It was Yeom Baek-gyeong, one of the younger officers, who spoke. He hadn’t joined the other adjutants’ back-and-forth, only quietly watching Mok-young’s complexion, and now he casually put forward his suggestion. Though young, he had a weighty, earnest air — the subordinate who most resembled Mok-young. He worked hand in glove with Baek Dae-ho, who was likewise among the younger ones; the two often moved as a pair, and since nothing entrusted to the pair of them had ever failed, they could well be called dependable.
“Right. You two are the swiftest, so go look into the situation within the next few days.”
Mok-young’s lips, sealed all this while, moved at last. He said nothing about the adjutants’ jokes, and there was no particular stiffness in his voice as he answered Baek-gyeong. It was his usual tone, firmness and gentleness blended just right.
“It seems you want to get home to see this general’s grandchild even more than I do, so let’s disband for today.”
At Mok-young’s single word, the hubbub around them fell quiet. The adjutants stopped their chatter all at once, answered, “Yes, General,” and bowed their heads to him in salute.
Mok-young gave a light nod and was the first to leave his seat. Much like at the training grounds earlier. It was plain he had no intention of drawing his words out any further, and the adjutants could only watch his retreating back.
“Doesn’t it seem like he’s gotten even stiffer these past few days?”
“It’s not as if Commander Dan has been stiff with us for just a day or two. What’s a little more or less on top of that?”
“No. I can feel it too… it’s gotten more intense these past few days.”
“Shouldn’t he be softening up, being a newlywed?”
“Right? He ought to be loosening up his days a little, letting discipline slacken a touch, but…”
“What nonsense. Is our commander the kind to do that? Even the grandfather of the wedding night himself could come and he’d still be on the training grounds at dawn after a whole night of it.”
“Well, I mean… word is his husband is that beautiful. They say his looks nearly toppled a nation. At that level, even our commander — eh? Honestly, you’d know how to have some fun.”
“About that… doesn’t it seem like he hasn’t been going home early lately?”
“Eh, that…”
“That what?”
“Oh, come on, man. You’re asking as if you don’t know. It’s because he’s too pretty. Too, like… ugh, too much — you know? That kind of thing.”
“Ha-ha, careful, man. Someone might hear, and that’d be scary.”
“What? Weren’t all of you just curious about the general’s newlywed life? You all chattered away with me, so why are you making only me out to be the pervert?”
This was as Mok-young was passing the armory at one side of the wedding grounds, where the weapons were kept. Through the gap of the half-open door came the sound of soldiers inside chattering away, and despite himself their words lodged themselves deep in his ears.
Shameless, unmatched words. How dare they utter such outrageous things about the general and his wife? One of them at least warned the others to watch themselves, but by then every word had already entered Mok-young’s ears. Yet Mok-young, without deliberately making his presence known, quietly quickened his steps and moved swiftly away from the armory.
Truthfully, this sort of thing had been going on since the very first day of the marriage. Not to this extent, but there was nowhere you could go without hearing people casually gossiping about the general’s wedding. There were those who congratulated Mok-young on “welcoming a beautiful spouse,” and those who tossed off light remarks as they passed — “So, how’s married life? Newlywed bliss treating you well?” Just as one of his adjutants had lightly probed in the office earlier.
In the end, Mok-young’s newlywed life was neither sweet nor blissful. He had refused the wedding night —
Since then, the couple had been living in separate rooms, and Mok-young left the house before Hae-gang opened his eyes, returning only long after dark — so there were hardly even occasions when they faced each other.
“If this way won’t do, then I suppose I’ll simply have to find another way.”
“You may yet come to regret having laid me so low today.”
For all his bold words, Go Hae-gang himself was quiet too. Coming home late at night and heading for his own room, he would sometimes see light leaking from the far-off window of Hae-gang’s room — but no sign at all came from that direction.
It was a little more bitter than merely awkward. Apart from the single fact that his wife was an inscrutable person, there was nothing he knew about him, so with nothing to predict by, he was all the harder to read. A vague unease born of helplessness, perhaps.
Well — if Hae-gang himself had drawn that line first, then keeping quietly to it would be something for Mok-young to be grateful for.
*Truly?*
At the thought, in the briefest flicker, one of Mok-young’s hands came to clasp his other wrist. An unconscious gesture — the very spot where Hae-gang had once gripped him so firmly that the memory remained.
Never before had he felt such a burning brand. To say it was merely because he was a yang-bodied man — no, too thick a fragrance flowed from him. For Mok-young, it was the first time: smelling a yang person’s scent, his mouth going dry even as saliva pooled at the tip of his tongue.
Just as Hae-gang was affected by Mok-young, Mok-young could not claim to be unaffected by Hae-gang. Looking back, from the very first day they met — that day at the reservoir, the moment Hae-gang had playfully approached and taken hold of his arm — though he’d called it faint, there had unmistakably been a brushing sensation of heat. In the course of the wedding ceremony, Mok-young had come to know that what he’d felt was not some mere coincidence.
Being near Hae-gang, a warm, mellow fragrance seemed to drift from him, and he could all but taste the words. But the yang energy was sweet and persistent, seeping in through the cracks of his breath, and it was plain it would not be easily shaken off. Before he knew it, he found his fists clenching tight without his willing it, or his gaze forced away from Hae-gang, his mouth pressing shut all the firmer.
Yes, that was it. Toward a yang-bodied man he had barely even seen a few times, Mok-young was feeling his heart stir. Whatever the degree, that he felt even the faintest stir woke him to the fact that he was alive. That he — who only five years ago had been a man of extreme yang — should now catch a yang man’s scent and feel himself waver…
When he had cultivated the Hyeoneum Divine Art to a certain pinnacle, all that had remained was to seek out the “essence of hyeoneum,” take it into his body, and complete the art — yet even then, Mok-young had never held the resolve that he must complete it at all costs. Any warrior would wish to make the ultimate martial art wholly his own and reach the realm of the supreme master, but the Hyeoneum Divine Art carried a great danger in doing so.
Some would ask what there was to agonize over about becoming a yin person. The Emperor and Mok-young, of long standing —
Ju Geon-yang, who had trained alongside him, had said the same. Ju Geon-yang too, true to the imperial bloodline, had been a man of extreme yang, yet he had said he could give up part of his yang energy and accept yin nature without any trouble. Because for him, only “becoming the supreme master” mattered.
Even if the Emperor were to become a body neither yin nor yang, who would dare point at him and call it an ominous portent? People would only think the divine art was concealing its truth , and no one would urge him to marry a yang-bodied man the way they had urged Mok-young.
“It looks splendid. You throw about such might as my right arm , and if the brand carved into your body catches the eye, what will the people think? Must you frighten even the people themselves?”
But it was Ju Geon-yang who was the first to cut Mok-young off. They had been like bosom companions sharing peerless ambitions, but from the start the Emperor could not help seeing his friend differently than himself — and Mok-young hadn’t known that.
Ju Geon-yang had thought that by training alongside the martially gifted Dan Mok-young he would raise his own realm, and with his help obtain the essence he so coveted and ascend to the seat of the supreme master. So though he could regard Dan Mok-young as a cherished friend, Mok-young must never stand above him. Not the throne — not anything. The “yin brand” that Dan Mok-young had sought — that brilliant fame, now forever unattainable at least until the day Mok-young’s life ended — became fair game for derision , and with the Emperor looking at him so, those around him no longer looked at Mok-young with kind eyes alone. The man who had once inspired fear and awe together whenever one stood before him was now cut down as “a monstrous thing neither yin nor yang, a wretch who threw away his own yang energy just to become such a monster.”
It was petty jealousy. The Hyeoneum Divine Art had been passed down for seventeen hundred years, and ever since Northern Wei was newly founded seven hundred years ago, it had become the nation’s traditional martial art, its prestige immense in itself. Most of Northern Wei’s warriors trained in the Hyeoneum Divine Art, and even those who practiced martial arts of a different bent had all derived from it. There were even five great martial sects claiming to understand the divine art best and to be its orthodox home. The Dan family, into which Mok-young had been born, operated one of those five great martial houses as its hereditary head.
In seven hundred years, no one — since Northern Wei’s founding, not a single person — had obtained the “essence of hyeoneum,” so people had only vaguely revered it. They must have thought it could never be obtained — but Dan Mok-young had grasped it, and the unwillingness to admit it was, in a way, only human.
Anyway, in the context of all this, Mok-young felt as though he himself had become a new kind of test case. Who could have known that his spouse — whom he’d thought he need only endure for a year or two — Go Hae-gang, would come at him as such an enormous variable, marry him, and before he’d even taken a step, make him agonize so? Mok-young felt all the more helplessly flustered.
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