You've Grown Up Right
Mi Soryeong stole a sidelong glance at Hong Yumin, who was listlessly picking at her rice.
It was the day after the date. At a meal the two of them rarely shared alone, Hong Yumin could not pull herself together, as if some piece of her mind had gone missing. She pressed the grains down hard with her chopsticks and dropped bits of side dish — things that, on any ordinary day, would have been unthinkable.
"Ahem. Yumin, does the food taste bad?"
"Hm? No. It's delicious. As expected of you, Soryeong."
She answered the question normally enough. Only her face was normal. Her eyes were unfocused.
"...Did you do it at home?"
"Cough! Cough!"
The blunt question, flung because the silence was unbearable, set Hong Yumin coughing in a fit.
"What are you saying! As if I would have done such a thing with that man!"
"From that reaction, it seems you didn't."
"Of course not! Do I look like an easy woman to you!"
Color climbed Hong Yumin's neck. Mi Soryeong's eyes narrowed.
"For all that, the date seems to have pleased you. Your mind's gone completely somewhere else."
"Wh-when did I ever..."
Hong Yumin trailed off, short on conviction.
"Sigh. Our Yumin's gone and met the wrong man. This is a disaster."
"...What do you mean, the wrong man."
"Then it was a good meeting?"
"That one isn't even a man!"
At the outburst, Mi Soryeong let out a small giggle.
Only then did Hong Yumin realize she was being teased, and she ground her teeth.
"A nasty hobby, Soryeong!"
"Sorry, sorry. You weren't paying me any mind, so I got sulky."
Hong Yumin worked her embarrassment off as appetite. The rice she had been picking at vanished in an instant.
"I love it when you eat like that. Watching you eat is my favorite thing."
"And on ordinary days it isn't?"
"Oh, come on. It's lovely on ordinary days too."
Mi Soryeong slipped past the light complaint with practiced ease. Pushing the matter would only leave Hong Yumin the loser, so she turned the talk elsewhere.
"Now that I think of it, where have Dan Miryu and my disciple gone?"
"Mm..."
For a moment, Mi Soryeong looked troubled.
"Chuyeon's grown now, that's all. They went out somewhere."
"A matter of the Dan Clan?"
"Yes."
"Tied to the attack the other day?"
"......"
Mi Soryeong gave a bitter smile.
"Tsk. It must have been no small matter, for you to go turning out your shame before a child precious as gold."
"You noticed?"
"You were showing it plain. I'd be a fool not to see."
Hong Yumin scraped her bowl clean. Mi Soryeong looked down at rice gone cold.
"...Won't Chuyeon be disillusioned with us?"
"Who can say. It will depend on what the two of you have done."
Mi Soryeong flinched and brushed a hand down her arm.
"He will be, won't he?"
"Do not decide a child's thoughts for him. That is a thing a parent must not do."
"...Right."
Mi Soryeong looked around the lonely kitchen.
"...I hope Chuyeon comes through it all right."
"......"
Hong Yumin offered no comfort. Mi Soryeong's past rose, faint, before her eyes.
The karma of killing lies thick upon her.
An evil set against the good she carried wrapped Mi Soryeong like smoke.
Everyone has a mirror they wish to hide.
How many people truly want to bare the self that waits in the mirror opposite? Mi Soryeong was doing exactly that — for a child she loved more than her own life.
The Dan Clan's debt of sin has piled up for as long as the clan has endured.
The weight of it was more than Hong Yumin could measure.
And only now, in this age, is that debt being paid back?
She ached for her dear friend, restless and unable to settle for worry.
...I hope it is settled well.
Hong Yumin prayed that this household would not fall.
"Did the two of them go to the archive?"
"Yumin, how would you even— ah. You said you'd been mixed up in it, long ago..."
Mi Soryeong shook her head.
"Not there."
"Not there? Then where, I ask you?"
Remembering the day they had first met, Mi Soryeong opened her mouth.
"My brother-in-law's grave."
"...Ha."
Hong Yumin pressed a hand to her head and muttered.
"...There must have been a great deal of history there."
"There wasn't even that much. It was just..."
Only complicated. At the words Mi Soryeong let fall like a lament, neither of them spoke for a while.
"Nom, nom."
The only sound was San-gun, sprawled beside them, savoring a tube of cat treat.
After a long drive, Dan Chuyeon and Dan Miryu were at last able to step out into a lonely mountain valley where no one else came.
"Dad, where are we?"
Dan Chuyeon finally asked the question he had been holding down.
"A place where someone precious to Dad is sleeping."
"Your first love?"
"If it were, do you think your mother would have left me in peace?"
At his son's teasing, some of the tension eased from Dan Miryu's face as he looked up at the mountain.
"Son. Do you remember what the one who attacked you said?"
"...I don't. I was too out of my head."
Dan Chuyeon hedged. His son's consideration made Dan Miryu's chest ache.
"A story tied to that person is up there."
Leaving only those words, Dan Miryu walked into the mountain. To Dan Chuyeon, his father's back — broad as a great mountain — looked strangely small.
"A grave?"
Within the valley, a grave rose in a low mound. It was so small, with not even grass upon it, that one might have mistaken it for a heap of dirt at a glance, and there was no headstone carved with a name, so it was impossible to tell who lay there. The only thing that made it a grave at all was the small stone altar set before it.
Dan Miryu drew incense from a bag. He lit it with a lighter, and a bitter smell rose from the burning sticks. There was no censer to stand them in, so he laid the incense on its side atop the stone altar.
"This grave belongs to Dad's older brother."
"...Dad's older brother?"
Dan Chuyeon startled at who the grave belonged to.
"...Weren't you an only child?"
Not once in his life had he met anyone he could call a relative. He had never so much as seen the ancestral rites other families held, and he had never received New Year's gift money from kin. He had simply assumed his parents had cut ties with their relatives for some reason, or that every last one of them was already dead.
And now, out of nowhere — an older brother.
"If you counted only relatives, your dad would probably have the most in the whole country."
"...How many were there, for you to say that?"
"Who knows. So many I can't even remember."
Dan Chuyeon swallowed hard. A faint killing intent was leaking from his father.
"...Then where did they all go?"
"......"
In that silence, Dan Chuyeon's mouth went bone-dry. Somehow, he could already guess what would come next.
"...They're all dead. Every one of them. By Dad's hand."
"......"
Dan Miryu steadied his breath and laid his shame bare before his child. Dan Chuyeon barely caught himself before he took a reflexive step back.
"I didn't leave a single one alive."
Grandparents, nieces and nephews, uncles, aunts — not one exception.
"Everyone bound to the Dan Clan."
He had killed them all.
"......"
Dan Chuyeon's mouth opened and closed, again and again. That his own father was a murderer of historic scale was too great a shock for a high school boy.
"...Does Mom know about this?"
"...It's something your mother and I did together."
"Mom did?"
That gentle, delicate mother of his — an accomplice, the same as Dad?
"You're lying, right? Right?"
He wanted to deny it. He could not accept that the parents he loved more than anyone had been stained so foul.
"No — why would you do something like that? Huh? Why would Dad..."
Dan Miryu met his son's eyes.
Dan Chuyeon was afraid of those clear, peaceful eyes, and afraid of whatever words waited behind them. If his father justified the killing, or scrambled desperately for excuses, he did not think he would be able to look at him.
"Are you afraid of Dad?"
"...A little."
The corner of Dan Miryu's mouth curved. It was relief — relief that his child was far better than he himself had been. In that smile, Dan Chuyeon felt a small relief of his own. This was the father he had always known.
"There were reasons, weren't there?"
"Reasons. What a pretty word that is."
Dan Miryu brushed a hand once over the grave. Longing all but dripped from the touch.
"What Dad did was nothing more than a simple massacre. I hated the hard road, so I took the easiest one."
"How is hurting your own family the easy road..."
"Because Dad only ever walked a road someone else had laid down for him."
Dan Miryu looked at the one seated atop the grave.
Are you going to tell him?
I have to.
The boy's a high schooler now. There's no telling what it would do to a mind still that soft.
I can't put it off forever.
Dan Miryu turned his back on Dan Mihyeong.
Now that Brother's son has come, Chuyeon needs to know what he needs to know.
...Miryu.
He felt a light hand pat his back.
Don't carry it as a burden. Your child isn't weak.
Thank you, Brother.
You did nothing wrong.
"Chuyeon. From here on, the story I have to tell is the story of your father's shame."
The wind came howling through. Green hair, vast as a field, tossed in it.
"I'm ready. How bad could it really be."
Dan Chuyeon shrugged, as if he had composure to spare. Unease still flickered in his eyes.
"...Thank you."
Dan Miryu was glad of his son's resolve, and he made himself a vow. He would tell the boy everything he could. He would become a parent upright enough not to hide his wrongs from his child.
"The man in this grave was named Dan Mihyeong. Eldest son of your grandfather, Dan Hocheol, and the rightful heir of the Dan Clan."
And—
"The man who laid the road so that Dad could become head of the clan."
This—
was the story of one man who had stopped a clan from running wild.