Notes.

A chapter entirely dedicated to the ladies.

Warnings : mention of sex toys and masturbation (the question is : is it really necessary to give a warning for this kind of things ?). All the objects mentioned in this chapter do exist and were in circulation at the time. Unfortunately, there is not much about the uses in South Korea (well, there must be some in Korean, but I don't know the language well enough to attempt any translation), but I did the best I could with the documents available on the internet.

CHAPTER LXX

"The fortune said,
'Flowers bloom with no regret'

Surround me, body and soul
Pull me into your glow, make me blush
Unbound me, spin me in gold
As the story unfolds in your touch"

(Years and Years, "Hypnotised")

a. Snowball effect

She had barely risen, and had just fixed on her head a gache made of elegant braids tied one behind the other, when one of her sisters abruptly slid open the door of the room she shared with Chae-Won, without regard for their privacy or even the progress of their preparations. Her companion uttered an outraged cry and, because she was being lightly dressed, shielded the view of her chest with a respectable hand while giving the girl, who was an apprentice recruited less than six months ago at the Spring House, a dark and disapproving look. Go Hyang, on the other hand, was more measured, and turned her head towards her without ragging her for her indiscreet entrance.

The girl looked wild, and somehow radiant. A smile that was far too enlarged to be attractive took up half of her face, which she had pretty even though it was still developing, for she was hardly more than fourteen years old. Go Hyang vaguely remembered being her age, but not having her temperament. Among the courtesans, she had always been in the quiet category, among the ones that the more lively gisaengs called "boring" to divert the attention and favors of the clients, even though the latter usually juggled between the two opposites with as much ease as a rooster in the middle of all the hens in his barnyard. If some made more noise than others, were was the difference? As long as there was a choice of gisaengs, their individual qualities were of little consequence.

The customers appreciated that they were conversational, knowledgeable, witty, beautiful and graceful, and had various talents for music or poetry, but as soon as it came to the personalities of the courtesans, the interest of those who frequented the houses of entertainment diminished drastically. There were some who took pleasure in arrogating to themselves the privilege of one gisaeng rather than another, giving the impression of appreciating her more personal attributes, but Go Hyang had gained sufficient experience to suspect it was not so much the courtesan herself, and the individuality she contained, as what she represented that was pursued.

One man wanted the listening, the kindness. Another, the gift for gayageum or painting. A third one demanded knowledge and philosophical discussions. For the last one, nothing was as worthy as the skills in bed. Basically, all gisaengs had these same qualities, and were thus as tragically replaceable as hens were from each other, although some had beautiful plumage or a more graceful gait.

The apprentice wore that morning a hanbok of pink and pale blue, appropriate to her rank in the hierarchy of courtesans.

"Did you hear the news?" She asked them, still smiling, and there was something broken and crippled about her smile that Go Hyang could not fully define.

"What news?"

Chae-Won was invariably in a bad mood when an intruder came to disturb the organization of her morning schedule and her dressing. Otherwise, she was a charming, polite, discreet companion, whom Go Hyang appreciated for her diplomacy and modesty.

The big entertainment houses were home to just as many cunning and ambitious women as the lesser establishments, and perhaps even more so to some extent, for the smaller houses rarely cultivated that much requirements to satisfy the customers, and the freedom of movement thus softened the gisaengs' feelings of bitterness and jealousies, and enabled them to establish a more friendly atmosphere among themselves.

Go Hyang was one of the few gisaengs in the Spring House who came from one of these establishments, and so she had noticed over the years how her fellow gisaengs could be more greedy for wealth and attention than her sisters in the Boryeong Jasmine House. Moreover, since Gyo Hui Seon's departure, the new owner, Mistress Yim, tended to accentuate the rivalry between the residents of the house by being stricter and more fastidious in her service to the bureaucrats and military who visited them.

Gyo Hui Seon had been far from being a sinecure, but for the past two years, Go Hyang had frequently heard other gisaengs miss her openly, whereas they mistrusted and feared her respectfully when she was still head of the establishment.

She turned her attention back to the apprentice, for the thought of Mistress Gyo kept sending her back in the past, and tugging at some of her heartstrings that were infinitely more sensitive than those of the gayageum.

(I told you not to betray me)

She had received no news in four years, no letters, no messages, not even from Mistress Gyo or any of the other dead gisaengs as long as they had remained in the house.

They were long gone by now : Go Hyang was moving on in silence, and though its form had changed from the one that had accompanied her in the ten years before Yeo Woon's resurrection, had became more hopeful, its edges however were still as full of uncertainty and fear.

"The barracks was attacked," the girl told them, leaning a little more through the doorway. "All the soldiers who slept here last night were visited by a messenger very early this morning, and they all ran over there like they were crazy. Some even forgot clothes or their swords."

Go Hyang exchanged a skeptical look with Chae-Won. Both of them had indeed been awakened early by the sound of heavy, rapid footsteps in the corridors of the Spring House, but it had to be admitted that since the introduction of anti-gwishin interrogations and searches four years ago, the courtesans had somewhat lost the habit of being frankly surprised by a little more than usual commotion in the corridors of the establishments where they stayed.

At first, they used to get up continuously to observe the commotion, but since then, the practice had passed to them, and they largely preferred to privilege any additionnal hour of sleep they could get, even if it meant being woken up by their sisters in case of extraordinary events.

"What do you mean by that?" Go Hyang asked her, while Chae-Won was trying to continue her preparations and listening with one ear.

The girl entered their room frankly, and closed the door behind her. Voices could now be heard over the mulberry paper, as giggles, murmurs, exclamations.

"Hwa-Young told me about it. She was receiving a brigade captain for the night, and they were awakened in a hurry by the messenger. From what she understood, a part of the barracks was destroyed, and there were many injured, as well as several dead."

"I didn't hear any explosion," Chae-Won observed, looking for the most logical explanation.

The apprentice pointed a finger at her, waving it as if her sister had just revealed a fundamental truth.

"Exactly," she said enthusiastically. "The truth is, no one really knows what happened yet. All the girls who slept with the military are being grilled by the others right now to get a better understanding of the situation."

"And?" Go Hyang asked, applying powder to her cheeks, forehead and chin, as she had no illusions about the continuity of the courtesans' activities even if the city were to be besieged. "What conclusions for now?"

"So far, it's not very convincing," the girl sighed. "There are two theories circulating. According to the first one, it would be the work of a pro-gwishin network which would have wished to interrupt the patrols, but we can't figure out how they would have managed to do it without resorting to explosives, and more generally how they would have succeeded at all given the concentration of soldiers in the barracks."

"And the second hypothesis? What is it?"

The apprentice's smile regained its dislocated look, which had displeased Go Hyang back when she had first identified it.

"You've heard the rumors about the bogeyman, haven't you? The ones about it prowling around Hanyang at night?"

Her two older sisters nodded in unison, obviously to the delight of the girl.

"Well, it seems that it doesn't just come at night anymore," she revealed slowly, with obvious morbid pleasure. "Apparently, it came to the barracks and attacked the soldiers as well as the buildings. Yebin said she had heard the messenger tell her lover of the moment, you know, the commander who likes to be mistreated from time to time, Chae-Won, I think it was one of yours..."

"Yes, yes," the latter grew impatient, dismissing curtly the mention of her former suitor as if he had not been more than a fly annoying her by fluttering around her. "And what?"

"According to Yebin, the messenger said that the soldiers had been 'slaughtered'. Like those sometimes found in the forests or in the mountains."

This time she gained the full and undivided attention of her sisters, who offered her a horrified face, the sight of which seemed to please her, for she smiled more widely after her revelation.

"And that's not all," she continued. "Some of us have heard other things, about an escape of gwishins who would have been held at that time in prison. It's been also said that their hair are all white now."

Go Hyang remembered the pale locks she had discovered in Yeo Woon's hair (she killed me), but also in those of mistress Gyo, Su-Jin, Min-Su and So-Ri.

"What about the Boogeyman?" Chae-Won asked, and Go Hyang knew she was particularly frightened by the prospect of an unknown and hostile creature walking the streets of the capital. "Do we know anything else? Do we know if it was captured?"

The apprentice shook her head.

"Not a clue. Several girls are of the opinion that if all the military were requested by the messenger, then the monster, or whatever it was that caused the damage to the barracks, is still on the loose. Perhaps it has escaped back into the forest. Who knows? In the meantime, many of us think that we won't have much activity today. If the rumors are true, you can take your time with your preparations."

"Mistress Yim wouldn't allow it," Go Hyang objected. "Besides, the bureaucrats can still visit us."

"Apparently, they too are on the warpath, and I mean that literally."

At this announcement, Go Hyang saw, in her mirror, Chae-Won abandon her make-up for good.

"What?" she hissed. "What's going on, again? Another bogeyman? The king was a gwishin all along?"

Chae-Won's mornings were generally sour, especially when they began with unfortunate news. The apprentice's face took on a more serious, pensive expression.

"Nothing like that," she said. "But some of the girls heard other, more disturbing things."

"What could be more disturbing than a monstrosity roaming free in the city?"

But the girl did not react to the provocation, which Go Hyang interpreted as a bad sign.

"A lot of things," she replied simply, shrugging her shoulders. "There was an officer assigned to the southern gates. According to the girl he spent the night with, there were reports of troop movements approaching Hanyang. And from all other sides of the city, apparently."

There was a moment of brief silence, during which the apprentice's statement swelled in the room, fully reaching her two sisters. It contained a particularly gloomy implication, a calamitous omen, which smelled of gunpowder, famine, blood. Go Hyang felt her shoulders and back tense violently.

"Troop movements," Chae-Won whispered, sounding even more terrified than when she had heard about the Boogeyman.

"These are just rumors," the girl hastened to add, but her voice betrayed her lack of belief in such a prospect. "For now, nothing is certain. Mistress Yim is waiting for confirmation from the royal palace."

"But do we know which troops they are?" Go Hyang asked. "From the Qing? From Japan? Insubordination?"

The rebellions of some provincial cities had not remained unknown in the entertainment houses, where tongues were loosened more easily under the supple and sagacious charm of the courtesans.

"No," the girl answered. "They would be gwishins."

We will meet again, Mistress Gyo had told her shortly before leaving the house, while the new repressive measures were being put in place and she was about to flee them. We will come back. When she had left, Go Hyang's life had not as disrupted as when the former headmistress of the Spring House had come to her during the autumn of 1776, asking her to join her establishment and to take care of Yeo Woon.

She had kept her position, accommodated herself to the new manager, and integrated perfectly among her other sisters, this time fully alive. Unlike many other entertainment establishments in the capital, the authorities had not found any gwishin at the Spring House. The dead staff that Gyo Hui Seon had hired had been replaced, shortly before her retirement and most likely at her request, by individuals more likely to check off the requirements of the new repressive measures.

The last one to leave had been Su-Jin. In the end, it wasn't you who had to leave us, she had remarked to her with a mischievous smile, but with eyes full of apprehension and sorrow. Go Hyang often followed the path in the corridors leading to the room Yeo Woon had occupied, or expected to discover little So-Ri when she turned around. The dead no longer lived in the Spring House, but Go Hyang had never had such an overwhelming feeling of being surrounded by ghosts, and she found herself wondering at times if she had not turned into one herself.

The departure of Mistress Gyo and the gradual, more discreet ones of her gwishins sisters had led to a resurgence of the detachment and melancholy she had once felt, before the director of the Spring House had announced to her the resurrection of Yeo Woon.

Go Hyang glanced at her reflection in the mirror, at her eyes wide with fear, at her sudden pallor (they would be gwishins). If the rumor was proved true, and the dead did indeed show up massively at the city gates, it was likely that Mistress Gyo would be one of them, for Go Hyang remembered her as having always been very committed to their situation, and perhaps with her would also come back her young lord, and with him the turmoil, the guilt, the anguish, the tenderness, and all those things that had colored Go Hyang's existence in the days when she was his right hand, and which had withered away into a dull abyss.

She thought of her days at the Jasmine House (dull), then of those that had made up her first year at the Spring House (colorful), and finally of the last ones, which had succeeded Yeo Woon's exile (dull). The comparison was based on a deep dichotomy, going against the official government communications, the speechs against the gwishins, the common view according to which they were monsters and abominations. Such a comparison implied that the dead brought life back, and took it with them as soon as they left.

There was a crack in the wall of their room, thin, sinuous, a procession of caterpillars or the body of an unfolded snake, slithering between the gaps until it reached the ceiling. From where Go Hyang was watching it, it looked like Yeo Woon's scar, the one made by Baek Dong Soo's sword. The latter had only returned to the Spring House on rare occasions after the departure of the Sky Lord, and had stopped visiting altogether after Mistress Gyo's resignation.

Go Hyang would have lied if she had said she missed him, and when they had seen each other the few times the man whom his devotees once called the sword saint of Joseon before his drunkenness made him unworthy of his title, they had exchanged dark, hostile looks. Yeo Woon's anger frightened her, was an agony, but Baek Dong Soo's anger fueled her own rage, and she still dreamed, very often, of the poison she poured into his cup as well as into Hong Guk-Yeong's.

She hoped the latter was dead, forgotten by everyone, and rotting under the ground without any hope of ever getting out. Her last great moment of joy in the last four years had been to learn that the monarch's precious adviser, the "kingmaker", had lost his favor, his prestige, his position, and all his honor. In all the gisaengs' establishments, rumors had been spread, some of them making no sense, and others whose precisions bordered on dangerous revelations.

One evening, Go Hyang had heard an official of the Royal Investigation Bureau, whom she had reserved herself the right to deride knowing full well that he belonged to the same institution as Baek Dong Soo, say that Hong Guk Yeong's downfall had been mainly caused by incriminating information passed on about him by his former comrade.

"It was Baek Dong Soo who signed the main statement that Hong Guk Yeong had plotted the death of his own sister to gain more power," he had told his audience, then clinging to his gossip like a tide of carp whose mouths opening and closing would have produced wet, unpleasant sounds. "And it was Baek Dong Soo who brought the king all the evidence of the conspiracy. No one knows exactly where he found them, but the king seemed largely content with it, and Hong Guk Yeong had lost too much support to provoke any more sympathy among the other advisers."

Go Hyang didn't know if her client's words were true, but if they were, she felt that she and Baek Dong Soo had now at least some common ground, if nothing else.

The voice of the girl, in her room, years later, pulled her out of her thoughts.

"Be prepared," she notified them. "You never know."

(she killed me)

Go Hyang put away the white powder. Her hands were trembling. Fragments of ivory spilled onto her skirt, onto the palm of her delicate, fire-scarred hand, and onto the decorated wood of her beauty box.

b. Iphis and Ianthe

Ji-Seon did not recognize him when he and his companions entered the store. She was busy with a different issue, which was to interfere as finely and ingeniously as possible in the discussion Jin-Ju was having with one of her father's associates, who regularly sent them rare goods and objects he had unearthed during his many trips around the country and to Qing.

After obtaining a royal pardon and attending the wedding of Huk Sa-Mo and Jang-Mi, Hwang Jin-Gi had lived in Hanyang with his daughter for three years before deciding that he still had enough time to, according to his own words, "be of some use". He had decided to contribute to the development of Ji-Seon's business, to which Jin-Ju had just been permanently attached, by making use of his nomadic experience in the Joseon territory and by spotting for them interesting, peculiar pieces of non-conformist beauty, while informing them of the national demands he perceived through his travels in order to enable them to adapt their offer and thus maintain a sustained activity.

During the first two waves of gwishin resurrections, when the kingdom's economy had plummeted, it was through the general information transmitted by Hwang Jin-Gi that Ji-Seon and Jin-Ju had been able to modify their stocks and obtain the most sought-after commodities and materials. He was also the one who had advised them, in the beginning of the crisis, to reduce their prices voluntarily in order to attract a more varied clientele and thus keep their income acceptable, while around them the shops and their owners were falling like the heads of the culprits in public executions.

The number of public executions had been greatly reduced since the gwishins had become the new enemy, and Ji-Seon could not remember the last time she had seen leaflets posted along the facades and thrown into the street announcing this or that conviction and death. Most of them took place behind closed doors, and the people were fed by rumors, if not by the blood of those who had been brought to the scaffold.

Ji-Seon's belly was cramped to the point of intolerability, inflicting her pain repeatedly since the end of the day before, when it had manifested itself in the course of the night, as she was bringing her hand down to her crotch and brushing the wetness there, always with a restraint that stemmed from her pre-shop upbringing. She had never mentioned it, and had hardly focused herself too much on the subject, until Jin-Ju had brought up the issue in the company of gisaengs from the Summer House, with whom they had just concluded a not insignificant fabric and ginseng tea supply agreement, guaranteeing them a noticeable advancement in terms of finances.

The entertainment houses were among the most sought-after clients for sellers, due to the concentration of population that they involved as well as the diversity of the activities and consequently of the accessories, and more generally of the objects and materials, mobilized by the courtesans and the personnel in charge of the household, the kitchens, and the maintenance of the gardens.

The deal had been finalized after two months of relatively tough negotiations between Jin-Ju and the mistress of the establishment, a woman considered inflexible and not very open to new perspectives, but whom the speech of Ji-Seon's associate, combined with her direct manners, had seduced enough to convince her to accept a trial period that had lasted one year, and at the end of which her satisfaction had been such that she had agreed to extend the contract on the long term.

That evening, Ji-Seon and Jin-Ju had been received for a sumptuous celebration, in the company of a dozen gisaengs who had already ordered articles from them, of some of their apprentices, and finally of the director. It was on this occasion, after having eaten and drunk happily, that Jin-Ju and the courtesans had launched into a heated debate about feminine pleasures and the possibilities they had well beyond the recourse to the affection of men.

At first self-effacing, holding a polite and more medically oriented conversation with one of the gisaengs trained in the field, Ji-Seon had allowed herself to be drawn in by her partner's laughter and shoutings, and had listened without interfering too much to her exchanges with the courtesans, at least in the beginning.

Jin-Ju spoke with ease, and confidence, while the other gisaengs responded in equally confident tones. The discussion had been a new and unexpected experience for Ji-Seon, for never before had her entourage brought up these matters with her.

The priests when she was still a samini had never spoken about it, and Ji-Seon had sometimes wondered, since that evening, if most of them had not voluntarily avoided the subject, out of embarrassment, or out of sincere ignorance, because it had to be admitted that the men who had educated her had themselves been sorely lacking in instruction on the things of love, or at least on those of carnal pleasure, and if theirs had been ignored or given little attention, Ji-Seon suspected that none of their teachings had even touched on the possibility of women's desires.

Sexuality was not part of the training of Buddhist monks and nuns, for the simple reason that it was not intended to be considered by them. Ji-Seon had been told about the stages of pregnancy and the process of the act to achieve such a result, but otherwise she had never heard anything. They were trained in religious and spiritual love, not in the love of bodies and their lasciviousness.

And even after her forced departure from the order, Ji-Seon had never been confronted so directly with the theme in familiar conversations with other women, though not adherents of the cult, and therefore supposedly more inclined to these things. She had heard occasional embarrassed giggles, softly spoken words, but never anything that could compare to the loud and very raw conference that had taken place between the courtesans and Jin-Ju.

"I say, from my own knowledge of the matter, the fingers make much better the work than any artifice," one of the gisaengs had said, showing in passing her very long slender fingers that she slid in a delicate caress along the chin of one of her sisters, tearing off her a small mischievous but not embarrassed laugh.

"You lack curiosity," another had stated. "Or imagination. If you knew the wonders that a few feathers can do, you would quickly let go of your fingers."

"Feathers can't go anywhere," the first one had objected, shaking her head. "They're good for shivering, that's all."

Several of her sisters, obviously fervent supporters of the feather method, had protested strongly at her observation. At the same time, the opinions of those who preferred the warmth and languorous movements of tongues had risen.

Others had declared that feathers and fingers were not worth the splendor accomplished by dokatas, objects from Japan that some of them had been able to acquire, and whose shape was that of a man's phallus made of tortoise shell, "that never let you down when you wanted it and never forced itself on you when you didn't want it to, while doing exactly what you wanted it to do," a gisaeng added, her lips painted a deep red, and she provoked hilarity but also the general and philosophical approval of her peers. There were also wooden ones, at a more local level, but the women agreed that they were less pleasing, as they were less comfortable with their rough and massive appearance.

They also mentioned the uses of other accessories, each more unknown to Ji-Seon than the other, such as the miracles of things called higo zuiki, woven from aphrodisiac plants, or taigaita, which some of the courtesans admitted having already used among themselves, and having obtained full and complete satisfaction from them. Most of these objects came from the Shogunate, and made their way to the courtesans through secret paths, dedicated only to their unknown pleasures.

Jin-Ju, with a strong voice, had then suggested the hypothesis of a mechanism which would combine the qualities of the different approaches mentioned, and she had then obtained particularly interested and almost enamored looks from her audience, which had debated with her for a long time about the possible manufacture and sale of such an object.

"What about you, Ji-Seon?" She had then turned to her, her long black hair tied in a high ponytail moving from one shoulder to the other. "What do you think?"

She had hesitated to answer that obviously the Japanese were considerably more advanced on the matter than the subjects of the Joseon kingdom, but had refrained from doing so, as she was too used to using moderation in her words to formulate such a strong opinion.

"I don't know," she confessed. "I've never looked into it."

All the gisaengs had turned to her with a delicate rustle of silk, and had gently questioned her, without rushing her. Ji-Seon had soon found herself discussing with them her past existence as a samini and what little information she had been able to glean about it as a result.

Jin-Ju had put on an attrited expression, and apologized for not having taken the time to discuss it frankly with her since they had become partners.

"But have you ever tried to...?" The red-lipped gisaeng had asked her, and the brightness of her mouth under the candlelight had made Ji-Seon want to kiss her for a moment.

"To what?"

The courtesan had smiled kindly, then had taken Ji-Seon's hand and intertwined her fingers with hers, causing her a deep, intoxicating turmoil.

"To touch yourself," she had murmured gently. "To please yourself, to seduce yourself. Try. You're free now."

Since then, Ji-Seon remembered her and her red lips whenever she led her fingers towards the heat between her legs. But when she dived inside herself, it was Jin-Ju who occupied all her thoughts, and she had blamed herself at first, thinking how dirty, rude, decadent she was being, before realizing that the phenomenon was hers alone, belonged only to her, and that she was free to do what she wished with it, just as the courtesan had told her. Sometimes, there had also been a fleeting image of Yeo Woon and his sad eyes.

The day he and Baek Dong Soo had come to the temple, she remembered wondering, as she was watching him sweep the floor while he was obviously trying not to meet her gaze, what the nature of the touch of his hands on her skin would be, whether they would be calloused, hard, or, on the contrary, as gentle and careful as his glances toward her.

At Heuksa Chorong, she had only thought about it once, wandering vaguely from the path of her pain and sadness. She never thought she had hated herself as much as she had that night.

The day before, her fingers had come back soaked with blood, and the sight of it had taken away all of Ji-Seon's pleasure. Since then, the pain had appeared, as it always did, and she was struggling to stand up and not to wince. She had borrowed some gaejim from Jin-Ju that morning, after realizing with irritation that she had failed to renew her own supply. Jin-Ju had given her a gigantic load of them, and had gone to buy her a nex stock before the arrival of their delivery.

Ji-Seon had wanted to kiss her when Jin-Ju had handed her the small box with a knowing smile, before going to greet their guest, and this keen desire, coupled with the irritation generated by the pain of her cramps, by the discomfort of the blood she felt flowing out of her, by the annoying persistence of the impression that she had become impure after having heard in her youth that women's bleeding was a sign of their weakness and imperfection, was making the vision of Jin-Ju laughing with the young courier all the more unpleasant, even though there was probably nothing to be worried about.

But since she had left Hong-Du, Jin-Ju had had other lovers, and while Ji-Seon had never said anything, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of sour pain whenever she saw that her companion was taking too obvious pleasure in being with a man.

She was too focused on their discussion, which she listened to from a distance while considering how to interrupt without appearing rude or curt, and had not seen him enter the store. The streets of Hanyang had been abuzz with activity since early morning, and one of their suppliers had come by to alert them regarding the latest rumors about the barracks having suffered a devastating attack, which was attributed to the creature known as the Boogeyman, already held responsible for the violent murders of several soldiers during outdoor patrols.

In addition, there were talks about an entire army of gwishins approaching the capital, and a possible siege of the city.

"These are only rumors," the man assured them, "but they are spreading faster and faster, and no denial has been made yet."

"So you think there's really a risk?" Jin-Ju had questioned him, her eyebrows furrowed.

"Well, it's better to prepare for the worst than to minimize the danger," he had answered with pragmatism.

After he had left, Jin-Ju had clinked her nails against her teeth, as she often did when she was nervous, and then made a decision to prepare an escape route for them if they needed it, on the grounds that there was "no smoke without fire."

She was hoping to go to the barracks during their late morning break to see Dong Soo and ask him about the situation. She and Ji-Seon hadn't seen him in a while. His wife had come to the store several times as usual, but Dong Soo had been quite absent, and Ji-Seon could count on her hands the number of times she had gone out with him and Yoo-Jin or seen him come into the store.

He has a lot of work to do right now, Baek Yun-seo had explained to them the last time she had entered the shop. Jin-Ju had deduced from the combination of her features, tone and manner, that she had lied. Ji-Seon, on the other hand, had given her the benefit of the doubt.

When Jin-Ju had put a hand on the arm of their courier to escort him to the back door of the store and check the stock, Ji-Seon had decreed that she had spent far too much time watching them, and had therefore turned to the visitors who had entered the shop moments earlier. Two of them were wearing military uniforms, which had worried her at first, before she noticed the girl.

She must have been thirteen or fourteen, no more, and wore a long, thick piece of cloth wrapped around her face and over her hair. Behind the front of the store, Ji-Seon could hear loud voices visibly calling out to passersby, the sounds of running. She saw the girl tense, and then noticed that her clothes had dark, strange stains on them, and that she was holding a sword in her hands.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" She had asked carefully, standing far enough away to run away in case of danger.

"Nothing, thank you," one of them had said, bowing his head respectfully to her. "We're just looking."

"Are you looking for something in particular?" She had insisted, without really knowing why except that the presence of these visitors, dressed in army colors, who had entered her store so hastily, had brought with it a fog of threat and anxiety.

"Nothing specific, don't worry," the same man had replied, this time with a benevolent smile.

Ji-Son was about to return to her counter, to consult her registers while keeping an eye on the customers, when her name had suddenly resounded in the room, and she had recognized the voice, the timbre, the admiration.

"Ji-Seon..."

She became a statue behind the solid surface of the counter, frozen in time, or rather in the past, and unable to utter a word or phrase that would have seemed appropriate. For a moment she thought she had simply fallen victim to a trick of her tired and irritated mind, then she had looked up, and then she had seen him, turned towards her, this time looking directly at her.

Under the military hat, his face, despite the bandages that covered part of it, was the same, with his gaunt cheeks, the narrow nose, the lips that seemed never to smile, and to have been made only for severity despite their curves. The eyes, in particular, caused her a dense, terrible turmoil and panic, as she imagined others to have felt when they had seen the return of lost, dead family members or friends.

For her part, she had never been confronted with the resurrection of one of her loved ones. She hadn't had many, to begin with. She had maybe waited for her father for a while, before the temporary sharp pains in her back from the burn of the tattoo had led her to conclude that his return from the dead was not necessarily good news for her. She knew that Jin-Ju had hoped for the return of her mother, Ga-Ok, although she had been perfectly aware that the dead whose remains had been cremated were the only ones who did not wake up.

Ji-Seon had never knew what had happened to Yeo Woon's body. She had learned about his death from a distance, had been kept away from the events. All she knew was what she had heard, that Baek Dong Soo had executed the Sky Lord of Heuksa Chorong in accordance with the royal directives, after he had committed yet another treason and attacked Yang Cho-Rip. She had not seen anything, had not been able to say goodbye.

And Baek Dong Soo, when he had gone to look for Yeo Woon's body at the palace and had stolen it to bury it somewhere else, had never revealed to her where he had taken it. Ji-Seon, while not daring to move, wondered how long Yeo Woon had been back, and if Dong Soo knew.

She felt the urge to say "sir", as she had done every time she had addressed him. He himself had never called her anything but "miss," while Dong Soo had been quick to use her first name. There had always been a polite, cautious distance between them. For a while, Ji-Seon had attributed it to her own will, and while that was partly the case, she had come to understand that the spacing between them had primarily been rooted in a decision made by Yeo Woon.

She had shown less coldness with him than with Dong Soo, because he had been more respectful, quiter, less arrogant, quicker to arouse her interest, but he had never seized it, preferring to keep her at a distance he could control and modulate independently of Ji-Seon's desires. Sometimes, she had interpreted it as a sign of shyness and deference.

After the murder of Prince Sado, when Yeo Woon himself had retreated to his room after being wounded by Dong Soo, just like Ji-Seon, she had wondered about the possibility, petty and dark, that his attitude had been tinged with a great deal of calculation, as if the fascination he seemed to express for her at the time had been a layer over a more inhospitable judgment, a less pleasant opinion, reminding her of the one she had established from the behavior Baek Dong Soo exhibited at the time, an excessive and egotistical attraction that had seemed to her far too visible and exacerbated to be totally honest.

She remembered, as she was gazing at an alive, and gwishin Yeo Woon, the impression of having been a carcass upon which two scavengers would have thrown themselves, desperate to find salvific food to escape a more fatal outcome.

Yeo Woon bowed to her, and his gesture restored her mobility, at least enough for her to respond in kind.

"I didn't know," she said. "I didn't know you were back."

"I'm sorry to impose my presence on you," he answered simply. "My companions and I will leave."

"Do you know each other?" The girl intervened, while approaching with slow step.

Ji-Seon opened her mouth to answer in the affirmative, and was watching Yeo Woon do the same while turning his head towards the girl, but then a clamor rose outside, a series of loud and dangerous voices, shouting, "Search all the houses, search the stores, they can't be far! ".

At the same time Jin-Ju returned, and she stopped next to Ji-Seon as soon as she saw their customers, the only ones that late morning, especially Yeo Woon.

"Oh," she said, and Ji-Seon thought, "Yes. Oh," with both bitterness and a form of amusement at her associate's succinct reaction.

The voices came closer to the store, seemed to be about to take over the place. Jin-Ju did not react, obviously still in the grip of surprise and incomprehension, while she stared at Yeo Woon and the other two as if she wanted to repeatedly check the reality of their existence.

"Are these men looking for you?" Ji-Seon asked, although she suspected the answer.

Yeo Woon nodded without saying a word. The one who accompanied him spoke up.

"We came into your store to hide," he confessed, then bent over in a pleading bow. "Please, let us stay here while they're out. We promise to leave as soon as they'll be gone."

There were new bursts of voices, closer this time. Ji-Seon took a step towards Yeo Woon, and came with it the memory of the bow, of the arrow, of the string stretched between her fingers.

"You'll be too visible if you stay here," she said. "Go hide in the back room. Jin-Ju, show them the way, and stay with them in order to help them get out if needed."

Her companion, coming back to her senses, worried immediately.

"What?"

Ji-Seon turned toward her, looked her straight in the eyes.

"The soldiers will enter the store. That's for sure. I'll keep them away from the back room, but I need you to help our guests in case the soldiers don't stick to the main room. I won't be able to do much without looking suspicious."

Jin-Ju's mouth half opened and then closed several times, as if she wanted to say something or protest before deducing that the idea was bad. Her eyes darted from Yeo Woon, standing still by a shelf containing Qing's decorative items, to Ji-Seon.

"Are you sure?" she finally asked, after a defeated sigh. "I can take care of receiving them if you prefer."

Ji-Seon put her hands on hers, felt the reassuring warmth of their thin fingers.

"I'm sure. Don't worry."

Jin-Ju gestured Yeo Woon and his companions to follow her. As he passed by her, he murmured a "thank you". His shoulder brushed hers, frozen, dead. Ji-Seon smiled at him, smoothed her skirt, and took a long breath, before returning to stand behind the counter.

When the soldiers came in, with much more noise, she greeted them cordially and did her utmost to lie as best she could.