Notes.

No notes.

Answer to Itsrainingtacos :

Thank you again a billion of times of still reviewing this story and for your kindness, I'm so glad and touched (and deeply grateful) that you're still enjoying the chapters and find it interesting ! Haha, yes, indeed, not all the living soldiers think the gwishins are bad, as you could see with Seung-Min's POV ! Thank you so much as well for thinking I'm writing Dong Soo well, I'm doing the best I can and if you like it, that it's all that matters ;) ! I completely agree with you about Woon's father...and thank you again (I know, I'm lacking original ways to say it, but I do mean it very much, I swear XD) so, so much for linking Iseul's POV, I'm glad you found her funny (and you were definitely right about her spotting Woon and Mago - again, you're really, really good !). Yep, a new not-alive-not-dead character, I thought it could be interesting to explore that possibility, and so the Preacher appeared :D ! And you're absolutely welcome for the last two chapters, it was a pleasure, and I'm really happy you liked them (haha, yes, the boys are back together, I know, it's been a while !) ! I hope that this new chapter will please you just as well, and in the meantime, let me bow down before you to express my neverending greatfulness to you !


CHAPTER LIII


"The human soul is capable of hunger without satiation."

(Jan van Ruysbroek, flemish clerk, "The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage")


a. The One Thousand and One Nights

I mustn't forget to stop by to see Captain Baek before going to the barracks tomorrow, Gil Seung-Min thought for the hundredth time, remembering the request he had to submit to him, and which he didn't want to be heard by his brigade by the silk skirts of the gisaengs, served in soju by their long, nimble, airy fingers while following the way they bent, smiled, or looked down at the floor of the room when one of their guests cracked a dirty joke or expressed compliments to one of them more or less well phrased according to their state of intoxication, Seung Min was struggling to find a way to demonstrate his swordplay skills to one of the beautiful young women who made up the dinner he had been invited to by one of his fellow soldiers from another brigade.

That evening, they were taking a break : the term, under its recreational aspect, simply implied that he and several of his companions had been dispensed from night patrol since they had completed their service the night before for several days in a row.

For the past two years or so, new rules instituted by the king and his ministers allowed the soldiers who formed the anti-Gwishin brigades to take one or two evenings off, sometimes a day, as long as they participated in field missions on a sufficiently regular and frequent basis for their efforts to be rewarded as such. The length of time required to take advantage of this benefit tended to vary according to the positions held, but also, based on the bitter comments of several soldiers, according to the social class to which they belonged.

Seung-Min had heard at the barracks, during meals, or when men were preparing to join their brigades outside the walls of Hanyang, that the yangbans were still largely favored in this last area, and that they were much more easily given a rest than the sangmins or cheonmins. Many men who were members of the two lowest classes claimed so, just as, on the other hand, those at the top of the social pyramid were outraged to see such privileges offered to the boors and scum, whose only function was obedience and service to the country, and not amusement or physical or mental amusement.

Seung-Min, for his part, had a more mixed opinion on the matter. His own brigade consisted mainly of low-ranking men, and their captain, despite his higher status, hardly seemed to be regarded with more esteem than the soldiers under his command, since none of them had ever seen him enjoy a longer rest than they had, or grant himself a vacation freely and independently of the limits officially set by royal decrees.

When one of the guys had asked him about it, Baek Dong Soo had answered without embarrassment that it had to do with both his general unpopularity among the bureaucrats, which was no secret to anyone and that his protective speeches towards his men hadn't contributed to improve, but also with his own birth, for he had been the son of a traitor until the recognition of the Crown Prince and then King Jeongjo had enabled him to clear his father's name and the projects with which he had been associated, and continued to be so for several councillors and generals whose convictions were in line with those of the Noron faction, having opposed in priority Prince Sado when the latter had destroyed the Samjeondo.

The speciality of prolonged rest was nevertheless widespread among some of the brigade chiefs, who had no qualms about being absent for a period of time otherwise deemed intolerable, and liable to heavy penalties, if it had been applied by one of their subordinates. They sometimes made arrangements with others in charge, temporarily taking over another patrol to allow one of them to use the time he gained on more personal and entertaining activities, with attendance at courtesan establishments at the top of the list.

While supporting in thought, if not in deed, the raising of the voices of his colleagues to protest against this new proof of injustice, Seung-Min couldn't help imagining that, if the situation had been reversed and the most wretched statutes propelled to the same heights as those from which the noble classes dominated, totally similar behavior would have emerged, based not this time on social ranks, but simply on moral honesty and the sense of duty proper to each one.

Fear of punishment and disapproval, linked to a precarious status, was the only real cause at the root of the existence of inequalities. As soon as they disappeared, it was highly probable that everyone would unleash his own selfishness, whether it was that of an aristocrat or a commoner. Then the complaints would still exist, but they would come from another source, from soldiers who would feel driven by a greater sense of responsibility than their peers, by a supposedly more developed sense of righteousness, and who would then accuse their comrades for a freedom that they themselves didn't dare to seize.

There were about ten of them that evening at dinner, served on a table covered with a golden tablecloth embroidered with silver ribbons, and the food was sumptuous and rich, all the more so since the meals at the barracks, where Seung-Min usually ate, were of a much more frugal and rustic nature than the dishes now displayed before his eyes.

He had eaten so much that he was getting sick from it, and his stomach was gently, almost pleasantly gnawing at him, for after several years of visits to the Spring House, he knew when to stop and rest his chopsticks so as not to have to suffer the consequences of too large a feast. Moreover, the gap between the barracks menu and those proposed by the courtesans was so wide that it was dangerous to overestimate the extent of his appetite and to indulge in having some more of every dish, claiming that such a display of victuals was too tempting not to afford multiple platters.

He had made the mistake only once, five years ago, when he was still an apprentice and had seen fit to spend all his pay on a summer banquet in the establishment's gardens, where he had eaten like an ogre for two hours, and had been in a bad shape for the next day, not being able to get out of bed to join the other soldiers for the various theory lessons and then training. Ever since this wandering of his stomach, or rather of his beliefs about his stomach, Seung-Min had always been cautious in his consumption, and made sure not to push the limits of his appetite more than necessary whenever he was invited to a dinner party.

He was sitting with his back to the sliding door of the room, between another soldier whom he had never seen, but with whom he had exchanged a few banalities, at first friendly but a little distant due to a lack of familiarity, then much more relaxed once the alcohol had soaked their interactions, making them more natural and less uptight, and a young gisaeng dressed in pink and sky blue, with a secret, mutinous look, pink on her cheeks and a hairpin that evoked a flower in full bloom.

Seung-Min had asked her how old she was, and although she had claimed to have been born in the same year as him, there were lines in the corners of her lips and under her nose that were too deep to match her statements. She took care to converse with him in a melodious and cheerful voice, and listened attentively as he was speaking about him and his military duties without interrupting him.

At times, her beautifully shaped eyes would widen a little under the influence of a revelation or a rather scabrous detail, and Seung-Min would savor with perpetually renewed delight those fleeting moments of supreme silence and curiosity during which he knew he had captivated his audience. They were rare and, consequently, ardently desired on his part, pushing him to adapt his speeches, to seek new formulations, original expressions, which gave his stories zest and allowed him to freeze, briefly, the thoughts of an audience so that they would rush to him.

During the first years he had spent in the company of the gisaengs, then a young recruit under the clumsy and alcoholic tutelage of Baek Dong Soo, he had been poorly skilled in words and gestures, and had expressed his transports or anecdotes with a cruel lack of finesse, an observation that generally made him uncomfortable whenever he found himself at a banquet among more cultured guests who, on the surface, had a better command of words and the enunciation of ideas through convoluted and elegant verbal constructions.

However, at the time, the courtesans with whom he was acquainted had been sensitive to this so-called flaw, and he was always full of nostalgia when he remembered some of them, especially the very pretty Min-Su. Changes of position and departures were generally uncommon in entertainment houses, especially the most famous ones where the clients, with an economic capital sometimes as imposing as Bukhansan, had their habits and liked to meet familiar faces again, but at the end of 1777, the Spring House had broken with tradition when several of its residents had left, starting with its headmistress, Gyo Hui Seon, who had announced her retirement despite her still remarkably young appearance, after having hinted at the idea for several months.

She had left the city with great pomp, greeted by all her courtesans and clients, as well as a few sisters from neighboring homes. She had been followed, a few days apart, by three other gisaengs from the house, including Min-Su. When she had warned him, during one of their usual walks in the gardens, Seung-Min had tried to convince her to stay, because she remained her favorite among all her sisters for being the first to have pointed out to him that his awkwardness was more touching, because it was more real, than all the poems that scholars had dedicated to her.

- My health is becoming more and more fragile, she had declared back then, and I fear the weaknesses that have often forced me to give up my duties to recover.

It was true that she was known to be often ill, and she had once explained to Seung-Min that it was not so much her body as her moods that were causing her harm, thus preventing her from getting up and receiving her clients. She had continued by saying that she intended to go to a quieter establishment in the north, without specifying where, in which she hoped to find some inner peace and remedies for her deep melancholy, the seriousness of which too often paralyzed her activities for a house as important as the Spring House.

Seung-Min had come to see her almost every day before her departure, and had cried in his bed the night she had disappeared. She had given him one of her norigae, of a beautiful dark blue, which he had frequently seen her wearing over her skirts as an accessory. Seung-Min kept it among other of his personal belongings at the barracks, and saw her again each time he took it between his fingers, with her somewhat sad smile and touching modesty, and the kind words she had always had for him, and which had been so decisive in maintaining his self-esteem.

The gisaeng he had in front of him had a smile that resembled Min-Su's, a way of standing that was meant to be equivalent, a restraint in her attitude that vaguely evoked her, but she wasn't Min-Su for all that, and Seung-Min didn't doubt that she wasn't one of those who would tell him that not knowing how to handle words and forms wasn't an infirmity, but would on the contrary encourage him to express himself in a more harmonious and distinguished way.

Min-Su had never demanded this from him, and with her, Seung-Min had been able to be himself without fear of being mocked or belittled. He would have liked, at times, to be able to tell her that she was safe with him, that she could have been herself because she offered him that same possibility, and that they would have been the only two beings to see themselves as they really were, without artifice, without pretense.

At times, he had felt that the courtesan wanted to say something to him, and he regretted not having had enough time in her company to give her this opportunity to reveal herself without fear or shame.

He smiled at the other gisaeng, the one who wasn't Min-Su, and handed her his cup so that she could pour soju into it. Patrols would resume the next evening. I mustn't forget to stop by and see Captain Baek, he recalled laconically, before returning to his drink and the fluttering of his companion's eyelashes.


b. Merkel nerve endings

Mago allowed herself to linger in bed until the daylight had finally pierced the fine interstices that delimited the bedroom window frame with the shutter, judiciously folded down to offer more darkness and calm to the room. Although she was generally early in the morning, as much because of her condition as a Gwishin, which condemned her to no longer experiment with the leniency of sleep, but also by temperament, and finally for four years in association with the accomplishment of her role as a martial arts student, anxious to observe the protocol and rules implicit in the occupation of such a position, she had nevertheless remained sprawled, like a ship stranded on a beach, in the velvety softness of the wonderfully clean yo that their hosts had deployed the day before.

The bed smelled fresh, unlike her personal bunk, which had weathered so badly that it now looked more like a pile of foul-smelling linen than anything else, and had probably taken on the shape of her body. When she would get up, she was willing to bet that she would see her human silhouette impregnated into the mattress, all in line and not in curves, as most thirteen year olds' bodies were.

With her head leaning against her pillow, she closed her eyes for a moment, as if she was about to plunge back into the collective consciousness, but instead, she tried to capture the slightest sensation coming from the different parts and extremities of her carnal envelope. It was an exercise that she had been doing in addition to the consciousness for a while now, long before her meeting with Yeo Woon, and that she had finally made daily and systematic.

She knew that she wasn't the only gwishin who wanted to experience her sense of touch in this way : her congeners, when she had been given the opportunity to get to know them, were almost all stunned by the absence, or considerable weakness, of the feelings and perceptions that their dead skin, the tips of their fingers, the soles of their feet sent back to them.

Admittedly, the phenomena varied in magnitude and it would have been fundamentally incorrect to claim that the entire population of the Gwishin never felt anything, because there were touches that revived, or stimulated, mechanisms that had until then been considered lost, but the stories that Mago had heard, either directly or through the echo of the consciousness when it was still animated, nevertheless showed that the general tendency was in favor of hypoesthesia.

Under the yo's comforter, where her outstretched legs rested, she bent her toes, and felt them respond to her command, without however picking up the impression of the fabric above her feet, or even the brief, rapid draught that characterized this kind of benign and infinitesimal movement. She performed a series of similar folding and unfolding operations with her fingers, hands and arms.

She turned her head on her pillow, so that her cheek was in contact with the white cotton surface, and faced a lack of sensations that she had become accustomed to, but which still regularly continued to surprise and, sometimes, when she really thought about it, to torment her. Like the vast majority of the dead, and more generally like those people who lose something and only realize the importance and their need for it once it is definitively out of their reach, Mago was hungry for perception, almost as much as she had been hungry for meat since her resurrection.

She liked to walk barefoot, caring very little about getting them dirty, and she remembered opening up to old Jae-Ji, who had responded to her in an unusually uncryptic way for her usual standards, that "feet, by their permanent attachment to the ground, are the first great source of sensation, and therefore the most logical choice to turn to for anyone unable to feel anything else". She also tried to touch as much as she could, sometimes leaning entirely against tree trunks hoping to feel their roughness, letting herself fall on the sun-heated floors of Qing, on Joseon's damp mosses, pushing her fingers into the earth, bumping her nose against the petals of flowers.

At times, when she was lucky, or when her sensitivity was heightened by totally unknown processes she suspected to be random, she managed to extract from her contacts fleeting impressions, barely lighter than a butterfly's wing, but on which she fed shamelessly, plunging her teeth into them with all her might (hungry hungry hungry). There were times when she worried, thinking that perhaps only hunger was left for the dead to feel something.

She finally got up on her bed when a ray of sunlight, finer than a hair if there had been any golden ones (she had seen some once, in a fantasy painting depicting a fabulous landscape, where the trees were made of blue silk and the clouds of a delicate pinkish hue), lightly brushed against her blanket. She was alone on the bed : her master had risen before her, almost at dawn, which in itself wasn't a particularly disconcerting change, and he had left the room in a ghost-like move, sliding the door behind him while being careful not to open it too much to the outside light so as not to disturb his student who was still at rest.

He didn't need all these precautions per se, but Mago was often touched by the solicitude he showed her, most often by attitudes that were totally insignificant at first glance. If he woke up before her, for example, he was cautious not to make too much noise, so as not to bother her, whether she was otherwise immersed in the consciousness or not. It was the simplest way to counterfeit sleep for the dead, and because of its immaterial and transcendental aspect, it could still give the illusion of a waking daydream, but otherwise, the gwishins rarely plunged for hours into its infinite space, or at least only reached very little of the usual sleeping time of the living.

Very often, Mago had seen her peers, lying on makeshift mattresses, on the ground, on transport yos, observing the sky and remaining for a long time like this, nose up, without even blinking, as if they were still in their graves. The behavior was common. She herself acted this way, and Yeo Woon was no exception. The three characteristics of Joseon's ghosts, she thought, throwing into an imaginary auto-da-fé the Encyclopedia of the Dead and its cold, brutal conclusions, the hunger for meat, the hunger for touch, the hunger for dreaming.

She put on a pair of pants, which she had rejected so that she could move more freely in bed, as she had done every time she and her dead companion had been able to benefit from a decent and comfortable shelter, then put on her socks and shoes, before hesitating, and take them off immediately in order to exercise the sensitivity of her feet (you won't hurt yourself anyway old girl). She took a look at the room before leaving it.

It was a room furnished with simplicity, but nevertheless pleasant, and which contained here and there elements revealing the tastes of its owner. On the wall, she had noticed the painting with the tigers, and Yeo Woon's insistence in front of it. He hadn't told her much more during the night about Baek Dong Soo, and she herself had hardly pushed her questions beyond what they had already talked about before, after meeting him in front of the gates of the capital. She had then been preoccupied with the collective consciousness, but had failed to catch a satisfactory enough echo to learn more about the current state of things.

The old man hadn't shown up since Mago and his master had warned him of their change of plan, and yet she would have appreciated being able to discuss more with him, or possibly see him. She had considered proposing the excursion to Suwon to her master, and then she had changed her mind when she had remembered the surveillance at the gates. If they left the city, it was very likely that they would have to resort to the same tricks used by Baek Dong Soo in order to enter again. In other words, from being stuck outside, they had become stuck inside the town, and Mago had been wondering over and over, while Yeo Woon's friend was taking them to his house, which option was the safest.

She opened the door of the room to the inner courtyard, bathed in a still dawn sun, pale, a little cold no doubt, although she didn't feel it. She set her foot on the brown, grainy earth and took pleasure in the fact that a discreet perception, nebulous, but existing in spite of everything, went all the way up her legs to reach her nerves.

Feeling reassured, she immediately went to the large central hanok where they had been introduced the previous night to Baek Dong Soo's wife, whose presence had surprised her, because she had spontaneously imagined him single, an impression reinforced by the conversation she had observed between him and Yeo Woon, and who, presumably, didn't lead anyone to believe that one of them was attracted to the charms of the fairer sex.

In the light of day, she noticed that the main building of the house wasn't completely slender as she had thought when they had arrived, but that it was more in the shape of a "u", suddenly folding over to the sides. She noted on this occasion, following its structure, that it was connected to both rooms, but she hadn't seen a direct interior passage leading to it in Baek Dong Soo's room, and felt that there was a question of privacy there.

As she entered, she discovered her master and their two hosts sitting peacefully around steaming cups of tea, which exuded an aroma of yuzu, arranged on a beautiful black oak table around which they had settled, Baek Dong Soo and his wife on one side, Yeo Woon on the other. They turned their heads in her direction almost as one man when she appeared, and Mago thought for a moment that she had interrupted the equivalent of a crisis meeting, since their eyes were so insistently fixed on her.

The wife of their host had a somewhat amused smile on her lips, and she put her cup down when she saw Mago, to whom she addressed a warm and welcoming figure. Baek Dong Soo had cataclysmic dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn't slept all night, and he raised his cup a little to greet her with a vaguely contrite smile.

As for Mago's master, he looked like a statue, unchanged, immutable, and of a formidable cadaverous lividity in front of the two living whose colors and expressions were as much proof of their status as the rigid pallor of their guests. No need for a fire test, Mago thought to herself with a certain bitterness, it would be enough to put ourselves next to the living to see the difference. She remembered Yeong-Ja, in Sokcho, the hot springs, what she had revealed to them when she went there, about the make-up subterfuges she used to appear more alive, more present.

- Hi, she said, because you had to start with something.

She came to sit next to her master, crossing her legs under the table carefully and avoiding putting her elbows on the table. He asked her if she had managed to rest, to which she simply nodded her head, for lack of more interesting information to pass on to him.

- Tea ? Baek Dong Soo's wife offered her, lifting a remarkable porcelain teapot of exquisite taste, with charming celadon reflections.

Mago accepted a cup, although she wasn't thirsty, and kept her nose above the amber-colored beverage to see if she could feel the smoke sliding down her face. Baek Dong Soo, suddenly coming alive, slid a bowl of finely grilled beef towards her, which instantly made him much more sympathetic.

- Eat, his wife advised her in a soft voice, still a little hoarse from sleep.

Without a word, she looked up at Yeo Woon, who imperceptibly shook his head (already eaten). She then frankly attacked the dish that had been put in front of her eyes. Facing them, Baek Dong Soo and his wife, in spite of their cups of tea and the sleepy languor of their gestures, suddenly looked at each other sideways like a couple of conspirators.

The former finally put down his cup, and leaned a little forward over the table, as if to whisper a secret to Yeo Woon. His wife had joined hands in front of her mouth, and she was still smiling as she watched him, visibly waiting for him to speak.

- How much time do you have before your night service, husband ? she asked, glancing obliquely at their two dead guests.

- Until Yusi, more or less, he replied, passing a hand over his face, probably to wake up a little. Seung-Min must come here around that time.

- Perfect, his wife said in a satisfied tone. We've got plenty to work with.

At this utterance, Mago forgot about breakfast for a bit.

- To work with what ? she asked, with her mouth full.

- Mago, Yeo Woon called her to order, and it was the first time she remembered him reprimanding her like that. Your manners.

- Sorry, she apologized, putting down her chopsticks and diligently applying the rule of bowing to make it all more believable.

But Baek Dong Soo's wife shook her head, looking hardly more annoyed by this misbehavior than her husband.

- There's no harm done, she affirmed. To talk, I meant. We have plenty of time to talk.