Notes.

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CHAPTER XII

" We have mostly wasted time

Half-asleep and have-to-buy

Waiting for the faintest lie

And waiting for these wounds to heal "

(The Midnight, american artists, "Lost and Found")

a. Pandora's Box

King Jeongjo summoned Hong Guk Yeong in the early days of February 1777, while the government was, among other things, working out the final details of a official visit by the Qinq ambassador, scheduled for the following month. The event came as no surprise: the monarch asked to see him several times a week to deal with various issues regarding the functioning of the kingdom, and Hong Guk Yeong had seen too many years go by to marvel any longer at the influence he had gained at court during Prince Yi-San's ascension to the throne.

For the past few days, Jeongjo had been taking a closer than usual interest in the Gwishins. He had of course always paid very specific attention to them because of the extraordinary nature of their appearance, but the priority handling of the problem by his grandfather, the late King Yeongjo, had somewhat contributed to relaying the case of resurrections to a political difficulty like any other for the young sovereign. In addition, rumors in the corridors claimed that he was devoted to his love affair with Lady Seong, one of his mother's former bridesmaids, whom he had just raised to the rank of concubine. Several ministers had said that it was only a matter of time before the young woman was appointed royal consort.

Hong Guk Yeon, whose function was to read and understand the king's desires and orders, nevertheless saw things more closely, and he saw them better. He actually knew that Lady Seong served as an elegant cover for the king's burning passion for his own sister, Lady Hong Wonbin, who had revealed the full extent of her importance in the family by being placed in front of the royal eyes. Until then, she had been so absent and meaningless that she could just as easily have never been a member of the family.

The monarch's proximity to Hong Guk Yeong and the latent jealousies within the palace had nevertheless called for caution. It was better to pretend that Jeongjo spent his days thinking of an established woman rather than the sister of his closest adviser. There are enough sharp tongues already, thought the one who had been called Cho-Rip as a child, and who now rejected the patronymic as if it had been an insult to his existence. He knew it for being one himself, and for having fed more than one gossip in recent years, most often for the benefit of the sovereign and the kingdom. Thus went power. He was unable to change this rule any more than he could not submit to it.

By mid-morning, as he had met with the ministers of war and justice to discuss the last requests submitted to him by the monarch (the army of the dead for our country, Hong, the wonder of true power), someone knocked on the door of his richly furnished and decorated office to tell him that the king wished to see him.

- Is it urgent ? Hong Guk Yeong asked, barely taking his eyes off the campaign reports against the Gwishins that the Minister of War had just presented to him.

- No, my lord, the messenger said, bowing for what had to be the third time since he had passed through the door. His Majesty said it could wait until the second half of osi.
- Tell His Majesty that I will come to see him without fail at this hour.

The messenger bowed respectfully again. The days could be very long but also extremely short. Hong Guk Yeong had a workload that exceeded all his expectations of yesteryear, and it never really stopped, not even when he returned to his home a few meters from the royal palace. The king loved his advice and suggestions, and liked to question him on all possible and unimaginable subjects, as if Hong Guk Yeong was an extension of his thoughts and decision-making abilities. There was good things in occupying the role of the royal conscience (status prestige power), just as there were bad things (hatred jealousy fear). Some days, Hong Guk Yeong found himself having to move from one to the other almost without transition, and he came back exhausted, on edge, wishing nothing but to lock himself up at home and never set foot in the palace again.

But there were also the other days, when he felt that every corner of the royal residence was his, that he had fashioned its angles and orientation, when he felt that everyone was bowing humbly before his influence and word. The king was a stable divine figure in a kingdom weakened by a loss of belief and knowledge, and to be so close to him meant to assume an almost cosmic role for himself. The submission of others testified as much to his empire over the government as it strengthened it. It was a sign of the power of his decisions, the legitimacy of his privileges and his worth.

But the gods have sons, and you don't, a voice sometimes whispered deep inside himself that sounded strangely like his and Min-So's mixed together, and which he hated above all else. In a few words alone, it destroyed his achievements, undermined his authority, and made him a subject of mockery and disdain. All the ministers knew it, all his political opponents knew about the miscarriages and dead babies. He needed a son to inherit his possessions and hard-won rights, which he had earned over the years of advising the king and correcting the mistakes of his ancestors. It was the boys who were in power.

It wasn't that Hong Guk Yeong didn't love his daughter, or generally despised her gender. It was simply an absolute truth that he had learned, and which served as the law. It wasn't his fault if girls couldn't have power, things were the way they were, and the kingdom was out of control enough to see further dramatic changes. He needed a son. That was the only thing that mattered to him now, the only thing that had taken such a place in his life compared to his duties in government. If Min-So couldn't give it to him, he would have to get it by some other means.

One of his mistresses, a former Min-So's maid, had already given him a beautiful boy who was about to turn two, but she was not his wife, she had no status, and he needed a legitimate descendant. That can be arranged, he thought nevertheless several times in the evening, looking at the king's situation and seeing young women of good family, fresh, beautiful, whose entrails seemed to contain treasures of fertility, passing under his nose.

The king met him in his private apartments, as he had become accustomed to for some years. They exchanged on state secrets, confidential elements which were not intended to be evoked outside the sovereign and some privileged people. The face of the monarch was beginning to show signs of his age, and marks of anxiety caused by his position. Hong Guk Yeong took his place in front of him. They often looked at each other as equals now, and it even happened that the sovereign showed a form of humility towards him, at the same time and inescapably inflating the self-importance of the one who was sometimes called the "kingmaker".

- Something is troubling me, the monarch said immediately. I would like us to discuss it.

Hong Guk Yeong thought about the actions taken by King Yeongjo to annihilate his ancestors who had come back to life as Gwishin. He thought about his decision to send the resurrected back six feet under the ground, believing that they were not normal, that they were a disturbance and a threat, and that Hong Guk Yeong had been right to suggest it in the first place, when the first resurrection had begun.

- I will do my best to ease Your Majesty's concerns, Hong Guk Yeong assured him in an even tone, bowing his head slightly.

- This is about Baek Dong Soo.

The idiot, was the first thought that came to Cho-Rip (Hong Guk Yeong). He should have suspected that the subject would poison his discussions with the king. Dong Soo was behaving like a fool, and he was ruining all the efforts that Hong Guk Yeong had invested to bring him back to the palace.

- I am at your Majesty's service, he said, controlling his voice so that it would not betray his growing anger.

Jeongjo nodded quietly, satisfied with the answer.

- You know the respect I have for Instructor Baek, he began sincerely. We've already talked about it, so I won't bring it up again. I have been informed that his behavior has not improved much since his return from exile. Can you confirm it ?

- I am afraid that the rumors are indeed well-founded, Your Majesty.

- Is he still drinking ?

Cho-Rip (Hong Guk Yeong) pushed his nails into the palm of his hand.

- Yes, Your Majesty, I regret to tell you that his drinking has not decreased since he left the palace three years ago.

The king glanced outside, thoughtful.

- Do you think his position suits him ?

The question seemed to be a double-edged sword. Hong Guk Yeong answered it with deliberate caution.

- Your Majesty was very generous, and I remember that Dong Soo was very happy to take his place as an instructor of the Gwishin fighting troops. He also confided to me that he considered it an honor to be given the position of deputy and assistant to the Royal Investigation Bureau after having disappointed you so much.

He was embellishing things, but that was how court life went, and especially the slightest conversation with the monarch.

- So this isn't a question of responsibilities ? the king said.

- That cannot be, Your Majesty. Dong Soo always liked to be active. I don't think that's the source of the problem.

After Dong Soo's dismissal for risky behavior and incompetence (considered temporary), he was the first to bring up his name to the newly crowned king during his government's formation. He has significant experience, Your Majesty, he had stated, and he wrote to me that his three years of isolation opened his eyes to his misconduct as an instructor. The last observation was made up, as Dong Soo had not sent him a single letter since he had left Hanyang to move to Inje Province in order to live there with his wife and son as a farmer.

But he needed convincing arguments, and several of the sovereign's closest advisers had already used such extremes to win their case. Dong Soo couldn't remain isolated and too far from his influence, especially since the waves of Gwishin resurrections (what if Woon comes back) were multiplying. Alone, he was all the more inclined to have bad ideas, and Cho-Rip (Hong Guk Yeong) feared that some of them had his own person as a main subject. He had used patience and elaborate reasoning, but his strategy had finally paid off, and Jeongjo had eventually called Dong Soo back to the palace, where he had the opportunity to distinguish himself only once, by thwarting the conspiracy led against the new king by the norons.

- If he continues to act like this, I will have no choice but to dismiss him again, the sovereign taught him, without really surprising him. If it is not his work, what do you think could be the reason for his attitude ?

Yang Cho-Rip was sent back years ago, and suddenly he was twenty-three years old again, and was in a field, injured, tired, and resentful beyond words. In the distance, he could hear Dong Soo's sobs, loud, guttural, heavy with despair and muffled, because Cho-Rip knew, even without seeing him, that he had buried his face against (Woon's) chest and could no longer hear any heartbeat. He had been trying not to think about it for a long time, but like the absence of an heir, the idea never really left him, and contaminated his thoughts. Since the appearance of the Gwishins, he was again having that nightmare he used to had right after Yeo Woon's death (I had to, I had no choice, it was him or the kingdom).

In the latter, Woon leaned a livid face and blood-soaked eyes over him, whispered "Guilty", and dragged him mercilessly to the depths of the earth, hauling him to Hell and horror. Sometimes Dong Soo would be with him, smiling with unhealthy joy at Cho-Rip's decay, and then Cho-Rip would scream, scream, scream, in the dark and void.

b. Death and the maiden

The spring of 1777 began in April and truly started with a particularly sunny and hot day during the second week of the month. Throughout the previous season, the Spring House had been the scene of a meticulous inspection conducted by Go Hyang and the three gisaengs closest to Mistress Gyo. Every hallway was checked, the gardens were controlled, banquet guests were examined, and the sisters' visitors were investigated. Every weekend, Mistress Gyo would ask "So ?", and she would be answered "Nothing", which tended to make her smile with complacency.

As Baek Dong Soo had not been spotted during their careful supervision, their attention was somewhat slackened, and the four courtesans had returned to a more ordinary activity, going on with their occupations towards the noble customers of the establishment and taking care, for So-Ri and Go Hyang, of Yeo Woon. Mistress Gyo was right : he had refused to let them approach him during several days after seeing Baek Dong Soo at the market. He kept the door closed and hardly ate, to the point that Hui Seon, worried at the idea of seeing him subject to one of the aggressive crisis to which the gwishins were submitted in case of lack of food, had ended up intervening in her usual way, with forceful admonishment and brutality, to finally obtain only an unfruitful result.

Yeo Woon had kept his door closed at each of her visits for almost a week. He cried, Mistress Gyo had confessed to her gisaengs, when she called them to give them the report of her meeting with their dead guest, and I have the impression that this is all he's been doing since he woke up. I'm starting to lose patience, and I don't know what to do anymore. In a moment of vague hesitation, she turned to Go Hyang and asked her if it was one of her young lord's habits.

- No, Go Hyang said with a loyalty that would probably have earned her more sympathy from Yeo Woon. He has always been very secretive. I've never seen him in such a state.

Mistress Gyô's lips had pinched.

- Because obviously he never was, she replied. It seems that even he doesn't know how to react.

She informed them that Yeo Woon likely spent his days in bed, staring at the ceiling or crying, and pointed out that she "did not understand such an abandonment of will". Because she wants to live, Go Hyang thought without daring to tell her, and my lord doesn't want to. The realization was abrupt, alarming and haunting : it had the taste of the gaping wound that had opened in her heart the day Yeo Woon had died, murdered by his childhood closest friends (she killed me). Lately, Go Hyang was more and more convinced that she could have killed Baek Dong Soo or Hong Guk Yeong with her bare hands, provided that one of them showed up on the doorstep of the Spring House.

Her resentment reached levels of unprecedented violence, which their catastrophic excursion out of the establishment had only reinforced. At night, she dreamt that she was pouring poison into their cups, while they were at the dinner she had organized with Bok Joo Bong, back in Heuksa Chorong's time, to protect Yeo Woon from their hostility. They coughed and spat blood in front of her and eventually died in a rage of suffering, and she awoke in sweat, full of morbid jubilation and bitter regret. I should have killed them, she thought every day, as she prepared herself, combed her hair and received her customers with a sweet smile, I should have strangled and suffocated them and my lord would have been saved, he would have lived. Another part of herself, buried in indecipherable depths, nonetheless whispered to her that Yeo Woon would have skinned her alive, before throwing himself off a cliff, as a final insult to her disobedience.

His young lord agreed to let them back into his room at the end of March, when the sun seemed to reappear after days of gray clouds and heavy snow. He was as unlocacious as ever, and his eyes, whose black gradually took on a much more human appearance, were red and swollen. He agreed to take a bath, but refused to let Go Hyang slide a wet cloth down his arms and torso, where the scar seemed to taunt anyone who looked at it.

When Mistress Gyô entered the steamy, smoke-filled room, unconcerned about Yeo Woon's privacy, she sent Go Hyang and So-Ri away and spent more than half an hour talking with him. When the two gisaengs were allowed to return, the water had cooled down, and Yeo Woon had dressed alone, draped in the large coat he had worn when he met Baek Dong Soo's apprentice in the gardens of the establishment.

- Do I have your word ? Mistress Gyô had asked him in an imperious tone before leaving the room.

- You have it, he had assured her.

Go Hyang waited three days before knowing the content of their conversation. Mistress Gyô called them at the end of the day in her apartments, and announced with disconcerting simplicity that Yeo Woon was planning to leave the Spring House soon. Go Hyang felt her legs slipping out under her.

- To go where ? She couldn't help asking, her voice hoarse with fear and disbelief.

Mistress Gyo shrugged her shoulders.

- No idea, she said. It's up to him, and it's better for us not to know. If the police came looking for him, he would be safer that way, and so would we. He was talking about going north, maybe to China.

(China ?)

- When is he supposed to leave ? Go Hyang continued.

- Soon. I will need you to organize his departure and get him some items to constitute his equipment. I don't need to tell you to be discreet. You know that.

- But why does he have to leave ? Wouldn't he be safer here ?

Mistress Gyô had looked daggers at her.

- Think about it, she hissed. It's here he is most at risk. The army is everywhere. I thought you wanted to protect him. He won't be safe if he stays near Baek Dong Soo and Hong Guk Yeong.

Go Hyang had cowered, uncomfortable and distressed, while acknowledging the validity of Hui Seon's arguments.

- None of them came to the Spring House, she articulated weakly, aware that she lacked justification. The soldiers who came did not suspect anything either.

- For now, the mistress Gyô coldly interrupted her. We were just lucky, and well prepared. I told you that it only took one mistake for us to be exposed. I am risking my house, my reputation, my life and those of my courtesans. I have an affection for Yeo Woon that you cannot understand, but when it comes to my responsibilities, he will only ever be just another Gwishin. It has to be that way. You can't keep him in an ivory tower forever. He told me he wants to leave, and I think that's the best thing he can do.

(He's going to kill himself) Go Hyang opened her mouth, unable to imagine that Mistress Gyô hadn't thought of such a possibility, but she raised her hand and shut her up.

- He must go, she said imperiously. He won't get better by staying close to his past.

It was finally agreed that Yeo Woon would leave in mid-May, when the good weather would be finally settled and the kingdom would think less about the fourth wave of resurrection that had occurred in the fall of 1776. Go Hyang would return to the House of Jasmine at the same time, since her presence would no longer be required at the Spring House. Her three sisters were kind enough to be affected by her departure.

We will miss you, dear, Su-Jin confided to her one day as they were helping each other to do their hair, you are a delightful company, and without you, we would not have been able to take care of our guest for so long under such good conditions. Her kindness brought a small measure of comfort to her heart, but did not erase her anxiety about Yeo Woon venturing out of Hanyang alone, nor the insult of Mistress Gyo's dismissal, underscoring her inability to join one of the most famous entertainment houses in the country. For a while, she imagined accompanying her young lord : driven by anxiety, she made the proposal to him one evening, while bringing him his meal (very red meat).

- Out of the question, he said dryly. You've done enough.

By the end of April, the establishment experienced a significant number of receptions and banquets in which all members of the government without exception seemed to participate. The gisaengs of all the large houses, overloaded with invitations, went back and forth between the palace, where the king held several festive evenings (it's always like that at this time of the year, Min-Su, who generally preferred to stay within the protective walls of the Spring House, revealed to her), and the houses of entertainment, where the ministers began to organize dinners and lunches more regularly than usual.

It was said that King Jeongjo had made a major decision about the Gwishin, that he had finally decided to capture some of them to condition them and form an army of the dead to protect the kingdom from foreign invasion, and that the advisers and officers were celebrating the news. There was never any mention of such a possibility during the meals and meetings to which Go Hyang was invited, but Su-Jin nevertheless pointed out to her that she found strange the restraint of their clients, who usually did not hesitate to share secrets and confidences with the courtesans, convinced that they were too female to be a danger.

The boiling excitement was probably the cause of the second of extreme slackening in their surveillance, which triggered the sequence of disastrous events that led to the premature departure of Yeo Woon. One evening, on her way to an umpteenth banquet, where she was expected by some of the highest ranking officers and generals in the kingdom, Go Hyang met one of her sisters in the corridor, dressed in red and black, wearing a jeonmo with a veil that concealed her face and walking briskly, hurriedly.

At first she greeted her cordially and did not react any more, as she had become accustomed in the last few days to seeing the other gisaengs pass by in all possible and unimaginable outfits, and no longer cared. She slipped smoothly into the reception room where her clients were gathered, accompanied by several of her sisters and served by little So-Ri, who had just returned from the palace and had been urgently requisitioned, as one of the courtesans had fallen ill a few minutes before the feast. The young girl filled the cups with a shy and touching smile. As Go Hyang settled in, she noticed that the seat of one of the guests was empty, and subtly remarked it to one of her guests.

- It's nothing, he said. Master Baek had requested a private session. We'll do without him for tonight.

For the first few seconds, she didn't understand.

- Master Baek ?

(Baek ?)

Her customer looked at her as if she had suddenly become stupid.

- Yes, Baek Dong Soo. He was supposed to attend the dinner, but he felt it was better to celebrate his return home from Spring with only one gisaeng at a time. Knowing his habits, he probably won't come back tonight.

Then he shrugged his shoulders as if the idea seemed completely out of place to him. The spirit of Go Hyang was crossed by a sharp hint of panic and absolute fear (Baek Dong Soo !). She turned to So-Ri, who was passing by, to tell her to go and warn Mistress Gyo of the danger, and then she almost automatically thought back to the gisaeng she had crossed a few moments earlier, and the jeonmo she was wearing, with a black veil, which she had already seen before. The jeonmo season has long since ended, she thought, and her terror only increased in intensity. She grabbed So-Ri's wrist, startling her, and whispered in her ear:

- Go find Mistress Gyô. Tell her that Baek Dong Soo is there, and that Yeo Woon will try to see him and talk to him. He is disguised as a gisaeng. Hurry !

Her heart was pounding, and she could hear the blood rushing against the walls of her skull. They mustn't talk to each other, she thought, praying to the gods, the dead, the living, praying to anyone, they mustn't, please, for the love of gods, I'm begging you.

The last time they had been together, Baek Dong Soo had plunged his sword into Yeo Woon's chest, and he had never returned (Baek Dong Soo killed him).