Notes.

My chapters are getting longer and longer, it's a disaster. I'm also using these notes to warn you (again, I'm so sorry) that although I've finished working on my communication, I have another big paper to write soon for an international scientific journal, so the next chapters might be a little late. I'm still doing my best to get them published on time though !

The second part of this chapter is a tribute to the French series "Kaamelott", and more precisely to the character of Guinevere, who delivered one of the most terrible and saddest lines of the whole series.

By the way, yes, Dong Soo smokes opium (it existed at the time, even if it wasn't as widespread and known as it was in the 19th century). "Chasing the dragon" is an expression that refers to smoking opium ;).

Soundtrack (middle of second part of the chapter, once in bed):

Omake-Pfadlib (Attack on Titan OST - this piece belongs to the whole Ackerman clan *insert love and admiration here for that scene where Levi slaughters a titan with this piece in the background* and I'm almost ashamed to borrow it, but it was absolutely perfect)

CHAPTER LXVI

"Because every time I close my eyes, I see all the blood you're missing on the floor, with your wrist cuts, and then your empty eyes... So you never told me that you were already married, but this, you let me see it."

(Alexandre Astier, " Kaamelott")

a. Nunchi

Seung-Min had only visited the camp of the army of the dead once since it had been built on the outskirts of the capital in the year 1779, in an area considered to be quite isolated between the mountains, following the course of the Han River. He was not unaware, as were almost all the soldiers of the Joseon army, as well as government officers at every levels, that the idea of a regiment composed by gwishins was far from recent, and the bold ones affirmed it had been fomented by Yeongjo during the end of his reign. But they also said that the previous monarch had lacked the time, the will and the means to put in place these possible military plans for the dead.

Former advisors of the late ruler, whose functions had been taken over by a new generation as soon as Jeongjo had come to power, as it was the tradition, had observed, not without legitimacy, that the situation under Yeongjo, and thus the control of the gwishin, had been too tricky and unstable to allow the deployment of such ambitions.

An army of the dead will be worthless if it cannot be controlled and directed, an official attached to the War Ministry had written in a missive dating from 1772, the contents of which, together with those of other correspondence between ministers, bureaucrats and scholars, attested to the emergence of the question of an army of the dead very soon after their appearance, since the second wave of resurrection had been over barely two years earlier.

The nature of the exchanges between the various authors of the letters brought to light, underlined the fact that the hypothesis of using the strength and physical resistance of the gwishins on the battlefields was only in its early stages at the time, but it had been enough to cause a wave of frantic presuppositions about Yeongjo's last words to his grandson, and about the stances the latter had chosen upon coming to power, as well as the sowing, which had been considered to be quick in the eyes of those who were not directly involved, of the possibility of creation of an army of the dead within the government.

Seung-Min had more than once heard the subject arise in conversations, both among young recruits and instructors, and later among experienced soldiers. It was never particularly detailed, and tended to be more of an overview, but it had come up many times, at least enough to arouse his curiosity and to understand that the theme of the army of the dead had taken on a key role in the affair of the gwishins, and the relationship that the living, and in particular the leaders of the country, had with them.

In the year during which it had been officially decided to establish an army of the dead, a project said to be strongly supported at first by the kingmaker, Hong Guk Yeong, before he had suddenly begun to fear it and tried to dissuade the king with all his might, without giving any logical explanation, the procedures within the army for carrying out patrols and the questionning of the gwishins had undergone drastic changes.

After years of resorting to systematic executions, soldiers and their commanders had been ordered to favor captures according to a predetermined list of criteria, which favored adult males, but relegated women, children, and the elderly to the shadows and decapitation unless they possessed a remarkable enough talent to be deemed useful to the constitution of the army and the service of the kingdom.

The scouting duties had been focused on more discreet tracking of targets, on more subtle approaches designed to enable arrests without fear of having to automatically kill the gwishins. Fire swords had been provided, in order to convince more easily the gwishins to comply with their fate. In those days, prisons across the country had became overcrowded with gwishins, and the fifth wave of resurrection had made them even more numerous.

As a result, the camp to which they had been sent en masse, or parked according to the critics who were the most sensitive of their situation, had been built rapidly, without any real interest in elaborate architecture or overall elegance in its structure. It was meant to hold the dead as well as a prison, and therefore aesthetics had no importance in the construction of its buildings and fortifications.

Seung-Min, one day when the convoys were short of men, had been assigned to one of them and had led gwishins into the compound of the camp. It was a monstrosity of wood and steel, always under construction and growing as the dead accumulated. They were hardly trained at all. At most, they were taught how to handle a sword. The goal was not to make them efficient soldiers, capable of defending themselves and therefore of being potentially dangerous, but to prepare them to be a destructive vanguard aiming to crush the spirits of the opposing troops.

It had been explained to Seung-Min that the gwishins were deliberately starved so as to fall into states very close to a hunger crisis, without however completely reaching them, and that they were then conditioned, with much recourse to flames, to attack the silhouettes of enemy soldiers, whether they were Japanese or Chinese. Mannequins were dressed in their uniforms and symbols, then stuffed with meat, and the gwishins were unleashed on them.

If they tried to attack the Joseon soldiers, they met with fire, sometimes with additional torture, because it was far from ending once the dead were released from prison and brought to the camp. The government did not want to turn them into a hardened and conscious military : it simply saw them as a weapon, an object, like a cannon, and it wanted to use them immoderately and safely to shoot down its opponents and make the country a first-class power.

Seung-Min still remembered the eyes of the gwishins inside the camp, their haggard, lost, bewildered eyes. They had never really left him.

Seung-Min was following the rest of his brigade along the side of the mountain, and he was watching Captain Baek's back as the latter was advancing next to the scout, with a torch in his hand. Earlier, before they had left the barracks, Seung-Min had come to find him the moment he had set foot in the bulding that served as the captains' general office.

He hadn't really prepared his speech, or even his thoughts, and had obeyed above all else a primordial need, the talons of which had irreparably dented the core of his thoughts, but also of his beliefs and principles, to communicate to him the fact that he now shared what the young man had called his "secret", during the nights he had spent circling, hesitating, wavering in the dark as to whether or not to address his captain.

He recognized that the term was unoriginal, but could not bring himself to find a more extraordinary name for it. Besides, the notion of secret had always implied for him an aspect of forbidden, of danger, of darkness, and there were definitely darkness in the eyes of the little Mago, or of her master.

He had returned a few times to the Baek's home since the confrontation with the girl, and the memory of her icy strength had never left him in those last days. It had been a constant reminder of the dychotomy between what he considered his military duty and his own individual values, which had evolved and become considerably more nuanced than they had been a few years ago when he had entered the army as a future recruit. At that time, Baek Dong Soo was a drunkard, a disappointing teacher, his comrades more rivals than brothers, and the gwishins the great enemy of the people, the monster whose horrors were told to children to make them behave.

But he had since completed his training, joined a brigade where the men were close-knit, united in fear, both of the dead but also of their own mission and the similarities they kept seeing between themselves and the gwishins. Baek Dong Soo had become his captain, and he was more competent, less intoxicated, more aware. He listened to his men, was fair with them. With the gwishins, he was one of the least radical ones. And Seung-Min knew, now, that two of them resided in his house, freely.

"Captain, I wanted to tell you that I know about your childhood friend and his student," he had said, while Baek Dong Soo was checking the blade of his fire sword, and was making sure that it was in working correctly in case of need.

The Captain had looked at him with a sharp eye, like an eagle spotting a small gnawer on the ground and deciding to swoop down on the fragile creature to eat it. For a brief moment, Seung-Min wondered if he had made a mistake and overestimated his rights.

"I'm afraid I don't follow you," Baek Dong Soo had replied in a tone that was meant to be nonchalant, but in which Seung-Min heard the hint of tension, of distrust. "You'll have to tell me more if you want me to understand."

"I know that they're...they're dead," he had corrected himself, feeling that the wording could potentially be more confusing and preserve them in case someone were to hear their conversation. "I know it since the fight."

He felt he didn't need to explain further. Captain Baek's expression was prodigiously inscrutable, and Seung-Min had found it was looking exactly like the one displayed most often of Mago's master face, at least during the times Seung-Min had seen him.

"These aren't small accusations, Seung-Min," he had said calmly.

There was something in his voice, like a snarl, a rigidity, that had immediately prooved Seung-Min that there was a huge risk here, a kind of hidden hornet's nest, which until then he had never suspected from Baek Dong Soo. It's because of the alcohol, he had told himself, you always think of him with alcohol, and not of what he was or what he is without.

He had felt the weight of the implications and, almost in spite of himself, had begun to evaluate his captain's possible choices, and how dangerous for him they could be. He kills me, had been the first. He knew the Captain could do it, at least physically, because he had seen him behead gwishins without major difficulty. Then the other eventualities had followed naturally, but with less force, because less worrying. He blackmails me. He threatens me. He begs me. He confesses. He continues to deny.

Seung-Min had answered while he was still pondering each of these possibilities, catching himself off guard, yet not totally, in the sense that the reply he had then uttered had been the result of several nights of questioning, of days spent observing his captain, his guests when Seung-Min was at his home, but also of this realization that he had already experienced before, which had been amplified over time, and in every occasion he had evoked the memories of Min-Su, the eyes of the gwishins of the army of the dead, the executions, the captures.

"I won't say anything. You have my word. They're like us. I won't tell anyone about this."

Baek Dong Soo had remained motionless for a moment, staring at him as if to determine the veracity of his promise. He was still holding his sword. Then he had smiled bitterly, resignedly, and had put the sword back into its sheath, shaking his head, without adding anything more.

They were progressing in the same area as for several days, along the steep relief of the Cheonmasan mountain. Captain Baek seemed to have taken a keen interest in the mountain, the summit of which a king living back during the Goryo kingdom had claimed it could touch the sky (which was a dramatic exaggeration, for Seung-Min had already reached its top during a patrol, and although he had faced a splendid tide of clouds, he hadn't felt like he could reach out and touch the sky), and he kept on leading their footsteps there, deeper and deeper into the mountainous forest, away from the capital, and strangely disregarding his usual caution regarding the risks for his men.

The Boogeyman was said to be around more than ever, and to be more aggressive than ever as well. A dozen horribly mutilated bodies had been found in the Bukhansan heights. All were from the same brigade. The captain, a man named Yoh Sang-Hoon, known for his intransigence and hatred of the gwishins, had also been killed. He had been discovered without his arms, and with one eye missing, his tongue hanging out in a silent scream.

The presence of the creature was making the men more tense, and there had recently been louder protests against the outdoor missions, which had ended in mass arrests of all dissidents, imprisonments, suspicions of associations and protection of the enemies of the realm, and, for the most extreme cases, torture and executions. The punishments of the dead had never prevented those inflected on the living. The bodies had been burned.

All requests for investigations had been conducted by the Bureau of Investigation, and Seung-Min had seen the dark circles under Captain Baek's eyes widen as the latter had been requisitioned more frequentely to interrogate suspects and handle cases with his colleagues, while still carrying out his service towards his militia.

None of the men knew exactly why the captain was taking them back to the slopes of Cheonmasan so often. Seung-Min, for his part, remembered the question Baek Dong Soo had asked him during one of their sessions for the gwageo exam (a clearing near Hanyang sounds familiar), and although he was not entirely sure it was the origin of Captain Baek's sudden fascination with the mountain, he nevertheless assumed it was more likely than other alternatives to justify his attitude.

It was already the seventh time he was bringing them here, and so far the search, both in terms of tracking down gwishins and finding a possible clearing, had been unsuccessful. Seung-Min could sense the confusion of the others, to whom the captain hadn't asked any questions that might have swayed their thinking towards the same perspectives as his own, and he himself felt some irritation at being forced to participate in a patrol in which an obviously personal objective was taking precedence over their military duty.

For Baek Dong Soo, although he had been quite flexible about the duration of the previous patrols and had not sought to impose overtime on them, seemed to have put aside his laxity and did not hesitate anymore to extend the duration of the surveillance at times, hoping to get his hands on what Seung-Min suspected him of seeking. Moreover, the Cheonmasan was relatively far from the capital, and in addition to the patrol time, it was a rather long journey for them to come back home.

They stopped briefly between the trees to eat and drink a little, as they always did. The light of the torches dimly illuminated the food and water bottles, and the night was completely dark, thick, and moonless. It was also for this reason, because it was so dark, that Seung-Min had been able to see it so clearly. At first he saw only a glimmer in the distance, a vague halo, which reminded him of the moon or of (gwishin's skin). He had been the first to see it, because he had been sitting right in front of it.

He hadn't reacted at first, since he was tired of walking and too busy devouring his ration. Then his neighbor had suddenly declared "what's that? ", and everyone else, including Captain Baek, turned around in unison, expecting to see the Boogeyman, some gwishins, or any other threat that caused some to draw their swords.

Seeing that the silence remained unchanged, and that no figures were coming in their direction, a wave of calm fell over the brigade, and Baek Dong Soo decided to send a few men to go and check the source of light, including himself. It was the usual procedure. If there was any danger, such decision could imply losing only a few men, and not the entire militia. Seung-Min, on whom the glow exerted a deep, incomprehensible attraction, asked to join the detachment.

They approached with deliberate caution, avoiding as much as possible to step on leaves or branches that would have indicated their presence. The glow was growing, swelling. It was whitish.

Finally, from between the trees, in a powerful and morbid opaline flare, with traces of green and blue, emerged a bounded flowerbed on which no trees or bushes were growing. The flowers were of an unpleasant, deviant, almost occult white. Two soldiers went around, and confirmed the round shape of the place, as well as the total isolation it presented from the rest of the forest.

In its center stood a dead, torn tree trunk, and it was blackish, as if covered with soot, and without a single leaf. There was a tension inside that place, a pressure, and its whole appearance had something irrational, impossible, illogical, which made Seung-Min want to run away, to turn his back and forget about it.

(the)

He turned to their captain, hesitating about what to do, wanting to hear him tell them to turn back, to leave and join their fellow soldiers, not to talk about it among themselves. It was only a clearing. But you heard about it, a voice said in the back of his mind, in the depths of his guts, you know, there were rumors, the clearings of the dead, the white glades.

Baek Dong Soo's face expressed and intense concentration, a fierce and unjustified joy. Seung-Min realized that he was trying as hard as he could to remember the location of the place, to find some bearings. He thought of Min-Su, of Mago, of her master. He thought of the eyes of the gwishins, those from the army of the dead.

(Eyes)

b. Latent content (part 3)

Woon followed Dong Soo that night, after having seen him return from his patrol, enter the main hanok and most certainly go to the kitchen to eat or drink something, then go the other way, not to join his wife in her quarters, and return to the street in the opposite direction to the one that had brought him home. Woon was then sitting in Dong Soo's room, right in front of the door, when Dong Soo had returned, and he had slid the door slightly in order to be able to observe the outside of the house and the main courtyard without fear of being spotted himself in his examination.

He had been doing this for almost a full week, and more exactly since Maho had confirmed to him Dong Soo's unexpected departures from, since she had also seen him going back to the street when she was occasionally getting some air after immersing in the collective consciousness. She also had heard the sound of his footsteps on the earthy floor of the courtyard several times after emerging from the common mind of the dead during the night.

At the same time, his student had confided to him that she had heard, two or three times, guttural growls coming from the vicinity of the house, and that she had associated, based on the descriptions she had heard about it, with the potential presence of the creature that was killing the living and the dead, with the Boogeyman, whose ghostly figure Woon had glimpsed on the surface of the Han River.

I'm not sure it's specifically that, Mago had said, as Woon had just made some remarks about a sequence of attacks she had performed blindfolded, and that he had considered still too imprecise to be totally effective and provide her sufficient protection. Of the Boogeyman, and with the possible exception of those whom Woon had sensed in his head (gwishin-king) along the banks of the Han River, no gwishin seemed to know much.

The collective consciousness remained silent, Hui-Seon and Jae-Ji had not come back again to share any additional information about it, and those who were residing clandestinely in the capital with the help of the Yeogogoedam network had mostly answered in the negative when their living allies had taken the liberty of asking them if they knew the creature or had ever come across it. Na-Young had been one of them. On the other hand, she had told them during their first visit to her father's store that she had already heard the same grunts as Mago, and as other inhabitants of the city.

Woon had been watching for the creature as well since the beginning of his surveillance, although it was hardly his main concern. During the nights he had spent leaning against the wall of the room, his face cut in two by the thread of light from outside through the slightly open door, he had silently watched Dong Soo coming back from patrols, and his returns almost always followed the same pattern, the same organization.

Dong Soo would enter the main courtyard of the house, then the large main hanok, most likely to go to the kitchen, as he had done two days earlier while Woon was taking his nightly bath (the river), and then, on his way out, he would either go to his wife's room, from which he did not come out again, or to the street. If he did so, he would turn his back to the house and walk away in the dark, with a slightly more shuffling, weary step, which had evoked Chun in Woon's mind at times.

He was going out more than he was staying. And yet he was always there in the morning for breakfast, invariably red-eyed and looking more exhausted than ever, but awake and dressed in his uniform. He smiled at Woon, offered him meat, said nothing of his escapades. He did not drink, and Woon doubted very much that he had decided to resume his drinking on the sly, considering he had never hidden it before, even from him.

When Woon had mentioned it to Yun-seo, she had replied evasively, with a certain embarrassment he had found unusual. Yes, it's true that he spends his nights elsewhere sometimes, she had said without any trace of anger or concern. He's always had trouble sleeping since we got married, and I know that the place he goes to is very soothing to him.

Woon left Mago in the bedroom. She asked him if he wanted her to go with him, as a backup in case he came up against a city brigade, but he had refused, believing it best if only one gwishin out of two was arrested, and had instructed her to stay in the room and continue her search within the collective consciousness. They hardly produced any more echoes, in keeping with what Dong Soo and his wife had told them about the usefulness of torture in locating gwishins through their shared mind, but continued to dive and stay immersed as long as they could, in the dark silence and abstraction, motionless, hidden, hoping to pick up something.

During their second visit to her, they had questioned Na-Yound in more detail about her own receptions related to the consciousness, and, just like the absence they had been confronted with, she hadn't been able to give them any more answers. She herself used the consciousness very little, both for lack of experience, but also to protect her location in connection with the torture of gwishins.

He was walking a few paces behind Dong Soo, along the decidedly silent street, just lit by the light of the torches that littered its edges. He was far enough so that the sound of his footsteps could not be heard by Dong Soo, but close enough to follow him without major difficulty, to see him turn into the alleys, to choose one direction rather than another. Moreover, he had deemed it too risky to move further away from the potential protection of Dong Soo's status in case a brigade intervened. It was most likely that the ruckus provoked buy the meeting of a brigade would necessarily be perceived by Dong Soo at the distance Woon was at.

Dong Soo took minor avenues, zigzagged around dark corners, with a determination that left Woon vaguely stunned, and all the more eager to know where he was going. He could only see his back, and walked quickly so as not to lose sight of him. Dong Soo walked through the more and more filthy, more and more poor and dilapidated streets, as if he had been walking through them all his life, while his place, to all appearances, was more expected in the streets occupied by the nobles and the highly born. Everyone has something to hide, he thought he remembered Jae-Ji telling him at the Spring House when she had come to see him.

Woon kept his eyes on Dong Soo's back, and he hesitated to chase after him to stop him in his tracks, to see his face, to see his eyes and their expression, to check if there was a secret (another one), even though the idea went against his principles and deep-rooted old reflexes, dating back to the time when he was still a living, active assassin, supposed to act in the background, to use shadows, and to stalk without being spotted.

But it was Dong Soo, he realized at the same time, and anyway, Woon had been chasing after him since they were twelve. Not literally, because Dong Soo had almost always occupied the role of the pursuer in reality, but Woon had learned to hunt in the dark. Moreover, Dong Soo had never told him about his nocturnal outings, and Woon, despite himself, couldn't help but find it unpleasant, both because Dong Soo had never hidden anything from him, but also, in part, because he had been accustomed to being the one who controlled the secrets (the leaves).

The part of the city Dong Soo was dragging him into without realizing it, was unfamiliar. The ground was muddy, barely maintained, and the houses all looked like they were about to fall apart. Their foundations were misery, despair, hunger, anger. There were only straw roofs, wood too damaged to be watertight, and the dwellings were too close together. The laundry was hung on ropes between two hanoks.

On a doorway, Woon saw a tiny, stunted child with huge eyes crouching down and looking at him with a blank stare, expressing an appalling indifference. From inside the building, Woon heard the sound of objects falling to the ground and breaking on the floor, and then a man's voice, hoarse, furious. It caused the child, who had not reacted until then, to shake violently out of sheer terror.

Woon recognized in his behavior the same reactions caused to him by his father's fit of temper, when he was smaller. He looked away just in time to see Dong Soo turn left into a small dead end.

Woon joined him, only to find that he wasn't walking anymore and was entering a house. Its facade made up the entire row in front of which Dong Soo had stopped. Woon let him enter without following him, and then approached the house himself. The place had no sign, no indication of its function or activities. A garland of red ribbons hung above the main door, but with that exception, there was nothing really special about the rest of the structure, except that the wood was very dark, and gave off an unusual, sweet and sour smell that mingled with the ones from the street, a mixture of rain, sweat, mold and disease.

The other buildings had seemed to Woon to be ready to collapse, but this one had a visibly stronger frame. He pushed open the door : contrary to what he had anticipated, it opened onto a singularly clean, full-length interior that extended mostly to his right. There was, directly to his left, a beautiful screen unfolded entirely and which depicted floral arrangements of great delicacy, although some traces of wear were visible in its frame.

On the other side, the room evoked by some of its characteristics the interior of a tavern, because there were tables surrounded by cushions, and they were both single or able to accomodate several people, while against the walls were aligned cabinets of various size, some of them more refined than the others by their pearly finishes. Lanterns, few in number, softly illuminated the interior with a coppery light, reverberating in amber hues on the faces of the few visitors who were seated, sipping what appeared to be a cup of tea and tasting portions of food served in front of them in dark bowls.

The scent of incense was heady. No one was talking. Woon's entrance did not provoke the slightest reaction from them. Along the walls were draperies expressing all possible shades of red, which reminded him of Heuksa Chorong (Qing). As he hesitated, and wasn't moving, a woman came to meet him.

She wasn't wearing a traditional hanbok, but a long embroidered dress that reached down to her ankles, and whose cut, with tight sleeves and a high collar, was that of the garments Woon and Mago had seen worn by the inhabitants of Qing, in more or less sophisticated forms depending on the status of their owners. Woon spotted another woman, a little further away, who seemed to come from a corner of the house and was approaching a man with infinite gentleness. The woman's hair, free, barely tied back as Woon's had been when he was still alive, shone like a silky crown.

A smile appeared on her small face with incredibly fine features and slender eyes. She bowed to him with respect.

"Welcome, my lord," she said, in a low, deep voice, as if she were telling him a secret. "I'm Jiao-Yue. What can we do for you?"

She didn't seem hostile, nor quick to attack him at any moment. Her attitude and gestures were calm, relaxed, confident. Woon thought of lying to her, very briefly, before concluding that the maneuver would probably be of no use to him given the few elements he had about the place and its function. Besides, he didn't want to draw attention to himself, nor did he want to be in the middle of a fight.

"I'm looking for someone," he finally informed her. "A man who came in here a little while ago."

Jiao-Yue frowned, testifying to the fact that Woon's request was probably unusual for her, but did not lose her friendly tone.

"I'm going to need more information," she said. "Why are you looking for him? Is he guilty of something?"

"He's a friend. I just want to see him and talk to him. I assure you I won't cause you or him any inconvenience. He was wearing a military uniform, and a hat with a feather. I have money, if you want me to pay."

He had thought to take some muns with him before leaving the Baek home to follow Dong Soo. The woman looked at him for a moment, as if assessing the possibility that what he had said might have been the truth.

Then, as Woon was holding her gaze, she nodded slightly and waved her hand languidly toward the back of the long room.

"Please follow me. I will take you to him."

Woon complied. They passed between the tables until they reached the other end of the room, and Woon then noticed that it forked to the left, and opened onto another sliding door opening onto an admirable exterior courtyard with an elegance that was definitely not expected in such a poor district of the capital.

Without being moved, Jian-Yuè guided him across the terrace with its polished parquet floor, which ran along part of the building's facade, also punctuated by massive wooden doors. Their oiled surface gleamed in the light of the lanterns and testified to the existence of other rooms, and to a much larger scale of the place than Woon had initially suspected. Stone steps went down from the terrace to the courtyard floor.

There, a small pathway was leading to two other raised hanoks, smaller in size, but one of which had an open terrace, surrounded by vegetation. They encountered other women, dressed like Jian-Yuè, according to the Chinese fashion. They did not even look at them. The roofs, curved, were made of tiles.

Jian-Yuè directed him to the terrace hanok.

"What is this place?" Woon asked her.

"You don't know?" Her tone was neutral and did not express any surprise at his question.

"No. It's the first time I come here."

"Ah. You've never heard of the dragon, then?" She turned to him, facing him from a slight angle, with an unctuous smile.

"I don't know what that means."

"The smoke dragon of Qing," the woman explained. "We use it here to bring comfort and help to those who need it. Our purpose is therapeutic, and in accordance with medicinal principles above all."

"Do you belong to the Qing?"

The woman slowly climbed the stone steps that led to the door of the hanok.

"We do receive our supplies from the empire, but we are primarily affiliated with Joseon. Our clothes are no more than a sign of honor to our supplier. Our hearts belong to our customers, and our customers belong to Joseon."

"And the smoke dragon? What is it?"

She smiled at him again, opening the door.

"This," she replied.

She made them enter the hanok, and from its inside escaped a dense, odorous fog, which revealed after dissipating a little a group of men lying on yos unfolded against the wall, one after the other, separated in an questionable intimacy by thin partitions. Some had their heads resting on pillows, others not. They were on their backs, on their sides. These ones looked crazed, and their eyes were glassy. These other ones were sleeping.

Smoke was spreading in the room, invading it, bouncing in volutes against the walls. Jian-Yue made him walk between the sleeping and the drowsy men. Near some of the beds, Woon noticed a small wooden table, on which rested a tray containing a long, thin tube, from which most of the smoke escaped and which had an incongruous prominence, but also a series of more atypical objects, such as a small carved metal lamp, which reminded him of the incense burner with its two dragons, a wooden box in which were some accessories for a use unknown to Woon, and a round box.

As they walked, they passed a woman crouching near a man, holding the long rod in front of his lips, while bringing the lamp, covered with a kind of copper sleeve, close to the protrusion of the pipe. A greasy smoke was coming out of the man's mouth. Jian-Yuè paid no attention to it. They reached a border of hangings, the fabric of which was made of sunset colors, and the woman pushed them aside with a peaceful hand.

Another part of the hanok appeared, and the men in it were lying on raised beds, bounded by elegantly carved frames like most of the chinese beds, and lined with draperies that gave them more privacy. There were far fewer of them than in the first part of the hanok, and Woon guessed it was a matter of money.

Jian-Yuè then turned to him, hands wisely placed one inside the other.

"With your permission, my lord," she began, "I think it would be better if I approached him first and warned him."

"Could he react violently?"

"I don't think so. But to be perfectly honest, this is the first time he's receiving any visit in this place, and the substance he used is likely to distort his perception of things."

"Alright then," Woon allowed her, but he felt a twinge of anxiety and apprehension somewhere. "I'll be waiting."

Jian-Yuè bowed her head again respectfully, and walked to the third bed on the right, which also happened to be the last one. If he doesn't want to see me, Woon thought, and as his heart tightened, he felt ashamed. He saw the woman speak softly, serenely.

Then she smiled, and finally returned to him.

"You can go to him."

She didn't follow him as he walked along the beds in turn, before coming to a stop right where she had done so a few moments earlier.

On the bed, Dong Soo was lying flat on his back. He was wearing no shoes, no socks, and let alone his hat, which Woon could see behind his back on the mattress. His uniform was dishevelled, and wide open over his chest muscles. His hair was loose, messy. Woon had seen him vulnerable more than once, but he couldn't remember ever finding him that much fragile.

"Woon-ah?"

His voice was hoarse, like a drunkard's. He straightened up on the cushions of the bed, and the opening of his uniform revealed the skin of his stomach. His eyes, dilated, were nevertheless attentive and were looking at him with a mixture of concern, adoration and surprise. He had the same expression as the day they had met again at the Spring House, ten years after Woon's death.

"Hi, Dong Soo-yah," Woon replied, and he was somehow relieved that his voice hadn't shaken.

He didn't understand. Dong Soo stared at him for a moment, then a sigh escaped him.

"It's not very glorious, isn't it?" he said, in a bitter, tired tone. "I'm sorry you have to see that. Did you follow me?"

Woon came and sat next to him on the edge of the bed.

"Yes, since the house. What is this place? What did you take?" He wished he had taken a less severe tone. "Do you come here often?"

Dong Soo, standing on one elbow, flank facing Woon, smiled half-heartedly.

"Quite often," he replied, looking at the bed, at the floor. "I used to go somewhere else, to a much seedier place, but since I took my job at the palace and with the anti-gwishin brigades, I have enough income to afford a more secure place. You saw the smoke, right?"

Woon nodded his head.

"That's what I took," Dong Soo answered. "They call it the 'dragon smoke,' or sometimes 'chasing the dragon'. It's from Qing, I think it's something you can find in poppy. At least, that's what the owner of the old place where I used to go told me. It can be taken as a decoction, but it works faster when it's smoked." He pointed to his neighbor, next to whom was one of the tables that Woon had seen in the previous part of the hanok, near the sleepers' beds. "See the rod? That's what you smoke it with. It's a pipe. The women come with the material, make a small pellet of plants, which they then place in the bottom of a lamp with a sleeve around it. Then you have to hold the mouthpiece of the pipe, what you see in the middle, in front of the lamp to collect the smoke."

"What for?"

"To relax. To sleep. To stop thinking. That's why you have to smoke it lying down. It makes you sleep, Woon-ah."

He slowly let his head fall back against a pillow, and the stuffing made a muffled, somewhat comical sound.

"How long have you been smoking that thing?"

"Some time. Something like nine years, I believe. A colleague told me about it, he had insomnia and back then I had... let's say I had a lot of trouble sleeping too. It was good for me. I was able to stop drinking, but this I couldn't stop. I need to sleep."

"Why can't you sleep?"

The question was useless, and Woon knew it, but he asked it anyway, out of a desire for confirmation, to hear the answer, to remove more dirt. Dong Soo's head swiveled slightly on the pillow, from left to right.

"Because I keep coming back there," he replied. "In the fields. In the leaves. I keep seeing the blood. Even now, Woon-ah. It won't go away. It's still everywhere. Sometimes it feels like it wants to drown me." Woon saw his chin trembling, his mouth twisting, and then he added : "Because I can't stop thinking about it. About the possibility that I made a mistake somewhere."

"I told you it wasn't your fault," Woon whispered. "It never was."

"Oh, Woon-ah," Dong Soo sighed with a deep, unhappy, disillusioned laugh. "You know, you never told me about your father. You never told me about Heuksa Chorong. About the murders. About your childhood. You never told me if you were okay, or if you weren't. You never showed me these things. But in the fields, you jumped, and you fell on my sword. You let me watch you die, and you left me with your blood everywhere, all the time. You left me with the autumn leaves. You hid everything else from me, but this you showed me. Of all the ways you could have chosen, you chose to kill yourself with my sword. Right in front of my eyes. Woon-ah, my love, if this isn't a sign that I've made a mistake somewhere, I don't know what else you need."

He shook his head, and laughed again, even though there was no joy in his laughter. His cheeks were wet. Woon didn't know what to say, and a part of him suggested him to remain silent, explaining that there was nothing to offer to Dong Soo's statement except listening to it, accepting it, and acknowledging it. It's not settled, he thought defeatedly.

He didn't think he had really believed it, but he was nevertheless forced to admit that he had hoped for it, after the resurrection, after the walks in the gardens of the Spring House, the words exchanged, the visions of the clearing and Sokcho, the letter, Dong Soo's body between his legs, his kisses, his hands on his bones, the incense burner. But there could have been a hundred of them in the end, and things would never have been completely settled. He suspected, now, that even saying them would never really be enough. What had happened in the fields would most likely always be there, like the day of the autumn leaves.

Dong Soo had fallen back into silence, and was watching the ceiling above him, the canopy of bloody draperies. Woon felt the urge to leave, to run away, to defend himself (look what he did to us). But Dong Soo wasn't saying anything else, seemed to expect nothing, had become deaf to the rest of the world.

Woon took off his shoes, his socks, then bent down and lay on the bed beside him, came to press himself against his side. He brought his face in front of Dong Soo's, pressing his temple against his own hand to keep himself above him, to look at him from above. His hair brushed Dong Soo's chin and cheeks. He was still staring at the ceiling. Woon didn't know how to reach him.

He slipped a hand under the blue fabric of his uniform, pressed it against his heart, felt it beat slowly, quietly. Dong Soo's gaze did not move from the ceiling, but his hand came to cover Woon's over his tunic. Even at the Spring House, Woon had never seen him so sad, nor so pessimistic.

"I'm sorry Dong Soo-yah," he whispered, because he didn't know what else to say. "I don't know if it means much, but I'm sorry."

"Me too," Dong Soo said. "I didn't see anything. I didn't think enough, I didn't pay enough attention. I saw Cho-Rip in the field, and I didn't ask myself any more questions. The same goes for the rest. For Ji-Seon. For everything. Cho-Rip was right. I only ever saw what I wanted to see, and never mind the rest. I have this to make up for, except you'll never forgive me, will you? You betrayed me, but I betrayed you the same way, in the end. I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive you for the fields, but neither will you, right? And why should you, if I can't do it any more than you can? You're right to be angry with me. You're right to be mad, and to think that I could have done more, that I should have done more, for you, for us. Sometimes I think I'm right to blame you for your death too. We will never forgive each other. It will always be there, Woon-ah. No matter what we do. And I think about it all the time. I think I'm getting used to it more and more since you came back to Hanyang. Since I stopped drinking. But especially since our parents came back. I think we need to talk about it, and maybe acknowledge it together, to make it better. My parents don't seem to have done it with each other. I don't want us to end up like them."

He spoke in a soft voice, devoid of rancor, and finally deigned to meet Woon's eyes. Woon thought of the herbalist's mixture, of the thing and its empty eye sockets, of what it had told him, of the feeling of Dong Soo's sword going through his chest again. Answers, the old man had promised him, and perhaps he had meant the same thing as Dong Soo, that the answers given by his infusion were not so much about what Woon was afraid to see and acknowledge, but rather what he necessarily had to agree to see and acknowledge.

He leaned in a little closer to Dong Soo, stroked his heart with his thumb, underneath his warm, living flesh.

"Why do you say that?"

"My parents?"

"Yes."

He felt Dong Soo's chest swell under his hand, as Dong Soo took a breath and then sighed heavily, while returning to his observation of the ceiling. They spoke in very low voices, in whispers.

"Because I think my father killed himself because of me," he answered. "I think he didn't want to be a father, and he couldn't handle my mother getting pregnant. I think my mom blames him, and that she blames me. Maybe she blames herself. They died keeping it all to themselves, and even now they don't want to acknowledge it. I don't want this to happen to us. I just want things to be said, if ever..."

He didn't finish his sentence, but he didn't need to. Woon guessed the rest. If ever the dead were to die again for good.

Dong Soo's voice was pasty, his eyes misty. The smell of smoke was all around him, on him, on his clothes, on his face. Woon buried his nose in his hair, inhaled, and it was there too, clutching at his skull. They were in a den of blood, wrapped in cloth with sparkles of autumn leaves, they were alone, and Woon thought of the golden dragons, of how he had refused Kenzo, but also Captain Seol, of their parents' last visit, of Dong Soo's arm weighing against his father's throat, but also of before, when Byeong-Cheol had insulted them after they had come back from exploring the old house, and of Dong Soo's swollen eye against his lips. I just want things to be said. They were alone. The draperies were concealing them from the rest of the world.

His hand slid, under Dong Soo's uniform, down, lower and lower, working its way through the fabric. Dong Soo's hand caught it as it reached his lower abdomen.

"It won't work," he told him in a sorry tone, looking at him with sorrow. "Not when I'm like this, Woon-ah. I'm sorry."

He brought his hand up into his, pressed his fingers to his lips and kissed them gently, biting them.

"It's nothing," Woon said. "Go to sleep."

Dong Soo lifted himself a little towards him, sought the touch of his cheek.

"You don't have to stay, Woon-ah," he whispered, patting his hand under his uniform. "You can go home. I'll be back for breakfast."

"No, I'm staying," Woon replied, reluctantly letting go of Dong Soo's hair. "You can sleep if you want, I don't mind. I'll go home with you."

"I don't want you to feel obligated to..."

"I don't," Woon objected. "I just want to stay with you. Now go to sleep. Your eyes are closing by themselves."

"Woon-ah, I wanted to tell you," Dong Soo said, looking at him with a slightly more focused gaze. "You have a very beautiful...," he paused, obviously searching for words, and then finally said : "Forehead. You have a very beautiful forehead."

Woon figured his eyebrow was probably disappearing under his hair as he felt it arching with perplexity.

"That's new," he remarked to Dong Soo, who replied with a mocking smile and then closed his eyes with a sigh of relief.

His chest began to rise more steadily, more deeply. Woon followed its movement with his eyes. After a few moments of absolute silence, Dong Soo spoke again in a sleepy voice.

"By the way, we found the clearing."

"The one near Hanyang?" Woon immediately understood, as a sharp pinch of interest crossed his mind.

"Yeah. It was Seung-Min who saw it. He knows about you two. About you and Mago. That you're dead. He told me he wouldn't turn you in. I think he's ready. The others, I don't know, but he's ready. I was thinking of taking him with us."

"Where?"

"To the clearing. I wrote down the path. That's what Jae-Ji said, right? That you should go there?"

"Yes."

"Then we'll take you there. Me and Seung-Min. We'll get you out and back into the city, we'll make you avoid the surveillance. And if anything happens, we can help you."

"I'm not sure, Dong Soo-yah. This kind of place has effects on gwishins, but I don't know if they have effects on the living, and I don't think it would be very safe for you to go near it."

Dong Soo shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly.

"We'll stay away, then," he said simply.

He was falling asleep. Woon could hear it in his breathing, see it in the fact that he hadn't opened his eyes since he had complimented him on his forehead, in the rhythm of his chest heaving, in his head slowly dropping against Woon's cheek.

"I allowed Kenzo to come to me one evening," he confessed. "In my Sky Lord's apartments."

Dong Soo didn't comment, but Woon knew he wasn't asleep yet, and he continued.

"I told him I would accept any challenge he offered me. He had sent me a letter, and I accepted."

"He came?"

"Yes."

"In your apartments?"

Woon confirmed it to him once more, watching Dong Soo's face for any sign of anger or bitterness. But there was no flinch, no twitch, no pinch of his lips, and Dong Soo's voice, when he finally answered, was neutral, though tinged with a tiny hint of affliction and anguish, only noticeable to those who knew him well.

"That's good, Woon-ah. That's good."

"It didn't work."

A brief silence preceded Dong Soo's reaction.

"What do you mean?"

"He came. We went to bed. It didn't work. I didn't let him."

"You didn't?"

"No. I would have killed him if he had tried. I wanted to kill him when I tried. It didn't work, Dong Soo-yah. I sent him away. You hear me?"

He pressed his nose against his cheek, felt his skin under his lashes. His voice became feverish, and he could not control it. He wrapped his arms around Dong Soo's neck, hugged him, and felt him respond gently, kindly.

"And there was a brigade captain in Sokcho," he continued, "but that didn't work either. He couldn't even touch me. I didn't want to. He didn't know me. None of them knew me. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Dong Soo sighed fervently, with relief. "Yes, I think I do. But even after the fields?" He worried. "Even after that?"

Woon kissed him firmly on the lips, and held his lower lip between his teeth for a heartbeat.

"It's never worked with anyone else," he whispered to him as he released him. "It never worked with no one but you."

"Why?"

Woon, half lying on top of him, put a leg over his, made a movement of his hips, a slight, spasmodic undulation, and Dong Soo's hands came to embrace his waist, digging in his skin like claws (keep me).

"Because I don't want to," he said, against his lips. "Sometimes," he then added, whispering his confession, "sometimes I call you 'my love', in my head."

He saw a smile of joy appear on Dong Soo's face.

"Me too," the latter replied.

Woon bit down on his jawbone, and felt one of Dong Soo's hands come to lodge in the hollow of his knee, like a harpoon made only of flesh.