people, and yet...

What was nation? There had to be something greater than myself, and perhaps that was just what it was: the future of our descendants, the honor of our state, the status of our skin color, something. But was it still a nation when a part of it was under the jurisdiction of a foreign power, when half of it was under the occupation of another, and when all of it was at the complete mercy of the rifleman that wanted it dead?

Was it still a nation when it was cut up, crushed, hopelessly scattered? What made my people mine?

Thirty three.

I was really, really tired.

Feverish, I remembered my mother. The invasion of Manchuria was nigh, and the farmland had long fallen behind us. We had become a family with no claims under our name. Pushing west and deeper inland, we were among the rag clad ragtags traipsing across the country, seeking to trade space for time. We needed more time.

And food. If the enemy didn’t kill us, hunger surely would. 

With the onset of winter, the effects of starvation only became more cruel. The coarse wind whipped our thinly covered backs, as if to hurry us on. I tightened my arms around myself. 

“Go faster,” Nature’s frigid breaths hissed. “The Japanese are coming for you.” Had my lips not been screwed up in a grimace, I might have liked to respond that I was going as fast as my thin, frozen legs could carry me.

In the distance, there was a noise — a human noise. I lifted my shivering head and my frost-beleaguered eyelids to find the source of it. “Volunteer to fight.” a voice bellowed. “One bag of rice for anyone who signs up. Sign here please. Volunteer to fight.”

My hands fell to my sides and I took one step towards the voice.

In the next instant, my mother secured a firm grasp around my wrist. As I turned to look at her, a gust of wind blew my eyes dry, triggering the reflex to close them. Hers too were narrowed, but her sentiment was clear.

Then, to make sure I understood the warning in her gaze, her parched lips parted. “Don’t,” she managed. “Not worth.”

“But,” I returned, my throat equally scratchy. “Rice.”

“Not worth.” she repeated, her tone beginning to take on an edge.

“For us.” I said. She shook her head.

I studied her a while more, and then my arms returned into a crossed position, conserving heat, preparing for the rest of the day’s long trek.

But the voice sounded again. This time it was sinister yet all the more alluring, a devilish temptation. “Anyone who serves their country will be rewarded with a bag of rice!”

My stomach wailed and my skin burned from the cold. Stumbling once, I made my way towards the seller of the seductive promise.

“Son!” my mother shouted hoarsely. I knew it hurt her to raise her voice, but I walked on anyway. I heard her frantic, uneven footsteps as she struggled to catch up to me.

Getting nearer now, I saw a box of individual satchels at the feet of the commander to whom the voice belonged. He saw me, too, and once I arrived, he offered me one of the bags.

I would get to be a national hero, and on top of that, I could eat.

I snatched the bag, forced it into my mother’s trembling hands, and knelt before her in the snow. Her calloused, frostbitten fingers felt like snake scales against my shoulders. Quietly taking a deep breath, I tried to steady my voice for her sake. “Hai’er bu xiao.” 

Forgive me for my disobedience.

One.

Xin Ning was no longer beside me. I wasn’t sure if he had made it, or if he had fallen along with all the other forgotten warriors. I was barely conscious of my own existence, only of the desire to keep. Moving. Forward.

Snarls and hisses, the noises of a beast, flowed from my mouth. Through blurred vision I saw some of my brothers behind the border, safely off the bridge, receiving medical attention. But I saw more of those who had taken their final breaths here, any one of whom could’ve been me. 

I was already shedding my pack and dropping my rifle. Fantasies of a soft, white bed and a steaming plate of sweet and sour pork filled my throbbing head. I lifted my hands to hold onto my bucking helmet as I briefly crossed the gate.

Whizz! Crack!

For a split-second, a violent pain seared into my wrist. My heavy breaths prepared to tear into a scream, and then--