NW CHAPTER 10

← The North Wind Blows at the Treetops

Chapter 10

“Our interests aligned, you see. I needed someone to spend my heat with, and these gentlemen here hadn’t had any release in a long time and needed somewhere to let it out.”

“How could a palace person…!”

“Ah, I’m not a palace person. I’m… a palace physician!”

“A palace physician?!”

He pointed with his chin at the official robe folded and set aside. Mo-yong could only gasp, “Ha, huh,” unable to string words together, as if dumbfounded, then burst out in a furious shout, “A subject who eats the nation’s salary lured soldiers in to satisfy his own lust?!” A-ching answered with nothing but a small, wry smile. He had no idea how it looked to Mo-yong, but judging by the foot that came down stamping on his chest with a thud, it certainly had not looked friendly.

“Vulgar…! I will have fitting discipline meted out to you at once. State your post and name.”

“Hmm, there’s really no need to be so stiff about this…”

“Shut your mouth, you filthy wretch! Don’t string together any more vulgar words!”

“If I don’t speak, how am I to give my name and rank?”

Grumbling, A-ching pushed Mo-yong’s foot away. As if even the touch of his hand on his leg were revolting, Mo-yong kicked him roughly. A-ching tried unsteadily to get up, but his heat had not yet faded and his legs gave way beneath him, sending him sprawling. Ugh… to look like this with everyone watching. Truly pathetic. Mocking himself, A-ching flopped down where he was and only scratched at his disheveled hair.

“Royal Physician A-ching.”

“A royal physician?”

“Well, that’s how it turned out.”

He pulled the blanket over and wiped the semen from his face.

“Surely you, Captain, understand full well the feelings of men with lust built up inside them. Let’s just let this pass on good terms, shall we?”

“You really are mad!”

“You’re awfully stiff about this. Captain, you look hard yourself. In the end we’re no different, aren’t we? And if you’re not even hard and it’s still that size, well, that’s impressive!”

It was only natural. Mo-yong, whose vigor was fierce even among yangin, could hardly have walked into a place swirling with the scent of an eumin in heat and not reacted. His face twisted with shame, Mo-yong finally struck A-ching with the sword, scabbard and all. A-ching’s body fell like a straw doll. Even fallen, he kept giggling mockingly, as if something were so very funny.

“You lot, dress yourselves and come out at once. You will face fitting discipline!”

“Yes, Captain!”

At least he isn’t talking about killing them. Lying on the cold floor, A-ching gazed blankly at the soldiers’ feet passing before him. They owed him a debt today, so next time they’d talk freely even without him doing anything special. That much meant his purpose was achieved.

Just rest a little. Then pull himself together… and leave the office early to ride out his heat. That should do it. In the exhaustion flooding over him, as if he might faint at any moment, he barely held on to his wits and closed his eyes. But he had to open them again at the presence of several soldiers slipping in through the open door like seeping water.

Did they want to take a body in this state? It was smeared all over with the semen of who knew how many men. But if they said they liked it, what could he do? A-ching readily spread his legs. While he took two cocks in his mouth, pounded senseless, another man’s cock drove into his loosened rear.

***

The soldiers who had come in later at least had the presence of mind to fetch water for him. With the water they brought in a bucket, he washed himself and managed to throw some clothes on, more or less. Though he would still have to wash himself clean once more at the wooden washbasin near the lodgings.

***

By the time he returned to the Inner Medical Office, it was already night. On the wall, A-ching’s name stood boldly on today’s list of those on night duty. The bastards. Was it right to treat him so shabbily just because they were short-handed? He grumbled, but thanks to his several encounters his heat had faded a fair amount, so he even felt cheerfully optimistic that he could just lie around comfortably in the night-duty room and pass the night.

And so he slept soundly for a good while.

When he woke, it was the hour of the Ox. He ought to at least make a show of doing one round, or else he’d hear again that he was a thief stealing his salary, so he took up a lantern and went outside. A yellow lantern lit the way softly. Sure enough, palace people on patrol with lanterns greeted him with smiles. Thinking that was enough to show his face, he was about to turn back when the faint sound of drill commands drifted in from afar.

He walked toward the sound of tramping feet. It was the training ground. Soldiers with familiar faces were circling the training ground round and round, shouting drill commands.

A steep price for one fuck. A-ching passed the training ground with indifference and headed for the imperial library. The night was long; he meant to borrow a few books and read.

The librarian welcomed him warmly, asking if he was on night duty again, offering comfort and recommending newly arrived books. Here and there he could see civil officials still clutching their work, racking their brains over it in this place. He peered over their shoulders to see if there was anything worth a look, decided there was nothing much, and stepped into the stacks.

It was the only place in the palace he liked. On a day of such ill luck as today, all the more a place he wanted to linger. Humming a little tune under his breath, he picked out books. He dusted off a dusty volume and flipped through it briskly.

“The stink of rot is overpowering.” …No wonder today was such an unlucky day. A-ching heaved a sigh at the familiar voice striking the back of his head. That man, openly showing his disgust. A head taller than A-ching, with broad shoulders and an imposing build, truly, in the very words, a “majestic” general. Mo-yong, captain of the Byeolseongdae.

“Come now, pretend you didn’t see me and let it pass.”

“Discipline in the palace has grown far too lax. It’s because a lewd creature became Imperial Consort that such things happen.”

So this man was one of those who hated Ye Seol-ah too. A-ching clicked his tongue at the aftertaste.

“If you speak so carelessly, you’ll get yourself in trouble. Please don’t drag me into it, and while you’re standing there, pull that book down for me, would you? Yes, that one.”

Before he knew it, Mo-yong had pulled out the book A-ching pointed at. A-ching snatched it straight out of his hand. “Thank you. It’s too high up for me, you see.”

It was a book he had long wanted to read, but since he always came at such a late hour, there had been no one to ask to pull it down, and he had been on the verge of giving up. A-ching smiled, genuinely, for once. Watching him, a troubled light tangled in Mo-yong’s eyes. Above all…

“Wait!”

In the storehouse the stench had only made him push the scent away, but this eumin’s scent was strangely familiar. Without thinking, Mo-yong pulled A-ching toward him and pressed the tip of his nose to the nape of his neck.

“What is this smell?”

“The smell of rot?”

“…No.”

Watching A-ching throw his own first words straight back at him, Mo-yong bit his lower lip thoughtfully.

“Have you put on scented oil? What oil is it?”

“On my meager salary, I’m hardly in a position to buy scented oil!”

Watching A-ching answer so glibly, Mo-yong could only shake his head. What sort of… a man with no shame at all.

Right, he’d have nothing more to do with him. He was about to turn away when, for no reason, he glanced over the books A-ching was holding. He had expected medical texts or trifling storybooks, but A-ching was holding books on military strategy and politics that even scholars would find daunting. Not the sort of thing one could easily imagine a vulgar physician, busy playing with his lower parts, reading, so Mo-yong found himself blurting out one more sarcastic remark.

“For a physician’s reading, those look rather demanding. Do you even understand what you’re reading?”

“If I didn’t understand it, why would I read it?”

A-ching was not so good-natured as to be warm to a sarcastic man, so he answered in an equally unwelcoming tone and was just about to turn away when—

A rough hand seized his shoulder. Before he could even spit out, “What now?” in annoyance, Mo-yong had driven him into a corner of the bookshelves. His back struck the hard wall. With a small grunt, the books he was holding clattered to the floor.

“If you’re in heat, come find me tomorrow after the sun’s up. I don’t do business at night—”

He muttered flatly, scanning with his eyes the books scattered on the floor, half wondering if a shelf had come loose. Then, at the sound of harsh breathing, he raised an irritated glance, wondering what was wrong with this man now, and his vision filled with dark brown eyes trembling inside eyes opened wide and glaring. Come to think of it, he had never really looked at this man’s face. To avoid being caught “observing” someone, it was important to glance at anything only in passing and grasp just the essentials, so when looking at people he had fallen into the habit of skimming only a rough outline, a voice, a hairstyle… Only now did he see Mo-yong’s face clearly.

Soft-looking black hair. Thick eyebrows. A nose rising clean and straight. No, what use was any of that? Facing Mo-yong, who still could not hide the suspicious light as he scanned every corner of his face, A-ching smiled bitterly.

Well. He had said he was from a military family, and even then he had already belonged to the palace guard, so it was no surprise he had become a captain by now.

“Well, well, it’s been a long time, Young Master.”

Hot breath covered his lips. It was a longed-for touch.

The wind blows fierce all day long, that man looked back at me and smiled, all of it mere teasing and jest, and so my heart grieves.

— from the Book of Songs, “Airs of Bei,” “Final Wind”

“How is it, is the seasoning right?”

A-ching snapped up the japchae the royal kitchen maid picked up for him and tilted his head for a moment. “Well, it tastes fine to my mouth,” he answered vaguely. The maid grumbled that he always answered like this, but there was nothing to be done. His sense of taste was dulled, and unless something was quite salty or quite sweet, he could not tell the difference.

“You have to tell me properly. Sanggung-mama will be furious again.”

One more bite. A-ching chewed the chewy glass noodles thoughtfully. The texture was pleasantly springy. If only they had put in just the right amount of salt, but he had no gift for telling, alas.

“To tell the truth, I’d like to savor this flavor myself, but…”

He smacked his lips, then changed the subject. “Just looking at Moon Maiden’s face makes anything I put in my mouth taste like honey.”

“Oh my, A-ching-nim, really! What eumin is so fond of eumin?”

“Isn’t that all Moon Maiden’s fault?”

He slipped up onto her. The maid, too, blushed as she stealthily felt at A-ching’s groin. He kissed her neat, elegant eyebrows softly and, with one hand tickling the smooth inside of her thigh, lifted her skirt. She was a maid whose underclothes were already damp with caresses alone. Mm, moaning faintly, she parted A-ching’s outer robe and gripped his erect cock. Their hot breaths tangled as A-ching put out the tip of his tongue and licked the maid’s full lips.

“A-ching-nim!”

In-ah’s shrill voice broke the mood, but—

“In-ah. Between one person and another, there is such a thing as basic manners, you know.”

“Manners, what manners! Isn’t this work hours right now? What are you doing with palace people—”

“Just close your eyes a little and speak. Isn’t she embarrassed?”

In-ah only then whipped his flushed face away. He could not leave the maid, her breathing quickened, just like that, so A-ching slipped his fingers between the maid’s legs and teased her sex. At his skillful touch the maid was soon panting and clutching A-ching tight. Ah, ah, perhaps not wanting to hear the stifled moans, In-ah pressed both palms over his own ears.

“Hmm, but A-ching-nim, what about you? You’re all swollen like this.”

“As for me, well. I’ll just take care of it thinking of Moon Maiden.”

“If it weren’t for that little brat, we’d both have felt good, wouldn’t we?”

A-ching chuckled, kissed the maid’s forehead once more, and got up. Then, wiping his hands on the cotton towel the maid held out, he asked casually, “So, what is it today?”

***

“Mo-yong!”

It was three days after his return to the palace that Choi Mu, Vice Minister of the Ministry of War, came looking for Mo-yong. The first day had been the victory celebration banquet, the second busy with handover and reorganization. Choi Mu had thought that Mo-yong, a stiffly proper man by nature, would be absorbed in something without rest even today, and had deliberately come at lunchtime, but Mo-yong had set the Byeolseongdae soldiers to training and was sitting alone in the office, blankly lost in thought.

Honestly, this man. Choi Mu laughed dryly and slapped Mo-yong on the back with a smack. Mo-yong must have been wearing armor under his official robe, for it was Choi Mu’s own hand that hurt, swelling red.

“Ahem! So, what are you doing?”

“Ah…”

He looked as if he had just woken from a dream. Life on the frontier must have been hard indeed. Choi Mu clicked his tongue and took a seat across from Mo-yong. As the heir of a renowned military family, Mo-yong had no need to go out himself to subdue the barbarians on the frontier, yet years ago he had insisted on going. When Choi Mu asked why he wanted to go to such a dangerous, harsh place, he had left behind words with a strange lingering ring: “Only that way, I thought, could I forget…”

True. Choi Mu had thought the fellow had someone in mind. His family was distinguished, his face handsome, his build fine, and above all he went about exuding the fierce scent of a yangin. Rumors spread thick that not only several eumin holding civil posts but noble houses too were competing to propose marriage to him. But for some reason, every marriage proposal fell through, and he turned away attractive eumin who came on to him openly. Choi Mu had even worried, quietly, whether the man might be impotent, but seeing him now and then take up with someone as if to relieve himself, it didn’t seem to be that at all.

The conclusion was one: “He has someone he likes!” But if a man like Mo-yong couldn’t confess, the person must already belong to someone else. Some said it might be one of the palace people, and others cautiously raised the suspicion that it might be a man who wasn’t an eumin. Still, nothing had ever been revealed clearly. Not even now.

“How many times did I tell you not to go to the frontier? They say the hardships of youth are worth seeking out, but still.”

“Yes. Quite…”

Hm? Choi Mu could not hide his bewilderment for a moment. This Mo-yong was a man who would never admit a mistake to the end, even when he was wrong. Was he denying the war he had spent years working at and finally led to victory? Good heavens, had this fellow taken a hard blow to the head during the war?

“You don’t suppose…”

“Hm? W-well, do you have something to ask?”

“No, it’s just…”

Mo-yong bit his lower lip for a moment and swallowed his words. But Choi Mu thrust his face forward without any dignity, pressing him with “What, what is it, what do you mean!” and so the hesitation did not last long.

“Do you happen to know a man called A-ching?”

“A-chiiing?”

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