Chapter 10
Volume 2
Unedited as of 9/28/2023
1
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The girl’s name was Sowan (素琓).
T/N
-White bead
As her name indicated, she was white and small as a marble. She was the girl Yeo-Heun had met in his 17th year after having left the main house of Tohwa to seek out a villa(別邸) with a hot spring for recuperation.
She was around fourteen or fifteen years old.
She had lost her mother when she was a child and drifted from one relative to another until she became a servant at the villa. The manager of the estate had once teased him about the two young people with particularly light complexions, saying that if a stranger saw them, they might think they were brother and sister.
The secluded villa was entirely undisturbed, however, Gok Yeo-Heun had troubled thoughts sprouting up in his mind like thorns that disturbed even the tranquility of the countryside. He couldn’t escape the memory of Gok Jinsung’s crimes against him, and day by day he grew more thorns that tore in his heart.
Meanwhile, the world outside was talking about how the Yi people, who had come down from the North, had finally accepted the submission(屈膝: bend the knee) of the Odaesae and completed the great work of unification, thus completely restructuring the Five Kingdoms, but that held no interest for him.
The unification of Zhongyang was an inevitability. It was just that it had come much sooner than expected. Tohwa had already submitted to the Imperial Court before Emperor Ja-Horyung, so it was something he should have been planning for.
The noisy world only exhausted his ears, but did little to smooth his jagged thoughts.
Sowan, who could not speak, was the only comfort he had. Most of the time if he was not in his bedchamber, he was in the hot springs that connected to it, and if there was any other discussion, he was horribly displeased, forcing Sowan to attend to his every need.
The two uncommunicative people had grown to resemble each other not only in their fair complexions but also in their moods.
He sometimes thought to himself. It would be better if he had a woman like her in his life.
The thought of returning to his home where Gok Jinsung would be, made his head pound.
Every once in a while, Gok Jinsung would send someone to check on Yeo-Heun, and every time he did Gok Yeo-Heun felt like he was going to explode into a rage, so he sent Sowan instead.
-Did he say anything?
Sowan would just stare at him wordlessly.
-Did you tell him I’m fine here?
She shook her head.
-In your eyes, you think I’m not doing well?
She looked away and nodded.
Strangely enough, that was more credible than the words of any authority. In the days that followed, Gok Yeo-Heun would often ask Sowan the same question. Most of the time, Sowan said he wasn’t doing well.
It was quite a while before Sowan finally nodded, as though saying he was okay.
Her wordless demeanor was comforting and it somehow made him feel alleviated. He seemed to feel like maybe facing Gok Jinsung wouldn’t be so terrifying after all, and that he could go back to what was waiting for him.
After he had just told the manager that he would be returning home soon, something else happened within his relationship with Sowan. Many times when he was alone in the hot springs, Sowan would come over and draw water from the hot springs.
When he asked Sowan why she was drawing the water, she simply bowed her head and didn’t answer. It wasn’t until the frustrated Gok Yeo-Heun asked the manager, and the manager put the water in the kitchen(屋)pavilion, that he realized what Sowan was doing.
The day was very cold. It was Sowan’s job to wash the bowls, but she had been scolded by the female cook for using cold water which didn’t remove the grease properly, so she thought of using the hot water from the spring instead.
That got Gok Yeo-Heun’s mind racing.
A young master who had been withering(竹子) away in the hot springs suddenly rolled up his sleeves and cut winter bamboo to make something out of it right then and there.
It made his wish to die soon seem ridiculous. Without even feeling the weakness in his hands, he built a water pipe system from the hot spring to the kitchen pavilion. He added a valve mechanism so that the hot water could be easily accessed from the pavilion. This was a small gesture of thanks to Sowan.
But even after he showed her how to use it properly, Sowan still came to fetch water from the hot spring.
He couldn’t help but feel disappointed that all his hard work had been for nothing. Even though his hands hurt he grabbed Sowan’s shoulders and said several times ‘I made this for you so stop looking past it and use it.’. Then Sowan threw the bucket of water down, sobbed, and ran away.
He was very worried about where the young girl might have gone on that cold day, and he also wondered why she was crying, so he asked someone else what happened.
-I’ll send the girl away, Lord Sogaju.
After receiving such an answer, Gok Yeo-Heun stamped his foot in frustration.
-I just want to know why. I’ll ask her if you can bring her back.
The Manager wrung their hands in distress.
-You really don’t know what’s wrong with her?
-I said I didn’t know.
-I should not be the one to answer that out loud. Not because I do not know, but because it is not something I should say.
-……?
-That child has set her heart on the Lord of Tohwa. She was just trying to see you more often, so she would take trips to the hot springs.
-Ah…….
He had vaguely glimpsed a sense of the order(情理) of things between people, and he now recognized why Sowan could see so well into his own condition.
Sowan was always looking at him with those eyes that looked as though they should have been so very talkative but instead were tight-lipped.
-So she liked me too much.
He remembered her crying as he spoke to her. She wore her heart on her sleeve, and he had learned that love was very different for each person. Some people wept uncontrollably, while others ran away because they couldn’t speak.
Others would forsake their hands and make a gift for someone else to see them smile.
Gok Yeo-Heun stayed for several more days waiting for Sowan to return, but they never met again. The manager told him that Sowan had gone to work as a domestic servant for a young Lady in another house.
In his grief, he broke the pipe system he had made for her. Somehow it felt like it shouldn’t be used by anyone else.
In retrospect, that may have been his first love.
He remembered that it was because of Sowan that he was able to make things again, and each time he did so, his imagination flashed back to her. He imagined a life with a wordless, calm woman like Sowan, maybe even marrying her and having children, starting a family. He would care for her, and she would understand him in some unspoken way. A silent, wordless serenity.
But that’s all he could imagine.
As he began to move his hands again, all the things he had buried deep within himself came flooding back. He could not deny that it was in his nature to build things on this earth.
When he returned home, he found the Emperor’s orders to build a new Imperial Palace. He believed it was his destiny.
A meeting with a young, ambitious Emperor who, at the age of twenty-nine, had consumed all the fertile and vast lands of the Zhongyang.
That fateful encounter…
At the age of seventeen, Gok Yeo-Heun believed that his fate was indeed beautiful.
If you’re reading this anywhere other than Foolishtranslationss.wordpress.com, it was stolen from the translator’s website. Reading this anywhere other than the translator’s website ensures that the translator may never translate any other works. Thank you.
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2
Several days must have passed.
There were quite a few chunks of time missing in between his sporadic snippets of memory. Throughout most of it, his memories were of him constantly vomiting. He vomited and vomited until he vomited blood and felt like he was going to throw up his intestines.
There were more and more people watching him, until one day, like an ebbing tide, they were all gone. Heun didn’t know if he was seeing things or dreaming.
All he could do was clench his jaw.
He had tried not to hate,
But it didn’t work. The resolve which he believed was the only thing he had left in him was burned clean away by the fierce hatred which had been revived.
He and Ja-Horyung were bound together, inseparable.
He could taste a hallucination of the flavor of the drug, and as it drifted across his tongue it set his heart on ablaze. It was a fire that could only be extinguished by putting it out with his own hands and scattering the ashes.
“……uh, ahh!”
Heun woke up and rolled over.
It was already midnight. The whole of Yiyang Palace was silent as though it had collapsed into exhaustion, and only the moonlight softly caressed the windows.
He was alone in the middle of the silence.
He paused for a moment, then craned his neck, unable to overcome the violent thundering of nausea, because if he allowed his thoughts to continue, his memories would surely return to that place.
-Give it to me. Give it to me……. huh? Because it’s fine to break me, huh?!
“……ugh!”
“My Lord……?”
The bedchamber door, which had been sealed under a veil of silence(不言), opened cautiously, and Yeonmyung’s voice was heard.
The moon shone down upon Heun’s back. Yeonmyung rushed over to him as he spat out a stream of bloody bile with his fists curled into a ball as she held a bowl to his mouth with her pale white hands.
“What’s wrong, My Lord? When the Royal Physician saw you falling asleep during the day he said it was just a matter of convalescing, but now you’re sick again? Would you like me to rub it a little for you?”
Her small hand touched his back. Despite her careful, compassionate gesture, he felt an unbearable wave of revulsion.
Heun shoved her hand away in frustration.
“Don’t touch me!”
“……Oh?”
Yeonmyung froze in place, staring wide-eyed. Her expression was familiar to him. He had seen this look many times before.
Heun realized he’d done this over and over again over the past few days. He’d vomited, blacked out, rampaged, and blacked out again……in the middle of it all, he screamed at the top of his lungs, unable to tolerate the presence of eyes watching him. He cried out to be left alone, even if it meant him ending up in a coffin.
When they could not do anything to help and he was restless, they asked for his permission and gave him a medicine that forced him to fall asleep, and only then did they leave the room.
He was not entirely wrong; what still lingered in Heun’s gut and poisoned him was not the drugged liquor he had been forced to consume, but the poison from a hundred years ago that he had swallowed with his own hands given to him by Wonje.
Heun pressed a hand to his head, forcing himself to remember.
“I……don’t like relying on other people’s hands, so please don’t……mind me.”
Seeing that Heun had calmed down, Yeonmyung let out a long breath.
“Ah, thank heavens. Yes, My Lord. Do you want me to ask the Royal Physician to bring you some more medicine to help you sleep?”
“No. I’m all right……,”
His voice trailed off mid-sentence. He didn’t know if he was really all right.
He couldn’t believe that his heart, which had only moments before been on a raging fire, even in his dreams, could have been reduced to ashes and cooled by the mere opening of his eyes.
Heun slipped his hand over his chest and pressed his palm to his heart. His palm served as his ears, transmitting the thudding sound.
I do not hate.
Never again…… I will never live this life again. Never again!
I shall not meet you for the third time!
So I won’t even hate you…….
“My Lord. Don’t be sick again.”
Yeonmyung’s eyes filled with tears as she put the soiled bowl aside.
“I don’t think any of us have slept well lately because we’ve been so worried about you My Lord. Everyone has been at a loss……and even the Emperor’s complexion has grown very gray. He comes here whenever he can……and even Sudang-taegam, who doesn’t know of any better way to help, has been prostrating himself on the floor so often that he’s nearly cracked his skull, My Lord.”
Thump, thump!
His heart thundered against his palm at the severity of her words. Heun pressed his hand to his heart tightly.
At that moment, he remembered the face of his wordless Sowan, whom he had long since forgotten. He recalled her simply because he wanted to hear the answer to his question: am I alright?
Was he alright? Was he ‘not hating’ him?
“My Lord, are you okay, you seem to be drifting away, do you want me to call for help?”
……Or maybe he was already too far gone.
“My Lord? Can you hear me? My Lord?”
As her breath became more frantic, Heun suddenly saw the length of a shadow outside the door.
It was inching closer, then drawing away. The intervals of the lengthening and retracting caused Heun to have a sinking suspicion in the pit of his stomach.
“Who is……outside?”
“What?”
Yeonmyung turned her head toward the door.
“Sudang-taegam is gone, it’s just me and the ladies of the Yiyang Palace now, so why do you ask?”
Heun shook off the quilt and stood up.
“Whoa, My Lord!”
He scrambled up onto his unsteady legs and yanked open the door. Suspicion sometimes yielded to a moment’s certainty, like fate.
He was there. Right where he was expected to be.
Heun found Ja-Ryung, his face frozen and his shoulders stiff. Their eyes locked. Those bottomless obsidian eyes which had always sucked him down like a tarpit. He momentarily recoiled in suspicion, then plunged back in as though this were his karma.
He said he wouldn’t hate him.
But how could he not, the Emperor was right there even now. As though it were his karma that he should open his eyes and find him there.
Therefore, this anger that would not die no matter how hard he tried was also his karma, just as he deserved.
Their eyes met and merged, and he slowly opened his mouth.
“……Is this good, now?”
His indignation was righteous.
“You’re worse than a goddamn dog!”
His hoarse, cracked voice was weak.
It was probably the reason that……everyone doubted their ears. They couldn’t believe the words had left the Honored Guest’s mouth with the intention of finding their way to the Emperor’s ears.
As everyone else froze, Heun’s hoarse, cracked voice broke through like an incoming easterly wind through a crack.
“……What?”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said you’re as lowly as a dog!”
Ja-Ryung’s stare roamed the periphery of Heun’s increasingly piercing blue eyes. He then lifted his eyes to meet Ja-Ryung’s.
“That’s all I want to say to you. You may have enjoyed my whimpering like a dog, but you’ve always been unable to tame me. In fact, I should have said this long ago. From the day you first stripped me naked and I begged before your eyes. Because you’re no better than a dog who doesn’t recognize what it means when a person’s heart is spat upon.”
“…….”
“Did you take pleasure in trampling me? Did you delight in violating my body in place of the Five Great Families who resisted you so bitterly? Did you feel that it was somehow a slap in the face to the Odaesae to see the Tohwa Sogaju rolling around at your feet? Did it please you so much that it became a habit, like an uncontrollable madness, that it consumed you? Then you are not just a dog, but a mad dog!”
Ja-Ryung froze where he stood, and Heun moved to approach him.
Ja-Ryung looked at him as though he were a stranger. It was the same for Heun. For he too seemed like a stranger to himself.
The next moment, as he raised his arm a sound was heard that should not have been heard.
Smack!
“……!”
“Aah!”
Ja-Ryung was a beat ahead as he raised his hand for Jimok-cheon to stop. Ja-Ryung’s head then turned back into place.
His cheeks, bearing a red imprint of Heun’s hand, brought back before their eyes that which no one wanted to believe. Astonishment had caused everything to stop, frozen in time.
In the meantime, Heun’s voice continued, steadfast.
“I have said nothing up until now, not because I could tolerate you, but because I already knew you would never listen. Now that I have spoken up, kill me or spare me, do with me as you will. What I fear the most is not that I will die here in vain, but that you will not have the guts to kill me.”
There was no use in trying not to hate him and there was no use in hoping to be a mere silent speck. Heun had given up on the Emperor, on himself, on everything that surrounded them.
The more he tried to become lighter, the heavier he continued to become. For every penny he removed, a pound was added. It wouldn’t stop even in death.
Even before coming face to face with the Emperor, Heun had already remembered him. He had not forgotten, nor was he likely to forget.
“Kill me. I’d prefer it. There will come a day when my soul will wear out and crumble to dust, and I would rather wait for that day than continue to endure you. Kill me. Kill me if you are a man at all.”
A blue light blossomed in Heun’s eyes.
If you can’t stab me, don’t bother saying you hate me.
He had been right about one thing, he realized it now.
He should have done it years ago. If he had stabbed him, Wonje would have killed him in turn.
The Emperor was no better than a dog, and he was stupider than a dog.
How the hell did they end up tangled together?
Like a breached embankment, his voice burst forth.
“I told you to kill me! Why? I’ve cursed at you and struck you! Don’t pretend you’re man! Don’t pretend to be compassionate when you’re no better than a dog! Don’t you ridiculous!”
Thwack!
The sound of a slap rang out once again. After striking Ja-Ryung, the wound on his wrist that hadn’t healed burst open staining the thin cotton cloth. The anger he’d been so careful to keep hidden was also red as his blood.
“Kill me! Kill me! Can’t you hear me? Do your ears only go deaf at times like this?”
Heun raised his hand again, wide-eyed,
“Ahh, My Lord, My Lord, you can’t do this, don’t do this!”
Yeonmyung held onto him from behind, and Jimok-cheon, who hadn’t moved until then, drew his sword soundlessly. His astonishment suddenly morphed into killing intent sharpening the air around them.
With a single step, Jimok-cheon would have stepped forward and slashed at Heun. However, Ja-Ryung was one step ahead of him and grabbed Heun’s wrist. As Jimok-cheon recoiled and drew back his sword, Ja-Ryung snatched Heun’s forearm and spun him around.
Ja-Ryung headed for the bedchamber as Heun’s feet dragged across the floor.
“Let go!”
Heun struggled. Jimok-cheon spewed a stream of words.
“Your Majesty, how could you……!”
If there was any sense taking place in the room, he would have pointed out what the deranged Guest had done. However, all Jimok-cheon could say was that he hoped the Emperor would give him the order.
Instead, Ja-Ryung replied,
“If anyone utters idle words, cut out their tongues.”
“Your Majesty!”
Bang!
The door to the bedchamber slammed shut. Jimok-cheon, who had instinctively rushed in front of it, lifted his hand as if he were going to open the door, then narrowly stopped himself.
“What the hell……, who the hell is he……,”
His confusion elongated like a shadow beneath his feet. Jimok-cheon felt himself growing increasingly unsteady and realized the cause of it was this confusion.
He felt himself leaning more intensely and realized it was because of this confusion. Jimok-cheon was afraid because as an Emperor, it was not how Ja-Ryung was supposed to stand.
“Your Majesty…….”
Jimok-cheon swallowed back his fear with a groan and turned around. More than thirty imperial guards and high-ranking officials were cowering with similar fears.
“You have seen nothing, and you have heard nothing.”
The more frightened a man was, the sharper his sword was. Jimok-cheon’s blade flashed as though it could shred the moonlight that fell upon it.
“For those who disobey, the Imperial command will be carried out.”
“…….”
At last, his fear was silenced.
⚔ ⚔ ⚔ ⚔ ⚔
Bang!-
Ja-Ryung tried to sit Heun down on the bed and Heun tried to push him away. As they struggled, their limbs entangled and bumped into objects, making noise.
“Hold still!”
Ja-Ryung ended up pressing down on Heun with his entire body.
His tightly pressed body undulated intermittently. Neither of them understood how this kind of strength could come from Heun’s body, who had barely opened his eyes after suffering for so many days.
The brilliant blue radiance in his eyes which had been renewed, shifted viciously, as though they were seeking to strike at Ja-Ryung’s throat.
“Stop acting like a fool. You should cut me into pieces and throw them to the dogs one by one, then you’ll have some semblance of dignity returned to you.”
“Dignity?”
Ja-Ryung lips twisted as he bent Heun’s arms over his head and pressed down.
“Kill me. Go ahead. Didn’t you say I was making a fool of you? No, not at all. You have made yourself into a fool in my presence. You’re no better than an animal that can stand on its hind legs. Aren’t you tired of it, too? Kill me and end it.”
The arm that was held by Ja-Ryung made a cracking sound. Seeing Heun’s brow contorted in pain, Ja-Ryung released his grip with an unhappy expression.
However, as soon as his hand was released, he clenched his teeth and lifted his hand to grasp at Ja-Ryung’s throat again.
Once he let go of his grip, Heun’s rage transformed into a rampaging madness.
There was no way they could un-walk the difficult road they had already taken. All Heun could do now was to let go and follow this course to the end. Heun was yelling like he had lost his mind. He could not differentiate Wonje from the person who was speaking to him now.
There was so much bottled up inside of him that he thought he’d already emptied, and once he started to let it out, it surged up and out of the depths of his heart and threatened to tear at his throat.
“Kill me! Don’t tell me you still pine for my body! Don’t be ridiculous! That’s senseless, even necrophilia(屍姦) wouldn’t be beyond a madman like you. How can a body that’s so weak and drenched in drugs that it can’t even handle its own waste be any different from a corpse? How much longer are you going to be like this? How long am I going to be trapped with you like this? How long until this fucking ends?”
How much longer, until when?!
What was the reason that he had to suffer all of this? Why? Gok Heun no longer held anything that Gok Yeo-Heun of his previous life held.
“I’m no longer the Sogaju of Tohwa. No matter how much you might abuse me, I’m no longer of the Odaesae, they will not put it in their sights! Nevertheless, you still persist……! Why do you still treat me like this?”
“Damn it! What does that have to do with anything!?”
Suddenly, Ja-Ryung snapped in response to Heun’s words.
He felt a lump rise in his throat. Ja-Ryung took advantage of the momentary silence to pull his hand away.
“What the hell do I care about those other things that are not you!? You’re the only thing in my eyes. What do the fields of Mungang mean in this world next to you?”
Ja-Ryung laced his fingers through Heun’s and then pressed down. As his injured wrist tilted, Heun bit his lip.
The strange thing was, it wasn’t his arm around him, nor his body pressed against his that was most uncomfortable for Heun at that moment. It was his piercing gaze.
He wasn’t just staring past his flesh, it felt like it was like an arrowhead piercing all the way to his bones. Not only breaking Heun, but breaking himself as well.
His voice trailed off for a moment. He spoke in a low voice to Heun with a broken expression.
“How……how can it be that you don’t know… someone as clever as you?”
“What……I don’t know what?”
The malice in him that had been raging out of control stopped as though it had hit a wall.
Perhaps it was because Ja-Ryung was removing the blood-soaked bandages with an expression that he had never seen on Wonje’s face before.
He gripped his hand tightly to prevent it from moving anymore, and his fingers moved uncomfortably as he slowly removed the blood-soaked cloth from his wound, as though he too were injured.
“This is why it won’t heal.”
Suddenly, Heun realized that he wasn’t moving uncomfortably and slowly, but rather he was moving cautiously. Heun rolled his eyes at the absurdity of the thought.
“What…… are you doing, stop fooling around and kill me.”
“Don’t do anything so foolish next time.”
Ja-Ryung looked at him with the same eyes he’d seen once before, the same eyes that seemed to treasure and cherish something so dear and precious.
“You have done two things wrong today, the first was to speak ill of the Emperor in the presence of my people……,”
Heun came to his senses and tried to push Ja-Ryung away.
“G,Get off me……!”
His body succumbed to Ja-Ryung’s force, in spite of the venom he was pouring out like a burst dam, and in spite of the fact that Ja-Ryung continued to put up with it. The feeling of helplessness was quickly replaced by hatred, forming a solid foundation. It had always been this way with Wonje too, as well as the resignation that things would always be this way that always followed. At the thought of not being able to escape, he twisted harder and harder, resisting.
“Let go of me……kill me……, come on!”
He bound him, and I couldn’t untangle himself from him. It wasn’t simply a matter of movement.
Their relationship always ran in circles, bound by the shackles of Heun’s hatred. The more he hated him, the stronger their connection became. Just as the drug kept his hunger running in circles, his hatred kept his mind running in circles.
He spent a hundred years trying to forget the sensations he’d experienced over a decade by Wonje’s side. Yet with each drop of hatred, they returned to him. Just as a drop of poison can taint the entirety of the water.
Ja-Ryung carefully released his grip and spoke.
“Ilcheon’s swords are heavy, but they are never slow. If I had been but half a step behind, who knows what would have happened to you. And your second mistake was to strike me with this hand.”
“Doesn’t matter. No matter how many times I strike you…… a thousand times…… ten thousand times would not be enough……,”
His mouth tasted of blood. Heun quickly regained his composure and savored the bitterness of hatred on the tip of his tongue.
Ja-Ryung raised Heun’s uninjured hand this time.
“You have two hands if you wanted to slap me, you should have used your other hand instead.”
And with that, he slapped himself across his face using Heun’s good hand.
Smack!
His hand tingled from the intense impact. Heun saw his handprints etched into Ja-Ryung’s face.
It was a different sensation than when he’d slapped him while cursing at him.
Somehow, he didn’t understand. What was going on at the moment?
Why was a man with Ja-Horyung’s face hitting himself as though he had done something wrong?
The Ja-Horyung Heun knew was incapable of such a thing.
“N,No, now……,”
“Is it not enough? If so, do more.”
Pop, Smack, Pop.
Ja-Ryung locked eyes with Heun and forced him to slap him in the face again and again until finally, those tough, brazen lips were split open and blood ran down them. At some point, Heun’s hands started to hurt. The pain that he hadn’t been aware of when he lunged at Ja-Ryung was reawakened as he watched Ja-Ryung begin to behave as strangely as he had.
“He……!”
Heun seized his hand back and snatched it away.
“Is it enough? If not, do more.”
Pop, Smack, Pop.
Ja-Ryung locked eyes with Heun and forced him to slap him in the face again and again until finally, those tough, brazen lips were split open and blood ran down them. At some point, Heun’s hands started to hurt. The pain that he hadn’t been aware of when he lunged at Ja-Ryung was reawakened as he watched Ja-Ryung begin to behave as strangely as he had.
“He……!”
Heun seized his hand back and snatched it away.
The fact that he had almost told Ja-Ryung to stop became an invisible bond that tightened around his neck. Ja-Ryung smiled dryly through his bloodied lips as he looked at Heun.
“You couldn’t stab me when I told you to, and now you can’t even hit me properly.”
“…….”
From inside Ja-Ryung eyes’s Heun could perceive a laugh so crisp that it could almost be heard.
“Don’t you dare talk about escaping me with that paltry resolve of yours. Don’t you realize I’m much stronger than you are? Unless you plan on tearing me apart with your own hands, nothing will change between us. I will keep you, and you will not be rid of me. If you are truly that tired of this……,”
Ja-Ryung paused for a moment and expanded his smile. The dry laugh seemed to cut his already torn lips even deeper and wider.
“……I don’t know about that either, so just keep hitting me. You say ten thousand times isn’t enough, then count ten thousand and then count to ten thousand again, and I’ll be reduced to rubble, just like you said.”
It wasn’t so much the endless, bottomless abyss of time that was exhausting, it was the fact that it could be repeated ten thousand times more.
It was a person looking at him, a man, many times stronger and harder than he was.
“T,Tell me…… why……,”
Why you, why me?
Why did he go to such lengths to………..have him?
“I don’t understand the why either. All I know now is that I will.”
It was a person looking at him, a man, many times stronger and harder than he was.
“What the hell……,”
“Perhaps this is how I am fulfilling a promise I made to you. I don’t know any other way.”
Heun didn’t understand what that meant.
“A……promise?”
Was there such a thing? When had he ever made him a promise?
For a moment, Heun was confused as to whether he was Ja-Ryung or Wonje. He’d only known him for about a month, but Wonje had known him for about ten years. If Wonje had been reincarnated in Ja-Ryung’s body, he would have known by now.
Ja-Ryung wasn’t like Wonje. He would act like Wonje, but when the moment came to repeat what Wonje had done, Ja-Ryung would always stop short. When Ja-Ryung saw him rubbing himself against him after taking the drug, it was Ja-Ryung who stopped him.
It was as though he was carrying a restraint around his neck.
“Yes.”
With a very measured movement, so that he didn’t touch Heun’s flesh, he lifted a handful of Heun’s hair.
He pressed his swollen red lips to his hair. Gently, as though he were touching a snowflake that would soon melt, instead of a hair.
“…….”
His breath caught in his throat, and without ever touching his body, Ja-Ryung let go of Heun’s hair.
“For me, from the moment you gave me your hair, this became the land of a thousand years.”
“……!”
Heun’s opened his eyes wide.
There was a time when such a thing was said.
A time when the word ‘promise’ didn’t sound so alarming, so odious, and so lifeless as it does now.
There was a beautiful man who promised to fly with him across to ‘the land of a thousand years’ and beyond, a man he knew was his destiny the moment he laid eyes on him.
If you’re reading this anywhere other than Foolishtranslationss.wordpress.com, it was stolen from the translator’s website. Reading this anywhere other than the translator’s website ensures that the translator may never translate any other works. Thank you.
3
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When he returned to Tohwa, everything had changed.
Gok Yeo-Heun’s heart no longer felt as troubled by Gok Jinsung as it had before, not because he rationalized his actions or because of his compassion for him, but because he could see how self-serving and hypocritical his tears were.
-Have you gotten better, are you alright now?
He turned his cool gaze toward Gok Jinsung and responded coldly.
-If my body was not broken in the first place, there would be no need for you to ask me whether I’m better or not.
Gok Jinsung tried to hold on to him with a pleading gaze.
-I was worried so much, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.
The desperation Gok Jinsung exuded no longer elicited Gok Yeo-Heun’s sympathy. He was quite aware of how surprisingly cold his heart had grown, and he practically delighted in it.
-Is that so, however, it was probably for nothing because I was not worried about you.
He couldn’t quite remember the reaction on his face. He thought perhaps he must have turned away from him.
-That’s…… what do you mean?
-I realized that a person’s affection had its limits.
Gok Yeo-Heun finished his words as indifferently as he could.
-I got to know a girl who didn’t speak but had talkative eyes. I found her beautiful, and I wanted to stay with her for a long time. I felt like doing things for her over and over again, and I was reminded that I was a man. However, as long as I was the master of conversation and she was a mute orphan, it could never work. So I persevered, and at some point, I decided to bury it in the bottom of my heart, because it could never be anything more than a brotherly love.
At that moment, he felt Gok Jinsung’s forceful grip on him.
-What are you talking about?!
-Don’t touch me!
I shook him off and called for his personal guards.
-From this moment on, I intend to treat you not as my elder brother, but instead, I will only treat you as I would anyone else as The Sogaju of Tohwa. If you still want to be heard, please keep your distance.
The memories of the pain he had caused Heun were all just a waste. They withered and turned to dust, and dissipated in his heart. All that remained he made so thorny that they couldn’t touch him.
-You’ve never treated me the with respect I deserved as Sogaju of Tohwa. At this rate won’t I be in trouble when I become Gaju? I’ll have to rectify that mistake from now on.
-…….
Gok Jinsung’s red-rimmed eyes, which looked as though they might burst with red tears at any moment, didn’t hurt him in the slightest.
No, of course, it should not have hurt him! Because human affection should be able to be buried when it comes time to bury it.
Sowan left him without a word of farewell. Instead of seeking her out and holding on to her, Gok Yeo-Heun chose to let her go. He believed that love was about bearing the pain for the sake of the other, not pushing the pain off onto the other to bear.
Gok Jinsung was incorrect. Gok Jinsung couldn’t endure his own sick longing, so he took it all out on Gok Yeo-Heun. He never even considered labeling it as merely just his burden.
-I’m going to the Imperial Capital soon. I heard that you had offered to escort me, however, I already told you that it was unnecessary. I don’t know what kind of thoughts you harbor in your heart, being that you do not look upon me as your Sogaju. So now I will say my farewells to the Gaju, and then I’ll take my leave.
Gok Yeo-Heun turned his back on Gok Jinsung, who couldn’t say a word.
The next day, Gok Jinsung’s behavior changed. He rallied his allies within Tohwa and traveled separately to meet with his clansmen. It was said that he had his eye on the position of Gaju of Tohwa.
Days of exhaustion followed. When Gok Yeo-Heun toured the capital and the palace grounds, Gok Jinsung and his men openly opposed his plans. They argued that the project was too ambitious and that there was no reason for the Gok family to be involved in the Imperial Family’s surveying and planning.
Gok Yeo-Heun felt incensed by their refusal to consider more than a single generation ahead.
For him, building a palace was not a case of whether or not he was loyal to the Empire of Pa. Building such a massive city without a proper foundation was contrary to everything he had ever understood about architecture.
Not considering the use of the buildings or the lives of the people who would be living in them was only a half-hearted measure. To build a structure of such magnitude that would only last a generation was something he considered to be as unworthy as not building at all.
This stance jeopardized his position as Sogaju’s within the Gok family.
Then a question became a pivotal determiner, it was as though the decision came down to whether or not he was worthy of becoming a Sogaju based merely on whether or not he could be an excellent architect. It was the clansmen whom Gok Jinsung had recruited to his side who raised their voices loudest, arguing that if a person born into the family could put others’ interests ahead of his own clans, could he really be worthy of being Gaju someday?
They brought up how he had agreed to abdicate the position of Sojagu, and how Gok Yeo-Heun had stayed in his hot spring villa for a long time using recuperation as an excuse. Gok Yeo-Heun thought that neither he nor Gok Jinsung would be capable of bringing up how it had come about, however, it was as though Gok Jinsung didn’t even fear being exposed, and he seized on any manner of things to tarnish Gok Yeo-Heun’s reputation.
Gok Yeo-Heun’s anger which had been building up, overflowed into disillusionment.
All those years of suffering, believing that Gok Jinsung’s actions were caused by love, became nothing more than a fistful of lies he had convinced himself of. The more Gok Yeo-Heun pushed him away, the more Gok Jinsung sought to drag Gok Yeo-Heun down.
This continued until the moment when he finally faced Wonje.
-I have been sketching out Taewoongseong Palace.
He had never seen a man quite like this one before.
He was twenty-nine years old, a Northern Lord who seemed like he would be more comfortable on a horse than in a bed.
It was him. His strong, rugged bronze skin was tanned by the sun, and each brow was like graphite. His body was large, but not bulky; it was strong and lithe. His long, lean limbs flowed from him as smoothly as a river. His voice was deep and rich, and no matter what he said, it was impossible not to listen.
This man, who had the Five Great Kingdoms prostrate themselves at his feet before he had even reached his thirtieth year, was unlike any other human being Gok Yeo-Heon had ever seen. He was not constrained by anything. He was unbound by convention, the old ways, or by the strictures of anything.
He was an Emperor, but he was not confined by being an Emperor. His mind was broader than it was profound, he was more intuitive than learned. He was the strongest of all the men he knew, and therefore the freest.
It was a time for him when Tohwa’s stubborn hedges were considered nothing less than a stranglehold.
Gok Yeo-Heun wanted to be like him, to be as free as he was. He wanted to throw off the old shackles of the Tohwa that held him down and fly farther and farther into the world.
-This is my palace?
-Yes, Your Majesty…………!
Ja-Ryung accepted the sketch of Taewoongseong Palace that Gok Yeo-Heun had presented to him as an illustration, and he laughed unexpectedly. Unsure of what that meant, the nervous Yeo-Heun was puzzled until Ja-Horyung set the drawing down on the table.
It was not a drawing of Taewoongseong Palace, but a doodle of a rough calculation of the tributaries of the Jisa River. This meant that someone had tampered with his meticulously drawn draft which he had prepared to present to the Emperor. The face of Gok Jinsung quickly flashed before his eyes, but it would be pointless to speak of it here.
He bit his lip in confusion, then nodded.
-Yes. The foundation will be laid first. A land without any flowing waters will be habitable, but it will be stagnant. Such a place can only borrow from the works of others, but it cannot shine on its own.
-Continue.
-I will build a palace that is a metric in and of itself, one that will stand firmly on this earth for a hundred years, even for a thousand years, I will divide every stream that flows through the capital evenly. Neither the gold mines of the North nor the granaries of the South will be able to match the breadth of Pa that a thousand years of water control will bring.
-According to your drawings, it will take more than three years just to lay the foundation.
-I understand, however, three years is a very short time compared to the thousand years of prosperity that will follow.
Ja-Ryung locked eyes with Gok Yeo-Heun’s.
His clear ebony eyes pounded at his heart, and at that time he thought that those eyes might contain an insight(眼識) as vast as the depths in which they could see.
He was not wrong.
-The man who speaks of a thousand years is a man who has a mindset like a white-capped(腦天:) mountain whose snow crystals(雪晶) have never melted in ten thousand years¹.
T/N
Looking so far ahead they take no notice of the needs of the present: Disconnected and Out Of Touch.
Ja-Ryung lifted the drawing of Yeo-Heun’s and laughed like clinking glasses.
-Well, what’s the point of wishing for prosperity in the future when the present will melt and flow away?
Gok Yeo-Heun was mesmerized by his laughter.
-Alright, then come with me. Let’s go to a ‘land a thousand years in the future’, and I will be your wings.
He felt as though he had already sprouted wings. A new land side by side with him. Thus, for the first time in his seventeen years of life, Gok Yeo-Heun found his destiny in Ja-Horyung.
His hopes were not in vain. The Emperor accepted all of Gok’s designs, even the ones that everyone in Tohwa insisted were too far-fetched. The man’s wings were as strong and broad as he was beautiful, as though they were carved from a million years of graphite as he stood atop the highest peak on the continent, the gateway to the Immortal Realm. And at the Emperor’s side, the Tohwa was not so oppressive, nor was the Gok Jinsung so troublesome.
Gok Yeo-Heun trusted in a strong embrace, one that would never break him again. He believed that the Emperor’s presence was exactly what he had been looking for, that with him, he could truly see the land of a thousand years in the future.
So on the day that Ja-Horyung smashed his foot, Gok Yeo-Heun wept aloud.
It wasn’t just his foot he had broken. It was the wings they were supposed to be flying on, the wings they were supposed to be strengthening day by day.
He who had promised him flight had bound him to the ground with the heaviest chains.
Worse than the whipping and the shackles was the promise. Even as he hobbled along on his ruined feet, the promise was so vibrant that it haunted him every night.
From then on, he thought of one thing,
Just as the lust Wonje had for him was repulsive, so too was the fact that he disguised it as love.
He wondered if he would have been blinded by him in the first place if he had not passed off that ridiculous idea of traveling to a far-off ‘land of a thousand years’ with him as though it were a promise.
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“You…… you are……,”
He was Ja-Horyung!
“Yes.”
Over the back of the hand that held Heun’s hair, he could see his eyes, the same eyes.
This is not the end. You will never be rid of me.
They were the eyes that said those words.
I will never do it again. Never again.
They were the eyes that said those too.
Heun saw both the Emperor who crushed his foot and the man who had held it and sucked each toe meticulously.
He was Wonje who promised him wings and Ja-Ryung who forced illicit drugged liquor down his throat. He was the one who cut off all the concubine’s heads in a single day, and the one who took his hair in exchange for his pleas for others to be spared.
And then,
“A,Again…… again…… not again.”
He was the one that Heun would give his life to never see again!
There was a cracking and a tapping sound. It wasn’t until Ja-Ryung stuck a finger in and forced his mouth open that he realized his jaw was clenched and his teeth were gnashing against each other.
“Get away……get away from me!”
Heun slapped Ja-Ryung’s hand away. Ja-Ryung stared at his silently rejected hand, then raised his head.
“You may have died and been reborn, but the same thing remains: you don’t understand me, and I forget every time that you don’t understand me. Does that mean there’s no point in trying to be different?”
Ja-Ryung’s words pierced Heun’s ears and made them hurt like thorns pricking them.
“How long…… since when. Since when have you been toying with me? You’ve known all along!”
“I haven’t known long. I wish I had known sooner than you, but I was late.”
“Don’t lie! You’re……!”
“I’m not lying.”
“You are!”
Heun shouted, pouring all the strength he could muster into his voice.
There was only one thing he wanted to say: You are no better than a dog. I would rather you killed me. Let me hate you to my heart’s content.
But to that, Ja-Ryung had already answered: I am stronger than you. Unless you intend to kill me, nothing will change between us.
So he had to ask him. It was not what he wanted to say, but what he needed to know.
Why? Why was he doing this to him? Why, what was the point of him holding on to Heun so tightly? And why did it have to be him?
“You don’t have the right to say that. Why would you say that when you were the one who threw it away in the first place! You broke it!”
Why did he weigh him down with the heaviest burdens when it was he who said he would give him wings?
“If you were going to break it, you shouldn’t have made it in the first place! Why did you make me…… why! Why did you do that to me? Why!”
Why did he…… blind him with such words?
Ja-Ryung replied. It was an answer that would never be an adequate answer for Heun.
“Because I was blinded by you.”
“……What?”
“Because you were always too radiant for me, like you could fly away at any moment. I was trying to hold on to you somehow.”
That wasn’t an answer, and what he offered was hardly an acceptable answer for Heun.
“But I don’t use that as an excuse, I know you think I’m a dog, but I don’t do that. What I have left to say is still the same. You can’t go alone. It will be useless. Even if you die, you’ll be reborn, and you’ll find that you’ve come back to me.”
As he stirred, his own body heat swept over him like a fever.
The red handprint on one side of Ja-Ryung’s face made him seem like both Ja-Horyung and unlike Ja-Horyung. Whenever he spoke, the tear in his lip parted shallowly and bled.
It felt like an excuse. He said he wouldn’t make excuses, but he felt like he was actually making them with his whole body.
“Stop and rest.”
Ja-Ryung turned his back. The receding figure of his back grew smaller and smaller, like an excuse.
He paused and raised his hand in front of the closed door.
His shoulders wavered. Like someone who was about to turn back.
But he quickly straightened his shoulders.
“I’ll come to see you when you’re asleep. You won’t have to see me when you’re awake.”
Creeeeek, thump!
He left the room without a second glance back.
“Don’t make excuses…….”
Heun spoke into the void.
“What kind of love is it that blinds a man and makes him insane, and…… what kind of love does a man have for another man to make him do such a thing? It was not love with you, nor my brother. Don’t make excuses to me with such words.”
His exhausted head dropped heavily between his shoulders.
“It’s not an excuse…it isn’t.”
It was the same of himself. It was also true of him as he realized how ridiculous that shallow excuse of ‘being blinded‘ was.
What he needed to forget was so very heavy that it could not be released even in death, and the excuse given in words was so absurdly light. No amount of excuses could balance the weight between the two sides. It wasn’t sufficient, it was useless.
So he wouldn’t make excuses either.
Heun muttered words toward no one in particular.
“You were blinded too……don’t say that. Don’t tell me it’s something you do not understand. Don’t tell me you were once like that as well…Don’t say such things.”
Heun flopped down onto the bed with a thud.
His lean shoulders creaked loudly, as though they were a noisy substitute for his mouth.
If you’re reading this anywhere other than Foolishtranslationss.wordpress.com, it was stolen from the translator’s website. Reading this anywhere other than the translator’s website ensures that the translator may never translate any other works. Thank you.
Foolish Translations 
Hi. I can’t click on the chapter 11 for some reason, it always redirects me to C10 TT anyone else facing the same issue?
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thank you so much for letting me know:) it’s should be fine now.
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I feel that this chapter is exceptionally heavy ( ̵˃﹏˂̵ )
Thank You for the new update (๑ơ ₃ ơ)♥
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