Chapter 486: Difference? There

"How long will the ride take?" someone asked.

"To Kumagaya, about three hours," a veteran‑looking man replied, "then three months of training. After training, some go to Deguo, some go to Yingguo."

"How do they decide?"

"Based on results, and also on luck," the veteran lit a cigarette. "This is my second time. Last year I spent eight months in Faguo, got injured and was sent back. This year I recovered, and I'm going again."

A surprised murmur rose in the carriage. Hao Er sized up the veteran—he looked in his forties, a scar streaking from his left eyebrow to his right cheek, and his left hand was missing two fingers.

"Senior," Hao Er asked respectfully, "is it really that dangerous over in Europe...?"

The veteran exhaled a smoke ring and laughed, "Dangerous? Kid, do you think this is a game? My squad sent a hundred and twenty men, fewer than thirty came back alive. My two fingers were cut off by bayonets in the trenches."

The carriage fell silent.

"Then... why go anyway?" Shankou whispered.

"Why?" the veteran stared at him, something flashing in his eyes. "Because if we don't go, the old and young at home will starve to death. If we go, at least they can survive. Moreover—" he stubbed out the cigarette, "dying there is more dignified than dying here. At least the tombstone can read 'sacrificed for the nation', and the family can receive compensation."

The train whistled and slowly set off. The crowd on the platform waving goodbye receded, eventually becoming tiny blurred dots. Hao Er, looking through a vent, watched the receding Tokyo skyline and suddenly felt an inexplicable flutter in his chest.

But he quickly suppressed the feeling. He could not waver. It was an honorable choice, the right choice.

He took the book *Soldier's Handbook* out of his backpack and began to read it earnestly.

At the same moment, on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, Renchuangang lay beneath a lead‑gray sky.

Jin Shuntai had his hands bound with hemp rope, linked together with nine other youths like livestock awaiting slaughter. They were driven across the cement of the pier, the ground marked with dark‑red streaks left by the previous batch—blood washed repeatedly by seawater, now faded to near invisibility, yet the iron‑rust scent still lingered in the air.

"Hurry up! What are you dawdling for!"

A leather whip cracked across Jin Shuntai's back, searing hot. He staggered, nearly falling, snagged by the ropes in front and behind. The escort was Sakura Nation military police, clad in yellow‑brown uniforms, white cuffs, their faces perpetually impatient.

Their group numbered about five hundred, all seized from the Hansong Peace‑giving area. Jin Shuntai recalled being captured three days earlier—he had been picking wilted vegetable leaves in an alley behind a rice shop when two military police walked up, asked nothing, shoved him to the ground and bound him.

"Why did you arrest me?" he shouted in Korean at the time.

The military police answered in stiff Japanese, "The Imperial Army needs labor. Go overseas to work, you'll have food and wages."

"I won't go! My mother is still at home—"

A gunstock slammed into his stomach; he curled up in pain. When he came to again, he was on a train bound for Renchuangang. The carriage was packed with youths like him, the youngest looking only fourteen or fifteen, the oldest no more than twenty‑six. No one spoke, only suppressed sobbing.

Now they stood at Renchuangang Pier No. 3. Before them loomed a massive cargo ship—the Yellow Sea, its hull riddled with rust, its smokestack belching black smoke. The cargo‑hold doors were open, like a monster's gaping mouth.

"Name! Age! Hometown!"

At the registration desk, a Sakura Nation clerk kept his head down. Jin Shuntai reported his details in halting Japanese.

"Press your fingerprint."

A document was pushed over; it was dense with Japanese characters he didn't recognize a single word. In the corner, a line of Chinese read: "Voluntary Overseas Labor Contract."

"This… this is…" he wanted to ask.

"Press!" the military police's gunstock pressed against his waist.

Jin Shuntai trembled, pressing his thumb—stained with red earth—onto the marked spot. The red fingerprint bled onto the paper like a drop of blood.

"Next!"

He was shoved onto the gangway ladder. The cargo hold was already packed with people—three tiers of bunks, each less than a meter high, requiring one to crawl in and lie down. The air reeked of mildew, sweat, and… urine. A few wooden barrels in the corner served as toilets.

"Get in! Hurry!"

Jin Shuntai was jammed into a spot on the lowest tier. He had barely gotten in when people behind him shoved in, nearly flattening him. On both sides were strangers, sweat‑slick skin sticking together, breaths misting each other's faces.

"Make way… can't get out…" someone said in Korean.

"I'm going to vomit…"

"Mother… I want to go home…"

In the darkness, the suppressed cries spread like a tide. Soon, the cargo‑hold door slammed shut with a clang, sealing tight. The world fell into total blackness, only a few vents letting in a faint glimmer of light.

The engine roared to life, the hull shuddering.

Jin Shuntai flung his eyes open in the dark. He thought of his brother Shun Zhi. A few months earlier, Shun Zhi had been taken the same way. Their mother had sobbed herself unconscious, and after waking kept murmuring, "He'll come back, Shun Zhi will come back…"

But now, he too had arrived.

"Where… are we going?" a boy beside him asked, trembling.

No one answered.

The ship drifted slowly away from Renchuangang. Through a vent, Jin Shuntai could see the pier receding, the port's cranes standing like giant skeletons against the dim sky.

He recalled home: the dilapidated thatched hut on the outskirts of Hansong, drafty in winter, leaky in summer. Their mother washed clothes all day, her hands cracking and bleeding; a day's earnings couldn't even buy a litre of rice. Their father had long since died—crushed in a mine collapse; the mine owner, a Sakura Nation man, paid twenty yen and said it was "more than enough."

Brother Shun Zhi apprenticed at a rice shop, whose owner was also a Sakura Nation man. Shun Zhi worked fourteen hours daily, sleeping in the granary, eating leftovers from customers, and hadn't earned a single cent in three years. The owner said, "Food and shelter are the wages; what more can a Korean expect?"

And now, even their bodies no longer belonged to themselves.

The hull began to sway as they entered the open sea. In the darkness, someone started vomiting, a sour stench spreading. Another couldn't hold urine; the barrel filled quickly, the liquid spilling onto the deck, soaking the floor.

Jin Shuntai closed his eyes, fists clenched tight. His nails dug into his palms, blood oozing, yet he felt no pain.

Brother, where are you?

Are we still alive?

Can we… still go home?

Tokyo, late October

The Kumagaya training camp sat on a barren plain, surrounded by bare hills. In late October, the cold wind already raged, making the tin roofs of the barracks creak.

Hao Er had been here for three weeks.

Daily life was as precise as a clock: rise at five a. m., finish washing and quarters within ten minutes; assemble for a morning run at five‑thirty, ten laps around the training field; breakfast at six‑thirty—coarse rice with soup; training began at seven—drill, assassination, shooting, and crawl‑forward.

The instructor was a sergeant named Xiaolin, in his thirties, a veteran of the Russo‑Japanese War. His face was perpetually fierce; a slightest slip in training earned a kick or a slap.