Notes.
Happy New Year everyone !
I know, I'm early. The thing is, I wrote my french chapter for the Death Note fandom quicker than I thought, and it turns out I completed the three one-shots I had planned to write during my break (including the Kenzo/Woon one) already, so I was there, sitting in front on my screen, with nothing left to do...except writing my Gwishins. And so I did. I wish I had a better explanation.
In the meantime, the break has been very rewarding for the story : I was able to solve some plot issues and holes, got a whole bunch of new ideas because I saw/played/read tons of great stuff, and I finally decided for not one, but two endings.
1°) The first, bittersweet, the way I like endings to be, will be the main and official one. EDIT : just maybe to make you less worried about that, when I say "bittersweet", I mean it won't be really happy as in "and they lived happy forever", but it won't be bad either, have no fears. I planned something quite alike the end of Game of Thrones, the Lord of the Rings or the usuals Stephen King's endings (yes, I know, again, I'm sorry), which is still and "ending on a high note, but one that is mixed with sadness and nostalgia. Often, such endings are the result of the plot making a completely happy ending impossible" (from the "Tropes" wiki).
2°) And then, there is the other one. The other one which, honestly, just shakes hands with the Warrior Baek Dong Soo scriptwriters, and right after that tear their hands off, and then waves the bloody stumps at them, while giving them the middle finger. No, of course it's nothing against them (#irony). It's just to show them that you can always find someone worst than you are when it comes to cruelty (*wink wink that are just making me look like I'm loosing IQ points again). And the best (or worst) part is : I love that ending so much.
The two endings will be written as separate chapters, I promise. You'll be able to choose to read one or the other (or both) depending on your preferences, and I'll give all the warnings in the notes before to inform you.
This chapter begins the third arc of this story, called "The Island of the Dead". It will be between fifteen and twenty chapters long, and I can already tell you it's going to be much more intimate than the previous ones. Meaning, it's going to focuse a lot more on the relationships between the characters (including families relationships, which I've just been dying to explore since I've started this fic) and a lot less on the world building, even though it will answer some questions and elements regarding the gwishins, but let's say it won't be the main point of the whole arc. That will be for the last arc (that one is my treasure, my wonder, my pain, but I'll explain later #dramaqueen).
Strangely, this arc wasn't really inspired by anything in particular, but I'm sure it's because I can't remember any specific references right now, except of course Stephen King and all the previous ones mentioned before. The chapters will be posted every three or four days like usual. Should I encounter some difficulties in updating due to my teaching at the university or my thesis, I swear I'll let you know.
I hope you'll enjoy this new arc, and I wish you a good reading !
Answer to Itsrainingtacos :
I am so, so very sorry, I just noticed I've forgotten to answer to the extremely kind reviews you left in the chapters (and on the one-shots !), my deepest apologies ! I loved receiving and reading them, they were like christmas presents, and again I feel so honored to have caught your interest. Thank you so very much for taking the time to comment on every chapter and to give me your opinion, it means a lot, you didn't have to and I'm very grateful, I will probably never be able to thank you enough for your kindness. To answer some of your question, haha, yes, I did got inspired by Virgina Wolf for Mago's grandma (I was watching - again- the movie The Hours, with Nicole Kidman, and I don't know, I couldn't help myself :P) as well as Olenna Tyrell for Hui Seon and Claudia for Mago :D. Yes, I think I do have my symbols now with the incense burner and the autumn leaves and the tigers and all these things XD. I'm very glad and relieved you're still liking this story, and I hope the third arc will please you as much ! Thank you again so much for your kindness and your support, and see you soon for the next chapter !
CHAPTER XLII
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
(Howard Philips Lovecraft, american writer, "Supernatural Horror in Literature")
a. Bluebeard's cave
At the end of yusi, realizing that Sa-Mo wasn't coming home, Huk Jang-Mi decided to make dinner, because she felt she had to start some kind of activity, or else she would go completely crazy. Lately, her days were like this : if she couldn't find a way to stop herself from thinking, even for just a minute, by doing anything and everything, even things she had never done before, like, for example, snooping around the dongdongju stock that her husband kept for the festive events, she would feel like she was slipping away. "Snooping" wasn't exactly the right word, in truth. It had a pejorative connotation that Jang-mi wasn't fond of, and she couldn't conceive that her actions as a beloved companion and attentive mother could have led anyone to call her a snoop.
Rice alcohol is going to your head, she thought nevertheless, because with the years had come the end of illusions and a pessimistic realism that tended to hang on much more fiercely than fantasies, you snoop and you drink, and you're not even good at hiding it. Perhaps the worst was that last statement, because in reality, although she had tried by all means to conceal the increase in her consumption from her husband, and she was almost certain she could say it was easy to hide, because she drank very little compared to what she had seen around her, Sa-Mo had noticed it almost immediately, from the second evening when, after coming back from the butcher shop, he had looked her straight in the eye for a moment and said "You've been drinking".
At first, she had denied it, as had almost any reasonable person who had been caught red-handed and who hadn't wished for such an outcome. She had laughed at Sa-Mo's concerns, saying he had probably consumed more than he should have, and that it was probably for this reason that the contents of the bottle of dongdongju had diminished. She was so ashamed and embarrassed at the same time that she had gone so far as to assert, albeit for a very short period of time since the argument had not lasted five minutes, essentially due to a cruel lack of logic, that the carafe was exactly the same volume as the day before, and that her husband was undoubtedly subject to some optical mirage or chimera that must surely have resulted from the tiredness of his long workday.
He was at the shop almost from morning to night, and she had always known him that way, immersed in the bloody carcasses of animals brought back from the hunt, his choppers at hand, rough but cordial, ready to serve you without denying his independence of mind and freedom of movement. She didn't always find him attractive, or even pleasant. When she had met him, when she was eighteen, he had just been recruited as a royal soldier and had recently made the acquaintance of Dae-Po (my little sister of honey, my little sister of milk).
To say that he had left her cold was a step below the truth : in reality, she hadn't liked him at all. In her defense, she sometimes thought to reassure herself, she had only seen him briefly as she came to visit her brother and bring him news from home. He hadn't particularly stood out for his attitude or manners, as he was exchanging dirty jokes with another man whose remarkably square face and deep-set eyes had marked her, and who had been introduced to her by Dae-Po as Yeo Cho-Sang. She had never been able to like him (never). She still didn't like him, in fact.
Yet, the gods were her witnesses, she had tried with a fervor that would most certainly have commanded the respect of any man, even the most enduring and strongest. Her brother had praised his new friends, calling them upright, honorable and respectful men. It was true that these three qualities were not necessarily incompatible with a debauched spirit, but Jang-mi was then very young, and full of aspirations coated with honey and nauseating gallantry that had been stuffed into her head all day long, much like they had done for her younger sister, Myeon-ji.
Until then, they had met few of the most prestigious men in society, and all their beliefs had been built on tales, stories and anecdotes passed on by their friends and female relatives. Now that she thought about it in retrospect, she realized that these same women and girls must have received their knowledge from other women and girls, thus forming a long chain of stories whose content and form had obviously been modified, amplified and adapted to correspond more and more to the expectations of each audience.
Jang-Mi and her sister had always more or less heard the soft versions of the sentimental sagas experienced by others, and going to the palace to find their elder brother had somewhat damaged their hopes. With time, Jang-mi knew it had been for the best, and that one day would have come anyway when all this beautiful optimism would have been shattered by a much less sweet and delicate reality. More often than not, these things for women came with marriage. Myeon-Ji had suffered so violently from it that Jang-mi had been forced to learn her lessons, almost to the point of wanting to remain an old maid.
And yet, things had started well. Almost a year after their face-to-face meeting with their brother Dae-Po's friends, Myeon-Ji had met a good-looking, well-built blacksmith with broad shoulders and a square jaw like she had always liked. He lived not far from the house they occupied back then, about ten miles from Hanyang, in one of those villages that grow like natural roots around large cities. At first, the seduction had been charming and polite, and barely demanding. Jang-Mi remembered finding the man decent and accommodating, just the opposite of what she had thought of Sa-Mo at the time.
However, she had never been more wrong, for she had fallen into the trap, like many others, of a handsome figure and purely public manners. Myeon-Ji had married her dear admirer after an uninterrupted seven-month courtship, during which Jang-mi had heard her giggling like a goose on countless occasions, having highly detailed dreams, and seen her blushing every time the young man greeted them as he passed by. She had seen her sister's affectionate letters, her desire-tinged bows, and the fluttering of her eyelashes when she was chatting with her lover.
On the surface, nothing had ever suggested what happened next. Everyone in the village knew each other, and they all agreed that Bom Seong-Su was a good man. Of course, once or twice, he had perhaps expressed his opinions a little too loudly, or raised his voice for no real reason, or threatened to beat up a young apprentice who had made a minor mistake in placing his horseshoe. It wasn't serious. People had seen worse.
The wedding had been a joyful and carefree event, where everyone had drunk, eaten and danced to the rhythm of a small troupe of local musicians who had been happy to honor the couple with romantic and old-fashioned ballads. Myeon-Ji was radiant, their parents were delighted with this union which seemed good and profitable, and Dae-Po had been allowed to join them. He had come accompanied by his friends. They are so close to me I consider them my second family, he told anyone who asked him (or not).
There weren't three of them anymore, but five, because two others completed the gang, and those two had made a strong impression on Jang-mi by their rigor and courtesy. The first was a tall man, with a stern face but laughing eyes, who was called Baek Sa-Goeng. Jang-mi had loved him almost right away, because a strange feeling of strength and vulnerability emanated from him, one like she had rarely experienced in others of his kind. The second, stockier but with a softer, sadder expression, was named Kim Gwang-Taek. It was with them, initially, that Jang-mi became friends.
She liked both of them equally, and for a while she had seriously considered seducing Baek Sa-Goeng, before he married a long-time fiancee a few months later. Sa-Mo was then just a name, and although he had been impeccable and friendly during the wedding, she didn't develop the same tenderness for him that she felt for the man who would become, years later, Dong Soo's father.
It was afterwards that everything had gone wrong. Once the wedding was celebrated and the spouses settled into their new home, it took no more than a week for the masks to fall off. Jang-mi realized it gradually, slowly, through a multitude of details and elements which, when put together, painted a shocking picture of the situation. Her sister, who used to visit them often, had progressively drifted away from them, reducing her contacts. She went out less and less.
She was an enthusiastic drinker, but seemed to be undergoing a radical abstinence, without the slightest explanation, as she was certainly prone to drink, but not excessively so. Her friends had complained about not seeing her any more, and when they did, it was almost always by chance. She opened the door only to a limited extent. She only came to her family home to borrow money, because it had turned out that her husband was sitting on some debts, and not small ones.
The few times Jang-mi saw her, she was pale, emaciated, and her red eyes were constantly full of tears. Even her general attitude was different : from a playful and mischievous temperament, she had turned into a frightfully shy, mute and withdrawn little thing. At the end of the first month, Jang-mi noticed a bruise on her little sister's cheek for the first time. Everyone worried and asked her questions. She never answered anything, shrugged her shoulders, changed the subject.
- Tell me the truth, Jang-mi had once cornered her. Seong-Su did this to you ?
Her sister had looked horrified.
- No, of course not, she had said with a voice that trembled like the leaves of a tree when the wind was blowing hard. What are you talking about ? He's very kind to me, he keeps the house going, he keeps us safe. I'm grateful to him for his sacrifices, and you should be too, instead of accusing him without proof.
Oh, she had plenty of proofs. But the most important one was Myeon-Ji's confirmation, and she had never been able to get it. Until the end, her sister had denied, lied, assured that her husband was gentle, good, loving. Then, one morning, as one of her friends was knocking on the door of the happy couple's house to propose to Myeon-ji to go to the market, and she had received no answer despite a wide open door, she had cautiously made her way inside.
The younger sister of Jang-Mi and Dae-Po was lying on the floor of the main room, dislocated, her neck broken. The handsome, respectable, formidable husband had disappeared, along with all their savings and valuables from the house, most of which had been brought back by Myeon-Ji as an inheritance and wedding dowry. No one had ever been able to catch him. Many bruises were discovered on Myeon-Ji's body, with signs of fractures in several places. She had been buried in the family garden, far from the love nest that had seen her die. Jang-mi had wept silently, and her tears were filled with rage.
Years later, she was thinking more than ever about her younger sister while secretly drinking, even though Sa-Mo knew all about it. It was after Myeon-Ji's death that she developed a closer bond with him, for he had been surprisingly supportive and understanding to the family. Jang-mi suspected he had been so because of Dae-Po, whom he loved like a brother, but he had shown a rare tactfulness with her, and she had then seen beyond his face, which wasn't very handsome, and his manners, which at first had seemed rustic to her.
She had seen and understood that appearance was nothing, meant nothing, nor did manners or posture. Bom Seong-Su had been good-looking, he stood up straight, he had been polite, and he had murdered her sister without an ounce of mercy. All of Jang-mi's beliefs had died along with Myeon-Ji. And Sa-Mo, under his commoner's and somewhat vulgar veneer, had the kindness of a long-time nobleman, the elegance of a prince, and above all a gentleness that she would never have suspected in someone like him.
Noticing that she was drinking, he hadn't said anything to her, just kissed her, and allowed her to do so. She was older now, they had gotten married so late, but on their wedding night, when she was worried about her already visible wrinkles, about her hair already turning white, he had simply said to her "you're beautiful", and the rest had ceased to matter. Even when she had given him a daughter, he, who was a man, had praised her, had lifted the baby in his arms, had fallen madly in love with her. She had been told, as a little girl, that a wife's first duty was to give birth to a male heir. Sa-Mo, for his part, didn't give a damn.
- I just want our family, he had said to her, shortly after Ju-Won's birth.
Dong Soo was already drinking back then. His relationship with Sa-Mo was deteriorating, and Jang-mi was powerless to reconnect them. She had thought that the birth of their daughter would make things a little better, that Dong Soo would be happy to have a "sister" of heart, if not of blood. But the news, if it had brought a smile to his lips, had also made a shadow as thick as a winter fog appear in Dong Soo's eyes, and he had started to visit them less and less.
Sa-Mo had transferred his affection onto Ju-Won, and Jang-Mi knew he was hurt by the distance Dong Soo put between them, by his behavior over the last ten years, by his obvious inability to let ghosts evaporate around him. Not the ghosts, Sa-Mo had gently corrected her, one evening they were having dinner, Ju-Won on his knees. Only one. He didn't need to explain any more to Jang-mi.
And now that she too was making more regular stops at the house's liquor stock, which wasn't mind-boggling for all that, part of her also had a better understanding of the appeal Dong Soo could perceive in a soju cup or a carafe of magkeolli. Maybe it runs in the family, she sometimes thought with a sense of humor that wasn't one. Dong Soo had a wife and a son, and he drank to forget his pipe dreams. Jang-mi had a husband and a daughter, and she started drinking to forget hers.
Sa-Mo entered as she and Ju-Won were finishing dinner, and he kissed them both. Jang-mi felt his beard stinging the skin on her cheek, and perhaps it was the effect of the dongdongju she had already drank, or the worried line on Sa-Mo's forehead, or the slightly dim glow of his eyes, but she felt the urge to put her arms around her husband's neck, to cover his aging and kind face with kisses, to tell him that she loved him, that she was happy.
She didn't drink to run away from her marriage, or because she was sad all the time. Those were Dong Soo's habits, but she wasn't Dong Soo. Ju-Won, who would be fourteen soon, and who had recently developed a taste for arithmetic, asked her father about sales and profits, without him being the least bit embarrassed. He often let her handle the accounts, and marvelled at the accuracy of her calculations and some of her advice. Then, when the girl went to her room to prepare for bed, he leaned over to Jang-mi and asked her :
- They didn't give you too much trouble today, honey ?
He looked worried when he asked her, and there was the real reason why Jang-mi had been drinking a little more for four years, since exactly the end of the summer of 1777. It was now winter of 1781, a fifth wave of resurrection had swept through the country a year earlier, and Jang-mi was drinking because she was afraid, because she was angry, because there was a deep, black basement under the house, and that basement was full now, and no one was supposed to know.
She drank while remembering the eyes of Myeon-Ji's monstrous husband, because every day she saw those same eyes somewhere else, on another face (I never liked that one). They are like my brothers, Dae-Po had said. Sa-Mo had said the same.
- No, she answered her husband. No, everything went well. Go. I'm sure they're waiting for you.
Sa-Mo nodded his head, pressed her shoulder gently, as if to tell her that everything would be all right, that everything would eventually get better. She poured herself another cup of dongdongju, and watch him as he went down to the basement.
b. The Bogeyman
They were sent on November 2, 1781 in the late morning, shortly before lunch. The task had to be accomplished quickly and without trouble. The day before, late at night, scouts from the night brigades, hired three years earlier by royal order in addition to a set of additional measures aimed at preventing the appearance and spread of Gwishins on the territory, had located and made it possible to track down a clan of five dead in the forest north of Bukhansan. Once warned, the soldiers of the patrol had waited almost until dawn to strike, for the decade of successive resurrections had finally culminated in new ways and techniques of hunting, in which caution and patience played a fundamental role.
They had attacked shortly before dawn, when the dead had been lying for a long time on the ground or on transport yo's for three of them, probably older and more experienced, and therefore better equipped in terms of material than their peers. Yeong-Ho had been told that everything had gone very fast, as it always did. They had seized the Gwishins from their makeshift beds, grabbed their collars, ignored their wild looks of terror and surprise, and one by one, one after the other (there was a woman, one of his military brothers had told him, and in is gaze there were clear traces of shame), they had chopped off the heads of four of them in a bloody harmony made of precise gestures, which had become routine for each of those who composed the brigade, while the scouts brought their torches and set fire to the bodies, which were still jolting. The fifth had managed to escape thanks to general inattention, which was focused on the dead who had been captured and held on the ground, but they thought he couldn't have gone very far.
Several times, Yeong-Ho had been called in as a reinforcement in the night brigades. No one liked to join them, and as a result, the members rotated regularly with the daily patrols, to satisfy everyone, or at least avoid an even greater number of desertions. Yeong-Ho recalled one evening when he and his comrades were chasing a small group of three dead who had set up their temporary camp in the woods a little too close to the capital's borders.
They were probably freshly arrived, for the older Gwishins, who had seen the repression begin, knew it was unwise to come so close to the big cities, and that it was better to try your luck inside than to venture to spend the night under the stars in the nearby forests, which were swarming with specialized militias. Slowly encircling them with the other soldiers, while taking care not to crack the leaves and branches under his feet, Yeong-Ho was for a moment taken by this fleeting and biting thought, a thought he hadn't had since he had killed his first gwishins six years ago, and which whispered, like a seductress, like a temptress : "they look so alive".
Of course, they weren't (anymore). Yeong-Ho knew that, because he had learned it the hard way, like all his military brothers, like all men, like all the living who walked the land of Joseon on their heavy and noisy feet. He knew it. He had, however, been unable to prevent the thought from extending its grip on the rest of his musings, any more than he had been able to silence the hint of pity and panic (they're like us) that had passed through him less than a minute before striking.
He wasn't the only one. Although the subject was considered taboo in the army, many people felt uneasy during executions, and the power of that feeling, once comfortably installed in the dark recesses of men's hearts, to which even they struggled to gain access, seemed to grow only stronger. During meals, the soldiers would look at their neighbors, often questioning their gaze, especially since the publication of the Royal Decree of June 1777, which had generalized interrogations among the living, the trials of pain and then of fire a few months later, simplified arrests, revised methods of torture, but also cemetery militias and field searches (the fire swords).
Before, things were easier, opinions were more definite, although there were already some warning signs of indecision. The Gwishin were the enemies, and the army existed to protect the living. Everything was clear, obvious, instinctive. But with the Decree came the formation of the army of the dead, and Yeong-Ho felt, as did many of his colleagues, that everything had started from there.
They left Hanyang's walls around mid-Jasi, in search of the missing gwishin. According to the night militia, they had wounded him seriously enough to limit his ability to move, setting fire to a part of his leg before he took advantage of the massacre of his companions to flee into the darkness of the forest. The most experienced scouts on the patrol had drawn a theoretical perimeter within which they were to begin their inspection, before expanding it incrementally if they found nothing. It's possible that we won't find him, the captain of the brigade had nevertheless pointed out, a man in his forties who Yeong-Ho had never met before, but who had made a good impression on him with his quiet demeanor and his concrete speech. Prior to joining the army, most soldiers like Yeong-Ho had worked in undeserving, clean, but relatively unattractive jobs from an economic point of view.
Almost all of the lowest and most numerous ranks of the kingdom's army were made up of sangmins and cheonmins. The majority had no military experience and learned everything on the job, although training methods had improved greatly since the first resurrection. They were also, more often than not, the first to die in the field (cannon fodder). The highest positions, such as captain, commander, or generally all functions requiring responsibilities, were taken over by the jungmins and yangbans. Incidentally, this type of profession was also the least subjected to the harsh realities of the field.
With the army of the dead, the social fracture and the considerable risks involved for the poorer and larger social classes, in addition to the compassionate movements towards the Gwishins which were more marked than before among the military, a polarization of the two camps was gradually taking place, becoming more and more intense : those who were sympathetic to the Gwishins were fully supportive of them, making them martyrs and leading figures of other political and social movements, supported in this by the Yeogogoedam leaders, some of whose strange and unexplained deaths had been reported over the past four years.
Those who were against them hated them with a strength never achieved until then, and they expressed themselves particularly violently since the government's official announcement of the secret integration of the Gwishin among the living. The resurrections had caused panic, but people had become somewhat accustomed to them. On the other hand, the news that Gwishins had quietly settled among the living and were enjoying a peaceful existence as monsters hidden in the midst of an innocent population had sounded like a thunderclap. For the past four years, the country had been in constant turmoil, and at times Yeong-Ho worried about the radicalization of ideas, the impossibility of thinking gray where everything had to be black or white, and the need to make choices even when you didn't want to.
The forest ground was lined with brightly colored leaves that covered a slippery mud, which the last autumn rains had helped to make even more treacherous. They had been advised to be particularly careful, as the cold seasons were the most dangerous for them, while the dead, insensitive to changes in temperature, pain and darkness, tended to have the upper hand. During the day, in stealthy missions of this kind, they avoided flaming swords, or the " blazing blades " as the soldiers regularly called them.
Expensive and remarkably complex to produce as well as to use, they were usually reserved for the most important positions. Brigade captains were usually equipped with them, and Yeong-Ho's captain had taken his own for protection. They were also used by night brigades, and some very experienced soldiers who had proven themselves many times in the field could receive one. Yeong-Ho wasn't among them. He held tightly between his fingers the guard of his hwando sword as he cautiously moved forward, his eyes scanning the heights of the trees, his left, his right.
Several soldiers had already recounted attacks by Gwishins that seemed to come from the sky. Others had said they had seen dead, driven mad by hunger, climbing tree trunks and walls of hanboks with such agility that they had for a moment believed they were giant spiders. And they stay on them, they stick on them, a comrade of Yeong-Ho had once said, with a frightened expression on his face, that had made the latter's hair stand on end.
And there was something else lately. Men didn't dare to talk about it, or at least not in a direct way, mainly because they lacked information, but the subject had nonetheless appeared as the days went by, growing steadily, like a poisonous abscess in conversations. Yeong-Ho thought about it as he progressed through the forest, sword in hand, lips sealed, two comrades behind him as the rest of the patrol was moving further west. It was likely that the two men following him were also thinking about it. It was nothing new.
The Gwishin hid among the trees, in the depths of the forests, but by July 1777, rumours, terrors had been heard, spreading among the living, and poisoning thoughts and courage. There's something else in the forest now. And it went without saying that this other thing, Yeong-Ho certainly didn't want to encounter it. He had heard the stories, seen the corpses found in the woods, shredded, unrecognizable. Nobody knew exactly what it was, but it was new. For most of the soldiers, it was a Gwishin, or a group of Gwishins, who hunted together and were more relentless than their counterparts, who were only feeding and usually inflicted targeted damage.
For some others, however, the matter was more complex, more disturbing, more obscure. What if it isn't a gwishin ? they asked anxiously. What if it's something else ? And in the forest, in the silence, Yeong-Ho, who had tried by all means to rationalize his fears, was now ready to believe these more terrible words, because fear fed the imagination, and the imagination, once it was unleashed, was immensely fertile and much more tolerant of illogicality.
They found the fifth Gwishin in a condition that none of them had anticipated. He had been torn to shreds of flesh, which they discovered in a small clearing, and tree trunks and leaves had been splashed with blood.
- It doesn't make sense, one of the soldiers with whom Yeong-Ho had gone, who couldn't have been more than twenty years old, remarked.
Yeong-Ho hadn't replied. He was raising his sword and exploring the clearing, looking for something without knowing what exactly. His whole body was tense, and his comrades didn't want to linger, they wanted to go back and look for the others. They were exuding a new, bitter fear. The gwishin's head was missing. It had taken them too long to notice the state of the body, too long to ask questions and increase their fears. The pounding had come so quickly that none of them had really had time to react.
There had been a breath of wind (what), a whistling noise, a shape that had moved somewhere between the trees, and one of the soldiers had screamed while the other had collapsed to the ground, his head half ripped off by something that had no name, which Yeong-Ho had seen (SEEN !) and there was nothing to do, nothing to say, because what had come to him after piercing his second comrade's belly, what had (rushed) towards him at full speed, was like nothing he knew, except for monsters that his mind sometimes built on moonless nights, and Yeong-Ho had been unable to scream, unable to make a sound, had just felt his bladder and sphincters let go and his reason crumble forever.
And when finally the thing (HORROR) had encircled his head with a nightmarish hand, huge, clawed, and squeezed tight, cracking his bones, crushing what he was, sticking abominable fingers through his eyes, Yeong-Ho had thought (I'm going to die) and had taken with him, in the dark, into eternity, the image of what the living would call a few days later, after finding his body and that of his comrades, the bogeyman.
