← The North Wind Blows at the Treetops
Chapter 8
Royal Physician A-ching
“Ha, A-ching. You’ve come.”
The Emperor, Ga-heon, greeted A-ching with a beaming smile, a snow-white silk dopo draped only over his shoulders, his waist cord not even tied. The scent of eumin and yangin, and the fishy smell tangled in with them, let one guess what had just gone on in here. At the end of a glance he threw without thinking, Ga-heon’s still-erect cock was visible, so A-ching hurriedly bowed his head and paid his respects. Ga-heon, who had been leaning against the window, came striding over with soundless footsteps and took hold of A-ching’s chin and lifted it. A flat gaze, in which no particular emotion showed, was turned toward the Emperor’s noble face.
“Hurry and fix him. If a eumin in heat says he will die from only this much, what use is he?”
Only then did A-ching glance sideways and look around him. The white naked body lying as if dead on the silk blanket, unable even to compose itself though he had come in.
“Seeing as Your Imperial Body is so hale, how about keeping several and enjoying them, Your Majesty?”
“Haha, several?”
“If one is worn out, you can take another. And there would be the fun of choosing and enjoying them, would there not?”
“Hahahat, yes, you are right. Anyway, you are quite something!”
The Emperor tapped A-ching’s cheek and laughed pleasantly. It was a strange thing. That an Emperor who would cut off the head of a palace person who groveled before him, calling him insolent, according to his mood, should keep at his side a physician who did not hesitate to speak such rude words. Of course, for A-ching, these were not words he blurted out as he pleased, either. He had only given Ga-heon, according to his mood each time, the words he wanted to hear.
At Ga-heon’s laughter, Ye Seol-ah finally raised his head. The lovely face called the flower of the palace was badly hurt. His lips were all torn, as if he had just now been taking Ga-heon’s thing as it thrust in roughly, and both his eyes were swollen. The bruises blooming bluish on his cheeks were just as rough. Without knowing, below his waist must be worse. A-ching quietly closed his eyes and turned away from him.
“So, next time, will you join us?”
Ga-heon threw the words out like a passing remark as he tied his belt. A-ching quietly lowered his eyes and tried to guess his intent.
“How could I…”
“Heh.”
He was a man who dug unseen traps into every single word, Ga-heon was.
“Rumors about you among the palace people are rife, is this evasion?” It was the same this time too. If he hurriedly made excuses while he spun his words round and round like an antlion’s pit, the end of it was bound to be insolent. Still, he was glad the expected words had come out. A-ching smiled faintly and parted his lips.
“How could a lowly thing like me, used by wretched ones who have not received Your Majesty’s favor as they hurry to relieve their urges, receive Your Majesty’s favor?”
“Yes, it is not a wrong thing?”
“Please think of it as part of the treatment. After all, is mine not a useless thing, no matter how much it stands?”
Ga-heon burst into loud laughter again at whatever was so amusing. And as he did, he said things that scraped at another’s insides, like, “Yes, the things of male eumin are good for nothing. Is that not so, Consort?” Because of that, Ye Seol-ah buried his face, wrapped in humiliation, in the blanket.
“Anyway, fix him well.”
Ga-heon, with no thought of soothing Ye Seol-ah, passed by A-ching, stroking his waist with a touch plainly laden with sexual meaning. Why Ga-heon teased him in that way and yet did not violate him, A-ching himself did not know the reason. In many ways it was fortunate, though.
“Consort-mama.”
Only after the sound of the door closing, tak, was heard did Ye Seol-ah raise his head again. At first, the moment the Emperor had left, he had thrown things at A-ching and struck him with his hands and rampaged. But by now he must have grown used to it. He meekly raised his upper body and sat, and held out one hand. His wrist was swollen, as if it had been twisted all night.
Still, the Consort was better off. If one looked at the state of the palace people who had slept with the Emperor, one could not say this was severe. At least Ga-heon had not broken any of Ye Seol-ah’s bones. Nor did he inflict severe wounds. Considering his nature, it must have been an act of suppressing his passion, and suppressing it again.
He had seen a palace person whose arm had been cut off. Ga-heon had called the royal physician on duty in the middle of the act. That day, A-ching happened to be guarding the duty room. When he entered the concubines’ hall, Ga-heon told him to stay beside him, as a patient would appear shortly. And giggling, each time he thrust his genitals in and shook them roughly, he pressed down on one arm of the palace person who only screamed and endured helplessly. He told the guard standing beside him to trample the back of his hand with his foot.
He could not understand why he had done such an act.
But how many things in the world were there that he could not understand? A-ching had grown up seeing, hearing, and enduring worse than that. Ga-heon’s sadistic acts were cruel, but they were not ingenious. It just seemed that when he drove himself into someone suffering terrible pain, he liked how they tightened around his thing each time they felt the pain. While bringing a blade down like a cleaver, slowly slicing the flesh, cutting the muscle, crushing the bone.
A terrible scream filled the room. Even the guard, who must have seen his share of sights, frowned and turned away. The only ones watching this without blinking an eye were Ga-heon and A-ching, those two.
What had become of that palace person? He had screamed like a pig being slaughtered, saying that was not a person, and had his remaining arms and legs all cut off and thrown to the dogs? He said he disliked the screaming, and yet he did not pull out his tongue alone. A trained dog ran to the palace person, who was leaking the eumin’s scent, and drove its thing into the hole that had long since been ruined. In that place where only desperate screams, as if in the middle of hell, rang out, A-ching had whispered in Ga-heon’s ear.
“Must I fix that too?”
Ga-heon turned to look at A-ching with somewhat surprised eyes. At first A-ching did not understand why he wore that expression. I mean, I just want to stop fixing now. Because it is annoying…
“…No, stop it. Kill him.”
The guard, rather seeming grateful, pierced through the palace person’s breath. And looking at the courtyard that had gone quiet, Ga-heon opened his mouth in a low voice.
“What is your name?”
He had not wanted to exchange names with the Emperor. A-ching sighed, barely audible, and yet answered politely.
“A-ching, I…”
It was probably from then. That Ga-heon began calling for him so often.
***
How tiring.
Ye Seol-ah’s wounds were fortunately not deep. But the price of those wounds would surely be paid by someone. It was the same way every time. After Ga-heon had finished his rough act, as if bestowing a prize on Ye Seol-ah, he would give him a chance to do whatever he wanted to his heart’s content. With this tacit authority, Ye Seol-ah removed his political enemies and slaughtered the maternal relatives of the First Consort. That he had gripped the necks of the Empress Dowager’s brothers and sisters and intimidated the mother-in-law who looked at him unfavorably was thanks to this very thing. Say what you would, Ga-heon cherished Ye Seol-ah, and Ye Seol-ah was one who knew how to use it.
[garbled] My life, caught in between, is the only hard one.
Thinking about it, perhaps he was called a spy precisely because he was always caught in between. What could be done about it? Suddenly, standing in a place with no people about, he glanced over the order he had received in the daytime. The cipher text, scribbled as if a young child had written it, said to look closely into the movements of the Byeolseongdae.
It was a known fact that the Byeolseongdae, who could be called the main core force of the imperial guard, had returned yesterday after finishing the subjugation of the barbarians. That an order to watch their movements had deliberately come down must be an expression of the will to use the Byeolseongdae to do something.
A-ching had his hands stretched throughout the imperial palace, but the Byeolseongdae was somewhat awkward for him. They were the imperial nation’s foremost special forces unit, famous for deep loyalty and for their noses poking the sky. It was hard to lay a hand rashly on such fellows. If he risked the danger and approached them for nothing, his own identity might instead be exposed.
But well. It was not that there was no method.
They too would have retainers, and they would bring along soldiers to serve as arrow shields.
***
“Hey, Physician sir!”
His eyes were good too. A centurion who had been training far off spotted A-ching and at once climbed the hill road like an arrow. Today was really tiring.
“Did you hear yesterday’s news? The Byeolseongdae bastards have returned. Bastards back after nearly three years, they’re starving now, so if the Physician sir loosens them up a bit, won’t they repay you? You like that kind of talk.” Did he think A-ching gave his body because he truly liked hearing war stories and collected them, or was he just pretending to be foolish in order to mix bodies? A-ching sometimes felt the impulse to look into his inner thoughts, but going beyond the proper degree was dangerous, so he decided to just bury it quietly, thinking there was no reason to risk danger over such a trifle.
“How many?”
“Heh, I’ll only bring fellows I’m close with, so it won’t be that many. Six or seven?”
Six or seven vigorous men who had not fucked in three years was ‘not that many?’ But what else could be done? A-ching nodded readily and shifted his gaze meaningfully toward the armory. The centurion, quick-eyed in such matters, tapped A-ching’s shoulder and went rolling back down the hill again.
Tiring…
Murmuring this one phrase as if it were a habit, he turned his footsteps toward the armory. Since it was work he had to do anyway, it might be better to get it over with quickly.
***
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