Archive of Our Own

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My clouded reflection eyes me

like a bird of prey, the profile of night

slanted against morning. I turn

this way—the stone lets me go.
- Yusef Komunyakaa DAEGU, KOREA—present day
i.
First comes a diagnosis. A diagnosis, and many whispers, and then blood. The blood is unavoidable; he watched it drawn slowly out with a needle, before the tests, and he will see it run wide and red again, when the news begins to creep out.He tells the doctor he has heard enough for today, and coughs into a handkerchief behind a locked door. Mu will come and visit him as he does every Thursday. He will tell Mu first, and Mu will tell no one.It is Taejo’s own body that will betray him, graying skin and tired eyes and weakness, so much weakness. Then she will know, and as soon as she knows, it is over.
ii.
“At this age,” her mother says, “You should be worrying about getting a husband, not more education. Ha-Jin, you already have your degree.”Her father spends half the year in San Francisco, a world away. Why didn’t her parents leave each other long ago? Why does her mother care so much about marriage, when her only daughter has come back so miraculously, from near-death? These questions about her future feel meaningless, like they are asked by people who don’t know her at all.“I’m twenty-six, eomma.” And she leaves it at that, because she’s going back to the museum.Again.…It doesn’t help much, seeing the ancient, painstaking sketches. They are stylized to show heaviness as wealth, and they look nothing like him.He lived into his fifties, the texts say. That was old age, in ancient times. That was thirty years beyond the days she knew and loved him.“You come here often, miss?”It’s the curator. The one with Choi Ji Mong’s face.“Do I know you?” her voice sounds harsh to her own ears. It sounds like she’s been shouting, or like she has been silent for a long time. Maybe both. Maybe the last time she was alive, she wanted very badly to be heard, and wasn’t.He blinks, expression neutral. “I don’t think so.” A half-bow, very courteous. Like she is some grand patroness of the Goryeo exhibit, and not just a girl in a skirt bought two seasons ago from an off-brand shop in Seoul. “Maybe I just have one of those faces.”Ha Jin clenches her fists. I bet you do. “Do you work here?”“I do not.” He strokes his short beard. “I—manage acquisitions for some prominent clients.”“Any emperors?”There’s a pause. It’s too significant. “Don’t know any emperors these days.”She wheels on him, but the lights are dimming—the doors are closing—it’s time to go home.“Good night, miss,” he says blithely, and hurries away.One of these days, she’s going to catch him.…Life doesn’t work so simply. Three whole months go by with weekly museum trips—sometimes twice-weekly, like that will do her any good at all—and she never sees him, the astronomer of the past.Ha Jin—or is Hae Soo? Is it ever going to be Hae Soo again, or is that just a strange and terrifying dream?—is restless. She’s also probably a little crazy, if her mother is to be believed. Her father cuts his trip short. He comes home. He tells her he almost died himself, watching her lay so still and quiet, for so many months.It wasn’t months, she wants to say. It was years…But there it is: the craziness. She can’t tell anyone that she changed the course of history, because history cannot recognize what it might have been, only what it is.And people are blinder still.She has lost her one connection. Choi Ji Mong is gone. She reads the news, and it is nothing that has ever interested her, nothing she cares to understand.Before—well, before she drowned, that first and only time, she centered her life around a man who left her.Her mother thinks she’s had her head turned by feminism, or the coma, or both. Twenty-six, and won’t settle down! (Twenty-six, dead and alive again.) If only eomma knew, just how far she’d go for a man.But that was hundreds of years ago.Ha Jin actually laughs, at that.…Crowded with her parents around a cracked enamel table, she picks at her bibimbap and decides that maybe what she needs is to get drunk. That wouldn’t be her doctor’s orders, certainly—but it might do her some good. Maybe drinking will make her forget.Maybe it will finally allow her to remember enough to do something.
iii.
 “Yeon Hwa, I said, we’ll be late.”“And I said, yeot-meog-eo.”“Is that any way to speak to your brother?”She glances up and sees Wook’s furrowed brow. His hands rest on the back of her chair. His nails are almost as well-manicured as hers are.“I don’t leave this house without a perfect face,” Yeon Hwa snaps, beckoning the makeup artist to return. He’d fled at Wook’s appearance. “If Queen Yoo can’t deal with that, I’m sure you’ll make it up to her somehow. Boot-licker.”“Aish, you’re sour today.” But Wook is smiling; he never stays severe for long. “It’s important to make a good impression,” he adds, all gravity and repose. “It respects our father’s memory.”She narrows her eyes; these days she wonders if there is more on Wook’s mind than honoring a ghost. “If you would get out of my rooms for two minutes,” she suggests, “We would be there already.”This is an exaggeration, but he shrugs and saunters away. She parts her lips for the application of liner and Chanel Rouge. If So is there today, perhaps he’ll notice.Likely not. The knowledge of who she is, and who she may never be, curls her stomach.“Hurry up,” she tells the stylist, but she keeps her voice low so that Wook won’t hear a hint of her changing mind.
iv.
It would be satisfying, Yo thinks, to press the trader’s flabby throat between his fingers until it bruised, until the man was gasping for air rather than wheedling for a higher price.He knows better, of course. He settles for words. “Do you take me for a fool?”“Never, honored sir.”“Honored? Tell Dae-Ho he’d be better off sending an executive, not a sniveling shop-man.”  He plucks at a flawless lapel. “This? Is jacquard. That?” He lets the sample drop from his fingers to the floor. “That is shit. Now take your shit, and your honorifics, and get out.”The trader has barely limped through the door before Won starts up a chorus of congratulation. “That was brilliant, Yo. Brilliant. You skewered him! You could be a street-fighter.”“Brilliant?” Yo arches an eyebrow. That the eyebrow is the most flawless wing-shape that might ever grace a Vanity Fair close-up goes without saying. He could use a VF; all the Vogues are getting a little monotonous. “Save it, Won. We needed that deal.”“We did?”Won is cloyingly slow, as always. Yo drums his fingers against his knee—also suited in jacquard, because why not go all out? (Power moves are always deliberate, and sometimes observable.)“What do you bring to a party?”“A…bottle of scotch?”“Exactly. What do you bring to a funeral?” He doesn’t wait for what will certainly be an inane answer. “A better bottle of scotch.”“Whose funeral?” Won asks.Yo stands up, reaches for his gleaming obsidian phone, and scans for new messages. Seven, but none urgent. He’ll need another deal lined up by the end of the day, something to sweeten the pot at dinner tomorrow.A new message blinks: it’s from his mother. We have company. Hwangbos.He rolls his eyes—Wook’s pandering is no threat, though it is transparent—and tucks his phone into his breast pocket.“Whose funeral?” Won asks again, trailing him out.Through a smile that is mostly teeth, Yo answers. “My father’s.” SEOUL, KOREA—GANGSEO DISTRICT
v.
The man’s tooth splinters under his knuckles, though that isn’t so good for his knuckles.“Have you had enough?” he asks, ground out.A gurgling whimper.“Yes, I take it.” His hand hurts like a bitch, and it’s raining in flat, ice-water sheets. He wants this to be over, but then, he always wants it to be over. That is the part of himself that he keeps held down, chained like a dog.He reaches forward with his left hand and gets a firm grip on the man’s collar, tight enough to bruise. “Three hijackings in two months? Someone’s paying for that. I want a name.”The man wheezes, and he loosens his hold, just a little. “If they are paying,” the man mumbles, breath whistling around the missing tooth, “For hired muscle, are you surprised that someone else is paying to destabilize shipments?”“I’m not surprised,” So growls. “I’m insisting. A name.”“I don’t have one.”“You own the trucking company.”“I’m just a businessman.”“Who leaks routes, for a price?”“Never!”“You have thirty more teeth, give or take. I can keep going.”“There wasn’t a name!” The man’s voice ratchets up a notch of desperation. “The wire transfer came from Daegu.”“The textile capital. Where every rival would be?”“It’s not that simple.” The man wrenches free from his grasp and actual grovels, hands splashing in the black puddles. “There’s a line of hired operatives. They don’t make deals in back alleys, they make them at galas. Tradeshows. Where everyone’s talking about everything.”“I’m not leaving without a name.” The pain in his hand has dulled just enough for him to start punching again, and So thinks his target knows it.The man sputters and gasps, and then relents. “Woo Hee,” he says. “The last contact I sent. Her name is Woo Hee.” NAMWON, KOREA
vi.
“Who is it, my love?”The latest “love” giggles, tossing his phone from hand to hand. Baek Ah straightens the collar of his robe and frowns. This blue is mixed too dark; he wanted the frail hue of a robin’s egg, and what he has is turquoise.“He sounds handsome,” the girl says, dancing her fingers along the back of his neck. “But not so handsome as you.”He plucks the phone from her hand absently, still distressed over his colors. A landscape should come alive, but gently…to smother it is a garish, ugly thing.“Hello?”“Answer your own damn phone.” So’s voice is clipped, which means he’s short-tempered, which means he’s probably injured.Baek Ah forgets all shades of blue and stands quickly. “Where are you?”“Seoul.”Baek Ah imagines him folded like a jackknife against some warehouse wall, a slight, tense shadow with blood pooling on the ground. An artist’s vision is vivid, and cruel. “Do you need—”“I didn’t call you because I needed anything.” This may be untrue, but Baek Ah knows better than to comment on it.“Why were you calling, then?” He tries, gently, for humor. “You interrupted something very sweet and pleasant here.”“Spare me.” Wherever So is, the coverage is bad. “I…called to tell you, I’m going back to Daegu.”Baek Ah suddenly feels much too far away. “Geugoya?”“Yes. Really.” There’s a long pause, and then So adds, “I think my father is dying.”Baek Ah draws in a sharp breath. It seemed for many years that Wang Taejo was absolute, a stone-carved icon among chaebols, someone who would never die. Who could never die. Baek-Ah comes from a family without so much wealth and lineage, but he played with the Wangs as a child and has seen them grow up hardened in different ways. He wonders, off-handedly, if So found out this news in the middle of a fight.“What happened?” Baek-Ah asks. He asks its gently; So, of course, never demands that anyone treat him with kindness, so Baek-Ah chooses for both of them. “How did you—”“I don’t know.” So cuts him off, before sympathy can hang in the air too long. “I need to be certain.”And it would take that, Baek-Ah reflects, as the dial tone hums in his ear. It would take something terrible and possible, to drag Wang So back home.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

for he had arrived at his own conclusion

and that was

for him a relief even if he was separated

even if his hands were frozen

even if the wind knocked him down
- Gerald SternDAEGU, KOREA – SEO DISTRICT
i.
 Weaving through a crowded train station is no easy task, especially for someone who’s been out of the metropolitan rush for a long time. Woo Hee ducks and bobs, one slim travel-bag tight under her arm. She has a change of clothes and a few hundred thousand won, which will cover a night’s stay. The address for the hotel is crumpled in her hand. The contact will meet her there.Chae Ryung. Chae Ryung. That was the only name she’d been given, and she turns it over in her mind to pass the time. Calm and focus are the only things that will serve her, but the narrow lines concealed under her sleeve reveal that Woo Hee has never been an expert at calm.Only at precision.She turns a corner and collides against another traveler. It’s no fault of hers, no lack of precision—this mi-chin-nom was completely oblivious to where he was going. She keeps an iron grip on her luggage and glares stormily at him, biting back the sharp words on her tongue.“I’m sorry,” he says, formally. Formally? She’s surprised. Her clothes are dirt-cheap and her eye makeup is several layers too heavy. She looks like a geol-le-nyeon. That’s the point.As for this crazy bastard—he’s anything but cheap. He’s wearing a loose, flowing jacket over a silk shirt patterned with shadowy flowers, and there are multiple rings on his graceful fingers. His hair is smooth over his brow, and his skin is—well, it’s flawless.He’s beautiful.Woo Hee is not here to gawk, or to make eyes, or whatever she has found herself doing in a very short span of time. She’s come to Daegu for a particular—and particularly dangerous—mission.“Thanks,” she says, almost gruffly, and would push past him.But one of those elegant hands catches her wrist and holds her fast. “Buy you a drink for your troubles?” He has no right to such a warm smile. No right at all. “It’s a cold day.”She frees her wrist instead of leaning into his touch. “I’m in a hurry.”That smile again. “I can see that.” He releases her. “May we meet again.” And then he actually sketches a little bow, lowers his expertly coiffed head a couple inches, making Woo Hee’s traitorous heart flutter.She sprints off without looking back.DAEGU, KOREA – JUNG DISTRICT
ii.
One eggshell-thin teacup slides off the tray and shatters in a sparkle of flaky shards.Silence falls like snow, broken only by the sound of the maid’s terrified breathing.Sinmyeongsun Yoo, Wang Yoo by marriage, smiles.“That cup,” she says, in a tone as thin and sharp as the fractured porcelain, “Was from a two-hundred year-old set, gifted to me by my grandmother.”“Mrs. Wang,” the maid whispers. “Please…I am so—”Yoo stoops. Her white linen dress remains, somehow, uncreased when she straightens her spine. The largest fragment of the teacup is in her hand.The ladies around her—gathered for an informal book-group, as they did, twice-monthly, at the Wang’s palatial penthouse home—collectively gasp.Blood drips from the meticulous, deliberate slice across the flesh of her oval palm. Her face hasn’t changed at all, not even a flinch or twitch of muscle. She drops the shard, lifts one stilettoed foot to cross the wreckage, and holds the wound at the maid’s eye-level.“The whole set,” Yoo explains gently, “Will have to be packed away. Unusable.” She presses her hand against the maid’s face, dragging a wet red smear across nose and lips and chin, and finally, down to stain the pale uniform blouse.The younger woman whimpers, but does not dare to move.“Clear away this mess,” Yoo says. “And call a doctor.”
iii.
Baek Ah takes one step inside the door and thunders, “Eun! Get down here!”The place reeks of sweat and spicy noodles and beer. Gingerly, Baek Ah sets down his polished leather luggage in the entryway and skirts around a heap of empty food cartons.Footsteps sound on the stairs. In peacetime—peacetime being when Eun and his brother-in-arms, Wang Jung, are kept firmly under control—the loft apartment is a luxurious haven. The open floor plan allows for lounging and parties, centered around the gem of chaebol heir hangouts: an enormous indoor pool sunk in the middle of the floor and ringed with three different kinds of marble in graduated steps. The winding staircase that curves above the ever-bubbling fountain leads to the sleeping quarters, which are arranged under a constellation of skylights.Baek Ah considers it his second home.At the moment, he’s considering tearing the whole thing down.“Aish,” he mutters, kicking at a rumpled towel. “You good-for-nothing little…”“Hyung!”This is Baek Ah’s trouble: his heart is easily melted. All it takes is the sight of the ultimate culprit, Eun, tumbling downstairs, and…he’s lost all his anger. Most of it, anyway.He submits to Eun’s fierce hug and tries to remember to scold. “You call me hyung as you welcome me to a place in this state?”Eun glances ruefully behind him. “Ah…OK. You came at a bad time. No offense!” he adds, skipping out of the way of Baek Ah’s reprimanding backhand. “Jung and I had a few visitors last night.”“Jung lives here now?”“No.” Eun rolls his eyes. “Like the Mother Dragon would ever allow that. He just…stays, from time to time. We didn’t know you were coming back!”It has been a long time since Baek Ah was in Daegu. As a child, he expected to pick up where his father (and more to the point, though less publicly, his mother) left off. They were the chief design team for Wang-Hwangbo International Textiles, and not a day has gone by since his father’s death that Baek Ah hasn’t felt that larger hand guiding his pen and paints.Mother still lives, of course. But she hated the city, and the business, and the Wangs most of all, and so she lives in the countryside now, and does not answer her phone.Lately, it has felt like Baek Ah is following in her footsteps. Tucking himself away into mountain villas. Surrounding himself with comforts. Mother’s comforts take the form of exotic teas and silk-screen embroidery; Baek Ah prefers more…vivacious entertainment, but the fact remains: he has been gone.And he isn’t quite ready to tell Eun why he’s come back again.“Call the housekeeper,” he says. “I’m not going to live in a sty.”Eun misses the chiding tone by a mile and settles on the kernel of a promise. “You’re staying!”“Yes. I’m staying.”At least for as long as So needs him. And Baek Ah has a feeling—an artist’s haunted predilection of the future—that the need may be great.
iv.
“Miss, the exhibits are closed today. Private event.”Ha Jin shakes her head. “What—I just—” The notebook in her hand seems like the simplest excuse. “Student project.”“Private event.” The guard is already getting impatient. Behind him, delivery workers are carting in bolts of what look like…textiles?  A strange prickle runs along Ha Jin’s spine. She cranes her neck to get a better look, and asks, in a less insistent tone, “What kind of event?”The guard glares. “Who are you, to get to know?”She waves the notebook again. “I just need something to tell my teacher, ahjussi.”The guard sucks at his teeth, lips poking outward. “Textiles,” he says. “It’s a tradeshow for the new season.”“I…manage acquisitions for some prominent clients…”“Oh!” she squeaks, because a little touch of aegyo won’t hurt. She has the face for it, the wide, perpetually child-like eyes and rosebud mouth. It’s strange to wear a face that looks so young, when Ha Jin feels anything but. “That’s perfect! I’m a design major. Can you tell me who’s featured?”The guard is charmed enough. “Wang-Hwangbo International,” he says, a little puffed up, glad to represent his museum. “Surely you’ve heard of them.”…She has.…At home, Ha Jin’s heart beats too fast. The doctor has cleared her for any heart-related issues, but sometimes she thinks about how it killed her last time, the perpetual pulse and the fear and the love, all things that seem tied together with this fickle lump of flesh in her chest. She sits on the edge of her bed, listening to her mother rattling around in the kitchen, the rise and fall of her father’s voice as he discusses the weather.She needs to find her own place to live.She needs to find her way into the museum tonight.Ha Jin swallows down something too hopeful to be a sob.She has no idea what she will find there.
v.
“My love. Are you sure you don’t want rest?”Her hand is ice-cold on Taejo’s forehead. Her left hand; the right is neatly bandaged across the palm.“You’re hurt,” he says, avoiding her question. It seems safer, to avoid that question.Yoo’s eyes bore into him, sloe-black. She’s never had a soft gaze, not even when he was young and she was younger, when she whispered lovely nothings to him in gardens atop skyscrapers, and won enough of his heart to keep all of him. “It is just a scratch,” she says. “I’ll wear gloves tonight.”He sits up.  He had woken from a restless nap to find her standing over him. “I’ll be ready in half an hour,” he promises. He told Mu he would be there, and he never breaks his word to Mu.
vi.
“Call for you, Mr. Wang.”Yo stretches. There is still an hour before the gathering—which is at a museum, of all places, because his father has no sense of modernity—and he is weighing carefully the risk of having a third drink. He cannot afford to have dulled senses tonight, or any night.Won, of course, is not allowed to drink at all. He is loose-lipped when he drinks, and even Won holds too many secrets these days for such carelessness.“I’ll take the call,” he says, and waits for the transfer. It’s probably IMG, offering him the Givenchy winter campaign for Southeast Asia. He’s been waiting for that ask, though he probably won’t take the deal. Time to change careers, in a manner of speaking.  “Mr. Wang.”“Has the agent arrived?”“Yes. She arrived in Seo-gu a few hours ago.”“Excellent. Anything else?”The man on the other end of the line hesitates. Yo snaps to attention. Reluctance is never a good thing. “Tell me,” he orders.“Your brother was seen in Daegu today.”“Jung?” Yo asks. It’s a venomous pleasantry, and a last line of defense. He knows the man doesn’t mean Jung.“Wang So.”Yo bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds.
vii.
The sky is clear when So arrives in Daegu. His right hand is still smarting from last night’s altercation, but the pain is the least of his concerns today.He spent the train-ride facing the window. Of course, this did not stop the round-faced schoolboys across the aisle from whispering about his face, but So has had twenty years to hear every manner of commentary, and shuffles that to the lowest level of concern as well.His father, after all, is dying.Nobody took the trouble to tell him this, including the man himself. Mu likely would have, in time, but Mu is overly cautious.Perhaps So should have waited to be called. That would be the dog in him, after all. Crawling on all fours for the scraps of being needed. He picks at the bandage wrapped around his fingers and frowns.Whoever is behind the sabotage of Wang-Hwangbo’s shipments is likely close to the heart of the company. In his own mind, there’s no need for veiled suspicions.His money is already on Yo.Yo has the most to gain by destabilizing the fragile line of succession. Yo must have sensed, as So actually knows, that Mu would just as soon not take on the family legacy.If Mu is halfway convinced, turning the shareholders against him will topple him inexorably. Shareholders are not overly fond of stolen shipments and money trickling away like water.Wook would urge caution, in pursuing this theoretical line of inquiry, and So should probably listen to him. Wook is closer to true brotherhood with So and Mu than their brothers by blood, though Wook is the son of their father’s late partner. Hwangbo Ji Hyuk was a kindly man, more openly affectionate than Taejo.Everyone, of course, is more openly affectionate than Madame Yoo.So shuts his eyes; he doesn’t want to think about his mother any sooner than he has to.When he gets off the train, he hears a camera shutter snap somewhere to his right. Life has taught him to be suspicious.It has also taught him to be resigned.
viii.
Ha Jin waits until 7:30, when her parents have settled down to watch reruns of The Great Doctor, and slips outside. She has on her nicest dress, which hangs a little loose on her frame, and a pair of heels almost too high to walk in. With her hair slicked back and her best makeup skills put to use (and oh, there is one for irony), she hopes she can pass for a plus-one of some lesser tradesman.The front entrance of the museum is ablaze with light. Garment trunks are still being unloaded and carried through the service entrance, while businessmen filter through the main doors. The women who lean against their arms are as sleek and fair as flowers.Ha Jin remembers Princess Yeon Hwa, and bile rises in her throat.(She doesn't know what she will find here.)The service entrance seems like her best bet. She passes a row of trays, one of which is laden with champagne flutes, and snatches one up.Props, remember? Whether it's a notebook, or a hastily stirred-up foundation palette, she's always been good with props.(She misses him. She misses him so much.)She walks a little tipsily, which isn't hard in these damn shoes, and melts into the crowds of waiters."Miss!" one calls, right on cue. "Miss, are you lost?""Sorry," she says, as blasé as she can manage. "I--" She waves her wine glass. "Can you help?""Through there," he says. He looks young, young enough to be Eun's age. Ha Jin's heart twists in her chest. She follows his gesture to the door marked Goryeo Gallery,  steps through, out into a blur of glamour----and comes face to face with Wook.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves.
- Robert FrostDAEGU, KOREA – JUNG DISTRICT
i.
Centuries ago, when she was dying, she thought of Wook.Not with any love, nor, at last, any confusion—only some extension of the grief and weariness that had overcome every other waking moment since she left the palace, and maybe even before that.It wasn’t her world, no matter how many people she came to love there. She was a fighter at first; then the fight was beaten out of her. She watched death and hatred and the hatred of death.She was afraid, there, and some might say that made her a coward.Perhaps she would have believed it herself, if she hadn’t known Wook, and all the blood that a coward could spill.…Ha Jin freezes, hand crumpling her skirt as though his very presence is a stab wound. He looks as handsome as ever, tousled hair and pristine suit and glittering cufflinks.He leaves her ice-cold.Ghosts are not known for comfort; this ghost leaves her with something far less.“Excuse me,” he says, eyes blank. No recognition, thank heaven. Ha Jin does not know what she would do if it was Wook who remembered.Of course——that means—What if So doesn’t remember?Her heart clenches like a fist.Wook has paused mid-step, and is considering her. “You look a little lost,” he observes, charm itself. Those hooded eyes have lost none of their appearance of tenderness.“Maybe a little.” Ha Jin forces herself to smile. Her dress is nowhere near nice enough, she knows. Not for a textile exhibition. Trapped in the same world as her greatest hopes and fears, she wishes that she could have had more time to plan. “Would you show me?”He offers her his arm.This is not Goryeo, and Ha Jin is not a child. Maybe she is not Hae Soo.But she slips her arm through his, and walks out into the crowd.“Tell me when you see your people,” Wook purrs, near her ear. He is so…considerate. She doesn’t trust it for a moment. Did she mistake the look in his eyes for ignorance? Maybe he does remember, or some animal sense within him knows enough to keep her close. She tries not to tremble beside him.She tries not to think of what this means, that he is here, in this world, in this time, under the name of Wang.Goryeo wasn’t a dream.Nor, apparently, was it an ending.
ii.
“Who is that girl?”“What girl? I only have eyes for you.”Yeon Hwa knows better than to believe a word out of Yo’s mouth, and she raps his beringed knuckles with her YSL clutch. “Hajima. The girl with my brother.”Yo’s gaze slides lazily to the cheaply dressed, slip-thin whore who is arm-in-arm with Wook. He shrugs. “Paid company.”“Ya!” She’s already hit him once, she has to maintain her dignity. She daggers him with a glance instead. “Wook would never.” “Ah yes.” Yo smiles the maddening smile of someone who is fully aware of how handsome he is. Ever since he started modeling, he’s outlined his eyes in a fine ribbon of kohl. It makes him look otherworldly, and every bit as dangerous as Yeon Hwa knows him to be. “Wook is a man without vice.”Yeon Hwa doesn’t believe that. Nobody is perfect; her brother has always been too careful, too deliberate, to enter fully into anyone else’s suffering. That is a vice, but not one that she will divulge to Yo. The Wang brothers are prone to very different sins.Sins, she thinks, with a speculative look at Yo’s smirking lips, of passion.“I’ll find out myself,” she hisses, and stalks away. Damn it all, why does So never come to these things? He’s been away on business in Seoul ever since he was in his late teens.And before that…Yeon Hwa isn’t blind. She’s grown up practically side-by-side with this ruling family, she has seen every direction in which its power stretches.The Hwangbo name comes second. Nights like tonight remind her of that.Fittingly, she catches sight of Mrs. Wang at that very moment. Yoo—Yeon Hwa refers to her by her given name mentally, a safe internal show of disrespect—looks as young and inhuman as ever. She has soft, delicate features and hair untouched by frost, and she is the most terrifying person Yeon Hwa has ever met.(Yeon Hwa’s own mother is gracious and quiet, never caring much about her husband’s share in Wang-Hwangbo, but always caring about her children’s futures.)
No wonder So isn’t here. Why would he want to be?
She steels her resolve and calls her brother’s name. He turns, not letting go of his unknown escort’s arm.“Yeon Hwa. Do you know…”“Ha Jin,” the girl supplies. She’s terribly pale. Not a flirt after all, but Yeon Hwa doesn’t like her any better.“I do not,” Yeon Hwa says coldly, still speaking to her brother. “I thought this was a private event.”Wook looks more disappointed than embarrassed. It’s a trick of his, conveying a perspective on others’ feelings before he expresses his own. “Play nice, sister.”A chill of…memory, suspended halfway between regret and resolve, settles over Yeon Hwa. She lifts the corners of her lips in a smile. “Very well. Enjoy your time here, Ha Jin.” It is still a threat, of sorts, but pleasanter than she could have been.She goes in search of another drink.
iii.
There’s a figure huddled on the front steps of the Nam’s house, and Jung halts.“Who’s there?”“It’s me,” Eun says, unfolding himself from his dejected heap. “Aigo, my life is over.”“What now?” Jung rubs his jaw, hoping that the hit he took in the ring today won’t bruise. Mother is already so severe on his beloved boxing; he doesn’t need to present a marked-up face as further evidence of its unsuitability.“What now? You don’t know?”Jung rarely knows anything. That’s the benefit of being the youngest, favorite son. “I only know that you are skulking like a dog when we could be drinking. Eating. Anything, really.”“Heol! You really don’t know.” Eun is shaking his head. “So has come back! Remember So? Your older brother, the gangster? Who’s killed, oh, I don’t know, fifty men at least?”“So hasn’t killed anyone,” Jung says, though he’s far from certain. “But—shit. Are you sure?”“Baek Ah has invited him to stay here,” Eun says gloomily. “Baek Ah’s come back too, not that we get to have any fun with him.” He frowns dramatically. Eun does everything dramatically. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it from Yo. Weren’t you at the party?”Jung scratches his neck, a little sheepish. “No. I…had a thing.”“A fight.”Eun knows him too well. Jung nods. “A fight.”“Did you win?”“Aish!” Eun really is a disloyal little bastard. “Don’t you have any faith in your hyung?”“You’re not my hyung,” Eun grumbles. “We’re practically the same age. Alright, what are we going to do about So? I am not staying in the same house as him, and it’s my goddamn house!”“Then,” says a low, calm voice behind them, “Sleep on the street.”Jung and Eun spin round like tops.So always looks the same to Jung. Stone-faced, panther-lean, dressed in black. In the half-darkness, it’s harder to see his scar—a white rivulet that runs from the hollow of his eye to the edge of his cheekbone.Jung has never heard the whole story.“So,” Eun chokes.“Eun,” So echoes. It’s mocking—it must be, So is related to Yo and nobody mocks like Yo—but with So, it’s always difficult to tell. He could describe the weather and his plans to murder someone in the same exact tone. “I’ll toss out a blanket for you.”He doesn’t speak to Jung. He turns his back and climbs the steps, two at a time, up the pathway to the front door. When it closes behind him, Eun finally regains his power to speak.“Whew. We survived that.”Jung swallows. It’s been three years at least since he saw his brother. It didn’t even merit him a greeting.He realizes, belatedly, that he didn’t offer one either.“Come,” he says to Eun. “Let’s go drinking.”
iv.
“Your contributions are impressive.”Yo flattens his palm over his heart. “Thank you, father. I want to see our company flourish.”“No need for such formality,” Taejo answers, as though he has ever demanded anything other than formality from all his sons but Mu. “Your help does not go unnoticed.”But it does go unappreciated. Yo smiles. “Truly, I am glad.”He feels his mother’s approval radiate—not warmly, never warmly—but powerfully. She cuts like a blade and she has always taught Yo to cut with her. Sometimes, traitorously, he thinks that it was a choice between becoming the knife’s edge and being shipped off to the Kang boarding school.Not that So had learned his lesson; he keeps turning up like a bad coin.Yo would rather not think of So tonight, but he has to. The tactile displays of his ruthlessly executed business deals were for his father; the message is for his mother. When his father totters off to find a comfortable seat, he turns to her.“So has come back,” he says. Might as well get to the point, and do it in the public eye, so that she won’t rake her nails across his face in what will likely be her ensuing rage.Yo has a higher-than-most (higher than So’s) success rate of avoiding his mother’s hands, but even so, it never hurts to be cautious.Yoo turns a shade whiter, her gloved fingers tightening around a crystal champagne class. “To hell with him,” she whispers harshly. “Will he never let me alone?”Yo smiles thinly, ruefully. “It would seem not.”
v.
Hating Jung is never as easy as he wants it to be.So switches on the lights, drops his bags on the tiled floor and scans the room for anything amiss. Threat assessment is a rather permanent character trait.Baek Ah had promised it would be no inconvenience to host him indefinitely at the Nam home, though Eun’s protests are a keen reminder of how tenuous his welcome is…anywhere.And he hasn’t even tried to go home yet.He drags his teeth along his lower lip. Yo almost certainly knows that he’s here, which means his mother knows. Jung is the last in the loop always, because Jung is a child in a barely grown body, and Jung is going to outlast them all without even trying.So scrapes a hand through his hair, which has grown long enough in front to half-cover his disfigurement, and sighs. He can’t rest, not yet. Mu is waiting for him. He contacted So from a burner phone, told him he’d heard that So was coming, and asked that he meet him as soon as he arrived from Seoul.Well, So has arrived.He washes his face, but waits until he has gone back outside to light a cigarette out of courtesy to Baek Ah’s home. Jung and Eun are long gone, the rascals.So turns his mind to other things.The cigarette is a stub by the time he reaches Mu’s. It’s a long walk, longer than he remembered. He grinds the ash under his heel and taps three times at the back door.Ji Mong opens it.“So!” Ji Mong’s face lights up. As ever, he’s the only one who’s actually glad to see So. Time and trouble never change that. “Come in, come in. Mu’s just opening up a bottle of cognac.”Come to think of it, So could use a drink—though he doesn’t understand what Mu has against good old-fashioned soju.He slips off his shoes and pads into Mu’s spacious common room. Mu is surrounded by books and ledgers, and his favorite soft rice cakes. These are all familiar things, and something in So’s chest aches.“You look well,” Mu greets him, which is a kindly fabrication at best. So looks like shit, and everyone knows it or will know it. He’ll take the kindness for now, though. The first visit to his mother and elder full brother will dispel any such pleasantries.“You didn’t tell me he was sick.”“It wasn’t mine to tell.”“Or mine to know?” It comes out more bitterly than So means it too. He sits down opposite Mu and reaches for an amber-filled glass. “I’m sorry. I only…”“No need to apologize,” Mu assures him, and Ji Mong bobs his head encouragingly. “Honestly, So, I was asking him for ages, to speak with you. To ask you to return.”“Wae? What possible use could I be?”Mu and Ji Mong exchange a weighted glance. They are among the only people So trusts, but that doesn’t make him any less wary.“Father will not continue to lead the company,” Mu says slowly. “The announcement comes soon, and then…”“He appoints a successor,” So finishes. “You.”Mu clears his throat. “That is his wish, yes.”“But not yours?” So racks his brain. Who else could do it? Not Yo, if they can help it. Wook has never sought such notoriety. Baek Ah is too far removed…“No,” Mu is saying. “Not my wish. I want it to be you.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

You’re in a car with a beautiful boy,

and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and

you’re trying to

choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he

reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist,

and you feel

your heart taking root in your body,

like you’ve discovered something

you don’t even have a name for
- Richard Siken
i.
Ha Jin has no plan. She escapes the museum gallery at last, still burning under Yeon Hwa’s stare. Yeon Hwa didn’t know her. None of them know her. None of them remember.Ha Jin has no plan, and she leaves before the erstwhile Queen Yoo sees her. She limps along the pavement with tears beginning to bubble up and over. She swipes at her wet cheeks.Who can explain this? They are all gathered in perfect preservation…Wook as inscrutable as ever, Yeon Hwa as haughty, all the rest as rich.And So is nowhere to be seen.If she dreamed it, how did she get it so right?If she did visit Goryeo, how are all of them here?She needs to find Ji Mong again, more urgently than ever. Not because he will tell her who does and who does not exist—she has answered that question for herself.No, she needs Ji Mong because Ji Mong may be able to answer her questions on reincarnation.They seem to be the only two who knowingly walk through time.She wonders how to find Baek Ah. Because he must be real too, mustn’t he? Baek Ah…please God, Eun too, and Jung…all the ones who loved her simply and forever, or at least as long as forever lasted for them.“Miss—are you alright?”Ha Jin blinks away her tears. This voice, too, is familiar, but she doesn’t place it until she sees the speaker.A waitress, hair piled high atop her head in a springy knot.Chae Ryung.Many thoughts collide in Ha Jin’s mind. The first is that Won was nowhere to be seen at the party, though she caught a glimpse of Yo——and the second is the memory of how Chae Ryung betrayed her, and paid a price higher than any Hae Soo would have set.She has trained herself not to be shocked. The numbness helps, with that. “I…” Think fast, Ha Jin. You threw yourself into this, and there will be no one else to get you back out. “I was supposed to meet my boyfriend.” She sighs dramatically, channeling a little of Yeon Hwa’s loftiness as best she can. “And he didn’t show.”“At that party?” Chae Ryung asks, nodding in the direction of the glowing museum lights. “Seems…fancy.”Chae Ryung is wearing fire engine red lipstick, very dressy for a waitress. Ha Jin suspects that Chae Ryung knows more of the party than she lets on.“Yes.” Another sigh. And now, the gamble. “I decided I’d just meet him at his house, but I always get so mixed up…curse you, Baek Ah!”Chae Ryung takes the bait. “Baek Ah? Oh, he…he’s a regular at the coffee shop where I work.” She sketches an arc with her hand as if she’s holding a paintbrush. “Likes to draw?”“Yes.” Ha Jin dabs at her cheek. As with Wook, it’s hard to tell if Chae Ryung is playing some sort of game, or if there really is a conflict in her heart, after all this time.Maybe she and Wook and Yeon Hwa can feel the pull of time’s magnet, whether they remember anything or not.“He lives a few miles from here. Let me call you a taxi, unni.”If Ha Jin shuts her eyes, she will see Chae Ryung, misshapen and bleeding and gone. She does not shut her eyes. “Gomabseubnida,” she says. “Thank you.”
ii.
He leaves Mu's house with a heat like fever rising in his blood. He hasn't seen his father yet; he's never really had his father's blessing. It isn't his father whom he goes to visit now.Years don't change her habits. She hosts many meetings and opportunities for social prostration with the other chaebol wives, none of whom dare to cross her.But every night—late into the night—she takes tea (and liquor) alone in her room, and reads.So is not much of a reader. Kang boarding school couldn't beat it into him—not for lack of effort. It's Yo who inherited her intellectual hunger. Yo, like So, has to try to be perfect in her eyes.Yo, unlike So, succeeds.He picks the lock, which is reckless, but the pounding in his head won't let him think straight.So slips past the entrance to the kitchen, where the stainless steel clatter is already in full swing for tomorrow's breakfast and any American "brunches" that the Wang household sees fit to hold for its foreign visitors.There is a back stair to her elaborate chambers. So takes it.He feels eager, like he always does, like this time will change anything.He raps his bruised knuckles on her door and waits until one of the staff opens it. The girl blanches when she sees him, but So stares her into silence."Who is it?" rings an impatient voice he knows too well, and his mother comes into view.She goes paler, too, but not like the maid. No—Yoo's face hardens like white marble, and So has to check the urge to drop to his knees and beg.There will, he thinks bitterly, be plenty of time for begging."What are you doing here?" she hisses, when she has dismissed the maid with a sharp gesture.He's still in his travel clothes, dark jeans and low boots and a leather jacket with blood ground into the cuffs. He feels about five years old."I've come home," So offers humbly."You have no home here," she says coldly. "You're a man now. A twisted one, yes, but a man. Your home is the streets of Seoul, or Incheon. Not Daegu.""I'm not asking permission." He hooks his thumbs in his pockets, as if bracing himself. "I know that Father is dying."It is a gamble. Not one that Mu, probably, would want him to make.But Yoo’s face doesn’t flicker with surprise and So knows he’s only telling her what she already knows.Already knows, and has no doubt been using to her own ends.“So you came back to assert your usefulness to me in this troubling time?” His mother lifts her eyebrows. “Where are your gifts? You always bring some pyemul.” She scoffs. “Something to soften the blow of your visit.”“A storm’s coming,” So tells her. His bruises seem to have spread from his fingers to his whole body over the course of a few moments. “I think it is likely your storm.” He raises his eyes to hers again. He had let his gaze slip to the ground. “And I am your son.”The corner of her lip curls; a sneer, not a smile. “Hardly,” she says. “Now, get out.”
iii.
“Come away from the window! Your nose will get cold.”Kiha does not listen. His hands are pressed against the glass, too, and Min Seo sighs. No matter how many times she reminds him not to get his hopes up, he doesn’t listen.Then again, he’s only four.She turns back to the stove, where a late pot of tea is boiling. Their apartment is small and tidy. It could be larger, if she took all the money Kiha’s father offers her.It could be much smaller, if his father had shunned them when everyone else did.Still, nothing is perfect.“Kiha.” She sighs. “I told you. It’s past your bedtime. Appa isn’t coming tonight.”
iv.
He can’t stop thinking about the girl. Two minutes at a train station, and apparently Baek Ah, long the unsinkable ladies’ man, is weighed down.He’ll have to dispatch his spies and find the girl with the stony glare in Daegu.He is, after all, a believer in fate.He’s also a believer that Jung and Eun are wily bastards who will do their best to get out of anything. Here he is, at yet another gala for Wang-Hwangbo, and his potential socialization prospects are Yo, who despises him, and Wook, who…Well. Baek Ah’s relationship with Wook, ever since Wook’s girlfriend Myung Hee died two years ago, is fraught.Baek Ah, of course, was the only one who knew that Wook was cheating on her before she even got the diagnosis.No, he has nothing to say to Wook tonight. Wook has a flawless reputation and Baek Ah has never told his secret, even though it burns in the space between his ribs every time he remembers it. Strange, that So is such an outcast but is undyingly loyal, while Wook is welcomed and trusted by all.Baek Ah sips at his drink, and tries to forget Myung Hee and the girl at the train station, two bright and different stars in a constellation of complications. He needs someone easy to flirt with tonight, someone to take his mind off things.That’s the trick to being a ladies’ man, after all.
v.
The door of the coatroom is barely ajar, but Chae Ryung pulls away from Won to stare through the gap.He hums with irritation.“Is Baek Ah here?”“Yes, of course he’s here. Why, do you want to have us change places?”“Strange,” Chae Ryung murmurs.“What is?” Won asks, stroking her hair as one might stroke a dog. “That one so handsome as I would love you?”“No.” She is absent-minded, and she forgets to praise him. “I saw a girl outside. She was looking for Baek Ah, and she said he wasn’t here…I directed her to his house.”“Baek Ah always has a girl at his house.” Won purses his lips. “What of it?”Chae Ryung shakes her head, and cuddles up against him again, amid the coats. “Nothing. Just—a feeling. I don’t know.”
vi.
Baek Ah’s house is a modern structure, all clean lines and soft, cool shades, even when seen at night.He is an artist in this world too. Ha Jin is comforted by that. She slips off her heels so that she can approach on silent feet. The front door is, incredibly, unlocked.She almost turns back. Is she delusional? Does she have any right to meddle in the lives of those who know nothing about her?
I had a child there.
We had a child.It is enough.Ha Jin opens the door.The sound of running water filters into the hallway. Ha Jin follows the sound along a tiled parquet floor, until the hall opens up into a room that stretches up to the second story, ringed by an elaborate loft railing. In the center of the room is a pool, endlessly rippled by a fountain.Her chest pinches with longing.And then, a splash.He rises out of the water, skin glistening, a slash of hair plastered across his face. When he runs his fingers through it, smoothing it away from his forehead, the scar on his face is exactly the same.Ha Jin stops breathing.What happens next happens quickly. He sees her, barefoot on the tiles in her ill-fitting red dress, and he hoists himself out of the pool with lethal efficiency to tower over her, eyes flashing.She wants—Well, there are many things she wants. She wants to raise her lips to his and breathe his name into his mouth. She wants to trace the familiar map of scars across his shoulders and chest, scars she has kissed, and tell him that she isn’t going to die, not this time, not if she can help it.She wants to remind him that he used to be a king, or that in some eternal way, he still could be.Ha Jin knows that she can do none of this.“Who are you?” he growls. It reminds her of how he was at the beginning and at the end, half threat, and half the pain of a broken bone.Before Goryeo, she never thought of herself as clever. She was skilled as a makeup artist, and her exams were never anything to be ashamed about, but she wasn’t brilliant.In Goryeo, she began as a child. Foolish and brave.Now, she has to take a different tack.A name hurls itself at her out of the depths of a past. Ha Jin risks it all, and says, as calmly as a person can who would sooner be sobbing, “Park Soo-kyung sent me.”She prays that So will recognize the name of the old general.Mercifully, he does. He takes a step back, a muscle jumping in his neck—still in attack mode, but waiting to learn more. “Is that true?”“How else would I know where to find you?” Ha Jin flattens her hands against her thighs. “You need eyes on the inside. I’m just here to help.”“I could call him right now and test this story,” So tells her, punctuating his words with a jab of his finger. But he’s only wearing sodden shorts; he doesn’t have his phone.Ha Jin forces her shoulders to lift in a shrug. “Go ahead. But you need all the help you can get, so you might as well take mine.”“And you know this—how?”Because I know you, because I used to watch you sleep, because I love you, I love you—“Because that’s what I was told. Am I wrong? Are your brothers not vying for the crown? Of the business, I mean.”So paces like a watchful cat, his eyes never leaving her. She knows that somewhere in his heart he must want to trust her. He always did, back then. From almost the first moment they met.“Come back tomorrow,” he says, so coldly that her heart almost falters. “We’ll talk then.”He isn’t well. His face is drawn tight with misery. She wonders if he’s been with his mother. Only his closest blood could hurt him like that.His closest blood, and her.“Please,” she says, imbuing it with every touch of gentleness that ever nearly saved him, “I don’t have anywhere else to stay.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

They too know all too well that some cracks were built just for us to fall through.

We live in a world that tries to steal spirits each day; they steal ours by taking us away.
- Tanaya Winder
i.
Baek Ah finds So with his back turned, dressed like he’s ready for a fight. His hands are deep in the pockets of a leather jacket that Baek Ah can tell has seen better days.“You’re here,” Baek Ah says softly, joining So by the wide window that looks out into the yard. “I didn’t know that you would be coming until tomorrow.”So’s hair is wet, but it hasn’t been raining. Baek Ah casts a glance over his shoulder, where the pool bubbles and churns.“It’s already begun,” So says, hoarsely. His face is reflected as a pale twist in the dark glass. He is shorter by half a head than Baek Ah, but he has always felt so much older, so much greater, like someone capable of plucking a knife from between his own ribs and using it to kill.“What has begun?” Baek Ah asks carefully. And just like that, he realizes that they are not alone in the room.The girl is a slip of a thing, in a red dress that is passé and too large in the shoulders. She opens her mouth when she sees Baek Ah, a look like longing.So, without turning towards her, explains. “She says she knows Park Soo-kyung.”Soo-kyung is a hardboiled police detective who was forced to retire when a bullet shattered part of his jaw. His Seoul department was too image-conscious to have a lead detective who struggled to speak, and so they’d saddled him with a heavy pension and effectively shown him his way out.Baek Ah knows all of this because he knows So. When So was kicked out of the Kang boarding school for the last time, his mother had refused to take him back. The eponymous Kangs hadn’t wanted him anymore either. Somehow, the grizzled Soo-kyung had come to know him and had welcomed So into his home.The Wang-Hwangbo complex is aware of this, though it is communicated only by whispers. Baek Ah is also aware that Soo-kyung taught So how to fight.Baek Ah reads people. It’s part of being an artist. He can tell, at least, the beginning of someone’s story—even if he doesn’t always guess the end.Right now, he doesn’t think that this girl in the red dress looks anything like a threat.“Hello,” he says gently. He offers her a hand to take it. “I am Baek Ah.”“She says she has to stay here.”“Please,” the girl adds. She is staring at the back of So’s tense shoulders like she is going to die.“Did you threaten her?” Baek Ah asks.“No.” One of those shoulders lifts. “Well, not a lot.”“I’m not afraid of him,” the girl says, which makes So go stiff. “I truly am here to help. I know that the family…business is in trouble. Soo-kyung would have sent—” she pauses, and Baek Ah thinks, aha, a gambler, but the impression is fleeting—"Soon Deok, his own daughter, if he thought she would not be recognized.”“What use is a woman?” So wheels around, eyes flashing. “Whatever you think you know—”“That,” she answers quietly. “A woman is useful because she is always underestimated. Believe me, I do not always trust myself.”“Aish,” So breathes out, and turns back to the window.Baek Ah has no idea what is going on. When this is true, he finds it wisest to follow his heart. “What is your name?”“Go Ha Jin.” She is in her stocking feet. Baek Ah wonders if she is cold; evening sets in with a chill, here. “I…was at the tradeshow tonight. You would do well to watch Won’s moves.”That gets a response from So. “Kim Won?”“Y-es.”“What about him?” He has turned again and stalks towards her, eyes narrowed. Baek Ah stems an urge to step in between them.“He’s a greater threat than you think.” Ha Jin is doing, by Baek Ah’s metric, a pretty admirable job of staring down So. It is not a task for the faint-hearted. “Yo uses him to manage lower-level connections. Spies.”“And you’re the alternative to Won’s spy network?”“One alternative,” Ha Jin whispers.So slides his gaze to Baek Ah, as if Baek Ah is supposed to have answers. “A word?”Baek Ah follows him out of the room. It’s his house, so perhaps he should be more worried that this strange intruder will try to lift any of the high-priced artifacts lying around for the taking, but—he isn’t.“What the hell?” So hisses, when they’re alone.Baek Ah had hoped they would meet under different circumstances. That So would come here and get some sleep, something to erase the gray circles under his ever-wild eyes. Instead, he is bullet-sharp, too quick for his own good.“If you don’t believe her, why don’t you just call Soo-kyung?”“He’s out of the country. I can’t reach him.”“Out of the country?”“Daughter. College. America.”“Ah.” Baek Ah rubs at a muscle in the back of his neck. “So Ha Jin, just shows up here…knows where to find you, knows his name, Won’s name, Yo’s name?”“It would be like Yo,” So observes darkly, “To play some sort of trick. Anything to take me out at the knees.” He swears harshly under his breath. “I saw her. She might as well have confirmed it to my face. She’s planning a coup. Yo must be fronting it, she wouldn’t want Jung in the line of fire…”He’s talking about his mother. Baek Ah’s chest hurts. “You went to see her.”“Yes.” So isn’t looking at him.“Because you wanted her to tell you the truth?”So looks at him. It’s worse. It’s much worse. “No,” he says. “I went to see her because I wanted her to ask for my help.”Baek Ah draws in a sharp breath.“You see?” So laughs, a twisted, ugly thing. “There are so many for whom I’d commit open treason. But no one ever asks me to. It keeps me an honest man.” He scrapes a hand through his hair. Baek Ah realizes that he has added to the collection of characters tattooed on his knuckles since their last meeting; they are not quite legible, under the bruising from his latest fight.“What are you going to do?”“I would say we throw her out and let her find somewhere else to stay,” So suggests coldly, but Baek Ah doesn’t think his heart is in it. “Or I stick my neck out for Yo to strangle. Aish, I want a cigarette.”Baek Ah’s home is adamantly smoke-free. “Can I get you to trade one vice for another? I have wine.”“Wine?”“I have soju.”“That’s more like it,” So says wearily. “No need to throw this Ha Jin out tonight, I suppose. Deal with her in the morning, Baek Ah—but keep her away from me.”
ii.
“Are you certain you didn’t know her?”“Wook, you must be trying to piss me off.” Yeon Hwa tugs out a hairpin. She had liked the feeling of Yo’s eyes on her, and that stung, because she had spent many years pushing away Yo’s wiles. How dare they have any effect now?All it means is that Yeon Hwa’s heart is tired of rotting, tired of waiting. She knows as well as everyone else does: So is out of reach.“Myung Hee would want me to be happy,” Wook muses, hands clasped behind his back. Their mother is asleep; Yeon Hwa lives in the family house, and Wook often stays there, though he owns his own expansive flat near the Wang-Hwangbo headquarters. It is like old times, Yeon Hwa thinks. Wook and her, whispering after a party. Him scheming; her trying to untangle her mess of emotions about the Wang brothers.“Aren’t you trying to make some sort of power move?” She takes out her earrings and lays them in a delicate porcelain tray. “Since old Wang is dying? A strange time to worry about a girl. Much less a common nyeon like that one.”Wook lifts his eyes to the ornately molded ceiling. “Hmm.”“If you do a thing, do it completely.” Yeon Hwa sniffs disdainfully. She fears her brother when she least respects him, when he moves so slowly it can only be with long-determined purpose. “If you plan to take on the company, and put our name first, keep your focus on that. Leave the bitches to the Wangs. Lord knows they get enough of them.”“Even you?” He says it so softly it doesn’t quite register. When it does, she feels the blood rushing to her face.“I don’t know what you mean by that.”Wook smiles. It’s a thin smile. She’s felt it on her own face, but it chills her, to see it on his. “If you want me to do a thing completely, sister, then be certain you aren’t the one to stand in my way.”Yeon Hwa will not tremble. She is stronger than that.Wook, still smiling, leaves her.(She trembles.)
iii.
He doesn’t sleep, but the girl does. She curls up on one of Baek Ah’s sofas as though she is safe in this unknown place.As though she trusts them.And maybe she does.So digs his nails into the palms of his hands and tells himself that he is right to doubt her. It is too convenient. It has always been too convenient for him to be cast off, tricked, left in the cold.Ha Jin sighs in her sleep. A sudden image, unbidden, thrusts itself into So’s mind—his arms around her, her head pillowed in the hollow of his shoulder. He half-fancies that he knows how soft her skin would be under his hands. Half-fancies that there is peace, somewhere, for them.Them?He must be going mad. He has had good reason to go mad for years. He rubs at his eyes with his fists and goes in search of Baek Ah’s coffee pot.If he can’t sleep, he might as well think.(Not of the girl, and her soft skin he hasn’t even touched.)(Never her.)In the morning, he will not let Baek Ah be his messenger. He will be the one to tell her to go.
iv.
“Blood.”Taejo swipes quickly at his lips, but it is too late; Yoo has already seen it.“My throat is hoarse, damnably. It’s nothing.”“Blood,” Yoo repeats, “In your lungs.” She is dressed simple for night—as simply as she ever is, in a gossamer silk robe over her night clothes. She skims absently over the screen of her phone with a finger. “Never a good thing.”His phone blinks with an unread text from Mu. He watches as Yoo’s eyes flicker towards it, cold and curious. “Maybe you’re right.” He gestures to the wide bed. “I think I should sleep alone tonight.” “Of course, yeobo. I want you to rest.” She smiles. “For as long as you need.”When she has gone to her own rooms, Taejo opens Mu’s text.
So is here. You should see him.
Taejo sighs and presses the hard edge of his phone against his brow. So is the most difficult of all his children, through no real fault of his own. It began with Yoo, of course—with the only time Taejo had ever seen her really lose control of her hair-trigger emotions.Unfortunately, on that only time, she had a knife in her hand.And after that, what to do? It seemed right to send him away and let some other family give him the home he needed. When Taejo discovered that So was mistreated by the Kangs, in school and out, it was too late to make a change.As for the man he became…Reluctantly, he replies. Tell him to come and visit me tomorrow. Send Ji Mong as well.It is better to have someone else in the room, so he doesn’t have to quite meet his son’s eyes.
v.
She opens her eyes to light, and wakes to the sound of rushing water.She is Hae Soo again, warm beneath silken coverlets in the palace. He has just left her side for a moment—he is—“So?”She catches herself. She is Ha Jin here. Her mother and father are likely wondering where she is, for they will worry over her, over the fact that she has been gone all night and the fact that her interests, since the coma, are focused on something they cannot understand.She is Ha Jin here, and the man standing over her does not love her in this world.When he speaks, his voice is level. He looks as though he has not slept, but his eyes are less wild. “Until I can verify your identity,” So says, “I’d be a fool to let you stay here.”Ha Jin gets to her feet. She should have expected this. That he would not know her, or want her.She is certain that he needs her.“I only want to help you,” she says.“If there is anything for me to do in Daegu,” he answers, dangerously soft, “I will do it myself.”Only when he has closed the door of Baek Ah’s house behind her does Ha Jin let herself cry.
vi.
“You sent her away?”He doesn’t need Baek Ah’s judgment. So tears his gaze away from the window, where Ha Jin is just a red speck in the distance, and lifts a brow as a challenge. “What of it? I know what I have to do.”Baek Ah looks tempted to say, no you don’t, but thinks better of it.This is why So likes him better than practically anyone else.“I thought you did not want to talk to her.”“I didn’t. I said very few words, I promise you.”Baek Ah frowns. “You’ll need all the help you can get.”“In keeping my mother and brothers to heel?” He smiles, because it is as easy as doing anything else—so, not very easy at all. “I’m the wolf-dog of Seoul, remember?”“You mean,” Baek Ah asks, “All you want is peace? You’re not trying to take your father’s place?”So feels himself go still. Baek Ah can be trusted, he is certain of that. But Mu’s proposition is not one he can even bring himself to utter aloud.He faces Baek Ah head-on, and lets the smile fade away. “I am not my father.” The words don’t seem forceful enough. “I am never my father.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars—on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.”
- Robert Frost
i.
This time, Choi Ji Mong finds her.“So,” he says wearily. “You remember them.”“Of course I remember them,” Ha Jin hisses. She’d like to shout, but they’re in the kitchen, only a few yards away from where her parents are reading at each other, not talking. Ji Mong talked his way in by pretending to be a job interviewer doing a follow-up call, and ever since, Ha Jin has been waiting for an opportunity to throttle him.“Very rare,” he says, tilting his head. “That someone would blend cycles as you have—seeing all of them with open eyes.”“You have too. Although you’re no longer a beggar by the waterfront.”“Yes.” Ji Mong just shrugs. “Whatever you did in Goryeo changed my fortunes. Linked me inextricably with the Wangs and Hwangbos and all the rest. I used to watch from the street corners. Now…”“Now you can get me in,” Ha Jin tells him, flattening her palms against the tabletop.Ji Mong glares. “That’s why I’m here. You’ve caused enough trouble already, sneaking off to Baek Ah’s, seeing So—don’t think I wouldn’t find out.”“Don’t think I was trying to hide from you!” Her voices rises a little and her father peers over the edge of his paper, curious. “I was trying to find you.”“Why, Ha Jin?” Ji Mong asks. “You already lived Hae Soo’s life. They lived their old lives as princes of Goryeo, and did what fate and time intended. You have no place among them now.”“That,” Ha Jin says, deadly calm, “Is not for you to choose.”He stands up, rounded face set in surprisingly hard lines. “What could you do for them? I remember it too. You couldn’t save them, there. You could not save him.”Ha Jin is on her feet, fists balled against her sides. “I didn’t know who to trust there,” she bites out, bitter and sharp. “Did you?”His eyes shift away from hers.“I do not believe in fearing fate,” she says, quieter. “Not anymore. Let me help them, please?”In the distance, thunder.In the present moment, a cloud of uncertainty on Ji Mong’s brow.Ha Jin chooses her cliff and leaps off it. “How,” she asks, “Could I possibly make things worse?”…“You’ll start as an assistant,” Ji Mong explains, when they’re crowded into his office. It’s littered with papers and proofs, digital renderings of textile prints and flyers for gallery openings. “That’s all that we can justify, at the moment, with…the current situation. And if it gets out of hand, you’re gone, understand?”Ha Jin nods. “So do you think Yo or Wook is behind the shipment hijackings?”“Ah, jinjihage!” Ji Mong throws up his hands. “You’re already starting in! Keep your mouth shut and your head down.”Ha Jin feels a smile twisting over her face, utterly devoid of warmth. This didn’t used to happen before. “You mean,” she says slowly, “Like when I was supposed to marry the king? Is that when I should have kept my head down?”Ji Mong has the good grace to look ashamed.Ha Jin scoops up the employment papers from his overflowing desk and counts it as a victory.…Ji Mong’s office is tucked in the corner of the Wang-Hwangbo highrise. To get out to the street, Ha Jin has to leave the same way she came in: through a vaulted hallway that resembles a western cathedral——or an ancient palace.She clutches her application to her chest, lowers her head, and cross the path of another young woman who glides by her with an easy, confident step.Ha Jin raises her head, and for the thousandth time in this strange week, she knows who it is she sees. This time, it is the face of a friend who didn’t make it out of Goryeo alive.Woo Hee.Woo Hee doesn’t look twice at her. Just keeps walking, sensible pumps clicking against the tiles.She must be an assistant too, Ha Jin muses. An assistant seems humble and harmless, but Ha Jin herself is trying to leverage the position towards an invisible goal. And if the Woo Hee of modern Korea is anything like the displaced princess of Later Baekje...Ha Jin’s mouth pinches in a frown. Another person to save.
ii.
Yo steps out of a meeting, having effectively squashed the competition vying to win a capsule collection. It’s for a coalition of Parisian designers who are looking to turn attention to the east, and Wang-Hwangbo is in the perfect position to offer high-end taffeta and silk-thread.It’s the last card in the hand he plans to play. The staff and resources used to close the deal are all under the direct purview of Gwangjong, the subsidiary branch of Wang-Hwangbo that has been his mother’s game since the beginning. She brought fashion connections to the larger table in the exchange for an isolated holding.Gwangjong, Yo feels certain, is the way of the future. He is his mother’s chosen scalpel—the surgery on the family name will be absolute and life-saving, at least for him.  She set him on the path of a model career in his early teens; she taught him to ferret out weaknesses over drinks and in the boardroom. She did all of this while remaining impeccable and almost out-of-sight.His mother understands the world without having to be in it.Now, when his father breaks and calls a family meeting—which Yo is sure he will—Mu will have to come clean about the lost shipments, the wavering market. Yo, on the other hand, will have a bouquet of ripe prospects to present.His phone rings, breaking the silence on the glass-rimmed tunnel. He turns a corner in the hall and answers it so he can cup his hand over his mouth and speak quietly.“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s been a busy week.”“More like a busy month.” She sounds more tired than accusatory. “He stands at the window every night and watches for you.”Yo pinches his brow. This, he suspects, is probably guilt. “I know. I’ll…”Footsteps, only heard when very, very near. He hangs up without telling her why, and meets Wook’s serenely smiling countenance.“What are you doing here?”“I have an office here too, you know, hyung-nim.”The respect is velvet-touched; Yo doesn’t trust it for a moment. “I didn’t realize you stayed so late.”“You just left a meeting?” Wook’s eyebrows lever upwards. “Did I see…Versace? That’s quite something, for an evening meeting. Why not deal in daylight, Yo?”“I think,” Yo says coldly, “That vultures prefer the day. I do not.” He slips his phone into his pocket. He hates himself more than he ordinarily allows, but his goddamn heart won’t stop ratcheting. He wonders if Wook can hear it.“You seem uneasy.” Wook tilts his head. “A personal call? I didn’t mean to interrupt.”“It was Jung,” Yo lies, smiling. Sometimes he hates Wook almost as much as he hates So, and that is an accomplishment indeed. “I was cancelling dinner plans. A disappointment for both of us.”Wook trades his attaché from one hand to the other. “The Wangs are more fraternal than expected.”“I would not expect an outsider to understand us.” Yo glances at his watch and steps past Wook. “Send my compliments to your sister—at least as many you can stomach.”
iii.
“It’s slow-going,” Chae Ryung explains. She’s a talker; Woo Hee has barely been able to get a word in edgewise in the few days they’ve been staying together. Not that she needs too; it is Chae Ryung who needs to teach her to be an outstanding yet simultaneously unremarkable assistant. Chae Ryung is only a waitress in the enormous office restaurant, but she knows many things.Woo Hee wonders if she should be taking notes.“As an assistant, you’re not strictly in charge of shipping. They’ve been upping security, too, lately, since the takeovers have been successful.” She finishes braiding her hair for the night and reaches for a green tea face mask. “Your job is too catch the details when you can, where you can. If you’re serving tea in a meeting, or sorting through the mail—always be on the lookout for anything about routes and risk-assessment.”“Risk-assessment?”“Contingency plans.” Chae Ryung presses the oval sheet carefully against her cheeks. “Wang Mu—he’s the CEO’s oldest son, you know, and when the old man finally shrivels up everyone thinks  Mu will get it. He thinks he’s clever. He’s certainly cautious; clever doesn’t quite count up.” She swears. “Aigo, I can never put one of these on without tearing it.”Woo Hee stretches out on the bed opposite Chae Ryung’s, in the shoebox-size flat she knows she’ll never truly call home. “How many are there again?”“There are four Wang sons, one Hwangbo son. Then there’s Baek Ah and Eun, who are good-for-nothing but might as well be family, if you ask Wang Jung or Wang Mu. Baek Ah and Eun,” Chae Ryung elaborates, sitting down cross-legged and staring ghost-like from behind the mask, “Are the sons of the design team who started at Wang Hwangbo…oh, thirty years ago. The husband’s been dead since Eun was small. I mean, he’s still small. Only eighteen, and a shrimp for his age.” She giggles.“Who else?”“Baek Ah is twenty-six, which isn’t much younger than Hwangbo Wook—he’s twenty-eight—but Baek Ah doesn’t care about the company.” Chae Ryung sniffs. Woo Hee wonders if at any point she is supposed to laugh or swear in return, though neither is really her style. She is more wont to listen quietly, soaking in the prospects of pain or vengeance or cold ambition.Anything, really.Chae Ryung doesn’t mind the silence, that’s for certain. “Kim Won is the son of the original accountant,” she says, affection coloring her tone. “He is Wang Yo’s right hand. Wang Yo, of course, is the one who deserves to take over the company.”The one, Woo Hee assumes, who is paying me.“What about the other son?”“Other son?”“You said there were four Wang sons.”“Oh. There’s Wang So, but he’s a murdering mobster from Seoul.” Chae Ryung shakes her head. “If he’s still alive, I doubt you’ll ever see him.”Woo Hee, for her parts, doubts that she will care much for any of them.
iv.
“Jung-ah.”“Nae, eomma?” He was supposed to be at a wrestling match fifteen minutes ago; he’s going to miss it. But his mother is more anxious than usual about him; she keeps reaching for his hands and forcing more rice-sugar cakes on him.That, at least, Jung doesn’t mind.“I don’t want you to stay at Eun’s this month.”“Heol?” The exclamation of surprise is out before he can stop himself. “Why not? I promise, everything is done in good fun. Nothing to…” he searches for an English expression that will amuse her. “Break the bank.”Her lips tighten at the corners. “You know I never mind you having fun. But I heard that he is staying there.”Jung shifts uncomfortably. His mother—and Yo’s—hatred of So is something he doesn’t like to think much about, but that doesn’t make it less obvious. Mu may only be their half-brother, the son of their father’s deceased first wife, but he is the only one of the family is anything near close with So.“So did come to visit,” he answers carefully, “But I don’t know if he’s staying. He and Baek Ah are friendly.”“Aish, as if he can be friendly with anyone!” His mother sighs deeply, and crumbles the remainder of her own cake in her hand. “He’s dangerous, Jung-ah. And he will take it out on you. That is what beasts do, you know. They bite anyone who seems within easy reach.” She strokes his cheek, her face twisting with worry. “I couldn’t bear it if anything happens to you.”So has killed people. Jung does not doubt this. He also does not think that So would ever try to kill him. The few times Jung has seen So in the past few years, he has been reminded more of a shadow than anything else.So may have blood on his hands, but Jung wonders how much of it is his own blood.“I can take care of myself,” Jung promises. He doesn’t want to stay in the grand house on Songak Street, where his father is always coughing and his mother watches him so closely it stifles him. He loves his mother, but he also needs air. “I’ll…stay with Yo, if that would make you happy.”Yo will want him out of the house as much as possible, which will be a convenient compromise. Yo has three spacious floors of a sumptuous penthouse all to himself, but he likes to be alone.  His mother relaxes slightly. “Very well,” she says. “As long as you keep clear of him. He can’t be trusted, Jung. Never forget that.”Jung doesn’t think he ever can.
v.
In two years, his father has become an old man.So does not take the time or trouble to sort through what is in his heart; he knows it only to be a sorry, knotted thing, serving its sentence under his ribs. But something under his ribs hurts when he sees his father stand on unsteady feet, gripping the carved arm of his desk chair as if he might fall.So bows. A week ago in Seoul, he nearly killed a man. Now he prays for any appearance of meekness.Anything that will make his father soften.Taejo’s bloodshot eyes regard him warily, though, which is pretty much what So expected.“You came all the way to see me,” he says heavily. “What is it?”It would seem strange, for a man who lives by his fists, to say, I was worried about you, and therefore, So doesn’t. “Mu tells me you are unwell.”“What else did Mu tell you?”So bites his lip. Beside him, Ji Mong clears his throat, as if to say, not now, and So knows his instinct of silence was correct.“You always leave me feeling like I’ve kicked the dog,” Taejo says, and drags a hand over his eyes. “Your timing isn’t bad, So. I would have called for you.”“Would you?” That escapes before he can think better of it.Ji Mong draws in a little breath.“I would have had Mu call you, at least.” Taejo has never liked being pressed on the point of parental devotion, which is why So usually leaves well enough alone. It’s all water under the bridge, anyway. Nobody can take anything back. “Yes, I am unwell. Everyone here knows it, whether I want them to or not. I’ll hold a meeting soon.” He raises his eyebrows. “You should come, but first, dress like one of the family. You look like a thug.”So nods. He is one, but that doesn’t need to be said. “Thank you, abeoji.”The word has always felt wrong in his mouth.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body  love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.- Mary Oliver
Let our scars fall in love.
- Galway Kinnell

i.
Ha Jin could find many griefs in her current life, if only she went looking for them.Here is one she does not have to go looking for: her mother.She remembers the stone altars, and how her hands trembled when she folded them to pray for someone who hadn’t even been born yet. She feared him there, at first, though she wouldn’t admit it. After, she forgave him there.It wasn’t so far from a snowfall, and every other kind of fall that followed.But: her mother. Her mother doesn’t understand why Ha Jin lay still as death for six months, and then woke suddenly and inexplicably, and became obsessed with an ancient history museum. She understands better, perhaps, why Ha Jin would want to work for the textile industry—fashion is at least connected, in some way, to her prior career as a makeup artist.Still, a mother’s worries never cease. “Are you sure you’re well, yet?” She tucks a lock of Ha Jin’s hair behind her ear with a gentle finger. “You seem so restless, since you…woke up.”Came back, Ha Jin thinks. In the mirror over her mother’s shoulder, she marvels again at how she looks so young.Her leg doesn’t hurt here. It was never twisted in a vise. She was never under false suspicion of poisoning a prince, in this world.(He still had the scar. The scars.)“I’m just glad to have a new job, eomma. I’m…excited.” And she is, but not in a way her mother would understand.Her first week of work is largely uninteresting. She is somewhere half between a secretary and a maid—answering phones, fetching coffee, guiding visiting tycoons to sumptuous offices that float many stories above the grime of the city streets. She keeps her ears pricked; she watches Ji Mong like a fox whenever she sees him pass, just in case he has some message to convey to her.He never does.So. The week passes, and then Ha Jin gets her orders. A whole batch of the assistants do; they are assigned to waitress a private family dinner that Wang Taejo is hosting for his sons, the Hwangbos, and the young blood of his most trusted (current and former) business partners.Ha Jin thinks of Goryeo, the exorcism ritual, the passing of masks. She accepts her assignment with a nod and a quick, flat smile.The night of the dinner, the three connected conference rooms on floor fifteen of the Wang-Hwangbo building are opened into one long, tunneling space. The internal walls fold away and bouquets tables laden with canapes and cocktails are arranged. Hours beforehand, Ha Jin and the other assistances are given simple black dresses to wear. They are snug-fitting, dipping low in the back.Every world has its court ladies, seemingly.She doesn’t see Woo Hee, in the chosen group. She does see Chae Ryung.“So this is how you know Baek Ah,” Chae Ryung remarks, with a slightly-too-sweet smile.Ha Jin decides it is in her best interest to feign a huff. “What of it?” Already, there are too many lies.Ha Jin hopes they won’t overtake her.
ii.
Yeon Hwa once poured a glass of merlot over a man's head at dinner without getting a single drop on her cream-colored Chanel suit.The man in question was not Wang Yo, but she recalls the incident pointedly when his hand drifts to her lower back for the third time in thirty minutes."What are you doing?"His lips brush her ear. He smells like sin, bottled in amber glass and sold for some ostentatious amount of money. "Irritating your brother."Across the room, Wook looks unaffected to all but the most discerning eye. Yeon Hwa, possessor of that eye, can see the compressed line of his mouth. She pushes Yo away, raking her nails over the fine-woven sleeve of his burgundy suit. "Stop it, damn you. I can make Wook angry on my own.""Do you want to?"At the moment, she's more angry at herself. They’ve been milling about, waiting for the call to meeting, with Wang Taejo nowhere to be seen. As such, the worst and sharpest of family and inter-family dynamics have made their appearance.So hasn't even looked in their direction, hasn't been jealous in the least. Yeon Hwa, for her part, has been stealing far too many glances at the devastating lines of his black suit. Whatever Wang So's estrangement from Yo, they must share the same tailor—everything is fitted within an inch of its life.So has spoken to Baek Ah, Wook, and has tried to speak to his mother. That last was painful to watch, even though Yeon Hwa couldn't hear a word they said. Yo still watches her, and she wrenches her eyes from So, too late."Aish," Yo says quietly. "Am I second-best to him, after all this time? You'd rather have the carved-up gutter rat."To defend So in this moment is to give herself away. Yeon Hwa is always careful with herself. "You always want to be first in everyone's estimation," she tells Yo, going on offense instead. "Even though nobody but yourself is first in yours." His fingers close, vise-like around hers. He has his mother's eyes, impossibly dark and often deadly. "Are you very sure about that?"Wook is making his way towards them. Yo drops her hand and assumes his usual mocking smirk. There’s no depth to it. He salutes Wook and then fades off into the crowd.Wook opens his mouth to speak and Yeon Hwa just…can’t do it. Not tonight. She takes her fate into her own hands, whether it looks desperate or not, and marches towards So.For all that he hasn't made a single effort to greet her, he smiles."Yeon Hwa.""It's been a long time," she says tightly. "Yes." He looks ill at ease in this room, eyes constantly darting to the exits. "I had business elsewhere.""But you're needed here," she tells him. Tempted to put a hand on his arm, but Yo did that a moment ago to her and she doesn't want to acknowledge that it meant something. "We're glad to see you.""You are, maybe," So tells her. "Thank you." Then he stops still, eyes narrowing.Swiftly, Yeon Hwa follows his gaze.And there, across the room pouring tea, is the girl who was on Wook's arm at the museum tradeshow.
iii.
She’s here again, crossing his path and setting all his senses ablaze. It isn’t fair, but nothing is ever fair in life, and therefore So spares little thought to that.No, he’s far more interested in who is truly behind this girl’s mysterious appearances: who would know that he had gone to Baek Ah’s, who would know Park Soo-kyung’s name, who would know that leadership in the company would soon be shifting.So fights with his fists; he has no stomach for politics.Across the room, Yo laughs at something their mother says.The whiplash of isolation has descended upon So countless times; he has already felt it twice tonight, when neither Yo nor their mother would greet him. He supposes this is his due, to be chasing down a shadow while they have already set their plans in motion.Doubtless, this girl is one of Yo’s.(There was a model once. Yo met her in Paris, but she was from Jinan. It must have been five, six years ago? So came home, and nobody wanted him, but in a handful of moments he thought he saw something soften in Yo’s face. The next time he returned, the girl from Jinan was gone.)So doesn’t know much. Never has, never will. His nerves sizzle to the outer edges of his skin, he can smell danger, he can break the wrist of a thrown punch by catching the fist in his hand and twisting sharply.  He doesn’t know much, but he doesn’t like to think that this girl is one of Yo’s.She has slipped into the hallway, no doubt helping prepare the room where Taejo will hold court.Where everything will change, whispers in So’s ear, but he shakes it away and hunts her down.“You.”She lets out a startled cry as he catches her arm and spins her, back against the wall, out of sight around a corner.“I told you,” she whispers. “I’m on your side.”(Why was Yo laughing?)“You’re following me,” he answers, not letting go of her arm. Her skin is soft to his touch. He aches, and he is angry, and the two are so often inextricable from each other. “You’re a spy.”“I told you I was.” She is different now than she was by the side of Baek Ah’s pool, she is wearing more red on her mouth and charcoal around her eyes. “I told you I was here, to spy, and help you.”The meeting will start soon. He can’t be late. He can’t be anything except a bullet loaded and ready. He lets Ha Jin’s arm go.“Tell me,” he says quietly, “One thing. Anything, that will really prove your help.”She glances, left, right, back at him. “You don’t trust Yo,” she says, “And you shouldn’t. But you also shouldn’t trust Wook. He’ll strike when you’re not expecting it.”Wook is unlike him in nearly every way. Collected and patient and beloved. In one way, though, they are the same:Neither is ambitious.Is that still the truth?He swallows hard. Looking at Ha Jin’s face, shining through its heavy makeup, does something to him that he cannot understand. It wakes some softness and some degree of complication that doesn’t, he is sure, rightly belong to him.“If you are wrong,” he says fiercely, “You will regret the day you crossed my path.”She bites her lip. She says, “I won’t regret that day.”Mu appears at the other end of the hall. He beckons So with a tilt of his chin. Something is about to happen, and there is no time.So leaves her, and feels it in every step.
iv.
He trusts So. Mu, of course, is trusting by nature, but So has been like an open book to him ever since the doctor ask Mu to hold So’s six-year-old hands away from his bleeding face.“I did not mean to interrupt,” he tells So now.So thrusts his hands into his pockets, jaw set sharply. “You interrupted nothing.”That’s a lie, but Mu doesn’t press it. So’s troubles, or not-troubles, with one of Wang-Hwanbo’s endless stream of pretty assistants, is not the most important thing at the moment. “I could not bring myself to tell our father of our conversation,” Mu says.So flinches. “I…”“Yes, I understand. You are still reluctant.” Mu feels his skin prickle with anxiety. He needs So to step up, but it’s not something he can order or demand. It is only something he can ask. “When he announces me as successor tonight, I will have to take up the reins. At least…at least for now.”“How much longer,” So says, voice as cold as Yoo or Yo’s, but eyes still tormented, “Do you really think our father has to live?”It destroys Mu, to even think of it. To think of the person he loves most (and most imperfectly), laid to rest. But Taejo is not immortal. He never has been. “I don’t know,” he answers truthfully. “But he will want a clean transfer of power. He’ll hand off to me, and then…”“Me.” So bites his lip. “You’ll hand it over to me.”
v.
Inside the room, the assistants file out with their heads bowed, having poured tea and pale liquor in squat, soap-bubble-thin glasses. Baek Ah is sorry to see them go, not for such a shallow reason as that they are beautiful women, but because without them, it is only the whole terrible hierarchy of his entire life, gathered around one table.Eun and Jung are shifting uncomfortably to his right. On his left, Won is texting with his phone between his knees. Yo leans back, but his eyes are merciless in their surveillance. Wook rests calmly across from him, hands folded together.So and Mu enter at the same time. So is only wearing a suit because Baek Ah called in some favors, and had one ready-made in black merino.So, drawn tight as wire, sits down at the far end of the table. Mu joins his father at the head.Yoo is here too, and so is Mrs. Hwangbo, who is as unshakeable as her two children. Baek Ah has never had much to do with Yeon Hwa, but his opinion of her is not much higher than his opinion of Wook.Looking around this assembly, he finds himself thinking of vultures and eagles, and feels himself to be neither of these two.Taejo looks almost deathly ill. His hand grips the lacquered edge of the table, and when he speaks, it is with effort. “You may wonder why everyone here is young,” he said. “You may wonder where my vice-chairmen are, and my advisors.”There’s a weighted silence.Every single person in this room, Baek Ah thinks, is unhappy.That is the reason he leaves.Eun and Jung—and So—are the reasons he comes back again.“You are all here,” Taejo continues at last, “Because you are the company.”A ripple of conversation. Jung to Eun. Won to Yo.Wook and So are stone-still and silent. Baek Ah does not know what to make of the parallel.“I hope to hold out for a month,” Taejo explains. “These things should be done properly. An announcement of my retirement—” Despite his frailty, Baek Ah notices that he is too proud to say why—“And my successor.”His eyes turn to Mu, and Baek Ah is certain of what comes next, until he isn’t.Wook stands up. Slowly, surely, as a snake might lift its head from endless coils. “Forgive me,” he says, bowing formally to Taejo. “Before you make any pronouncements, daebu, there’s something I have to bring to our attention. As a near-family, we have to be cautious.”“What is it?” Taejo is vexed, and, Baek Ah thinks, confused.Yo is bone-white. His hands are fists, the signet ring on his middle finger winking darkly. Baek Ah suspects that Yo had planned to interrupt, and that Wook beat him to it.(The world is changing.)Wook taps his phone, and the screen on the far wall blinks to life. Everyone turns, jackknife-quick, but the only thing to do is watch.In a second, shaky footage appears, then steadies into resolution. Baek Ah draws in a breath that is matched by everyone from Eun to Yeon Hwa. It’s an image of Mu, on the phone.“I’m going to tell him,” he is saying. “I can’t do this. It’s not my dream, it never has been. I don’t want the responsibility of a goddamn empire. I don’t want—the whole thing’s in shambles. The company has been driven into the ground.”The screen goes black. The silence is blacker.Mu shoots to his feet, frantic. Tortured. “Abeoji…”Baek Ah tightens his hands on the arms of his chair. This isn’t his battle, but everything is their own war. Everything. “It is my understanding,” Wook says smoothly, before Mu can continue. Wook’s lips are tipped down with concern. “It is my understanding that this has been leaked to the press. We have days, maybe. More likely—hours, before the stock prices drop.”Taejo splutters, and says nothing. It’s too late. Whatever Wook was doing, he has done it. To call him a traitor is to expose Mu to further judgment; to call Mu a traitor is to play into Wook’s hands. Or Yoo’s, or Yo’s, though neither of them seem to have prepared for this.And most of all, Taejo cannot name Mu his successor, now. He can’t choose a man who doesn’t believe in what this room represents, what billions upon billions of won represent.The market would never trust him.He can’t choose a traitor, which is what everyone will believe Mu to be.Baek Ah drops his chin to his chest. He can’t bear to see the pain on Mu’s face. Who is Baek Ah, to judge him? He would have lived all his days in Namwon, if So hadn’t needed him.This isn’t his dream, either.“I understand that this is embarrassing.” Wook’s voice is still silky. He directs his next bow to Mu. “My apologies. I thought we should all be prepared.”If looks could kill, Wook would be dead from several directions. Mu is generally peaceable, but he looks like he’d like to throttle him.Taejo’s gray pallor has flushed to an unhealthy shade of purple. When he stands, he has to lean on both hands. “Well,” he says. “If you want me to thank you, Hwangbo’s son, you will not hear such words here.”Wook smiles, and waits.Taejo’s voice rises. “You all want it so much,” he bellows, staring down the lot of them. Even Baek Ah feels the heat of his gaze. “You want to rule, every last one of you. Very well then. I accept.” He lifts one hand from the table, a gesture of challenge. “Take it. Take it from him, you wolves. Take it from each other.”Then he collapses.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The centuries turn their locks

And open under the hill

Their inherited books and doors
- W.S. Graham

They say the truth works two ways

(maybe the truth’s not what we need)
- Mumford & Sons SEOUL, KOREA – five years ago

i.
So remembers—“You look tired.” Wook pours him another cup of tea. “Are you living well?”What is there to say to that? So is nursing three cracked ribs, and has not been to Daegu in a year. Park Soo-kyung, usually gruff and merciless, has told him to rest. He had not expected Wook to visit; he never expects anyone to visit.“Is there any news,” So asks, avoiding the question, “Of the expansion?”Wook purses his lips. “Wang Taejo has pushed off the U.S. contract again. He’s concerned about the market.”To So’s understanding, the market is primed and ready for Korean connections. But he is not Wook, or his father, and his help is never sought on such matters. The real question he has—when will his father write to him again, or call—is not one he will ask Wook.“I will be in Daegu at New Year’s,” So says, sipping at the tea. Swallowing is painful. “Will you be at home?”“That’s why I came,” Wook says, and for the next half-hour he explains quietly that So had better not come home at all, tensions are running high and it would be wise not to stir the pot. Of course, two months later, Wook scales higher in the management of the company, taking over a position that had been left open by Hwangbo’s death two years earlier.At the time, So is pleased that the position does not get subsumed under his mother’s aegis of power. At the time, So presumes that Wook kept him away to spare him familial infighting, not to clear the path for his own advancement.After all, who would think of promoting So?“For now, keep your distance,” Wook said, when the tea was finished.It felt like kindness, then.It feels, now, like a warning.
ii.
The party breaks up to the shriek of ambulance sirens. In a few moments, the news spreads like wildfire: CEO Wang has had a heart attack.Or a stroke.Or he is already dead.What is rumor and what is truth is, of course, hard to divine in a flurry of faces and voices, all of which want to know what this means for themselves as well as for Wang Taejo. Ha Jin’s heart is in her throat as she watches her former princes cluster in corners, brows knotted with worry.Still, she must work and wait.As the wife of the CEO, Yoo commandeers a microphone and speaks with dulcet calm. “The CEO has had an unexpected health setback,” she says, as though her husband was not carried out on a stretcher moments before. Ha Jin wonders if the very publicity of his exit was part of someone’s chess-piece plan. Surely a backdoor exists for time such as these.Yoo tells the guests that the party must end early, but they are welcome to finish drinking and eating. Then she returns to talk with the former Queen Hwangbo, Jung’s arm linked through hers.Ha Jin tries to find So, but she can’t. She is pouring another sherry for a lech of a businessman when So practically swoops down on her. His face is set like granite.“Ya,” he says. “We need to talk.”The businessman splutters something about his frazzled nerves, but Ha Jin isn't sorry to be free of his wandering hands. Anyway, So gives him a death-glare that settles him and his nerves.She half-expects to be shoved into a coat closet, but So leads her, instead, out into the sharp evening chill. The nightlife of Daegu whistles around them. In her scanty dress, Ha Jin shivers.“Aish,” So mutters, and to her surprise, he shoulders off his immaculately fitted jacket and tosses it around her.“What do you want?” She asks the question softly. It is impossible for her not to speak softly to him.“Not here,” he says, gruff. “Meet me at Baek Ah's. You seem to know the way.”Something else must have happened behind those closed doors. Something that she fears.“Your father…” she begins, but he has already turned his back, ramrod stiff and resolute.She may lose her job over this—leaving early—but Ha Jin doesn't care. She only got the job in the first place to win his trust.She didn't think it would happen so soon.She arrives at Baek Ah's before So does. She doesn't think there is anyone home until--“Aigo, what a mess!” Eun, in the most ridiculous tangerine silk pajamas that Ha Jin has ever seen, swans dramatically into the hall. “Wook is wily, I'm telling you. Always has been. And now he’s all but killed—”He sees her and stops short.“My father always lives,” Jung says confidently. “Always. But I’ve had enough talk of business tonight,” Then he sees her too.She had glimpsed them at the party, before it all fell apart. She had ached, then, over flashes of memory.The ache has now swelled, and it pounds in her chest like a heart would.“Who are you?” Eun asks, mouth rounding in surprise. “One of Baek Ah’s—”“Don’t be rude,” Jung mutters. He is upset, for all his appearance of bravery. Ha Jin wonders how much Jung loves his father in this world, or if his mother is once again his only star. “Miss, are you lost?”They both loved her in Goryeo. She feels the loss of it as they stare at her, curious and ignorant.“She’s with me.”So’s voice rings out behind her and in another moment, he has her by the elbow and is guiding her away from them. Even with the worries for Taejo hanging over everyone’s head, that will get the two of them gaping—So bringing a woman home, a woman wearing his jacket. Ha Jin assumes (hopes) that he doesn’t have anyone here, and then hates herself for wishing isolation on him.Hasn’t he suffered enough?I’m here now, she thinks stubbornly. I’m here.Whatever happens to his father, whatever will not happen with his mother, she is here.So shuts the door of a chestnut-paneled office behind them. He folds his arms, hands gripping his elbows. He has tattoos on every knuckle. One bears the characters for wolf, another the character of fire.Some part of him, Ha Jin thinks, must know.“You knew,” he says, and she jumps.“What?”“You knew that Wook was planning something. Tell me how.”She doesn’t know what Wook did, but she can guess its essence. Can guess that Wook, with surgical precision, shifted the scales against Taejo’s life and sanity…and his power. “Your eyes have always been on Yo,” she suggests. She hopes, this time, he’ll listen to her. “It’s as I said. Wook is an enemy too. He wants the company for himself.”“So you said.” A muscle in So’s jaw twitches. “And it seemed unlikely. But now…”“I listen and learn,” Ha Jin says quickly. “That’s why…I can be of value to you. Wook has been taking steps in the dark. When your mother fights for a place for her sons—” she bites her lip, hoping he won’t flinch under the knowledge that that doesn’t mean all his mother’s sons—“He has whispered in others’ ears. If you let me, I can…I can get close to him. I can learn what he’s plotting next.”She is speaking in vagaries, but mercifully, So seems momentarily convinced. He bites his lip, deep in thought. She knows that this isn’t what he wants to do, or be—he hates intrigue and everything that makes men into shadows. He always has.“It won’t be safe,” he says sharply. “Nothing in this city is. No one is.”“You don’t care about me,” Ha Jin reminds him, and feels the thrill of bittersweet satisfaction when he flinches slightly.He recovers quickly. “Despite what you may believe from Soo-kyung or my snake-tongued family, I am not so hard as that.” His fingers whiten, clenched too tightly. “You seem hellbent on helping me. It is not without risk.”“I’ll take any risk,” Ha Jin says, and she means it.
iii.
So Hwangbo has his vengeance after all.Justice never enters her mind. His family knew it as a suicide; the media as an unexpected heart attack. Hwangbo’s wife bore it with levelheaded grief; his children with silent, moon-faced depression.Yoo knew it for what it was; arsenic to weaken the system over time, and one final, heavy dose to finish him off.They are a weak family and they will all die weak.So she thought.She stays at the hospital by Taejo’s side because it is what a wife is supposed to do—even though she will do it for one night only. She combs her hair in the mirror of a private room, too small for her preference, though more luxurious than any other offering in this wing.Wook had some fire in his belly after all, even if he didn’t realize the irony of causing a real heart attack.Turn and turnabout. He rose after his father’s death—to no great end—and now he wants to rise again.(Justice never enters her mind.)Yoo smiles at a cold reflection. It is almost impressive, to be sure, but it will not stop Wook from dying weak.
iv.
“I saw the news,” Min Seo says, as soon as he arrives. “They say it’s a heart attack?”“They say any shit they can sell,” Yo says wearily. He doesn’t love her anymore—perhaps he never truly did—but he can let himself be weary around her. That is more than most. “The old man has to die someday.”She flattens her lips into a line. “Imagine if Kiha said that about you.”Yo glares. But his face softens when the bedroom door opens and Kiha bounds across the room into his arms. “Appa!”He buries his face in his son’s thick hair, because this, no one can see: tenderness.When Kiha wriggles away, Yo is suitably stern again.“It’s past your bedtime.”“You haven’t been here in eleven nights,” Kiha accuses him. He waves two fat hands. “That’s more than my fingers.”“Appa is busy,” Min Seo says caustically. “He has funerals to attend.”“Funerals?” Kiha’s round cheeks fall a little.“No. Aish.” Yo drags a hand over his face and glares at Min Seo again. She’s clearly pissed at him for not coming around as often as he should. Their arrangement is harder for her, in many ways, than it is for him. Partly because she won’t take as much money as he would give her, and partly because she has to live with shame while he only has to live with a secret. The latter is something that money cannot solve.She could still model, he thinks, eyeing her slender figure. One pregnancy shouldn’t finish that. He knows well enough that it did.Min Seo softens a little over the course of an hour, but by the end of an hour, Yo has to leave. It was foolish of him to come here anyway, with Wook on the prowl for blood. Not to mention his mother.She wouldn’t speak to him, afterwards. She turned her face away with a sliver of the scorn she usually reserves for So, and performed her public duties. A warning, as sure as Wook’s coup had been.He didn’t act soon enough. That is the long and short of it, the long and short of Yo’s dangerous weakness—that he plans and plots and is endlessly clever, until he drops his guard.He tightens his arms around Kiha. He has been known to drop his guard.Mercifully, that is not yet known by his mother—or by Wook.Yo wonders who between them would pay more for such a chink in his armor.
v.
“The girl,” So says, not looking up from his soju, “Is sleeping here tonight.”Baek Ah has to swallow his astonishment, and chase it with a drink of his own. “Jinjjaya?” He half-expected So to be in a tortured state about his father, but the Wangs are never simple. Jung was similarly disaffected. “Did she…convince you?”“Wook convinced me.” So reaches for another bottle. “And she predicted Wook. Voila.” He says the word, a French word, with a mocking little glance at Baek Ah, who spent a year in Paris.There will be no talk of Taejo, then, or Mu. Baek Ah’s heart stings for So anyway; for the way that everything in his world must be shaking. Baek Ah knows that Mu depends on So more than either of them let on, and surely it is reciprocal.Baek Ah hopes that So knows he can depend on him, too, but he is not anyone of import. Not really. Not here.“She seems sincere,” he says, to fill the space of silence. The girl—Ha Jin—looks at So as though she loves him. That is what Baek Ah does not say. “Whatever happened in that room…”“I told you my father was dying,” So returns, unexpectedly. “I came here, knowing that. Everything else is a duel, Baek Ah. A duel for a throne.” He drops his head into his battered hands.Baek Ah puts together the pieces of the puzzle. He asks, very cautiously, “Your throne?”So lifts his head. When he answers, it is not quite an answer. “I,” he says, “Have never asked for it.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The gray of misery is half as near

When golden gleams glean promises from fear

A knife set hard and sharp to future’s spine

Reminds us of the loss of things sublime
- E.L.
i.
“You’ve been quiet.”Woo Hee rolls over on her side, facing Chae Ryung. She has grown tired of those friendly, relentless stares, coming to realize that their rooming together is no accident.Whoever hired Woo Hee doesn’t trust her.She supposes that is fair. She doesn’t trust herself either.What she hadn’t quite expected was that her every waking move would be watched by a girl who fans her hair in twin tails over her shoulders, who applies red lipstick with an expert hand, and never stops talking.Somehow, that is more unsettling than a shadowy figure around every corner.“I’m tired,” Woo Hee replies, pressing the back of her hand against her yawn. “It’s been a long week, and last night…”The day is splitting open like an overripe fruit. Sun is trickling through their narrow window. It is time to rise for work; later than usual, because the Wang-Hwangbo office is closed until noon in a show of solidarity with Taejo.“Jinjja? After all that sleep?” Chae Ryung lifts her eyebrows. “You’re a funny one. Anyway, I bet you we’re getting new assignments today.”“From who?” Thing is, Woo Hee hasn’t come face to face with whoever she is really working for. Not yet.“Don’t ask too many questions.” Chae Ryung slips a pair of Louboutins out from under her cot. “It pays well. That’s all that matters.”Woo Hee carries it all with her as she settles into the work of writing thank-you notes to the guests of last night’s gala, assuring them in stilted message after stilted message that Wang Taejo will be perfectly fine. She is weighted down with why she came here—revenge—and what she is doing. She’s living a lie.Something draws tight in her throat, a noose of her own making.She hears footsteps in the hall, and looks up from her desk.It is a moment, a single moment. But Woo Hee’s life (and all the death it has contained) is distilled to single moments.
Him.
He strides with the same easy purpose, draped in the same soft, pricy garments, as she observed that day at the train station.She was working behind closed doors at last night’s party, she did not see the guests. Now she wonders if he was here all along.Woo Hee wonders what it all means.
ii.
Baek Ah’s father used to have this office. He knows that Wook has his eyes set higher than anything Baek Ah has been or will ever be, but it still rankles. It still rankles, the way Wook can touch anything.Now, Wook—here before almost anyone else, and drinking green tea out of an enameled cup—smiles warmly. Baek Ah grits his teeth.“You’re here early, my friend,” Wook says, and then adds, thoughtfully, “The fact that you’re here at all…to what do I owe the pleasure?”Baek Ah came here of his own volition.  He doesn’t know what So would want him to say, or if So would want him to say anything at all. Maybe all the questions are Baek Ah’s.“I came to speak with someone about the status of my father’s contracts,” Baek Ah says. “I would have expected to speak to Yo, but I was told to come to you.”He wasn’t, but he wants to see the effect the lie has on Wook.Wook doesn’t so much as blink. “Times are changing,” he says. The words slide like chess pieces, Baek Ah thinks. He himself has never cared for chess. “What troubles you about the contracts?”“It was an agreement between my parents and Wang Taejo,” Baek Ah explains, as though Wook doesn’t already know. “When he…retires, they come up for renewal.” The question he does not ask in words, but which hangs in the air nonetheless is: would you renew them?Wook wags a finger. “Myung Hee was right about you,” he says softly, and Baek Ah’s blood rushes hot, so hot in his veins. “She always said that you were a gift to us all. I might say a value. Do not worry, Baek Ah.”Baek Ah thanks him—it is difficult to do it without clenching his teeth—and leaves.
iii.
At the end of the work day, Ha Jin goes home to see her mother. She tells her that she has found a new apartment, and a new job, and she will be too busy to be home for some time. Her mother takes the news hard, but she takes it.Somehow, this hurts.In half an hour, Ha Jin and a bag of clothes are standing in front of Baek Ah’s home. She climbs the broad steps with her lower lip tucked between her teeth, because she does not think anyone will make her leave here, but nor has anyone asked her to stay.(Last night, So told her she could spend the night. He said it like it did not matter, but he also did not look her in the eyes. This, of all things, gave her hope.)She tucks her things in a closet off the kitchen that seems unused and unimportant. Then she tiptoes down a lush-carpeted floor, as silently as she can, and comes to a heavy door. It rests slightly ajar; beyond it, voices.“I’m…I’m sorry, hyung.”“No need to call me that,” So answers. “Why are you sorry? You learned something valuable.”“What?” Baek Ah sounds baffled. “I mean, at first I thought I might learn which way the wind was blowing, but I already should have known. Wook is the wind. I showed my worry, visiting him at all, and he can probably see my plots better than I see them myself.”“You’re not a plotter.”There is the clink of glass on glass; So is pouring himself a drink.“What is the…” Baek Ah stumbles over the last word. “Value?”“Yo,” So answers shortly, “Would have laughed in your face. Wook didn’t. Wook will use anyone. He has no pride.”“Because he’s not a Wang,” Baek Ah mumbles, but if it’s loud enough for Ha Jin to hear, it’s loud enough for So.So doesn’t exactly laugh, but he seems to come close. It warms Ha Jin, to think that he and Baek Ah have each other, here, too. “He’s the farthest thing from a Wang,” he agrees. “But it’s no compliment, this time.”Ha Jin doesn’t want to be spotted so she slips away to the kitchen, where one of them will find her and she can explain her plan to stay.Once there, the thought she has feared so far springs to mind.Wook will use anyone.Wook, given the chance, will be all too eager to use her.
iv.
“We should have foreseen this.” Yoo smooths a lock of hair behind her ear. “Worms can grow into snakes, if they’re not watched.” She tilts her gaze at her eldest son again. “Why were you not watching him more closely?”Yo bows. He only ever bows to her. “Mian haeyo.”“I don’t want your apologies. I want action.” Yoo hisses out a sigh through her teeth. “If the doctors are right, your father has weeks to live. Gwangjong can be yours, but you need control. Decisive control.”“Subject to his appointment?”“Better that he appoints you than that it is left to the board.” His mother’s hatred of the company’s board is no secret to Yo. “Who will he whisper words to but his own wife?” His mother smiles. “He is angry at Wook. That will not be a hard story to sell. Mu is ruined. You are the one, Yo.”A little prickle of a thought has been teasing at Yo’s mind of late. “What about So?” He knows even the mention of that name will make his mother angry, but he has to ask.Her red lips twist. “So has nobody’s trust, except for that weakling, Mu. Your father thinks of him like the trigger of a gun. Useful enough, if you want something killed.”Yo has a suspicion that their mother shares that belief. He does not say so.“Double your deals,” Yoo says. “You can go higher. If Taejo wakes up, I will promise him that you are prepared to provide for Jung—and even Mu. There will be no further need to derail shipments, with Mu gone. We no longer need the contrast with his enterprises.”“I’ll task the assistants with watching Wook.” Yo stirs in his seat. The teacup in front of him is twice emptied. “If he has been preparing deals of his own, we take them over.”Yoo waves a hand. “That won’t be enough.” Her gaze dances over him like the graze of a knife-edge. “I will only ask you this once,” she says. “Wook learned Mu’s weakness and exposed it. Are you in the same danger?”“No,” Yo answers.He is lying.
v.
So follows the sound of laughter. It is coming from the kitchen—Baek Ah’s kitchen, which is always stocked with good things. Three times a day, cook-staff arrives to prepare meals. Supposedly the meals are for Baek Ah and Eun, but Jung and So share in them as well.Not at the same time, of course. He and Jung continue to orbit each other uneasily, if at all.He finds Jung in the kitchen, as luck (or un-luck) would have it. Beside him, across the table with her knees tucked up against her chest, is Ha Jin.They are both laughing.So knows jealousy like an old friend. He has few enough of those, of course—perhaps it had better be called something else, then. He is tightening his fists without knowing it, setting his jaw as if bracing for a blow.Jung sees him and stops laughing. “So.”He shifts his gaze to Ha Jin, and does not address Jung. It makes him feel like his mother, to cast someone aside. There is no power in the gesture, though. Not for So. “You’re still here?”She chews her lip. Soft, pink. He wants her mouth, and he wants—Shame, as familiar as jealousy and much better-earned, rolls over him. He’ll be asking for more than his birthright, soon enough. He shouldn’t ask for anything else.“I thought I should stay here,” Ha Jin says. “Not just…for a night. To be of better help to you.”He has still not gotten through to Soo-kyung. He doesn’t know what Soo-kyung arranged for this girl, this spy. Perhaps So was meant to look after her.(Last night, he saw her as she slept. Again, it had shaken him. Again, it made him into something he is not. Something else, and not like jealousy.)He shrugs, and turns away from her, from Jung, from the echo of their laughter. Why should he care for what makes her laugh? She has proven her usefulness, yes, and he trusts almost no one but he does not quite distrust her. That is enough for her to stay here.It should also be enough for everything else, but instead So finds himself fleeing, returning to the better-known territory of violence and vengeance and the upward climb.
vi.
I’m sorry about your father.She shouldn’t have sent that text. It lingers, read and un-replied to, and Yeon Hwa feels a twinge of embarrassment whenever she thinks of it. She should have known better than to expect Yo to be overly concerned about his family.She always wants to believe better of him than she has a right to.Truly, the text would have been better sent to So—but she doesn’t have So’s number anymore and it seems unlikely that So’s relationship with his father is much warmer than Yo’s is. It’s better than his relationship with his mother, surely, but that is not saying much.She tosses her phone aside. She felt only disgust when she watched Taejo rant, and no pity when she watched him fall. He is not her father.Yeon Hwa’s father is already dead.Perhaps she should go to America. Istanbul. Paris. Somewhere where she won’t have to worry about Wook climbing to the top of the empire that has already shunned them. Somewhere where she will stop dreaming of So and reaching for Yo.She was never meant to be weak.The next time everything changes, maybe she will change with it.Or maybe she is already doomed.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The random hands, the loose unready eyes

Of men expecting yet another sun

To do the shapely thing they had not done.
- Richard Wilbur
i.
It goes like this: two weeks pass. Taejo recovers consciousness but does not come home. With stealth and speed, the company begins to reshuffle, even as the conflict between its members roars in the media.
Patriarch on his deathbed: Who will rule the family empire?
Ha Jin reads newspapers that ask such questions, clicks through online articles, and tries to learn what she can. She does not speak of it at home.Home! She catches herself, realizing that she has allowed days and nights and dreams to make her too comfortable, even among the chaos. Her parents call, worried, and she reassures them as best she can, but the truth of it is—She has been accepted by those she once loved, once more. She will not leave until she has to.Baek Ah and Eun accept her presence without issue. Baek Ah seems convinced that she is an ally: that is, he trusts her. Eun is charmed by her, and charming in return. Jung, when he visits, seeks out her company.Just as before, Ha Jin thinks. Here they are surrounded by modern spires instead of ancient temples; the weapons that flash are words and rumors, not keen-edged swords. But the eyes are the same. The blood, she is sure, is the same.And So—So disappears during the day and does not tell anyone where he goes. At night, because her room is beneath his, Ha Jin hears the sounds of his nightmares.(In Goryeo, he was haunted by the memory of old sins, whether they were his own or not.)“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she dares one night, when she has returned from a long day of positioning herself and the completion of her tasks alongside Wook’s schedule. She has entered his orbit; she has seen him watching her with half-lidded eyes. She knows that it is too late to turn back now.“Like what?” So turns away from the open window, and she sees the red eye of a cigarette in his hand. He smells like smoke and rainwater. The air outside is gray with fog.“You’re not betraying any—” She almost says, any of us, but amends it to, “Anyone you care for. You’re not betraying anyone you care for by fighting for your rightful place.”His dark eyes flash, his jaw tightens. “How,” he asks, very quietly, “Do you always seem to know too much?”Because I know you. “I keep telling you,” she says, keeping her voice even, “You can trust me.”“I confide in no one,” he observes, turning back to the window. One sharp-knuckled hand lifts the cigarette again. He drags deeply and exhales, a plume of smoke that makes Ha Jin’s lungs ache. “It makes me unlikely to trust anyone who speaks my thoughts aloud.”It is so hard not to remember, and so hard not to let such remembrances overwhelm: his hands pinning her wrists; his mouth, soft, against her throat.She sighs.“You are sad,” he says, tone unchanged. “I can feel it surrounding you. What kind of help does Soo-kyung send, exactly, that grieves for every snake in the grass?”“I’m not grieving for them,” Ha Jin argues. Wook, and Yo, and Yoo—Queen Yoo, she can never think of her otherwise—flash before her mind. “I’m grieving for you.”She didn’t mean to say it so openly.So drops the cigarette out the window and faces her. He looks exhausted. She can see the shadows of sleeplessness bruising his pale cheeks. “That’s what I don’t understand. Why me?”“Because you are unhappy.” Ha Jin knots her hands in the folds of her uniform skirt. “And I want you to be happy.”One corner of his mouth tugs upwards. Almost a smile, though why, she does not know. “You waste your time.”He strides towards his room without saying goodnight.
ii.
Damn the girl; she haunts his every step as well as his every thought. He invited her here; it is with his tacit consent that Baek Ah lets her stay.Baek Ah likes her.Yet for ever useful insight she has provided—every detail she faithfully reports to him of the happenings at Wang-Hwangbo from day to day—there is another moment that he would hold at arm’s length.The girl, So thinks, wants to save him.All of this—her sympathy, his father’s decline, the thousand watchful eyes—have made him miss street-fighting. He wants to beat something into the ground, wants to bleed. Bleeding has always been his chosen form of payment, from others and from himself.Instead, he has become just another snake. Mu has told him every fact Mu knows, and now So seeks for himself: Yo’s weaknesses, Wook’s weaknesses. He and Ji Mong pore over all publicly available records (and a few that aren’t), seeking evidence of fraud and finance-mishandling.Wook has had his hands on the money for years. Yo, for his part, has almost certainly been responsible for sabotaging Mu’s operations, foreign and domestic.Here, too, Ha Jin is helpful. She has identified one of Kim Won’s (and therefore, Yo’s) lackeys among the other assistants: Chae Ryung, a waitress.“I don’t think she is bad at heart,” she hastened to say, as though he would care about such a detail.(Sixteen-year-old So, hands inked red by the blood of his first kill, might feel rather differently.)In that moment, he took a chance.“Have you met anyone named Woo Hee?”She said no at once, all innocence,and it is at times like those that he thinks himself a fool to believe her.His errand today is a cruel one, even for him. It does not do to tear himself open over Ha Jin.Ha Jin.He looks at her, sometimes, and thinks she would be better suited by another name. Only, he does not know what that name would be.  
ii.
Wook smiles at him too knowingly for days after their meeting, and Baek Ah hates him even more than usual. Hate is a cancerous thing; he has always done his best to remove it from his heart, that his heart might live healthily and kindly, even.This, too, Wook will steal from him, if he is not careful.Yet, Baek Ah feels that he must make more appearances at the office. So still stays away on his own errands, but Baek Ah believes that alliance means presence, at least for him.Because he is himself, though, he often escapes to the rooftop with his sketchpad.That way he can be close, but not too close.Fate is a funny thing. A terrible thing, bytimes—yet it knows no reverence for grief. So it is that Baek Ah catches sight of her one day, just when his whole mood has been darkened by reflections on his own peripheral futility.“You?” he exclaims, and the girl runs. But she is wearing teetering shoes and he isn’t, and when she trips on the graveled rooftop, he catches her.“I don’t know who you are,” she says angrily, which is giveaway enough.“Liar,” Baek Ah says, feeling a smile slip over his face. “I never forget a face.”The girl struggles against him, and he lets her go.Through gritted teeth, she says, “I am sorry, ahjussi,” and offers a subservient bow.“You don’t…” He swipes a hand through his hair, as he often does when he is nervous. “I don’t mean to be rude. I only want…”He doesn’t know what he wants. Isn’t that always his trouble? Myung Hee, and a lost chance, and a lost dream.His parents’ legacy, and the crushing power of the place where they believed that legacy could flourish.“What do you want?” She has a soft-featured face, this girl from the train. Soft-features, and hard eyes. He wants to paint her.He settles for: “Have a drink with me.” His most charming smile would feel cheap, now, so he settles for sincerity.To his surprise, her response is not one of outright refusal. “Why?”“Because,” he says, and he follows his heart: “I think we’re supposed to know each other.”
iv.
A message from Yeon Hwa blinks unread on his phone. That in itself is representative enough of all their unfinished business.He kissed her once, when they were younger: her back against the wall, his hands twisted in her smooth hair. She pushed him away and slapped him, but he saw the color in her cheeks, her eyes gone wide and black.She has spent the years since then in love with So. So and his animal scars, his twisted brutality. Yo can be brutal, too, but it is refined. Powerful.He is the kind of man Yeon Hwa should want, but she won’t let herself. She is the kind of woman he should pursue, but she was right, at the gala: he cannot bear to be second-best.Then, too, what would Yeon Hwa do if she ever found out his secret?He leaves the nondescript car he uses for these errands several blocks away from Min Seo’s apartment as an extra layer of caution. He takes the steps two at time—everything has been so heavy of late, his father and his mother and damnable Wook—and he wants the distraction of Kiha, all smiles and sweetness.No brutality there.Nothing prepares Yo for what he finds when he unlocks the door and opens it: Min Seo, pouring tea, her hands shaking——and across the table from her, with one scarred and tattooed hand lifting a cup to his lips, So.Fear is panic and panic is violence. This is deeper in the blood of the Wang sons than Yo knew, but he knows it now as he hurls himself across the room at So. The tea service shatters thinly, and So’s shoulders slam against the wall, enough to make the nearest window shake.But Yo has forgotten, if indeed he ever admitted, that So’s murdering ways give him strength and cunning beyond that which Yo’s gym reps could ever hope to offer. So twists easily out of his hold and wrenches Yo’s arm behind his back, spinning him around so that his sharp chin digs into Yo’s neck.Yo struggles. It does no good.Then the bedroom door creaks open.“I don’t want to break your arm in front of your son,” So murmurs, close by Yo’s ear, “But I will.”Yo forces himself to relax. So lets him go, and Yo raises his hands, showing that he will not attack again.“Take the boy,” So says to Min Seo, who needs no further prompting. She darts past them and scoops up Kiha, slamming the bedroom door behind them. Yo hates him for being the one to say it, for protecting them, even in some warped sense.Fear is panic, and it is pain. Yo folds his arms, hands gripping the opposite elbows, to steady the sick shivering that seems to roll over him with all the blinding force of a wave.“Why,” he asks, through his teeth, “Have you come here?”So slumps against the window frame. The scar on his face stands out in sharper relief than it ordinarily does, though So has had it for almost as long as Yo remembers. “I wanted you to know that I could.” So’s eyes bore into him. “It brings me no joy.”“Wook sent you?” Yo’s voice is not quite steady, and he hates himself. Well, more than usual, anyway. “Wook sent you, to find out what would break me. And you have.”So’s jaw clenches. “Do you hate me so much,” he asks softly, “That every enemy must be my ally?”“I hate you enough,” Yo shoots back, “To know that you are capable of nothing better than killing and breaking. Even if you are not Wook’s mercenary, you have always been Mu’s. Is this Mu’s way of avenging himself on me for a few spoiled shipments?”So stares at the ground. When he speaks, he says only, “He looks like you.”Yo’s fingers dig into his arms. “What?”“Your son.” So lifts his head and looks at him. His hair has fallen over his forehead, and he looks like Jung. Yo hates him. It is a foundation of their world, that Yo hates him. “He is not so much younger than you were,” So adds. “The day I went away.”Yo breaks the gaze first. “Short of killing you,” he says coldly, “I cannot stop you from ruining me, now. Leave this house.”So straightens and strides past him. A soldier’s walk, Yo thinks, or an assassin’s. Stiff-spined but silent. At the door, So pauses.“It was not hard for me to find them,” he says in a low voice. “Wook will find them next, if someone does not stop him.”He closes the door behind him.Yo bites the inside of his cheek until the blood comes.
v.
“Tell me about yourself,” says the beautiful boy, and Woo Hee desperately wants to.She should never have agreed to this—to drinks. But here he is, gracefully pouring soju in a delicate cup. His elegant fingers brush hers as he passes the cup to her, and she drinks deeply.“I am an assistant at your family’s business.”“Not my family,” the boy—the man, really—says, almost regretfully. “Not anymore.”His name is Baek Ah, and Woo Hee knows this, but for her he will always begin as the man at the train station.He always looks like a way out of despair.“That is not all you are.” He is trying again. “I told you, I never forget a face. But even if I did, I wouldn’t have forgotten yours. Why is that?”She is flummoxed. “You are asking me to tell you why your mind works the way it does?”He laughs softly. It makes his face glow, somehow. Woo Hee wants to put a hand against her chest, to still her heart’s rapid beating. “I want to know how your mind works,” Baek Ah tells her.“Why?”“Because we are all unhappy here,” he answers, toying with his own cup. “And I do not think we have to be.”
vi.
“Who is she?”Kim Won shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I thought you wanted to know…”“Oh, yes,” Wook waves a hand. “Everything that Yo has his fingers in. I welcome that, and I will make sure you are well-protected later.” He leans forward. “But for now, what do you know of this—Ha Jin? I feel that I have seen her before. Who is she working for?”“For the company,” Won says, and Wook remembers how dense he can be.“Who in the company?”“I think…” Won chews his lip. “I think she is close to Baek Ah.”Baek Ah is a simple-minded fool, so that is no help. Wook sorts through every useful fragment of memory, until he pieces together one that chills him:Ha Jin, this elusive not-quite-stranger, began her time at Wang-Hwangbo almost exactly when So returned from Seoul.He smiles, and it burns in his throat. He thinks the feeling is jealousy. “Find out what you can,” he tells Won. “I want to know her completely.”
vii.
 Yeon Hwa drags the brush through her hair. Outside, she hears a crash, and muffled voices.It would be so like the servants to get into a late-night tussle, spurred on by the gossip that has been permeating the air like a bad odor for weeks.She sets the brush down and stalks to the door, not caring that she is in her nightclothes and a filmy dressing gown."What the hell is--" She stops short, with the door flung open."Where is your brother?" Yo demands. The maids whisper behind him.He's clearly drunk. Yeon Hwa heart pounds in her chest. "My brother is not here," she says, and thinks it a mercy."I'll wait," Yo insists stubbornly. She doesn't think she's ever seen him like this, bloodshot eyes and clothing disheveled.She needs to get him out of the maids' sight. "Come with me," she commands, and prays that he obeys her.He does. She closes the door that leads to her rooms behind her, and knows that all manner of new gossip will spring from the decision."What happened?"He doesn't answer. He sits down on one of her sofas, and rests his head in his hands."What did Wook do?" she asks."I need to speak to him," Yo tells her. He stands up again.Almost without knowing what she is doing, Yeon Hwa reaches for his hands and grasps them tight. "Wook will ruin you," she says, "If you let him see you like this."He leans closer. If he kissed her, she wonders if he would taste the same under all the alcohol. "Don't you want him to win?" he rasps out. "He's your brother."Yeon Hwa closes her eyes, and whispers, "I don't want him to win."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

And I, who have listened for a step

All afternoon, hear it now, but already falling away,

Already in memory. And the terrible scales descending

On the silent piano; the snow; and the absent flowers

abounding.
- Donald Justice
i.
He wakes in an unfamiliar bed. The whole room around him is white and pale pink, reminding him of sunrise on snow, or the sands of Crete. Yo forces himself to wake from these soft thoughts, and sits up. His head is pounding.Across the room, Yeon Hwa drags the gold zipper of her cobalt dress towards the nape of her neck.Yo rifles through every memory he can readily bring to mind, but none satisfies him. The other side of the bed is smoothed, unslept in. What, then—“You’re awake,” Yeon Hwa observes, and he realizes that she can see him in the mirror. “I thought you might be dead.”Her voice is flat, careful. Yo plucks at his shirt; sweat-dampened silk. The day before is beginning to hurl itself back at him: Kiha and broken china, So’s fists. Too much to drink, afterwards.“Why am I here?” he asks sharply, and Yeon Hwa turns to face him. Her eyebrows are drawn tight; her features are otherwise expressionless.She presses her lips together, then answers, “You came to find me.”He is sick; his tongue is sour in his mouth, his stomach is twisting rebelliously. He is in Wook’s house, in Wook’s sister’s bed. No, he corrects himself, almost unconsciously. In Yeon Hwa’s bed. Yeon Hwa and Wook, somehow, are leagues apart. There is no sibling alliance. Not that he knows of, not in the light of day.Yeon Hwa returns to her reflection. She lifts her heavy hair over one shoulder and cards her rosy fingernails through it.Yo asks, “Why did you let me stay?”“My brother will find out that you were here, one way or another.”“So you’d rather he think that we’re sleeping together?” He does not add, rather than let him see me at my worst.“He already thinks we’re sleeping together.” She is still not looking at him.This is not a surprise, and yet it is. “And I think you’re in love with my wolf of a brother.” He shouldn’t be so cruel; he should be grateful—but he has always known better how to be cruel. “So which is it?”“Maybe it’s neither,” Yeon Hwa says, somewhere between a knife’s edge and a world of weariness. “Must you all think me a desperate slut, in one way or another?”He bites his tongue. He draws back her petal-colored quilts and stands, forcing down bile in his throat. “I,” he says, “Have never thought you were desperate.”“Just a slut, then.” Her voice trembles.He strides towards her. He wills himself not to be unsteady on his feet. He puts his hands on her shoulders and spins her towards him.She smells like jasmine. He can feel yesterday’s grime still clinging to his skin.“Thank you,” he says. “For catching me.” He presses his lips against her smooth forehead. Then, he lifts a snowy towel off her vanity table and tosses it over his shoulder. “I’m going to shower.”“Ya!” This Yeon Hwa he recognizes; pert and indignant. “Who gave you permission?”“I did,” he says. “After all, I must look my best when Wook watches me leave.”She curses at him and he laughs. It is easy, in this moment, to feel like himself again. When he leaves her quiet room, the truth will crash down on him. For now, he doesn’t want to go. He pauses at the bathroom door.“I would,” he says. Says it with enough twist of eyebrow and tongue that she knows exactly what he means.He leaves her silent, her teeth worrying her lip.
ii.
He needs to speak to his father. The task is not a pleasant one; So feels every layer of unworthiness etched like filth and ashes on his skin. Who is he, to ask for Taejo’s blessing?Who is he, to think that Taejo will give it?You will surprise him, Mu had promised. You will surprise him—and then his heart will turn to me. He will ask my guidance, still. I believe that.Too much talk of trust and love and loyalty. So knows only the worst of these things. Still, he does as Mu bids him: he buttons himself into clean black and white. His marked knuckles of course, are his own fault.His face might as well be his own fault, too.He weaves through Daegu traffic and tries not to think of Yo, or their encounter yesterday. Yo’s ice-varnished anger has always been as hard to parse as their mother’s unrelenting hatred. So is too weary, or too stupid, to understand it. He knows that there was a son before Yo, Yoo’s first son. He knows that that son died.If not for Jung, he might be able to believe that she ran dry of love—what little love she had.If not for Jung.Jung renewed her, and Yo supports her, and that leaves only one explanation. It is the explanation carved across So’s skin.He parks a few blocks from the hospital. Mu, who has managed to visit their father a few times, instructed him on how to sneak past security. So is fairly certain that the only obstacle will be his mother.To his surprise, Taejo’s door is ajar. So slips inside, and finds the room—aside from his father’s still form—to be empty.He bows.“So?” Taejo asks, from behind draped curtains. The whole place seems swamped by gray-tinged light.So greets him formally, and asks after his health. Asking after people’s health has always been anathema to his path in life. The words taste strange.“I am not getting better,” Taejo says. He tilts his head, and So doesn’t know what he is looking at, at first. Then he sees it: out of reach, the small, shrewd eye of a camera.So can guess who is behind that.Still, So has prepared for this. He reaches into his breast pocket. “Can you read easily, abeoji?”His father nods, and So passes him the envelope.“It is the respects of the Kang family school board,” he says. This is a lie, and he knows that Taejo understands that. There is no letter; it is a document drawing up a restructuring of the company, replacing the current officers with allies of Mu’s and Taejo’s, elevating Baek Ah—So had insisted—and otherwise pinning the company’s future under the weight of a poison pill. Whoever retires from the old board may well be replaced by Yo or Wook, but should Yo or Wook or any other upstart attempt to buy up shares and take over, the company will collapse.It is a time-honored, war-like tactic, and as near to permanent as such a thing can be. Mu promises that the old board, nearly shut-out as they have been, will agree to it.Times are changing, Mu said. They would have accepted me—they cannot, now, even as my father cannot.Why would they accept me? So tapped his cheek, in that moment. With this ugly face?They’ll accept a deal that keeps power in their hands a little longer, Mu told him. They distrust our father’s love of family and old friends, unless they are those old friends. These men do not want Yo, or your mother. They do not want Wook. They may not want you, but this deal gives them power.It is a sacrifice, then, So said, and he didn’t just mean the papers in his hands.A sacrifice, Mu agreed. You and I are the only ones who would make it.Now, in the gloom, Taejo’s brow creases as he reads the terms. It is not the Wang family empire that he might have wanted.So, who is not the son he might have wanted, does everything he can not to twist his hands together. He keeps them clenched in fists.“The Kangs’ words are appreciated,” Taejo says at last. His voice seems to rattle in his chest. “They taught you well. You are the only one who has never asked anything of me.”Until now hangs in the air. So finds that clenching his fists is not enough, and clenches his teeth.Taejo’s eyes settle on him, searching. “You do not want this,” he says, very softly. “Do you?”So would like to live in the mountains. He would like never to see a city again, never to cut his knuckles against someone else’s teeth for as long as he lives. He would like to shut his eyes and dream good dreams.These things are impossible, and foolish.These things are anything but his.“I want this,” he answers.Taejo folds the papers carefully, returning them to the envelope. His fingers shake. He raises his voice with effort, and adds, “I will have to reflect on a proper response to the Kangs. They did not have to extend such generosity.”So takes the envelope, tucks it back in his pocket, and bows.“What,” demands a voice that he knows too well, “Are you doing here?”He spins quickly on his heel and comes face to face with his mother. Her beringed hand strikes him across the mouth, serpent-swift.He tastes blood on his lip; not a new sensation.“Eomeoni,” he rasps, and bows quickly.“Answer me!” she hisses. “Who let you in? Who let you in to upset your father?”He steps back out of the range of her next blow, but she advances.“Yoo!” Taejo thunders from the bed. So is surprised that he can still thunder. “Leave him alone. I sent for him. He is the only son I have not seen, lying here.”So will not raise his hand to his mouth, though it stings. He keeps his head down. The hidden envelope burns against his chest.“Forgive me, husband,” Yoo says sweetly, sinking into the chair beside Taejo’s head. She folds her hands almost demurely, as if her rings are not red. “I grow so anxious when you do not rest.”“So,” Taejo says, turning his head. “It was good of you to come.”So murmurs his thanks. He bows again, and flees like a coward before his mother can tell him to go.
iii.
She works busily at her desk all day, so engrossed that she scarcely notices Chae Ryung’s teasing visits.Until—“Have you found a man?”Woo Hee’s head snaps up. Very carefully, she says, “Why do you ask that?”Chae Ryung picks at her iridescent nail polish. “You’re not listening to me.”“Because I am trying to keep up the pretense of…” Woo Hee gestures. “This.”“Yet your eyes are so dreamy,” Chae Ryung says, and she grins. She looks like the girl she is when she grins. Woo Hee has to wonder what drove her here—was Chae Ryung’s family brought low by this dynasty, too? Does she have nothing to live for, but money and revenge?I went to the countryside, Baek Ah told her yesterday. I wanted green trees instead of malice and greed.Did you find it?  She was breathless, asking that.
Trees? Yes. But there was more here than malice.

Your brother?

And my friends.
She thinks—she does not know—that his friend is the son of Wang Taejo who never seems at home.“I don’t dream,” Woo Hee says flatly, and returns to her filing.
iv.
The arching glass and all-white interior of the Seoul-Incheon airport make Yeon Hwa feel like she is trapped in a spaceship. But no—that is not quite right. Perhaps she has more in common with a biological sample in a petri dish, with the four walls of a lab as her world, the ceiling as her sky. Behind her, porters wheel her luggage—all silver cases and a few hatboxes. For her, this is traveling light.
New York.
New York seems as good a place as any to go.She booked the ticket as soon as Yo sauntered out of her bedroom. Her father left her a penthouse suite in Tribeca; it was one of the few assets untouched by settling the scandals his death revealed.For these, she blames Yoo. She blames Yoo, and Wook for continuing his slow and steady ascent. She blames her mother for her softness.
Are you not soft yourself?
For all that the Wangs have both defined and harmed her family, she cannot seem to let them go.That’s what she’s trying to do now.The wheels of her suitcases skate across the concourse floor. Her heels skitter: tick, tick, tick. People who fly often wear comfortable shoes, but flying first-class means you don’t have to.Yeon Hwa digs her nails into the palms of her hands. She has always been pampered and protected, in the world’s eyes. The princess of Wang-Hwangbo. She is catty, she is sharp-tongued, she still has traces of her too-rounded cheeks from girlhood.It is a great deal for a woman to bear.Yo likely does not know how to love her; So is never going to try. Overhead, the lights are too bright, brighter than a sky.She does not know, here and now and running, why love should concern her at all.They have almost reached the gate when she halts. She can hear her heartbeat in her ears. Yes, love. Yes, that terrible weakness that Wook has never suffered from, that her mother keeps calmly buried. She thinks of Yo last night, peaceful in sleep. Thinks of his hands in her hair, so long ago.“Turn around,” she says, as imperiously as she can manage, and drops her ticket into her bemused assistant’s hand. “I’m not going.”
v.
“I have yet to meet my one.”Ha Jin starts. She didn’t realize she was drifting off, and now that Eun’s face is mere inches from her own, she isn’t sure what to expect.“Your…one?”“My one true love.” He sits down on the floor in front of her, cross-legged, looking up at her with a good degree of his Goryeo hopes present on his face. “Do you think that’s coincidental?”“Coincidental?”“With you coming here. A mysterious woman who is very beautiful and makes me laugh…”Well, she had better nip this properly, before he goes and gets serious. Of course, he won’t be put to death for refusing an arranged marriage here, and that is something for which to be grateful.All the same—“Eun, that’s very sweet,” she says sincerely. “But I can promise you, I am not the one for you.” She hopes he meets his Bear-Princess here, in this kinder-but-still-unkind time.His face falls, but then he smirks. Not so serious after all. “It was worth a try.”“Aren’t you fresh,” she sighs, trying to hide her own smile. She leans back against the plush pillows on Baek Ah’s sofa and shuts her eyes. “Eun, do you ever feel so tired you could sleep in the daytime?”“I do sleep in the daytime,” he says, but then he adds, “It’s not really day, anymore. It’s dark out.”She wonders where So is. She always wonders where So is. “Work was long today,” she admits.Eun never asks prying questions. He and Jung both would be more than entitled to ask who she is, and why she is here, why Baek Ah—and So!—allow her to stay, though she looks to most eyes to be nothing more than a lowly secretary.“Have you eaten?” Eun asks. “Jung and I ordered spicy chicken feet. And black bean noodles. So many noodles.”She shakes her head. “Gamsa. You’re too good to me. But I’m not hungry.”She isn’t. She rarely is, these days, and she forces down some rice and steamed meat and vegetables to keep her going. She isn’t going to fade away, like Hae Soo did. She takes her heart medication every night.  A door opens and slams shut, shaking the house. Eun scrambles to his feet. Only one person slams doors like that.So. Ha Jin sits up, swinging her stocking feet onto the thickly carpeted floor. “I’ll talk to him,” she says, and again, Eun asks no questions.She finds So shouldering off his jacket. His white shirt—unexpected—almost glows in the half-lit hall.“Are you—” She stops short. His lip is swollen and bleeding.“I’m fine,” he says, but he doesn’t tell her to leave him alone.(She hopes that means he doesn’t want her to.)Like a dancer tiptoeing into a solo, she comes close to him. She lifts one hand, and strokes his cheek. “Who did this to you?”“It could have been anyone.” He does not move, even to flinch, beneath her touch.“But it wasn’t.” She looks him in the eyes for a moment, and knows. “Your mother?”He reaches up and lifts her hand away. “Aigo,” he says. “You read us all too well.”Her phone jingles in the pocket of her cardigan. She has been waiting for a call, and she stiffens.“I’m sorry,” she tells him, though she doesn’t yet have much to apologize for. “I—need to take this.”He shrugs like it doesn’t matter and heads for the kitchen. Eun’s black bean noodles may well be in danger.She waits until he is out of ear-shot and picks up. “Hello?”“Ha Jin.” The voice is just as she expected it to be; self-satisfied and smooth as cream. “I think we should see one another.”
vi.
She slips in the door, mouse-quiet. She is not flashily beautiful—he could readily find a dozen girls more charmingly disposed. Still, she has an unreadable depth that intrigues him.Wook leans forward in his chair, all warmth and sincerity. “Forgive the meeting time. I know it is late.”Ha Jin does not sit until he asks her to.“You are not happy with your work?”“It’s not that.” She smiles politely and uses honorifics; Wook appreciates her good manners, though he does not trust them. “I just believe I might be able to be useful to you, sir.”“Useful?” He arches a brow—as lazily as Yo ever does, he is sure. “In what ways would you be useful?”She swallows hard. “In whatever way you wish.”“Destroy him,” he says calmly.“What?” Two points of color rise in her cheeks.“I know you’re more than a secretary,” Wook says. He does not let his tone shift even a fraction; he skates along the surface of all things—truth, and feeling. “So clear my path. You have the kind of face a man would love.”She shakes herself, as if waking from a dream. “Yo would never…”“I’m not talking about Yo.”“Then—” The flush drains from her face. “So? He isn’t a threat to you.”
As if waking from a dream.
The vine of something green and grasping wraps itself around Wook’s heart and throat. He feels the cool rush of winter air on his face, footprints in snow, blood in a forest. Feels the absence of a hand in his—feels rain fall on the back of his neck as he turns away.“Think it over,” he offers. He feels numb, and not numb at all.She stands up, shaking, and bows. She loves his brother.
Brother?
“I—”
Waking.
Wook smiles, leaving snow and blood behind. “Don’t go yet,” he says. “Don’t go yet, Hae Soo.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

What is alive and what isn’t and what should we do about it? Theories: about the nature of the thing. And of the soul.

Because people die.

The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does.
- Richard Siken
i.
Her wrists are zip-tied together. She blinks heavy-lidded eyes, trying to re-orient herself.Wook was quick with the chloroform.He is leaning against his desk now, legs crossed at the ankle. He is handsome. She loved him, hundreds of years ago, but she was not in love with him.She would have had to really know him, for that.“I would have called the police,” Wook says into his phone. Calm and smooth, like water ruining lines in the sand. “But she keeps saying your name. She swears you sent her.”Ha Jin lifts her head. Panic rises in her throat. She can taste it like a chemical tang.Wook hangs up the phone and turns back to her. “I want to know,” he says. His voice changes; it is almost hoarse. “Does he still want you, here?”So. He means So.“Leave him out of this,” Ha Jin begs, and as soon as she has spoken, she knows she should have stayed silent.“Ah—you love him too, of course. You aren’t acting on Yo’s behalf.” Wook taps his temple with his knuckles. “Aish, it’s all falling back into place. I was eighth in line there…for a time, Hae Soo. For a time.”“So you remember,” she says, trying, with ever filament of steel that past and present have given her, to remain calm. “But there’s no monarchy here. You can’t order people poisoned or beheaded.”He gestures towards the chloroform bottle. "Can't I? try again.”She wrenches futilely against her bonds; it only makes her wrists sting. The ties are pinched snugly into her flesh. “You’re a snake.”He purses his lips. “Goryeo changed you. You died there, you know. They say he nearly tore the palace apart. Too brutal, in his grief. Too brutal in everything.”She bites her lips to keep away her tears. Looking at an unrecognizable portrait of Gwangjong is one thing; hearing a man who was there, after she was, recount his pain…“I was sorry, you know.” Wook turns his back on her. He keeps passing his hands over his eyes and through his hair, like he is physically setting his brain to rights. Perhaps he is. Ha Jin remembers the remembering. It is a torturous thing. “You were trapped by others’ ambition. It seems you still are.”“Your ambition was always more important to you than anything else,” Ha Jin answers. She finds herself surprised, still, after all this time, that she has a voice to speak. To call Wook to account at last. She did not think she’d find that courage tied to a chair, but life has rarely given her what she expected. “I should have seen it sooner.”“No,” Wook says. He faces her again, and she sees now as she saw then: his eyes are deadly cold. “You should have known better than to promise him what he could never have.”“Me?”He scoffs. “Everything. Because here we are again, aren’t we? Company over crown, this time. Yo will never expect it. Even their mother…no. I’m the only one who’s always known what So would try to do, if he came back.”Footsteps sound in the hall outside. Wook recollects his smile, his riptide composure. Ha Jin can practically feel it dragging against her skin.He opens the door.So steps inside. His face is set; clamped jaw, endless eyes. He looks at Wook. He looks at her, Ha Jin, Hae Soo, girl with bleeding wrists—and says nothing.“You came.” Wook sounds concerned, but Ha Jin can hear the satisfaction.“You told me one of the company secretaries claimed that I sent her,” So answers. He is still looking at her. She bites her lips again, and stares back.“She claims,” Wook says softly, “That you sent her to rifle through my papers.”So’s lips quirk at one corner—too feral to be a smirk. “What would I want,” he asks, “With your papers?”Wook drums his fingers on the desk. “These are strange times,” he says, too pleasantly.Ha Jin, in her mind, can hear the clash of swords.So seems to sense that Wook is gloating; the lines of his shoulder snap tight like a bowstring drawn back. “The girl is no connection of mine,” he offers, voice still careless.“I took every precaution,” Wook tells him.So’s eyes drop to Ha Jin’s wrists. “I see that.”“I’ll call the police now.” Wook reaches for his phone. “A pity.”So takes the bait. It makes her heart rise, even though she knows he puts himself in more danger than he dreams. “No,” he says. “I’ll question her myself. Let her come with me.”There it is: the serpent smile on Wook’s lips. All sweetly dripping fangs. “Very well,” he says. “On your head be it.”
ii.
She doesn’t know what he does with all this space.Of course, perhaps she is merely making excuses for herself—she still lives with her mother and her brother, as if such a thing is necessary or even desirable. Yeon Hwa nods to the doorman with the kind of imperious head-tilt he’s probably seen before, from Queen Yoo, and takes the elevator up.Yo’s penthouse, walled in by chrome that glints in the sunlight and shivers like the surface of water under clouds, is not a place that Yeon Hwa has ever come before.And yet, she knows where it is.There is another doorman to get past at the entrance of his rooms. Yeon Hwa gives her name to this one and he vanishes behind heavy doors.In a few moments, the man himself appears. He is wearing a silk shirt the color of a ripe plum, half-unbuttoned. His hair is slicked back, and that ridiculous line of kohl along his eyelids is as razor-sharp as ever.“Hwangbo Yeon Hwa,” he says mockingly. The doorman shuts the door behind them. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”She has planned this moment. It would be done effortlessly; it would be said artfully.What she actually says is, “I cancelled my flight.”“Flight?” His eyebrows lift; his hands rest casually in the pockets of his tailored wool trousers. “Where were you flying, little bird?”She’s not a little bird. She feels a spark of irritation, which is exactly what she needs. “I was leaving,” she says. “I own a flat in Manhattan. I was going to live there.”He digests this news without comment. Then he turns a still-too-insolent shoulder and stalks towards a marble-topped table, fitted out with a decanter and glasses like crystal bells. “Drink?”She’ll take it.She has sipped something burningly expensive—sipped too much of it, in fact—before he asks, “Why were you going?”Yeon Hwa stares at the amber depths swirling in her hand. It’s scotch, of course. All he ever drinks is scotch.  “You,” she says.“Why did you come back?”She looks at him. “You.”“Not my brother?”“Aish!” She throws the glass down and revels in its sparkling destruction. “Must you always be so jealous?”He advances on her, eyes dangerous. “That,” he says, “Was expensive.”She steps back, her high, narrow heel catching among the shards. “Buy another,” she says.His left arm circles her waist with no warning, steadying her amid the shattered mess. “I don’t want another.”“What do you want?” she asks. “Because I don’t have the patience to keep waiting.”His right hand spans the distance between the nape of her neck and the curve of her chin. He tips her head back, a little roughly, and then he kisses her, a little gently.Then his hands become gentle and the kiss turns rough, and Yeon Hwa pays little attention to anything else.
iii.
“My roommate will be suspicious.” It is a truth and an untruth, Woo Hee knows. True, that is, but not for the reasons he knows.“Of me?” Baek Ah looks dangerously innocent. He should not do that; should not look like that. It does strange things to all the pieces of Woo Hee. “Of how often I am away in the evenings,” Woo Hee answers. It is their third meeting in not so many more days. She has told him about her past as a dancer; he has shown her his sketches and spoken wistfully of his music.He plays piano, does Baek Ah.She imagines his slim hands building a cathedral of sound out of those simple keys, and she smiles in spite of herself.“We’re getting to know each other.” He pours more wine. “We two, the only real people in this whole city.”“You don’t believe that.”“No.” His kind mouth breaks into a grin. “No, I don’t—and it is no judgment on us. It’s just—I have seen the people of this city. Not the ones in high places. The ones who race down the streets like life is after them. They are, all of them, very real.”“Do you paint them?”“I’d like to paint you.” He props his chin on his hand. “You know, I have a house.” He sighs. “Well, I share it with my brother and our friends. But it is a large house. You would be welcome there.”He is delicate, despite the brief stretch of their acquaintance.  But Woo Hee knows she can’t simply follow her heart.“I’ll have to think about it,” she says, meaning a visit. She stares down at her hands. They are scarred, her hands. She has so many scars.“Take your time,” Baek Ah says quietly. “We have time, in this city. We have time.”
iv.
It is dark when he drives her home.Home. It isn’t hers, and it can’t be his—when did such a thought slip by his defenses?When did such a girl?She is crumpled in the seat beside him, cradling her lacerated wrists. Wook restrained her methodically, cruelly. He didn’t need chloroform—which So can smell on her skin—and he didn’t need to tie her down.There is so much more to Wook than meets the eye. Or maybe there isn’t. So has never trusted himself as a judge of character, but lately, he’s found himself wondering if Wook is just as flat in soul as he is in composure.It would explain a good deal—the steady-eyed calculation, the way he doles out blows like playing cards.Taejo was already dying, but Wook doesn’t seem to mind if some of the blood is on his hands. Wook doesn’t seem to mind anything.Beside him, Ha Jin sighs.So swallows.“Are you alright?”He should demand an explanation. He should demand to know why she mentioned his name to Wook, and what she thought she was going to accomplish, going there in the first place. He should wonder, yes, he has wondered—if she isn’t some double agent after all. Maybe this is just Wook’s latest card trick.And yet, he asks if she is alright.“I will be.”Her voice is a girl’s voice, high and insistent. But it stirs something in him, something he is not allowed to feel.Baek Ah might call it hope.Baek Ah might be a fool, but So knows he isn’t.“You should be more careful,” So says gruffly. “What were you thinking?”Ha Jin drags in a deep, shaking breath, like she is preparing to make a confession. Perhaps she is.  “I went to try to…make him think that I could bring him news of Yo,” she says. “I thought if Wook made me an ally, I could help you win against him.”“And?” So keeps one hand on the wheel. The other yearns to reach for her.“He saw right through me.” Ha Jin’s face is pale as snow. Something happened, there. Something she did not expect. So wants to know what it is.“Did he hurt you?” That is as close as he can come.“Only a little.”Half of Baek Ah’s house is alight when they pull up. So avoids that half, and guides her, his hand—his rough, unworthy hand—on her elbow. They enter through the kitchen.“Sit,” So tells her. “I’ll get bandages.”Now her cheeks are rosy. “You don’t have to,” she says.“I know I don’t.” He glares at her, and hunts for the kit among Baek Ah’s expansive cupboards. When he finds it, he separates out gauze and salve and medical tape.“You’ve done this before.”Too many times to count. “What makes you say so?”She smiles. It’s a sad smile. “Just a guess.”If she kept guessing, she might find out all the other terrible things about him—from bodies and bloodshed, to the story behind the scar on his face.He kneels before her, and reaches for her hand. She gives it to him. Her skin is as soft as he—remembers? No. Not memory; just a pitiful imagination.“This will sting,” he says thickly. He has to say something.“I don’t mind.” She smiles again, a little brighter. “They’re not so bad. Cat scratches.”She is always surprising him. “I hate cats,” he says. Which—of course he does. Yo and his mother have always been fond of cats. They were safe to hate.“Dogs?”“Eoh.” He shrugs. “I had one, once.” It was a yellow mongrel. Pat-Pat was his name, and he was faithful and trusting, right until the end.The end being, of course, when So put a bullet behind his ear. Putting him out of his misery, to be sure—and maybe someday, someone will do the same for him.“He’s dead.”“I’m so sorry.” Ha Jin sounds utterly sincere. “Losing what we love is hard.”“I don’t love anything,” So says, taping off one wrist and starting on the other. “Though that is not advice you seem willing to take.”He can’t believe he said that; he, not Baek Ah, is the fool.“Only people who love very deeply say such things,” Ha Jin argues. “It takes a good deal of love, to be lost like that.”She has him; she has him wrapped around her small hands. He stares at her fingertips, not ready to look her in the eyes.Baek Ah finds them like that, because Baek Ah is not a fool.
v.
You died, there.He stares in the mirror for a long time. Twice, he lifts his hands to run over his face—feeling skin, and bone beneath it. He died there.He is not yet certain if he lost.The second time will leave no such uncertainty. Here, he is unfettered by the same harsh laws. Here, Taejo is not his father, but he can be just as easily replaced.
Who am I, with the same name?

Who am I, with the same future?
He was soft, there. Faithful to Myung Hee, though she died for nothing. Charmed, for a time, by the wide eyes of Hae Soo.That Wook died because he was foolish. He waited too long to strike. He waited too long to believe in what he deserved.It strikes him how, in this world, everyone else is weaker. Yo seems preoccupied. Taejo lacks military force. So has not been wrenched out of his suffering state, as he seemed to be, for a time, in Goryeo.Wook shudders under hatred and almost does not hear the door opening behind him.“Wook?”It is Kim Won. Won, that loathsome little creature. He is the same here as he was in Goryeo.“You asked for news of Yo,” Won says, bowing more times than is strictly necessary. “Yo’s weaknesses.”Wook turns his mind away from So. So will keep, and crumble, on his own time.“What is it?”Won smiles greedily. Won’s greed is always for others’ praise—something Wook has never needed. “Everything.”
vi.
Baek Ah can admit when he is pleased. He can also admit that he did not strictly plan this, only that he has hoped for it since the first time he saw them together—So and Ha Jin, an unlikely pairing, seemingly bound by sparks.Planned or not, the sight is a welcome one. A pleasing one. So kneeling at her feet, more vulnerable than he ever is, bandaging her wrists.Baek Ah belatedly realizes that this must mean all is not well. “Ha Jin! Are you hurt?”So is on his feet at once. There is a little color in his cheeks; Baek Ah is not imagining it. Ha Jin smiles and shakes her head. “I’m alright.” Her hair is tangled and she looks drained, but she doesn’t seem to be on the point of death.Baek Ah does not want to imagine her on the point of death.“It was Wook,” So explains, brief and to the point. His lifted eyebrow says they will have more to discuss later. Baek Ah’s good humor fades at once, at the sound of that hateful name, at the knowledge that Wook has taken another step into darkness. He opens his mouth to say something he may regret, and pulls himself together at the last second.So does not need someone else’s anger.“Where have you been?” Ha Jin asks, breaking the tension. “You looked so happy, when you came in.”Baek Ah remembers, and Wook is temporarily driven from his mind. “I’ve met someone,” he says. “A dream of a woman.”So rolls his eyes.“Really?” Ha Jin asks, plucking at her bandages. “Who is she?”“She works where you work.” Baek Ah knows that that, given the circumstances, may not be the best recommendation, so he adds—“Do you know her? Her name is Woo Hee.”Out of the corner of his eye, he sees So stiffen.Ha Jin frowns. Her eyes dart to So, nervous, like she knows something. Baek Ah feels a tremor and a chill.“I don’t know her,” Ha Jin says tightly.So steps forward, fierce, like he is on the point of asking a question, but then his phone rings. “Excuse me,” he says abruptly, and steps out of the room.This leaves Ha Jin and Baek Ah in sudden silence.“Do you know much about this girl, Baek Ah?” Ha Jin speaks low, insistent. “I only ask because so many of the girls who work there are…untrustworthy. Do you know where she is from? If she is…”“If she is what?”“I don’t know. I just know that many of the other girls are helping Yo, or Wook…”“You ask if she is a traitor?” Baek Ah is startled, ashamed at his own naivete, and then a little angry on Woo Hee’s behalf. “No, she’s not a traitor.”“How interesting that you should use that word,” comes So’s voice. He has rejoined them, more quickly and silently than Baek Ah thought possible. He glances at his hyung, and his confusion is shot through by fear. So looks positively murderous.“Traitor?” Baek Ah asks.“Yes,” So says, “A traitor.” And then in one motion, he grips Ha Jin by her injured wrists and drags her upwards, pulling her close against him. His eyes flash. “I just spoke to Park Soo-kyung,” So says coldly. “And I told him how helpful the girl he sent was. The girl—the traitor—Go Ha Jin.”Ha Jin is silent.So stares down at her, his fury much too calm for Baek Ah’s comfort. So says, “Soo-kyung told me he has never heard of you.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The common funeral

Unrolled its swaddling band,

Lapping, tightening

Till we were braced and bound

Like brothers in a ring.   
- Seamus Heaney
i.
Sun on water, fans and swords. A breeze sweet with the scent of cherry blossoms, and a girl like a poem, like a song among songs.A girl, falling.Baek Ah blinks back tears. Baek Ah blinks back the memory of blood on his hands.Memory. Ah—Yes. It is memory.He sees So with his hands around Ha Jin’s bandaged wrists. Sees So’s face, rent with anger and pain.Ha Jin.
Hae Soo.
A king and an almost-queen, a past and a future.Baek Ah steps forward. Baek Ah, who sees.“So,” he says firmly. “It is not what you think.”
ii.
Ha Jin’s wrists are stinging. So has released them, but that accounts nothing for the betrayal that burns like hatred in his eyes.“I lied about Soo-kyung,” she admits, desperately. “But I was not lying about helping you.”“Get out,” he orders, hard as stone.“No.” Baek Ah steps between them. His hand is on Ha Jin’s shoulder. Warm. Reassuring. Her heart feels like it is bound to explode.So looks at him, too, and his face twists a little. So’s face has always shown his horror, his grief. Ha Jin remembers Goryeo, remembers the end, and is broken anew. So says, to Baek Ah—to the one who is like his brother, though he does not know it—“You too?”“I would never betray you,” Baek Ah says fiercely. “I would die first. While I breathe, know that. You have to know that, So.”So turns, like a bird of prey wheeling downwards in striking, despairing flight. The door slams behind him as he goes out.Ha Jin cannot hold back her tears.“Soo,” Baek Ah says breathlessly, and she is suddenly too shocked for tears. “Hae Soo. It is you, isn’t it?”Her dearest friend. The one who never left her, never left So, and was emptied of hope and light because of it.  “You know me?”He nods. “I know you. How—how are we here?”She has thought of it long, and has not understood. She has thought of this long, too—remembering and being remembered. “I…” she bites her lip. “I do not think we are the same people,” she says. “Only the same souls.”“And some of the same names.” Baek Ah holds both of her shoulders now, staring her in the eyes. “You have come among us again, haven’t you? Our disastrous family.”“Not all a family,” she says. “It is different here.”“I was left with Eun,” he says, and shakes his head. “But no, I cannot laugh. Tell me. Tell me everything.”She wonders where to begin—dying, waking, seeking. The fact that So looked at her without knowing her, and broke her heart.She imagines Baek Ah understands that already.And also—“Wook,” she whispers. “Wook remembers.”Baek Ah glances at her wrists. “Is that why—”“Yes.”“Curse him,” he says vehemently. He is mingling his older, courtlier speech with the poetic artist he now is. Past and present. Two men, one face. One soul. “I have hated him here my whole life, Soo—Ha Jin. What should I call you?”And that is Baek Ah, all concern and kindness, even when the world is tumbling around his ears.“I am Ha Jin,” she says. “I am Ha Jin, here.”(Hae Soo was too weak to survive.)“Very well,” he says. Then he claps a hand against his forehead. “Woo Hee! She is here too.”“Does she remember?”“No.” Baek Ah purses his lips. “But I think she wants to. I think—” He tugs at his hair fretfully. “Aigo…that is why So responded to her name. She is a spy here, too, isn’t she?”“I think so. I don’t know. But—”“This damn world won’t leave us alone.” Baek Ah collapses against the edge of his granite countertop. “Another kingdom—one built on money—and another dynasty of wolves snapping at each other’s necks. Poor So.”“Where do you think he went?” Ha Jin bites the inside of her cheek.“To find out who sent you?” Baek Ah shakes his head. “He’s angry. I don’t know…I don’t know how we’ll make him trust us.”Her eyes flood with tears. He is at her side again at once, and his arms are around her.“Don’t give up hope, Ha Jin. Don’t give up hope.”She nods, clinging to him. She blots her eyes against his sweater and raises her head, newly resolute. “I know who we need to speak to,” she says.“Who?”“Ji Mong.”
iii.
The rooms are hollow with echoes, when Yeon Hwa is gone.He won’t call it love. Yo will never call it love, when it is before him—that makes it far too close, too dangerous. He lies awake with his arm across his eyes until his phone rings, shrill and warning, tearing him from the blank gray of near-sleep, from the whispered memory of Yeon Hwa’s perfume.  It’s his mother.It’s past one in the morning. A better man might think of his father, and his father’s health; but Yo has only been trained to be a son of one parent.As she trained him, then, he thinks of himself.He dresses quickly. His mind betrays him—he will only recognize this later. He should have expected the worst; should have expected it soon. Instead he fancies some failure in his accounts, some new loophole that must exploited in the ghost hours of the night.Yo does not see the figure slip into pace behind him when he charges out the front door, dashing down to the car already idling near the steps. He does not see the headlights trailing him. He does not see much; that is the trouble.His mother’s rooms are always guarded by a host of terrified maids—terrified of her, that is. They are fierce defenders of her privacy to anyone and everyone else.Yo is his mother’s son. He pushes past them with a snarl.It is a twisted mirror image of two days before—no. Less time, even, than that.It is Min Seo, drinking tea instead of pouring it. It is his mother, red lips curved coyly; red nails draped affectionately around Kiha’s shoulder, holding him close against her side.Yo thinks, stupidly, that he’d been afraid of So.All his veneer of control is useless here. Even if that were not true, he would not have remembered to maintain it. He skids to a halt, unsure of what to dive for, first—the teacup being lifted to Min Seo’s lips, or Kiha, held in his mother’s hands.“Yo,” his mother says sweetly, without looking for him. “I am glad you have joined us.”Min Seo is crying silently. Yo can see her biting her lips and winking back the tears as best she can. He wishes he could tell her it is alright.He can’t.“I was asking your whore,” his mother continues, as though nothing at all is wrong, “How she liked France. Because of course it was my understanding that that was where she had been living ever since it became obvious that she was eager to get her little commoner claws in you.” She is running her fingers up and down Kiha’s sleeve.Kiha is mouse-quiet, eyes wide.“My rule was never against attachments,” Yoo adds, almost contemplative. “It was against weaknesses. Walking wounds, like a country slut and a bastard son, paid out of your precious time and money.” She bites her lip, hard, and a little of the sweetness drains from her tone. “Precious,” she repeats. “To me.”“Eomoni,” Yo murmurs. He is more terrified than he has ever been in his life; he cannot stop thinking how close his mother’s talons are to Kiha’s face, his eyes. He wonders, madly, if So is laughing. Laughing, at how the wind has turned. “Let them go. Please.”Yoo cocks her head at that; hearkening to the scent of blood, no doubt. To the smell and sound of something flailing, wounded, beneath a pinning blade. “Eomoni?” Her eyebrows arch. “You are so dutiful. Except when you lie.”Kiha whimpers. Min Seo twists her hands together. Yo hopes she knows better than to reach for him.“I have never failed in my work,” Yo says desperately. Modeling contracts, textile production, designer hires—money from all of these, he has laid at her feet. Why can she not forgive him one corner of his heart?Why, he knows too well, does not matter.“Is she to be my daughter-in-law?” Yoo demands, pinching Kiha’s shoulder more tightly. “And my grandson—you bring me a grandson. Did I ask you for another heir?”No, Yo realizes. She never did.“Jung,” he says flatly. “You want this all to be Jung’s.”“Some part of you must have always known that,” Yoo says, not shaken at all to have it said aloud. “You serve a purpose, Yo. A limited purpose. You do not have his vision.”Vision. Jung. Hatred roils in the pit of Yo’s stomach for Jung and his empty brain and his fistfights, who holds their mother’s heart and trust without trying at all.For a half-second, Yo understands So. Then he remembers he has So to blame for this, and stamps out the sparks of that understanding.“So will be pleased,” he offers acidly, trying not to hear the hitched, shuddering sob that escapes Min Seo’s lips. “Very pleased to think of how he has elevated Jung still further in your favor.”“So?” His mother looks on him with pity. His use, in her eyes, must have faded long ago. It has been a ruse for so long, Yo is sure. “It wasn’t So who told me.” So’s voice, defeated. Almost soft.
Wook will find them next, if someone does not stop him.
Yo grinds his teeth.She reads his thoughts. “Yes, it was Wook.” His mother’s voice rises, shrill and sudden. “You let me be humiliated by a Hwangbo!”Kiha screams. Yoo has her hands twisted in his hair, pulling hard.Yo and Min Seo both leap forward, but Yo keeps her from touching his mother with one hand. He knows how that will end, if Min Seo lays a hand on her.“Let him go.”Yoo’s eyes flash. He hasn’t seen her like this for a long time.(So has. He keeps thinking about So, when he shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than what is in front of him.)(Maybe that is what is in front of him.)“Let him go,” he pleads. “I beg you. Don’t hurt him.”Min Seo has the good sense to be silent.His mother smiles, a twisted smile. Yo hears the faint snick of a door opening to his right, somewhere in the shadows; it is the backdoor to his mother’s room. Rarely used.“Beg?” Yoo asks softly. “Very well then. Beg.” Her eyes flicker. “Kneel down.”Min Seo says his name. Yo ignores her. He has to.He kneels.“Please.” It is a whisper; it does not sound like his own voice. “Don’t hurt him.” Kiha is crying and crying, as though he will never stop.“Should I hurt you instead?” But at least, she loosens her grip on Kiha’s hair.“Yes.” Anything, to make her let go.“Very well then.” She drops Kiha like a sack. Min Seo moves, lightening fast, and snatches him up in her arms.“Go,” Yo snaps.Min Seo pauses him. He senses that she does not want to leave him. That has always been her weakness. He has always been her weakness.“The doors are locked,” Yoo says calmly. Yo is sure he remembers the quiet sound of one opening, but that part of the room is in shadow and he cannot see if anyone came in. “Stay where you are.”Min Seo freezes.Yoo slaps Yo across the face. He feels the prongs of her rings slice into his cheek.“If you move,” she says, as he sets his jaw again, “I won’t tell you what I put in the tea.”The tea. Min Seo, drinking. Yo’s blood seems to clot in his veins.She strikes him again, harder this time. He holds himself still with effort.His mother steps back, eyes narrowed, as if she is considering. Then with her right hand, she dashes one of her teacups to pieces, keeping hold of the largest shard. “A Hwangbo,” she hisses, and strikes.Only—the blow never falls. Out of the shadows of the room, movement. And then So is there, with his hand around her wrist, inexorable.“Come now, Mother,” he says. The scar on his face is all that Yo can see. “Isn’t one enough?”She screams and fights but Yo knows well how strong So is. So pinches her wrist until she drops the fragment of china.“Let me go, you filth,” Yoo spits. “How dare you—”So drags her backwards, pins her against the wall, and puts his arm against her throat. Yo is still on his knees. He does not feel that he can stand. He does not think his legs will hold him.Yoo chokes.So asks, in a voice that Yo has never heard him use before, “What was in the tea?”Yoo is obstinately silent. So presses harder, until she wheezes and coughs.Finally—“Nothing,” she says, and crumbles, weeping. “There was nothing in the tea.”Yo feels something loosen in his chest.So lets her breath, but he does not let her budge. “You will go into your bedroom,” he orders, in that same voice, “And lock the door behind you.”Yoo is shaking.“Go,” So says. And she goes.When the door has closed behind her, So tips his head back, sinks his hands into his pockets, and sighs. Yo does not want to make of him, of any of it.So turns his head to look at Yo, and asks, “Are you alright?”Yo wonders what his face looks like. Scratched and bleeding; he cannot know if it will scar.So crosses the distance between them, and reaches for Yo’s face. Only in the second before his hand touches Yo’s skin does he pause uncertainly. But then his fingers grip Yo’s jaw, all businesslike confidence again, and he turns Yo’s face gently from side to side, examining.“Not deep,” he says. “They’ll heal clean.”Yo does not know what to say. So reaches out his hand and Yo realizes he is supposed to take it. He does, and So pulls him to his feet.“Come,” So says. “We will take them home.”
iv.
He came here angry.It seemed the sort of plot that Yo could be behind; something cruel and vicious and bearing the imprint of their mother’s ageless intuition.Wook, of course, would be his second guess.He can’t confront Wook with anger, though. He has already shown too much of himself to Wook tonight; to return without planning would be to slice himself open under his own blades.Wook wouldn’t need to raise a finger.That was how he came to Yo’s; only to see Yo racing down the front steps in the pitch-black of after midnight, climbing into a car and heading towards their mother’s.What did it mean?So follows. So knows how to tail someone; So knows how to trap someone, how to beat the truth out of them. But Yo fleeing to their mother’s is not something he expects.Not now.Somewhere in the next hour, So loses hold of his anger.They take the backstairs to the street. So is carrying Kiha, since the stairs are steep and Min Seo and Yo are both unsteady on their feet.Nephew, So thinks, when Kiha presses his face against old leather.They spill out onto the pavement. So’s car is there, as is Yo’s—his driver, waiting.“What a charming scene,” comes a voice from behind them, and Wook strolls into view.It occurs to So, for the first time, that Wook is fully capable of being a fool.Yo lets out an almost inhuman growl and lunges for him. So sets Kiha down as quickly as he can and hauls his older brother back by the collar. His muscles ache from the effort. It has been a long night.“Keep it together.”So, it is not what you think. Shit. He can’t think of Ha Jin and Baek Ah. Not now.Wook smiles thinly. “You only have yourself to blame, Yo.”“Fuck,” Yo hisses in So’s direction. “Let me at him.”“So you can murder him?” So hisses back. To Min Seo, he says, “Take Yo’s car. Go to his place. You have a key?”She nods and scurries away, holding Kiha’s hand.“Wook,” So says, while Yo continues to struggle. “You’ve had your fun.”“No, I haven’t,” Wook snaps, sharp and unexpectedly bitter. “I’ve slaved away my life, trying to keep your fickle parents happy. I’ve endured more than you can imagine.” He controls himself quickly, and the smile returns. “I am not afraid of you. I came to look on my kill.”Certainly a fool. So supposes that that revelation is a relief, even if Wook is also capable of diabolical cleverness. “Yo will kill you if I let him,” So says, through his teeth. “And I will make certain that no one finds the body. Perhaps you should reconsider your courage.”Out of the darkness, three more men join Wook. So does not recognize them, but he recognizes their kind; hired bodyguards. Probably armed. He sighs, and in Yo’s ear, he says,“Will you promise not to do anything stupid if I let you go?”Tightly, Yo nods.So releases him.“An alliance of the Wang brothers.” Wook chuckles. “You have me to thank for this reconciliation. Where is your gratitude?”So angles himself so that his left hip is not visible to Wook, and reaches into his pocket.“You are outside our father’s house,” So says. “If your men shoot, they will draw attention.”“Then leave.” Wook shrugs.For answer, So pins the shoulder of the largest man with a throwing knife.The man yelps and tumbles, hand going to his wound. The other two draw guns.Wook raises a fist. “Hold.”“See?” So says. “Don’t bluff. I’ll always call it.”Wook’s grin shows teeth, this time. “Is that a promise?”“It’s a threat,” So says. He grips Yo’s shoulder and steers him towards his car, which is haphazardly parked at the curb.Wook’s laugh rings out behind them.
v.
Mu’s phone is ringing. He rubs his bleary eyes, rolling over in bed. Who would be calling him, at this late hour?He doesn’t recognize the number.When he answers, he does recognize the voice.“Appa?”“Mu.” Taejo’s voice is faint, almost gone. “Will. Find the will.”“What will? Your will? Abeoji—” more formal, now that the first shock is over—“Abeoji, are you worse? Is the doctor there?”No answer. Mu calls his name again. Nothing.He scrambles out from beneath the coverlets, reaching for his shoes. He calls the number again, calls the hospital, does everything he can.His father, when he arrives, is already dead.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

the statues might have been enough,

the drowned boy blurred as much by memory

as by water, molded toward an essential,

remote ideal. Longing, of course,

become its own object, the way

that desire can make anything into a god.
- Mark Doty
i.
The news breaks like shattered glass. Wang Taejo is dead, supposed heir Wang Yo has a grasping, money-hungry lover and a secret child. Wang Mu has retired from his post in a cloud of mystery. Wang Taejo’s will is read, with a special addendum, before the Board: he desired Wang Jung to be his successor.His widow reads the will.His widow presents their youngest son—her youngest son—as a new way forward.Ha Jin sees it all on television.She sees, too, the blank pallor of Jung’s face when he sneaks back to Baek Ah’s house at night, and her heart breaks for him as it has broken time and again, in the days since So left and did not return.They do not know where So is.“Jung,” she says, and she opens her arms to him. She hopes that is not unkind. He looks at her with such admiration, in this world, as though he still sees something that is not there.Jung has not yet remembered.He says, against her shoulder, “I didn’t want this.”“Then—” Ha Jin struggles to find the words. She feels like Yoo is watching her, like Wook is watching her. She is the enemy, and at least one of them knows that.If Yoo remembers, they both will.“Do you have to continue?” she asks. “Shouldn’t…isn’t there anyone else?”He steps back, his face a little hardened. “My father gave it to me,” he says, and Ha Jin sees that her heart will not be readily put together again. “That means it must be mine.”When Jung has gone away again, in dark formal suits with the striped grief-band around his arm, Baek Ah sits on the sofa beside Ha Jin and offers her a drink.“Eotteohgehae?” she asks wearily, covering her face with her hands. “We’ve lost him.”“Jung doesn’t know his own heart,” Baek Ah says, carefully. Now that he knows all, Ha Jin sometimes realizes that he knows too much. “He has always struggled with it.”“His mother will ruin him.” But even as she speaks, she knows it unfair to him. Knows it is unfair to Jung’s wide-open spirit, to his kindness. “We have to save him.”Baek Ah nods. “We have to put an end to this. How many more lifetimes will you be forced to come and meddle?” The question is affectionate; he covers her hand with his. “When next we met, we’ll be cyborgs, won’t we?”“A space empire,” Ha Jin agrees bitterly. “Over and over again.” She slams her hand on the table, suddenly angry. “Ji Mong said he would come today. He’s been dodging us.”“He was always a shifty fellow,” Baek Ah observes. “I’m not surprised that that has not changed.”Ji Mong arrives at last. His face is a little puffy; Ha Jin realizes that he is one of the two people on earth who will miss Wang Taejo with all their hearts.“So you’ve caused more trouble,” he says testily, sinking into one of Baek Ah’s comfortable chairs.“Leave her alone,” Baek Ah says. “You toyed around with the future when you lived in Goryeo; I remember the airship.”Ji Mong falls moodily silent.“Why did Baek Ah remember?” Ha Jin asks, linking her fingers. She does not want to speak of Wook. “Why did he remember, and others did not?”“You mean So?”She feels the knife of that name on every inch of her skin. “Yes,” she whispers. “Why doesn’t he?”Ji Mong casts off his mantle of irritation and leans forward, suddenly sincere. “I have studied,” he says. “Not everyone is like us, Hae—Ha Jin. Not everyone walks through time with their eyes open.”“But some do?” Baek Ah asks. His painter’s fingers are clenched tightly around his knees.“Some do, and some float near the surface,” Ji Mong says. “Reincarnation. Soul-transfer. Cyclical destinies. Call it what you will. I do not know—” He bites his lips. “Her past changed our future,” he says at last. “The man I was in Korea, before she fell…I knew nothing of the Wangs and Hwangbos.”There is a little silence.“And?” Baek Ah shakes his head. “You mean—we exist now, again, because of Hae—Ha Jin?”“History fulfilled itself.”  Ji Mong sighs. “But…because of who you were, because of how you walked through time and turned Hae Soo to Ha Jin, you changed the man.”“So?”“Gwangjong.” Ji Mong’s round eyes seem darker than ever, maybe with sadness. “He has been gone for hundreds of years, but he did not forget you.”“I don’t understand,” Ha Jin says, but she thinks she might. She might know what it is, to wrench oneself through the centuries, all for the sight of love.“He walked through time,” Ji Mong says. “Whether he knew it or not. He walked through time to find you.”Her cheeks are hot with tears. For her, So lives, and suffers—twice over, and many times over what any man should bear. “But why doesn’t he—why doesn’t he know me?”Baek Ah reaches for her hand and holds it tightly.“Some people never remember their past selves because they are in too much pain,” Ji Mong tells her. It is exactly the answer she was afraid of. “So is barely surviving as it is. He has not had an easy life here—it is a close parallel to the one he lived there, perhaps worse.” He chews his lip. “I do not know what, if not the sight of you, will connect him to his past soul.”“You mean…” Ha Jin feels her hope doused like a flame under water. Under rain. “You mean he might never—”Ji Mong nods.
ii.
His first meeting with the board will be tomorrow. They will vote on his position as interim president and chief of the company, and his mother will be watching.A year’s term, she told him. I gave them a year. You will prove your worth in that time, Jung-ah.She brings Gwangjong, her subsidiary company, to the table—something to sweeten the deal. Yo has filled its coffers for years, but the prizes land with Jung.He rests his forehead on the heel of his hand. She told him he should spend the evening in his father’s old, palatial office, considering what it means to lead.If only he could go back to street-fighting, and Eun, and Baek Ah, and the mysterious Ha Jin. All of that was still his a week ago. It is all he truly longs for.A light tap comes at the door and Jung lifts his head.“It is late,” Wook says quietly. “You look tired, President Wang.”Jung swallows. He doesn’t fit the title, not at all, but he cannot hear any mockery in Wook’s tone. “I am,” he says. “But I—I thought it was best to reflect.”He cannot say that the idea was only his mother’s.Wook smiles, close-lipped, and steps inside. He stares down at the carpet as though he is mapping a territory.“Your loss is a hard one,” he says. “I’ve—felt it myself. With my father, and again, to some degree, with yours.”Jung was not close to his father. He knows he should mourn him, but he does not really know what that would feel like.“Thank you,” he says, formally.Wook shakes his head. “Let us be friends,” he says.Jung thinks of Mu, and the fateful meeting, and Wook’s cold-fingered plans. He does not think that Mu’s downfall, Yo’s downfall, are accidents.It is elimination, and Jung is the only one left.Still, Wook’s eyes are kind. Yo’s have never been, and Mu never wanted the company, and rumors are only rumors.Jung does not know who to trust.Wook bows deeply, seeming to sense Jung’s conflict. “I will help you,” he promises. “In any way I can.”
iii.
A week.He’s been at Yo’s apartment for a week.This—even more than their father’s death—is a turn of events So could not have foreseen. The funeral arrangements have been postponed due to Yoo’s “fragile state,” and neither So nor Yo have been able to discover much detail about them.He has not felt inclined to speak to Mu, particularly. He has certainly not wished to speak to Baek Ah, or to Ha Jin.There are six missed calls from Baek Ah on his phone.In the morning, on the seventh day, So rises before dawn. He never sleeps well; he certainly is not going to sleep well in one of Yo’s luxurious feather beds. He always expects to wake to an ultimatum, to the realization that this newfound alliance is a trick.
I would never betray you. I would die first. While I breathe, know that. You have to know that, So.
He misses Baek Ah. It is like all the years in Seoul rolled into one bullet-wound.He dresses quickly and drinks coffee as black as his clothes.Yo wakes up after nine. Yo’s life has gone, quite ultimately, to shit, but he apparently has no plans of losing his beauty sleep.They eat breakfast as they have for seven mornings—in silence, at first, and then gradually in conversation.“Have you heard from Mu?”“No.” So pours more coffee.“Have you tried to speak to Mu?”“Have you?”Sniping. He shouldn’t start it; Yo will most certainly finish it. But Yo is more patient than expected.“Mu and I have no relationship,” Yo says. “You do. If anyone knows anything about the details of Taejo’s death and funeral, it will be Mu.”“It must be a conflict between him and Mother,” So points out. “I haven’t…” He stops, chews his lip. “I’ll text him, today.”“He’ll be pissed if he knows it came from me,” Yo points out. “But at this point, why shouldn’t we all be miserable together? Aish.” He passes a hand over his brow.“Eoh.” So picks at his food. He wants, very badly, for Yo’s friendliness not to be an act, which probably means that it is. “Have you made arrangements? For your son?”“They’re in Seoul,” Yo says, arching an eyebrow to acknowledge the irony. “Harder to find, there, for the present.”“Wook got what he wanted out of them,” So reasons. “He won’t threaten them again. He likes to keep his hands clean.”“Does he?” Yo asks sharply. “Don’t be naïve.”So glares at him, and Yo smirks.“Fair enough. But as it turns out, you aren’t a strategist. Lucky for you.”So thinks of his plan—his and Mu’s—and says nothing. Yo will not take kindly to him proposing a takeover of the company, of that, he is certain.“Always quiet,” Yo muses, his eyes flickering. He finishes his coffee and does not take another cup. “You were a quiet kid. Now what’s on your mind?”“Are you going to let him ruin you?” So asks. Him, of course, meaning Wook. “You haven’t done anything.”Yo’s face darkens. “You’re the one who stopped me from throttling him.”“It would have been a bad idea.”“Would it?”“Trust me.”Yo smiles, at that, as if to say, unlikely. So thinks, with an awful, stabbing twinge, of Ha Jin, and all her talk of trust. It was a bad phrase to use. Yo says, “You’re saying you couldn’t have taken on all his thugs?”“Not without getting you killed.”Yo stares down at the table. His voice drops lower still. “That’s what I don’t understand.” He looks at So again; masked yet curious. “Why and when was I your concern, brother?”So stares back mutely. He has never been good at this, finding words.For a long moment, Yo says nothing either. Then, just as So expects a quip about his doglike loyalties, his affinity for crawling back for yet another beating, Yo’s jaw twitches. He stands up, and half-turns. In profile, So can see the echo of their mother’s features.None of the Wang Yoo sons take after their father.“I am indebted to you,” Yo says. “For now.”
iv.
“I hope you saw this, sister.”Wook’s voice slides over her, too smooth and familiar. There is a newspaper under his arm.“Saw what?” Yeon Hwa attempts a casual study of her flawless lavender nails. “Taejo’s funeral announcement? There hasn’t yet been one.”“The news.” He sighs heavily. “About Yo.”Yeon Hwa shrugs. She knows he does not believe her nonchalance, but she will not abandon it. “I did.”Wook comes close, close to where she is sitting on the window seat, a magazine flapped open beside her. He spreads the newspaper over it so she can see the headlines. “It must be hard for you,” he says, but he is not even trying to keep the smile off his lips. “To find that your lover left his heart elsewhere.”“Lover?” Yeon Hwa sniffs, and wills her voice not to shake. “Who even calls people lovers, anymore?”She thought she could save him.Her chest feels empty, punched out.Wook crosses his arms and strokes his chin. “Whose name did he say, I wonder, when he was—”Yeon Hwa stands up and slaps him. It is almost all one movement.“I know,” she says. “I know that you were cheating on Myung Hee when she was dying. Don’t speak out of that mouth to me.”For once, Wook has nothing to say.It is not as satisfying as Yeon Hwa wants it to be.She takes a car to Yo’s building. Once there, she travels the same distance of city and sky to reach the penthouse, but the doorman does not let her in.“He’s not seeing anyone today.”“Please,” she says. She wishes she could say, he’ll see me, but she does not think she has a right to.What would she tell him? That she loves him? That it is love, and she does not begrudge him a past, a child. That she would go anywhere with him, given the chance.That she thinks it must be her brother, who betrayed him.Yeon Hwa leaves.
vi.
Here is a memory: Mu is five, and he is an only child.(An only son.)His mother is still alive, although she is dying.(Mu does not know that, yet.)They are somewhere outside the city. Somewhere where they can see the flat-topped mountains and the endless, weeping green of forests. They are in a meadow. There is a picnic basket. There are sweet bottled drinks.Mu’s mother is dying, but she laughs. And his father laughs too. There is no gray in his hair and he has no beard.He tosses Mu into the air and catches him.Then he groans.“You are getting too heavy for appa,” he says. Mu frowns.“Once more!”And then his father laughs again, bright like the sun and swift like the wind, and he tosses Mu up into the endless green air.Mu collects himself. Thirty years have passed, since then. His mother died, and his father remarried. The new wife bore brothers—four in all, three who lived. None of them are anything like Mu.He loves them all, and barely trusts one.His stepmother has been characteristically difficult around planning the funeral. She has stretched out the amount of time that Taejo lies within their house for a full seven days, but she has scarcely allowed any of the family to come near. Mu has seen him, though. He has asked for very little from Yoo, but he demanded that.He has not heard from Yo or So. So has vanished, and Yo is doubtless holed up in light of the scandal that is streaked across the tabloids.It is the sort of thing, to Mu’s mind, that ought to be no scandal at all.Just as not wanting to rule a company should not lead to its downfall.He sighs, and dials So’s number.Once more, appa.He has a last message to convey.
vi.
This is a new world.Below him, the streets of Daegu run the same crawling lines they always have. Up here, on the seventieth floor, he always felt like nothing could touch him.The scratches on his face have scabbed over. Yo runs a fingertip tentatively across them, checks his phone for any updates from Min Seo.She promised him she would keep quiet, hidden in Seoul.He wishes she did not have to.It is all a tangle—his son, his mother, Wook’s ghastly, grinning face. Jung taking over the company, fueled by the Gwangjong money.Yo cannot quite bring himself to think of the harder parts, not for very long, though they keep him awake at night.And of course, his father is dead.He wonders how So feels about that. He is wondering, for the first time, how So feels about many things.That, too, he must not examine too deeply. He must not question twenty-odd years of loathing. It asks too much.This last week—these last months—have all asked too much of Yo.He drops his chin towards his chest and shuts his eyes. Somewhere, So’s voice drifts to him; he must be on the phone.
When will you send him away?
The internal question is chased down by another.Why would you send him away?Yeon Hwa came by, earlier today. Yo heard her talking to the doorman. He was close enough to the door that he could have opened it himself, before she left.But what would he say to Yeon Hwa?Maybe that is why he has been strangely neutral about So’s presence. So is uncharted territory, as an ally. There is equal reason to trust and distrust him, and he seems to ask for neither.(So does not ask too much.)Nothing in Yo’s life has ever been true. The realization of this rises through the air, above the streets. High enough that it can look him in the eye.He blinks; his eyes are dry.There is so much about him that is heartless, and he would believe that so much meant all, but he must acknowledge the marks on his cheek.“Yo.”His younger brother—brother, it is strange to think of So that way—is in the doorway, his phone in his hand. Yo has discovered, over the course of a week spent mostly drinking and sometimes talking, that So is skittish, and quiet, and watches him out of the same sad eyes that he has had always. So also wears black day in and day out, without variation, and the scar on his cheek is hardly his most impressive—even if it is his most memorable.Two days ago, Yo reached out and tapped one of his knuckles. “Do you get one every time you kill a man?”He meant the tattoos.So stared at him, unblinking.“Yes.”“Really?” Yo lifted an eyebrow.“No.”They held each other’s gazes; if they were other people, Yo supposed they might have laughed.Now, So bites his lip and looks uncertain.“What is it?”“That was Mu.” So taps his phone.“What did he say?”“I will not lie to you,” So says. Quiet, not calm. There is a difference. “And I won’t hide…this from you. Before he died, Father left a will. He told Mu to find it. It may be that it—overrules the one that Mother read to the board. His wishes may be different.”“Of course Mu has no idea where it is.” How like Mu, Yo thinks, to be ignorant.“Father told him as he died.” So shrugs. “Mu told me, because…it may help us. Him. Me.”Yo takes this in—both the possibility of it, and the fact that So told him. “I am your enemy,” he says, at last. “Why include me?”“You’re my brother,” So says. His shoulders slump. He looks tired, Yo realizes. So always looks tired. “And I don’t want power. I’ll only take it if I should.”Yo wants power. Yo was born and bred for power.But this is a new world.“Kol,” he says. “We’ll find it. Tell Mu I’m in.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

After experience taught me that all the ordinary

Surroundings of social life are futile and vain;

I’m going to show you something very

Ugly: someday, it might save your life.
- W.D. Snodgrass
i.
“Sir.”Wook lifts his gaze.“Contact 8 has arrived.”He crafted the numbering system himself; there are no names here.“Send her in.”The nurse is out of uniform, but Wook recognizes her from their prior encounters. She is shy, eyes cast down.“If this is about Taejo,” Wook says, “You’ve taken your time.”“The wife made it difficult, sir.”“How?” He decides it doesn’t matter. Yoo is not his focus—not for the moment. “Well, what is the news?”“A will.”Wook’s blood runs cold. At least, it runs colder. “A will?”“He was babbling. He had just made a phone-call.” She lifts her head, blinks. “I was with him when he died.”The phone-call was to Mu, most likely. Was there anyone else whom Taejo truly loved? “I need his exact words.”The woman purses her lips.“In the house, he said. It’s in the house.”Taejo’s will, the one that Yoo read before the board (before the world), was kept in a deposit box under both their names. She did not conceal this fact. As for the will, Wook has no doubt that it said whatever Yoo wanted it to say.He also has no doubt that Taejo would not have spent his last breath telling Mu of that will.“Did he say what was in it?”Disposition of his shares, his assets, his foreign holdings. A directive to the company that they would feel pressured to accept, just as they accepted Jung’s interim appointment.In short, a new will could reshuffle the empire.“He did not say, sir. He only--he kept repeating a name.”Wook knows that the name is not his, which is all that matters.Still—“Whose name?”“So. He called for So.”If you let a wolf become a dog, the dog will find gratitude, but it will not lose its teeth.If you let a dog become a man…Goryeo burns in the back of Wook’s mind, in the back of time.
Burning.
There’s something there. An idea of an idea.
ii.
Eun throws himself across the sofa.“Ya.” Baek Ah frowns at him. It is hard, he finds, to be ordinary with Eun. In this world, his memories of Eun are of a sticky-cheeked, sticky-fingered little brother, growing taller but never quite growing up. A closer bond than the close one they had in Goryeo.In Goryeo, his memories of Eun are all blood and dust and So, laughing.Baek Ah shudders. Ordinary. He has to be ordinary.“It is sturdy,” Eun protests, patting a cushion. “When have you worried about furniture?”“Always.” Baek Ah forgets his worries for a moment, piqued. “And you have always—”“I am worried about Jung,” Eun interrupts. His face is all turned down—mouth and eyes drooping in abject gloom. “His witch-mother has him in her clutches. And you know he never wanted this. He just wants to be a boxer. A fighter.”Baek Ah chews his lip. He is worried, too, for Jung—has been round and round that ring with Ha Jin for more than a week, now.“We cannot…” He pauses. Well, maybe they can. “We should talk to him.”(Jung, shaking in Baek Ah’s arms when even Soo’s ashes had been taken away—oh, has Jung ever been a fighter, after all?).“Do you think so, hyung? Do you think it would help?” Eun brightens instantly.“Tell him to eat with us today.” Baek Ah flexes his fingers. It has been too long since he painted. Too long since he expressed what words cannot.Jung comes late. He shoulders off his jacket, armband and all, and flings it on the same sofa Eun imperiled that morning.“Damn,” he says, his brow clouded and heavy. “I am ten years older.”Eun, who had much to say to Baek Ah, has nothing to say now. He sits with his mouth o-ing open, and then he shuts his mouth and leaves Baek Ah to manage everything.As usual.“Is there anything we can do?” Baek Ah asks. He doesn’t want to be the same bystander he was then. The one who let Jung suffer, who couldn’t save So from his own eternal tortures.The one who couldn’t save Eun at all.Jung exhales. “Ha Jin tells me that I don’t have to do this.”“Do you?”“Yes.” He cracks his knuckles. “At least, there doesn’t seem to be a way around it. She doesn’t trust any of my brothers.” He says the last part almost to himself, but Baek Ah knows exactly whom he means.“Do you trust them?” Eun speaks up at last.“Mwo?” Jung leans forward, hands clamped on his knees. “No, of course not. Mu barely knows me—Yo hates me, I think—”Baek Ah asks, with as light a touch and tone as he can—“What about So?”Jung’s jaw tightens. “She hates him,” he answers. “I don’t know what to think.”There is an uncomfortable pause. A twist of pain crosses Jung’s face, and he stands up. “I can’t do this,” he says. “I can’t do this, to both of you.”“Jung—” Eun cries out, but Baek Ah stops him.“We will not count this as leaving,” Baek Ah says, for Eun’s sake. (For Jung’s all the more.)Jung snatches up his jacket and almost races for the door.
iii.
Jung is on television. He delivers a few remarks stiffly, promising further interviews when the mourning period is over.“When will that be?” demands a reporter, and Jung’s eyes flick to his mother, who stands behind him on the stage.“Geumbang,” he says. “I mean, when it is appropriate.”“What a fool,” Yo says, and switches off the television.So says nothing.Yo prowls about the spacious room like a panther. His hair tumbles over his forehead and his hands are tucked in the pockets of his silk dressing-gown. He could have rolled out of bed or stepped off the pages of magazine; it is all the same, for him.“I hate him,” Yo says fiercely, turning glittering eyes on So. “What. Don’t you?”
Hate?
It is too complicated a word for Jung, and too simple a word for what So feels. He scrapes a hand over his jaw. He needs to shave.“Well?” Yo asks again. “I want to know. I want to know who you hate. Is it really no one, as Mother thinks?”“You,” So offers stolidly. “I hate you.”Yo laughs. “I already know that.”So bites his lip, wishing he hadn’t said it.“Have a drink,” Yo says, sloshing scotch into two glasses. There are only three, by the decanter. So is surprised by the uneven number. “Drink to your hate.”It’s only eleven in the morning, but no Wang has ever had a healthy relationship with alcohol.Except Jung, So supposes. Jung has probably never even been drunk.So drains the glass.“We need a way into that house,” Yo muses. “Any ideas?”“None.” So sighs. “As long as she doesn’t know about the will—and as long as Wook doesn’t, we have time.” He wishes the whole thing could be settled with blows.And maybe it will come to that.“What about that secretary of yours?” Yo asks it casually, half an eyebrow tilted, but the hair on the back of So’s neck stands on end.“Who?”“Don’t be shy. Go Ha Jin? Isn’t that her name? Mother took an especial interest in her. I don’t remember when, exactly, but she did.”“Mother…knows?”“So there is something between you two.” Yo grins, like he’s found out something terrible. Maybe he has. So’s adrenaline is spiking. “Mother dispatched a few secretaries to keep an eye on her. She seems to be staying with Baek Ah. As were you.” He pauses. “Should we expect another sex scandal on the front page?”“There wasn’t—”“Any sex? A pity. You’re so tightly wound.” Yo stretches, lazy and feline, daring him to retort.Or punch him.So stares at his hands. “I’m not sending her.” He meets Yo’s searching gaze and adds, “I don’t trust her.”“Ah.”So does not want to think of her soft eyes and softer smiles. The way her hands always seem to reach for him. He does not want to think of how much he longs to trust her, whether it is wise or not.Why did she have to lie to him?Why did she want to?It can bode no good.“And Baek Ah?” Yo’s tone is a touch more reserved, now. Almost—respectful? But no. That cannot be.So shrugs. “I do not trust him either.”Yo scoffs. “Baek Ah? You think Baek Ah’s a rat? He hasn’t the spine.”“Ya,” So warns. “Watch your mouth.”“Loyal as ever.” Yo is unbothered. “I doubt Baek Ah and your doe-eyed secretary are the ones looking to lodge their knives in your back. But don’t listen to me. I’m a fool as much as anyone.”“Never trust anyone,” So says. “We are proof of that.”“Are we?” The eyebrow again. “Aigo, it’s all water to the sea, I suppose. No way to sort it out again.” He stands and stalks away again, the tails of his gown floating out behind him. “Trust and distrust are just footholds,” he says. Over his shoulder, he adds, “Mother taught me that.”
iv.
Wang Yo’s position at the company seems to be in flux, now that his mother has publicly disowned him.Woo Hee does not traffic in pity for the Wangs or the Hwangbos, but she does wonder how the tremor will affect her.Chae Ryung communicates the relevant facts one morning, soon after, chattering from behind those ever-present red lips.“We report differently, now,” she says, and drops her voice to a squeaky whisper. “Eighth floor.”“Eighth floor?” Woo Hee turns this over in her mind. Eighth floor—whose office is on the—Right.Hwangbo Wook’s.“Shhh!” Chae Ryung cautions, lifting a finger to her lips. “Say nothing.”And who does Woo Hee have to confide in, anyway?Of course, that question can no longer be flung out rhetorically; she has, in some sense, Baek Ah.On her walk home that night, she decides that she has to leave the company, or leave him. The confluence of purposes will not lead to any good. Wang Yo frightened her from afar; Hwangbo Wook frightens her up close. And none of them know or care, particularly, about her. She, like Chae Ryung, is only a tool in their hands. Useful for information, nothing else.And as for Ha Jin…Woo Hee feels drawn to Ha Jin, though she can’t explain it. She has scarcely exchanged a dozen sentences with the girl. And yet—a version of the same longing she feels around Baek Ah is present whenever she passes the office where Ha Jin sits, bent over her desk with her lower lip tucked between her teeth in concentration.Used to sit. She hasn’t seen Ha Jin for more than a week.You’re lonely, that’s all. Desperate for some real friends.She didn’t come here for friends; she came for revenge. Wang Taejo ran her father out of business, and into the depressed poverty that led him to take his own life. In the months and years before that, he was drunk and brooding, or drunk and angry.Woo Hee remembers well.So what does it all mean, now that she is in Daegu, close to the beating heart of the company she hates?What does it mean, now that Wang Taejo is dead?It means there is nothing left to destroy.(Baek Ah might call that mercy.)Woo Hee braces against the chilly breeze and rubs her knuckles against her sternum. She feels a little short of breath. She feels like something is hanging overhead.She comes to the door of her apartment—Chae Ryung is spending the night with Kim Won, and will not be home—and realizes that someone is waiting for her.“Woo Hee.”He looks like a scoundrel. Black jeans, tattered at the knees. Scuffed boots and a leather jacket. A scar that winds across his strangely delicate cheekbone.
Wang So.
The enemy, for her. For Woo Hee, the girl who came out of the countryside to have her twisted justice.The scars on her forearms sting.“I don’t know you,” she says, distant. “I don’t—”“Tell me who you are working for,” he asks. Is that—a hint of desperation, in his tone? He could hurt her, she is sure. He still may.“I work as an assistant.”“I know you work for my family. I want to know who.”Eighth floor. She thinks of Wang Wook’s soft-lipped smirks. She thinks of the day he took her vengeance from her, and pushed Wang Taejo into a depressed poverty of health, if not of riches.“I’m quitting.” The words are flat, and a relief.This seems to surprise him, though the reaction flickers across his features for less than a second. “What did Baek Ah pay you to tell him?” He is still blocking her way to the door.It is only after, when she recalls how quickly indignation, above all else, flooded over her—yes, it is only after that she sees how far gone she is.“How dare you!” Woo Hee snaps. “Do you suspect Baek Ah of being as dirty as the rest of you? He is—”He is musician in sun-dappled woods. He is holding her in his arms, begging her not to hurt herself any more. He is a painter and a poet and a prince. He is not fast enough, when she jumps.Woo Hee cannot see Wang So through her tears. She turns and runs.
v.
“Where have you been?”“I was not at work,” Ha Jin says wearily. She mailed in her resignation the day after Wook remembered. She is not such a fool that she would readily put herself in his path again.At least, not yet.“You should stay here during the day.” Baek Ah’s brow is creased with worry. “It isn’t safe out there. We never know when—”“When Yoo might remember? Or Won? Or Yo?” Her voice rises, and she doesn’t mean it to. She knows Eun is upstairs in his room, and cannot hear her—but Baek Ah does not deserve this, does not deserve her grief.“Exactly.” He rakes his hands through his smooth hair. “Soo—Ha Jin, I can’t lose you here. We have to be careful. We have to be—”“What we have to do,” she says firmly, turning away so that he cannot see the tears standing out in her eyes, “Is save So. That is all that matters.”She hears him sigh. They drank together in Goryeo, after Myung Hee’s funeral, and she loved him then and she loves him now.“So matters to me, too,” Baek Ah says. “He told me once…he told me that you and I were all he had the world.”The sob overtakes her. It has been swelling for a long time. Baek Ah catches her by the shoulders and turns her against him.Ha Jin cries for a long time.“What is it? Do you fear that he will not come back?”That, and so much else. That, and everything she knows. “Our daughter,” Ha Jin gasps out at last. “I am thinking of our daughter.”Baek Ah falls silent. They have not spoken of this, yet. Somehow, they have avoided it in the days since finding each other fully.She barely dares to ask her question, though she must. “Did you know her, there?”“Yes.” Baek Ah’s voice is hardly above a whisper. He sounds like he, too, is on the verge of tears. “I did know her. And—Ha Jin, so did he.”Hope. It is a sun-touched blossom of a thing.“He did?”“He did.”“He knew that she—”“Was his? Yes. Jung used to bring her to the palace, sometimes. She was happy, Ha Jin. Happy like you never were.”Like he never was, or is. Her tears, as they fall, fall gratefully.“Thank you,” she breathes. It is one less weight, in a weighty future.From above, footsteps. Eun is on the stairs. Ha Jin swipes at her eyes, pushes Baek Ah away, and pats his chest.“Thank you,” she whispers again, and they ready themselves for whatever Eun is going to barge in about.But Eun heads for the front door.“I’m coming,” he practically bellows, and they both hear it now, too—knocking.They run. (Eun does not know, and so he is not safe.)When the door opens, though, it is not Wook (as she fears) or So (as she hopes). It is Woo Hee, with wild eyes and red cheeks.“Baek Ah,” she calls out. “Baek Ah. I need to speak with you.”
vi.
She has chosen a different room for herself. This one faces west, and is drenched red by sunset, though its carpets are the color of cream.To be Yoo is to expect everything and nothing. She drinks tea, her hair like slick sealskin on her shoulders.She drinks tea and twists the ring on her left hand.Taejo was buried today. It was a private funeral.Only she and Mu were there—his last show of defiance for some time, she imagines. He has a narrow scope of rebellion. He has his father’s weak heart.Mu, for a mayfly life, has lived long. Too long.Yoo scrapes her fingernails against the nape of her neck. There is tension there. She should rest.But she expects something tonight, in the blood-light. She expects much.A maid’s slippers shuffle in the hall. Then, the turn of the doorknob.“Excuse me, madam. Someone is here to see you. He will not give his name.”With one hand, Yoo shifts her drying hair over the shoulder of her lamb-white robe. “Tell him to come in.”She does not turn. The door closes again. She says, “Good evening, Hwangbo Wook.”He clears his throat. Caught off-guard. She can do that; can slip the razor-edge beneath that snake-like skin of his. He is not so clever, for all that he is steadier than her own sons.“Good evening. My condolences.”“Keep them.” She turns, now, and drags her gaze from his polished shoes to his polished features. His eyes are different. Knowing. “You have changed, Wook. What changed you?”He smiles. It is his weapon. “Grief,” he says. “Surely you can understand that.”“Suppose that I can.” She stands. Her robe falls open; she is wearing her nightgown beneath. It might seem like vulnerability to some; to anyone who knows her, it is just another display of power. She simply does not distress herself about the arrival of a Hwangbo—or anyone. “What have you come here to say?”“Did you know,” Wook asks, studying his fingernails, “That your husband left another will?”She did not. She does let him see that. “How interesting. Its terms?”“Unseating Jung.” If he is lying—and she always suspects that some sliver of him is lying—he does it well. “Replacing him, with So.”Her cheek bleeds where her teeth have pierced it. He does not see that, either. There are scars that are visible, scars she has made, and there are ones that are not. A week ago, she howled in her own rooms, but not because her husband was dead. “Why are you telling me this?”“Because I would rather Jung lead the company.” He adds, very sweetly, “For a time.”Honesty at last. She will not respect it, from him, but she will acknowledge it. “You want to destroy this will, then?”“I want to destroy your son.”The blood-light leaks over his skin, over her skin. Yoo breathes, deep and satisfied. “Do you have a plan?”“Install Jung,” he says. “Do it publicly. Do it here.”“Is the will in this house?”The twitch in his jaw answers her.“What if we do not find it first?”“That won’t matter. You need an event to draw So, and Yo. Something they would see as cover. Once there, leave it to me.”“No, no,” Yoo says, and laughs. “This is my house.” She pierces him with a gaze. “Continue with your fantasy of revenge, Hwangbo. It entices me.”Wook half-turns, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “Then you will help me with all of it?”“Tell me what it is.” She is growing impatient.“Rent out an apartment in So’s name. My men will fill it with the necessary…incriminations. If you can lure him here, and give me the access I need, I will finish him.”“How?”“He was arrested for arson at sixteen, and let go.” Wook holds out his phone—a mugshot that she’s seen before. So, with blood and soot streaked over his face, singed hair in his eyes.“I know the story.” The story being, that some of the other boys at the Kang school locked him in the schoolyard with a rabid city dog, and he nearly set the place ablaze fending the creature off. Soo-kyung—a man whom Yoo despises—let him off the charge. “What is the point of it?”“So is bitterly jealous,” Wook says. There is that smile again. “He cannot bear that you chose Jung over him. He came to the gala in Jung’s honor—indeed, you could also honor Taejo with it, I care not—and tried to burn the house down around you all.”Carefully. Carefully, now. “Does he succeed?”Wook blanches. “Of course not.”There it is, the cowardice. She swallows the sweetness of it and smiles back. “Of course not.”“Jung will discover and subdue him,” Wook adds. She can read it rolling off him, the hunger of him, as he tries to sneak in for the kill. “Unless—unless—you do not think it safe for him…”Yoo tips her head back. Her hair is heavy. She shuts her eyes and opens them again. “Had not you better be the one to do it?”(Ah, he is so hungry.)(She will give him what he wants.)“If you think so. It is whatever you wish. It is…it is your house.”“Very well.” Yoo reaches for her hairbrush. “Good night, Wook.”When he has disappeared, silent-footed, she crosses the glow of the room and checks the tiny alcove in the bookcase on the far wall.In another kind of blood-light, the camera’s red eye winks back.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Where blood-begotten spirits come

And all complexities of fury leave,

Dying into a dance,

An agony of trance,

An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
- William Butler Yeats
i.
The invitations arrive. With them, a sense of dread.“This can’t have been Jung’s idea,” Baek Ah pronounces, shaking his head.“A masked ball?” Eun is always livened by the prospect of a party. “Hyung...”“Yes, we’re going,” Baek Ah says, more snappishly than usual. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Eun recedes.“I don’t like it,” Woo Hee says, when Eun is out of earshot. She looks to Ha Jin, and Ha Jin clearly agrees. “It reminds me too much of...”None of them say, Goryeo.None of them have to.Baek Ah’s arm settles around her shoulder. It’s a comfort and joy, almost searing in its intensity, to have him so near. She doesn’t know if she will ever get used to it.“That’s why we have to go,” Ha Jin insists. “If something happens, we should be there.”Something, for Ha Jin, always has means Wang So.And given what they know, she isn’t far off the mark. The occasion of Wang Jung’s coronation—or this world’s equivalent—is sure to stir tension.“Wook will be watching for you, I feel sure,” Baek Ah says. “If this isn’t Yoo’s way of setting a trap, it’s his.”Woo Hee’s sigh escapes before she can stop it.Baek Ah’s soft eyes are worried. “What is it?”“I want to get away,” Woo Hee murmurs. “Take you with me. Never see any of this again.” There is a little pause. She knows half of his heart wants that too, but there has always been so much of Baek Ah’s heart.With as much bravery as she can, she reaches out and takes Ha Jin’s hand. This is why she missed Ha Jin, at the cold corporate headquarters; they were friends.They are meant to be friends.“I won’t leave until we’ve saved So,” she promises. Ha Jin smiles back, tears glinting in her eyes.Baek Ah looks at them warmly, but then he is worried again. “He’ll see you, Soo—Ha Jin.”She grins, a little fierce. “Not with a mask, he won’t.”
ii.
So reaches out, tracing the contours of black and silver. “Where did you get these?”“Balmain.”Everything that Yo has is slipping away, or in danger of it, but he can still make a call and produce results. The results, in this case, take the form of two exquisite masks and two bespoke suits.He watches So out of the corner of his eye. When this is over, it is hard to imagine that they will continue what is now nearly a month of…Good will?So reaches for the plainer of the two and holds it in his hands, examining it. It will cover his scar completely.“Do you ever wonder why?” Yo asks, despite himself, and So’s fingers fly to his cheek, understanding the question at once.“I…”Yo turns away. He is embarrassed; it is almost a new sensation. “Never mind.”“No,” So says, a furrow in his brow. “I—I think she knew I would do anything for her.”It is not the answer Yo was expecting. “You were a child.”So stares at him blankly.“You were a child. You weren’t doing anything for her. You were just—in her way.”“She was angry.” So’s voice is low, lifeless. “She needed to show Father why she was angry.”“So much,” Yo says, his skin crawling, “For a mother’s love.”“I know she doesn’t love me.” So’s voice is strained; a muscle in his jaw jumps and skitters like a beating wing. After all this time, he is still so bird-boned, just as he was at five, at ten. The raw strength that Yo has become recently acquainted with is well-concealed under his dark clothing. There are too many things about So he cannot hope to comprehend. So says, half to himself, “A mother only wants a son who will make her shine.”“But you love her?” Yo asks, at last.So’s lips pinch together. He is silent.  Yo assumes the answer is yes. He feels disgust, and rage, all in a rush that years of smirking, scheming subservience have tamped down. “So—”“Leave it,” So snaps, eyes blazing.Yo leaves it.Half an hour later, they have regained their wary truce. They are almost a matching set—Yo a little broader in the shoulders—in black and white, masks dangling from their hands.“We don’t know where the will is.”So shrugs. His hair is coiffed almost as smoothly as Yo’s. “We’ll have to be clever, then.”Yo has had weeks to think on this. He has had a handful of texts from Min Seo, two pictures of Kiha, and a heaviness deep in his chest that can only be grief. He has not read the tabloids, but he can imagine what they say.And for all of a lifetime, he has not known what he wants. His mother has always wanted for him, and he let her.He let her, and called it ambition.“When we find it,” he says, with the brutal, raw-edged confidence that is part and parcel of being a Wang, “I will abide by its terms.”So’s fingers clench around his mask. “You mean…”“I mean if Father gave everything to you, he gave everything to you.” Yo does not know if this is what sacrifice should sound like, should be.He is doing his best.So opens his mouth.“Don’t thank me,” Yo says. He thinks that if he has to hear his brother say the words, he will die. “Never thank me.”
iii.
The Wang mansion gleams in the night. Somehow, its glow is set apart from the shine of other Daegu windows. Yeon Hwa feels that these windows are eyes, and that they can see her.“You seem nervous,” Wook observes, offering her his arm.She takes it, grinding her teeth. He is her brother, and she hates him. Their mother would call that a tragedy.(Their mother never looks closely at her children.)Yeon Hwa’s face is thrown back at her by the polished doors. Even with red lips and her hair twisted high, she still looks young. Youth, she thinks, does not fit in the world she now walks.“I am ready for this ruse to be over,” she says, in answer to Wook’s question, and does her best to level him with her eyes.Her dress is white silk, beaded with thousands of pearls. The straps over her shoulders are black velvet, as is the sash that trails almost to the floor.She wants Yo to see her, and kiss her. The corner is turned, the precipice leapt. She wants Yo, just when she is quite certain she cannot have him.She lifts her black lace mask to her eyes, ties its ribbons, and is grateful for what it conceals.Wook melts into the crowd. Across the room, Yoo is resplendent in a white sheath with a red rose bleeding at the breast.So much for mourning, Yeon Hwa thinks, almost absently. She is vaguely aware that the Internet has been chattering about the scandal of throwing a gala, so soon after Taejo’s death, but she cannot bring herself to care.She thinks back to the last time she was Taejo alive. Yo flirted with her that night.The heat of his eyes, then, was bested by the heat of his mouth when he kissed her.Yeon Hwa’s fists clench through her gloves. A good thing that this mask hides her cheeks; they must be scarlet. Of course she would choose this place—this terrible, glittering, hopeless place—to remember.Her back against the wall, her shoes slipping off. Yo’s mad, wicked lips and skillful hands...She has spent a month of nights, since, wondering if they’d be happy together. Wondering if either of them is even capable of happiness. What would she be, his son’s step-mother?Across the room, she sees a slip of a girl. A black dress, a silver mask.Yeon Hwa frowns. The girl on Wook’s arm, so long ago. The girl So followed, first with his eyes and then all together.Did she only settle for Yo when she realized So was truly lost to her?Aish, She reminds herself, Yo is lost to you also.Then she sees him.He is keeping to the corners, away from the harsh light of the waterfall chandeliers. Then, too, he is wearing a mask.But Yeon Hwa would know those shoulders and that panther-stride anywhere.She looks around for Wook, and does not see him.(She chases after Yo and does not look back again.)In a dark-carpeted, shadowed hallway, she loses him. There are no other guests in this part of the mansion. Yeon Hwa remembers where she is, all of a moment: the Wangs’ house.Taejo is dead and Yoo’s favored son is being feted by a faceless crowd. A chill climbs her spine. How she hates them, Taejo and Yoo.How she loves their sons.“Yo,” she whispers, into the darkness, “I know you’re here. At least, I think you are.”Silence.Yeon Hwa bites her tongue, then presses onward.“I miss you,” she says. “I want you to know that I miss you. I think we understand each other, don’t we? We’re so hateful, left alone.” Her eyes swim a little. She fights to take control. “I don’t care if you’re king or not,” she says softly. She doesn’t know why, but king seemed like the right word. “I only care for you.”She’s an idiot, speaking to emptiness.Yeon Hwa turns away before anything in the darkness moves.
iv.
“Are you happy, Jung-ah?”He wishes she would not ask him that.But his mother wants an answer, and Jung clears his throat. “It’s a magnificent party, eomma.”He feels like a fool in this gaudy mask.His father’s friends have paid him their respects, whatever they may think of the irreverent frippery of the event. Wook has hovered like a too-friendly ghost. Jung keeps reminding himself that it isn’t the time to tell Wook he distrusts him. As president, he knows, it may never be that time.He misses fighting with his fists.“You look tired, my son.” His mother presses something into his hand, a cool glass. “Drink. Stay awake a little longer.”There is a long line of diplomats still to greet. Jung takes the cup gratefully, and empties it.It doesn’t make anything better.His German is shaky at best; his French is worse. His mother speaks for him, and he knows it shouldn’t be like that, and he wants to take the mask off…this is no way to…The room blurs and Jung sees two of everything. Two French designers, two spiral staircases, two of his mother’s face, behind her golden half-mask.“Jung-ah…”“I can’t—”“Excusez-moi, monsieur,” Yoo says imperiously, and her slim arm slips under Jung’s. “You are overheated. You need some fresh air.”He needs to take his mask off. He bats at it with one hand, but the floor threatens to climb up to meet him, to strike him full across the face.“Eomma…”“This is for your own good,” she whispers, close to his ear. He feels night air and night wind on his skin. Stars. There are so many stars. Or are they windows?The space between the stars widens. Black on black on black.Jung gives in, and lets go.
v.
Baek Ah is probably right. She is a fool for coming here, for sneaking around after So, of all people. In his mother’s house, with Wook watching—but this is the path she has chosen, this is the path that Goryeo took from her. Ha Jin curses her weak heart, not for the first time, and chews her lip.Where is So, in all this mob?She sees him at last. He is in a flawless tuxedo, which lends credence to Ji Mong’s improbable report that he has holed up with Yo these past few weeks. Ha Jin has not been able to find out much else—only that he has been in sporadic contact with Mu, and that he confronted Woo Hee right before she remembered.I think, Woo said carefully, when Ha Jin pressed—desperate, as she always is these days—I think that he wanted to believe in Baek Ah. He wanted to.And yet, he has stayed away.
Why is he here tonight?
Reliving a past life until he can save his present one, Ji Mong said. She has to think, she has to use what she knows to understand—Why would So and Yo be working together?Jung. Of course. They want to unseat Jung.It twists her heart, or what’s left of it. To think that after all this time, after all these years and lives and losses, So and Jung are still at odds.Hae Soo, dying, had not been able to defeat that.
In Goryeo, there was a document…a document that named the king…
She frowns in concentration and tiptoes towards a side-door out of the ballroom, into which So and his tuxedo have recently disappeared. She hears voices, and inches along a pitchy hallway on her stocking feet, holding her shoes by the straps.  “You take the west side.” That’s Yo’s voice, hushed but recognizable. “It’s either in his office or his bedroom. They were the only rooms he ever had to himself.”“I’ll text you when I’m in.” That is So. Ha Jin hears the jangle of metal. Creeping closer, she slips around another corner and sees them, standing close together. So has unfolded something in his hand—something that catches what little light there is. A set of lock-picks.“I have the office key,” Yo says. Then, rather sardonically—“Good luck.”And what is Ha Jin to do?She follows So.(This is the path she has chosen.)
vi.
He remembers So with half his face behind leather and metal, sizing him up and finding him wanting.
She belongs to me.
Even then, when he was still half in rags, when his own blood-brothers would barely acknowledge him—Too much confidence.Too much hope.Wook reminds himself to breathe. They are a thousand years away from that time, a thousand years away from Gwangjong. So here is every bit as violent, and in this world, that makes him more useless than he ever was in Goryeo. He is a marked man in this century, and today will be the last day he fights to rule Daegu.Wook is halfway up the staircase when the bombs go off.
vii.
Blood and dust. He tastes them mingled on his tongue; feels the familiar pang of torn flesh. He’s bitten through his lip.Around him, the muffled crackle of flames catching fills the air.The room is on fire.Everything is on fire.So coughs through smoke, and stumbles to his feet. The suit Yo had fitted for him is ruined. His hands and cheeks are scraped. Where did he fall?Where is he?He sees bed curtains. A vaulted ceiling. Heavy oak furniture—a wardrobe, a desk.He is in his father’s room.So stumbles to his feet. The lockpicks are still in his pockets, though he doubts he will need them now. He hit his head—that is why his temples ache, and why all his thoughts seem layered under cotton.
Fire. Get out.
Instincts, at least, never leave him.He dashes down the hall and hears screaming. The crowd in the ballroom must have heard the explosion too. It is only then that So remembers that there was an explosion.No time for that—no time for anything but getting out. He skids to a halt at the top of the stairs. Wook is on his hands and knees, coughing and swearing by turns.So stops short. His mind goes blank. He’s had moments like this, before. Moments of panic, where the very air he breathes seems to be screaming at him to—Remember?He pushes through. Teeth set, fists tight.“You,” Wook rasps out. “How did you know? How did you…” He lunges for So’s legs but So sidesteps him easily, and drops to plant a knee in the middle of Wook’s back.“Stay down,” he growls, and Wook does, gasping for breath.Wook, So realizes, is a coward.“It’s quick-burning,” So says. “I would suggest that you run from it.”He takes the steps two, three at a time. He follows the stampede as it rushes out over the rain-damp sidewalk. The city opens up around them. The sky above the Wang mansion glows.It glows red.Across the crowd, he sees Yo, his mask gone, his eyes wild. Relief stabs So between the ribs; he is less surprised by it than he might have been a month ago.Then Baek Ah grips his arm.“Ha Jin,” Baek Ah says frantically, towering over him like he always does. “She followed you. Where is she?”Behind them, the fire roars.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

O heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!

Earth’s returns

For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!

Shut them in,

With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!

Love is best.
- Robert Browning
i.
So enters a bedroom, and shuts the door behind him.This is the flaw in Ha Jin’s plan: she has no plan. She only has hope, like a bird trapped in her hands. She cannot open her fingers and let it fly, but if she holds it too tightly she will crush the life out of it.She tries, instead, to breathe.The hallway that stretches out beyond that door is all dark wood and inlaid gold. Taejo’s taste, more than Yoo’s, if she had to guess. From what little Ha Jin has seen of Yoo (from what little she has wished to see), she thinks that the former queen’s tastes have turned quite modern.Taejo never let go of his empire, even if he did not remember it.He is dead, she thinks. He is dead. Portraits of him are in this hall—some of him and his wife, one of him and Mu.
What of your other sons? Did you ever love them more than you feared their futures?
But now is no time to grieve.Ha Jin pauses before one of him as a young man—a smaller photograph than the rest. A woman’s hand rests on his shoulder—slender fingers. Cropped to her wrist. The rest of her is not here.Strange, that Yoo would allow herself to be edited out of a photograph like that. Unless—
You foolish girl.
Lady Oh rises in her mind. A sad-eyed specter of women everywhere, all of whom deserved more.
His first love. He always kept her close.
If Taejo wanted to hide something, in his own house…Ha Jin thanks fate, yes, but she prays first for it to rule in her favor.  With hands that must not tremble, with a wish that she dares not whisper aloud, Ha Jin lifts the portrait from the wall.Behind it, an alcove.In the alcove, a lacquered box, long and flat. There are cherry blossoms, both in the lacquer and in the faint whiff of perfume that clings to her skin like a human touch.Save me, Lady Oh, she prays, and pries open the box. Save him.Inside, a wax-sealed document.All around her, a dynamite roar.Ha Jin blacks out.When she comes to, she is face-down on the hardwood, and it feels...warm.She tries to clear her head, but cannot seem to order it properly. She crawls until she can stand. She reaches the doorway that So entered. The doorknob is blazing to the touch.Above her, the ceiling groans.She has to get out, but tears are running down her face now, in fear of what—of who—may lie beyond that door.He made it out, she tells herself. You have to believe that.He would want her to save herself in the world they shared, and even, she decides, in this one.Ha Jin holds the box close, and runs back the way she came.At the end of the hallway are glass-paned doors. The handles are still cool: she does not know where, or why, exactly, the fire started, but at least it has not trapped her yet.She flings the doors open and steps onto a balcony.The sky above her is a sick shade of orange. Yes, the fire is in the roof. She has to get down—somehow—or she won't survive the heat, the creeping smoke. Sirens keen in the distance. Below, a throng of glittering partygoers huddle together, as if they have reached safety by taking only a few steps.Please, she begs. Please, let me survive. Let me live for my love, this time.The sky scowls. It is beginning to rain.
Let me live.
The balcony juts out beside a long line of windows. There is a fire escape attached to one. She could leap—She drops her shoes. They don’t matter now.She doesn’t know if she can jump that far.There is a murmur in the crowd below. She is vaguely aware of people running. One person. One man in black and white—she knows him by his very sprint.
So.

ii.
He doesn’t know why it matters. Why the thought of her hurt, the thought of her gone, is more than he can bear. He is not kind like this: he is not Baek Ah, or even Jung. He is broken and wicked. A month of brotherly reconciliation, the reliance of a few friends—none of this can change what he is.Yet, there is something very faithful about a dog.He sees Ha Jin four flights up. The fall, from such a height, would kill her.So has climbed walls before, when he has to. These walls are not particularly suited; too few crevices. He’d have to do it window ledge by window ledge.Fire escape. Mercifully—blessedly—there is one, only two windows’ distance from where Ha Jin is leaning over the balcony rail.Behind her, the sounds of destruction rain as if from heaven.So strips off his jacket. The fire-escape is old and out-of-use. He has to take a running jump to catch the end of it, and when he has pulled himself up, it shudders under his weight.Somehow, its treachery is symbolic.(This is his parents’ house, burning.)The rain is falling more heavily now, which will keep the fire from spreading. But the damage to the upper levels of the mansion has already been done. Water-weight will only hasten its collapse.Just as he fears, there is a series of thunderous crash. The roof is caving in. He nearly loses his balance and slices his hand open catching himself.Pain, at least, is familiar.(So knows how to fight through pain.)He reaches the top at last, rust and rain ruining his clothes. His hand is bleeding steadily. Quickly, he wraps it in one of Yo’s spare handkerchiefs.Then, he looks at Ha Jin. She seems to be waiting for him. Patient, as only someone who trusts can be.“I don’t think I can jump that far,” she calls. Her hair is plastered to her forehead. So feels like he is breathing underwater. The crackle of flames, the smell of smoke—he has been here before, in too many ways, but what seems most familiar of all is this:Ha Jin, in the rain.“I’ll climb across,” he tells her, gauging the window ledges. If he holds her with one arm, he can walk them both back. He trusts his arm strength. And there are better footholds up here.“Take this,” she says, and holds out something in her hands. “I think it is your father’s…wishes.”So sees a flat box, large enough to hold sheets of paper. The will. He wonders how Ha Jin knew. He wonders how she knows anything, and why she always tries to help him, rather than to hurt.“Hold onto it,” he says. “I’m coming.”And before she can protest, he scrambles over the narrow rail of the ladder and catches hold of the window casement.Yes, there is room to walk here—the sill is almost a foot wide. He shifts sideways, measuring as best he can.If she can climb from the balcony to the other window casement, he can catch her when she jumps.When he explains this—shouting a bit, to be heard above fire and rain—he half-expects her to protest, to say that she is afraid, that she will fall. But Ha Jin nods gravely, eyes never leaving his, and does what he asks of her.Now they are almost beside each other, clinging to their respective window-frames. So uses his elbow to smash the pane, picks out the glass as best he can, and hooks his left arm into the opening so that he can brace himself.“Jump,” he says.She matters more, in that moment, than anything else in the world.So does what he has not done in more years than he can remember: he prays.Her weight crushes him against the window, breaking more glass. She is tuckd against him, with his arm around her waist, and her wet face pressed against his neck.“So,” she breathes. “So, you really came.”He does not know how to answer this. He feels her hair brush against his chin, his lips, like something sacred.“Don’t let go,” he says, when what he wants to say is, Don’t leave me.The descent is slow and painful. His hands are scraped raw; there is glass daggering his arm and his shoulder. The wounds, if isolated, would be minor. Together, the pain is rising like a wave.“Thank you,” Ha Jin repeats, one arm around him, the other clutching the box that likely holds his destiny. “Thank you.”When they reach the ground, the crowd erupts into cheers. Baek Ah appears again, seemingly out of nowhere. He takes Ha Jin’s arm, supporting her. So does not want to let her go.But his limbs are failing and his head is swimming. A hand materializes on his shoulder; he looks up, up through the rain, and sees Yo.“Come,” Yo says. His face is unreadable, but So does not think it is hateful. “We’ll take you home.”
iii.
This is a collection of people Baek Ah never expected to have in his house. Yo, still irritatingly resplendent even with healing scratches on his face and rain-soaked finery, is at the head of the table. So leans against the wall. Ha Jin stands near him, her arms folded tightly across her chest, cradling a thin lacquered box.Woo Hee’s eyes dart to Yo, then to So, then to Baek Ah.“Should I…”Baek Ah shoots her an encouraging glance. He himself is not feeling particularly the master of his own house at the moment, much less the master of this meeting, but he can be strong for Woo Hee.“The box,” So says. “Open it.” His voice is taut. His clothes are ruined, and Baek Ah sees blood.Always, too much blood.Ha Jin lays it on the table. Baek Ah sees Yo look at So, and So nod. Yo nods too, and leans forward to lift the lid.This done, he breaks the wax seal of the envelope and draws out a sheaf of papers.“What is it?” Eun asks. Of course, Eun is here as well—worried for all of them, without having any idea of what is going on.Yo ignores him. He bites his lip and stares at the papers in silence. Then he stands, folding them together, and hands the whole sheaf to So.“Take it,” he says. “It’s yours.”Baek Ah sees agony flare across So’s face. His arms hang at his sides, the papers crumpling in his fist. Yo strides out of the room and silence remains behind him.Baek Ah is overwhelmed with pity, with the remembrance of one cruel orbit in which these brothers once circled each other, and another in which they find themselves now.The look on So’s face is very much like the look on his face at the end.Gently, Ha Jin—living, Baek Ah reminds himself—reaches out and frees the papers from So’s bruising grip. She says something that Baek Ah does not hear, but So must. He dips his chin and follows Yo out the door.He is limping.Baek Ah’s eyes smart with tears. But they are all looking at him, here—the painter who ran for the mountains at the first sign of trouble, and whom trouble called back—and he thinks again, living. Here, they live.
iv.
He is not his mother. He will keep his promise. But it burns like a fallen city, like a house reduced to ash. So much weight and so much destruction, all resting with him.Yo, as the world knew him, is finished.He strides quickly down the steps, wanting to be away from the quiet, open beauty of Baek Ah’s home. It is too friendly a place for a man like him.“Hyung!”He stops short.So has never, to his memory, called him that.That his brother still stands upright would come as a surprise, if his brother was anyone but So. Yo turns to see So’s soot-streaked face, anguished, and hates that he recognizes the twisting in his chest as a twinge of heart, a prick of conscience.“I told you,” he says stonily. Yoo lives forever, while her sons live—just as she intended. “I will abide by Father’s terms. Rule the company, So. Grind Jung into the dust he loves so much.”“Don’t leave,” So says—pleads, and oh, they are six and eight again, and Yo is running from the sound of So’s screams and the sight of his ruined face. “I do not want it.”“Neither do I.” Yo can hear the rattle of exhaustion in his own voice. “And yet, we were not bred for grace, little brother. I do not know how to let go without leaving. Do you?”A foolish question. So does not know how to let go.So’s right hand twitches, pressed against his injured arm. Blood is seeping through his fingers.“You’re hurt,” Yo tells him. “You should get it treated. Why must you always bleed for the rest of us?”So’s teeth drag against his lip, worrying it. A dog, their mother used to say, when his name was (rarely) raised in conversation. He was always like a dog, pawing at the door, wanting to be let in.Yo hates everything that his family is, he thinks, except—Except this brother, who begs and bleeds and never lets go.Yo makes another promise. Likely, he will regret it.“I will return, someday,” he says. “Is that enough?”The look on So’s face is all the answer he needs to bind him to his word.
v.
“Yeon Hwa! Yeon Hwa!”Her mother is sobbing, frantic, her hair coming undone from its perfect chignon.“I am alright, eomma. My dress is torn.”“But the Wang mansion! So much money—so much history—”“So many people,” Yeon Hwa interjects, rather bitingly. And it is not quite fair—her mother is worried, and worried for her. It is only that she no longer knows what to believe about anybody. “We can only hope that all of them got out.”“Where is your brother?” her mother sobs, sinking into an armchair. “Where is Wook?”“I saw him leave.”She did. He looked furious. This is what Yeon Hwa means, when she says that she trusts no one. She adds, in the face of her mother’s incomprehension, “He survived.”
But why?
Why had Wook any reason to be furious?A plan foiled. Yo and So in the corners of the ballroom.The explosion.Yeon Hwa crushes her ruined gown beneath her fingertips. She believes that Yo, at least, had nothing to do with that.She believes in him.Far enough from the Wang mansion, sheltered from the rain, she stares out her window and thinks. The glass is crisscrossed with droplets; she can see nothing but the remote blur of too many lights.It would be no better in New York.“Yeon Hwa.”She starts up from her seat by the window, her breath caught in her throat.Yo closes the door quietly behind him.“Yo.” She heaves a deep sigh. “You’re safe.”He stands there, all his proud eloquence gone. His hands are in his pockets and his lip is tucked between his teeth.“What happened?” Yeon Hwa whispers, crossing the room towards him before she even ponders whether that is the wise thing to do. “What happened, at your father’s house?”“I don’t know.”“But—”“My father left another will.” Yo ducks his head. The gesture, in its restraint of visible expression, makes her think of So. “We got it out—So and I.”Yeon Hwa is back to holding her breath again.“The terms favor So,” Yo continues. “My father wanted So to be his successor. He also left him the largest share of his estate.”“And you?”“He left me enough to live on.” Yo does not meet her eyes; the curl of his lip is not a smile. “Not that I have any future left.”“Don’t say that,” Yeon Hwa says, and reaches for his hand. “Yo, I…” she is transported back, for a moment, to her whispered litany in the hallway. Her love confession to a ghost.He looks at her, then. “I heard you,” he says. “I heard you, and did not deserve a word of it.”“Stop it,” Yeon Hwa whispers, and grips his hand more tightly. “Yo, I don’t are about money, or our brothers, or—”His arms close around her shoulders, holding her close. “You shouldn’t say such things.”Pressed against his shoulder, Yeon Hwa breathes easily again. And with breath, with the rise and fall of his chest against hers, she is overcome by a different sensation entirely.(It is the sensation of opening her eyes.)They step back from each other at the same moment. Both in black and white: he in his dripping tuxedo; she in her crushed pearls.The word leaves their lips at the same moment, too, in a tangle of confusion and clarity and haunted fear.“Goryeo.”
vi.
Jung’s head is pounding. Around him, the world shifts into focus—a bed, unfamiliar, and softly painted walls.Where is he?What happened?“Jung-ah,” his mother sighs, leaning over him. Her smile is as red as ever, her cheeks as smooth. “You are well again.”“I…”“Do not trouble yourself.” She strokes his brow. “Rest.”He can’t. He sits up, his thoughts chasing each other aimlessly. “Eomma. Tell me.”Yoo sighs again, almost sadly. “There was a fire,” she explains. “At the gala. The house was mostly destroyed.”Jung swallows. He remembers the gala, in bits and pieces of ordinary discomfort. He remembers no flames.“You were a hero,” she adds. “Dashing to save people, like you always do. My good son.”Something clicks into place. “No,” Jung says. “I…was sick, and I…fainted. There was no fire.”“The trauma must have been too much.” Yoo shakes her head. “There are eyewitnesses, believe me. The house is lost, yes, and we will all feel sorry for it forever.” But her smile does not flinch. “You truly are the leader of our family, Jung-ah. I can scarcely keep the media away.”His mother is lying.He just doesn’t know about what.“The house really burned?”She nods.“All of…your rooms? Our things?”“I know. It’s hard.”He never cared, much, for that house. It belonged to other people, and not to him. There was a reason he was always escaping it. Still—“I’m tired,” he says, and lets his voice tremble. “Will you let me sleep?”Her eyes crinkle into half-moons, all affection, ever-present. “Of course.”
vii.
He has always considered himself…prophetic. Perceptive. Able to divine, within a neat margin of error, where others’ ambitions will lead.Only, he did not think that Yoo would burn her own house ot the ground.Wook can admit his own failures, surely. He is not Yo. He is not So. Both of them melted into the darkness last night, after So scaled walls to save Hae Soo, in the sight and to the praise of all.Wook was powerless to stop it.He clenches his fists. He can admit his own failures, surely.Yoo and Jung have taken up temporary residence at Daegu’s premiere hotel. He recognizes it as the one where the most prestigious contacts of Wang-Hwangbo have stayed, when invited to conferences, exhibits, business deals.He has the uneasy feeling that she is expecting him.Calm, he reminds himself. You must be calm.A concierge lets him in after calling up to the presidential suite. Wook’s clothes are rain-damp, smoke-streaked. His back still aches from So’s knee, and the remembrance of that shame makes him curse anew, inwardly.It must remain inward.When he enters Yoo’s room, she stands facing him, a black shawl draped over her evening gown.“Wook. Do you have something to say?”“Damn you,” Wook grits out, fury overtaking him, as he feared it would. He forces down the flame into a safer ember, something to keep him alight. “What of our plan?”Yoo stares, unblinking. “Our plan came off rather well. Except for So saving that pathetic little secretary.”“You burned down the mansion!”“No, Wook,” Yoo answers, and she smiles. “You burned down the mansion.”He does not understand. He is beginning to fear that there is much that he does not understand.“You should leave the destruction of my own sons to me.” Yoo’s red-tipped fingers toy with the fringe of her shawl. Her voice is dulcet, too queenly for Wook’s comfort. “You overstepped, Hwangbo. I stepped back.”“What does that mean?” Damn it all to hell—damn her to hell. His voice is shaking.“It means that you and So are both in my hands. If I want to finish one of you, I can. You should not have sent your own men to to lay the trail for him. It is too easy a connection. An assassination attempt on Jung? Of course, you would want that.”“I offered you an opportunity,” Wook stutters. She isn’t telling him enough, but he can fill the gaps with guesses. If Yoo has evidence of what he said, what he offered, what he ordered his men to do in an apartment under So’s name——or in an apartment, not under So’s name—A thousand devils, why did he ever trust her? Even for a moment?“Has it occurred to you,” he says, “That your sons will not be surprised to know the depths of your—your depravity? I am trusted. I have been cautious. Wise, even.”It is the sort of thing a fool would say, but the words are gone already when he realizes that.“You and your family have always wanted what the Wangs have. Your sister covets my sons’ bodies, and you covet their souls.” Yoo is looking at him as if she can see straight through them. “Your parents spent their rise vying against forces that they did not understand, and so they fell.” She pauses, and her hands let go the long silk fringe, clenching in fists at her sides.Wook swallows hard. “We are not your lessers,” he snaps. “No matter who you may think that you are.”Her smile tells him that it was the wrong thing to say. “But has it ever occurred to you, Eighth Prince,” Yoo says, with eyes like flint, “That I know exactly who I am?”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Then came the darker sooner,

came the later lower.

We were no longer a sweeter-here

happily-ever-after. We were after ever.

We were farther and further.

More was the word we used for harder.

Lost was our standard-bearer.

Our gods were fallen faster,

and fallen larger.
- Catherine Wing
i.
This is vengeance. This is sweeter than honey, warmer than blood. She watches Wook’s face go white, paper-white.In any world, Wook will die weak.A strangled sound leaves him. It might be a question. Yoo chooses to answer it.“How?” she echoes. “Some of us walk through time with our eyes open.” She pours herself a cup of tea, white peony. A fragrance like mercy, like peace—all the parts of being that Yoo has never known.He manages at last, to ask, “How long have you known?”“I have always known.” Yoo lifts a shoulder and lowers it. Kingdoms have fallen with movements no greater than that. She has nothing to hide from Wook. “As a girl, I only remembered afterwards. As a woman…” She smiles, and changes her mind, as she often does. She has nothing to hide from Wook, but Wook does not deserve to know what it is to suffer the same choices and the same pains and vexations, only to have them revealed immediately thereafter in moments of deadly clarity. “When Hae Soo woke up,” Yoo says, since that is just about exactly right, “I knew everything. It was only a matter of time before all of you fell at my feet, in one way or another.”Wook is stammering, and something ugly is building behind his eyes. It makes Yoo want to hurt him.“A fine mess you’ve made of it,” he says viciously. “Your home destroyed. Your sons scattered. The weakest of all in his dead father’s stead—”“And what of your father?’ Yoo strikes back, sharper than any serpent-fang, and maybe, too quickly. Too quickly, when Jung is on the line. “He left a weak son, too, when I killed him.”Wook, and the room around him, is gone still as time turned backwards.And oh, with Taejo gone and long-unworthy, with her first son in the ground twice and her heart there too, with memory and memory and kingdoms she never ruled, this is victory. Sinmyeongsun Yoo has her victory, for a time.(So short a time.)“Eomeoni,” Jung says, in the doorway. He looks like he does not even know who she is.
ii.
There are a thousand questions Ha Jin wants to ask him, but she settles for this—eyes locked on his, and her hands helping him out of his ruined jacket.She expects to be turned away. To be told that he only saved her, and does not trust her.Instead, he keeps hold of her gaze, and is silent.“You should see a doctor.”This is a losing argument, and she knows it.Still, he says nothing.“There seems to be a piece of glass in your arm,” she adds, “And I don’t want to—”So reaches over, without looking down, and pulls it out. His cheek twitches, but he does not wince.“Gomawo,” Ha Jin whispers, wincing herself. “Again.”“You don’t have to keep saying it.”She lifts the scissors from the kit and snips away at his shirt sleeve, gingerly peeling it back from the largest of the wounds, the one oozing blood steadily.It is where the arrow struck him, when he saved her life.Tears cloud her vision. His hand grips her wrist.“What’s wrong?”“Everything,” she gasps out, because she nearly died tonight, he nearly died tonight, and he’s bleeding again and she is so very, very tired of loving him from afar.“Aish.” Against all odds, he almost grins. “You’re afraid of a little fire?”He used to do that, in days that were dark but not the darkest, used to find a little twist of humor to clear the tortured air.“It wasn’t just a little, was it.” But she swallows down her sob and goes back to his arm. “Does this hurt?’“Your hands are so rough,” he says softly, still teasing. “Poking and prodding.” He is still fighting, then, through the vengeful violence of life, only to be kind—even if he has no reason to be. He sent her away, there and here, and she does not know if she gets to come back again.She draws back, but he won’t let her.His eyes flicker. “Don’t stop.”It might be forgiveness. It might be something else. Ha Jin drinks deeply of an unquestioned moment—something she has rarely allowed for herself, these days, and keeps her touch light against his tattered skin.Then they hear voices in the hall—Baek Ah and yes, yes, that is Jung. What is Jung doing here?“I need to speak to So,” Jung is saying desperately. “I need to speak to So.”So staggers to his feet. The worst of his hurts are bandaged, but all that Ha Jin can think of is that So never seems to bleed enough. There is always more to come.“What is it?” So raps out, when Jung bursts into the study. Jung looks like he’s seen a ghost. When his eyes turn to Ha Jin, he looks like he’s seen another.Oh, Ha Jin thinks, ineloquently. Oh.Still, Jung’s words surprise her. He has wrenched his gaze away from her and turned it to So. “It’s Mother.”
iii.
In Baek Ah’s study, wreathed in leatherbound books and pastelled sketchpads, Jung does not know how to say what he must.Hard enough to say anything, to So’s guarded, battered face. Harder, when Jung has just watched the world split open before his eyes.The world, and his mother too.(She went deathly pale, and called his name—a strangled call. She fell, and Jung dashed in to catch her.His mother, the murderer.His mother, the queen.)“Eomeoni has had a heart attack,” Jung says. “I…did not have your number. I thought I might find you here.”So’s expression does not change, except that Jung thinks he has stopped breathing.Jung’s fingernails prick against his palms. Hae Soo’s bones are dust, the boy who fought in the streets of Goryeo is dust, the daughter he raised as his own is dust. But the man who was king, the brother who hated him, the wolf who bayed at the door of a firelit home—he is standing in front of him.Jung grew up in the space of seven minutes.(Yes, he heard it. All of it. All that Wook had to fling in her face, all that she spat viperously back to him. Jung tried to stay quiet, but the floor might as well have shaken under his feet.)(There will be no going back for the rest of his life, whatever this life is.)“Where is she now?”“The hospital.” Jung swallows. “And the house—”“Burned.” So’s eyes bore into him. “Weren’t you there, Sa Jang-nim?” The title drips with sarcasm.“I was.” Jung has put the pieces of this, too, together, in the last hellish hour. “Eomma…” The word aches. “She drugged me and got me out.”“Protecting her own,” So murmurs, and his eyes drop at last. There is that weary slump in his shoulders. Jung recognizes it more than he can say.He steels himself, past and present, and tells So what he heard. At least, a part of what he heard. If So does not remember Goryeo—as the rest of them seem not to—Jung will not remember it for him.Jung tries not to think of Hae Soo, Ha Jin, the love of his life. (Whatever life this is.)So does not interrupt. He waits until the end—does not So always wait until the end—then asks, “She has evidence on Wook?”“And on you.”“So you have that evidence.”Jung supposes that he does.“Should I expect it to be used?”Jung was a thoughtless younger brother, once. He struck first, like he was taught to. Here, he bites his tongue. “I came to tell you,” he says, “That the company is yours, if you want it. I think…I think of all our family and of all…all of Father’s friends, our friends, that…” He is not good at this, finding words. “I believe that you are the son Father would have chosen.” His very breath is trembling. The air around him seems laden with the sight of Wang So, Fourth Prince, crowned king.(The air around them is empty.)“Hardly,” So says, but he smiles, a feral-edged, bright smile. “You are more than we give you credit for, Jung.”He does not explain this. Does not say who we is. Jung knows that there have never been collectives, in the Wang family, of more than two: Father and Mu, Mother and Yo, Mu and So. They are not happy here.His father is dead and his mother is dying and his brothers give him little credit.“Take the company,” Jung says, because he was a soldier in Goryeo and he does not want to be an emperor here. He was a father in Goryeo, to someone else’s child. “Please.”So leans back against the study desk, but the casual pose is belied by how his fingers whiten at their marked knuckles. “Father did want me to have the company,” he says. “But I do not want it. You are the only one of us who is not broken, Jung. That should count for something.”(Suddenly, terribly, Jung remembers who carved the scar into So’s face.)(He never knew that, here.)“I am no leader.” Jung bows his head. Centuries ago, there were times when he wanted vengeance on So. There were times when he wanted that scarred face brought low again.Jung, too, is his mother’s son.But Jung loved, and was loved, even if it was not in the ways he might have wanted. This changes a person, if you let it.He lets it.“I am no leader,” he says again. “Please, So. Hyung. You are wiser than I am.”“Why would you say so?” his brother whispers, and his face has changed, now. He looks young—or at least, he looks like the young do when they die.Jung thought—if he thought at all, on his way here—that he came to deliver a birthright. Now, he is not so certain. He realizes that fate is handing him another man’s legacy, yet again.“Think it over.” The words stumble out, and he cannot take them back. It is a retreat.He leaves So staring after him.
iv.
Ha Jin clutches Baek Ah’s arm when the study door shuts behind Jung. “He knows.”“Jung?”“He looked at me—” She bites her lip. “He knows, Baek Ah. He knows. He must have come to…”They both glance uneasily to the door; they can’t hear the conversation behind it. Baek Ah runs his free hand through his hair. “Hopefully Jung doesn’t…”“Tell him?” Ha Jin laughs. It’s a bitter sound. “I don’t think So would believe him.”“Still.” Baek Ah is rifling through all the tension of the past few weeks; putting his own memories in order, trying to understand whom to trust in this new time, and coming to his own peace with Ha Jin’s words.
I do not think we are the same people. Only the same souls.
He is not the Thirteenth Prince of Goryeo. The men behind the door are not his brothers.Woo Hee is not the cast-down princess of Later Baekje.And yet, he loves. He loves them all.Jung bursts out of the study. Ha Jin panics, and darts away. Baek Ah understands; understands why she wouldn’t want to subject Jung to her presence when he spent the last years of her life in silent, unrewarded love.Baek Ah understands why she can’t yet face the man who raised her daughter.But this leaves Baek Ah alone with Jung: with So behind a closed door and Hae Soo simply gone. It is too much. Too much like it was.“Baek Ah,” Jung says, and Baek Ah nods.“I know.”“You…”“I remember.” Baek Ah believes that’s what he means, and judging by the way Jung’s face clears, it is.“What are we?” Jung asks, hoarse and desperate. “What—”“Two worlds colliding.” Baek Ah shakes his head. It’s harder to explain, each time it happens. “Ji Mong thinks that—thinks that because of what happened to us there, we’ve come back to do it a second time.”“Better?” Jung bites his lip.“Better,” Baek Ah says. “What did you say to So?”“I didn’t tell him about this. Does he—”“No,” Baek Ah answers. “He doesn’t know.”“I wanted to give him the company,” Jung says, and Baek Ah is struck by his generous heart, free, still, from his mother’s clutches. So does not know who he was, but Jung does not know that Taejo’s will could change their future.He came to offer on his own terms.“Did he take it?” Baek Ah asks. The answer to that seems important.It is Jung’s turn to shake his head. “No,” he says. “He didn’t want it.”
On his own terms.

v.

The number you have dialed is not in service.
Yeon Hwa tosses her phone onto her bed. Her mother has sent up dinner for her; she sent it back again.What does it all mean? Does it mean that Yo has already devolved back into a tenth century man and cut off all contact with the outside world?He left that night—only last night—before Yeon Hwa could beg him to stay.
Stay, and let’s figure this out.

We aren’t the same people.
They aren’t half-siblings warring in a long-dead kingdom. They aren’t murderers. They aren’t—she drags her hands over her face and shudders at all the things that Princess Yeon Hwa did, all the dreams she killed.You can’t leave me, not now.Only—he did.
vi.
Jung is gone, Baek Ah tells her. When she ran, Ha Jin told herself that it was mercy. Now, in the patient darkness of evening, it seems more like cowardice.Facing Jung was the least she could have done.She is sitting in the room with the inset pool, amid a few of Baek Ah’s carefully tended tropical plants. The windowseat faces the moonlit garden outside. Ha Jin wraps her arms around her knees.She hears footsteps on the tiles, and turns.It’s So.The last time she and So were in this room was when she first came here. It feels like a long age ago, and ah, there is one for irony.He looks drained. He is holding himself carefully, because of the scrapes and bruises. She has never forgotten what he looks like when he is wounded.“You should rest,” she says. Her voice trembles. She keeps thinking about Jung, and her dear lost baby, and the man she should have married in Goryeo.She keeps thinking of So, even when he’s right in front of her. It is like she has two times the weight of his life on her shoulders, and none of him in her arms.“You should go.”“What?”“I was wrong to distrust you,” he says quietly. It sounds like an apology. “But I still don’t understand you.”“Let me stay, then.”“Why?” He took a step forward. “You keep insisting on staying, even though it puts you in danger. Soo-kyung didn’t send you, didn’t pay you. You’ve done nothing but help me, and I…” His hands clench and unclenched. Even where they aren’t bandaged, the skin is almost raw.Ha Jin looks at him and loves him. She wants to say it more than anything she knows.“I can’t leave,” she says. “Because—”“My father is dead,” he says. “My mother is dying. My brothers have stepped aside to let me into power. Aren’t you happy? Aren’t you glad to see my path laid straight?”“None of that is happiness.” There are tears in her eyes.“Believe me,” he says. “I know.” Another step. He is standing over her now, looking down at her out of those long, expressive eyes. “But happiness is not in my future, Ha Jin.”She stands up. Is it really over? With all the mysteries and pains vanquished or laid bare, with power thrust into his hands at last?No. It cannot be. That was when she left last time, and she swore she would never do it again, from that first moment she opened her eyes in the present day.She is the one who steps closer now. He stands motionless when she rests her hands on his shoulder. He lets her fingers settle against the back of his neck.He lets her—Time lets her—Ha Jin becomes Hae Soo again, and Hae Soo lifts her lips to Wang So’s. Hae Soo remembers this mouth, remembers its sweet softness, the way he yields before he pushes back. She expects resistance to this kiss, for all that it is unexpected. She expects him to throw her away, or to remain the statue he now is.Instead—Instead he groans in the back of his throat and his hands seize her shoulders. He kisses her like he is memorizing her lips anew, all grazing teeth and soothing tongue. He crushes her against him and she holds on, she holds on so tightly, because this—them—is all that linked the last waking memory of Hae Soo’s death to the first waking memory of Go Ha Jin’s life.We die like this, she prays, and then—we live like this, she hopes.So steps back at last, breathing hard.Hae Soo returns to Ha Jin, and Ha Jin holds her head up before she does the hardest thing she ever has.(She walks away.)Tiles upon tiles, the song of running water, and what if, what if it is all for nothing?Her lips are burning and her eyes sting with tears. She prays and she hopes and she curses the weakness that ruined them once. The weakness and the cruelty that rightly belonged to neither.Ha Jin wraps her fingers around the handle of the door, and So calls out her name. Only—he doesn’t call the one that this world knows.He calls her Soo.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

you are my right,

have come to be my night (your body takes on

the dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleep

becomes you): and you fall from the sky

with several flowers, words spill from your mouth

in waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet (trees

and seas have flown away, I call it

loving you): home is nowhere, therefore you,

a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,

and free of any eden we can name
- Reginald Shepherd
i.
Jung is with his mother when she dies.This is after he presents the restructuring plan to the Board, and sees it approved. After he has heard the first of now-constant rumblings that his interim presidency will be extended indefinitely. After So signed over a large portion of his own inheritance, without Jung asking or dreaming of asking. After Eun remembered—in the middle of the night—and immediately left for California, to find an unsuspecting Seon Deok, who was knee-deep in studying in biology and now has to deal with a daily dose of Eun.Jung is happy for Eun. He is happy for all of them—Baek Ah and Woo Hee, even So and…Ha Jin.He keeps having to remind himself to call her that.Jung sits by Yoo’s bedside with his hand over hers, in the last hours of her miserable life, and thinks of Ha Jin.She is not so pale here. She is far from broken.(She still loves his brother more than she loves herself.)Jung has decided to be too busy for bitterness. This is the way to move from youth to something else. He serves no one else’s king, here, and as much as he wants to say so, he is not alone.“You are always welcome,” Baek Ah said, when Jung refused his offer to let Jung move in to Eun’s old room. Jung was grateful, but he needed his own place. And it hurts, still, to see Baek Ah. Baek Ah, who outlived the rest of them in Goryeo. Jung remembers when So died, there. Jung remembers when he himself died.He has so much life left ahead of him.At least, he hopes so.His mother’s breathing fades out somewhere around midnight. Jung does not know where Yo is. So knows where Jung is, though; So told him that he had no wish to see their mother again.Jung is not sure whether So will regret that or not, but it’s not Jung’s burden to bear.When Yoo dies, her face is peaceful. This is more than she deserves.Jung presses her cold hands to his lips anyway.The next day, he stands at the press conference podium and speaks his own words.(He has so much life left ahead of him.)
ii.
It had seemed wisest to take a month’s sabbatical, giving things time to settle. He keeps tabs on the comings and goings of all through Kim Won’s channels of information—Jung stays on, Yo is missing, So has not sought a takeover. When news of Yoo’s death arrives, Wook returns.He is barred from entering the building.Maybe his course had not been the wisest after all.“Let him in,” calls a too-familiar voice, and Wook’s spine stiffens as he turns.So, in half a tailored suit—his shirtsleeves are rolled to the elbow and his jacket is slung over his shoulder—saunters across the pavement.The guards at the door bow. Wook’s blood runs cold.“Jung is busy with…affairs of state,” So announces, when they have been led to a small meeting room on the first floor. “We agreed I’d have the honor of welcoming you back.”“Your mother is dead.” Wook hopes to throw him off his guard.“That she is,” So answers, taking a seat and leaning forward on his elbows. There is a tattoo of a dragon snaking along one of his forearms. “For a second time.”Wook swallows hard.So smiles, dagger quick, then resumes the curious veneer of businesslike calm that Wook has never seen him wear before. “Did Kim Won serve you well,” he asks conversationally, “As an informant?”“I—”“My brother Mu has been busy,” So muses. “Of course, he has been compiling an extensive report of your financial mishandling for some time. Lately, he has also been in charge of feeding Won information about our comings and goings. Has it been to your satisfaction?”Wook clenches his fists. “I know you know me,” he says, through his teeth. “What will you do, wolf-dog? Kill me as I stand?”“In this day and age?” So lifts his eyebrows, the feral smile returning. “No, your highness.” He stands, and Wook takes an involuntary step back. “You will leave the company,” So says. “And the country. We have enough evidence to press charges. My mother is dead; who else is there to blame for the destruction of her house? Certainly not me.”“She wanted to destroy you,” Wook spits. The walls are closing in around him.“Of course she did,” So answers quietly. “You had that in common.”Wook almost wishes that So would kill him.So seems to read the thought. His face changes. There is something terrible in his eyes, though the smile remains. “Won will tell you the rest,” he says. “You may go.”Wook glowers at him with all he has left. “Go? Where is there to go?”So reaches out, and his rough hand pincers the breath out of Wook’s throat. Just as Wook is sure he will faint, So’s hold releases.“Anywhere but here,” So says. “And anywhere, so long as you live. Go and live, Wook. Live for a long time.”
iii.
She’s on the front steps of Baek Ah’s house when So comes back at noon. There is—can it be?—a spring in his step.Ha Jin does not try to hide her smile.Soo, he said, in that first moment. Soo-yah, is it you?And she ran back to him, across the room and the world, and stayed in his arms all night.I am sorry, she whispered in the dark. To make you remember all the hurt.But he laughed, surprising her. So has always been more than any of them dreamed. Hurt? What hurt? You’re here.“You look lonely,” he calls out now, and she laughs.“I’m waiting for my man.”He lifts her off her feet, his arms around her waist. His mother is dead only a week, but she has yet to see him grieve. He had a heavy errand this morning, too, but it must have gone well.“Now,” he says into the curve of her neck, “Now we go to the mountains.”“The mountains?”“Eoh. Don’t you remember? I used to climb the hills, and you used to join me.”There will be an untangling of pain, Ha Jin is sure. Two parallel lives lived in suffering cannot be saved by a single moment. But all month long, So has seemed almost deliriously happy.She asked Baek Ah what he thought, and he said only, “Maybe he’s done with suffering.”They sit on the steps together and she links her fingers through his. “Did you see Wook?”“Yes.” He looks a little sterner.“Will he leave?”“He has no choice.”She breathes more lightly.“I saw Jung as well.” He runs his thumb along the side of her palm. “We spoke of…”“Your mother?”He nods.Here it is, Ha Jin thinks. The pain. “What do you want to tell me?”“He was with her.” So speaks quietly. “It is good that he was with her.” He tips his head back, and the sunlight dances on his skin. He shuts his eyes and adds, “She did not love us, I see that now. She did not love any of us.” A pause. “She did not know how.”It feels like the closing of a book.She leans her head against his shoulder. “Tell me what you need.”“I have it already.” His lips brush against her hair. And even though his past ruined him and his future tried to, Ha Jin feels the warmth of him, the life of him, and is content.There are footsteps on the path in front of them; the sound of someone clearing his throat.Ha Jin looks up and sees Wang Yo.
iv.
Ha Jin’s hand presses his shoulder and then she hurries away. So stands, and does his best to keep his legs steady.“You know, don’t you?” is the first thing Yo says.So nods. Because whatever Yo means—that they’ve been here before, that their mother is dead, that Jung is the only one to keep going—So knows.Yo looks exhausted. His eyes are red-rimmed. So fights the urge to break his gaze.“Where have you been?” So asks, as if he has a right to. (Maybe he does.)“Around the world.” Yo buries his hands in the pockets of his long black coat. “I had too many questions for this place alone to answer.”So can understand that, even if it is not what he feels himself. All of So’s questions are answered by her, and Baek Ah, and few others. “Is your son well?”Yo seems surprised by the question. “Nae. They’re in France now.” He cards his fingers through his tousled hair. “I am planning to go there as well, soon.”So nods. France is far away from who they are. Yo worked there, almost a decade ago. It must have been good to him.“The cliff,” Yo says, and So snaps to attention, his heart thundering in his chest. “Do you remember the cliff?”When it comes to Yo, these days, So can remember little else. This, he has concealed from Soo—Ha Jin—as best he can.“You saved me,” Yo murmurs.“I wounded you.”“You tried to catch me.” Yo’s face twitches, like a spasm of pain has crossed it. “And after I fell, when I came back…I destroyed your life. Again.”So thinks of Eun. Thinks of what it was like to plunge cold steel through his youngest brother’s soft body. Thinks of how he would rather have fallen on the sword himself.In a way, he did.(Eun, of course, forgave him. Indeed, Eun said that there was nothing to forgive.)“It was long ago,” So whispers.“It feels like yesterday.”(It does.)Yo bites his lip. Then he shudders, as if long years are slipping over him like cold water. “I am sorry,” he says. “Sorry, to have lived like that.”So wants to fall on his knees.“I will live quietly.” Yo smiles; a wan, if hopeful thing. “I have been given another chance at life, So. I wanted to tell you that I see that.”“I, too.” So has to say something, and that is what he manages to say at last. “We have all been given another chance at life. You promised—before, you promised you would come back. Does that promise still stand?”Yo nods. He takes a step forward, and then another, and he hands So a white card with a number scrawled across the back.So takes a risk. Every risk, as far as they are concerned. He throws his arms around his brother and holds tight.It is a distance, a closeness, that they have only ever known as one of fists and dread and cold steel.After a moment that seems like an eternity, Yo shifts one arm up over So’s shoulders and grips back.
v.
It happens like this: Yo splits his time between Paris and Chinon. Jung has done much, through his connections, to recussicate Yo’s career.Yo supposes he should be grateful; he tries it, and finds it easier than expected.So much is easier than he expected.He spends his weekends with Kiha and his weekdays hard at work. It isn’t perfect—nothing is perfect—but it comes remarkably close, considering that he deserves exactly none of it.He is wandering down the Champ de Mars one evening when his phone pings.A text message. It might be Min Seo, with a picture of Kiha, but no—The number isn’t one saved to this phone.
Turn around.
He pauses. He turns.“Va te faire enculer,” Yeon Hwa says.It comes as no surprise that she speaks French. Perhaps he’d always known.Yo has nothing to say.She crosses the green in teetering Louboutins, until she is standing only a few inches from him. “I’m in love with you,” she sneers, which is a particularly Yeon Hwa way to declare it. “Do you think the past changes that?”He thought it would.“Yeon Hwa…”She slaps him. He catches her wrist and holds it.“How did you find me?”“So gave me your number and told me that you were being a fool.”He wonders how So knew. Maybe So knew more than he let on, all these years. At least as far as Yo’s heart was concerned.  “What a meddlesome brat.”“You’re the brat.” She struggles, not very hard, against him.Yo has missed her. Has missed her girlish face and her fierce eyes. He grazes her cheek with his fingertips and feels his pulse leap.“Did the past change you?” Yeon Hwa asks.“Yes,” he says. She frowns, and before she can answer, he adds, “But so did you.”It happens like this: they kiss, and she stays.
vi.
“Drink deeply!” Baek Ah commands, and they tip their cups of soju back.“Be careful,” Woo Hee says. “This is your fifth.”He smirks at her. “Heavy drinking is my specialty, yeobo.”“Yeobo!” Eun crows. “What an old man you are, hyung.”“Am I not your yeobo, too?” Seon Deok pouts beside him, and Eun is deeply offended.“Ya! Give me time!”Baek Ah laughs into his cup and squeezes Woo Hee’s hand. He flicks a glance to the other corner of the table, where So and Soo are practically attached at shoulder and hip. Soo—Ha Jin, aish, he will never get better at this—is running her hands through So’s hair, and he is laughing at her.So. Laughing.Nothing is perfect when so much is past. They all know that, they have all discovered it in their own ways and wounds. But happiness has never been about perfection, any more than art or music is, any more than the unfurling flower of life. Life is what matters, life and hope for all.Baek Ah could stay here in this house, with these people—this family—for as long as he is permitted to live.And Jung will come back as well, he thinks. He hopes. This is the duty Baek Ah was sometimes too afraid to take on in Goryeo: the duty of the open door.He reaches for the cup, for life, and drinks deeply.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

If you came to me with a face I have not seen, with a voice I have never heard, I would still know you. Even if centuries separated us, I would still feel you. Somewhere between the sand and the stardust, through every collapse and creation, there is a pulse that echoes of you and I. When we leave this world, we give up all our possessions and our memories. Love is the only thing we take with us. It is all we carry from one life to the next.- Lang LeavIn one corner of the Seoul Museum of History, an untitled sketch. Surprising realism for the time-period, the placard says.(How grateful they are, for Baek Ah.)“Tell me about her.” Ha Jin slips her hands through the crook of her husband’s arms, and he answers, soft and deep,“She was very much like you.”“How?” There are tears in her eyes; almost enough to blur the image of the ancient girl. “How was she like me?”“Strong-willed.” He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “A fighter.” Another kiss, this one to her temple. “And as soon as I saw her, I loved her.”“Even before you knew she was ours?”“Even before then.”Ha Jin breathes out a sigh, deep and aching. “She has your eyes. Baek Ah captured them well.”“Better than my official portrait,” So teases gently, but the smile does not reach the softness in his gaze. “Soo, do you believe we can do better?”They live in the mountains now, near Baek Ah’s summer home. After the wedding, Baek Ah and Woo Hee will spend some months there.Weddings are frequent, these days. With the tip of her thumb, Ha Jin feels the double rings on her left hand. These are his rings on her hand; the dark band on his slender, battered finger is hers.“Better?” she echoes, and she moves his hand to rest with hers against the growing curve of her belly. “Yes, my love. I believe we can.”