Notes.

This chapter is a bit longer than the previous ones, but you will quickly understand why I thought it best not to cut it (in passing : I know, so sorry).

CHAPTER LVIII

"Well I know, I know the sirens sound
Just before the walls come down
Pain is a well-intentioned weatherman
Predicting God as best he can
But God, I want to feel again
Oh God, I want to feel again"

(Sleeping At Least, american artists, " Touch" )

a. Filial piety

It didn't go well. Sitting in his study while Yoo-Jin was working as usual in the main room, this time without any teacher, just to prepare for his next lesson, Dong Soo silently looked at Woon in front of him, as the latter was finishing his lunch, his face expressionless and somber.

He had barely uttered ten words since they had seen their parents two days earlier, and as Dong Soo was examining his tense expression, showing an obvious but carefully repressed irritation, which was probably imperceptible to anyone who didn't know him as well as he did, but also considering the state of his own mood and finding it no more optimistic, if not equally morose and strained, Dong Soo was forced to accept that the encounter had been far from what he had imagined the day before, or even all the years he had spent without his father and mother, simply talking to their graves, and thinking how much he would have wanted them to appear, alive and healthy, to surround him with the overflowing tenderness and affection that he had always associated with parenting, regardless of gender stereotypes or the age of the children.

He and Yun-Seo were like that with Yoo-Jin since his birth, doing their best to be present, considerate, firm but not tyrannical, loving without stifling him too much, listening to his preferences and constantly seeking to create a bond, a long-lasting and benevolent relationship on which the boy could have relied in all circumstances, especially the most difficult ones.

He had waited, without taking into account the considerable differences in situations and parameters, for his parents to act in a similar way with him, to throw themselves into his arms, to flood him with a love that their premature deaths had not allowed them to express further. But during all their first meeting, which had lasted the entire evening until the end of the dinner at the Huk's house, he had felt from his father and his mother only a polite, distant interest, as clumsy as foreign. As for Woon's father, it would have been an understatement to say that he hadn't jumped for joy when he had seen his son.

After a few moments of total immobility, during which Jang-mi had remained withdrawn, mute, observing them one after the other with an impatient and hopeful eye, Dong Soo's mother had finally initiated the sequence of events, and moved towards her son to wrap his cheeks with her hands and contemplate him more closely. He recognized that, at that moment, she had looked very moved and very sad, and she had whispered a "my dear son" that shook like a skinny tree in the middle of a summer thunderstorm.

She had shed black tears, which had left traces of soot on her cheeks, had hugged him against her for a second, had stroked his hair, and Dong Soo had allowed her to do so, without being able to return this primary veneration to her, because he was still under the effect of surprise, dazed by the vision of his two parents alive (alive !), or more exactly dead, and yet perfectly capable of moving, thinking, feeling.

The shock was far from being as powerful as when he had seen Woon again at the Spring House, but his emotion had nevertheless been infinitely dense and overwhelming, composed of a myriad of others, fighting to take the lead, to reign unchallenged. While finishing his sweet potato bits, which had become cold while he was thinking, he found it difficult to say that he had been purely happy at the prospect of seeing his parents.

He remembered being in a hurry after Jang-mi's declaration, being almost sick with nervousness, and having one of the worst sleepless nights of his life. He had been eager, but also, more profoundly, frightened. In his wife's bed, feeling her quiet by his side, he had realized that what he had been told about his parents had suddenly lost all meaning as the meeting was approaching.

He knew them through others, but not really, not as tangible, real, flesh-and-blood individuals. They had received every compliment in the world, but it was common knowledge that the dead were always overly complimented. Moreover, his parents didn't know him either. Jang-mi had assured him that she had talked to them about him extensively, that they had asked many enthusiastic questions about him, but once again, they had only perceived him through the eyes of an intermediary.

They were complete strangers, and, as this fact had imposed itself on him, Dong Soo had gradually seen the meeting, from friendly, take the aspect of an anguishing confrontation. Are they going to love me ? he had asked himself, stupidly, almost instinctively. Will they like me as much when they'll see me, when they'll hear me talk, when they'll see me for real ? The only thing that reassured him was the idea that Woon was probably facing the same questions, although slightly different because he had lived longer with his father, and that they were going to the Huk's house together.

Woon had isolated himself immediately after their return, or more exactly had confined himself into Dong Soo's room, and this was the first time he had consented to get out to eat in his company, abandoning his protective solitude and at the same time joining his student, who was astonished by his attitude but had obviously not dared to push her interrogations any further.

As Dong Soo had briefly discussed the next morning at breakfast with Yun-Seo, who had noticed his despondency and was worried about it, the student had been informed of the state of things and of the way the meeting had gone in general, but Dong Soo was convinced that Woon hadn't said anything else to her, not even in case she had asked him. He was like that.

At the training camp, his bad mood was expressed above all by absolute silence, gradual isolation, and a determination to avoid any contact with others. He never explained anything, and Dong Soo had sometimes torn his hair out trying to find out where the problem was, most often without ever putting his finger on it. He has his moods, Cho-Rip always said, and the other boys of the camp repeated in the same voice, like good sheep bleating unanimously "Today, Woon has his moods". Even Sa-Mo and Jang-Mi would say it sometimes.

Dong Soo had brought his personal touch to the designation over the years, and as soon as Woon started exhibiting such behavior, he was reduced to thinking "Woon has his dark mood". He liked the notion, the color in particular, the same as Woon's hair and eyes. He thought it suited him, as well as the blood-colored chima and black jaegori at the Spring House.

To Mago, whom he saw destabilized and possibly alarmed, he had provided some relief.

"It'll pass," he had promised her. "He just needs time, and to be left alone."

He would have liked to have someone to tell him that at the training camp. The first year they had lived together in the mountains, he had tried more than once to go and talk to Woon, to ask him what was wrong, only to encounter a wall and an annoyed look, at times even seriously aggressive. Dong Soo had experienced his feral cat phase until he had been freed from his bamboo cage, because he was mocked by others and scorned, but it had faded away, while Woon had retained his adolescent tendencies of not saying anything.

Occasionally, Dong Soo had wondered whether he would have expected him, or others, to guess on their own the reason for his attitude, and then come to him with an apology, or solutions. The idea had seemed rude to him back then, because it went without saying that nobody could guess anything without any prior information, and it had taken him some time to understand that Woon actually had no expectations of them, except that he wanted to be left alone and not be disturbed.

Yun-Seo had gone to post some letters and visit the wife of a former client, who had become her close friend. It was Dong Soo who had proposed to Woon to come and have lunch with him in his study, with Mago, but without forcing him. You should never, oh never, force Woon to do anything (leave me alone), in the sense that trying to make him bend when he was determined not to act as you wished was a monumental miscalculation, and could make you unpleasant and harmful to him.

The only option you had to get him to let you approach was precisely not to approach him head-on, but simply to offer him an opening, and to act as if it wasn't important, as if you were suggesting it as casually as an additional portion of rice. It was then up to him to decide whether or not you were worth the effort. In Dong Soo's case, once he had assimilated the mechanism (and he had always assimilated things very quickly whenever they involved Woon), Woon rarely refused the hand he held out to him, at least during their years at the training camp.

The aftermath had been a terrible succession of rejections, and Dong Soo remembered that the anger, misunderstanding, pain, and everything else that had built up between them since they were fourteen (I know what you two are he could cause a scandal Dong Soo-yah I didn't want to hurt you the autumn leaves) had gangerated his common sense, and he had wanted to force instead of just reaching out his hand, and to look the other way hoping that Woon would take it one day, without condemnation or blame.

Mago and him were eating evoking the book he had lent her, which she was devouring with as much appetite as her meat, when Woon had appeared on the threshold of the door. When there were no visitors at the Baek house, he and Mago didn't resort to the technique of dyeing their white hair, wishing to preserve it as much as possible, and his ivory strands now occupied a good part of his hair, as well as Mago's.

The last wave of Dead Winter seemed to have done more damage in this regard, as Dong Soo had observed the same phenomenon among the imprisoned gwishins and among those whom the Yeogogoedam members sometimes took to meetings. The last one had been devoted essentially to bypassing the surveillance at the gates of the big cities, which was gradually spreading beyond Hanyang, and to the fire test.

A report had also been made, like almost every time, on torture. The yangbans who belonged to the government were looking for a way to expand the list of criteria necessary to keep a gwishin alive, more specifically for the women and children, while at the same time considering limiting the torture sessions, either in terms of time or in terms of the procedures adopted by the executioners.

The idea that the presence of spectators was not such a good thing had also been considered. It could always be argued that it would further enhance rather than diminish compassion for the gwishins, Lady Park, their host, had suggested. The argument had been challenged, however, mainly on the grounds that it could lead to a wave of mistrust and interrogation of the military personnel who took part in the sessions.

Woon had hardly said anything during the meal, but Mago had enough conversation for two, and she was less silent and hesitant now that she was assured of Dong Soo's loyalty. They had come to discuss her training, and Dong Soo had ended up suggesting to Woon an amicable fight, like when they were younger.

He knew that Woon was taking advantage of his student's lessons to work on his own as well, as he had seen him spinning elegantly in the back garden, and he was well aware that a physical confrontation often offered him a greater relief than a discussion, even a friendly one, no doubt because he was more comfortable and more used to the first area than the second.

Growing up, and as things between them had become distilled, had moved beyond rivalry and had taken on a softer, cuddlier form, they had ended up shortening their jousting and replacing communication by fists with real words and sentences with subject, verb and complement. But there were those moments when the use of controlled, cordial violence could succeed where any other form of contact had failed.

"Okay," Woon had said, and it had seemed to Dong Soo that a smile was emerging on his face for the first time since their visit to Jang-mi.

If Dong Soo had struggled with his parents, felt his mother deeply embarrassed, his father so distant that he said almost nothing during their meeting and avoided his gaze, the reunion of Woon and his father had been of a much more bellicose and resentful order.

Dong Soo had always more or less suspected that Woon's childhood with his father had been difficult, since Woon had avoided talking about it or had only implied negative things on the rare occasions when he had mentioned it spontaneously, but he had been taken aback by the degree of animosity that their two expressions had reflected from the moment they had seen each other.

While his parents had made the effort to at least approach him, Woon's father had simply ignored him with a barely concealed contempt. During the evening they had spent at the Huk's house, and even after Sa-Mo's return, he had not once tried to speak to his son. Dong Soo had heard him call him a rascal, a bad egg, and had noted with embarrassment that he was drinking a lot. Woon, on the other hand, had only asked him how long he had been back. His father had mumbled an answer in bad faith.

"What about Mom?" He had inquired afterwards.

"Why would I care?"

Woon had stared at him, lips pinched with anger, with an expression so cold and hateful that Dong Soo, who was listening to their conversation from afar but couldn't handle the one he was having with his own parents, had been afraid to see him lose his temper. Instead, he had finally stood up abruptly and decreed that he was coming home. Dong Soo had taken advantage of it, jumped on his feet in turn, had followed him as obediently as a dog his master. In truth, they had both run away.

They decided to confront each other in the rear garden, to avoid distracting Yoo-Jin from his study. The hand-to-hand combat was an unspoken agreement, because weapons were banned since the day in the fields. Mago asked if she could watch them.

"I've never seen my master really fight with anyone else," she had explained to justify herself. "In China, he trained alone, or it was just for my lessons, but it's not the same."

Dong Soo had let Woon decide, and saw Mago's face light up when he had given his consent. She was now watching them circling each other from the study window, open for the occasion, with her chin on her hands, and looking absolutely delighted like a kid who would have been given a handful of treats.

"Before we start, I must warn you I've grown old," Dong Soo announced while cracking the joints of his hands, and doing a brief, somewhat ridiculous warming up.

Woon shook his head and smiled.

"I'll be gentle with you."

"How kind."

They started out slowly, almost without ardor, with a dull patience, the phlegm of old warriors. Dong Soo was the first to try to grab Woon, because there were things that didn't change, and the latter dodged him as easily as during their adolescence, with nevertheless a new stiffness due to his condition, and the lack of training of the last years. Their blows were more precise than before, but less powerful, because they were no longer trying to hurt each other, or not really.

Dong Soo felt restraint in Woon, just as there was in his own movements. The last time, he thought, blocking Woon's arm before it reached his face, this is the first time since. The gestures were the same as years before, the reflexes similar. He grabbed Woon's leg in the middle of a kick and saw him smile with appreciation.

"You're better," he said.

Dong Soo was panting and laughing, but Woon wasn't, because Woon was dead, and the dead were never out of breath. He saw Woon's body rise up in a flash and whirl with such force that he released him so that he wouldn't be knocked out by his free leg, which was coming straight towards his head, demanding the liberation of the first one.

Woon fell back to his stomach without a sound, gracefully, hands and feet resting on the ground, and when his eyes lifted up to Dong Soo, he looked exhilarated, wild, and wonderfully satisfied.

"That's new," Dong Soo observed with a questioning nod, not without a certain admiration, thinking (gwishin).

Woon shrugged his shoulders, and they resumed the fight, grabbing each other with renewed, forgotten delight, their arms blending together, their legs throwing themselves at each other. Dong Soo was starting to feel a twinge in his thigs and belly from being hit, but realized that he didn't care, and anyway, he returned the blows well to Woon. He's going to win.

He had lasted longer than in most of his previous confrontations with him, but tiredness was gradually creeping into his muscles, as well as pain, and Woon had the advantage, both physical and technical, had always had it. He managed to grab him, press one arm against his neck and hold him against himself, keeping his other hand behind his back, and he felt Woon's hair against his mouth, the icy cold of his skin, and the smile that stretched his lips as he was struggling, superbly rebellious and fierce.

His grip lasted only a moment : Woon threw his head back, bumped his nose, not strong enough to break it, and taking advantage of the release of his hold, freed one hand and kicked him back, making him collapse to the ground, while Dong Soo was laughing heartily, unable to restrain himself, finding back their training camp habits and their former complicity.

And then Woon had jumped.

b. Eros and Thanatos

One day, when he was seven, his father had locked him out of their house lost in the middle of the woods and refused to let him in until the next day, simply because he had caught Woon playing fight by himself, in the part of the forest a few minutes away from the house where he liked to go to be alone and at peace, both far from Yeo Cho-Sang and the other kids in the area with whom he didn't get along, mainly because of his temperament and reputation, not so much his own in passing as that of his father.

Woon could stay there for hours on end, with no one around, just between the trees and the roots, playing with sticks, making up stories, which he had never been very good at, but whose quality he had never so much looked forward to as being able to indulge copiously in a fragment of his childhood imagination. As an adult, he had completely lost this tremendous ability to build around himself stories of wars, evil creatures, demons, monsters, and legendary fighters that he would join for a short and intense martial quest.

A few days after leaving Hanyang, and setting out on the marked paths of Joseon, he had regretted at the same time the decline of his imagination which had allowed him to largely do without the others when he was younger and to reassure himself, but also, more specifically, he had deplored the transmutation of it into another genre.

For if his possibilities of fantasizing about territorial conquests, skirmishes and fantastic entities had been tragically reduced as he had grown older, those for thinking about horrors in the dark, night terrors, crawling and swarming figures with long hooked fingers had remained intact, and particularly alert. That's how life goes, Hui Seon had pointed out to him one evening when they were having dinner in his little room in the Spring House, we grow up, and fear takes all the room.

Woon remembered the terror he had felt upon realizing his father had locked the door of the house, the force with which he had banged against it, sobbing weakly, begging (open the door open the door open the door I'm scared open the door), while his father, perhaps already stunned by alcohol, had never come to free him from his anguish.

Never then had Woon spent the night outside completely alone, and he had felt tiny, helpless, vulnerable to anything that could come out of the woods. His father, as punishment for disobeying his orders never to play the warrior, had given the silent treatment to all his attempts to regain the warmth and security, albeit relative, of the family home.

Curled up on the terrace near the door, and clutching the long wooden stick that a few hours earlier had been a sword set with gleaming stones, Woon had remained awake all night, drowsing from exhaustion, and waking up to the slightest creak, the slightest sound from the forest. He had shaken, hated his father like never before. Sometimes he thought that everything had started from there, from that moment when Yeo Cho-Sang had twisted his imagination towards fear rather than joy.

Standing in front of the door of Dong Soo's room, palms and forehead pressed against its surface, he felt almost as helpless as he did that night, except he was far from feeling the same terror, which had been replaced by frustration, anxiety, and shame. He had jumped, and Dong Soo's face had contracted violently, expressing an immense fear, a terrible despair.

His whole body had jerked at the sight of Woon rising into the air, and he had only understood after falling down, as Dong Soo had rolled sharply to the side to avoid him and had begun to stare at him with eyes wide open in distress and sorrow, his breath chopped up, suddenly withdrawn into himself. Woon was then only thinking about the fight, about the comfort it provided him after his meeting with his father who had been dead for more than thirty years, and about the thoughtfulness Dong Soo had shown in suggesting it to him, about the pleasure they both drew from it, about the sweetness of the familiarity contained in such an exchange.

He hadn't paid attention. He hadn't done it on purpose either. I wasn't thinking about it any more, he thought, in front of the door. It was the expression on Dong Soo's face, the one from the fields, the one from the last day, the one from fourteen years ago, that had led him to understand his mistake.

He had wanted to come close to him, apologize, and had approached him, reaching his hands out to him.

"Dong Soo-yah, I'm sorry, I didn't pay attention..."

But Dong Soo had stood up with his hands in front of him like a shield, and his eyes had fled from him, far away, forbidding him any access or apology. Woon had started to beg him, not caring much for Mago who was watching the scene without understanding, and was looking for an explanation she could not grasp, given her lack of information.

"Forgive me, I wasn't thinking about it anymore," he had articulated, his throat tied in fear of having made him angry, or worse, of having terrified him. I won't do it again, I promise.

In front of him, still refusing his touch, Dong Soo kept his eyes on the ground, stepping back, running away from him, back to the fields and the blood, and all the things they had touched on at the Spring House, without really lingering over them despite the need.

"It's nothing," he had affirmed, his voice wavering, "it doesn't matter Woon-ah, it's all right, I just need to..."

Woon had tried to touch him again, and Dong Soo had pushed him away, gently, moving further back, continuing to pretend that "it's all right, really, I just need to take a break, I'll be right back", then he had walked away towards his bedroom, with Mago and Woon staring at him in disbelief.

He had followed him, telling his student not to come and to finish reading the martial arts book that their host had lent her. She had complied with his order without discussion or comment, and had gone to join Yoo-Jin to keep him company, and no doubt to skillfully divert his attention from his father's turmoil.

Dong Soo was not his father. He could have drunk a whole basement full of soju without ever becoming him. Yeo Cho-Sang had been drinking before Woon was born, and had increased his consumption afterwards, because he thought he had engendered a monster. Dong Soo drank because Woon was dead, because he thought he was the monster.

As a result, he eventually allowed him to enter the room in a hoarse voice (open the door I'm scared open the door), and Woon discovered him with his back against the wall, sitting with his legs bent against his chest and his arms around his knees, on Woon's bed. He looked small, breakable, a thousand miles away from the man who had confronted Woon only moments before, smiling and lively.

His head was leaning against the wall, his eyes were closed, and Woon saw his cheeks wet, felt the urge to dry them with his tongue, to swallow them, to bite them.

"It will pass," Dong Soo bitterly assured him. "Don't worry, Wooh-ah. It always passes."

Standing in the room, not knowing what to do or what to say, Woon had thought of all the times he had seen Dong Soo that weighed down during their years at the training camp. They had been relatively rare, on the whole, because while it was true that Dong Soo was often angry or upset, sometimes saddened, he had nevertheless rarely reached states of melancholy or discouragement such as those Woon had from time to time, when his thoughts brought him back to his father, Heuksa Chorong, or other things, which always concerned Dong Soo in some way.

His own off days were customary and he knew how to take them, how to discipline them, unlike those of Dong Soo, which always seemed a thousand times more terrible than his own, perhaps because they were not his own, and always left him in the grip of a distress and hesitation that made him a companion even more silent than usual, and just good at standing there, without saying anything, without even moving, although he wanted to be able to act, to do something.

Dong Soo was more sociable than he was, had always been better with others. Regularly, Woon had sincerely blamed himself for not being able to give him as much consolation, for not being more comfortable with words and sorrows.

He came and sat down next to him on Mago's yo. From the window, sunlight filtered into the room, bouncing off the floor and the bed covers. Dong Soo did not react once he was near him, nor did he open his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Woon said, because he didn't know what else to tell him, and he felt that any other justification was useless.

"No, it's me," Dong Soo sighed, shaking his head slowly. "It's me. It's always been me."

He's in the fiels, Woon understood. He's in the fields, in the mountains, he's in the autumn leaves, he's stuck like me, since that day, he's stuck in all those days. They had never talked about it again, had only evoked it in half words, with imprecise formulas, with devious suggestions, and Woon remembered saying one day, in the palace, when they had been ordered to sacrifice themselves for the Prince Sado and Dong Soo had seen a chance of redemption for a crime he had not committed, not according to Woon, having whispered "it was never your fault".

Dong Soo drank, but it was not his fault. Dong Soo had killed him, except it wasn't him (look what he's doing shut up), and it wasn't his fault. He hadn't understood his return to Heuksa Chorong, nor his choices afterwards, but it was not his fault. He had only ever had half the information, only part of the facts. And even the autumn leaves were not completely his fault. He had had no choice. And Woon had said, a few days before, hands pressed against his chest, looking at him, examining him (asking), "he could cause a scandal".

"No," he said then, and he wrapped Dong Soo's cheek with one hand, slipped his fingers behind the back of his neck where his hair was shorter and curlier, and drew him to himself, not knowing what else to do.

This time, Dong Soo didn't push him away, leaned his cheek against his palm, kissed it, let himself be drawn backward by Woon, buried his nose in his collarbone, his face against his chest, against the scar (love me kill me), and Woon wrapped his arms around him, plunged his hands in his hair, pulled on the fabric of his tunic, wanting him closer, inviting him.

Without a word, they fell, lying on Mago's bed, in a reproduction of the vision Woon had experienced in Sokcho, except that Dong Soo was real, and Woon felt his muscles, his bones, his hands along his waist, on his hips, his warm cheek against his own, the absolute softness of his touch made even more tender by four years spent away from Hanyang.

Dong Soo had shown himself violent during their confrontations, but outside of them, and especially during those moments when they were absolutely alone, in fusion, he took a thousand precautions, sometimes barely touched him, never daring to do anything while whishing to at the same time, he touched, caressed, without ever pressing or demanding.

All his body weighed on Woon's, heavy, solid, alive, between his thighs, where he always wanted him, where he would have liked to keep him forever (and ever and ever and ever). He wanted to kiss him, to show him that it was fine with him, that he could do more, but Dong Soo initially shield away, full of hesitation and perhaps terror, as Woon was raising his chin and wrapping his hands around his face to bring him closer, lower.

Woon authorized him his evasion, felt him despite everything kissing his chin, his jaw, each time with a single slow, too shy, reverential kiss, as if Woon had been the statue of a god and Dong Soo hadn't been allowed to touch him otherwise, nor love him in any other way. His hands slipped along Woon's sides, pulled up his tunic, embraced his skin.

Woon kissed him, throwing himself forward to grab him once and for all, and caught his lower lip between his teeth without pulling, so as not to hurt him. Only then, Dong Soo surrendered himself completely to him, became heavier, more languorous, as Woon crushed him against him, lifted himself towards him. His lips against his were an imprecise touch, and sometimes the impression of his hands disappeared or became more indistinct.

At the Spring House, Hui Seon had revealed to him that dead courtesans felt their customers at night, in their beds, with them, but often ethereally, far away, like a breath of wind. Sometimes they don't feel them at all, she had noted in a tone that had sounded almost saddened. As he brought his hands up along Dong Soo's ribs to his shoulders, diving the fingers of one hand into the hollow of his spine, Woon thought that he would have liked to be alive, for a second, or a whisper, to be able to feel him fully against him like before, to better react to his caresses, just to please him, to reassure him, to show him that everything was the same, that nothing had changed (love me adore me keep me).

Dong Soo was breathing heavily, and when Woon bit into his lower lip again, he laughed, slid his hands along his thighs, let him wrap himself around him, hold him between his legs, between his arms. You're my golden dragon, Woon thought, feeling him move against him, press himself against him, you and no one else, ever.

He conceived from it a brutal triumph, a dangerous, animal, roaring exaltation, and smiled in turn as one of Dong Soo's hand slipped under his tunic with less modesty, and the other wrapped around his waist, arching his back towards him, while he kissed him, breathed him, while Woon was hearing the palpitations of his heart and the sound of his blood in his veins, under the flesh, the contraction of his bones, and the infinitely gentle contact of Dong Soo's belly against his, rolling like the waves of the sea of Sokcho.

With his fingers, Woon lifted the fabric of Dong Soo's tunic, stripped the skin from his back and its warmth, moved with him, and thought feverishly, passionately, "together together forever just you and me together and it's just like the dragons". Dong Soo's skin could have worn golden scales. Woon loved only him, accepted only him.

"Dong Soo-yah!"

The voice, coming from outside, was that of Sa-Mo. It froze Dong Soo, rooted him on the spot, putting an abominable end to the voluptuousness of their embrace, to his caresses, drawing his attention elsewhere, tearing from Woon a strangled sob of rage and consternation. It was soon followed by the voices of both Jang-Mi and Dong Soo's mother.

Dong Soo's face decomposed and tensed up with every call. Woon saw pain in his expression, a discouragement echoing the one he was feeling himself. Dong Soo's body began to rise and he instinctively held him, clutching his legs around him and his arms around his neck.

"Don't go," he implored him in a breath, out of selfishness, out of love, out of despair, pressing his cheek against his, pressing himself against him to convince him. "Stay. Please."

"I can't..."

Woon kissed him, whispered to him to stay, not to leave, and he felt Dong Soo's obvious desire to give in to his prayer despite his weak protests, the imperceptible slackening of his body against his as Woon's thighs pressed against his sides, the sigh he heaved.

The calls began again, louder, and this time they broke everything, tensed them up, split them in two, like Cho-Rip before them, like many others before them. Dong Soo pressed his lips firmly against his own, then pulled himself away from him, straightened up, let him go, and he looked terribly unhappy. Woon closed his eyes, didn't move, not even when he heard the bedroom door sliding open.

He stayed on the bed for a long time before joining them, after Dong Soo's departure, overflowing with bile, with anger and frustration, in silence.