BW C7

Chapter 7

“Please focus on the Fate-Matching Ceremony.”

The overseeing soldier’s command rang out. The loosened lines drew tight again. Hoeun lowered the heels he’d been see-sawing, though his eyes still clung to the doorway. Someone moved into his light.

“Um…”

A Military God, waiting his turn. Hoeun quickly offered his hand.

“Forgive me,” the man murmured.

They touched, but concentration wouldn’t come. His nerves felt waterlogged, drifting apart. Perhaps it was mere fatigue. He had pushed himself today. The familiar premonition of a fever stirred behind his eyes.

The Military God was not his match and moved on. So did the next—and the next. Jeokudae slid out of mind entirely; he felt he might collapse at any moment.

“Deokwoo…”

After sending off yet another, he called into the air. No answer. How far had he gone in search of a chair? If there wasn’t one, he could simply return. Hoeun rapped his tender lower back with his knuckles and sighed.

Squelch… thud. Squelch… thud.

Footsteps approached—sticky, weighted, a drag and drop unlike the measured clomp of standard-issue boots. Heavier. Thicker. Menacing.

He turned his head.

A man was coming, taller by a head than those around him, as if he carried his height like a standard through a crowd. Deokwoo was the largest man within the walls of the capital—this one seemed larger.

He knew him at once.

That one.

The most famed Military God of the Daehan Empire; the one said to have felled more monsters than any who lived; the undying who did not die upon any field.

Dark rumor clung to him as well—that killing monsters had turned to a hunger, that in secret he chewed human flesh as they did.

The hall was dim; his face was silhouette.

He walked past the outstretched hands, flicking each with the tip of an index finger—tap, tap—tap—like testing a line for slack. It seemed an odd way to find a match, yet he did not falter. He moved like a man who knew precisely what he sought. Practice clung to him; so did the dull sheen of habit.

Hoeun stared, mouth parted. The motion of a man that large was its own spectacle, and the nearness of renown carried a thrill. He even thought—as if from a distance—that he would tell his parents he’d seen Jeokudae today.

At last, the man reached him. Hoeun, still caught in the stare, barely noticed.

Bang—

Light snapped on. The hall burst white. Cries rose as pupils shrank in pain. Hoeun squeezed his eyes shut, then willed them open.

And understood—he stood before him.

“Ah…”

Hoeun lifted his gaze.

Skin, dusk-warmed. Brows, clean and bold. Eyes, deep-set. A straight, uncompromising nose. Cheekbones lifted just so; a jaw cut along a hard and handsome line. A long, thick neck with a pronounced Adam’s apple—a man’s.

Handsome, yes—but not neat. As if someone had carved him and left the edges rough. His fringe hung low enough to threaten the eyes; a feral light burned between strands, like a hill-beast catching a scent.

Hoeun knew his name already.

Lee Taemuk.

General of the Daehan Empire. Commander of Jeokudae. Newspapers called him General Lee.

His uniform differed slightly from the rest: the same subtly lustrous black, red-threaded finishing, gold buttons stamped with Taegeuk; but a black cape was thrown over one shoulder. Black outside, red within; the hem embroidered with a deep-crimson cloud.

Those who followed him were dressed the same. The capes billowed as they moved—flock-clouds crossing a sun.

It suited the name Jeokudae.

Snapped from his trance, Hoeun remembered himself and offered his hand.

“Pleased… to meet you.”

His voice rose of its own accord. Not for fame’s sake, but for rank: a general deserved high speech.

Until now, none of high rank had come. It made sense. High rank meant merit, meant monsters felled. A man with such record would hardly lack a guide. Most who’d attended today were privates. In that sense, Taemuk’s presence here was strange—or perhaps stranger that he’d become a general without a guide.

Hoeun waited for him to take his hand. Taemuk did not move.

“Um… you have to take my hand.”

No answer. Only an unwavering stare. In those jet-black pupils, Hoeun’s pale face sat whole—his large, clear eyes; his refined, not-quite-roseate lips.

The gaze slid over silk—ribbon, jacket, vest—assessing in a plain, unblinking way that made Hoeun glance down at his own attire.

At last, Taemuk looked at his hand: white, slender, nails neat, skin unmarred.

He tapped it with the tip of his finger.

The touch was an instant—yet the sensation struck hard.

Heat.

Searing, as if iron fresh from the forge. Hoeun knew fevers intimately; he had never known heat like this. Astonishing, that a man could burn so.

And then the prickle—fine lightning climbing from fingertips into bone. Hundreds of hands had passed today; none had felt like this.

This… surely…

Hoeun’s eyes widened. He looked up—

Taemuk passed him. Without pause. As he had the others.

Hoeun blinked, thrown off balance. Had only he felt it? Had Taemuk not? How could he not, when it was so clear—so… singular?

“Um—”

Taemuk turned on a pivot and reached. The hand that came at him was eagle-fast and broad enough to blot his view.

Before a cry could form, iron clamped the nape and reeled him in.

Smell rushed in: wind—outside—clean and cold. Beneath it, a faint metallic tang—not fish, but the shadow of hospitals and brown-drying blood. Wool. Tobacco. And a note he had never known before—likely, Taemuk himself.

Hoeun startled still. Only then did place and circumstance, and the number of watching eyes, crash in.

“Ex—excuse me, just a moment…”

He dared not lay hands on the man, and tried instead to edge back. Taemuk’s grip tightened. Not enough to choke—enough to lay a cool blade along the spine. With such a hand, a neck would snap like a reed; he could feel it.

Hoeun froze. Taemuk drew him in again, hunched that great frame, and buried his face in the hollow where jaw met throat.

Haa—

The sound was half sigh, half groan—heavy, hot, too vivid to disperse, as if it hung there in the notch of his neck.

Hoeun could not move. He could only stare and pray the strangeness would end. It did not.

The fingertips at his nape were rough and hard. They explored—rubbed, pressed, tested the softness there. The unfamiliar sensation made him swallow the wrong way—

“Young master!”

Deokwoo. A wooden chair in his hands, pounding toward them.

“Deokwoo…”

“You bastard—what do you think you’re doing! How dare you lay hands on our young master!”

The chair rose with a grunt.

Ghk—

There was no crash. Without so much as a glance, Taemuk’s free hand closed around Deokwoo’s throat and held. As if there were eyes set in his temple.

Footnotes:

• Taegeuk and red-black cape: Visual markers of an imperial-national military aesthetic; the crimson cloud embroidery visually echoes Jeokudae’s “red rain” epithet.