The Orphan Master's Son Read Free Page B

came running up with a yellow ball.
    For a moment, the man didn’t move. Then he took a step backward.
    â€œGet him,” Officer So shouted.
    The man bolted, and Jun Do gave chase in wet jeans, his shoes caked with sand. The dog was big and white, bounding with excitement. The Japanese man ran straight down the beach, nearly invisible but for the dog moving from one side of him to the other. Jun Do ran for all he was worth. He focused only on the heartbeat-like thumps of feet padding ahead in the sand. Then he closed his eyes. In the tunnels, Jun Do had developed a sense of people he couldn’t see. If they were out there, he could feel it, and if he could get within range, he could home in on them. His father, the Orphan Master, had always given him a sense that his mother was dead, but that wasn’t true, she was alive and well, just out of range. And while he’d never heard news of what happened to the Orphan Master, Jun Do could feel that his father was no longer in this world. The key to fighting in the dark was no different: you had to perceive your opponent, sense him, and never use your imagination. The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.
    From ahead came the body thud of someone falling in the dark, a sound Jun Do had heard a thousand times. Jun Do pulled up where the man was righting himself. His face was ghostly with a dusting of sand. They were huffing and puffing, their joined breath white in the dark.
    The truth was that Jun Do never did that well in tournaments. When you fought in the dark, a jab only told your opponent where you were. In the dark, you had to punch as if you were punching through people. Maximum extension is what mattered—haymaker punches and great, whirling roundhouse kicks that took out whole swaths of space and were meant to cut people down. In a tournament, though, opponents could see moves like that coming from a mile away. They simply stepped aside. But a man on a beach at night, standing on the balls of his feet? Jun Do executed a spinning back kick to the head, and the stranger went down.
    The dog was filled with energy—excitement perhaps, or frustration. Itpawed at the sand near the unconscious man, then dropped its ball. Jun Do wanted to throw the ball, but he didn’t dare get near those teeth. Its tail, Jun Do suddenly realized, wasn’t wagging. Jun Do saw a glint in the dark, the man’s glasses, it turned out. He put them on, and the fuzzy glow above the dunes turned into crisp points of light in people’s windows. Instead of huge housing blocks, the Japanese lived in smaller, individual-sized barracks.
    Jun Do pocketed the glasses, then took up the man’s ankles and began pulling from behind. The dog was growling and giving short, aggressive barks. When Jun Do looked over his shoulder, the dog was growling in the man’s face and using its paws to scratch his cheeks and forehead. Jun Do lowered his head and pulled. The first day in a tunnel is no problem, but when you wake on the second day from the darkness of a dream into true darkness, that’s when your eyes must open. If you keep your eyes closed, your mind will show you all kinds of crazy movies, like a dog attacking you from behind. But with your eyes open, all you had to face was the nothingness of what you were really doing.
    When finally Jun Do found the boat in the dark, he let the dead weight fall into its aluminum cross members. The man opened his eyes once and rolled them around, but there was no comprehension.
    â€œWhat did you do to his face?” Gil asked.
    â€œWhere were you?” Jun Do asked. “That guy was heavy.”
    â€œI’m just the translator,” Gil said.
    Officer So clapped Jun Do on the back. “Not bad for an orphan,” he said.
    Jun Do wheeled on him. “I’m not a fucking orphan,” he said. “And who the hell