Notes.

Woon and Dong Soo : trying to have a moment.

Me, bursting into the room yelling and banging on drums : the plot, the plot, the plot !

Woon: ... I would like to terminate my contract.

More seriously, a thousand apologies for the indecent length of this chapter : it contains two crucial scenes, and I didn't feel like shortening them or rushing them. The title of the first part was inspired by William Blake's poem. And the entire first part was inspired by the song "Chandelier" by Sia.

Soundtrack (during the second part of the chapter) :

Little One (Detroit : Become Human OST)

CHAPTER LXIII

"One, two, three, one, two, three, drink
One, two, three, one, two, three, drink
One, two, three, one, two, three, drink
Throw 'em back 'til I lose count"

(Sia, "Chandelier")

a. Tyger Tyger (burning bright)

The bars of his cell were made of wood, of thick dark beams with a fundamentally demoralizing appearance due to their utter lack of originality or fantasy, firmly planted in a rough foundation made of huge stones, with sharp and sometimes shining at the edges, like some false and magical ancestral gems, under the light of the torches. As soon as the sun's light appeared, they resumed their dull and dreary shape.

On the other hand, the wooden bars were relatively charming in the sense that they had been marked by time, but also by the men who had succeeded one another behind them, and had scratched the wood, bitten the material, torn off chips and dug out asperities, giving them a touch of life, a little more charm. Wood without branches was dead wood, and no wood was deader than the wood of the prisons.

Chun knew that, for he had spent a long time in their monotonous, necrotic interiors, in which men went mad, women hysterical, children adults. He had been arrested once at the age of thirteen, after stealing a chicken from the stall of a merchant whose eye had been accustomed to pilfering for too long not to have noticed the maneuver of the gangly, starving kid he was then. It had to be said that he had greatly lacked subtlety, but hungry as he was, it was also true that he hadn't tried to be discreet. The street was full of passers-by, and he had thought he would be able to escape easily, blinded no doubt by his appetite and inexperience.

The merchant had shouted "thief!", he had been grabbed from all sides, under the arms, and dragged to the police station. He hadn't been able to free himself from the grip of the men who had caught him in the act, but he remembered clinging fiercely to his chicken, and tearing off large, raw, vile pieces of it, which he had forced himself to swallow in order to regain his strength.

At the time, he had left his mother's home for a little more than three weeks, and his provisions having come to an end, he had begun to depend on the charity of others to feed himself : but in this district of Hanyang, where all the inhabitants were starving as much as he was, and survived on meager resources, barely sufficient to ensure their subsistence, the rule was every man for himself, and generosity was excluded. Survive or die. You could count on no one to save you, no one to help you. Misery had nothing to give but more misery.

All his life, Chun had been hungry, and even after joining Heuksa Chorong, even after becoming its leader, even after having enough money to buy a whole palace of victuals, he had continued to be hungry, non-stop, for both physical and spiritual nourishment. He had grown, thickened, hardened, but the skinny boy had never gone away, and in a way he was glad he had never disappeared entirely, for he had been the one with the strongest will, the greatest determination, and perhaps the bravest heart.

His cell had a wooden wall at the top of which was a small window, barely good enough to catch the glimmer of daylight without revealing anything else about the outside. The dirt floor was hard, uncomfortable, covered with sad, taciturn straw. It was a cell, and Chun had seen others. They were always built on the same model, the same idea, to be anything but a pleasant place to the eye as well as the body. Prisons were never about pleasure, and as soon as anything remotely attractive was introduced into them, they lost all their substance.

It was after having spent several days in jail for theft, and having been beaten by the jailers in a laughable and counterproductive attempt to teach him good manners, that Chun had met Ga-Ok's father, at that time the Sky Lord of Heuksa Chorong, but also his daughter. He only remembered her from that day, her ice-cold eyes, clear and beautiful, her black hair raised above her neck, the weight of their voluptuousness.

He had taken back his spot in the street, sitting on the ground, his late father's hat in front of him, waiting to receive coins from passers-by, and it was remaining empty, without hope, as the hours passed. It was Ga-Ok who had thrown a few muns in it. He didn't know who she was, back then. She had looked down on him, imperious, haughty and yet strangely compassionate, beautiful like a wild beast, and Chun had felt dirty, silly, and ugly under her steely gaze, while simultaneously a bitter idolatry had arisen in him, a deep, illogical adoration, as were all worships, which was precisely why they were so powerful and tenacious.

He had seen Ga-Ok and deep inside him something had given way, had collapsed for good. He hadn't said anything to her, but had looked up at her with pleading, ecstatic, boyish eyes. Ga-Ok had not moved, had stood over him as an absolute sovereign by divine right, whose charity depended on her moods. Her father had appeared behind her, a tall, gnarled, stiff figure, paradoxically looking less severe than her, and he had observed him in turn as if he had been a local curiosity, before asking his name.

Chun had given it without thinking, without taking his eyes off Ga-Ok. Sometimes he thought she had been the bait, the trigger, the carrot that the old man had put under his nose to convince him. He had come back several times, throwing coins into his hat, paying for his meals, paying for his survival. Then he had heard about his little shoplifting exploit, and it had all started from there.

He was to be transferred by the next day to the camp of the army of the dead, located about ten miles west of the capital. According to Baek Dong Soo, the convoys were transported during the end of the day, before nightfall, and escorted by several soldiers specifically designated for these missions, which were considered perilous because of the risk of gwishin rebellion.

In theory only, the kid, who wasn't really one anymore, had said, because in practice, no gwishin has ever tried to fight the guards alone, or if they did, I never heard of it. They always transported the dead one by one, in a mobile prison made up of a wooden box with a small crack for air inlet, in order to limit attempts to escape or protest. The irony had made him laugh in the middle of the stunned silence of his jail.

Prince Sado had been sentenced to die in a similar box decades earlier. The process had obviously been recycled, and adapted to the country's new needs. Chun had wondered several times if the young king had thought of his father's sentence when he had devised how to move the gwishins between Hanyang and the training camp for the dead, if the image of Sado, livid, bloody, huddled in his prison, had crossed his mind, and if he had taken any pleasure in inflicting the same punishment on others.

He had submitted the question to Baek Dong Soo when the latter had come to see him in his cell after the torture session. His skin and nerves were still crackling painfully from the abominable sensation of the fire that had been forced upon them, and were still wearing scars despite the care of a physician who had showed up after the session, and had undertaken to heal him with blood ointments.

He had felt nothing at first, and had been almost satisfied, until his muscles and perceptions had woken up under the influence of the infernal heat and had began to scream. Only then had the torturer deployed his full arsenal, and from timid, the torture had become mad, sharp, enraged, and he had screamed, oh, he had screamed, both of pain but also of rage, because nothing irritated him more than his own suffering, and between two moments of respite, always too short, he had glanced at Baek Dong Soo, and had found the kid who had stabbed him in his youth totally impassive, eyes empty, expressionless, and wonderfully cruel in his indifference.

In front of him, Yeo Woon had the same look Ga-Ok once had, that sharp iron in his eyes, those chunks of ice that were the ones of a frozen, harrowing lake under which teeth slept. His heir had always had beautiful eyes. So did Ga-Ok. And Gwang Taek. One two three one two three. In the throne room of the guild headquarters, Chun had counted the candles three by three, blown them out in the same way.

There were three lords of Heuksa Chorong. The sky, where the clouds necessarily progressed (Woon). The earth, the esoteric power, with its reliefs, its heights, its chasms, its trees and rivers, its set of destructive and creative nuances. Then came the men, the in-between, the intermediary, who suffered from one and the other and constantly rose, constantly advanced, lived, died, and tried in vain to understand things beyond their reach.

Dae-Ung had been a perfect Human Lord. Woon too, at the time he had taken the role, disoriented, rejected, lost in a fate that had never existed. One two three. Him. Ga-Ok. Gwang-Taek. They had been the cog, the mechanism, a decadent harmony, incomprehensible but powerful, omnipotent, and then Ga-Ok had died, and the system had broken with her. Boom. Chun had always counted from three to three. There had never been anything else. One two three. Right, left, center. Three.

Next to Woon, who was looking at him with contempt tinged with a tiny trace of compassion, stood Baek Dong Soo, with all the justice warrior gear he already worn back when he was younger. He was wearing it when he had wounded Chun to death, but the garment had lost all meaning by then. A sword that pierced through a body created a killer. And no matter the clothes, the role, the morals. A killer was a killer. Woon was one. Baek Dong Soo was one. Gwang Taek, Ga-Ok, Chun, had been killers.

The only difference was that some killed much more than the others. The rest didn't matter. And Chun had laughed for hours, in the throne room, amidst the candles and dead swords, in his apartments of silence and foolish extravagance, thinking how much people liked to call him a liar, when they themselves were strictly incapable of naming their deeds as they were (no worse liar than the one who doesn't want to see oh no worse liar than that one).

Chun had been a liar raised in a world of liars. Woon was a liar. Baek Dong Soo was a liar. Gwang Taek and Ga-Ok too. Lies here, lies there. Lying moths, or just plain myths, which difference ? All guilty. All the same. Sometimes, late at night, Chun remembered Gwang Taek and Ga-Ok against him, lying pressed against his sides, their hair on his face, their eyes glistening, languid and relaxed.

"We love you," Ga-Ok was saying, intertwined between them, with them, beautiful and royal. "We love each other. And the world is so, so far away."

And Chun said he loved them, dreamed he loved them, adored them, her with her icy eyes, him with his gentle face, he loved them madly, had never loved anyone but them, understood only them. He had been the Sky Lord, Ga-Ok the Earth Lord, and Gwang Taek would have deserved the title of Water Lord. He was liquid, lithe, agile like a river, clear and beautiful like a lake, treacherous like the ocean.

He had only loved the two of them in the world, and would never love anyone again. He would have burned the world for them. Perhaps it was also because of how much he loved them that they had left, that they had closed themselves off. Maybe they had become afraid of storms and thunder, of violent winds and monsoons. They had never said so, would never explain it to him. They were dead, and everything had gone away with them, everything had shattered into pieces, even Chun. And the sky alone wasn't worth much.

Baek Dong Soo did not ask Woon if he wanted him to stay. They exchanged a glance and that was all it took. I made a mistake, Chun mused, following him with his eyes as he headed for the prison exit, I choosed the wrong assassin. He hadn't seen it then. Now he could, because Baek Dong Soo was old enough so that Chun could recognize it, identify the crevices in his foundation, the sinuous, infected cracks. He was also hiding them a little less. Chun had the same.

Woon had them, too, but his were of a different kind, or they weren't open yet, and Chun couldn't see them. He also considered the possibility that the kid had hidden them from him, and remembered, fleetingly, the day he had entered his small room to wake him up from the soporific torpor into which he has fallen since he had betrayed his friends, and the moment when Woon lashed out at him, with insane eyes, red from crying, his hair a mess, looking sick and exhausted. He had held a knife to his throat and had ordered him to get the hell out.

There had been cracks in his beautiful eyes, and screaming horrors ready to come out of them. Seeing him like that had made Chun's hair stand on end. Perhaps it would have been better to take them both under his wing, on reflection. Needless to say, they would have been his wonders, his jewels, his monsters, and they probably could have set the country on fire together, bled it dry.

Without Gwang-Taek and Ga-Ok to keep him on a leash, to soothe him, to bring back quietness and control, Chun was an enraged, delirious animal, and his vision was one of destruction destruction destruction the world in ruins the world dead the world in flames. He had spent his life fighting against it. And during his torture, he had felt it, sneering, ancient, sinking its teeth in and coming back, a foul and uncontrollable little thing, a parasite of his thoughts, ugly and fabulous in its atrocity.

"You came to say goodbye?" He greeted Woon wryly, standing up without feeling the pangs of old age that had settled in his muscles when he was still alive.

"No," the latter answered, and Chun thought of his torturer, and found between them a striking resemblance in the economy of words they both favored.

"Ah. So you've just come to see the convict? A courtesy call, or maybe a victory call? It would be understandable."

Chun had lied to him about his father, and he doubted the kid would ever forgive him. He himself would never do so, had he been the one who had been lied to. He came up to him behind the bars and saw, once closer, how pale Woon was, how his eyes were much darker than before, and the discordant color in some places in his hair. His chest wasn't rising. He was not breathing. Chun wondered how he had died, what he had chosen.

You can't kill yourself, he had stated years earlier, to the child with his blade under his chin. It was true. It wasn't. It was what the former Sky Lord had said to Chun, it was what that same Sky Lord had been told by the one before him, and so on. It was the Argument. The endless circle, the snake devouring itself. It was the Excuse. An heir was needed, another king in the sky. It was the Law.

Chun had followed all the steps, ending the process with the final revelation, the one that had ensured him Woon's wrath, his rise to power, and the death of his predecessor. The entire life of the Sky Lords was one long suicide. Some just left earlier than others, and obviously Woon had been as precocious in learning the martial arts as he had been in dying.

"No."

"So what?"

"I came because I wanted to see you. Ask you a question."

It could have been touching if not for the last statement, and yet the latter was also paradoxically reassuring. Chun was perfectly aware how unlikely it was for Woon to fall into sentimentality about him. They had never been that way. He had been his past, and Chun had been his future, and perhaps, through this cloudy mirror game, they had been like father and son in a sense.

He remembered having affection for him, something like that at least. He sometimes thought he had given him the crumbs of what he had once reserved for Gwang Taek and Ga-Ok. He had liked what he had seen in Woon, that reflection of himself that he had seen in the boy, the lightning and the storm, the dark, threatening clouds. They had been the same, once.

Woon had escaped from his drunkard of a father, and Chun from his crazy mother. Everybody had their own battles. You never think of me, she used to chant during her fits, hitting him, scratching him, pulling his hair, you're a vicious little creature, you're a rascal, I should have gotten rid of you at birth. But I think of you, Mom, he had wanted to answer her, sometimes. I think about you so much I want to kill you.

Chun nodded, leaned his forehead against a bar of his cage, indicating he was listening.

"Why did you lie to me?" Woon asked. "About my father?"

Chun thought of snakes, of the sky, of swords on top of each other.

"Because I had to. Because it was the only way. Because it was part of the rules."

"You were lied to that way?"

"What do you think?"

Woon looked him straight in the eye, and Chun saw the confirmation on his face.

"Who?" He wanted to know, and Chun couldn't blame him, nor could he deny him.

"My mother. But it was different. I wanted it. She was insane. I just finished something she had started long ago. When I was little and growing up, she threatened to kill herself at least once a week. I think part of her found it funny to watch me cry for her to stop, to watch me suffer whenever she was holding a kitchen knife over her wrist or throat. I never regretted it. Some parents aren't parents. They just have the name."

On her good days, she called him "my darling, my treasure, my wonder". On her bad days, tragically more numerous, she threw objects at his face, called him a bastard, tried to attack him with anything and everything, had attempted to strangle him in his bed. She was never satisfied, never happy, never herself. She had made his head spin.

"My father came back," Woon said.

"Sorry, kid. Really."

Woon shrugged, as if it didn't matter. He had done it a lot when he was younger, when Chun asked him harmless questions. The gesture always made him look younger.

"Why did you told me the truth in the end?" He then asked in a colder tone.

"You can't see?"

"Because it was no longer needed?"

"Yes, that too. But above all because I had to. Because it was still the rule. Because it had to be done in order for the rest to begin."

"Just for that? For the legacy and the throne?"

(one two three one two three one two three we love you)

"I was tired," and his voice was old, weak, alone. "You know what I mean, Woon."

Baek Dong Soo suddenly appeared in the hallway, descending the steps leading to the cells two at the time and stopping on the last one.

"Woon-ah, we have to leave," he said, almost apologetically.

"I'm coming."

"I was wrong," Chun remarked, keeping his eyes fixed on the void left by Baek Dong Soo's silhouette after the latter went up. "The purpose of Heuksa Chorong's rules was to wake you up, but I was wrong. It wasn't me who woke you up. I never did. You had been awakened before that. I should have recruited you both."

Then he felt icy fingers digging into the bones of his temples, clutching them violently, and bringing his face against the wooden bars of his prison. He found himself face to face with Woon, but Woon's eyes had turned completely black, dark veins were running up his neck and cheeks, and he was holding Chun's head in a merciless iron grip.

He didn't move, nor did he dare to say a single word (what the hell).

"The army," Woon said, in another voice, a voice that was coming from agrave, a voice from beneath the earth, too hoarse. "Prepare the army. We need the army."

(obey)

"What army?"

(bend the knee)

Woon's head tilted slightly to the side, as if Chun had made a joke, or as if he hadn't understood his question. His eyes were abominable abysses of emptiness and darkness.

"We need the army," he repeated. "You will lead it when the time comes, with the others. Prepare the army."

(my command my word my order)

"When?"

"You will know. We are the Eyes."

Chun felt something cold spread inside him, in his guts, like a pocket of frozen water. He heard himself, almost from far away, repeating the formula in the same tone as Woon, monotonous, but this time submissive.

"You are the Eyes."

Woon released him, or rather pushed him against the wall, and his back hit the wood with a sickening crack. When Chun looked up, he found Woon standing calmly in front of him, his eyes once again clear and questioning, obviously disconcerted to find the former Sky Lord slumped to the ground.

(we are the Eyes)

b. In Memoriam

Dong Soo had warned him that visits from the living to imprisoned gwishins were only allowed on two occasions, when the latter could not be identified during interrogation but also in the case where they refused to give their names despite questioning and torture. He had informed him of Chun's resurrection the day before, immediately after waking up, taking him aside as Woon had just finished his lunch and was about to go and supervise Mago's training.

Chun's back, he had simply taught him that day, and his voice had not shaken, had not sounded more eager than usual, but Woon had noticed the urgency in his eyes, the need for answers and especially for the guidance they expected from him. Without a word, they were begging, demanding "tell me what to do, tell me what you want me to do".

They were in the kitchen, and the smell of cooked meats, beef and pork that had lifted the dishes of white cabbage, radishes and cucumbers served by the cook only a few moments earlier, had partly distracted him, like in Na-Young's father's backroom or more generally in all the closed spaces inside which the smell of flesh tended to clung compulsively. He had breathed it in almost without paying attention as soon as he had entered the Baek's kitchen, where he had until then hardly set foot except for when he was preparing tea for himself and the other inhabitants of the house, that is to say most often long after the meals.

His thoughts had instantly sunk towards the naked skull of the monk in Qing, towards the arm of the woman from whom he had bought his first portion of meat, towards the smells that had then escaped from her pantry, towards the sumptuously dripping and bloody entrails of the wild boar that they had devoured with Mago and another gwishin, a few kilometers away from Sokcho.

They had also drifted to the thick, vermilion tea that Hui Seon had made him drink during his entire stay at the Spring House, to the bowls of meat that she had served him, which had been too appetizing, too invigorating. With this, you will soon look more like a living than to a dead, Hui Seon had said, staring at him with her authoritative black eyes, that's what I give to all gwishins during the first months they spend under my roof.

A few weeks before his departure, she had added more conventional meat to his dishes, which tasted less appealing, but was more easily available.

"Better get used to it now," she had pointed out to him, seeing him wince imperceptibly after discerning the change in flavor. "That way you'll avoid hunger attacks, or at least reduce the risk of them."

In the kitchen, Dong Soo had very gently squeezed his elbow with his hand, asking him if he wanted to go see Chun at the royal palace prison, where he had been locked up after the torture, and Woon had swallowed his appetite behind his teeth, in the back of his throat.

"Am I allowed to?"

Dong Soo had explained to him the circumstances under which the living could visit the captured dead, and had said that he had managed to preserve an opportunity for him, telling Chun not to reveal his identity and promising to keep his mouth shut himself. I thought you might want to see him, he had said. They stood close, in an intimacy of confession and secrets.

Dong Soo was looking down at the ground while expressing his beliefs about Woon. Woon had looked at him, and instead of a possible desire to meet his predecessor, fresh from the grave, he had wanted to put his hands, flat, against Dong Soo's belly, to feel every ripple and quiver under his palms, or at least try, and hold his gaze, like the time they had returned from the gisaengs two decades before.

Tell me what I want, he had thought, as he was feeling again Dong Soo's hands move along his arms, in a distracted and relaxed, but firm caress, tell me, you know me, show me. One of Hui Seon's pastimes at the Spring House had been to pretend she knew him, and she was probably right to some extent, for he had remembered other things in Qing, walks this time not along the banks of the Han but in the dark, her voice saying "hurry up, there's no lingering here," her playful, toothy smile.

There was what she knew, everything that was on the surface, visible, barely concealed. And there was the rest, which was still his, just his, and Dong Soo's. And below the surface, the depths went down far, far away, into darkness and silence, into a chasm where autumn leaves floated. He had agreed to see Chun again, mainly because Chun wasn't his father, and Woon had deduced that meeting him could in no way be worse than suffering the insults of Yeo Cho-Sang.

He and Dong Soo returned a little before dinner. The cook had just arrived and was chatting with Dong Soo's wife while walking briskly towards the kitchen. She greeted them with a respectful nod, and after she disappeared inside the central hanok, Yun-seo, who had been informed of their trip to the prison by Dong Soo, showed concern about the smooth running of the meeting. At Woon's request, Dong Soo had not given her any details about Chun.

"Don't worry," her husband assured her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I didn't forget to give the false name for Woon, like we discussed."

Once in front of the gates of the royal prison, he had assured the guards standing there with a vaguely sleepy look on their faces that Woon was a friend to whom he had spoken about Chun, and who had believed to recognize him based on his descriptions. He had therefore come to help the army to try to identify the dissident gwishin, and thus fulfill his duty as a loyal subject. They had been allowed to enter without any fuss, and without requiring Woon to prove his status as a living like at the entrance of the city gates.

It's because I'm a brigade captain, Dong Soo had whispered to him mischievously, smoothing the feather of his hat with an indolent gesture, they trust me, and they tend to assume that if you're in town, you've passed the fire test with success. The former Sky Lord of Heuksa Chorong was laying in his cell, slouched on the floor, one arm supported by his bent knee, and he wore the white of the dead, not the black he had once liked to drape himself in, when he was still alive.

Woon had seen on his face the pallor of the gwishins, and in his eyes the black veil of the young resurrected, who hadn't consumed enough meat to weaken the marks of their new condition. He had found his gaze dim, even more so than when he had last confronted him before his death.

I told him Gwang-Taek and Ga-Ok had not returned, Dong Soo had explained to Woon on the way to the prison. In the throne room, Chun had spoken to him lenghtily about the duties of the guild lords, about their need to be three at all times, and he had insisted tirelessly on the number, had repeated it several times, and Woon had felt at times that he was drowning in it.

"There were three of us before," Chun had told him, bitter, aged, powerful but diminished. "Me, Ga-Ok, Gwang-Taek. All three of us. We were three, and we were one."

He spoke of them the same way Dong Soo had spoken of him, Woon and Cho-Rip. Us against the world. Woon preferred the "us" of him and Dong Soo, and had wondered sometimes if Ga-Ok had not also preferred the "us" she formed with Gwang-Taek.

Mago had accompanied Yoo-Jin in the streets of Hanyang, because he had run out of paper and wanted to buy some himself. His mother had given him the responsibility of a small amount of money, enough for the boy to purchase new brushes or color pigments. Mago simply wanted to stretch her legs and occupy her mind with something other than martial arts or the collective consciousness, and she had furthermore expressed a desire to mobilize the opportunity to continue her discovery of the capital. Yoo-Jin, as one could see it from his cheerful face, was obviously not reluctant to serve as her guide.

It had been necessary to dye Mago's hair, and since Woon had applied some to his own hair as well, their bottle had been nearly empty. His student had promised him to buy a new bottle while Yoo-Jin was going to get his drawing paper. The white locks had become omnipresent since their absence from a few days ago, the one that had caused their hosts to panic, and from which they retained no memory.

The next day, a letter from Na-Young's father had arrived : he had reported that his daughter had fallen into an "unusual trance" during the night, echoing the state in which Dong Soo had found Woon and Mago when he had returned from his patrol. She didn't remember anything either, but her father had scribbled the word "Eyes" at the end of his note, deliberately being vague in his explanations for fear of his letter falling into the wrong hands.

On his way to the palace later, Dong Soo had heard rumors according to which the gwishins held in captivity at the palace as well as those sent to the army of the dead had all experienced the same thing, and had all grown even whiter hairs as a result of it, causing increasing confusion among the living who were around them.

Mago and Yoo-Jin had left the house with a mutually determined agenda, and had agreed to take a look, among other things, at the ruins of the Gyeongbok Palace, which according to little Iseul was one of the city's most noteworthy attractions. These children live surrounded by ghosts, yet haunted places still have their preference, Dong Soo's wife had observed with sagacity.

When the latter and Woon came back, the kids were still outside. Woon found Dong Soo's room empty and silent, frozen like a painting. He was contemplating the two tigers when he heard a gentle knock on the door, and it slid open to let Dong Soo in.

"Hope I'm not bothering you?" he worried. "I can come back if you want."

Woon shook his head. Except for the night Dong Soo had found them dazed with Mago, they hadn't been together and alone in his room since Sa-Mo's visit had forced them out of it. I put us aside, Dong Soo had said.

They hadn't talk much more after Woon's confirmation, the one that had sworn he had liked having Dong Soo pressed against him, on top of him, belly against belly, lips against lips, but the silence that had followed his statement had been more comfortable and soothing, a little new and unusual, but no less appreciated, for it had been the kind of silence that came naturally after removing a layer of earth and thereby creating an opening to a grave that had until then been kept buried in the dark and inaccessible.

"What's that?"

As he approached, he pointed with his chin to the boxes held one on top of the other by Dong Soo.

"Oh, almost nothing," the latter declared while depositing them on the ground, just in front of Woon's unfolded yo, on which he took place with a noticeable twitching of the jaw (he has a back ache, Woon thought, remembering having seen him holding a hand on his lower back several times in the last few days, and hissing in pain whenever he stood up). "Memories. Things I've kept."

Woon came and sat next to him. There were two boxes. The first was rectangular and massive, very simple, barely decorated but well maintained, as the wood of its lid was glowing in the candlelight. Woon had never seen it before.

But the second one, smaller, square, deeper, more richly carved, oh, he recognized the second one as soon as he saw it, because he had already seen its patterns, its structure, knew what it contained (it can't be).

"I thought it might cheer you up," Dong Soo said gently, pushing the boxes towards him with his fingertips.

"I'm fine," Woon protested, simply because he was used to it.

"Yeah, I know. It's just...well, I thought you might like it. You didn't look so well after seeing Chun."

He was thirty-eight years old. He was twenty. He was seventeen. Woon didn't know anymore, didn't care. He opened the first box, reserving the second as a coup de grâce.

Inside, he discovered a pile of papers, and some flimsy, dark fabric he didn't even need to unfold to recognize its nature. It was his old black silk robe, the one he had begun to wear obsessively after resuming his duties as the Sky Lord, and with which he remembered having rejected Kenzo, one evening when the latter had come to his apartments hoping to win his favor.

It wasn't really his fault if Woon had turned him down, nor was he responsible for his impulsive desire to try something else, to see if he could allow himself anything else, if he really wanted to. It hadn't worked. He had never told Dong Soo. And where is he, your other dragon ? Kenzo had asked him, mortified by the rejection, and rightly so.

He's right here, Woon thought, emptying the contents of the box on his bed as Dong Soo watched him do so without a word, he's right here, and he knows me, he knows me, no one else knows me as well as he does. Kenzo had never kept a box with Woon's things. Neither did Captain Seol. They didn't know him, and Woon doubted they wanted to. If only you would give them some time.

The papers were the letters he and Dong Soo had sent to each other during the weeks when Dong Soo had gone on an exploratory and reconnaissance mission in the heights of the mountains with other comrades, while Woon had stayed at the camp. The headers were all the same. Dong-Soo-yah. Woon-ah. Woon's handwriting was diligent, careful, and regular. Dong Soo's was blotchy, and sometimes sloppy.

In one of the letters, Woon had written "I wish you were here". Dong Soo had replied with "me too". Jae-Jin and Do-Hyun had been in the mountain group, while Byeong-Cheol had remained in the camp. They had been relatively quiet as long as Woon and Dong Soo had been in the same area, but as soon as they had been separated, they had enjoyed tourmenting them wholeheartedly. I want to punch them from morning to night, Dong Soo had written in one of his last letters. You have my blessing, Woon had replied, as he himself had twisted Byeong-Cheol's wrist the day before, when the latter had found it clever to call him an abnormal whore.

The older Dong Soo, who had seen Woon die and rise from the grave, began to carefully reread the letters Woon had already gone through. Ah, do you remember that ? he asked with a smile as he leaned over to Woon and presented him with the sentence in which Woon had mentioned a night when their comrades had managed to get Cho-Rip drunk enough to remove all his sense of inhibitions. Sa-Mo had gone to the mountains, and the boys diligence had slackened considerably with his absence.

Woon nodded, pulling off his robe, stroking the prodigiously intact black silk. Beneath it he found the red ribbon with which he had tied his hair after becoming Heuksa Chorong's Sky Lord, meticulously folded over itself, and the sight of it caused his throat to tighten, clogged it with a painful weight. He turned his head to Dong Soo, to say something to him, but Dong Soo's eyes were fixed on the letters.

He look back at the boxes, popped the little golden latch of the second one, and the incense burner with its two dragons, shining, untouched, appeared in a whirlpool of tenderness and sorrow.

"Where did you found it?" He asked, because he needed to, because he didn't understand, and no one had ever given him anything like that, ever.

"In your room, in Heuksa Chorong," Dong Soo replied, and they weren't looking at each other, since he was looking at the letters, and Woon at the burner and the dragons entwined. "I asked the king to be part of the detachment that was sent to find its headquarters. I just wanted to see it, and maybe, I don't know, see you, in a way. It was a few weeks after your death, and after I was released from prison for burying you. The king thought it would help me grieve, so he agreed."

He explained to him that he had been among the first to enter the decrepit and empty interiors of the building, and that he had willingly sought the Sky Lord's quarters, because he wanted to see, had hoped in a fit of delirium that Woon would be waiting for him there, in the dust and silence, dead and mute, ready to take him with him and let the earth swallow them up.

He had found the room, without Woon, but he had found his own letters when he had opened the drawers of the cabinets, as well as his robe, folded as if it were about to be worn any moment by its owner, and finally the burner.

"The place was searched from top to bottom by the army," he continued. "The valuables were recovered and were to be added to the royal treasury. I stole your robe the same day, I slipped it under my uniform. Same for the letters. It didn't take up much space. For the burner, it was more complicated : I had to wait for it to be brought back to the palace and then go down to the vaults."

"How?"

"Remember the laxative trick? It came from there. I "happened" to be walking by the doors when the guards started to feel sick. I told them they could go away and that I could take care of the surveillance while waiting for them. I still had a good reputation back then. They trusted me. Anyway, nobody noticed. The register had not yet been completed. No one ever asked for it."

He put the letters on the yo, and finally deigned to contemplate the burner, the dragons, their delicate and beautifully crafted scales. Woon noticed that his eyes were wet.

"I saw it, and I knew," he said in a hoarse voice. "I don't know how to explain it, Woon-ah. I had to get it back. I took your ribbon the day you died, while I still had you with me. Do you think I was wrong? That I should have let you go?"

Woon wrapped his face in his hands, turned it towards him, drew Dong Soo to him while lifting himself forward and kissed him on the lips, feverishly, desperately. Dong Soo kissed him back immediately, with extreme gentleness. His lips were chapped, bruised from the nervous biting, and Woon very tenderly tore off a tiny piece of skin with his teeth, and swallowed it.

"I saw you," he sighed as he pulled back a little, holding back a laugh that tasted like a sob, Dong Soo's cheeks warm between his fingers. "I saw you in the clearing, and I saw you when I drank wormwood. I saw you when I woke up four years ago."

Dong Soo pressed his forehead against his, and wrapped his arms around his waist, under his tunic, against his skin. Sometimes Woon could hear his footsteps approaching the house at night, and then suddenly moving away, becoming more inaudible. Dong Soo never said where he was going. One night, Woon had opened the bedroom doors and had seen him walking in the opposite direction, turning his back on the house and its inhabitants.

"You saw me?" Dong Soo repeated, and his voice was fragile, full of hope.

Woon gave a tender push against his forehead, closed his eyes.

"All the time."

Dong Soo buried his face in his neck, pressed himself against him, held him close, and Woon buried a hand in his hair, wrapped an arm around his shoulders, felt him breathe against the skin of his neck, perceived the frantic softness of his heartbeat against his chest. The golden dragons were watching them silently, triumphantly.

Don't let me go, Woon thought, nose against Dong Soo's hair, never let me go, keep me forever.

Dong Soo stepped back nonetheless, but he kissed him once, twice, three times, firmly, as if to seal an agreement. He smiled at him. Dinner, he said languidly, to which Woon nodded, and he felt a final convulsive press of Dong Soo's forehead against his before he straightened up completely and stood up.

"Do you mind if I keep them for tonight?" He asked him, pointing to the letters, the black silk, the burner.

Dong Soo had already reached the bedroom door, and was about to open it. He shook his head.

"Everything is yours, Woon-ah."

"The burner," he confessed. "I bought it for us."

"I know," Dong Soo assured him kindly. "I kept it for us."

The door of the room closed very softly behind him. Woon stood still on the yo for a moment, contemplating the letters, his robe, his ribbon, the burner. No one has ever done this for me.

Behind the bars of his cage, Chun had said, "I should have recruited you both," and Woon, while reaching out and stroking one of the tiny golden claws of one of the dragons, repeating a ritual he had developed fifteen years earlier, thought quietly of autumn, of the bloody noses of his classmates, of Dong Soo's letters that said, "I feel like beating them up from morning to night" (yes, you should have).