Chapter Text
You won’t
kill me
because I
will not
oblige you
by dying.
- Sarah Gambito
i.
“Everything is either from God or the Evil One,” Yoon told him, during one of those tentative days that populated the first month after, all shoulder-brushes and tear-edged smiles. Hwa Pyung had no time to feel pain, for Yoon added, “You are from God.”
(Hwa Pyung will never know if that is true.)
The neighbors did not want him to play with their children. Always, even if they did not say the words, he knew:
I am the boy with the devil in me.
Now, with the devil gone, he is powerless.
I spent my life running away. But what does it matter, whom I am from, if I cannot save her?
“She asked for time,” Yoon says, now. They are sharing a meal at Yoon’s home. Gil-young is absent, because she wishes to be. She might also be in danger, which is what has spoilt what little appetite Hwa Pyung had. Yoon explained about Gil-young’s directive, as gently and calmly as he could, before the food arrived.
For Yoon, gentleness and calm are more in the stiff way he holds himself than in his spirit; he always has a clear window for a face. Hwa Pyung can see his doubts.
“Time?” Hwa Pyung asks, and their priest—his and hers—answers,
“We have that, now.”
A beat of silence. “I will scold her.”
“Will you?”
“No.” Hwa Pyung pokes at his jjolmyeon with the darkest frown he can muster. Falling in love is damnably inconvenient, when one is supposed to live quietly (or not at all). “Who could?”
Yoon nods his dark head, and then, lifting a mouthful of noodles halfway to his lips, says, “I think, after all, you should go and find her.”
“Mwo?”
Yoon smiles one of his slight, grave smiles. “You keep telling me that you can no longer feel,” he says. “That you can no longer see with the second sight. But you are worried for her, because she is being worrying. Perhaps that is all the sight and warning that you need.”
“Perhaps you are right, dongsaeng.”
“Dongsaeng? Ya!”
Hwa Pyung reaches for his coat.
Gil-young is not hiding, as it turns out. She is holed up at her desk at the station, with pen-ink dappling her slim fingers and a set of open handcuffs serving as a paperweight. She tucks her lower lip between her teeth when she sees him.
“That priest does not keep his word for even a moment.”
“Did he give you his word?”
“Hwa Pyung, I need time. I need to think.”
“Do I impede your thinking?”
Now, she glares.
Hwa Pyung tucks his hands in his pockets. He shuffles his feet. (He is a fool like this.) His mouth is still spicy with the memory of the cold noodles; he left his meal unfinished.
(Sometimes, the water still closes over his head, and he is not certain what he will see when it opens again.)
(He is not certain that he will see anything.)
“The spirits are gone,” he says softly. “They are gone, Gil-young.”
Gil-young has put down her pen. “A-la.” Her voice tightens and softens at once. Stretches thin. That is it; she is stretched thin by memory, but for once, he must not turn away.
“I still see,” he says. “Not—not visions. Dreams, yes.”
“That is why you came back to Yeongju.”
“Nae.” He drags a hand along the back of his neck. Wishes, fervently and madly, that he could see her with two eyes. “I always see you.”
“Yun Hwa Pyung…”
“I cannot stop seeing you, or feeling the danger that moves around you. I am not asking you to tell me what it means. I—” His voice chokes off, but he regains it. He has lost (and regained) greater things than that. “Only let me be by your side.”
Gil-young’s lip twitch. Speech, or a smile? Or a grimace, because he has caused her pain? “It is not that simple,” she says. “We three protected each other, didn’t we? Hardly knowing what we did, hardly bearing what we lost.”
“Has that changed?”
“We were happier,” she says, “And now we must pay for that. I do not want to pay you, or Choi Yoon, as my price.”
“And I do not want to lose you.”
“Then why will you not give me my one day, to set things right? To think?”
“Because something is wrong!”
“Aish.” She rakes her fingers through her hair, so that the solitary pin holding the knot in place at the nape of her neck comes loose. Hwa Pyung reminds himself to breathe. “I know something is wrong, Hwa Pyung! I fought off a couple of thugs this morning, with that equally thug lawyer at my side!”
He does not want to ape Yoon’s scandalized gape, so he keeps his mouth shut. (Yoon would say the expression was Hwa Pyung’s, not his.) “Thugs?”
“They were in my house,” Gil-young snaps. “Staking out the place, until I came back. And then what? Is Park Hong crazy enough to finish me off? I think she is, Hwa Pyung. You would not give me a day, but here is what I have discovered: I think she is.”
(They both already knew it to be true.)
“What did the lawyer think?” He cannot believe is he is asking this.
Gil-young sighs. The fight has gone out of her for a moment; she seems endlessly tired, slumped over her paper-laden desk. “He picked a fight. We won. He left.”
“He left?”
“He had a lead of his own, but I—” She reaches for her phone, checking the time. “Shi-bal. I meant to follow him an hour ago.”
Hwa Pyung takes a leap, of sorts. Not the kind that ends in drowning—or perhaps, in a manner of dreaming, it does. “You are fortunate that I came, reminding you.”
“Wipe that smug grin off that face,” she says, grabbing her jacket, and her handcuffs, and, after a moment’s searching, her baton. “I should lock you in the holding cell.”
Instead, he is lucky enough to be granted the passenger seat, and the address typed into Gil-young’s phone.
“Who is Kang Byung-ho?”
“That punk lawyer’s lead.”
Hwa Pyung considers. “He fought with you?”
“He is not unskilled,” Gil-young admits. “I’ll give him that.”
She drives with both hands on the wheel, leaning forward, as if the road cannot be devoured soon enough. Hwa Pyung turns his head so that he can see her fully. She is as beautiful in profile as she in full-on. As brave when she is hurting as when she is at peace.
Kang Byung-ho’s house looks empty. It is empty. Hwa Pyung smells the blood before he sees it, because that is what one learns, with only one eye. To smell and to hear. To feel uneven ground, where something has either been buried or dragged.
He does not ask Gil-young—anything.
Hwa Pyung has seen brave Gil-young frightened enough times to know what it means, when the color drains from her face.
They look at each other, believing.
ii.
Jae-yi wakes up alone. There is wind all around; she cannot hear it, but she sees it in the way it sends a sea of shadowed branches trembling. The branches are silent because they are on the other side of glass.
She is in a strange room, and her head aches. She is bound to a chair, and her head aches.
She is bound to a chair.
Jae-yi is not one for screaming, for being wild and foolish, but she does struggle, in this first dizzy moment of realization. She wrenches her body outward, but it comes to nothing. The thin, cruel cables snake around her chest, inexorable. They fasten her ankles together, and her wrists to her knees, which are, in turn, pinned to the seat.
Breathe deeply, she tells herself, and perhaps she is wild, for she tries to hear the words in Sang Pil’s voice. Breathe deeply, Jae-ya. He would know what to do, oh, he would—and no doubt he would be halfway free now, having bitten through some of his bonds, making short work of the rest.
Where to begin? She does not know where she is, but she sees the gleaming supports that frame the windows. The vaulted ceiling.
This is a fine room, though cold. This is the domain of someone wealthy. She thinks, not for the first time, of Judge Cha.
Judge Cha, dead to Jae-yi—
Here, death rises, and takes on the face of
Park Hong Joo.
And as if summoned, the door opens, and the woman (whom Jae-yi has never met) enters on cat-soft feet.
There is a second chair, facing Jae-yi’s, and Park Hong Joo folds her fingers over the back of it. Her unvarnished nails tap the curved metal. She does speak for a long moment, and she does not blink.
Jae-yi never liked cats, before she married Sang Pil and saw the feline grace of him, his secretive delight at being gently touched. As a girl, she only knew the creatures for their mysterious cruelties; their habit of playing with their food.
She is the food, the prey, and to speak will be but another move in the game, if she does not speak rightly.
Park Hong Joo smiles, and drums her nails, and Jae-yi’s head is swarming with a hundred bee-stings, her neck and shoulders dampened by sweat.
(Why is there a second chair?)
“Do you pray, Ha Jae-yi?” Park Hong Joo says. She blinks swiftly, and continues to smile, and her voice trembles a little.
Jae-yi flexes her fingers. She is only glad that they did not cross the cables lower than her chest. She fears that that would—
“To pray gija and byolgo in one year.” Park Hong Joo lifts her thumb, one. “To bury and baptize at once. What bad fortune.”
Breathe deeply, Jae-ya.
She knows. She knows.
(The tiny life, the gold-stitched love. Sang Pil, worshiping her body and not yet knowing, crying as he kisses her, sleeping in her arms, someday you will be a father, perhaps, and you will do everything right—)
Jae-yi bites the insides of her cheeks, her tongue. Feels a sickness in her belly that is not the same as before.
“I will not tear you open unless I have to,” the woman says, and then she turns her back and directs her steps to the windows. “You may die with the little thing still inside you, if you are of any help.”
“Why are you doing this?” Jae-yi asks, and her voice does not shake because she had to live alone for so long, because she knows a thing or two about keeping her fear inside. “Why? I do not know you.”
She can’t bear to have a challenger…
Park Hong Joo tips a backwards smile over her shoulder, and calls, “Bring him in.”
Jae-yi, to keep from screaming, bites hard enough to draw blood.
(Fear is only something surmounted when it is for the self.)
They have stripped off his jacket, and the white shirt beneath is streaked with dirt. He is child-frail, slumped between two men, his knees dragging low to the ground. They force him into the chair opposite Jae-yi, and since he has no mastery of himself, his head lolls forward. One of the men drags it back by seizing a rough handful of hair. The other makes use of the same cables that restrain Jae-yi. Her own hands are tender at the wrists, numb at the fingers.
They bind Sang Pil even more fiercely than they have her; the cables bite at his waist as well as his chest, and they fasten his wrists to the arms of the chair.
When it is finished, they let his chin drop to his chest. There does not seem to be any blood on his face. He is not—he is not conscious.
Jae-yi remains mute, through all of this. Keeping silent—keeping from waking him—is the last kindness she can do him, even as tears crawl down her cheeks.
“I do not know you,” Park Hong Joo says, “But I shall know both of you, together.”
She crooks a finger and one of the men steps forward.
“Wake him.”
A white cloth is pressed over Sang Pil’s mouth. His eyes flare open, wide and afraid.
Jae-yi herself is terrified, but she does not like to see him afraid. He coughs, he gasps, he—goes still. There is a moment where, because of the horror and not despite it, they two are all alone in the room.
“Yes,” Park Hong Joo purrs. “Your wife is here.”
Sang Pil swears viciously. He calls Park Hong Joo a number of names that Jae-yi does not think she ever heard even in Gisung, and he only falls silent when Park Hong Joo lays the keen edge of a knife-blade against Jae-yi’s throat.
“Bong Sang Pil,” Park Hong Joo’s voice may rise and fall, but her hand is steady. “Here is the body you asked me for.”
His cheeks are drained of color. Jae-yi does not think that even looking into his eyes can give him—can give him any comfort.
(Sometimes he sleeps with his head tucked almost against her ribs, curling away from the world. She holds him close, those nights. Protecting him, as he protects her.)
Sang Pil, she mouths. He does not respond. His gaze seems to pierce through her.
“What do you want?” he asks, a rough-scraped whisper.
Park Hong Joo laughs, too long. When she catches her breath, she says, “I do not want anything, but for you to understand.”
Jae-yi winces. The knife has nicked the tender skin beneath her ear.
“Don’t touch her,” Sang Pil rasps. “Don’t—”
“Would you rather it be you?”
His mouth twists. “Nae.”
“Very well,” Park Hong Joo says, and over the thunder-hum of her pulse, Jae-yi thinks the monster is satisfied. “You choose the knife?”
“I told you I did.”
The wind seems to have found its way into the room.
One of the thugs beside him steps forward. Park Hong Joo does not move from Jae-yi’s side, but she says, “Bind his leg, so that he does not bleed too quickly.”
The man hunts about for another length of cable. He cinches it around Sang Pil’s thigh. Park Hong Joo takes the blade from Jae-yi’s throat at last and crosses the floor between the two chairs. She switches the knife between one hand and the other, and then, striking swift, she sinks it to the hilt above Sang Pil’s knee.
Jae-yi feels, rather than hears, the scream leaving her throat.
Sang Pil makes a sound that seems to come from deep in his chest, but that does not pass his ashen lips. That is all. Park Hong Joo pulls the knife free with a sick sucking sound.
“Again?” she asks, very softly.
Sang Pil does not answer.
“In Sik,” she snaps. “Cut off one of her ears.”
“Wait.” Through his teeth.
Jae-yi sets her own teeth against her tongue. The hulking man who caught Sang Pil by the hair has his eyes trained on her, and is digging at his belt for a knife.
“Again?” Park Hong Joo asks sweetly.
Sang Pil does not look at her—does not look at anyone—but he nods.
Park Hong Joo buries it beside the first wound. No sound, this time. Jae-yi swallows her sob. She hates herself for—for what, exactly? Holding his love? Following him and leading him by turns? Promising that something waited for them here, worth finding?
“You choose,” Park Hong Joo says, breathlessly, “Over and over.”
“Only because you call this a choice,” Sang Pil mutters, tipping his head forward. She stands far enough back that he could not reach her, even to nudge her with his forehead.
The dark blood staining his leg spreads quickly. Too quickly.
“Like me, you do not like to be forced into weakness. Into choices that are men’s choices, pitiful and small.” Park Hong Joo gashes him savagely, higher this time. “It is not much like a choice, to be cornered. It does not feel like freedom, to be bartering in your own blood.”
When she withdraws the blade, twisting it sharply, Jae-yi can bear it no longer.
“Stop,” she says. “Stop. Please, you—”
“Ah, but I cannot be reasoned with.” The woman smiles, wide enough to break open her narrow face, and cleans the blade in Sang Pil’s hair. He does not resist. “You came here with your husband, your heart, and that new life in your belly. We have been watching, Ha Jae-yi. We knew as soon as you did.”
Sang Pil shudders. Jae-yi’s resolve betrays her and she weeps, not meeting his eyes.
“I see,” Park Hong Joo says, dragging the blade deep against Sang Pil’s left shoulder. He flinches, and stifles a cry, because he has forgotten himself. How could he not—how could he—
Park Hong Joo finishes, in a voice as steady as her hands have been, “She did not tell you, did she? Your little wife.”