Notes.

Warning ! Mentions of verbal and physical violences, as well as very brief allusions to sexual violences.

CHAPTER LXII

" Rememberthat Time is a greedy gambler
who wins without cheating, always! It's the law,
day declines; night grows; remember !
The abyss is always hungry; the water-clock runs dry."

(Charles Baudelaire, french poet, " The Clock")

a. Tempus Fugit

There had been a time when Yeo Cho-Sang was still relatively sober, respectable, calm, friendly. Sa-Mo was still able to remember it some days, even though the alcohol had quickly swept away everything his comrade had been over the years, covering it all up, slowly but surely drowning in its sourness the remnants of the man who would later become Woon's father. With Baek Sa Goeng and his wife, they had left the dark and oppressive comfort of the basement to join the Huk for dinner.

Ju-Won was sleeping that evening at a friend's house in the south of Hanyang, a playmate she had made during the first weeks of their relocation within the walls of the capital and who had gradually become a friend of heart and mind, both as a result of a meeting at an age when arguments and reconciliations were expedited and simplified, encouraging the creation of a solid affection, more resistant to disagreements, but also of two relatively similar temperaments, with interests and tastes, although they sometimes differed, that remained fairly homogeneous and therefore likely to strengthen the understanding between the two girls, without the risk of provoking an opposition due to too many similarities between their preferences and personalities.

Time was also an accomplice, contributing to thicken and strengthen the nature of the bonds they shared, just as it was capable of annihilating mutual tenderness, even if the latter had also been built up over a long period of time, but which a break at a given moment, a disparity, sometimes even a small one, or a set of dissidences and divisions piled up over the years, initiating the installation of a permanent, pathological tension, often kept secret, had damaged to a point of no return.

Time built as well as it destroyed. Sa-Mo, sitting next to Jang-mi, while eating, glanced at his dead friends, and noticed on their faces the presence of a sixth guest, silent and faceless, who happened to be the time itself, and he was aware of the weight this parasitic visitor was imposing on the whole house, on its inhabitants, and on those who knew them.

Time was in his wife's distressed expression, in her gaze that was falling resolutely into the contents of her dish, and was not trying to rise from it. In addition to the presence of gwishins in their homes, her concern had been heightened lately by Min-So's lack of response to the letter Jang-Mi had sent to her, which had been posted nearly two months ago.

The difficulties of delivering the mail were known and understood by all of Joseon's subjects, all the more so since the appearance of the dead in the territory had, for a time, coincided with several deaths of messengers who had unfortunately encountered starving gwishins, but the system had succeeded in developing solutions for the protection of its recruits and had, moreover, always been relatively regular before the beginning of the resurrections, due to an organization refined over the centuries and which had become quite decent compared to a previous and more distant era when the slightest communication outside the limits of a town or village turned into an epic worthy of the great mythological tales told at worldly feasts, during classes, or to children.

Moreover, the frequent exchanges maintained with the Hong, who had been banished into the deeper countryside, had enabled Jang-mi to calculate the average length of time it took for the messenger to deliver her letters to her niece. She was a diligent, and sometimes even fierce, correspondent who responded quickly. Her change of situation, and the obligation to follow her husband in his downfall and loss of privileges, had terribly aggravated her distress, precipitating her melancholy, already aggravated by the loss of her children and her feelings of guilt, both over their deaths and over the reproaches that had been raised against her for her inability to give Cho-Rip a male heir, into an abyss of discouragement and stupor.

In his own missives, Cho-Rip blamed her for becoming useless and apathetic, unable to take care of the house or their daughter. Min-So stated that he was becoming violent, both verbally and physically, and that his loss of power had reinforced his obsession with the Gwishins and had caused him to lose his mind for good. She must leave with her daughter, Jang-mi had said when reading to Sa-Mo her last letter, they must come here, both of them, we'll take them with us, but they can't stay with him, he's unstable, and dangerous.

However, since Jang-mi had written to her to come and join them in Hanyang, abandoning Cho-Rip without telling him anything, no answer had come back, and Sa-Mo saw his wife moping in anguish as she waited (my sister died because of her husband, she had told him, her eyes glistening with anger and pain, looking far away, I don't want the same thing to happen to my niece).

Sa-Mo had tried to appease her by assuring her that Min-So had a strong temperament, as much as her father, that there was their daughter, that Cho-Rip was going through a bad time, that it was probably nothing, but the days were passing, and doubt was creeping up to the surface, bringing along ideas, fears, fatal apprehensions.

He saw the work of time on the faces of Baek Sa Goeng and Dong Soo's mother as well. When Dong Soo's mother had arrived, they had seemed genuinely happy to see each other again, had hugged and kissed, then started talking, and somehow something had appeared in the meantime, a darkness that Sa-Mo could not discern the origin of, and they were now distant from each other.

Sa Goeng's face was constantly drawn downwards, as if the ground had seemed particularly sympathetic to him, and he no longer intervened in conversations unless it was absolutely necessary. When Sa-Mo had met him, thanks to Gwang-Taek, of whom Sa Goeng was probably the oldest friend after him, he was more carefree, talkative, less withdrawn, quiet but not as moody and amorphous. He was alive back then, Sa-Mo thought with painful bitterness, while memories of the day of his execution came to his mind, held it hostage, and persisted like the harpoons of the fishermen.

"It was really delicious, honey," he said after finishing his meal, to start a conversation, but above all to try to chase away the guest he didn't want, this invasive and suffocating time that had gone by.

"Really?" Jang-mi seemed grateful for the compliment, and he could see how his wife was also aware of the invisible intruder. "You thought it was good?"

"Of course! I've always told you, you could open a tavern and people would come rushing to taste your food!"

"Sa-Mo-yah, you shouldn't flatter me," she replied, with a shy, delicate smile, that of a young girl, and Sa-Mo then thought, "Time can't touch that one, never ".

"I promise you I mean it. Sa Goeng, don't you think I'm right?"

It was one of his tricks, one of the means he had found to involve their guests in the conversations. Otherwise, they could spend the entire meal in an absolute and excruciatingly morbid silence.

During the first days of their lodging at the Huk's, the talks had been warmer, because everyone's situation had been described, they had asked for news, tried to know more about the comeback of the dead, but for the most part, it was above all Sa-Mo and Jang-Mi who had animated the exchanges, taking turns to tell their stories. Looking back, he was realizing in retrospect that neither of his two former comrades had tried to deepen the conversations by wanting to learn more about him and the life he had lived without them since their passing.

Their questions, mainly those of Sa Goeng, as Cho-Sang had quickly lost interest in others the moment he had laid eyes on a carafe of alcohol, were very vague, very few in number. Moreover, they had reacted very little each time Sa-Mo had finished a story, usually one that was very long and detailed, by extension likely to generate at least a few additional questions or remarks.

At first, he had believed it to be a consequence of the shock of the rebirth. Later, as the weeks went by, he had been forced to acknowledge that those who were once his friends now showed a very limited interest in anything he could teach them outside of general themes such as the state of the country or the workings of the resurrections. They're not silent because of the shock, Jang-mi had protested one night in bed, her voice quivering with resentment, I think it's mostly because they're not interested.

Dong Soo was beginning to avoid them again. They both knew it, and although they had said nothing when he had claimed to have too much work to do, they had both seen in his excuse the old specters of the withdrawal on himself he had undertaken after Woon's death, by reducing his visits, his contacts with his former comrades at the training camp, now gone to join the fight against the gwishins and of whom almost no one had heard since they had been sent to command bastions in the southeast and the west coast.

At first they had written, then little by little their letters had become rarer, and in the last six years or so the Huk had received nothing from them. In contrast to Min-So, they had been less concerned, since there had been an effect of distance associated with strenuous occupations and, possibly, a lesser attachment that Dong Soo's remoteness had partially amplified. Sometimes the boys came up in the discussions (do you think they died ?).

They would think of sending a letter, before forgetting. And Time was laughing behind them, implacable and scathing, always the same, almighty. It had laughed especially when Sa-Mo had seen Woon again for the first time in fourteen years, as Dong Soo had brought him to their home to meet their parents.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Sa-Mo had asked him, dismayed and saddened by the obvious lack of trust, while in him were rising images of them at the training camp, of Dong Soo beating the other boys until they bled while Woon watched, the way he had seen Dong Soo observe Woon at times, with a decided and disturbing adoration, of his reaction after his betrayal, after his death, of his two successive breakdowns that had been more telling than any words.

He had managed to isolate him, while Jang-mi was distracting their guests and deploying treasures of inventiveness to make the atmosphere more convivial. Dong Soo had then revealed to him for how long Woon had been back from the dead, and he had been unable to contain his astonishment, nor the concerns that Dong Soo's idea of keeping Woon as a secret, even from his own family, had caused him.

"I forgot," he had replied at first, with a visible hesitation, before finally adding in a more brittle voice : "I wasn't sure how you would react."

Behind the wall of so-called indecision, Sa-Mo had heard the reproach, the accusation. He had wanted to reply that he had looked after him as well as Woon before the latter's return to Heuksa Chorong, that he had been worried about him, that he had been fond of the boy as he had been of all the other boys in the camp, that he had hoped and welcomed his desire to come back to them after the Minister of War's coup, and that under all these conditions, in addition to the fact that he had always considered Dong Soo as his son, he didn't see how his reaction could have been negative.

Then he had recalled what he had said to Jang-mi the night Sa Goeng had shown up at the door of their house (no one must know even Dong Soo not yet). He had also remembered all the times he had told Dong Soo to let Woon go, his rage and indignation, the way he withdrew into himself whenever Sa-Mo talked with him about it, the glances he threw into the void hoping they would be given back to him, the looks he had given Woon in the past and still gave him, the boys with their bloody faces, his old doubts and mistrust, never really asleep despite being discrete.

He had remembered Byeong-cheol, Jae-jin and Do-Hyun. What if what if what if. He hadn't said anything to Dong Soo, and had allowed him to go back to his parents. As he was turning around, he had met Woon's eyes, those beautiful, peaceful, sad, black eyes looking in their direction, and those eyes had been the eyes of the assassin, of Heuksa Chorong's Sky Lord, of the boy who had watched Dong Soo brutalize others whenever they insulted him, Woon, or both at the same time.

He repeated the question to Sa Goeng, but the latter just nodded his head with an artificial, forced smile. Sa-Mo had never been alone with him without Gwang Taek, and he was wondering more and more frequently since the resurrection of his former comrades if he had not in fact gathered them all around him, acting as a nucleus, a catalyst, around which they would all have gravitated.

The only one with whom he had truly formed a constant and comfortable affinity had been Dae-Po, and Dae-Po had not returned. They were both commoners, while Sa Goeng was the son of a yangban, as was Gwang Taek. As for Cho-Sang, the problem had not been his poor extraction, but his behavior. During his time as a royal guard, he still drank moderately, loving wine but not abusing it particularly, or exceptionally, on certain festive nights.

He was a bon vivant, liked good food, women and laughter. Sa-Mo had spent incredibly lively, joyful evenings with him, and he always felt at ease in his company, because unlike Sa Goeng, who was sometimes a little less approachable perhaps because of his education or nature, Cho-Sang was sociable and easy-going. He did not put on airs, nor did he was prissy. He was simple and welcoming in his familiarity. Sa-Mo had no idea what had happened.

Cho-Sang's drinking issues had worsened shortly after their thirtieth birthday. Dae-Po had blamed it on the rejection he had suffered in love, as he was very much infatuated back then with a young woman from a good family, who was sadly out of his reach. Sa-Mo had perceived it as something else, a potential outcome of some unresolved difficulties his comrade had confided to him, such as the death of his mother, which had occurred very suddenly when Cho-Sang was twenty-seven, the fact that he had never known his father, or the persistence of a terrible leg injury he had sustained during a mission, which had never really healed, inflicting terrible pain on him.

He had been dismissed from his position as a royal guard after his marriage to Woon's mother, whom neither Sa-Mo, Dae-Po, nor any of his companions had ever met, on the pretext that his injury was too serious to allow him to keep his position, when in fact his drinking, mood swings and delusions had been the cause of his eviction. After his departure, Sa-Mo had hardly heard from him for six years. He didn't even know he had had a son.

At the Huk table, the Yeo Cho-Sang who had risen from the depths of his grave muttered something as he noticed that the carafe of magkeolli was empty. Jang-mi had looked desperate, and Sa Goeng's wife rolled her eyes in exasperation. Sa-Mo didn't know her well. He had seen her only twice, at her marriage with his comrade, to which they had all been invited, and then after his conviction, to help the mother-to-be who was about to give birth to escape.

He knew nothing of the life they had shared together, of what their daily relationships had been like. He also wondered where the mother who had kept her baby in her womb for ten months to protect him, and the father who had begged Gwang Taek to look after his unborn child, had disappeared. He was unable to distinguish them in the disparaging remarks they addressed to Dong Soo, in the coldness of their interactions, in the little attention they seemed to pay to the outside world.

"Cho-Sang, stop drinking a little, will you," he finally said, tired of seeing him shake his carafe like a child whose favorite toy would have been taken away. "You've finished all the magkeolli, don't you think that's enough for tonight?"

His former comrade shook his head vehemently, huffed and puffed like an ox, and put the carafe back on the table.

"Are you listening to me, Cho-Sang?" Sa-Mo repeated.

"If I want to drink, I drink," he answered sharply. "I have my reasons, good reasons!"

"Do you really?" Dong Soo's mother's voice, when she spoke, was full of mockery and annoyance. "Does the fact that your son was born with a caul seems to you a good reason to get drunk to the point of becoming unbearable?"

"You don't know!" Cho Sang protested immediately. "You don't know how to interpret the signs, you don't know anything about them."

"I know enough to say you are out of your mind," the woman said curtly. "The Sal Sung scar is a bland superstition made by some woman, which only a drunkard would take seriously. You've been harping on this story for months, so do us a favor and be quiet for a while. I gave birth to a baby after ten months of pregnancy, which is just as unusual, and yet you don't see my husband getting drunk constantly. Although, I will grant you that, he did manage to avoid having to do so."

"Seo-yeon...," Sa Goeng intervened, while Sa-Mo and Jang-Mo didn't dare open their mouths anymore, petrified by his wife's unexpected outburst.

She shot him a black look, sharpened with blame and resentment.

"What?" she asked him abruptly. "You're going to tell me it's not true? That you didn't plan it from the beginning?"

"It had nothing to do..."

"It had everything to do with it. From the beginning. From the moment I told you I was pregnant, you never stopped looking for solutions, for ways out."

"Sa-Goeng hyungnim, what is she talking about?"

But he didn't answer Sa-Mo's question, ignored his attempt to defuse the argument, and remained turned towards his wife, impassive, as cold and inexpressive as a statue.

"Of the day he took the blame on himself for the acts of the Crown Prince, the latter then said. Of the day he deliberately put his family in danger, knowing exactly what was awaiting them and deciding to condemn them in spite of that. Tell them, Sa Goeng. Just tell them. Tell them about the day you chose to die because the idea of becoming a father was too unbearable for you."

Then she stood up, stiff, pale and dead, but boiling with anger, and she left the table without adding anything else. The silence that fell after her departure was as heavy as lead, and as truth.

b. Learned helplessness

Since the controls had been instituted at the gates of Hanyang, the number of gwishins who had showed up there had decreased drastically, and it was now very rare to see at the surveillance posts their pallid faces made of moonlight sparkles, along which the veins were so easily visible during the first days of a resurrection, and with their too-black eyes in their midst, in which confusion, uncertainty and fear were shining.

Nam-Kin had never really discerned any real danger or hostility in them, but some of the other soldiers had laughed at him when he had told them about it, claiming he was too gullible, and had not served long enough in Joseon's army to have succeeded in taking the full measure of the barbarity of the Gwishins. You'll see when they'll come after you or your family, you'll see, they had said, you'll see when they'll try to eat you alive.

The walls of the barracks, if they had been able to speak at all, would undoubtedly have abounded with awful stories, which were divulged by the soldiers, as they were in all cities where military garrisons were stationed, and which depicted attacks of exacerbated ferocity, most often exaggerated for the sake of sensationalism and to stimulate fear and disgust in the audiences to which they were narrated.

Nam-Kin, like all men in the army, had not escaped the custom, and from his first days of integration, he had been welcomed by the Horror Book, a short series of pages written daily by a small group of recruits, for the most part belonging to the wealthiest classes and therefore able to read and write easily, which were deposited each morning in front of the dormitory doors, and made freely available in each of the annexes of the barracks for anyone who wished to read them.

The name "Horror Book" was not official, but it was how everyone had implicitly agreed to name these few pages which described, in crude, demoralizing and obscene terms, often accompanied by sordid illustrations, attacks on the living by gwishins, and more specifically on the army of the kingdom. There was a version for the rest of the inhabitants of the capital, which was displayed on the walls of the buildings, scattered in the streets, on the doorsteps of the houses.

The strategy had been thought out under the government of King Yeongjo, but it was with his grandson's administration that it had really been established. It also included criers, public storytellers, painters and authors. Each support was fine. In addition, the stories were reinforced by those of the itinerant troupes passing through the city, whose members replayed attacks for the cruel pleasure of the citizens, either through acting or puppets.

Gwishins were always the monsters, the hungry, the cannibals. Nam-Kin, who had attended a few performances in the streets of Hanyang, read a few pamphlets, heard several stories, had no recollection of ever hearing or seeing a dead being depicted as a sensitive being, endowed with as many perceptions and self-awareness as a living, but simply subjected to a hunger for meat which, if not satisfied, could lead them to violence.

It was the end of the day : he had finished his shift and was heading back to the barracks, accompanied by one of his colleagues who was also regularly sent to guard the main gates, with whom he maintained friendly relations and liked to discuss martial arts, women and good inns. This colleague was the son of an engineer, who had, among other things, worked on the reinforcement of the walls of Hanyang to fight against potential invasions of gwishins, but also on ideas for dams at several points of the Han River.

King Jeongjo, like his predecessor, was a highly educated man who had taken an interest in many projects, and the two sovereigns followed almost equivalent policies. Yeongjo's concerns had centered on the economic recovery of the country following the wars of the previous two centuries, the partial reduction of taxes for the small people, the development of more modern farming techniques, trade, and access to education for his most impoverished subjects.

The appearance of the gwishins had been a considerable hindrance to his latest reforms, and had jeopardized all previous efforts to improve the quality of life of the country's residents. Class differences had increased, wealth had gone to the better-born, education had been put on the back burner, and all the profits from the commercial activities of the past few years had been swallowed up by the defence of the kingdom and the needs of the army to fight a phenomenon no one understood.

Within a few months, all the positive things Yeongjo had been able to achieve in fifty years of reign had collapsed. With the situation now stabilized, or at least more secure than before because of better understanding and control, his grandson was working to initiate progressive reforms regarding Joseon's cultural and mechanical influence, building on the gains accumulated by his grandfather, even though the war against the gwishins had greatly weakened them.

He had founded the Kyujanggak Library in 1776, which Nam-Kin had been able to visit once during a stop at the royal palace, and he recalled never having seen so many books on so many subjects gathered in one place, while the penetrating and soothing smells of paper and ink incensed all the rooms.

The gwishins had their proper place in this library, under the title of the Encyclopedia of the Dead. Nam-Kin had heard vague rumors about a second volume which had been written under Yeongjo but the conclusions of which, favorable to the dead and their integration into society, had not pleased him, leading to its cancellation as soon as he had read the first pages.

Recently, people had also been claiming, especially among scholars and aristocrats, that an additional volume had been put into the king's hands, discovered on a gwishin captured several kilometers away and written by one of their own, who had recorded characteristics never observed before by the theorists and experts to whom the question of the study of the dead had been entrusted.

When the Royal Decree of 1777 had been published, it had been accompanied, beyond a description of the new measures of repression and the revelation of the presence of the gwishins within the living institutions, by a list of new attributes hitherto totally unknown to the general public, or at best envisaged silently. Among these particularities, three of them had unleashed passions and debates within all factions of society :

"Gwishins possess the ability to communicate with each other in thought, inside a space of pure mind which they call the collective consciousness, and which they use to exchange information or to locate each other."

"Gwishins are sensitive to the intake of specific plants, which, without killing them, can act as drugs or paralyzing agents."

"Gwishins feel pain only if it is caused by fire."

"Some gwishins hold important positions in a hierarchy of the dead not yet determined by the government."

Nam-Kin and his companion encountered the Preacher in the middle of the palace's main commercial street, silent and mumbling when he was not on his improvised pedestal haranguing the crowds about the dead and the end of the world.

He came to meet them, staggering like a drunkard, his eyes so round, so wide and so feverish that they would have frightened away any passer-by who hadn't had the pleasure of attending his sermons and getting to know him better. His bony hand fell on Nam-Jin's shoulder, his nails burrowed into his skin like the claws of an eagle.

"They'll be here soon, you know," he recited, as he did nearly four or five times a day, in different parts of the capital. "The Eyes will come. The Great White Blaze. It's about to happen. And then the Island and the Sea, and the monster will join the why, and everything will be solved, everything, everything..."

He was panting, and his voice was muffled, hoarse from shouting too much. His hair was almost gone, and one of his eyes was full of blood. His grip was weak. He seemed exhausted, terrified. His gaze was unstable, unable to focus. Nam-Kin felt a surge of pity for him, tempered by the repugnance his gaunt carcass and his stench inspired in him.

"Let him go," Nam-kin's colleague ordered him in a firm, but not really threatening tone. "And go annoy someone else with your Eyes."

Nam-kin freed himself from the grip of his fingers.

"You should go to sleep," he advised him.

The Preacher then uttered a brief, frighteningly lucid laugh.

"I can't sleep. I can't. As soon as I close my eyes, I see others, and I don't want to see them, oh no, I didn't ask for anything, I didn't."

He resumed his walk with his back hunched over, looking ready to collapse to the ground, repeating his last sentence over and over again, in a murmur that became more and more inaudible as he walked away. Nam-Kin and his colleague started walking back to the barracks. They were close now.

He heard them before he saw them, while he was remembering the last gwishin who had come through the gates of the surveillance post, a tall, threatening looking guy, walking heavily, with dark eyes and a rough, wild expression. He hadn't understood when Nam-Kin had asked him his name and had asked him the usual questions of the interrogation for entering Hanyang.

What's the meaning of all this ? He had demanded to know as he hovered an imperious index finger over the whole room. He was unarmed, but Nam-Kin had seen the danger in his posture, on his face with noble features despite his actions. He had not resisted when the other soldiers had taken him to the adjacent room for the fire test. Nam-Kin had not even heard him protest or try to delay the test, nor had he roared in pain when the white iron had struck his hand.

Gwishin ! One of the soldiers had shouted from the room, causing a momentary panic among the other living who were there, and even then, the man had not even tried to fight when he had been shackled and seized to be led to the prison. One of Nam-Kin's companions, who had come to lend a hand to his comrades out of caution, had told him that the man had simply asked what was going on, to which no one had bothered to answer.

Nam-Kin had taken the opportunity to confide in him his surprise regarding the dead's docility.

"I was expecting a bit more..."

"Resistance?" His comrade had generously completed for him, with a knowing smile.

"Yes," he had admitted. "He looked so threatening when he entered the room."

"He had no sword to defend himself, and we were much more numerous," his colleague had then observed calmly. "Besides, you know as well as I do that there are some people who look threatening and eventually turn out to be totally harmless, just as there are others who look very friendly, but who will rip you apart as soon as you look away."

"Even so, admit that you were surprised, too."

"A little. But I finally understood when I saw him behind bars. He didn't resist us because he didn't want to. He seemed dull in his cell. Like a lot of Gwishins before him."

Nam-Kin had granted him the point. The only slightly vehement dead he had ever faced since his affiliation to the gates of the capital had been a woman who had succumbed to the insanity of a hunger crisis right at the entrance of the city, and who had managed to seriously injure an old man before being beheaded by a guard. All the others had certainly screamed and cried during their arrests, but they had calmed down immediately once in prison, most of them falling into an alarming state of stupor, which evoked death.

In a deserted and almost abandoned alleyway, a group of five soldiers holding torches surrounded a man whose face Nam-Kin could not see well, except for the fact that there were black stains (the blood of the dead) all over it. He was on his knees, bent over himself like a child, and was shaking, sobbing and begging. Nam-Kin didn't need to be any closer to guess what he was saying. Please. Stop it. I beg you. I didn't do anything.

It wasn't the first scene of that kind he had witnessed. Sometimes, when brigades found a gwishin, they would begin to beat him, taking advantage of his theoretically immortal condition apart from fire and beheading to engage in particularly cruel and atrocious abuse, taking turns to kick and punch them, applying embers removed from the fires in their homes to their open wounds in order to cause them physical pain, burning them with the flames of the torches. They insulted them, spat on their dead bodies, robbed them. They were soldiers, but also captains, commanders, instructors.

Sometimes the gwishin had just been caught in Hanyang. Other times, they came from the prison, and were taken there in the greatest secrecy, to be used as a way for the soldiers to let off steam. They were easy targets, and the people's hatred and fear of them made them less sympathetic and in need of assistance. The army made them pay a hundredfold for the buffets of human flesh, their unexplained return, the deregulation they caused.

Not all the military would indulge in these practices, but they were a significant enough number to be mentioned, and even those of a more quiet and measured nature were embroiled in the aggressions of the gwishins, and found themselves martyring them with sadistic joy, finding in their pain an outlet for their own terror and confusion. They usually blamed themselves the moment the torments ended.

Some went very far in the distribution of suffering. Suspicions of necrophilia in Joseon's army were, after all, a direct consequence of these clandestine meetings.

Nam-Kin had once been invited to one of them. The gwishin was a kid his own age, and he had kicked him ten times, feeling his violence and anger grow stronger with each blow. But when he had stopped, handing over the reins to another of his comrades, the dead had looked at him with teary, black, distressed, begging (alive) eyes, and he had then felt a a bile made of terror and shame rise up from the deepth of his guts (why why why are you doing this why we haven't done anything anything at all). He had declined all the other invitations.

And as the gwishin, now surrounded by his tormenters, was giving him that terrible look, this time filled with hope, he felt the same abominable feeling of guilt, the same remorse. His comrade pulled his arm.

- Come, he prayed him. Let's go.

(why are you doing this)

- We should do something.

- There is nothing we can do. Nothing. It wouldn't do us any good anyway. Think of your career. Let's go. Don't look.

He obeyed. As they were leaving, he saw a woman on the doorstep of a house, located just across the street, who was also watching the persecution unfold with growing terror. Their eyes met. Hers were very black, her complexion very pale.

Nam-Kin bowed his head, lowered his gaze to the ground, and thought "please forgive me" as loudly as he could.