It was a sunny day in the countryside, Ang Makara had finished his meal and was soon working back, tending the field.

He was a young man, in fact, he was only 22 and was working on his family's rice plantation, times were harsh and there was barely any food available for the people, the King seizes a small portion of the food every month as tribute for the "royal family". The 72 square meter house that they lived was supposed to be plentiful, but Ang had four small brothers along with his parents; too many mouths to feed, but he always found a way, even if it meant stealing to protect his family.

His sunburnt skin and scrawny body was an inevitable fate; it is the fate of most Cambodians that work in the farms especially in the province of Ratanakiri, where men's life expectancy is of 39. Ang was the only literate member of his family and as such had a plethora of books, his collection featured maybe half a dozen leftist books including "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung".

After tending to the rice fields for a couple of hours, he had finally returned to his house in order to tend to his brothers and saw a different-looking newspaper on the kitchen table, "Khmer Truth" was the name on the cover.

"What a terrible name for a newspaper" Ang thought to himself before grasping the paper and reading it, there, he found a very interesting article written by a "Serip Chamb", the article asked for an overthrow of the monarchy and for the "fields to be returned to the farmers", with several claims of a revolution coming soon to Cambodia, he couldn't care less for it although he was quite intrigued, who would have the courage to publish a newspaper that very clearly claims their desire to overthrow the king? Were they mad?

These were all thoughts that flew inside Ang's head like an M-60 shooting NVA soldiers during the 60's, so many questions about this Serip Chamb, but duty called him first, he had to return to see the fence and later buy some bread from the village's baker; there wasn't much to eat in the village other than bread, rice, beans and ocasionally cow meat from one of the farmers in the region; around 1/4th of the way there, Ang was met by two men clutching AK-74's.

"Hello, what is it that you need?" Ang asked, fear permeating his voice, he'd never seen a gun this close to him before.

"We were looking for you, you've read our message, yes? By brother Serip?" The man on the left asked, a stoic face that let out no emotions as he unblinkingly looked at the scrawny Khmer.

"That? Uh, yes I have; is it yours? I can give it back! Just please don't hu-"

Ang couldn't even finish the sentence as a black hood covered his face, his attempts to scream were muffled by a hand being shoved in his mouth, he felt two hands grasp his feet and two other hands grasp his arms, he was being dragged around by a corpse, this lasted for a solid 60 seconds until he was violently thrown on the back of what sounded like an SUV, there wasn't much to go around and his mind was a jumbled mess of desperation, he was even considering jumping out of the car, but then his captors would kill him, he was too young to die.

Not a long time passed until they stopped, they dragged him out of the car by his collar and dropped him on the dirt road, they continued to drag him until they reached an encampment. The hood was then removed and Ang's eyes were blinded by the blotted out sun, he was in the middle of the jungle in some far-out camp, hell, he had no idea where his village was located anymore, all he knew was that those men were not fucking around and that they intended something?

"What am I going to do? I have no money, I have no clothes, I have no information. Are these the King's men? Was that newspaper a trap?" Ang kept thinking, eyes shut like those of a child, not desiring to face his fears and thinking that the trouble will, quite literally, disappear in the blink of an eye.

The cocking of a pistol behind him made shivers go through his body, he tried to remain calm and collected but it was getting hard to do so by the minute, until an older man, maybe 48-50 appeared. He was tall, around 6'2'' with a beard that resembled Ho Chi Minh's.

"Stop putting fear in the boy, is this how you want to convince the people that the monarch is the true evil? By pointing a gun to a boy's head and hoping that he joins our movement?" He ranted, Ang could feel his executor's shame in the air, the aura of this man was of a leader; with a croaky, yet stentorian voice he spoke.

"I'm sorry for the way we had to bring you here; you see, we believe that you have potential to help us do great things, we have been following you for quite a few weeks now; which means that we know about the books you read, the monarch wouldn't like it if you were reading leftist propaganda books now, would he?" Serip Chamb said in a joking tone. "You look like a good kid, which is exactly why we need you, we're the Revolutionary Group of Cambodia and we need recruits, now, theoretically speaking, you can go home but I wouldn't recommend it to be quite honest with you, the King and his men probably wouldn't like it if they found out that there was a youth with communist-revolutionary leanings in a poor, hungry village now, would he?" The mocking and cockyness of his tone was clear as day, this man had the gall to threaten Ang and still think that he was looking sympathethic to the kid kneeled down on the ground with tied hands.

"Look, you and me are pretty similar, I too desire change and revolution in Cambodia, don't you wish that your parents had something to sell so you could have money to buy more things? Do you really want to continue stealing and risk getting shot? Please, if you accept, I'll show you your quarters and this will be your home for two weeks, after that I'll let you return home, free to do whatever you want, okay?" This man had a plethora of tones to his voice, altering them minute after minute.

Ang looked at the man with fear, what choice did he truly had? Could he really trust this man to not shoot him during the two weeks? I mean, he did have a chance to shoot him just now.

Ang meekly nodded, as soon as he did, a knife cut his binds and his hands were finally free again.

"Welcome to the RGC, kid. You'll like it here, I promise." Serip said, signaling Ang to follow him.

Welcome to the rice fields, motherfucker.