When I cut the throat of a Kempeitai officer, I am whispering: (Mean tae sereipheap te) There is only freedom.

That is my real name. That is the Bridal Mask’s only truth.

No—not you, reader. The you that wears a uniform. The you that changed your name to Kanemoto . The you that forgot how to say “mother” without spitting.

I am not a hero.

I hide in the alleys of my own city like a comma in a sentence that refuses to end. The Japanese think I am a ghost. The communists think I am a traitor playing dress-up. My own mother, if she were alive, would not recognize my shadow. Good. Let her not. Because the boy who loved her is buried under a railway bridge, his mouth stuffed with surrender.

When I torch a rice storehouse, I am chanting: (Kom phlech) Do not forget.

It did not come to me as salvation. It came as a cough. A blood-fleck on a white glove. My brother’s dying hand pressed a ghost into my palm. And suddenly, the Nihongo I spoke so perfectly turned to ash in my throat. I tried to say “Tasukete” (help). What came out was something older. Something from the rice paddies my father burned.

Instead, find a quiet corner of a forgotten market. Listen to the old women selling radishes. They are speaking it. The old language. The one the colonizers could not brand. It sounds like:

(Khnhom jea kon Khmer) I am a child of the earth. (The unbreakable one.)

I am the son of a traitor who taught me to bow. My father’s spine was a question mark carved by Japanese bamboo. Every morning, he would press his forehead to the floor of Gyeongseong and whisper, “Arigatou gozaimasu.” And I, little snake in a police uniform, would click my heels. I arrested my own people. I smiled while their ribs cracked. I was the Empire’s favorite pet—the Korean who hated Korea.

Do you know what it feels like to have two tongues? One for the master’s whip. One for the mother’s grave. I am a schizophrenic nation. My left hand signs death warrants in elegant kanji. My right hand carves the same names into a prayer stick.

(Khnhom s’abt anak) I hate you.

And if I die tomorrow—if the bridge collapses or the bullet finds my lung—do not mourn me. Do not build statues. Do not name a street after my shame.