Side Story: Hell on Earth
Chapter 97
Radio
The silent fellow's lips curved into a rare smile in the present, as he gazed at the image of Maria weeping with joy in the past. This emotionless man suddenly felt his throat dry, a choking sensation in the present, because he remembered seeing his mother in the past, hastily wiping away her tears in fear of punishment.
Once, Maria made a small mistake, and a soldier plunged her head into the river. At that moment, she saw a fish eating human excrement, so she invented another strange method of fishing and taught it to Le. The two sisters rose earlier than most.
They went to the river, climbed onto a low bridge, and dipped a basket into the water with both hands, defecating into it. Hearing the sound of fish struggling inside, they quickly lifted it up. Each time, they caught five or six fish, which became the family's temporary means of survival.
Le and Maria got along well. Le was kind, brave, and hardworking. Maria's husband's sister remained calm even in hardship.
Fortunately, Le and Maria were together. Although they had no right to speak of feelings or their former life, they still encouraged each other, and half a sentence was enough to understand one another's meaning.
The children were forbidden to play with dolls, hide-and-seek, or any childish games like their peers. They could only eat a full meal when muttering deliriously in their sleep. Maria remembered: every morning before the adults went to work, the children cried for a breakfast they had never had, then lost the strength to speak again. They stared blankly but silently, as if asking:
"Papa, Mama, what happened? What should we do? When can we go home?"
Parents no longer embraced, kissed, or caressed their children as before. Out of fear of punishment, Maria no longer dared to play with Ange or care for her. The daily gestures of intimacy between parents and children had vanished.
Everything was mercilessly erased. The children did everything themselves: they bathed in the river, ate the first meal distributed at noon by the Hive. The Hive forbade them from going to school. At first, Maria worried and asked herself:
"What should the children do to keep up with their lessons?"
But every day they fell into an inescapable matrix, the death trap tightened, and food became the terror that consumed Maria's mind. A mother's only thought was that work could bring food, doing more could save her children's lives.
Maria felt regret and sorrow. She struck her chest so hard that she coughed blood, using the pain to suppress her cries of self‑blame for not opposing Yingming. At that time, she should not have listened to Yingming's order to keep the children with their parents, but should have resolutely entrusted them to relatives at the embassy. He would have taken them safely back to Hexagon, sparing them from suffering like animals, worse than death.
Dang Khong's eyes are instantly stained a searing blood-red… burning… scorching the emotions he has long dug deep within himself and buried away. Now, in the present, it rose from the grave in the heart of one who had never known peace, who had been forced to hear countless heartbreaking cries. He had to see:
The unyielding mother had always found ways to survive in the past, struggling with all her strength to protect her children's lives at any cost.
In contrast to his intelligent wife, Yingming was more stupid than the brainwashed. Maria did not see her husband all day; he and the other men cleared the forest, leaving early in the morning and returning only at night. Every time, he bragged about Wan. Yingming believed he was building a friendship with Wan, never for a moment suspecting that Wan was a spy for the Hive, secretly seeking out traitors for ethnic and social cleansing.
Whenever Maria's family lacked rice, Wan lent them some. When Wan fell ill, Yingming searched among the reserved medicines and gave the village chief a few pills.
One day, on his way back from working in the fields, Yingming met the families of two friends who had newly arrived at the temple. One family included a former guard from the Capital, accompanied by his son-in-law who had previously served as a government soldier. The other family's head was a worker, Maria's next-door neighbor back in the Capital.
Seeing Yingming's closeness with Wan, these two friends had the idea of asking Yingming to help them settle near Wan's house, waiting for an opportunity to curry favor with the man who held power in the village. Wan agreed immediately. Thinking he was doing a good deed, Yingming disclosed the entire personal backgrounds and former occupations of the two men. The fanatic and the two greedy men had no idea they had just made a fatal mistake: signing their own death warrants.
Yingming was far too talkative. Whenever he had the chance, he would tell Wan how impressed he was by the career the Hive had built. Yingming also befriended a villager who was both short and hunchbacked, sharing his political beliefs with the man without hesitation.
He bragged that he listened to foreign broadcasts on a portable radio. According to the information, the former king of Floating Kingdom was about to return, and the evacuees would soon reclaim their old lives. Naive to the point of absurdity, Yingming had no idea that the short, hunchbacked man was actually a secret agent.
That night, a group of rebels gathered at Wan's house for a secret meeting, right next door to Maria's. Although they spoke in hushed tones, Maria, restless and unable to sleep from anxiety, could still catch a few scattered words:
"Do not let the evacuees listen to foreign radio."
"Confiscate all radios."
"Return the Prehistoric people to their own country."
Maria was not yet fluent in the Mountain-Sea language, but she clearly understood the matters they were discussing. Terrified, she woke her husband and told him everything, but Yingming brushed it off:
"You are just seeing ghosts everywhere. You must have misunderstood the issue; there is nothing to worry about. Get some sleep so you have the strength to work tomorrow!"
Maria still tried her best to persuade him, but Yingming said again:
"If there were really something shady going on, they wouldn't be so stupid as to discuss it right next to our house!"
Maria whispered into his ear:
"Maybe they are doing it on purpose to scare the monkeys by shaking the trees, trying to panic anyone with rebellious intent into exposing themselves."
Yingming clicked his tongue at his suspicious wife. The fanatic, annoyed, pulled the blanket over his head and refused to say another damn word. Maria, helpless and dejected, lay with her hand across her forehead, tossing and turning all night.
The next morning, Wan came and told Yingming to search for the signal of the national radio station. The following day, the village chief borrowed Yingming's radio under the excuse that his own was broken, and never returned it.
Yingming still did not understand that silence was best. While working in the fields, he continued to exchange important views with his former guard friend, commenting on the news. The spies quickly discovered this and immediately began strict surveillance. The hunchbacked dwarf went to Liberte and asked:
"Does your father have a gun? Have you ever seen your father wearing a uniform?"
Maria trembled with fear, but Yingming did not care and even tried to comfort his wife. This former guard friend did not bring Yingming any luck; he often spoke loudly, boasted about himself, and constantly spoke in Hexagonese or King's language.
Two months after he arrived at the islet, one evening, four spies came and took him away, claiming that the Hive needed manpower. He was the first to be "accepted" into the reeducation camp, as the villagers called it—a sentence equal to death—but no one knew except the rebels and their families.
About two weeks later, before everyone went to work, the spies returned and took another twenty men onto the boat. Among them were the former guard's son-in-law, the worker neighbor, and Yingming. They lied to the children:
"Don't worry, children, your father will come back. The Hive is taking them to the reeducation camp to study."
Maria was not at home at that time. In the afternoon, when she returned, she saw the children crying on the porch. Maria asked what had happened. Wan said:
"The Hive wants to check, because your husband's friend is a former guard who once denounced him. But don't worry, in about twenty-four hours, at most forty-eight, he will come back."
From that day on, Maria never received any news of her husband.
Every time she came home from work, Maria saw many naked corpses tied to banana trees floating on the river near a small hut. She silently prayed to the deities, hoping Yingming was not among the dead.
Every day, after working from morning until afternoon, they returned to the islet, where each person received twenty kilograms of corn as their food reserve for the entire season. The Hive no longer distributed rice, so the evacuees had to eat corn cooked in various ways. Eating only one kind of food, their digestive systems began to fail.
Two weeks after capturing a group of rebels, the Hive once again searched the evacuees' "homes" (which were actually just temporary huts). At three in the morning, they took everyone out of the village to work in the fields seven kilometers away. When relatives returned, the children said Wan had brought two spies and searched everything.
The evacuees avoided those who lurked beneath the floorboards every night like the plague. But it was impossible to know who the spies were. During the first search, Maria managed to hide a few things in time.
The second time, they took everything. These were items the rebels considered useless to the evacuees, but for them they were as precious as medicine, soap, and Maria's notebook. Losing the notebook meant complete separation from the life once regarded as corrupt and decadent.
Around the end of August, rumors spread that the Hive would allow the evacuees to return home. To confirm the rumor, several boats full of evacuees sailed upstream. No one knew where they were going. Some said they were headed to the capital, others claimed they were going to Perkampungan Emas (Yellow Village). The Hive issued an order in the village:
"People from Perkampungan Emas, Perkampungan Putih (White Village), Perkampungan Hijau (Green Village), and Perkampungan Merah (Red Village)… are required to return to their hometowns."
The crowd rejoiced, eager to leave immediately, but only those from the capital still received no order to return. Before departure, the islet's natives believed the Hive would confiscate more property.
Once again, the evacuees were deceived by the Hive. They could not return home at all; in reality, it was a second exile to poorer, harsher regions, where they would face even worse treatment.
Around mid-September, Wan received a list of families from the capital. Maria, Le, and the children had to leave the village on the same day. Maria was not excited about the journey, because she still held a fragile hope that Yingming would return. Seeing Maria hesitate, Wan said:
"Don't worry, walk calmly. Your husband will know where to find you."
These words did not reassure Maria, because Wan's mother advised her not to go:
"Poor you, they won't let you return to the capital. Now the capital belongs to the families of soldiers. They will take you to a remote mountain area. Try to ask permission to stay here with us."
The old woman sighed:
"I love you as if you were my own child. I still need someone as hardworking as you!"
Maria asked the old woman to plead with Wan, but it was useless, because the list of who would leave and who would stay came from higher authorities and could not be changed. Maria's family left the old woman some heavy belongings, such as unworn colorful clothes, a few frying pans, and some pots.
On September 10, five months after arriving on the islet and two months after Yingming's disappearance, Maria's family sadly left the village on the islet.
In the early afternoon, the boat carrying Maria, Le, and the children headed to the shrine on the mainland, where many people were waiting to be sent home. By evening, Wan distributed the last batch of rice. Le and Maria lit a fire to cook. The two sisters did not use firewood, but instead burned old-era money as fuel. Ironically, one million Res went up in flames just to cook a pot of rice.
The flickering flames burned; they burn in Dang Khong's eyes as he stands motionless, watching. Liberte had once quietly taken a bowl of rice from Maria's hands. The little boy ate slowly, washed the bowl slowly, and slowly chose a corner to curl up and sleep in the cold night.
Dang Khong turns his no-longer indifferent gaze toward Maria—the mother who had once wanted to hold her child in her arms, yet had not dared to defy the Hive's orders. In that era when beasts killed humanity, showing maternal love had once been considered the most foolish act.
Maria could only silently swallow her tears of resentment, her sorrowful gaze watching the children gradually fall asleep. They still murmured, calling for their mother, but there was no laughter—only the groans of hunger, the desperate cries of fear, begging for help.
The mother covered her mouth to keep herself from sobbing aloud. She watched anxiously as her daughter woke, screaming and calling for her mother.
The little girl raises her hands, wanting to be held. But when she hears the bastards shouting, the child falls silent, panicked, then shrinks down trembling, clenching her teeth, squeezing her tiny hands to stop herself from doing something foolish.
All night long, the little girl lies motionless, terrified that if she moves, the bastards will cut her tongue like they did to the adults.
The sight of death had shrouded the gloomy atmosphere… and now it blurs in Dang Khong's cold gray eyes.