So this was how it worked. You got your own small room in the house — a stall really — and some nice clothes and make up and some musky perfume to spray on yourself. They gave you a tatami mat to sleep on and a box for collecting the tickets that the men brought in to give you. Each morning you would bring these tickets to the house manager, who wrote the quantity down next to your name in a ledger to keep track of your pay for providing services to the soldiers. But what services? What is this place? It was a question Meiko had kept asking herself all through the afternoon and into that first evening. “This is a place of comfort,” the manager had told her, told all the new girls. “You are here as a gift from Emperor Hirohito; your job is to give our warriors comfort.” But what did that mean? If we’re here to entertain these men, shouldn’t there be instruments in our rooms — a beautiful gayageum to rest on our laps, to send our fingers fluttering across like birds? Am I to sing, to dance, to tell the men adorable little stories that help them forget the horrors of the battlefield? What do they mean by comfort? The girls who had already been there when they arrived, who knew, offered no answer — they moved through the hallways of the house with their heads down. In her room, Meiko saw nothing with which to comfort the men. Besides the ticket box and tatami mat, there was a small wooden crate of the saku she had seen on the truck. She opened it to find mysterious squares of tinfoil inside with the words Assault No. 1 stamped on them. Next to the box, there was small ceramic bowl full of cloudy water, heavy with the scent of disinfectant.
Meiko lay on her mat waiting all evening, listening to the sounds of men being comforted in the rooms down the hall from hers. What wretched noises! They sounded like they were in such delirious pain, that the girls were injuring them somehow. Wait, that wasn’t quite right: there were mutual screams, men and girls, reciprocal anguish, though the girls’ tears seem to go on for several seconds after the soldiers had let out their last, tortured bellow. If it was all so unpleasant, then why were the soldiers lined up the hall, awaiting a go at it? They were yelling hayaku! hayaku! — hurry up, hurry up! It’s my turn. Hurry up and finish. It’s my turn.
Night came and a strange, errant peace fell over the house. There were still sounds of comfort coming from the rooms but the hallway seemed less busy, less crowded. Meiko was nearly asleep on her tatami mat when the curtain to her stall opened abruptly. She perked up in an instant and scuttled back against the wooden wall to see a man, a Japanese officer, standing at her threshold. He was short and corpulent but full of authority, his eyes sharp and small.
“Hello, my little one,” he said. She could not bear to talk. Tears were already forming below her eyes. “Do you speak Japanese?” he asked. She nodded hurriedly. He smiled, tossed the little red ticket he came in with into her box, a minor formality, then glanced down to make sure it was the only one in there. “Don’t be afraid. There’s no point to being afraid. What is your name?”
Again, that silly temptation to summon the Korean name her parents had given her, but she shook it off. “Meiko,” she replied.
“Meiko,” the officer repeated. “What a pretty name for a pretty little girl. How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
The officer let out a slow, happy breath and took a step forward.
“Sir, are you here for comfort?” Meiko stammered.
The officer blurted a chuckle at her. “Oh, Meiko, very much so, yes.”
“And how am I to comfort you?”
“By doing exactly as I say. Do you understand?”
Meiko could not bring herself to nod. She looked at the floor, and when she looked up again she saw the officer already undoing the front of his trousers and pulling away his loin cloth. His man muscle fell out, a thick, short cord, and he took it in his hand and began stroking it to life. Her eyes widened in horror.
“See this?” he moaned softly. “Watch me, Meiko. Watch me. Don’t turn away.” He petted himself slowly and the meat in his hand grew longer and stiffer. “Now come here. Come here, little one.”
She was too terrified to disobey. She took one reluctant step that brought her close enough for him to take her by the wrist and pull her all the way over. “Now you do it. Here.” And he put her hand on him. “Now you do it. You do it.” She ran her hand up and down him clumsily, her face streaking tears.
The officer leaned into her and began bunching up her dress in his hand, pulling it up by her hips. “Oh, you have such beautiful legs, Meiko. Look at that. Look at that.” He stared at her legs for a long time while she stroked him. Then he turned up at her with eyes glossy with pleasure. “Now put me in your mouth.”
She thought she heard wrong, got his Japanese wrong.
“Meiko, here, put me in your mouth.” He forced her to her knees, took his meat back from her and pressed it toward her face. He slapped her chin with it, a heavy thump that left what felt like a cobweb behind. “Stroke me with your mouth. Come on — comfort me.”
“No,” she blurted out, finally. “No!”
“Meiko, take it. Take it in your mouth.”
“No!”
He thrust his hips against her head, mashed the tip of his meat between her lips. Without thinking, she seized it in her teeth and bit down. The officer let out a howl and ripped himself away from her. “She bit me!” he screamed. “Fucking bitch!” and he drove his knee as hard as he could into her sternum. She yelped. Crumbled onto the floor in front of him, a deep bow.
“She fucking bit me!” he screamed again, pulling up his trousers and hustling from the stall. He was gone for only a moment, not long enough for Meiko to regain her breath or find a way to escape. When he came back, he was holding an iron poker he had yanked from the charcoal stove in the main room, its tip glowing an angry orange. The house manager was racing up behind him, pleading “Give me that! Would you give me that? What the hell are you doing?” He shoved the manager away and then knocked Meiko onto her back with one expert stomp into her clavicles. Even before her head hit the mat, the officer was climbing aboard her, pinning her legs down with his knees. Hiking her dress up with one hand, he dragged the hot poker across the narrow shelf of her shin with the other. She filled the room with a scream that seemed to originate from every cell of her body. The manager reached over the officer and stole the poker from him. “Would you give me that! You’re going to start a fire in here!” The officer turned himself around and forced Meiko’s legs up and apart, draping the back of her knees over his shoulders before fumbling with his trousers again. “Put on a sack!” the manager yelled, reaching into the wooden box by the tatami mat and tossing him one of the tinfoil squares. “Put on a sack, would you. Follow the rules!” Meiko fought him even as she watched him liberate the little ring of rubber from its tinfoil square and roll it down over himself. When he leaned with all of his weight into her, she felt the room slip backwards, slide away as if the house was collapsing down into the earth. It felt like every gram of the officer’s bulk had poured into her, filling her insides with a horrible, tearing weight. He shoved her knees all the way forward until they were squashed into her eyebrows. Began pumping at her with wild, canine thrusts. Meiko grew vaguely aware that the house manager had left the room once this act began, confident the officer could do no damage to the house itself. Meiko closed her eyes and let her mind flutter away. She thought of cranes lifting off into the sky from a vast body of water, taking their wisdom with them. What had her mother always called her? My wise little crane.
This was a wisdom she did not want.
The officer screamed into her ear and stopped his thrusting, just held himself there and melted away like wax off a candle. His breath was a wheeze that smelled vaguely of oysters. He pulled out of her and slipped off the condom with one motion of his hand. Threw the limp, soggy sack, stained red on the outside and bloated with a milky white on the inside, at Meiko’s face.
“Stupid Chosunjin!”