Welcome to Ganghwado (1)
Taesu first swung his backpack around to the front.
The boar didn’t so much charge as appear.
The boar crashing into Taesu’s backpack and Taesu letting go of the strap and leaping aside happened almost at the same instant.
“Ghk!”
He’d dodged, and yet the impact still stole his breath.
And the boar felt much the same.
Taesu’s backpack held more than twenty kilograms of gold and silver in total. The boar, slamming straight into that load of heavy metal, staggered for a moment.
Taesu clenched his teeth.
Then he brought the axe down hard on the boar’s crown.
Of course, a boar’s skull wasn’t something that would split open from a human axe swing. The shock traveled up his arm like he’d struck a moss-covered boulder.
But then a miracle happened.
Maybe it was the skill of a man who’d split more skulls than anyone in Korea today. Maybe it was the result of all the daily training he’d endured just to survive poverty and violence.
Or maybe it was, as that pompous Mountain Spirit was saying, something else entirely.
[Did I not already tell you that you possess a force akin to a divine general? When a god stands with you, what is there to fear?]
Whatever the third possibility was, and however much Taesu didn’t want to admit it, the axe was buried deep in the boar’s head.
Taesu was kicked by the boar’s thrashing legs and rolled once across the ground. When he got back up, gasping, the frenzy had already turned into convulsions.
Taesu looked down at the boar.
So this is just like that reservoir after all.
[You vile wretch, this is divine punishment! A curse shall fall upon you!]
Spare me. You couldn’t even handle one boar, and you’re talking about divine punishment?
The Mountain Spirit’s protests, denouncing this intolerable blasphemy, no longer even reached Taesu’s ears.
He pulled the axe free from the boar’s skull and walked straight toward Yi Won-beom.
Yi Won-beom looked as though he had forgotten the duties of a corpse. Half sitting up, he stared blankly at Taesu.
Taesu crouched in front of him.
“If you know what gratitude means, I trust you won’t pretend you forgot what I told you earlier?”
Unlike the later image of him as some ignorant woodcutter, Yi Won-beom had only lived on Ganghwado for five years, from age fourteen to nineteen.
He had been born and raised in Hanseong. He’d received an education when he was young.
It was only a little Sohak and Gangmu, but as the great scholar Jo Gwang-jo once said, a person only needed the Sohak to awaken to morality.
And as for the way those who betrayed kindness ended up, the lessons of history—Jachitogam was enough.
So Yi Won-beom nodded.
It was definitely not because there was a blood-slick axe glittering inches from his face.
* * *
People lump all exiles together, but if you sorted them properly, there were so many types you could run out of fingers counting them.
Among them, the anji Yi Won-beom had been sentenced to was a kind of house arrest reserved for political prisoners. A criminal wasn’t allowed to bring in guests as he pleased.
No—before that, he wasn’t even supposed to leave the house. Properly speaking, the door should have been locked, someone posted to watch him at all times, and a well dug inside the house so he couldn’t come and go under any excuse.
But the only part of that order still being observed was the well.
There wasn’t even a guard. Then again, the fact that this exiled criminal’s house sat “in the middle of Ganghwa Fortress” was proof enough that they probably hadn’t committed any real crime in the first place.
Yi Won-beom’s only family, his second elder brother Yi Uk, the future Yeongpyeonggun, welcomed Taesu with easy warmth.
“To think you saved my foolish younger brother’s life—Heaven itself must have guided you. If it isn’t too much to ask, please stay in our home, even if it is the home of criminals. It’s only the two of us brothers here, so the guest room stands empty. Change the thatch on the roof and it’ll do well enough for you.”
Of course, with the gold and silver axes Taesu had, he could probably buy every house on Ganghwado.
But Taesu wasn’t stupid.
If he suddenly started spending that much gold, even in Korea the police would come running. In Joseon, he didn’t know it, but the Choonghun Training Camp might be the ones to show up.
For now, he needed to read the situation and blend in.
Taesu, whose “strange outfit” was only half-hidden under the rough mat Yi Won-beom had tossed him, passed through the south gate of Ganghwa Fortress looking for all the world like an ordinary Joseon beggar.
With the Mountain Spirit’s help, he answered, “I am at a loss for words at such generous hospitality shown to a wandering monk.”
After Taesu stepped away, Yi Won-beom, who had been sneaking looks at his back, hurried over to his brother.
“Brother, is it really all right to let such an incomprehensible man into the house?”
Yi Uk gave him a long look.
“He saved your life, didn’t he? You brought him here yourself, so why are you suddenly singing a different tune?”
“That may be so, but… no matter how I look at him, he doesn’t seem to be a monk. He looks like a Westerner. If the magistrate investigates us, our lives—already no more than a fly’s—will be cut clean off.”
Yi Uk stuffed dried tobacco leaves into his pipe and replied, “I’ve never seen a Westerner myself, but I’ve heard they’re swift and savage. They say that man hacked a boar to death in a single blow. Indeed, the look in his eyes is full of killing intent. He seems like the sort who’d kill a man and set a fire without blinking.”
That was some impressive Confucian profiling, enough to make Taesu in the guest room flinch.
Yi Won-beom, blissfully ignorant of any debt of gratitude, agreed enthusiastically.
“That’s right. So…”
Just then, sparks leapt from the flint Yi Uk had been striking. As the fire caught, Yi Uk tossed out a question as jarring as a flying ember.
“Still, tell me this. If we don’t commit any crimes, can we live long?”
His voice was thick and measured, like smoke curling from tobacco, but Yi Won-beom understood him clearly.
“Did our eldest brother, Hwahyeonggun Yi Won-gyeong, die because he committed a crime? There is no law of king or law for nobles. Only the Jangdong Kim Clan exists.”
Jangdong Kim Clan.
At that vicious name, Yi Won-beom’s body trembled.
They were, in truth, the ruling house of Joseon. Before their leader Kim Jwa-geun, even the king was only a challenger, so Yi Uk wasn’t exaggerating.
But precisely because of that, it was not something one could say carelessly. Yi Won-beom hurriedly tried to rein his brother in.
“B-brother. Someone might hear us.”
Yi Uk, who could hardly be called an ambitious man himself, didn’t push his luck any further.
He brushed ash from his tobacco and said, “All the more reason not to be stingy with your life. A life no one has any reason to spare ought at least to be lived with dignity. Let’s see… yes. You can serve as the gatekeeper.”
“Gatekeeper?”
“An anji prisoner needs someone to watch him anyway. If that man stands by the gate, at least the place will look proper, and the prefect won’t have anything to say.”
In other words, they were to tell the suspicious neighbors exactly that.
Whether anyone believed it or not didn’t matter. It was enough if Ganghwa magistrate Nam I-hyeong turned a blind eye.
And Nam I-hyeong was the sort to extend passive goodwill to the brothers. The reason the Yi brothers could enjoy their countryside-life-in-name-only in exile was because he allowed it.
And so, in the house of the “Ganghwa Prince,” one absurd guest had suddenly moved in.
* * *
The room was so shabby that even I, someone used to cheap short-term rentals, was disgusted by it.
Filthy water from rotting straw seeped down from the ceiling like pus, and if you gathered the cobwebs properly, you could probably make a blanket out of them.
Among the scattered black flecks that looked like coffee grounds, the moving ones were bedbugs and the still ones were rat droppings. I could feel something shifting beneath the loose floorboards; was it a snake, by any chance?
I sighed, then sat down on the mat I’d been wearing around my shoulders earlier.
Cleaning could wait. Right now, I had something more urgent to deal with.
“While we were coming down earlier, I remembered something after hearing Won-beom lie about being royalty…”
[He is royalty. Can you not tell just by seeing that he is in anji? House arrest is not a punishment imposed on commoners.]
Hey, even a chaebol’s illegitimate child gets a building out of it. What kind of royalty is that?
“Anyway, that’s not the important part. It just made me think of kings. What reign are we in right now?”
There was no way this mountain spirit knew what year it was, so my question was perfectly sensible.
But the wretch sent me a blunt wave of contempt.
[Ignorant fool. Why would a living king have a posthumous name? The current king is the twenty-fourth.]
This bastard, he just called me ignorant, didn’t he? Fine. I’ll show him the historical knowledge of a modern man.
I folded my fingers down one by one.
Taejong, Taejo, Munjong, Danjong, Sejo, Yejong, Seongjong, Yeonsan, Jungjong, Myeongjong, Seonjo, Gwanghae, Injo, Hyojong, Hyeonjong, Sukjong, Gyeongjong, Yeongjo, Jeongjo, Sunjo, Heonjong…?
Heonjong? Let’s see. After that came… Cheolgo—no, wait, something like that—then Sun… and that was it?
Huh?
“This country’s about to collapse, isn’t it?”
The spirit’s answer was unexpectedly dry.
[You needn’t count on your fingers to divine it. I’ve heard the talk of a nation in ruin until I was sick of it.]
“You heard?”
[Those who pass through the mountains say such things often enough. They call it the end of the age. They say the state takes a single ladle of grain in spring as loan interest, then demands a whole mal of rice in autumn, and that the military tax sweeps up everyone from a fifth-generation ancestor reduced to ashes to descendants not yet born. How are people supposed to live? They say the country will topple over.]
While I was still thinking over what that all meant, the Mountain Spirit spoke again.
[Why not worry about yourself more than the country?]
“What?”
[How do you intend to live from here on out? Are you planning to serve as a hired hand in this poor house, then, whenever lust takes you, peel off a little gold and silver to keep company with the tavern mistress in town before dying?]
I froze. The Mountain Spirit narrowed his eyes, or at least he sounded as if he had.
[I don’t much care either way. I only need you to stay alive until my strength returns. But you?]
“I…”
[If that were your plan, then there’d have been no need to kill those petty swindlers who tricked you out of your home, would there? You could have survived somehow even in poverty.]
I shut my mouth.
But the Mountain Spirit did not.
[Setting aside the fact that my forehead got smashed because of you, at the very least, the man you were when you hurled that axe into the pond was not like this.]
What the hell does “like this” even mean? What do you know?
I couldn’t say it aloud.
Because the spirit’s next words were strangely meaningful.
[Do you remember what I said at first? A soul that has grown weak and feeble cannot bear a god. If you intend to leak away like a bowl with a chip in it, then hand your body over to me now.]
I clenched the iron axe. Then I sprang to my feet.
Never. Not like that, you half-witted demon.
If it couldn’t be done in Korea, then I’d prove it in Joseon.
I would prove that I had never lived that way because I was lazy or stupid.
That this life of tears and gritted teeth had been forced on me by nothing more than the hand I was born with—
And I would never repeat it again.
* * *
All of a sudden, the door opened.
It was Won-beom, the royal-family impostor.
“...My brother told me to bring you a set of clothes, but what in the world are you doing in here with an axe?”
“Why are you barging in like that?”
“Then what was I supposed to do? I was coughing my lungs out from the doorway and you didn’t answer. It’s not as if you’re some proper young lady shut up in a women’s chamber.”
I took the rag Won-beom insisted on calling clothes and set it aside. I’d use it to wipe the room down later.
“Fine. Wait a second. I’ll pay for the clothes.”
“What?”
After half a day in Joseon, I’d learned enough to understand this much.
My assets were not just the gold axe and the silver axe.
The clothes on my back, the backpack I’d packed in anticipation of being chased by police, and all the odds and ends inside it were all valuable property here in Joseon.
The one thing I regretted losing was my smartphone. I’d sold it in Korea and intended to get a new burner phone before leaving, so now I didn’t even have that useful little device, internet or no internet. Smartphones had monopolized the role of every electronic tool, so I hadn’t even bothered trying to find relics like a Walkman or an electronic dictionary.
Still, where in Joseon would I ever find a first-aid kit, stainless-steel tools, a mechanical watch, and convenient emergency rations all in one place?
This was the perfect time to test one of them.
“Try this.”
It was a hard candy meant as emergency calories for being stranded in the mountains or somewhere like that.
Won-beom, who looked as though he’d spent his whole life without ever tasting sugar, went ecstatic like a junkie high on his drug of choice.
I didn’t miss the moment and gave him one more.
Like that evil spirit had said, I wasn’t planning to live in this house forever. But if I wanted to lay the groundwork for what came next and avoid stupid risks, I needed to get on good terms with this guesthouse first.
“You said there’s a girl you’re seeing, right? How do you think it’d feel to move this candy from mouth to mouth with her and enjoy it?”
Sure enough, K-dramas sold even in Joseon. Won-beom stammered, “W-w-what kind of filthy, indecent thing are you even saying…?”
He was probably going to do it right away.
That seemed to be the case. Clutching the candy tightly in both his mouth and his hand, Won-beom hurried out.
I watched his retreating back with satisfaction and even followed him out to the yard to see him off.
Then I looked up at the sky.
I really hadn’t meant to, but a sigh escaped me all the same.
The tired cliché about a sky full of stars had survived as a cliché for a reason. Because it was true.
And the night sky behind it wasn’t black.
From the place where earth and heavens met, layers of pale yellow-green spread outward and mingled with the faint blue-gray of the background.
The stars themselves were not just a scatter of white pinpricks, either. The Milky Way slashed vertically across the sky like an erupting volcano, making even the colors of the stars shift into something vivid and varied.
[First time seeing stars?]
“...I did want to go abroad someday and see them for myself, once I made some money.”
It was the clearest proof yet that I was in Joseon.
You didn’t really need to confirm it that thoroughly.
I went back into the room. Then I picked up the rag Won-beom had given me.
Instead of using it to clean the room, I used it to change clothes.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t a bad place to sleep.
Author’s Note
1. Yukgap refers to the sixty-cycle calendrical system. When divining by the ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches, it was common to use one’s fingers as a crude counting aid. This was partly because many fortune-tellers in the old days were blind.