BETWEEN THE WARS
(A STUDY IN SERVICE)
"[...] he who rules
The savage works of battle, puissant Mars,
How often to thy bosom flings his strength
O'ermastered by the eternal wound of love -
And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown,
Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee,
Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breath
Hanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclined
Fill with thy holy body, round, above!
"Between the wars we dance,
Between the wars we left."
In the crowded diner, their shoulders brush against each other - the impalpable veil of robes separating his unblemished skin, and her battered skin of scars.
He is softly scolding a colleague of his, guilty of stoning his assets to death over the usual morning coffees, and she, her head reclined by the weariness of a night shift at the factory, eavesdrops with her eyes closed - as intently as if she were listening to a bedtime story, she who has never received one. Dong-Eun listens to his clear, enveloping voice like summer sunshine, his low, vibrant laughter, and almost finds herself envying those crisp human notes - free spirits unwearied by the violence of a godless world.
As she steps away from the counter, her numb fingers clasped around the steaming cup, a latent scent of chrysanthemums occupies her vacant seat, and soon mingles with the more overpowering scent of azaleas.
It is their first meeting, but it will not be their last - and both know that, in the tangled web of their two lives, there is no space for the coincidence of fate.
The hospital bed is uncomfortable, cold, inhospitable, and exudes a strong smell of disinfectant, but Dong-Eun cannot perceive any of this - only a rhythmic, incessant pounding in her ears, and the numbness of a long sleep that is beginning to fade. She blinks slowly, and the first thing her eyes catch is the perfect angle that her arm, covered with dissimilar scars and an IV needle, creates with the blood-encrusted one of her neighbor. She turns his clouded gaze to the left and, in the faint sway of the separating curtain, catches a glimpse of Yeo-Jeong's cloudy eyes: they stare at each other for what seems like an endless time, measuring each other as adversaries on opposite sides, each reminding himself of the real reason behind that relentless pursuit.
Dong-Eun escapes before he can reinsert the violently ripped needle, busily hiding her battered arms with her shirt sleeves - but Yeo-Jeong was quick, and managed to read the few essential pieces of information on her medical records: he feels no guilt for violating her intimacy, if it will allow him to see her again, even if only one more time.
The day's lecture is about the proper code of conduct in a school environment, but Dong-Eun cannot concentrate on her notes: she feels observed - an unusual feeling, since she generally tries hard to make herself invisible - and yet she dares not turn around. It is only when the professor interrupts his explanation to chase away a student not enrolled in his course that she turns around, and is just in time to catch a glimpse of Yeo-Jeong's longish features before he disappears into the corridor - his somewhat shabby smile and rosy face, those foreign fingers that first grazed her scars in a sterile hospital bed.
When she leaves the university, he is there waiting for her, his hands nervously playing with the laces of her backpack, and as soon as Dong-Eun's lips part in a smile, Yeo-Jeong feels his heart miss a beat. And then he feels it stop, as soon as Dong-Eun raises an arm in greeting and exclaims, happily, the name of another, passing him by as if he did not exist.
Yeo-Jeong follows them with his gaze until he almost loses them in the colorful multitude, and wonders if, between them, there is more than just a bond of friendship. Yet, as they say their goodbyes and the young stranger walks away, the mask of cheerful imperturbability that emerges on Dong-Eun's face reassures him: he is just another one of her victims, a white stone on the goban about to be removed.
It is late Sunday, and the park is swarming with people, especially the elderly who have gathered to compete in the game of Go. Yeo-Jeong is intent on analyzing the moves of a pair of opponents when someone bumps into his shoulder - and, before he even turns around, he knows to whom that low, scratchy voice belongs, apologizing. He's been eyeing her from afar, as she scans the faces in the crowd for his, and when he realizes Dong-Eun has found him, he gamely matches their stratagems.
Dong-Eun immediately recognizes him, and looks at him as if he were a puzzle to be solved; she apologizes one more time, and then, regardless of unnecessary pleasantries, asks him how he had discovered the university she attended. Yeo-Jeong feigns embarrassment, and rubs the base of the back of his neck with his hand.
«Well, I'm a trainee doctor, and when you escaped from the hospital without finishing your IV treatment... well, I had a little look at your medical records, and I noticed that the blood tests were not positive at all... I mean, did you know that you were suffering from anemia?»
Dong-Eun lifts the corners of her lips slightly at his rant. «I found out when I was seventeen. It would have been impossible not to.»
He does not retort - despite the thousands of questions crowding in his head - and tries to make her smile again: «And me risking a lawsuit to find you and bring you the prescription!»
He partially gets the desired result, but when she asks him if he has the promised prescription with him, Yeo-Jeong is struck by a sudden coughing fit, caught off guard. He opens his mouth to answer -how, he still doesn't know - but Dong-Eun must have realized that the medical report was merely an excuse to see her again, and deftly changes the subject, asking him instead if he knows how to play Go.
«Me? I'm among the best players in this city - I even made it to the final qualifiers two years ago.»
She stares at him with an absorbed expression, but the black irises appear washed out, as if the woman is lost in a distant memory and does not really see him.
«Why do you ask? Do you know how to play?»
She vigorously shakes her raven head. «No, I've only read a few theoretical manuals on different strategies, but... I'd like to learn. Do you know any clubs that provide courses that are not too expensive?»
Yeo-Jeong knows of numerous such clubs - one is even run by a longtime friend of his - but the frisson that runs through him at the thought of having a new opportunity to continue with Moon Dong-Eun makes him desist from telling the truth.
«Unfortunately, many associations have closed, and the ones that remain have really impossible schedules, especially for me who has to meet hospital shifts...»
He's lying, and Dong-Eun knows it - every detail already shrewdly calculated in her mind - yet she doesn't hint at exposing his white lie. «So, as an autodidact, how much do you think I would have to study to beat someone who is so good that they seem invincible?»
«Well, it depends on who you're trying to beat. You mean, like, Lee Se-Dol?»
She looks at him strangely, and a flash of panic cuts through her gaze, as if the thought of not having everything under control alarms her.
«Lee Se-Dol? Who would that be?»
Yeo-Jeong shakes his head in disbelief, and doesn't hesitate to seize the opportunity that Dong-Eun's torrid display of desire seems to offer him. «Let me teach you the art of Go. If you eventually succeed against me, then you will no longer have to fear any opponent.»
The young man is still unaware of how reassuring such words echo in Dong-Eun's mind - a support to cling to at the moment when life crumples in upon itself and spits out an impassable path from which one cannot escape.
The woman's gaze relaxes, and she turns the calloused palm of her right hand upwards, waiting for Yeo-Jeong's to clasp hers. «I have to prioritise the students I tutor, but I'm free after dinner. Is that a problem?»
He shakes his head without thinking about it - he would even cover the shifts of the most hated schedules if it meant not losing Dong-Eun.
For an entire year, they meet regularly to play Go - especially in the evenings or early afternoons, when neither of them are busy with work or university.
Go is a game of silent strategy, where one army dominates the other without ever reaching total annihilation, and Dong-Eun is fascinated by it - attracted by the possibility of defeating her enemy in a slow, quiet war that allows her to move unseen, in the rear, and rout her rivals from within.
Go is a metaphor for life - for Dong-Eun's life and revenge.
It is a battle she has been planning for a long time - even before she discovered and became passionate about Go: only one last piece seems to waver in the design of revenge, yet she is sure she has finally found it - in the game she is learning, and in the master who is preparing her.
They both learn more about each other, and about themselves, but the greatest secret of all still lingers beneath the surface: the time is not yet ripe enough to reveal something that conditions their every action, but the trust that gradually welds their relationship makes them hopeful.
One day, they both promise themselves, one day, I will reveal it.
From their position, sheltered under the great oak tree, they watch as the seasons gradually change - they see autumn lose its colours and decline into the icy winter, and the streets turn pink as the cherry trees blossom in early spring.
As summer arrives, Dong-Eun announces her departure: for Yeo-Jeong, it is as if the sun has suddenly stopped shining.
«When?» he asks her, his tongue struggling to articulate that dry question. «When are you leaving?»
She tilts her face to the side, and moves a black pawn diagonally.
«You'll know when I no longer show up for our lessons.»
For a moment, he looks at her expectantly, convinced she is taunting him - yet, he should know by now that Dong-Eun rarely jokes; eventually, he lets out a hysterical laugh. «You really enjoy talking in riddles, huh?» and moves one of his pawns vertically.
For a while, silence falls, broken only by the insistent croaking of cicadas and the rubbing of playing stones on the wood of the goban.
It is always he who speaks first - he who clashes with the impenetrable corolla of the lily of the night - and he does not care how desperate his question may sound: «Will you ever come back here?»
«My future is where my past lies.»
Yeo-Jeong doesn't know much, about her past, but it's not hard to guess that the memories of her adolescence are overshadowed by shady stories of violence. He gathered this from the scars covering part of Moon Dong-Eun's right arm - imprinted on her skin not by mistake, but to inflict pain -, the vacant eyes wide open to a hostile world, and the way she withdraws into herself - for those who have never known love do not know what it looks like, and fear to mistake it for further grudge.
«Does this mean you have finally found your worthy opponent?»
Dong-Eun peers at him seriously, and reclines her body against the back of the chair.
«Oh, but I had already found him. I just needed to match him, and outsmart him.»
«Well, you've only beaten me once, but since your opponent isn't Lee Se-Dol... I think you have victory in your grasp by now.»
For the first time since he met her, Dong-Eun laughs openly, and her pale face brightens under the warm light of the lanterns. «It's a relief to hear you say that. The moment I've been waiting for for years has finally come.»
The statement implied in those words pierces Yeo-Jeong's heart with the disarming arrogance of a javelin, yet he cannot help but ask for further confirmation.
«Does this mean... does this mean that our paths won't cross again?»
His voice wavers at the mere thought of losing her after finally finding her, and, in that instant, captivated by Dong-Eun's algid majesty, he longs for time to begin to flow more slowly - but time cares for nothing but itself, indifferent to the uroboros of human loss and achievement.
Time has no feeling.
Time does not wait.
«We have not yet reached our final destination.»
«And I can't go with you, can I?»
His bitter, self-contained realisation does not require another cryptic response to slow the beating of his heart, yet Dong-Eun, after a moment's silence, begins to speak again - the rusty voice scratching his soul with violent sounds.
«I am not looking for a prince, Yeo-Jeong, or a comrade. I need an executioner, who will join me in a merciless hunt - who will kill for me, and sacrifice for me, with me.»
The bewilderment catches him off guard, but only for an instant - for the edges of two frayed souls do not hesitate to bind together, to mend each other's wounds, find solace and pursue a draining revenge.
Yeo-Jeong is about to speak - he is ready to profess his unwavering loyalty, to swear his servitude, to promise her eternal alliance - but Dong-Eun raises a hand, nipping his response in the bud. She plays her last move on the goban, sanctioning a second victory, and finally utters words that have the flavour of a distant, but possible future - and that Yeo-Jeong will weave into the coating of his heart in the years to come, along with the ever-sharp memory of her.
«I don't need an immediate answer, not now. We will meet again, one day - and then, you will be the one to seek me out first.»
"And still the rest
hasn't happened yet."
A year passes, then another and finally another. For seven long years, Yeo-Jeong awaits the return of his Odysseus, never losing faith in that sentence that tastes like a promise made to him in the past.
We have not yet reached our final destination.
He waits for her, and searches for her every day with renewed vigour in the people crowding around the goban tables, in the diner where they used to dine from time to time before their lessons, in the streets that bear the signs of the changing seasons.
It is in a carriage of a train bound for Seoul that Yeo-Jeong meets her again, motionless in the middle of the corridor, as the first sun of summer bathes her in a cone of warm light. She hasn't changed much since their last meeting - she has shortened her silky hair into a bob, seems to have stood up a few inches, but she is wearing the same blouse as the day they met, and it is as if nothing has changed since she had sought him out and he had found her.
Dong-Eun scrutinises him for a time that seems to stretch into infinity, and when the whistle of the stationmaster announces the departure of the train, she awakens from her dreamy stupor and approaches him, with trembling steps, caught off guard by the unexpected turn her life has taken.
One is beaming at the other's gaze, both are sipping from their own breaths, and as the flurry of passengers bustle around them, it is as if the sand in the hourglass has begun to run backwards - and night walks along the Han River, the endless games of Go, her veiled request and his mute response come to mind.
Without being able to prevent it, Yeo-Jeong's hand moves automatically, and his fingers gently entwine around Dong-Eun's wrist - roots that anchor themselves in his own life force - and he pulls her lightly to him - because the fear of falling victim to an illusion deceives even the most rational mind.
Dong-Eun meekly indulges him, and then regains control, leading him to two vacant seats at the end of the carriage. They sit facing each other again, yet that distance pales miserably in comparison to the years that have separated them so far.
Silence falls between them like a blanket of snow - cushioning the pain and soothing the wounds in their souls - but neither of them hints at breaking it. In this uninterrupted game of glances, the seconds stretch endlessly and slowly turn into minutes, which run slowly together with the hands of a clock - but this is not enough for Yeo-Jeong: he would like time to crystallise completely, and for them to be able to stay like this for a long time - with the sun invading the carriage, and the specks of light dancing before their eyes - yet he is certain that even this would not satisfy him, not completely.
It is the dark side of desires - always claiming more once one knows the satisfaction that comes from fulfilling them.
A myriad of questions crowds his mind, yet his voice is lacking: he is eager to learn every last detail about Dong-Eun's life since they parted, to know if she has managed to graduate, if she has found someone to spend the rest of her days with - and, most of all, if she has finally fulfilled her revenge.
As if guessing her thoughts - she was always good at that - Dong-Eun anticipates his questions, alternating them with interrogatives that satisfy his latent curiosity.
And so, Yeo-Jeong learns that the woman has obtained a teaching post at Semyeong Elementary School, where she has recently moved, and he can't help but ask her if this is part of the dense plots of her vengeful plan.
For a moment, her breath catches and she seems about to lie, but in the end she simply looks away.
«Until now, I have lived every day of my life as a function of my revenge: there is nothing I have done that is not part of my plan.»
The implication contained in those words sinks into Yeo-Jeong like the sharpest of blades: he knows, he has always known, that he is a mere Bishop on the chessboard at the Queen's service, a white stone on the meticulously assessed goban - but the reckoning is still far away, and Yeo-Jeong swallows those doubts that gradually turn into certainties.
Dong-Eun scrutinises him for a grimace of disdain or disgust, yet Yeo-Jeong shows her an imperturbability that, on the one hand, intimidates her, but on the other, pleases her.
She has made the right choice, she congratulates herself, and is sure that he will soon make one too.
«What about you?» urges Dong-Eun. «What brings you to Semyeong?»
«I got my license in plastic surgery,» Yeo-Jeong replies, with pride shining in his bright eyes, «so I decided to leave Joo General and open my own clinic.» He avoids specifying the reason for such a choice - changing environment after what had happened to his father, escaping the constant harassment of letters from prison, keeping a promise he made - however, Dong-Eun does not insist further.
His is a half-truth, but it is lost as quickly as a trickle of water in the river of lies, secrets and innuendoes flowing between them.
«I have just completed the deed to my new flat, a few blocks from the clinic. Part of it is to be renovated, and I still have to finish furnishing it, but...» Yeo-Jeong closes his eyes, and thinks back to the light filtering through the huge living room windows, the small garden where he already dreams of growing an orchard, the spacious kitchen that will allow him to give vent to his culinary passion. «I already feel at home.»
Dong-Eun, too, had, years earlier, bought a flat - a single room with dark cloth-covered windows overlooking the residence of Park Yeon-Jin and her family, with a leaky ceiling and four walls that guard all her sacrifices and deprivations, welcoming the bowels of her plan. Yet, she too lies, partially, and says she has temporarily settled in her mother's house - that same denatured mother who had indulged her drunken habit with her daughter's violated body.
«Next week, I will open my new clinic - some of my colleagues and friends will be there, as well as my mother,» Yeo-Jeong resumes. «I would be very pleased if you would come too.»
Dong-Eun does not answer immediately, merely reclining her head slightly, but he is in no hurry to know her answer: he has been waiting for her for years, and now that he has finally found her, he intends to enjoy even her every silence.
At last, the woman moves her head in assent, and Yeo-Jeong cannot hold back a smile that only partly reveals the immense exhilaration that pervades every recess of his body. With trembling hands, he pulls out a small sheet of paper and a pencil from his black leather briefcase, and writes on it the address where to introduce himself, followed by a series of numbers.
«This is where I live, and it overlooks the clinic right across the street. I'll expect you next week, but I'd appreciate it if you came to see me even earlier, no obligation. 3724 is the code for my flat. For you, it will always be available.»
Dong-Eun accepts the note, and then, before he can detain her any longer, she disappears into the next carriage.
Yeo-Jeong is not at all convinced that she will show up at the clinic opening, yet in his heart, he knows this is not a final farewell.
In the intimate circle of people who have come to wish him a successful future in his new clinic, Dong-Eun's face does not appear. Yeo-Jeong is not surprised - in fact, he would have been astonished at the opposite - but the faint note of disappointment that matches the beats of his heart immediately gives way to a pervasive sense of contentment.
On the access staircase, a simple terracotta vase holds a pair of datura flowers, whose corollas - milky and golden in colour - turn one towards the Heavens, the other towards the Underworld. They are the Devil's and Angel's Trumpets, filling Moon Dong-Eun's absence with their harsh, intoxicating perfume.
A thin autumn rain is drumming on the large windows of the living room, and Yeo-Jeong watches those slender drops line the windows. It is late in the evening, and the boy, sinking into the soft cushions of the sofa, feels the weight of fatigue beginning to numb him. It's a busy time for him, between the opening of the new clinic, the looming need to hire new trusted staff, the increasingly urgent need to face his demons once and for all, and... the return of Moon Dong-Eun.
Since that fateful meeting on the train, she has not contacted him, except for the floral tribute sent to him on the day of the clinic's opening - yet Yeo-Jeong is hopeful. That hasty farewell, that dismissal so quickly of seven years of separation and their unexpected reunion, holds the taste of temporariness - a note left hanging on the stave that is slow to fade.
On his soul, there still hangs that unspoken answer that he kept for that infinite time, and which Dong-Eun keeps putting off hearing - something Yeo-Jeong cannot explain. As a doctor, he had become accustomed to interpreting a patient's body language - their eyes darting from one side of the surgery to the other if he is lying, the uncontrolled twitching of their fingers if they are hiding a pain they do not want to talk about - yet Dong-Eun is... different. It is a goban without blind spots, a chessboard without squares; it is a mask that never changes its features, that does not allow one to anticipate its moves. Yeo-Jeong wonders who has reduced her like this - what outrages and violence the world has reserved for her to freeze her soul like this.
A firm knock on the door wakes him from his unanswered musings, immediately replaced by perplexity as to who would want to meet him at such a late hour.
Standing in the doorway, her hair wet and her crumpled coat stained with what looks like motor oil, is Dong-Eun: she must have been crying, because her eyes are swollen and shiny - not even the thin blanket of rain covering it can hide it - and with her hands she hugs her own shoulders, mimicking a butterfly with broken wings. Yeo-Jeong looks at her with a grip on his heart that won't loosen, and without asking for any explanation, steps aside to let her pass.
«I...» stammers Dong-Eun, «I didn't know where else to go.»
Yeo-Jeong struggles to hide the feeling of pride that invests him at those words - for, of all the options available, Dong-Eun has chosen the abode of a partial stranger - and merely makes his way into the dimly-lit living room.
«Wait here, I'll go get something to dry you off with.»
He returns shortly afterwards with a couple of towels and a thin blanket, which he does not hesitate to wrap around the woman's shoulders. A silent pause falls between the two, as Dong-Eun accepts the invitation to sit on the sofa, dabbing at her soaking hair, and Yeo-Jeong revives the flame in the small fireplace adjacent to the kitchen counter. Curiosity makes him impatient, frantic in his usually thoughtful gestures, yet he restrains himself from asking too many questions, for fear of only achieving an accusatory silence.
«I had a panic attack.» Once again, it is Dong-Eun who takes the lead, but Yeo-Jeong is surprised at the vulnerability that shines through her words. «I hadn't experienced one since the end of school, and I had forgotten about the dizzy feeling that comes over you, and how everything seems to lose its balance...» A hand runs to clutch her throat, as if to protect her from an invisible enemy. «I couldn't breathe, even think about breathing, and... I had to flee, flee far away.»
It is the same feeling that has gripped Yeo-Jeong since that fateful day - when his father's blood had been brutally tapped and his enemy had settled in his mind. While Dong-Eun had run away from those who had hurt her, Yeo-Jeong had always tried to escape from himself.
The sense of abandonment he reads in Dong-Eun's eyes has the same appearance as his own, so much so that it pains him, but he cannot help but press her - because the desire to know her completely, to enter into total communion with her thoughts, burns hotly in his gut.
«What has brought you here?»
The answer is not long in coming; but it is a dry answer, undermined by the inflexibility of her voice, and, were it not for the woman's hand hesitantly reaching for his, Yeo-Jeong would never have believed her sincerity.
«I needed to feel at home.»
«Home?» he snorts in disbelief. «You consider a stranger's home yours?»
Dong-Eun sketches a smile, shaking her head at what she considers childish naivety.
«You are not a stranger to me, Yeo-Jeong. You have been my lifeline for a long, long time - even when our paths parted. When I myself,» she adds, bowing her head in regret, «drifted away.»
The bitterness and sense of betrayal that Yeo-Jeong had felt after Dong-Eun's departure resurfaced, and he found himself catapulted back into those endless nights of a summer seven years earlier, when the anger at being erased from her future, as if he had never been part of her present, consumed him endlessly, overcoming the calmness that usually characterised him. He had helped her every chance he could, he had granted her every request - yet, that had not been enough to allow him to remain by her side. Dong-Eun's stoicity blew like the icy North Winds, rippling through the placid waters of the lake of imperturbability in which Yeo-Jeong lived immersed, muddying them - and bringing, nevertheless, a calm stillness after the storm.
«Why?» exhales Yeo-Jeong, exhausted by the memories that come back to haunt him, «why did you leave?»
Dong-Eun does not meet his gaze, not yet, but merely contracts her shoulders, hugging them with trembling hands as a butterfly does when, betraying its own nature, it attempts to return to the secure grip of its chrysalis.
«To arrange my revenge,» the woman concludes. «And now I have returned, to fulfill it.»
«If you ever abandon me again,» Yeo-Jeong titters, «promise me that you will do so out of love, and not vengeance.»
Dong-Eun continues to stare at him, but does not utter a word - leaving him in a limbo of uncertainty, without any denial or reassurance.
«I have made so many promises, and received equally so many, that I no longer know what value to assign to them,» she confesses cheerfully. «I can weigh the measure of my vengeance, predict the consequences I will face, calibrate the resentment that lives in me... I know the power of an oath, but not the faith of a promise.»
How could a little girl's little body be consumed by such lividity? Yeo-Jeong wonders, bewildered after that unexpected statement, but the woman can read the puzzlement manifested on his face, and anticipates each of his questions.
«Sometimes, hatred resembles desire. There are desires so strong that they can push even those with broken wings far away.»
«You're on the edge of an abyss, Dong-Eun, but you can still pull back,» Yeo-Jeong implores her, clasping her hands tightly, as if afraid to see her fade at that exhortation. «Do it, before it's too late.»
Dong-Eun indulges in a dry, bitter laugh. «I have already crossed all limits. Now, it is time for me to shine in all my glory - to claim what has been ripped from me long ago.»
The contemptuous determination of those words intimidates him, and yet, a strange feeling of agnition prevents Yeo-Jeong from flinching - it's the same chant he repeats to his unseen rival, the same eager yearning to spill the guilty blood and purify the innocent, the same violent impulse that, as time passes, he struggles to keep hidden.
«Let it go, Dong-Eun. Let go of your past, forget your tormentors, let your wounds sprout,» he fervently pleads her, perhaps addressing that warning to himself, but the ardour shining fiercely in her face makes him falter, and Yeo-Jeong is afraid of losing that long-held control. «Only then can you regain your life.»
Dong-Eun abruptly stands up, breaking eye contact, and exclaims, betrayed: «Forget? How can I forget the humiliation I suffered, the nauseating smell of my flesh being burnt, the despair I was prey to? I grew up in the indifference of adults, in the cruelty of my peers: how can you be so naive as to ask me to forget everything?»
«You must heal, Dong-Eun, and move on. They have already done so, long ago.»
«They may have forgotten my body, my name, the violence they inflicted on me - but I will not make the same mistake as them.»
With her chest heaving, Dong-Eun tugs at the sleeve of her still damp jacket and brings her left arm close to Yeo-Jeong's stunned face.
«There they are, my scars. I've always been ashamed of them, so ashamed that I've tried everything to get rid of them - in vain,» she says, as Yeo-Jeong stares in horror at the web of scars, scrapes and burns that articulates along her arm, and disappears beneath the pale fabric. «Can you treat them, Yeo-Jeong? Can you erase these scars?»
He doesn't reply, because that intimate, recondite trauma, exposed with such blind rage, has paralysed him with shame. Dong-Eun notices this, and smiles deviously, as if the sight of his discomfort appeases her.
«After seeing what they did to me, do you still want to ask me to stop?»
A lone tear furrows Yeo-Jeong's pale face, and she merely tilts her head, curious. «How can you be so upset after seeing only one arm?»
A sliver of moonlight slices through Dong-Eun's frail body as she strides towards the centre of the room, leaving a trail of abandoned clothes on the floor - her damp jacket, her pitch-stained shirt, her crumpled trousers. As if on a pedestal, she exhibits her vexed skin to the moon's white caress and Yeo-Jeong's troubled gaze - her back lashed, her thighs pockmarked with burns, her arms with barely healed wounds.
«Was it them?» he asks, his gaze fixed on her naked and vulnerable body. «Did those bastards do this to you?»
Slowly, Dong-Eun rolls her face, and sentences resignedly: «I have no dignity left, except to remain true to my wrath and vengeance. Do you want me to be deprived of even this last, mere, satisfaction?»
Yeo-Jeong strides slowly behind her, and the icy beam of light that invests him emphasises the gory rush that, with no more restraint, stuns him with its intoxicating temptation.
«Let me be your executioner, your secret weapon to exploit - let my hands be the ones to stain with blood, and my eyes to witness such horrors.»
With one hand, he impalpably touches the uneven evidence of Dong-Eun's shady past, and murmurs to her the value a promise can hold.
«I will serve you until the very end - I will join the dance of swords. But now tell me: who shall I kill first?»
"Between the wars we'll stay,
Fading echoes spin away"
War rages between them - a raging war, decimating one by one the soldiers left on the battlefield - but the alliance pact that unites them grows ever stronger.
Every weapon is permissible in this battle, and neither is willing to back down - not even when the web of lies that first intertwined their destinies unravels, and the understood but always unspoken truths threaten to separate them.
Until, suddenly, the storm ceases, and the tumultuous waves gently recede from the shoreline.
Years of torment, resentment and rancorous frenzy come to an end on a banal mid-winter evening: the snow that has fallen to the ground preserves the dismayed faces of Yeon-Jin and her accomplices, and welcomes - like a white, anonymous grave - the perverse blood of sinners.
At last, Dong-Eun has obtained the longed-for glory, the justice she has always sought, the fierce sense of victory at the sight of her enemy's defeat; yet, it does not seem to be enough for her.
Yeo-Jeong can read it, that ravenous fairy gaze, that restlessness that prevents her mind and soul from resting, that hunger for death and destruction destined to remain unquenched.
Avenging her past has not helped her heal it, and Yeo-Jeong feels powerless in the face of the abyss of self-destruction into which she threatens to ruin; above all, he fears that the promise she made to him months ago may be broken.
As February dawns, Yeo-Jeong invites Dong-Eun to watch the winter sunset on the Sodolhang Harbor pier. It is the week of the thickest snowfall of the season, but the sense of contentment that unites the two seems to almost banish the frost.
The initial intention is to confront Dong-Eun about what the future - their future - has to offer; however, once they sit at the far end of the dock, Yeo-Jeong is the first to fall into a mild, pacifying silence as they watch, shoulder to shoulder, the snowflakes settling on the sea surface.
Ever since Yeo-Jeong had promised to help her in her vengeance, they had never uttered a word about the extent of what they were accomplishing - perhaps for fear of tearing the reverential veil separating reason from raw emotion; both had limited themselves to advancing their own stone on the goban of life, to sharing the same house and some meals as a sign of affection, to being each other's refuge in the most difficult moments to bear.
Not even after the end of the belligerent games had they dared broach the subject: the void left by the punishment of distant sins was too recent to be filled so abruptly, and Dong-Eun herself seemed unable to cross the ford that separated her from the beginning of a new life - in which she would be able to accomplish her plans without being suffocated by the ghosts of the past.
Yeo-Jeong is tempted to incite her to confess the indecision that is holding her back from going ahead, taking advantage of the quietness that maternally envelops them, but just then Dong-Eun hastily finishes the last of the cans of beer they bought on the trip, and turns to peer at him in tacit request. Yeo-Jeong struggles to suppress a smile, sensing that behind that childish strategy lies an attempt to delay the dreaded confrontation, and sets off along the wooden shelter in the direction of the booth by the beach.
The disc of the sun has half disappeared over the horizon, and just for a moment Yeo-Jeong slows his steps and turns back, gazing at Dong-Eun's figure silhouetted, dusky against the explosion of crimson and apricot tinting the stinging sky. There is a note of nostalgia mixed with longing in the way the woman points her gaze at the dying sun, the way she caresses her scarred arms and bows her head as if in the throes of a torn choice - but Yeo-Jeong decides, for the moment, to ignore her, and instead focus on that moment of happiness they are sharing.
When he reaches the booth, the first stars have already appeared among the indigo trails of the firmament; as soon as night falls, Dong-Eun vanishes into darkness - a shadow among shadows, a vacuous ghost retracing the footsteps of the past.
The last message she leaves him is a belial of a denial she assured him of long ago, a dry statement that leaves no room for reply or clarification - only disbelief and the weight of an unexpected betrayal resting on his heart.
«We have reached our final destination.»
On the other end of the phone, the woman's voice appears distant - a hoarse echo that fades along with the daylight.
«What... what are you saying?»
The brief pause that follows deludes him into thinking that what he has just heard might be the result of his own misinterpretation, the aftermath of a disfigured memory - but in vain.
«It's over, Yeo-Jeong. This is goodbye.»
«No, no, no... Dong-Eun? Moon Dong-Eun!»
There is no response to that desperate plea, and Yeo-Jeong can do nothing but rush back to the base of the lighthouse, as panic and despair overlap and mingle with frantic breathing - as if his quick reaction could prevent Dong-Eun's evanescence.
By the time he reaches the end of the pier, there is no one waiting for him - just the desolation of a pile of ice and snow, and a couple of beer cans spilled, helpless, on the wooden planks.
"Lost in memories,
lost in memories"
In the first months after Dong-Eun's disappearance, as soon as he returns home after work - out of habit and inert utopia - Yeo-Jeong hastens to examine the goban placed in the corner of the living room: of the dense black and white weave of pawns that had occupied the wooden board that autumn, only his white stone now remains, abandoned in the centre of convergence of the game's intersections, bitterly reflecting the loneliness that devours him.
And yet, the hope of seeing the black stone that had devoured the goban in the previous game emerge is slow to fade.
He knows, Yeo-Jeong, that the chances of Dong-Eun's unexpected return - after the violence they have sown, the limits of human dignity they have transgressed - border on zero, but he cannot shake off a sense of incompleteness that prevents him from believing in their final separation.
He cannot grasp how years of research, months of cooperation, days of silences and confessions, could have vanished in a banal winter night, without warning, leaving no trace or value.
Yeo-Jeong won't, can't, resign himself to that abrupt leave-taking - he doesn't accept that the newly blossomed love has been severed so prematurely - but the more the current of time ebbs, the more the starvation of the veil of illusion tears at a painful, ashen reality.
A new cycle of seasons is about to turn, and Yeo-Jeong promises the deciduous leaves of early autumn to let go of the memory of Dong-Eun forever.
Gradually, though with difficulty, he stops looking for her in the crowds thronging the gates of the Semyeong school, waiting for her call or a simple message, dreaming of finding her shoes abandoned at the entrance or her playing stone on the goban.
The nights, spent in a half-empty and cold bed, are peopled by the phantoms of his past, cluttering his nightmares and feeding on his despair. The emptiness of apathy is a sweet temptation, and soon Yeo-Jeong retreats into the monotony of days that slip away aimlessly, entangled in work that, in the long run, ends up losing its appeal.
Even the provocative letters he keeps receiving from Seoul prison do not provoke any reaction in him: if before, the resentment of his father's unjust, and unjustified, death accumulated in the innermost recesses of his soul and used to lie there like a pulsing magma, with no possibility of escape, now it wedges itself aphonously between his slack limbs and slender bones, and the thirst for revenge seems to have dissipated.
His own vengeance, after Dong-Eun's totally corroding one, has lost all attraction.
At the dawn of winter, Yeo-Jeong closes down the clinic and prepares to move back to Seoul; by now, there is nothing keeping him in Semyeong except a house that is too big and too empty, and a drawer that holds regrets and hopes. Still, the moving boxes are only half-filled, and for the entire month of December they remain stacked in a dark corner of the living room without Yeo-Jeong finding the strength to empty what had once represented a safe nest of affection for him and Dong-Eun.
The winter holidays stretch on without any memorable events taking place; Yeo-Jeong greets the New Year with a spasmodic weight he cannot suppress - the thought that Dong-Eun has settled to the ground along with the January snowflakes.
Having no news of her is heartbreaking: he drags his days paralysed by the restlessness of obliviousness, and every day he keeps praying for a sign - a note on the doorstep, a missed call - that will reassure him of his safety.
As usual, Yeo-Jeong and Dong-Eun never mentioned the fragility of their mental health, made increasingly precarious by the violence and turmoil of the past that reverberated in their daily actions, in the obsessive thoughts that prevented them from sleeping at night, in the stasis into which, some days, they poured.
In all those years, Yeo-Jeong had never contemplated suicide, or at least, had not dwelt on it much - not even when the lack of a father figure and helplessness in the face of failed justice had made even the idea of breathing unbearable. On the contrary, Dong-Eun kept it in her mind as a constant - and somehow reassuring - thought.
In one of the usual endless sleepless nights, Dong-Eun had told him about the time when, shortly after dropping out of high school and being abandoned by her mother, she had tried to drown herself in the icy grip of the Han River; that time, she had desisted thanks to the instinct of human fellowship that had led her to renounce her own selfish interest and save an elderly woman on the verge of doing the same deed. All that time, as a teenager without a glimpse of the future turned into a woman completely corroded by the lust for vindication, she had clung to that pretext as a reminder to pursue her own glorious revenge; however, the idea of putting an end to that miserable and drab existence had never abandoned her.
And now that the only purpose for which she had lived - for which she had existed - until that moment has ceased, Yeo-Jeong fears that nothing can dissuade her from raising her hand on herself[1].
Another month passes, and Yeo-Jeong finally puts Semyeong's house up for sale, hoping that this impulsive act will help him put an end to the abject hesitancy that atrophies his every thought and action.
With no more clinic to run, his free time seems frighteningly limited, and Yeo-Jeong commits his days to even the most futile activities - as long as they prevent him from dwelling on the love he has lost and what might have happened if things had gone differently.
Almost every morning he goes to the small park near the Town Hall, and teaches young and old the game of Go - just as he had guided Dong-Eun through the maze of the goban and through the darkest seasons of her life - while, in the evenings, he gets lost in the meandering streets and lanes of Semyeong - as if to accompany the loss of his soul. Usually, he returns home after midnight, too dazed and tired from the laxity of the time spent to notice the empty chessboard and his lonely pawn, the bed only half unmade.
Yet one evening, as he settles his coat on one of the two chairs in the living room, he feels his breath instinctively catch before his dazed mind can process the image unfolded before his eyes.
In the centre of the board of Go, next to the usual white pawn, its black twin has resumed its place.
Yeo-Jeong crinkles his eyes, blaming excessive fatigue for the oversight, but once he opens them again, he notices that the stone is there again, as if everything had remained unchanged since the night of the abandonment. He staggers backwards, unsteady on his legs turned to jelly, as he tries to calm the furious beats of his heart - because Dong-Eun has returned.
Behind him, the keying of the flat's access code - whose unchangeability figures as another sign of his disillusioned hopes - heralds the longed-for arrival of his reaper - his mistress, his avenging goddess.
Dong-Eun appears in the doorway in all his algid stoicity, but to Yeo-Jeong's still disbelieving and almost sceptical eyes, the contours of her figure blur into a dreamlike atmosphere. He vacillates between the desire to hold his lost beloved in his arms and the fear of seeing her vanish again like mist between his fingers - and between them, the urge to punish her arises.
Instinctively, he takes a hesitant step in her direction, but quickly stops; those months of distance from each other have erected an invisible wall that leaves no room for the ease and intimacy of times past.
Dong-Eun senses his hesitancy, but does not hint at approaching: her pride continues to burn latently and Yeo-Jeong feels his irritation grow at her inability to admit her mistakes and ask for forgiveness.
Yet, the words Dong-Eun half-heartedly sighs are a balm to the wounds in his soul.
«I missed you. So much.»
Yeo-Jeong's heart trembles, but he does not give up from his position of coldness and distance. He would like to tell her that he missed her too - as desperately as the thirsty man misses water, as a prisoner misses his freedom, as a soldier misses his sword.
Instead, he pours out against her all his bitterness at her departure, his helplessness before her arbitrary decisions, his own disorientation in a life that, without her, has lost all value.
«Then why did you leave?» he questions her in a choked voice, in a futile attempt to hold back iridescent tears. «Why did you leave me here, to ruin in the abyss of my own personal hell?»
She looks at him with melancholy eyes, and extends a hand in the direction of his face, flicking her fingers through the air as if mimicking the act of caressing, albeit from a distance, the rosy cheek.
The terse explanation she gives him bears a note of hesitation, but Yeo-Jeong immediately recognises that statement - it is the first, tentative step in finally acknowledging the elusive allure of promises sworn to the keeper of one's heart.
«Perhaps I did it out love, and not revenge.»
When Dong-Eun kisses him, there is nothing tender about the way she draws him tightly to her, the way her cold hands claw the base of his neck, or the way emotion prevents their quivering bodies from separating.
With trembling fingers, Dong-Eun traces the outline of his lips, and Yeo-Jeong whispers against them: «I knew it right away, from the first moment I saw you, and all the time I spent teaching you Go: this woman will be my salvation.»
She does not reply to that assertion - there is no longer any need, now that their hearts beat in agreement - but merely entwines their hands at Yeo-Jeong's chest level - and promises to never let him go again, to be his eternal ally, dominate and dominate, just as he, long ago, had immolated himself for her cause.
«From now on, I will be your mentor in the art of revenge. I shall be Dike who brings order back into the world, I shall be Nemesis who grants eternal punishments - I shall be Aphrodite who quenches your warlike anxieties and grants you serene peace.
Then tell me - who shall I kill first?»