Notes.

The "dead lights" are an absolutely non-subtle nod to Stephen King's "It".

Soundtrack :

A Glimpse of Ganymede (Raymond Yan - first part of the chapter)

Whispers and Confessions (Trevor Morris - The Tudors OST - end of the second part of the chapter)

CHAPTER LXV

" Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."

(Corinthians 15:51-52)

a. Gwishin-king (the hand in the river)

The dead did not sleep any more than they dreamed. The fact had been noted, acknowledged, verified, and confirmed invariably by all the scholars and theoreticians who had been asked to study the gwishin phenomenon since their appearance more than fourteen years ago, first by Yeongjo, and then by his grandson after him, whose military ambitions toward the people of the dead required an increased production of knowledge supposed to secure the government's hold over them.

Dong Soo, one afternoon during which he had joined him at the Spring House and had sat by the window of his room, half-open to the gardens, the sun and a warm, inviting wind, had informed him of the continuity of the studies on the gwishins wanted by the new monarch, presumably motivated by the reading of the second volume of the Encyclopedia of the Dead.

The book had been found in a region farther away from the capital, in the belonging of a gwishin, whom a brigade had captured and executed. Dong Soo had told him that the captain of the patrol had supposedly not leafed through the document and had immediately sent it, carefully sealed, to the royal palace, but he had also pointed out that the first rumors regarding the collective consciousness of the dead had been heard in the town where the captain of the brigade was on duty.

Inside the government, it was said that all the ministers of the state council had read it, and that certain passages had been copied to be passed on in the greatest discretion to high-ranking scholars, who had already worked on the subject when the king was still known as the the crown prince Yi-San. Moreover, it seemed that no one else had been allowed to consult the book and hadn't received the information it contained other than through official government statements and publications.

The sharing of information was deliberately controlled, as it had been back when Yeongjo was still ruling the country, and anything the volume presented as favorable to the integration of the gwishins into society, for its author had been scrupulous in including in his notes all the features that showed the possibility of a cordial coexistence between the dead and the living, had not even been mentioned.

One evening, Hui-Seon had evoked the cancelled volume of the Encyclopedia, this time written by the government scholars and men of letters.

"One of my sources in the palace assured me that it had indeed discussed the possibility of the living and the dead working and existing together in a same community," she had said bitterly, her lips slightly reddened after drinking her tea. "Most of the conclusions were in our favor, but Yeongjo ordered for everything to be burned, and for the authors to be silenced. Ji-Ho tried to contact some of them, but he never received any answer."

"They probably left the country," Woon had pointed out to her. "Or they're dead."

Hui-Seon had nodded unenthusiastically.

"The second option seems to me the most likely. It would have been too great a risk for Yeongjo if he had kept them alive. They knew, after all. I guess he got rid of them like he did with the Yeogogoedam a few years ago."

"The gwishins have no support? None at all?"

He hadn't said "we", had avoided the word knowingly. On the superb face of the mistress of the house of Spring had appeared a grin, and its curve was frightfully sarcastic.

"Not in public," she had said. "And that's the problem."

Sometimes, at night, she had come to join him in his room, leaving the luxury of her own apartments to come and sit with him in his bed, her back against the wall, legs unfolded, or lying at his side. Sometimes she would kept her distance and sat somewhere else, on the floor, on the chair by his reading table, in the window frame as Woon had often done before he was allowed to move freely in the gardens of the institution.

When she came near him, she could be very gentle, and stroke his hair, gently pinch his cheek, or smile more easily. Her face was usually demanding, authoritarian, and not very inclined to express tenderness or affection. But during the nights she had spent in Woon's room, especially during the early days, her beautiful features had been more mobile, more lively, more accessible. She had also said fewer harsh words, fewer scathing remarks.

I remember you, she had murmured softly, I saw you in my head, in the dark, we walked side by side, I was the one who had to show you the way, I think. She had told him how the memories she had kept of him, which had gradually resurfaced through the consciousness exercises recommended by old Jae-Ji, had allowed her to locate him a few days after his resurrection.

"But there was something else," she had added, lying fully on his bed in a white silk robe, embroidered with golden patterns, languid and quietly powerful. "I can't say exactly what, but I think I felt you, when you woke up. In fact, I'm almost certain of it. A reverberation in the consciousness. I'm not exactly sure."

In the early days, Woon had remained away, had isolated himself from her and the rest, from his condition and from the new reality of the world that he supposed to accept. Hui-Seon often imposed her presence on him, but not her touch. If she came on his bed, she was careful to keep a reasonable distance, and never tried to touch him in anything but a light, vaguely maternal or fraternal way, depending on her mood.

The night after he had seen Dong Soo again at the palace commercial street, she had come to find him in her all-white night clothes, and Woon had heard the soles of her dead feet creaking on the wood of the house floor. He had agreed to lay his head against her inert, cadaverous breast, had let her untangle the curls of his hair and lay her cheek against the bone of his skull. She hadn't said anything about Dong Soo then, pushing him away until later while running her fingers through Woon's black locks.

Listen, darling, she had whispered, listen to us, close your eyes, listen to the others, you're one of us. And Woon remembered to have heard, through her, through the junction of her mind towards his, then inexperienced and ignorant of the consciousness, a multitude of tiny, delicate whispers, like fabrics slipping on the ground, incomprehensible but present, numerous things, and there was no fear here, no anguish, no incomprehension, simply the voices, together, communicating, whispering, and filling the silence of the sleepless nights of their dead peers with soft, imperceptible words of union.

After that, and since his departure from Hanyang, Woon had never again experienced this unexpected but also deeply comforting feeling, especially for a gwishin just out of the grave, of absolute sharing, of quietness and infinitely intimate communication. He hadn't been able to replicate the process during his trip to Sokcho and then in Qing, and hadn't asked Hui-Seon how to do it.

When he had mentioned it to Mago, she had seemed to understand what he was saying and what he meant, but she had said that she herself had no idea how to reach the consciousness that way. You may have been projected into another level, she had considered, one that was much deeper and is probably only accessible to gwishins whose mastery of the consciousness is developed enough to allow them to go there, and potentially take others with them.

During their meeting at the Spring House, the shaman had mentioned levels of consciousness, but had not dwelt on the matter, preferring to focus on the details of the exercises, and Woon had been unable to confirm her theory to Mago outside of Hui-Seon's explanations. Until the silence of the consciousness, the immersion had always plunged him into a noisy, anarchic, visceral and unrestrained cacophony. He had never regained the eerie, hypnotic calm of the level into which Hui-Seon had plunged him at the Spring House.

But he was looking at her now, standing before him, white from head to toes, from her hair to her clothing, draped in a long, terrible, milky white hooded robe, and in his head had come back the airy, graceful whispers, the content of which he barely understood but which nevertheless anchored themselves in each thread of his thought, slipping in with a playful familiarity, without shyness or hesitation, but also without violence, preventing him from sinking into a dull panic.

The gwishins couldn't sleep, or rather could no longer sleep, but Woon nevertheless had the vivid impression of having woken up, of having emerged from a heavy sleep, of having dreamed, and it was dark all around him, except for the faint glow of the moon in the night sky, which gave the shadows an unreal, chimerical aspect. He looked down, and saw he was kneeling before a dark expanse of water, surrounded by a border of earth, and with, in its middle, a tree with a horribly broken, open, gaping trunk, the remains of which rippled like the surface of the water in the wind.

The breeze, thin, cold, crept between the trees surrounding Woon, and he could hear, almost muffled, as if his ears had been plugged by Hui Seon's hands, the rustling of branches and leaves that were accompanied by more whispers, whispers in his head, inside his nerves. He had no idea where he was, how he had got here, let alone why Hui Seon was right in front of him, standing still by the split tree, smiling, seemingly waiting for something (someone), and her feet were touching the water, but not sinking into it. She was (walking on it).

Woon raised his eyes from the water and slowly looked around, with a caution that had become like a second nature to him over the years. There was no one there but him, and Hui-Seon's silhouette, emitting a white halo, did not move from her place. To his left, he saw, at first faintly, then more clearly as his eyes were adjusting to the surrounding darkness, that the water continued on its way and seemed to grow larger, more spacious, stronger and fuller.

It flowed peacefully in this direction, but also in the other, decorated with a garland of trees looking hostile, disturbing under the moonlight, which reflected on the ground crooked, abnormal shadows. A ray of silver illuminated the forms of buildings with curved roofs, low walls, and their banal, known structure, pushed his questionings towards a treacherous slope, a terrifying incomprehension, which the sight of the tree immersed in water, over which he had found himself leaning a few moments earlier, was making even more tangible and more inescapable.

He glanced at Hui-Seon, in front of him. She smiled at him, and nodded complacently, as if to prove him right, to confirm his assertions. He had come here before. He knew.

(the Han River)

He had seen the tree during his last walk along its banks with Dong Soo. At night, the place was different, distorted, composed only of ill-assorted, eerie chiaroscuro, fog and reflections. The silence was absolute, and only the delicate sound of the water's movements testified to the passage of time and the persistent mobility of the world.

The water had risen. Woon could have sworn it had, because he only had to reach out slightly to touch its surface, whereas he would have had to bend over and almost fall into the riverbed to do the same thing a few days earlier. He could see the water moving, swelling, breathing beneath him. I don't understand, he thought, I don't understand.

He did not remember anything. He had laid on his yo after Dong Soo had left on patrol, after pressing his cheek against his in the street and watching their parents, dead, suffocating, finally leave the Baek home in a silence as heavy with blame as with embarrassment. Then he remembered nothing. Nothing. Like after the absence that he, Mago and all the others had suffered a few nights ago. Like when he had visited Chun in prison and the latter had stared at him with a strange look, slumped against the wall, while he had been leaning against the bars of his cell a moment before.

Woon had not seen him move, or rather did not remember seeing him move. Don't worry, Chun had said, staring at him in that incongruous way that had reminded him of the day he had threatened him with a knife to the throat, I'll take care of the army. Woon did not remember talking to him about an army, yet the promise of the former Sky Lord had given him a dizzying satisfaction. He hadn't told anyone about it, not even Mago. He didn't remember anything.

(Woon whispers the whispers brought you there the Dead Whisper)

He was no longer alone, and around him were massed, in silence, Hui-Seon and the others, the others who were whispering, all the others, whom Woon had felt in Hui-Seon's head and in his own, and who formed a whole of which he was a part of, in a sense, despite himself. The others came in a sigh, gathered together, all white, all glowing agonizingly white, and Woon felt them in his head, heard them, heard their whispers and voices converge, as the consciousness was becoming more alive, more noisy than it had ever been in the past few years.

He turned his head, saw Jae-Ji, but also Im Ji-Ho, the Herbalist, the couple he and Mago had stayed with in Sokcho. He saw others, whom he did not know, a very young-looking woman, a man with a prodigiously massive body, all in white, all wrapped up, their hair covered with their hoods, but whose ivory locks cascaded over their shoulders, over the lactescent fabric of their clothing. They produced around Woon, still kneeling, a sickly, unnatural light, a (dead) light. Your hand in the water, he heard Jae-Ji advise him, now it's your turn.

He had regained consciousness as his arm was already plunging toward the still surface of the water, seemingly drawn toward the depths viscerally, illogically. There was nothing below. He plunged his hand in spite of everything, felt the cold water, its caress, its threat.

In front of him, near the broken tree, Hui-Seon had been replaced by a large, abominable form, long, gangling, barely lit by the light of the others, and yet it took up more space, it was more constant, more powerful, more real, it was looking at him with its white, hungry, carnivorous eyes, it stood hunched over, and it had arms that were too long, too skinny, with hands that were too large, fingers that were too slender and ended in claws, monstrous legs, a disproportionate skull. Woon gave it its name (Boogeyman).

He sensed that the others did not want it. It's alone, he protested, feeling a surge of compassion from which he could not extract the origin, it won't do anything wrong. Hui-Seon interrupted him curtly (that one stays alone). Under the water, there was a tickle against his fingers.

(something the bottom something is pulling there is something not something someone is pulling feel the power take the power)

(pull)

(pull)

(PULL US UPWARDS)

Something grabbed his hand beneath the surface, violently, with immeasurable force, and Woon immediately began to pull, in a senseless impulse, in an unexplained reflex. It seemed as easy as if he had simply picked up a twig from the ground.

His wrist emerged from the water, then the back of his hand, and finally came his fingers, and then Woon saw, filled with fright and frantic euphoria, that to his hand were attached other hands, heaps of others, pale, with black, necrotic nails, desperate fingers that held on to each other, that came in mass, in one go, following his movement, obeying his grip, and the whispers grew louder, stronger, as Woon was still pulling up, pullin up, was bringing the others to him, and understing, oh, understing without understanding (mine mine mine the power mine), listening to the whispers going mad, eager, echoing in every corner of what he was and taking possession of it (we we we).

He let go of the hands that came from the bottom of the river, watched them grab the edges of the earth, using them to pull themselves out of the water. Then the faces appeared, with their black eyes, their veins, their moon-like complexion of gwishins. They are the drowned, the one that were thrown in the Han River, Hui Seon's echo said to him, and she looked triumphant, deeply satisfied that what she had just witnessed, like all the others around him, you've awoken them, brought them back, and now they're all yours, forever.

The gwishins were about fifteen, men and women, and they stood before him, knelt as he did, and seemed to wait, without a word, with a peaceful, trusting docility. I don't understand, he thought again, more calmly than the first time, and, turning to the figures of Hui-Seon and Jae-Ji, who stood next to each other, tall and cold, he asked : where are you?

Their two voices melted together in his head, producing a clear, reassuring resonance.

(with the others with all the others you're one of us Woon you've always been wait for us now find the clearing go to the clearing spend the night and then and then wait for us we will come)

Then he felt them slowly fade away, becoming more imperceptible, more distant. He didn't know what to say to the others, or even if he had to say anything at all. Their faces became darker, less distinct. Near the destroyed tree, the hideous figure didn't follow the others, and stood in front of him, doing nothing. Woon felt as if it were taking a step in his direction.

Hui-Seon's voice whispered into his skull through the veil that fell over him. Let the Dead Whisper do, she told him. Find the clearing, Jae-Ji added, imperious, powerful. Woon saw the creature plunge into the river water, swim toward him, and his mind reeled back at the whispering of the others.

(you're one of us)

(you awake them)

(gwishin-king)

b. Latent content (part 2)

When Dong Soo returned from his patrol, just as chucksi was ending, he saw a beam of amber light under the door of the bathroom, as he was heading to the kitchen to eat a night snack, a habit he could hardly get rid of completely since the beginning of his service and which had made him slightly thicker. In addition, his mouth had been dry since he had returned to the barracks with his men, and he had planned to drink a bowl of cool water.

The dryness of his throat had a pre-prepared explanation, and one he was not unaware of, like the increasingly persistent contraction of his pupils that his wife had observed since she was able to see them up close, but also the sweat that stuck to his skin even when he was resting sometimes, creeping under his hair, at the back of his neck, down his back.

He knew the language and the meanings of these signs, having heard about them at length during his first visit there, in the northern section of Hanyang, where most of the establishments of the sort were, but also having noticed them in others, who consumed more frequently than he did. The alcohol had made his tongue pasty, his mind heavy, his body cumbersome. But the smoke burned his mouth, enveloped his thoughts in a cloud of mist, and made his muscles fly.

He had stopped drinking, although the last visits of his dead parents had played on his nerves enough to cause a resurgence in his consumption, too contextual though to be risky. But he had never stopped the smoke, and after the nightly patrols, especially during the early years, when arrests and executions of gwishins had piled up, he had wallowed in it unabashedly, seeking its comfort, its soothing, while his break with his carafe made his mind wander, awakened old physical pains, and others, more inaccessible and irremediable, the furrows of which had dug themselves directly in his head (you were my only safe place).

He had planned to go north that evening, to allow himself a few puffs for which he felt a increasing need since the last meeting with his parents and Woon's father, which had turned into a disaster and wiped out years of maintaining his composure in the span of a few ridiculous sentences, of a single word (sodomite).

Woon had whispered reassuring words in his ear, monstrous and unthinkable solutions, which had reminded him of before, of the evening at the courtesans and the wall with its cloak of vines, and their sour sweetness had been enough to bring back the quiet and security. Woon whispered his suggestions like orders, peacefully categorical, imperative, and Dong Soo had always found pernicious consolation in listening to them and imagining himself obeying them (remembering having obeyed them).

Both he and Woon had been raised on traditional military principles of obedience, discipline, and compliance with whatever directives were given to them, but both had deviated from the original path, each becoming leaders in their own way, eventually giving orders instead of taking them, asserting their independence instead of fitting the mold and complying with the requirements. Paradoxically, it was only between them that their education and conditioning to orders had ever been allowed to manifest itself.

Woon's orders had something absolute, sovereign, against which Dong Soo found no will to rebel, perhaps because he always felt they were right, agreed with every one of them, and saw no point in not submitting to them. From time to time he had protested, mainly on principle, and also, no doubt, to counteract the sometimes somewhat gloomy realization that Woon, for his part, did not show such docility to Dong Soo's commands. That's because I almost never give him any, he had once realized, during the time they had spent learning under General Seo's guidance.

Woon had rarely needed to be ordered around, knew how to do things, understood almost instinctively what was expected of him and how to proceed, giving the impression that he was leading instead of submitting. And Dong Soo, for all his ambition and determination, the desire he felt to have some ascendancy over Woon, would have been lying if he had ever claimed to have felt legitimacy in commanding him. The opposite, on the other hand, had always seemed much more genuine and justified to him. Give me orders. Set me in motion.

Dong Soo obeyed Woon because he wanted to. Woon didn't obey anyone unless he decided to.

Usually, when he came home at that hour, the house was silent and lifeless. From the bathroom, a deep smell of fragrant water and hot steam came out. Dong Soo knocked gently against the door, made a quick calculation of the probabilities for each resident of the house to decide to take a bath at such a late hour of the night, and made his choice accordingly.

"Woon-ah? Is that you?"

Woon's voice rose, languid, though a little muffled by the thickness of the door surface, confirming his presence. Dong Soo saw again the line of his shoulder blades, the heavy, waterlogged, white-veined mass of his hair. He felt the urge to open the door, to take a look, just one look, that would not imply anything, that would be a simple look to check it was Woon, and no one else.

"I just came back," he announced. "I was just going to drink some water in the kitchen. I leave you alone. Have a good bath."

"You can come in, if you want."

Dong Soo felt as if he was suddenly taking roots in the spot in front of the door, as if he had gone back several days to the time when he had walked in without paying attention and found Woon in the steaming bathtub, before running away (I said I was too old).

"Are you sure?" he asked him, just to be sure, to lessen his apprehension.

"Yes. I'd like to talk to you anyway. Come on in."

Dong Soo slid the door open and slipped into the steamy room, which smelled of burning wood and hot water, of a still-lit fireplace. The bathroom, while modest in size compared to other houses in the neighborhood whose owners were mostly wealthier aristocrats, usually from families of already well-to-do means, was nonetheless comfortably equipped, with modern, good quality materials made by craftsmen Yun-seo had chosen herself and whose manual skill, sturdiness and elegance of the works produced, as well as financial requirements she knew about.

The room had a large square bathtub in the center, made of solid wood, ochre colored, and its location indicated its role as a centerpiece. Yun-seo had made it custom-built by a carpenter who had also provided several pieces of furniture for Dong Soo's office and Yoo-Jin's room, and loved nothing more than the opportunity to soak in the hot water in the heart of its gleaming rosewood frame.

Two large cabinets containing health and hygiene products, as well as clean linens, and a fireplace reserved solely for heating water brought from the home's individual well with a huge wooden bucket, a luxury that had partly influenced their choice to move in, completed the layout of the room. Dong Soo smelled the fire and saw a small pile of glowing embers in the recess of the wall and on the clay platform built for a medium-sized fire.

The bucket was lying next to it, and the wood was wet with it, darkened. In the bathtub, Woon was watching him patiently, immersed in water up to his waist, and seeing him like this produced the same effect on Dong Soo as the smoke, between soothing and drowsiness. Dong Soo closed the door, and felt foolish when he realized he didn't know what to do, or where to settle, even though he was in his house, and in his bathroom.

Woon smiled at him, and the thin veil of water on his face moved, rippled. Dong Soo thought he looked a little tired, though he knew perfectly well that Woon was dead, and that his condition theoretically negated any idea of exhaustion.

"You wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes. I'm almost done. The water is still warm, if you want."

He spoke calmly, with a casualness Dong Soo envied him. The idea of a hot bath after walking in the cold and mud of the surrounding forest was a violent, almost demanding temptation.

"I don't know if...," he began, while having no idea of the most appropriate way to finish his sentence.

Woon looked at him then, lowering his chin slightly, his eyebrows barely arched upward in a slightly mocking, haughty curve. His eyes crinkled back whenever he did this, and he took on a more feline, more animal, more extaordinary air. Dong Soo had learned to decipher his looks, to read his eyes.

Dare, they said, in the bathtub. Come on. Please. He nodded, submitted with some relief, pushing away the hesitations of his youth (too old for this) and thinking of their discussion along the banks of the Han River, of what Woon had said (I liked what you did), of the incense burner in its carved box, and of the languid pressure of Woon's thighs against his sides.

"It'll be good for your back," Woon observed with a secret, subtle smile, and Dong Soo wasn't even surprised to hear him mention a pain that had never come up in any of their previous conversations.

Shortly afterwards, as he himself was slipping into the warmth of the water and the essences Woon had poured into it, which were heavier than those usually used by Yun-seo, he asked him if he had felt trouble resting, therefore explaining his nightly retreat to the bathroom. Woon shrugged, while draping himself in a white cloth and not bothering to put on his nightgown, which was lying on the chest of the nearest cabinet, where Dong Soo had also placed his own uniform, neatly folded.

Dong Soo hadn't seen him completely naked since they were twenty, and when Woon had stood up in the bathtub to allow him to take his place, he had turned away to fetch him a cloth to dry himself in. He had seen the scar, and made sure not to stare at it as he was bringing Woon a white cotton sheet. The rest was of no real importance. Woon had always been Woon, and Dong Soo didn't remember feeling a particularly strong stirring when seeing him naked, looking at his belly, his nipples, the fall of his loins, his sex or his buttocks.

The vision of Woon's body, as the years were passing in the training camp, had become ordinary. It was a body that Dong Soo, by sight, knew almost as well as his own, which had become like his own, to a certain extent. At the camp, conversations about nudity, mostly women's nudity, always tended to get heated, quickly becoming scabrous, feverish. The simple idea of nudity seemed to trigger in his comrades a brutal, manic impulse of passion. It came to nourish their transports, multiplied them, inspired them a supreme ecstasy.

Dong Soo had seen Woon naked dozens, hundreds of times, and none of them had generated as much reverence and excitement in him as the day of the autumn leaves, than the time he had noticed the dirt on his cheeks. He thought, sometimes, that it was part of the problem, that he probably would have been better off more violently intoxicated by his nakedness than by the contractions of Woon's neck when he turned his head, the contours of the bones in his shoulder blades, or the way his too-black eyes rested on him after he had put the cloth around his shoulders.

The room was warm and comfortable. Dong Soo let himself go into the bathtub, leaning his back against the red wood. Woon had taken a seat in front of him on the edge of the permanently extinguished fireplace, where Dong Soo himself had come to sit a few times when Yun-seo was taking a bath and she had wanted to chat with him, or the other way around.

Woon's legs were bare, shiny with water, and his skin was white, sometimes almost dark blue. He held the sheet around him, and seemed to be thinking. His soaked hair, pushed back, refined his face, hollowed it out, intensified all its cavities.

"Your hair is getting whiter and whiter," he couldn't help but notice, as Woon was wiping his face with a piece of cloth.

"I know. If it keeps going, we won't be able to hide it any longer. The dye does the trick for now and works well on limited areas, but I doubt it will be as effective in covering everything."

The prospect was a calamitous one, as it implied an infinitely higher risk of visibility for the gwishins in a context where discretion was essential to their survival. If the gwishin's hair were to turn completely white, the simple use of hoods would in no way conceal their condition, and Dong Soo was not sure that more efficient and thicker dyes existed to help them preserve their status.

"Is everything okay?"

Woon didn't answer right away, and turned to look at the embers of the fireplace, the traces of soot on the wall.

Dong Soo waited, rubbing his arms with water, cleaning the smell of the patrol, the forest, the cold, and, only partly, the feeling of making a mistake, of having chosen the wrong option, of being on the wrong side, of not doing enough.

"You said Chun came back about a week ago, right?"

"Yes," Dong Soo said, surprised to hear the subject arise. "Why?"

"Outside the usual resurrection periods?"

Dong Soo confirmed it to him.

The news had already spread through the corridors of the royal palace, to all levels of the government. Chun had been subjected to closer questioning as soon as he had mentioned his rebirth date, and Dong Soo could easily imagine the concerns that had been stirring up among ministers, bureaucrats, and military personnel since his confession, for having experienced them himself.

Woon hadn't told him anything about his meeting with the former Sky Lord, and Dong Soo hadn't asked him any questions. It was never the right choice to try to force Woon into saying something. The only option was to wait.

"What are you thinking about?" Dong Soo asked him, looking at him silently as he was admiring the floor of the shower room, his eyes lost in his thoughts.

"To the absence Mago and I had a few days ago. I think I had another one, with Chun."

"What?"

Dong Soo left his place in the bathtub, reached the other end, the one closest to Woon, and put his arms on the wooden ledges, looking for some indication on his face, some precision.

"I'm not sure," Woon said. "We were talking, he was behind the bars of his cell, and the next thing I knew, he was on the floor, against the wall. It looked like someone had pushed him."

"Did he tell you anything?"

"No. But he looked suspicious."

"Isn't that what he always looks like?"

Woon gave him a smirk.

"More than usual," he said. "And he looked scared, too. I don't remember seeing him move."

"And you think it was another absence? Like the one you and Mago had?"

"Perhaps." He hesitated, then corrected himself : "Probably."

He was going to say something else. Dong Soo could sense it, like animals sense danger in the air, fire, hunters, disaster, he could see it in Woon's posture, in the pursing of his lips, in the fact that his gaze was back to the floor of the room.

"There's something else," he said, and Dong Soo let him come, let him talk, and made himself scarce and silent. "I think I had another one tonight."

The hand that was holding the cloth tightly changed. His face became more tense, more serious.

"I think I've brought the dead back to life."

His statement clung to the walls of the room, refused to evaporate, settled in, took up all the space. Its meaning and implications built up by degrees, and when the pattern was complete, when Dong Soo understood the scheme, he looked up at Woon, and found his eyes clouded with worry and doubt.

"Do you remember bringing back gwishins?" he inquired, grasping the problem in stages.

"I saw them, Dong Soo-yah," Woon replied, and his voice wavered under the weight of stupor and confusion. "It was near, along the Han River. I saw Hui-seon, and Jae-ji. I swear I'm not lying."

"I believe you, Woon-ah. Go on. Did they say anything to you? Where they were?"

He reached out and touched Woon's knee to encourage him to continue his story.

"No. They told me I was one of them."

"Of the Gwishins?"

"Not just that. Something else. I remember the creature, too. I think it was it. The Boogeyman."

Dong Soo thought of the bodies of the gwishins found without their heads, of the bodies of the brigade soldiers.

"Did it attack you?"

"No. I don't think it would have been able to anyway. It wasn't completely real. It was like the vision of Jae-Ji in the street of Hanyang."

"And the dead?"

"Drowned people," Woon explained. "People whose bodies had been thrown into the river. I put my hand in the water, and they took it. I felt them coming. Hui-Seon told me that I had woken them up."

(the dead will bring back the dead)

Dong Soo asked him what had happened to the gwishins who had come out of the river, if he had been able to talk to them, if Hui-Seon or the old shaman had lingered to explain anything to him, but Woon shook his head, and confessed that he had suffered another absence immediately after the dead had risen from their river tomb. He had no memory of anything until he had found himself standing in front of Dong Soo's bedroom door, ready to slide it open.

Dong Soo thought of his empty stare, of the blood that had flowed from his nose and eyes the night he had discovered him and Mago inert, of what they had repeated in a whisper (the Eyes), and of the new white streaks that had appeared in their hair the next day. He thought of the imprisoned gwishins, of those at the camp of the army of dead, and of the girl that drew maps. Several witnesses had said they had all exhibited the same symptoms at the same time.

He thought of Chun, who had awakened a week earlier, outside the periods of resurrection as the living had always known them. The only thing I can remember is that I felt like I was being pulled up, he said. And Woon had talked about pulling the gwishins out of the river.

"The Yeogogoedam are scheduled to meet soon," he reminded Woon, resting a careful, comforting hand on his bony knee. "I don't know if you'll agree, Woon-ah, and if you don't want to, you know I won't force you, but maybe talking to them might provide some answers until we can find a better solution."

"I thought about it," the latter said.

"Good."

Dong Soo withdrew his hand, and then they were briefly silent. The water had cooled. The heady smells of the beginning of the bath had almost dissipated. It was late, and Dong Soo could feel the fatigue in his muscles, a growing desire to lie down and close his eyes.

He couldn't hold back a yawn, which Woon didn't fail to notice.

"You should go to bed, Dong Soo-yah," he advised him. "It's late. I'm going to empty the tub."

"Leave it like that. You need rest as much as I do."

"I'm dead. The dead don't need rest."

It was the first time he said it so directly, so bluntly. Dong Soo wanted to say, "Yes, you're dead, no, you're not, you're more than that, you're so much more than that". He only smiled, nodding his head in approval.

"Chun told me he should have taken both of us to Heuksa Chorong."

"What?"

Woon looked him straight in the eye.

"Chun. That's what he told me when I came to see him. That he should have recruited both of us as assassins."

(I know what you two are)

"Do you think he knows?" Dong Soo asked, sensing the fear in his own voice, the surprise, the distrust, feeling something old and ugly curl in his stomach. "That he might know?"

Woon slid down to the floor, kneeling in front of the bathtub, in front of Dong Soo, and came so close that he could rest his chin on one of Dong Soo's arms, causing him a barely painful twitch, almost pleasant. His fingers wrapped around his wrist, and two of them settled loosely against the point where his heart could be heard beating.

"He has no way of knowing," he asserted, and Dong Soo saw the tiny drops of water on his face, the fragile bluish lines of veins under his livid, resurrected skin, the abysmal, admirable gulf in his eyes. "He may have assumed it, but he doesn't know. Nobody knows."

He whispered against the skin of Dong Soo's arm, pressed his lips against it. The sheet surrounded him like a royal robe. He didn't need to be naked. He had never needed to be naked. It was enough for him to be, and to look at Dong Soo like this. Sometimes he felt as if Woon's eyes were like the craters of two volcanoes, holding lava and flames. Not volcanoes, he corrected himself almost immediately, storm clouds.

"No one but us," he said, also whispering.

Woon's forehead touched his, very gently. Dong Soo held his fingers in his own, moved his head a bit to kiss them.

"Do you ever think about it?"

The question was rhetorical, and Dong Soo knew it. There was another one behind it, a more beautiful one, a more excruciating one.

"Yes."

"What do you remember most?"

(there it is)

"Autumn leaves," he replied. "You. Us."

Woon smiled. It was the same smile as that day, and Dong Soo felt exactly the same adoration, the same complete, unconditional idolatry.