Notes.

I had a really hard time writing this chapter, not because of a lack of inspiration or timing, but because it is such a turning point for the story that I was terribly afraid of messing things up (and to come back to Woon and Dong Soo's point of view such a long time after using many others before was kind of a challenge, especially since I wanted to stay in-character as much as possible).

I do hope the result is alrigh though !

CHAPTER XIV

" Your house is on fire, won't you let me in ?

I'm drowning in desire, your hair, your skin

The flame's burns hotter the deeper you go in"

(The Midnight, american artists, "Night Skies")

a. Orpheus and Eurydice (Part 1, Eurydice)

Woon kept his eyes glued to Dong Soo until the latter had almost consumed, in a half-religious, half-attentive silence, half of the contents of his soju carafe. It was like watching his disproportionate reflection in the water : all the familiar features, all the expressions that Woon had known were there, but they had changed, deepened or become more complex. Dong Soo's face was both something he knew and something he was forced to rediscover after ten years of separation. He had become aware of his visit to the Spring House in a totally hazardous way, as the group of gisaengs who had been invited to the feast he was going to, had come to prepare themselves in the room adjacent to his bedroom, thus transmitting the echoes of their harmonious laughter and words beyond the walls.

It's never ending, I'm exhausted, said one of them, with a very young voice and accompanied by the quivering of the silk of her skirt against the ground. One of her sisters had laughed with an ironic benevolence, but another had shown her compassion, by adding "This is one of the last receptions. I was told that Baek Dong Soo was one of the guests, you should be happy". The girl had responded with a shy laugh, totally different from the sounds usually produced by courtesans, as the sound was natural and unbalanced by a strong emotion.

Woon couldn't look at anything but Dong Soo. He thought that he knew him, that he probably knew him better than he knew himself, and yet there were new and foreign things in front of him. I know his face, he thought to himself, his chest tight with a burning and icy feeling all at once, but I don't know him. The laughter of the gisaeng was still there, like an incongruous and vaguely unpleasant resonance painted on the walls of the room.

It was a small room open to the outside, usually used for private receptions and individual appointments. The Spring House had a large number of similar rooms, most of which had been requisitioned for the evening. Under the veil of his jeonmo, his hands carefully placed on his knee, protected by the false identity of Yae Mina, a further product of Hui Seon's slightly paranoid imagination, Woon looked at Dong Soo, and saw the little boy he had met when he was twelve years old.

He remembered the expression on Go Hyang's face when Hui-Seon had mentioned Dong Soo with the courtesans. She had seemed afraid of his reaction, but Dong Soo had always liked women, and he had been going to the gisaengs since he was seventeen years old, back when the boys in the camp had received official permission from Sa-Mo to venture out of the mountains. They went in groups, usually in the evenings after training, and most of them came back drunk and dreamy.

Once or twice, Dong Soo had been in an equivalent state, but most of the time, he drank a little, observed the gisaengs with a singularly absent look and then left for the camp without asking for anything else. Their comrades were always surprised. Woon had sometimes accompanied them, but he rarely took real pleasure in it, and felt more uncomfortable than overwhelmed by the beauty and elegance of the courtesans. In truth, he never really knew what to do or what to say.

Is there one to your liking ? Dong Soo had once asked him, while they were participating with other boys (including Cho-Rip) in a small banquet that had cost them a fortune. He had remembered several times since that day and after his resurrection of the way Dong Soo was waiting for his answer, the greedy and almost worried caution betrayed by his eyes and the curve of his smile. Woon had shook his head. He never really thought about gisaengs. Dong Soo had then leaned over and told him that they could always go home and train, and fight each other like they had been doing for the last five years.

There was a reassuring familiarity in their ritual, and less than half an hour later, Woon had knocked him down, immensely satisfied to have escaped the frivolous entertainment and languid glances of the courtesans, to whom he didn't know how to react. He also remembered how he wished he could have felt the warmth of Dong Soo's breath in his neck again, when he had leaned towards him during the dinner.

Dong Soo had some success with women, like him, but it wasn't quite the same. The laugh of the gisaeng was one of a very young girl discovering an unknown pleasure for the first time, and for a brief moment, Woon had wanted nothing more than to pull the courtesan into his room, rip out her tongue and slit her throat in half, so that she would stop producing that troubled and transient giggle that expressed a real and indolent affection.

He had not been able to stop the thread of his violence any more than he had been able to stop himself from opening the chest of drawers where Hui-Seon had stored jaegori, chima and jeonmo, to hastily put on the first set of clothes he could find and tie around his chin the ribbon of the hat, which he had covered with the black veil he had used during their excursion to the commercial street of the palace. He never thought he would see Dong Soo again. Hui-Seon had made him understand that it was not in his best interest ("it's dangerous for you, you don't know how he will react if he sees you like this," she had told him), and while admitting the validity of her judgment, a visceral part of himself knew that he would seize the slightest opportunity to approach Dong Soo again.

It's a Gwishin thing to be irretrievably drawn to the past, Hui-Seon had told him, a few days after welcoming him to the Spring House. It doesn't mean it's a good thing. The scar on his heart was not a good thing, not really, but Dong Soo was one, no matter what Go Hyang (it's her fault her fault she set it all up) or Hui-Seon (she knows but she thinks too much about her position) might think. He had always been one. Woon remembered that he was crying the day he died, and he could feel the weight of his head against his chest as he was dying, but the images were distant and confused, like everything else about his existence before the resurrection.

He drinks because he's unhappy, he understood as he contemplated the wrinkles in the corner of his eyes and mouth, the grey streaks in his hair. He was dressed like a civilian, in dark blue, according to his colors. He looked like Joseon's best swordsman, and probably the saddest swordsman in the world. He had cut his hair : it was knotted in the same way as Woon's hair when he was younger, two thick curly strands tied to the back of his head with a black ribbon. His eyes were extinguished, and his hands were shaking. Woon could hardly resist the reflex of taking them between his own and feeling his skin hardened by the handling of the sword and the fighting. They had held hands before. The memory was diffuse and imprecise, but it existed in a deep part of his memory.

He looked at him silently and thought of him with Yoo Ji-Seon, and saw the child who accompanied him to the market. He was a beautiful little boy, about four or five years old, with curly brown hair and big doe eyes. He looked almost exactly like Dong Soo, but some elements, such as his smile or the expression on his face when he looked around, must have been his mother's, as Woon could not identify them in Dong Soo. He wondered how he would have felt taking the child in his arms, feeling his weight and the smell of his skin, and listening to him utter hesitant words and waving his little fingers. He didn't think he would see Dong Soo, but he had vaguely hoped to since he had met his apprentice and learned about his condition from him.

At night, he thought of his father sitting at the table of their house, his soju bowl constantly between his fingers (I told you to never take this tool of vengeance in your hands), and the image of the latter was gradually transformed into Dong Soo's : it was an abominable idea, which left him sweaty with anguish and pain. The scar was throbbing. Since he had seen Dong Soo again with his wife and son, he had the feeling that his heart had become too big for him, and that it would explode at any moment. He had cried when he came home from the Spring house, but he couldn't really understand why. He just knew that he wanted to see Dong Soo, that no one would grant it to him, and all the rest of his thoughts didn't go beyond.

And he's married now, he remembered constantly, recalling the hand that Ji-Seon had put on Dong Soo's arm, or the tender gaze she had laid on the child. The vision was remarkably reassuring, and terribly heartbreaking. It was one thing to wish for someone's happiness, and a completely different thing to finally realize that you hardly fit into the equation. I'm not here, he realized, and he was surprised that such a conclusion was so unbearable for him.

He was aware of how little time he had before Hui-Seon and the other gisaengs, Gwishin or not, as Go Hyang was skillfully kept away from most of her mistress' secrets, broke into the room or tried by other means to keep him away from Dong Soo. Dong Soo had asked him to tell him how Yae Mina had ended up at the Spring House, and Woon had picked up the fictional biography that Hui Seon had composed for him after their excursion, when she came to see him in his room and found him lying on his bed, motionless, with his hands folded over his chest like a corpse in his coffin, and his cheeks wet with black tears.

If you want to go out again, it's necessary, she had told him. He felt her on edge since they had returned from the commercial street, and on the lookout. He knew that the other gisaengs had been ordered to keep an eye on him, from near and far. Go Hyang looked like a hangdog, and always seemed to be on the verge of wanting to talk about what had happened, but he didn't give her the chance. He didn't want to talk to her, let alone about Dong So (she came between us). She persisted in not wanting to understand, and he felt he didn't have time to waste with a courtesan who wouldn't listen.

He didn't know where or what to start. He had come almost in a second state, driven by a yearning that had never known any release and by the simple fact that Dong Soo was his friend, and had always been. It's not his fault, he thought, it was never his fault. There was nothing to be done from the moment Cho-Rip and the Crown Prince had decreed that Woon was guilty. Dong Soo owed his obedience to royalty (what about me ?). He had no choice (he had it). And there he was, and he looked sad and lost and he was everything Woon had always wanted, and Woon wanted nothing more than to put his hand on his, watch him eat and hear him laugh (Dong Soo-yah).

It was like finding back the lyrics to a very old song or seeing the old house of his childhood again. He used to fight for me, he remembered, and he recalled how he liked to see him like that, his knuckles covered with the blood of boys who had insulted Woon or insulted them both (they never understood). Sa-Mo watched the scenes from afar with a reproving look on his face, but it never mattered. Woon felt like he was drowning. Dong Soo was all around him, at twelve, at fifteen, at twenty years old, and he would beat up boys who called Woon names, he would wait for Woon to wake up to go outside to fight, he would share his meal with him, he would put his arms around his shoulders and pull him against him, he would follow him into the forest after he woke up and he would say Woon-ah Woon-ah.

Woon remembered thinking "love me, keep me, adore me, be my friend, be my lover" on more than one occasion, and he felt his heart throbbing under the jaegori, while Dong Soo drank, in complete and happy ignorance, right in front of him. He knew that Hui-Seon could appear any minute. He had so little time.

b. Orpheus and Eurydice (Part 2, Orpheus)

The gisaeng was quiet and silent and Dong Soo's thoughts began to expand under the effect of alcohol and the relaxation promised by the carafe. In the room next to the one they occupied, the laughter of the courtesans and their guests regularly crossed the walls, and the music played by the strings of a gayageum could be heard. It was an admirable contrast between two worlds and perceptions, and Dong Soo continued to pour soju into his bowl, and the gisaeng remained still. She had given him a short account of her arrival in Hanyang and the Spring House.

Dong Soo didn't give her more than thirty years. The skin on her hands looked young. He had thought for a while about asking her if she could take off her jeonmo, but then he changed his mind. He had learned, after having spent some time with the gisaengs, that no clothing was chosen randomly. She must have had her reasons, and he didn't want to irritate her. Her shoulders were a little wider than those of the other courtesans, but her voice had the sweetness of a summer stream in the mountains, and Dong Soo had the very vague and distant impression (Dong Soo-yah) of having heard her before.

He was hesitant to touch her. It wasn't that he didn't feel like it, because she looked beautiful and she radiated something peculiar to which he felt receptive, but he didn't know how to bring his gesture in a way that was respectful and natural enough. Most of the time, the gisaengs would initiate the thing, come close and take one of his hands and slip it under their chimas or the satin fabric of their jaegori, but this one didn't move and was content to observe him under her jeonmo, with all the patience of an ancient statue.

She didn't invite him to do anything. She stood there and seemed not to really know what to do, and Dong Soo thought it was the first time a courtesan let him see something other than a confident and seductive attitude. Not that there wasn't seduction and confidence in the way she was behaving, but he also felt her on her guard, like a doe that hears a crackling sound in the forest and hesitates about what to do, fearing the hunter or the wolf. I was once called a tiger, he recalled, with the usual nostalgia that came from a large number of soju bowls. He had lost count. He was convinced that the gisaeng, for her part, had followed it with sustained attention.

The carafe was almost empty, and a second one was waiting obediently on a small table in the corner of the room. Usually he pushed his consumption to extremes that often involved the use of more than one bottle of alcohol, but exhaustion was already weighing on his muscles and his thoughts, bringing him more easily to the second state that characterized his inebriation. The voice of the gisaeng swayed in his head, in an indescribable and spidery way, slipping into the cracks between his reasonings and (whisper) whispering things he didn't understand but which he felt (knew) he had to obey. He glanced at her over the white porcelain in his bowl. She hadn't made the slightest movement and for a moment he was afraid of her and her inexplicable immobility.

- You don't play gayageum ? he asked her, simply to restart the conversation, simply to avoid her looking at him under the black veil of her jeonmo.

She shook her head. The veil floated elegantly around her like the fibers of a silk cloud.

- No.

She paused, then continued in an almost disappointed tone.

- Would you like me to get one of my sisters to play something for you ?

- Not at all, don't worry about me, he answered hastily, a little awkwardly, and felt his cheeks burning for no reason (alcohol). I was afraid you might get bored. I'm not the best company.

- I'm not bored, she assured him (whisper).

- Is what you have to say, he replied softly, in order not to offend her. I apologize. I'll finish this carafe and I'll go home. I just wanted to be alone.

- Do you want me to leave ? She understood, and suddenly her voice took an anxious twist.

- No ! No, I just wanted to get away from the company of my comrades, that's all. I didn't mean to offend you, I'm sorry.

- You didn't offend me, she told him, but Dong Soo could still hear the desperate intonation of her voice (whisper). Are your comrades such bad company ?

Dong Soo shrugged his shoulders, choosing nonchalance over resentment (they call me the drunkard).

- They're not the best kind, he replied in a nuanced way. Neither am I.

The gisaeng rose in a supple movement, vaguely disembodied, and Dong Soo followed her with his gaze as she finally came closer to him, her face totally invisible under her veil. Up close, the blackness of the fabric was so deep that she could have had no face underneath. He could see the silver embroidery on her sleeve cuffs and the collar of her jaegori. Her chima was vaporous, and he wanted to put his hand under the fabric and feel the skin of her leg (whisper).

- Why do you think you aren't good company ? she asked, her voice tender and her head slightly bowed.

The question made him want to cry (Dong Soo-yah). Once, he had been a lively and enthusiastic boy, who ran after his peers and wasn't afraid to drag them backwards to better overtake them. His bamboo prison had long since disappeared, but Dong Soo felt that it had encircled his mind, trapping his ardor and hopes.

- I don't know, he said, hesitating like the young man he hadn't been for ten years. I don't speak. I just drink. I am not very clever, especially compared to you.

He brought an umpteenth bowl of soju to his lips, and the gisaeng placed a firm hand with impossibly long fingers on its surface, interrupting his movement. She had a black jade ring on her index finger, slender and refined.

- You are clever, she said. It takes cleverness to realize that you think you aren't enough.

Tears burned his eyes, mercilessly. No one had ever told him such things before. Her voice was numbing (whisper).

- If you say so. You are kindhearted.

- And you are ruthless with yourself, she said to him, her hand still on his soju cup.

- Just realistic, I'm afraid.

- No, she said, as if she'd known him all her life and knew everything about him. Stop drinking.

He rested his cup, almost instinctively (WHISPER). He wanted to put his hand on hers. He felt lonely and vulnerable, like a very young child.

- You don't know, he reminded her gently, without malice or animosity. You're kind, but you don't know.

- Maybe I do, she opposed him, taking him by surprise. You don't know either. You've never known.

She shook her head, her voice trembled.

- You never knew and you think it's your fault, but how could it be your fault ? You didn't know. It was never your fault. No one ever told you.

She put her hand on his. Her skin was cold, and soft, and Dong Soo didn't understand and was scared and wanted to burst into tears all at the same time. Her hand was very small compared to his.

- I don't understand what you're talking about, he articulated, and realized that his voice was shaking too. I don't understand...

He brought the hand of the gisaeng to his lips, touched her cold skin, kissed it silently, and lightly bit her long fingers. She sighed, and Dong Soo heard pain in it. He felt as if she was crying under his jeonmo, and he would have given anything to console her.

- It doesn't matter, she replied, in a passionate voice (WHISPER). It wasn't your fault.

He heard himself answer almost automatically :

- Yes, it was.

- No, she insisted, pressing her fingers between his own, seeking his kisses and caresses, and he seemed to recognize this pressure, recognize the voice, recognize the lines of the hand and the texture of the skin. No. You didn't know anything.

- I should have done something. Something else, he whispered, the palm of the gisaeng against his lips.

- You had already done everything. Dong Soo-yah, you couldn't have done anything else, I wouldn't have let you.

(Dong Soo-yah) It was like falling off a cliff into a bottomless abyss, and suddenly being rescued in the middle of the fall. It was like taking a first breath of fresh air after holding it in for hours. Often Dong Soo would dream that he woke up on a beach, wet to the bone, out of breath and in tears. He held the hand of the gisaeng in front of his eyes, and thought he knew it, knew he knew it. It cannot be. But it was. He had seen gwishins. It was possible. He held the hand of the gisaeng, tried to see the features of her face under her veil, opened his mouth and said in a tiny, incredulous and terrified voice, in the voice of a twelve-year-old boy :

- Woon-ah ?

The gisaeng took a jerky, shaky breath, and her body shivered, as if awakened from centuries of peaceful sleep. It cannot be. There was a knock on the door of the room, loud and unpleasant blows, deliberately intrusive. My lord ? Called another gisaeng in an almost panicked tone. The gisaeng (Woon-ah ?) who was with him brutally withdrew her hand from his, leaving a ghost in it, then she rose sharply to leave the room in a sigh, opening the door on her sisters whose faces expressed intense and contained anxiety. Dong Soo recognized Gyô Hui-Seon, the person in charge of the establishment.

His hand was still cold, and he could still feel the icy skin against his lips, replacing soju and sorrow (Woon-ah).