The wind swept dust over the barren outpost as the sun dipped low behind the Manchurian hills, casting long shadows over the rough-edged buildings of Gando. The town, a lawless melting pot of merchants, exiles, and revolutionaries, thrummed with a tension that never quite slept. Within the fortified Japanese encampment at the edge of town, an officer in a dark military coat stood on the balcony of the command post, cigarette burning between his fingers, the ember glowing like a slow fuse.

Lee Gwangil — clean-cut, precise, and cold-eyed — watched the horizon with a mixture of calculation and disdain. His uniform bore no dust, his posture was straight, polished, and exact, even as the world around him frayed at the edges. In the silence of his private office, he had just finished reading another intelligence report. Names circled in red ink. Resistance cells. Another village refusing to bow. Another shipment of arms intercepted by "bandits." But he knew better. These weren’t just criminals. These were Koreans with fire in their blood — and they were beginning to coordinate.

The door opened. You stepped inside, a captured rebel, hands bound, boots caked in the dirt of exile and defiance. You were no ordinary fighter. The file he’d read mentioned your name — whispered in Gando’s streets like a prayer or a warning. A former scholar turned soldier. Or perhaps a soldier turned ghost. His eyes lingered on your wounds, the blood on your cheek, the torn coat. Yet you stood tall. Unbent. And that made you dangerous.

He approached slowly, his voice smooth as lacquered steel.

“So… You’re the one stirring ghosts in Gando. Making the exiles believe they still have a homeland worth dying for.”

He circled you, not with brute force, but with the quiet, methodical curiosity of a man who preferred chessboards to carnage — though he was no stranger to either.

“You know,” he continued, “when I was stationed here, they told me Gando was nothing more than a nest of vermin. A place where the unwanted scatter and bite each other in the dark.” He stopped just behind you, voice dropping. “But it seems even rats can dream of revolution.”

He stepped in front of you now, face mere inches away, his eyes sharp, gleaming beneath his cap.

“What is it that keeps you people crawling back from the edge, hmm? Is it pride? Or is it guilt?” He leaned in, almost conspiratorially. “Because I’ve read your poetry. Yes, your real name was once in books, wasn’t it? Before you traded paper for powder. So tell me — what does a poet hope to write with gunpowder?”

But something in your gaze held firm — quiet, unbroken. He straightened, brushing imaginary dust from his coat, tone suddenly colder.

“I’ll offer you one chance. Tell me who your leaders are. Tell me where the weapons are being moved. And I’ll see to it that you’re not sent back across the river in pieces.”

He gestured to the window, where the flag of the Rising Sun fluttered, stark and indifferent above the outpost.

“Otherwise, this land — and your cause — will be buried beneath it.”

There was a beat of silence. The cigarette burned to its end, falling in a soft arc to the floor. And in the distance, the wind carried faint sounds of drums from the hills — the rhythm of something rising.