Opening Stones (2)
And the child prodigy who had spread his stall at Dongdaemun was none other than—
"Yes. That would be me."
I gave my homemade shoe-shine box a rattle with tiny, snow-white fingers no thicker than fiddleheads, finished setting out my wares, and sank down against the barracks wall of the Hadogam, slipping into thought.
How did it come to this?
Truly—how had I ended up here? Anyone would wonder. You there. How exactly did you get from the heart of Seoul all the way to this?
"How? Simple. I caught a nuke to the face and got scattered."
I let out a dry little laugh that no child should have been capable of. Hah.
Boom.
I had been watching a nuclear fireball drop over Seoul in real time. Then, in the space of three short seconds, my vision filled with something else entirely: the mold-spotted ceiling of a shabby thatched hut.
Waaaaaaaaah!
I had no more idea than anyone else what had happened. One moment I was wrapped in that beautiful scarlet light—and the next, in a world spun a hundred and eighty degrees from everything I knew, I was wailing with a newborn's cry before I even understood that the voice was mine.
"I was plenty rattled, I'll tell you that."
A man well past sixty—well past the great turning of a sixtieth year—handed a trial this absurd.
And more bewildering still was the identity of the new flesh.
"Joseon."
I rubbed a chin still downy with baby hair and let out a short, incredulous sigh at a present I could chew over all day and still not swallow.
Born in the year 1875, in a backwater of Masan-bang, Pyeongsan Prefecture, Hwanghae Province.
The original owner of this body—the child's first name—was Yi Seung-ryong.
"Seung-ryong."
It was the first thing that reached my newly opened ears, whispered by a man and a woman who called themselves my parents. Eighteenth-generation descendant of the illustrious Taejo Yi Seong-gye. Closer in, sixteenth-generation descendant of Grand Prince Yangnyeong.
Two elder brothers had already left their parents' hands to the measles. The title of sixth-generation only son, precious as gold, was simply thrown in on top.
And then—
"Recently, a middle-aged fool who couldn't even read his own future stepped off his road, put a word in Lady Kim Mal-ran's ear, and ended up with a name he never asked for. So here I am: a little brat called Syngman Rhee, three syllables not a soul in the Republic of Korea would fail to recognize."
That was the truth of it.
This boy, who in another life would have become the founding father of the Republic of Korea.
That boy was me.
And so the days had brought me here.
"...Please. I need a little time. Just a little."
I looked up in silence at the Byeolgigun officer standing over me, his face drawn tight, his uniform and still-unfaded epaulets worn as neat as a pin.
Major Woo Beom-seon of the Byeolgigun.
If you understand that most of my earnings came from the wealthy Byeolgigun cadets training at the Hadogam, you will have no trouble guessing that the man who had taken to barking at his soldiers to polish their own boots in the name of military discipline was the very villain who had slashed my income to ribbons.
So it was about now, then.
This was a man who made a point of sharing the rough barracks with his troops, who wore the model soldier's spirit like a badge and carried himself as if his posture alone could hold a formation together. And yet today he had come looking for me with a face that would not keep still.
He went to Min Young-ik over a matter of insubordination, caught a beating for his trouble, and walked out of the service.
I already knew why he had come. The shards of a life already lived had given me the cause, and I could guess the rest well enough.
"Please, come. I've been waiting."
"...For me?"
So I met the counsel he asked for without a flicker of hesitation. I welcomed it, even. I hid the joy of two years' work proving not to have been wasted behind the pure smile of a seven-year-old boy.
"Sit down."
He swayed left and right as he came, nothing like the solid martial man he had been, wound tight with nerves. I tapped a finger against the shoe-shine chair as if the matter were nothing at all, then drew out a strip of linen with a practiced hand and took it in both fists.
He settled onto the seat I indicated, awkward and half-crouched, and stretched both feet toward me. From that alone I could read, more or less, the spirit in which this soldier had been living.
I pointed at his feet.
"Your boots. They're quite filthy, aren't they?"
"Ah."
"Of every man who walks out of the Hadogam, yours are the dirtiest."
He would not meet my eyes. He studied my face and my fingers from the side, the two of us circling each other. I tossed the remark at him without explaining it, and began to talk as I beat the dust from his tightly bound puttees.
"I've been watching from just up the way. Among the gentlemen who come and go from the Hadogam, the ones who don't ride a palanquin or an official sedan are the rare ones. I found that rather funny."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Do those gentlemen intend to travel that comfortably on a battlefield where you can't tell friend from foe? Oh—it's a fine way to get shot. Or perhaps they mean to volunteer as walking targets. A credit to the enemy, and a stroke of luck besides, wouldn't you say?"
"..."
"Well? Is this humble one mistaken?"
With cynical hands and a cynical tongue I scattered a measured handful of barbs at every Byeolgigun officer but him—especially the nameless ones who had soiled his unit with that contemptible title, the Japanese Byeolgigun. Then I stole a glance at Woo Beom-seon's face as he sat perched on the chair.
"You're right. What you said is right..."
Oh dear. The face of an officer more than a little thrown.
That's enough teasing.
I found the American shoe polish in my box, worked it into the cloth, and opened my mouth.
"Goodness. The most soldierly man in the whole garrison comes to see me, and I was so pleased I spoke out of turn. If I gave offense, I'll hold my tongue."
"No. It's fine. Ah—that isn't what I—"
"Then let's come to the point. What worry has brought a general to a boy who hasn't even reached the age of study?"
"That."
I asked him straight, and he froze, his mouth shutting tight. Or not froze, exactly—his head had simply filled too fast, and the words had nowhere to go.
His turn had arrived all at once. Woo Beom-seon's eyes darted left and right, and he stammered.
"W-well. That is. The reason I came looking for you—for you, I mean..."
So that's why they threw him out.
Spirit to spare, and not a scrap of eloquence to go with it. The Japanese Consulate, which would later put him up to a coup, left a record of him that was almost refreshingly blunt.
A man of considerable charm and abundant spirit. He is not, however, a man possessed of the capacity to embrace others.
Watching him stumble through a conversation of his own asking, I could glimpse the whole path—how a man stuffed full of righteous anger had gone to Min Young-ik, and how he had come away beaten and cast out. I smiled inwardly and decided to be generous.
"Allow me to answer for you."
A soul wandering lost in grievance and inferiority? For a boy who had not even grown a beard, even this was a gift. It fit me like a glove.
"Is it that the unweaned sons of the great Byeolgigun houses openly scorn a family that has served the court as military men for nine generations of only sons? Or is it grief that this incompetent court, having stumbled onto a chance at reform, means to let it rot?"
"...Yes."
I threw it straight down the middle. Woo Beom-seon's face went slack with shock for a moment. Then he blew out a long breath and gave a hollow laugh.
It was a thoroughly self-mocking sound.
"Pathetic. Even a boy who leans on a barracks wall and shines shoes could see how ridiculous I am."
"That isn't it."
"Then what?"
"I spoke because you were truly remarkable."
"What?"
He lifted his head at the barb in my voice.
"It's almost funny, isn't it? A ship out at sea springs a hole in her hull. The captain scrambles to plug it with his own fingers—and the passengers shout at him because their ankles got wet."
Might as well all drown and be done with it, I added under my breath, and lit the oil lamp to put a fire-shine on the leather.
The hide would suffer for it. Then again, this man was finished with military service for a while.
More to the point, I intended to make sure of that.
"And you are no different, General."
"I am?"
"Jinsim Janggu. Mencius said, 'He who exhausts his mind knows his nature. Knowing his nature, he knows Heaven.' General—do you know Heaven's will? Do you know your own?"
Woo Beom-seon turned to look at me, thoroughly startled.
First, that the creature reciting the "Exhausting the Mind" chapter of Mencius out of nowhere was a boy of seven. Second, that the person who had laid open the tangled watercourse of his still-wavering heart with the lightest touch was nothing more than a shoe-shine boy.
"How would you—"
"Did Mencius not also say it? To live long, and to cultivate oneself while awaiting the Mandate—that is how a man sets his destiny upright. Then let this one dare ask you, General. Have you ever truly considered the meaning of your duty, or of the Mandate that Heaven is said to confer?"
"That—that's...!"
"Every man has a Mandate of Heaven."
I did not even glance at him. I polished his boots in a tone of outright reproach, and he—unsoldierly, his head spun quite around—bowed his face toward me in embarrassment.
And he should have been embarrassed. I had not recited Mencius's chapter at him for nothing.
In a Japanese Byeolgigun everyone already despises, putting on airs by yourself is worthless. If you're going to put on airs, do it properly.
That was the whole of it.
In other words, I had taken the man who came asking for counsel and scolded him instead: You cling to post and rank no differently from the rest of them—so of course you look the other way when soldiers who ought to be punished for breaking discipline go strutting about in the open! And in the same breath: the disaster now upon you is one you invited yourself. If you have found your will at last, stop clinging to things that will not last, and set your errors right before it is too late.
"Finished."
"Ah."
With that I ended the conversation, swept aside the linen that had boxed in his sight, and gave his now-gleaming boots a pointed tap.
Even while we talked, the boots had come up to a perfect shine.
From that shine the officer took a sudden understanding, and a purpose with it. He thanked me in silence and rose from the chair.
Either way, the martial man's eyes that had wavered from our first exchange now held not a trace of unrest.
"Thank you."
"Not at all."
And that was the end of the consultation.
I stole a look at his back as he went. There was real dignity in it. Real presence.
A few days later, from the handful of customers I still had, I heard the news without any trouble at all. Two or three Byeolgigun soldiers, notorious around the Hadogam for their insolence, had been beaten half to death under an officer's frost-edged roar and carried out of the camp. From that day the Byeolgigun's wreck of a discipline had been set straight. And in the same breath came word that the officer had been dismissed from the Byeolgigun by the Office for Extraordinary State Affairs, at the behest of Old Man Min and his people.
He had not, however, been flogged.
Just as I had intended. Just as everyone had expected.
And so former Major Woo Beom-seon, freshly thrown out of the Byeolgigun, coiled himself up in none other than our house in Ussuhyeon, outside Namdaemun.
"I got thrown out because of you. Take responsibility."
"I beg your pardon?"
He had still caused a considerable incident, as in the original history, and word of the affair had reached more than a few exalted ears at court. But he had narrowly escaped the twenty strokes Min Young-ik would have laid on him by his own authority, and escaped his darkening with them. Now he stood pounding on our gate with a face of pure nerve.
"Come now. Isn't a grown man being a little hard on a boy who hasn't even reached the age of study?"
"Hmph. And didn't I just lose a military post my family has held for nine generations?"
"Oho. Then shall I remind you, with my own mouth, that the distinguished Major has yet to pay me for reading his fortune?"
We went back and forth like that. I brought out the janggi board of my father, Yi Gyeong-seon—who had gone wandering the eight provinces according to the fall of his own pieces—set it down in front of Woo Beom-seon with a thud, and began.
"I hear the so-called Enlightenment Party has approached you because of all this."
"Hmph. I thought as much."
"Reputation is easier to come by than people think. Especially in a troubled age."
I had been gathering every rumor inside the capital that deserved the name, scattering taffy and sweets among children my own age, quietly, without anyone quite noticing. Woo Beom-seon was impressed enough by my information to slap his knee and breathe a private of course—then he asked again.
"And how do you see it?"
"See what, exactly?"
"Oh, don't play the innocent with me. I mean those men inviting me into their faction. Obviously."
"The Enlightenment Party, you mean?"
Rather than answer him at once, I rattled a pawn in my fingers, then moved a cannon first, and opened my mouth.
A sharp tap.
"A single year. That's all it is. Don't sell yourself so cheaply, General."
He waved the flattery off, looking thoroughly uncomfortable.
"Would you drop that 'General'? I'm not even an old sir yet, let alone a general..."
"Haven't I always asked you, when we're in private? When it's just us, let's be honest with each other."
"Ah. Right. You did."
"Then I'll be honest. The Enlightenment Party needs a shield for when the hour comes. That's all. If you go with them, you'll be introduced to the new men entering the infantry academy under the Japanese Consulate's patronage—won't you?"
That was when it came.
"I'll be a little late for dinner tonight."
"Yes, Mother."
I stood at once to see her out, and Woo Beom-seon did the same.
It was a thoroughly strange conversation for a boy of barely seven and a grown man nearing the age of standing firm, and a stranger pairing still—but Lady Kim Mal-ran had spent the last half year growing used to the sight of us playing janggi on the porch as if we owned it. She simply took up her laundry and went out through the gate.
I watched her vanish from the yard from the corner of my eye, and went on.
"The young junior officials of the present court have had their eyes opened, but against all that spirit they have almost no real power and no backing to speak of. Their posts rise and fall with nothing but the direction of the royal heart."
"You're saying their positions are precarious."
"They're stable enough. For now. So long as the royal heart does not turn elsewhere."
Woo Beom-seon sat over the board with a grave face, then moved a piece as if it cost him something.
It was a blunder.
"A long think, and a losing move."
His king had wandered into the cannon's line. He shook both hands over his head to concede, and shook his head besides.
"I know. I know. But if what you say is true, you're telling me the Enlightenment Party is approaching me at a bad time. So how am I supposed to carry myself?"
"What's more, they haven't the seasoning yet to stand against the thoroughly worn Min clan—the ones who strutted about as royal in-laws in the Daewongun's day."
"Then what?"
"The only man who would put you to real use this very moment is His Highness the Daewongun."
At the quiet end of what I had been saying, Woo Beom-seon started so hard he dropped a piece, and asked it back.
"The Daewongun? Me?"
I nodded at him in silence.
A storm was coming.
A storm that would draw the curtain on five hundred years of a dynasty.