Hope

Beom-Seok was already dead. Too little food.

Sung-Joo swung his hammer down, cursing the Japanese devils. If only this rock was Nakamura’s head.

He recalled the wallet he’d found inside a bush, its unlucky pilot owner probably a bunch of maggoty chunks sprayed across the Japanese countryside right now.

Fuck him.

Corporal Nakamura had smiled when he’d turned in the wallet. All that American money. Extra rice granted.

He, Kim Sung-Joo of the Hiroshima Second Enforced Labour Camp, would survive this war somehow. He would.

Squinting up, he watched a lone B-29 droning across the sky.

Another American, he thought.

(NYCMidnight 2022 Microfiction 100 Round 1 Winner)