Chapter Text
Hanyang, a year before Lee Yeong’s coronation.
The babies proved to be a problem.
“They’re children,” Lee Yeong said. Everyone in Teacher Da San’s little front room knew him well enough to hear the unspoken qualifier, the thing that stemmed from his abundant tenderness for the small, the fragile, for those who needed him: my children. “They’ve done nothing to merit exile from their birthplace.”
“The Department of Justice is unbending on the subject,” Teacher Da San said. “It’s taken a lot for them to heed your Highness's advice to show clemency to Kim Yoon-seong, and to the Kim household’s staff. The recommendation is quite plain. No one from the family is to be accommodated within the bounds of Hanyang for ten years.”
Yeong snorted. “They showed Yoon-seong clemency because he’s too dangerous to be let out of sight,” he said, then frowned. “It’s probably for the best.”
“A talented young man,” Teacher Da San agreed. He turned to Byeong-yeon. “Has he said anything to you about his future plans?”
“The court ordered him to the family estate in Incheon,” Byeong-yeon spoke up. He’d been at the infirmary every day since Yoon-seong’s last, lethal fight. “He’s walking unaided now, and plans to move once he’s settled all his grandfather’s household staff.” He cleared his throat before speaking again. “He’s taking his nephew with him –– the baby boy.” The prince that wasn’t.
“There’s no reason for that child to leave the palace!” Yeong protested.
“It’s Master Yoon-seong or the temple orphanage,” Teacher Da San said in his mild, implacable way. “The investigation into his paternity strongly suggests he is Kim Geun-gyo’s child.” A scowl crossed Yeong’s face. Evidence of the former Minister of Justice’s misdeeds continued to mount well after his execution. For a senior official to importune a palace attendant, upon whom only the king might show favour, was one of the pettiest abuses of power: pettiest, and most disgusting.
“What a stroke of luck for that little baby,” Sam-nom said, softly. She’d been quiet ever since she received her freedom, like some hurt, hidden creature facing its first ray of sunlight. “He had no one in the world, not even when the que––when Lady Kim was pretending he was hers. Now he and Master Kim will have each other.”
Even in his temper, Yeong stalked back to the empty spot next to her and sat down to take her hand. He almost smiled, helpless before her; then he shook his head and scowled again. “Well, he certainly can’t take the little girl. She’s my father’s blood.”
“He left her with her mother’s mother, at a gibang. Perhaps he will do so again.”
Yeong shook his head. “I won’t have her brought up by strangers.”
“His Majesty’s will opposes yours,” Teacher Da San repeated. The king, still recovering from the shock of the queen’s betrayal and the upheavals of Yeong’s actions, had spared no effort in prosecuting the case against the Kims. There was a streak of cruelty in the Lee kings, though Yeong’s usually surfaced in reaction to some unbearable force, and his Majesty's, unfortunately, only in its absence. In the face of the criminal revelations about his prime minister, his high council and his wife, he could not find mercy in his heart for the tiny daughter he had only learned of recently; her very existence was a reminder of the great deception that kept him fettered so long.
“I’ll think of something,” Yeong said.
“You’re thinking of something,” Madame Jiang-ti said, pushing herself up and off him, her glorious face sheened over with sweat. Her hair, unbound, swept over their bodies like a cooling shadow.
Unlike Yoon-seong, who only visited courtesans to make their portraits, Byeong-yeon had no scruples against having sex for the fun of it. It was the only good secret he’d been able to keep in his double life. Jiang-ti was a powerful, experienced professional; her senior position in the gisaeng district had made her a valuable source of intelligence for the Baekwoon rebels, and the grace and discretion of her manners had provided her perfect cover. He’d been awed to be noticed by her, and quite gratefully fallen into bed with her, happy to be her occasional favourite when she crooked a finger at him.
There’d been no effusive welcome when he turned up today, for the first time after his long convalescence. But she’d cancelled her appointments for the day, and put him in a bath clouded with something soothing and scented. Then she'd towelled him off and sucked his cock for an incredible welcome-back present. That was before he went down on her until her thighs buckled around him and she came, whimpering. She’d climbed on him afterwards and they’d fucked for what felt like hours, in a lazy roll of hips and drifting kisses; he’d licked and kissed her beautiful breasts until he was breathless. Shivering, he let her bear down on him as some nameless tension unfurled and imploded at his core. Hot, wet, she clenched and fluttered around him; she moaned in his ear, and he laughed in delight, coming hard, emptied out and flooded with nerve-sparking pleasure.
“Sorry,” he answered her now, still feeling dazed and vulnerable, as he raised a hand to trace a damp curl clinging to her forehead. “‘m thinking about children.”
It wasn’t until she raised an immaculately sketched brow that he realised how it sounded to say that to a woman inside whom he’d just finished, while tenderly caressing her hair. “No, not like that.”
“I should think not,” she said, and rose and proceeded to her washstand, where she crouched and performed certain ablutions that Byeong-yeon guessed helped put off the likelihood of the outcome. “My dear, this isn’t going to be very amusing if you want to play house.”
“I daren’t aspire to it,” he said, and he really didn’t; he was all too conscious of the honour of her regard.
She looked over her shoulder at him, wry. “It’s hardly your style.”
He stretched out on her silk mattress and watched as she put on her under-robe, and gathered her hair into a low knot. “There was an infant, a girl, who was sent over to one of these houses a few months ago,” he said, the cloud still clearing from his mind.
“Right,” she said, “Madame Il-hwa's granddaughter,” and laughed at his surprise. “We keep our patrons' secrets, not each others'. I knew Kim Heon's daughter when she was a spotty little snob from the next lane over.”
“You didn't tell me that,” he frowned.
“You didn’t ask,” she said. “Anyway, passing around women's secrets isn't your style either.”
“What would happen to her if she came back to her grandmother's house?” he asked her. “The little girl.”
“What happens to most little girls who come to these parts, probably,” she said. “Are you feeling sentimental about it?”
“I guess she might grow up to be like you,” he said, sitting up, and realised instantly that it was the wrong thing to say, but finished his thought anyway: “––accomplished, and independent, and admired.”
Jiang-ti sat down at her desk.
“I was a child when a man first had me,” she said, and she was so serene, so in command of her circumstances, that it took him a minute to feel the cold dread of her words touch him. “I have no respect for private life. I would rather die than be pillaged in marriage of the services I now choose to transact. But I might have been spared that, had my mother been able to keep me a while longer.
“Or not,” she said, looking at his face, which he tried to wipe of any emotion that might seem degrading to her. “Cheer up, I'm sure she'll be well looked after. Madame Il-hwa's smart with money, though I don't think much of her taste in patrons.”
“What if she came to your house? The baby,” he asked, but he could see she was losing her patience with him. “Your confidence is touching,” she said, “but when I want a long-term investment, I buy land; and I make sure it isn’t in the shadow of his Majesty's court.” She turned away and pulled a brush and paper towards her; it was as good as a dismissal. He got up, his body still humming from their encounter, and pulled his clothes on.
“That new scar on your torso is very dashing,” she said, when he bowed farewell. “But do try and refrain from acquiring another one too soon.”
He understood it was meant in apology for her brusqueness, and it made him like her more. “I’ll try,” he said, and kissed her.
But of course, that was when he went back to see Yeong, and found himself in the middle of another firefight.
“Help! Hel––Officer Kim, intruders, in the attendants’ halls!” Eunuch Park rounded the corner, yelling.
For a beat, Byeong-yeon was distracted. He was on his way out of the palace grounds after seeing his Highness off in the direction of the East Palace. The evening had been one in a lengthening stretch of meetings with Yeong filled with a new awkwardness, and a new intensity. He had shown his whole self to Yeong on the night he’d fallen in the courtyard, and Yeong to him.
-I’ll lose you if you lower your sword.
-I apologise, Highness.
-Don’t do it!
-You trusted me. Thank you.
Neither of them, it seemed, quite knew how to proceed from there, or what to say about it.
Force of habit took over when he heard Eunuch Park. It was the easiest thing to slip back into the old form: send for back-up, clear the area, confront the problem. The attackers had not come near the residences or offices. In the attendants’ halls, nearly everyone who wasn’t on shift was fast asleep, including the tired young nurse who’d been tasked with looking after the two infants. It was only Eunuchs Do and Park, returning later than usual from an evening off, who had spotted the masked intruders climbing the walls.
There were six men. It wasn’t much work to relieve one of his sword and swarm up the staircase up which two others had climbed, on their way to the nursery. They were unconscious when he kicked them down a stairwell; a fourth, dispatched through the window, got hefted up by the first guards on the scene. The fifth, at the door of the nursery, turned and tried to twist out of his grasp, before dropping his weapons with a shout.
“Death to the Kims,” he said, viciously, when Byeong-yeon unmasked him, and spat at him. “And death to the ruler who lets injustice flourish!” It felt good to clock him unconscious, but retaliation came, after a fashion: Byeong-yeon saw the chain around the militant's neck, with a pendant embossed with the familiar sign of the crescent moon and cloud: the Baekwoon, his own people. His heart plummeted, and the world was wiped of sound for a moment.
Then: “Help!” he heard again; “Help us!” and he saw the little nurse through the doorway, screaming along with the two babies, now wide awake in their cribs. The room was blazing alive with light and smoke; the sixth intruder, escaping, had flung a firebrand through the paper windows.
“Take the woman,” Byeong-yeon said, as footsteps thundered behind him; he saw Lieutenant Seong, his old apprentice, at the periphery of his vision. Across the threshold, the world had narrowed to a single point of purpose. He knew this fierce, singular feeling of calm and clarity better than anything else in his life. The heat and exhaust of the horse-oil, burning the air out of the room, did not matter. He was stamping out the flames as he raced across to the cribs, where he hefted both children into his arms and turned back. His eyes were stinging.
He blinked away the tears, but he could not see very well. He paused, for a moment, to try and figure out a path through the flames without stumbling. That would harm the babies. He cuddled them closer to hide their faces from the frightening sight of the fire.
There was a familiar voice––whose was it?––calling his name, urgently.
Someone took one of the children from his arms, then held his hand and led him out of the room, down the narrow, smoky staircase, and into the clean night air.
When he gasped, clearing his sight and lungs, he was sitting on the steps of the pavilion by the attendants’ hall. The eunuchs had run up with fire-tending powder and oilcloth to starve out the blaze, which looked small and manageable from the outside. Across the lawn, the nurse was hiccuping, trying to stop crying, Lieutenant Seong’s cloak around her. And his hand was still in Yeong’s––Yeong’s, who was looking at him, worried, with a dash of soot on his chin.
“Did you run into a burning room?” Byeong-yeon asked him in wonder. “Is his Highness out of his mind?”
“I came after you, you ass!” Yeong shouted; the baby he was holding wailed at the sound. “I'm going to kill you myself one of these days,” he added, in a furious whisper.
Byeong-yeon looked down at the baby in his arms. She was blinking up at the night sky, too stunned to cry. Clumsily, he took his hand from where it was still in Yeong's, and loosened the tight swaddle of her blankets. Her breath was coming in little heaves, quick but mercifully clear. Her heart fluttered, strong, under his touch. She was looking up at his face. He looked back at her and felt the wonder overcome him again, like seeing through smoke and fumes, and finding that brilliant, cool clarity.
“Are you even listening to me?” Yeong asked him, at some point in his angry tirade, but Byeong-yeon wasn't, not really. He was gazing at the baby, light as a flower on his palm; at her waving fist, batting at his chest, and at her big, fearless eyes. He kept on not listening until Eunuch Jang, bowing low to clean the soot off Yeong's face, said, in a quiet voice, “I'll arrange for Master Kim to take them tomorrow, Highness.”
“How can they be safer with him than with me, here?” Yeong exclaimed, but it was a dispirited riposte. To get into this part of the palace meant their enemies had help from within, and these were not Yeong's enemies, or his father's: perhaps they were the opposite. “And not both, Yoon-seong can't take both.”
“I beg you to consider the circumstances,” Eunuch Jang said, remorsefully.
“I'll keep her safe for you,” Byeong-yeon said, still unable to take his eyes off her. “Yeong: I want her,” and he looked up to see anger turn to surprise, to the beginnings of a soft, heart-broken understanding on Yeong's face.
“Cho-hui,” Sam-nom repeated. “Kim Cho-hui.”
“I know it's old-fashioned,” he said, defensively. When he realised that no one had bothered to name her on top of everything else, he immediately gave her the best name he could think of: Cho-hui, the given name of his favourite poet, Heo Nanseolheon. There was no alternative, of course, to Kim. She was a Kim, of the same branch of the clan, at that; Byeong-yeon’s grandfather and Yoon-seong's had been second cousins.
“It's a lovely name,” Sam-nom said, loyally. “Is it really not safe to stay here with her?”
“It’s not,” he said, regretting the truth of it. “I thought of taking her to her grandmother’s, but we’d have to put the whole house under lock and key, even apart from his Highness’s objections.” I’m not going to send my sister to a gibang.
He’d come to Teacher Da San's hospital two days earlier. Mistress Rim, Sam-nom's mother, had taken one look at the bundle in his arms, and put them both to bed in her rooms at the staff quarters. Since then, Cho-hui had slept a great deal, and Byeong-yeon not at all. With disbelieving pity, Mistress Rim and some of the lady physicians had brought him things with which to feed, bathe and change her. Their brisk supervision anchored him as he struggled to do any of it: it was the hardest task he had ever been set. He'd learned to tolerate cold, hunger, thirst and pain; to leap off roofs and fight off a dozen men at a time; but the thought of hurting Cho-hui as he held her delicate neck up to pour water over her head was worse than any punishment he'd faced from Master Jang, his mentor in the Baekwoon society.
“My mother adores her already,” Sam-nom said.
“Literally any of the women here would bring her up better than me,” he said, feeling the wrongness of it like a physical pain even as he did. Cho-hui was dozing in the room behind the verandah where they were sitting. He could still feel the warmth of her tiny body in his rough, oversized hands as he'd rocked her to sleep.
“I think they think so too,” Sam-nom said, surprising him. “But I don't agree.”
“I don't know anything,” he said. “I don't have anything. I don't know what I was thinking.”
“You were thinking of a child who doesn't have a home or parents,” Sam-nom said. “You were thinking of someone who needed you to keep her safe.”
He didn't have an answer to make. Since he'd woken from his injuries, he’d found himself grappling with the change in Sam-nom: that quietness, that sense of retreating from hurt. She was trying, he knew, to deal with her own, invisible burden of accumulated grief and shock. There were days when it felt like his quicksilver, happy-go-lucky friend was playing a role. But she was still the kindest person he knew, and she still saw him better than most people did.
"His Highness was drawing up a plan when I saw him last evening,” she said. “Money for her upbringing. A house with a garden, on the edge of the city.”
“A wife,” he joked. “Servants.” She smiled, sadly.
“I think he realises you're not going to take any of it, somewhere deep down,” she said.
“I don't need to,” he said. “I can make a life for her. He doesn’t have to hide her away, like some secret,” before it struck him. “That is, not that…”
Her smile widened a little, and grew in desolation. “You haven't heard yet, I suppose,” she said. “The Crown Princess is leaving the palace. She went to his Majesty yesterday and pleaded to withdraw from her marriage to his Highness. It appears the king has granted her wish.”
He stared at her, open-mouthed. His heart had ached for Sam-nom’s sorrow, but he'd secretly liked Cho Ha-yeon, whom he thought uncommonly brave in her forthrightness and loyalty to Yeong; and wildly beautiful, to boot.
“So he’s free,” Sam-nom said, with something like a sob. “We're free. Everything's changed, Kim-hyung, even the people we are.”
“That's nothing to cry about,” he said, uncomfortably; but something in him was changing, too. He put his hand on her back and drew her to him as her tears overflowed, soothing her the way he'd soothed his sleepy baby.
“If you need me to stay,” he began, because he had held himself responsible for Sam-nom's life since the day he'd found out her true name, and the conviction hadn't dissipated even now that the world had turned upside-down. She shook her head, wiping her eyes.
“I need you to give that baby all the love in the world, and let her love you back,” she sniffed. “Because I won't be there to look after you both.”
“Sam-nom,” he said, “you can’t boil water properly. I had to do it for you at Jahyeondang.”
“Be smug, like that,” she said, but at least the grief retreated from her face. Behind them, Cho-hui stirred, making that inquiring little chirrup he already knew by heart. When they bent over her, calling her name, she screwed her eyes up adorably before fluttering them open.
“Hello there, Miss Cho-hui,” Sam-nom said, in that melting voice other people got around the very young. “Kim-hyung, she’s perfect. You’re perfect, aren’t you, my baby?”
“Say hello to Sam––that is, to Miss Ra-on,” Byeong-yeon told Cho-hui, awkwardly. He couldn’t talk to her except as an adult: he didn’t know any other way. He caught one of her fists, waving above her head, and trapped it lightly in his hand, feeling it uncurl as she scrabbled her minuscule palm against his.
Cho-hui looked from Byeong-yeon to Sam-nom, and looked back at him. It was that look of hers, the big, fearless one. With unblinking eyes she regarded the two of them for a moment. Then she lifted her chin and smiled.
“I’ll get out of your hair,” Sam-nom said, when he finally found that he could tear his eyes away from the baby, and attend to what Sam-nom had been saying. But she was smiling too, her proper, radiant smile at last.
Seo Hong-shim set out with him to the village in the north-east where he’d decided to go. A middle-aged widow recommended by Mistress Rim, she was strong and taciturn, which suited him, and could get Cho-hui to feed quickly and relatively quietly on boiled apple mash and cow’s milk mixed with water, which suited Cho-hui. They hired a cart driver to take them out of the city, then hitched wagon rides until they got to Paju county, where Nurse Seo’s daughters lived within a day’s walk of each other, and half a day from the village to which Byeong-yeon was headed, to see––
“You abducted the king’s daughter,” Hong Gyeong-rae said, dubiously.
“He doesn't want her,” Byeong-yeon said, and quickly told the outlines of the story; the criminal judgments, Yeong’s dilemma, the little boy who’d gone with Yoon-seong. Master Hong’s face grew grave upon hearing of the intruder wearing the Baekwoon insignia: the Office of Investigations, with their usual ham-handedness, had failed to do more than butcher the suspects.
“There have been impostors, before,” Byeong-yeon said, but something about it didn’t fill him with conviction. He knew what a false flag operation looked like, what it felt like.
“May the king’s justice be able to tell right from wrong,” Master Hong said. “I’ll inquire about this. But I wonder, Master Kim: was there no option for this child other than to be fostered by a nineteen-year-old of no fixed address?”
“I turn twenty next week,” Byeong-yeon said. “And I’ll make an address for her. Isn’t that what we’re doing, here?”
“Bringing up a child is a full day of work, and more,” Master Hong said. As if in agreement with the sound of his voice, Cho-hui purred, and said something that sounded like “Neh!” Master Hong’s face softened a fraction.
“I’ve worked two jobs before,” Byeong-yeon said.
“Don’t mind Master Hong,” he said to Cho-hui, later, when he was walking her around a serene, mossy pond. She seemed to enjoy the soft twilit colours around them, and when she nestled her head into the curve of his shoulder it was almost like she was sounding his words out, even if she couldn’t understand them. “He’s been living in danger for a long time, and it’s made him anxious for our safety. It can be difficult to believe that peace is coming to our lands. But I’m good at keeping people safe. And so’s Yeong, alright? He’s watching over us both.”
“You must miss her mother very much,” one of the flock of village ladies who’d taken to fussing over Cho-hui told him, soon after they’d arrived. He looked up; he hadn’t had an answer when Master Hong had asked what Byeong-yeon was going to tell everyone about who he was to Cho-hui. If someone had asked him in the early days, it might have occurred to him that orabeoni, elder brother, was the form closest to appropriate: it was how the royal daughters addressed Yeong. But doing that would pass along the grief of his own, lost family to Cho-hui, and he couldn’t bear the idea enough even to contemplate it.
Soon enough, the others started calling him Cho-hui’s abeoji, and that seemed easier. The lady who asked him about Cho-hui’s mother took one look at his face, and then word went around that Master Hong’s new right-hand man was too broken-hearted to talk about his past. So that ended up being easy, too.
The bean-growing villages of Paju founded a model of community education and medical care that came to be adopted around Joseon over the coming years. Their revival occurred during a period of tax amnesty over three harvests, aided by a score of volunteers from the Baekwoon society, who set about rebuilding homes and fields that had been destroyed in state-enabled rioting during Kim Heon’s time.
Byeong-yeon himself could never remember much about what he did there in its earliest days. He was too busy. He did remember the first time Cho-hui rolled over; the first time she pursed her mouth and cooed back when he sang her a song; the time her wet nurse came scurrying over to the school building site, and took him back to the shaded part of the riverbank, where Nurse Seo had started a crèche to watch small children while their parents were working. He remembered seeing Cho-hui standing on her chubby feet for the first time, trying to keep from wobbling with a look of intense concentration on her face.
“Sorry I interrupted your work, Master Kim,” the wet nurse said, smiling, “but you feel bad about missing these things when they’ve grown up.”
He remembered missing Cho-hui terribly on construction days, when he went to work on building the village’s new school, a clinic, and a gathering hall for wedding breakfasts and political meetings. He remembered strapping her on his back as he bent over a desk in the village square, writing out endless petitions and legal notices. People had been hunted by the state here, and it seemed important to restore their faith that someone would now listen when they wrote for clemency for their falsely imprisoned sons, or requested rebates for a new business, or protested police corruption before the provincial administration.
There was no question of being paid for any of it. It was enough that other people fed and housed him, and amused the baby on evenings when he was too tired to do more than stagger back to his room and fling himself on the mat for a few hours of sleep. He remembered getting used to waking up before sunrise, to a tiny body wriggling its way out of the blankets and sitting on his chest, demanding he wake up and play. He remembered opening his eyes when Cho-hui tugged on his hair and said “Aba!” for the first time.
“Post.” A few days past Cho-hui’s second birthday, Master Hong came by the Baekwoon office––really just a lean-to, where they warehoused supplies and kept their registers––and dropped a bundle of letters on Byeong-yeon’s desk.
“Thank you, sir,” Byeong-yeon said, his mind still on the legal documents he was studying, as Cho-hui squealed and put her arms out for Master Hong to pick her up.
“Kim Cho-hui! Did you miss Grandpa while he was away?” Master Hong, who was in actual fact an utter pushover for small girls, asked, and caught her up to smack a kiss on her cheek.
There were the usual missives that came in Byeong-yeon’s packet whenever Master Hong went to Hanyang to visit his wife: accounts from the palace pension offices, annotated by Eunuch Jang––now Chief Eunuch Jang; a long, chatty letter from Sam-nom; more restrained ones with news of government and security matters from some of his former military school cohort. Once he even got a delightfully perfumed love letter from Jiang-ti, with enough coded information to help them get an iniquitous district magistrate dismissed.
“Quietly, please,” he said, as Cho-hui started to tell Master Hong a story about her rag doll at the top of her voice, but she seemed not to hear him. He had to clear his throat a couple of times. He was looking at a thin envelope of expensive, silken paper, with an unmarked seal on the flap.
I asked Ra-on to marry me, he read, and folded the letter shut.
“You must thank harabeoji for that,” he said, in the voice Cho-hui knew not to ignore, as she was about to make off with the sweetmeat Master Hong had produced from one of his pockets. To her credit, she obeyed immediately, before toddling out to where Nurse Seo was waiting for her.
“You’re strict with her,” Master Hong said.
“I don’t know any other way to be,” he said. His heart was beating hard, but the sound did not seem to reach his senses. His own voice seemed to be issuing from somewhere other than his chest.
Master Hong leaned against his desk. “Your friend asked me to give you that letter.”
“Yes,” Byeong-yeon said.
“He came to my wife’s house to meet me.” Master Hong paused. “He asked for Ra-on’s hand in marriage.”
“My congratulations,” Byeong-yeon said, politely.
“You approve?”
“Wholly,” he said, which was true. “They love each other very deeply.”
“They’ll be married in the spring, with enough time for the palace to conduct all its unnecessary ceremonies. I’ve no wish to participate. Jeong Yak-yong has said he’ll stand by Ra-on.”
“I see,” Byeong-yeon said. “And Ra-on’s mother?”
“Ra-on says she wants another ceremony in Nan-hui’s house; for us, and the king’s sisters, and some dowager––Park, I think the name was. She says you’re to be of her party there; she’ll permit you to stand with the king at the court wedding.”
Byeong-yeon said nothing.
“Master Kim.”
“Sir,” he said, eyes still on the letter––on both letters, he realised, because he knew what Sam-nom’s would contain.
“I gave it some thought before I gave the marriage my consent,” said Hong Gyeong-rae. “I confess, because of you.”
This made Byeong-yeon look up.
“Do you love my daughter?” Hong Gyeong-rae asked, in ferocious simplicity.
“She’s very dear to me,” Byeong-yeon said, when he felt able to answer, and that was true, too.
“I wondered,” Master Hong said. “You see, I thought of asking her to marry you, with whom she would not need to have two wedding ceremonies, at only one of which her mother will be made welcome.”
“Yeong would never––”
“And yet, when I tried to see your future, all I could see was Nan-hui and myself,” Master Hong went on, ruthlessly. “She with her life; you, with your service.” He got up. “It’s better this way.”
“His Majesty is as steadfast in love as he is in duty,” Byeong-yeon said, for not even in this moment of transmutation could he pass up a chance to defend Yeong. “You will have a better son than any other.”
“Perhaps,” said Master Hong. “Did I tell you? Baekwoon volunteers have successfully petitioned the governor of Pyeong’an to build schools for the fishermen’s coves in Cheolsan. They begin in the spring.”
To Master Kim Byeong-yeon, the letter ran:
I’ve been holding out for your letters to arrive, but they seem to be mislaid season upon season. I imagine them to be variations on a theme. You are healthy, and busy, and have no time to return in between all your good works. You are consumed by the care of a young lady who, as of this writing, has just had a birthday. I imagine she will be tall for her age, just like Yeong-eun, and that she has Myeong-eun’s soft heart.
I can’t see her face, though. Try as I might, all I see is yours. I forget how you looked when we were children, but I remember your smile, because you smiled often as a child. You weren’t just tolerating Yoon-seong and I, were you? You liked playing with us, and getting into trouble over our pranks, and wouldn’t much rather have been reading? I wonder if you have books where you are, and the time to read, and rest, and write, even if it isn’t a letter.
There is some news. I asked Ra-on to marry me. She has agreed, after a certain amount of hesitation. Her bookstore is flourishing, and she is working on two new books, or perhaps three or four. I dislike being the cause of an interruption in her work, but I dislike our separation more. So lonely, and daunting, is my own task proving to be.
The situation demands it, so let me promise you, whom she considers her dearest friend, that I will love and cherish her, and place her happiness above all else. I’d be grateful if you could obtain similar reassurances from her, in your capacity as my friend, who was dear to me first.
We finish our preparations this winter, and the rites are to be held in the spring.
Wedding invitations are for guests, so don’t consider this any kind of formal request for the honour of your gracious presence, etc. Jang Hoon-nam has put aside a silk from Ilbon in a very handsome dove grey for your hanbok. Whenever you can, come.
With all my love for you and our little girl, Y.
They did eat at Yeong’s wedding feast, or an approximation of it. The bowing, scraping bureaucrats in Pyeong’an, who’d escaped prosecution by the skin of their teeth during the Kim indictments, hadn’t yet figured out that the new king was suspicious of all flattery; they’d spent a great deal of money laying on celebratory meals throughout the province to commemorate the wedding. The food stuck in his craw. Pyeong’an had been one of the worst affected provinces in the famine three years ago. He missed Paju and their friends almost as terribly as Cho-hui, who’d cried all along their journey up north.
But “Baba sad?” Cho-hui asked him, when she noticed.
“No,” he said, enveloping her in a hug. “Don’t you worry about me.”
It didn’t fool her. “No being sad, baba,” she said, eyes filling with tears again.
It was an inauspicious beginning, and the state of the fishing villages when he got there was a shock even to him. Byeong-yeon and a few other Baekwoon volunteers had come up here to work amidst a small and self-contained community of fisherfolk. Few among these people had boats, or even fishing-nets; they lived from day to day working with their hands, collecting shells, and catching fish that swept up when the tide fell.
The similarity to the Jesuit missions that defied border controls to live and preach among poor folks along Joseon’s borders wasn’t entirely coincidental. Master Hong disagreed on almost everything with the neo-Confucian orthodoxy, but he was as staunchly against religious conversions as Yeong’s most right-wing ministers. In consequence, the Baekwoon society was adapting itself to the same missions of service and care adopted––in falsehood, Master Hong was sure––by the French missionaries.
But when Michel Bonnot of the Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris was captured and brought to the cove, Byeong-yeon understood there was no correct decision to be made. The law forbade foreigners on Joseon’s soil, but he was also able to guess at the international implications of retaliation. He could still hear Yoon-seong clearly in his mind. “The Europeans,” he’d told Yeong during one of their frosty, painful official meetings, “care about their clerics, but not so deeply that they won’t sacrifice them; the better to have an excuse to force new concessions, and rattle their spears ever louder.”
“So we won’t kill him,” Na Jeong-suk, a boy from Jeolla who’d trekked across the country to help build the new Cheolsan Bay Fishermen’s Hospital, protested. “Let justice be done by judges. We’ll truss him up and send him to the city.”
“That compounds the crime of his presence, and delays his sentencing,” Byeong-yeon answered. He turned to the white man, who was struggling to stay upright, though he’d been pushed to his knees by the fishermen who’d hauled him in, bloodied and bruised. “Thou’st committed a grave fault,” he said, in the classical Chinese he had learned from the royal tutors.
The foreigner was in early middle age, and had the most roguish smile Byeong-yeon had ever seen. “Forgive me,” he said, in the speech of Joseon, and a truly atrocious accent. “I seek no concession from you but refuge. My endeavour is only to wipe the tears of the sorrowing.”
“Well, you can’t do it here,” Byeong-yeon said, feeling unhinged: talking to a spirit tablet by the highway felt less strange. At least one had more idea of how a bodhisattva was supposed to behave than this white man.
He hadn’t realised then how good Michel was at figuring people out, and that he had Byeong-yeon all figured out. He looked Byeong-yeon straight in the eye and said, “All I ask is the chance to serve, as the least of your brothers.”
“How could you,” Na Jeong-suk remonstrated furiously with Byeong-yeon when he said to let the white man stand, and to undo his ropes. “You were an officer of the king,” he whispered. “You’re Master Hong’s favoured disciple!”
“How could I be an officer of the king and Master Hong’s disciple?” Byeong-yeon repeated. “By all means, Master Na, let us keep him from leaving the cove, and restrict him from preaching.”
“We can’t keep him alive,” Jeong-suk pleaded.
“You just said we can’t kill him,” Byeong-yeon said, and it turned out he could figure people out, too, after a fashion, because Père Michel Bonnot didn’t just come to tell the hard-bitten shell-fishers of Pyeong’an that a dead man on a crucifix would save them. He was a doctor who rolled up his sleeves and got into the business of keeping them safe himself.
“You studied midwifery?” Byeong-yeon asked him, the day the fisherfolk stopped looking at Master Bonnot as a sea-demon who deserved their sufferance, and started seeing him as a useful human being. He’d spent a whole day with a young woman in labour and pulled off a miracle in getting mother and newborn twins through the ordeal, alive.
“Among other things,” Master Bonnot said, gratefully accepting the wine Byeong-yeon and Na Jeong-suk had brought him, tipping the skin back to pour down his throat. His Joseon speech was improving by leaps and bounds. “We don’t give enough attention to women who need medicine. It seems a shame to me: the world owes its whole life to the sacrifice of the mother.”
“No preaching,” Byeong-yeon warned. He’d heard that Catholics told stories about the mother of their saviour, a goddess in human form. Master Bonnot laughed.
“No preaching,” he agreed. “Only living. Thank you, Master Baekwoon,” and then, twinkling, “and little Master Baekwoon,” to Na Jeong-suk, who scowled.
Whatever else might be said about his habits, his looks and his manners, Master Bonnot won Byeong-yeon over by his capacity for hard work. The man was bookish, too, and under the hawk eye of the Baekwoon had taken to teaching the Roman alphabet to two or three people, who picked up a rudimentary French vocabulary from him: good morning, thank you, I belong to Joseon. Byeong-yeon did not have the time to attend these classes, but he found himself walking alongside Master Bonnot more often than not on the evenings he took Cho-hui out to the rocky beach. Master Bonnot knew how to hold his peace as Cho-hui babbled herself out of questions and fancies, and then as Byeong-yeon rocked her to sleep.
The acquaintance helped when Cho-hui came down with a fever after playing in the sea with some older children. Byeong-yeon looked at her, red and shivering, wrapped up in their blanket, then caught her up and raced to the hut Master Bonnot shared with the volunteer physicians who’d come to aid the new Baekwoon hospital.
“My daughter,” he said, weak with terror. She’d had colic and colds and tummy ailments before, but never had she been so still in his arms. “Doctor––”
“You’re about to fall over,” Master Bonnot said, firmly. He took Cho-hui from him, and peered at her watery eyes, put a hollow reed over her chest and listened to her breathing.
“She’ll be miserable for a few days,” he told Byeong-yeon. “Then, fine. Don’t worry, Master Baekwoon, you have a strong daughter.”
Master Bonnot was to make the same assurances many times over up and down the stretch of the northern coast that winter, many of them to parents whose children did not have Cho-hui’s constitution. As ice and snow kept people indoors and huddled together, a contagion swept through the shacks and cave dwellings of the north-eastern coast of Joseon. Had Michel Bonnot lived a hundred years later, he would have sent his patients home with prescriptions for rest and fluids. But in that year, he had very few tools at his disposal, and the flu wreaked havoc on the malnourished seaside, hunting down the weak, the hungry, the old and the very young.
It came for one last prey towards the spring: the overworked. Cho-hui’s cold-water fever had passed as quickly as Master Bonnot predicted, and she had already forgotten it. Far worse for her was waking up one morning, fidgeting and tetchy, to find that her father’s face was so hot it was unpleasant to touch, and that he wouldn’t wake no matter how hard she shook him.
“No!” she screamed, when Na Jeong-suk and his wife tried to pull her away from Byeong-yeon, who’d gone from having an irritating chill to full-blown fever overnight. “Cho-hui stays with abeoji!”
“Michel stays with abeoji,” the stranger with the cat’s eyes told her, firmly but kindly, in his funny voice. For four days he tended to Byeong-yeon, forcing gruel and water down his burning throat twice a day; keeping him warm and clean; and studying the local physician’s herbal remedies and supplementing them, where he could, with his own.
Byeong-yeon retained little memory of the illness after the worst was over. He was appalled to return to consciousness and find himself confined to bed on strict medical orders; it was too much like that other, painful convalescence. He agreed not to see Cho-hui, less in concern for himself and more to keep her away from seeing him useless and exhausted.
“Master Baekwoon!” Michel said sternly one evening, raising his head from the only book in his possession, which he read every day. “Kindly be still. The world turns without needing you to spin it on its axis.”
“I’m bored,” Byeong-yeon rattled.
“That is not a fatal condition, sadly for those nursing ungrateful patients.”
Byeong-yeon glared at him as best as he could. “What are you reading?”
“You know what it is,” Master Bonnot said, quietly. “You have forbidden me from reading it aloud.”
“Well, it seems you’ve forbidden the whole turning world from coming within earshot of this room,” Byeong-yeon said. “You may read to me.” And so Master Bonnot read him the words of Isaiah, not in the speech of Joseon but in the literary Chinese they both knew: Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgement / And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
“I’ve heard of Jerusalem,” Byeong-yeon said, when Master Bonnot fell quiet. “Are these other places real––Nineveh, and Chaldea, and Armenia?”
“I have not seen them,” said Master Bonnot. “Perhaps one day I shall.”
“Fairy stories,” Byeong-yeon snorted, but they smiled at each other.
By the time he regained his strength, spring had blossomed along the coast, and Cho-hui was going to the small new village school, the youngest in her cohort. The other students enjoyed her company, and were amused to have her among them. Sitting straight-backed and quiet as the teacher read the lesson for the day, she looked indomitable; just like her father, everyone said.
“I never thanked you,” Byeong-yeon told Master Bonnot, when he encountered him on a beach ramble: school mornings were affording him the previously unthinkable pleasure of an hour’s walk to himself. “I’ve been told before that I’m a terrible patient.”
“He who gets well is a good patient,” Master Bonnot said simply, and closed the book he was reading. “I am happy for your recovery. May I join you?”
It was another consequence of his changed circumstances that it did not occur to Byeong-yeon that he was going to say yes before he had done so, nor that he would mean it. Oh, he thought, looking at Master Bonnot framed in the early morning sunlight. He drank in the sight of his greying temples, and of the dimple in his chin. There was that curve of his throat, and fucking hell, Kim Byeong-yeon, he’d been looking at it since the day he’d first seen the man tip his head back to swallow a mouthful of wine. There was a line of dirt at the back of his neck. The thin stem, exposed by the man’s short hair, looked shockingly vulnerable. You’ve become slow.
He opened his mouth to say something. He’d never beaten around the bush on this account, except with––
“I thought you were alone in this world but for Kim Cho-hui,” Master Bonnot said.
“Pardon?” Byeong-yeon said, thrown off-track.
“You called for someone, once or twice, when you were sick,” he said, “It sounded like you had met the living in your fever dream, and not the dead.”
“I’m not alone in the world,” Byeong-yeon said, after a moment. He wasn’t, of course. There was more of him, almost all of him, left behind in someone else’s keeping.
“I thought it might be better to keep your friends out of your sickroom,” Master Bonnot said, boldly. “It did not sound to me like a woman’s name.”
He turned towards Master Bonnot, who had him figured out; who had figured him out all long. They were in a shaded, lonely part of the cove. Out on the falling tide, the boats were still too far from land for anyone to see.
“Come here,” Byeong-yeon said, and let himself be kissed and clung to, which Master Bonnot did with a desperation that seemed charming at first. But when they disengaged, breathless, Byeong-yeon was surprised to see tears track down the thin white face in his hands.
“This is what you get for trying to outrun yourself, to the end of the world,” Master Bonnot said, bitterly. “Your fear, that has outwaited you, and the most beautiful man the Lord made.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Byeong-yeon said, tilting his chin and kissing him softly. Master Bonnot’s mouth twisted unhappily.
“I am under vows of chastity,” he said. “Have you ever broken a promise in your life, Master Baekwoon? It’s a stain on the soul.” And Byeong-yeon, who really hadn’t ever broken a promise, understood the dishonour, and regretted the choice Master Bonnot had to make.
“Alright,” he said, and stepped away. The sound of the rushing waves behind him found an echo in some small, hollow place within him. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Master Bonnot said. “I've been trying to tempt you since the day I met you. I believed that you, like an oak tree, would never bend; I’ve been going mad with hope that you would. Forgive me. Pity me, if you can.”
There was nothing to forgive, and Byeong-yeon wasn’t the sort to turn away from his friends in their troubles. That was perhaps the thing that lasted, long after the feeling of that first kiss had faded; the knowledge that even here, far away from all the things and people that had made him and Cho-hui who they were, they had friends. They could make a difference in the lives of others, and be liked, and perhaps loved.
“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom like the rose,” he said aloud one morning, out walking with Michel. “What?” he said, when he looked up into Michel’s surprised face. “Your Isaiah knew how to write poetry.”
The pirates attacked in the summer before Cho-hui’s fifth birthday.
The first outsiders to turn up, though, came on horseback, not by boat: couriers from the Navy of Joseon. “Oh no, it’s unlikely fighting will actually extend this far up north,” the dispatch officer who asked to meet them said. “We’re scoping out safe harbour for supply and medical stations. Never saw much hope for it on this part of the coast, but the reports over the last few seasons have been glowing, thanks to you rebels. Former rebels! No offence.”
“None taken,” Master Na said, graciously, but before Byeong-yeon could turn away, the young sailor said, “And I have a message for Officer Kim, unless I am mistaken in your august colleague?” and Master Na beamed and said, “Of course, may I present our leader, Kim Byeong-yeon,” and the captain bowed low and said, “Vice-admiral’s on his way to see you, sir.”
“Your great-grandfather studied with Damheon,” Vice-admiral Cha said. He was a quiet man, with something of the remoteness of the seas on which he’d spent most of his life about him. “He would have been proud that a grandson of his followed the sage’s teachings: to work with one’s hands, and to remove poverty and ignorance.”
“Thank you,” Byeong-yeon said, moved in spite of himself. In trying not to think about his life before, it had been even easier to push back his faded memories of the other life he’d been meant to live; the one he was born into and educated for, before before. But the admiral was Byeong-yeon’s mother’s first cousin, and something about the family resemblance––perhaps it was the way he stood, or his deep, deliberate voice––was unnerving.
“I’m glad to see you, nephew,” Admiral Cha said. “I have no excuses to make for our neglect of you. But you were in our thoughts, and your aunt prayed for you. What you did for his Majesty, in the palace––” It was easy to see that he was a sincere man, and sincerely sorry.
“I would be ashamed to cause you a moment’s regret,” Byeong-yeon said, trying to end the awkwardness. “And I would have been more ashamed still to have you risk your life, and your family’s, to protect me when I was nothing more than a criminal’s grandson.”
“Yet you yourself are far from home,” Admiral Cha said, with a faint smile, “bringing up someone else’s daughter. No, I don’t wish to gain your secrets. Only, I knew my sister, and I know her boy would scorn to hide any child of his from the world.”
He watched Byeong-yeon’s face for a while, as one or other lie tried to make its way out, and died on Byeong-yeon’s lips.
“I don’t have a home,” Byeong-yeon said, finally.
“I thought you might say that,” Admiral Cha replied. “I wished to tell you, on behalf of the clan, that we would like––that we would be grateful to have the chance to correct the wrongs of the past. Byeong-yeon, come back. Come to my house. Take a rest from your labours, and think about your future.”
“My future,” Byeong-yeon said, blankly.
“You are young. The civils are still open to you. The king would restore your military career, should you ask for it back. And if you wish to do neither, and continue this work of yours, there’s plenty to do in our villages. We would welcome the child, and give her a household.”
“Cho-hui,” Byeong-yeon said. “Her name is Cho-hui.”
“Think about it,” Admiral Cha said. “I didn’t mean to ambush you,” though of course, he was a warrior, and had come to do exactly that.
“I left for a reason,” Byeong-yeon parried. “I’m sorry. You will think me ungrateful.”
“Reason changes with time,” the admiral said.
“It may,” Byeong-yeon said, and stood. “Won’t you take a meal with us? The school kitchen makes a good abalone soup. My little miss will like to meet you, though I should warn you: she thinks all grandparents exist to make a big fuss over her, and spoil her.” But Admiral Cha looked uncomfortable; “What?” Byeong-yeon said, his senses turning on alert.
“About the village,” Admiral Cha said. “I’ve been tasked with making certain inquiries.”
“Yes?” He thought back rapidly, to the market records, and the account books for the new buildings, and––oh.
“Have you really been hiding a Jesuit here, Byeong-yeon?” Admiral Cha said.
“We didn’t have anywhere to send him,” Byeong-yeon said, his heart beating fast. “The Qing––”
“I trust you did the best you could under the circumstances,” Admiral Cha said. “The district magistrate even said he felt compelled not to interfere, since he's been so popular at this new hospital of yours. But now they wonder if he preaches his book to the dying––”
“It’s the Baekwoon’s hospital,” Byeong-yeon said. He hadn't felt real anger in a long time; he had to remember how he used to conceal it. “And he is a qualified physician, valued by his colleagues. Didn’t the sage Damheon also wish us to learn from others?”
“I am not authorised to be in philosophical argument with you,” Admiral Cha said, frowning. “But surely we do not find ourselves at odds on the matter of obeying the law.”
Byeong-yeon bit back his answer. It was one thing to place justice above the law when tyranny ruled the land; but Admiral Cha was right.
“I am causing you trouble,” Michel said, regretfully, when he went to find him late that night. They'd sent him to hide away: Admiral Cha had stayed until sunset, eaten and drunk with the villagers, and allayed their fears about pirates and the Joseon Navy alike. He'd even given Cho-hui a little bead ring and told her to “Come stay with harabeonim and halmeonim soon.”
“You’ve caused me trouble since the day I met you,” Byeong-yeon said, sitting down next to him on the beach. “I don’t want you to feel trapped.”
“It’s a trap I made for myself, the day I left France,” Michel said. “No, the day I joined the Church. Shall I turn myself in to the district magistrate? Nurse Pyo says he is an honest man.”
“And then?” Byeong-yeon said. “They’re not going to––what’s your word?––‘martyr’ you. Will you accept a prison cell for the rest of your days, with Nurse Pyo in the next cell, perhaps, and all the others at the hospital who’ve adopted you, and hidden you, and sat in your classes?”
“To hell with martyrdom,” Michel said, feelingly. “Look, I’m not going to recant. It would be a betrayal of my ancestors.”
“Yes,” he said. “And your angels and saints.”
“My fairy stories, you mean?” Michel asked, with a small smile.
“They’re your stories,” Byeong-yeon said. “That’s what matters.”
“You’re right about that,” Michel said, slowly. “The more I dwell on their importance, the more I am certain of a change in my life's purpose."
“What does that mean?”
“I am going to leave the clergy,” Michel said. “In my heart, I already had, but now my mind accepts it too. If the kingdom of Joseon has no objection to my staying here and continuing my medical work, I’ll do so. Otherwise here, or in the Qing, or back home: it doesn’t matter. You––all of you––have taught me what it means to do the work of God.”
“You’ll accept our ways, and live like us?” Byeong-yeon said. Michel only looked him up and down, and then cast an eye on himself. They were dressed identically, in the homespun working clothes that every man on this coast wore. Michel even wore a gat on his head.
“Right,” Byeong-yeon said, and laughed. “Listen, I have a plan. Admiral Cha is in these parts for another––”
“I am sorry to interrupt you, Byeong-yeon; I do so with the utmost trepidation, but may I kiss you again?” Michel asked, in a rush.
“––Oh,” Byeong-yeon said. He’d put it out of his mind after their last, melancholy embrace; he’d valued the comradeship that sprang up in place of the dalliance too much. Now he thought of how his name sounded in Michel’s mouth; of how, in fact, he’d just said it, soft and rounded, the nasal consonants elided. He leaned forward and slid his fingers over the nape of Michel’s neck, tangling in the low knot of hair he’d grown in the year since their previous kiss.
“Are your vows forfeit?” he asked, touching his lips to Michel’s. They were chapped, like his own. His breath was coming quick, and hot.
“Yes,” Michel breathed, “I will account for everything before my god. And he will forgive me everything.”
It was a kiss as desperate as before, but the eagerness was not only on Michel’s part this time. They went clumsily at first, bumping knees and elbows, sleeves snagging, the gat knocked off Michel’s head. “You have to be quiet,” Byeong-yeon warned Michel, before kissing a trail down his stomach, and opening his pants. Michel gasped when Byeong-yeon took his jutting cock in his hand, but covered his mouth and muffled his cries. Byeong-yeon gave him a light, easy stroke, and suckled the tip, then slid his mouth over it and took him in deep. Desire broke in a wave; he hadn’t had sex in so long, hadn’t sucked a cock in so long. Memories returned, of doing this in truculent silence in the dark corners of the military academy, of the buzz of finding a man with whom to enjoy it in the alleyways behind the gibangs.
Michel came, filling his mouth with salt, the taste of a lush heat. He coughed and spat into the sand, and sat up, wiping his mouth. Michel’s smile was euphoric; the sight of it made him smile too, and feel a rush of affection for this lonely and defiant rogue, so different from anyone he’d known.
“I want to do that to you, please,” Michel said, when Byeong-yeon hauled himself up and pressed his body over Michel’s. He drew down to kiss him lightly, to calm him down, to pass the taste of the pleasure back to him.
“You may,” Byeong-yeon said, “but I want your kisses now,” and Michel tilted his head just so, and moaned as Byeong-yeon licked into his mouth. Kiss melted into kiss, and tempered some of the intensity of the suckjob. It was easier to rub his own hard-on against the crease of Michael's thigh; to set a pace that didn't drive him mad, and just enjoy the feeling of being in someone's arms, of the sweetness of being wanted.
"Give me your hand," he whispered after a while, and Michel appeared to know this part well, at least. He teased and fondled and rubbed Byeong-yeon, and made him lose a little of his mind again.
"That's it," Michel said, against the shell of Byeong-yeon's ear, and nibbled at its sensitive curve. "Finish on me, make me dirty, make me wet," and Byeong-yeon's breath hitched, and he spilled, as Michel asked, over his cock and belly.
They stayed out until the tide started to turn, then cleaned themselves up in the icy sea-water and returned, stamping the cold out of their feet, to the village. Cho-hui was sleeping at Master Na's house. "Come to the office,” Byeong-yeon said, and led him to the clerks' room at the hospital. He lit a lamp, sat at the long table where they came to do budgeting and lawyering, and pulled out a sheet of paper.
He did not have to think about what he was going to say, he found; he already knew. When he took the inkbrush in his hand he also knew what language he would say it in. In the childish code they'd created as bored schoolboys one day, he wrote:
Had I but one person in the world to trust, it would be you.
When the ink dried, he folded it flat, and put it in a rough envelope, which he stamped with his own, rarely used personal seal. He addressed it in both Han characters and hanggul.
“Admiral Cha owes me a favour,” he told Michel. “Should you agree, I will ask him to take you into custody, and return with you to the capital, and to the court of the king. There will be some hardship: they cannot be seen to favour you on my account, and your offence is non-bailable. But unless you mislay this letter, you will get fair treatment, and a fair hearing.”
Michel looked at the title on the envelope, and sat down.
“We used to make up stories, when we were small, about the European who met the Wanli emperor,” Byeong-yeon said. “He’ll enjoy meeting you. Tell him about your King Cyrus.”
Michel’s blue eyes were fathomless in the candlelight. “What shall I tell him about you?” he asked.
“Nothing. Don't burden him,” Byeong-yeon said. “Try to understand, if you can.”
“I will,” Michel said. “I will try. Will I see you again––my lord?”
“I would prefer to remain Byeong-yeon,” he said, and blew out the candles, and kissed Michel one last time in the starlit dark.