fingers, the smoke curling outwards, drifting towards me, like it was hunting me down, pointing to where I was hidden. I felt it tickle my nose, irritate the back of my throat.
Don’t cough, I told myself. I held my nose, cupped my hands round my mouth. My throat itched, I needed to cough. I watched the men. Watched them… watched them… waiting… waiting.
I heard the man’s lips drag on the butt, watched his fingers flick the cigarette to the ground and saw it land in front of me. My throat burned, the cough stuck there, the cigarette smoke pointing me out. I was going to cough, I knew it, and they would hear me, and they would catch me, and we would be gone. All of us. A family stopped in time.
A boot squashed the butt into the ground and I watched the soldier turn, my hands clasped round my mouth as I swallowed and swallowed, and I saw them reach the corner. And I coughed. But they didn’t turn. They had seen the shoe.
They walked away and I breathed again.
I stayed hidden for hours, my brain imagining what my ears thought they could hear – my family taken away, signs hammered into roadsides advertising tomorrow’s public trial, soldiers threatening neighbours who might be harbouring me, gossip muttered about what we had done.
I didn’t hear Min-Jee, and I didn’t hear Sook.
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