Wi Saheon was at the head of the center column, atop a black horse.
His long robe, so dark it seemed to swallow light, flowed down the length of the horse’s back. Each time the wind blew, the Dark Bureau emblem embroidered in silver thread rippled like a wave through darkness.
Wi Saheon sat with the reins held loosely. His posture carried no particular tension — and yet the air around him arranged itself around him as its center.
It was Gwak’s first time facing him in person, but he could tell at a single glance that this was the Grand Bureau Chief. The bearing that carried an imperial family’s authority was overwhelmingly dominant even among the Heugnyeongwi.
Beneath his long-settled lashes, his eyes were composed to the point of coldness, and the line of his jaw — revealed pale by the oblique slant of sunlight — was sharp as a blade.
It was a breathtakingly beautiful face, one that bore little resemblance to the fearsome reputation he had heard of the Grand Bureau Chief — yet it was absolutely not the kind of face that put anyone at ease.
The closer one drew, the more a dangerous aura lurked beneath the surface, as though it might cut you.
“Fall in—!”
The deafening shouts of the Propaganda Corps officers followed immediately after.
The prisoners reflexively straightened their bodies. Rails were set down wherever they happened to fall, and those whose knees had buckled were hauled upright by those beside them. Anyone who couldn’t find their footing was met with a kick. In an instant, the lines were dressed.
The labor grounds fell into complete silence. Some prisoners froze with breath held mid-inhale. Others forgot even to drop their gaze.
“L-loyalty!”
Gwak — who just moments ago had been roughing up prisoners — sprinted toward the Grand Bureau Chief and snapped a salute.
Gwak’s voice was excessively loud. The movement of his salute was overblown. His eyes, fixed somewhere on the ground, were in a state where fear and excitement had mixed together so completely that they couldn’t even focus.
Wi Saheon’s black horse stepped forward one pace.
What caught Gwak’s eye first was the hand. That hand — which appeared to hold everything even without applying any force — drew the reins in with easy composure.
Even with the light at his back, Wi Saheon’s outline did not blur. The restrained formality of the uniform falling cleanly beneath his long robe defined the slender lines of his body all the more sharply.
“Imperial Propaganda Corps, First Management Zone — all clear!”
Gwak’s agitated voice trembled.
“It is an honor to have you visit in person, Grand Bureau Chief.”
The booming voice was less a report and more a plea.
“…….”
Without answering, Wi Saheon’s eyes moved slowly. The rails set down crookedly, bloodstains spread across the dirt, the hollowed-out impressions left in the earth where someone had been dragged — and—
Shin Yigyeom, wearing a labor uniform soaked in dust and blood and sweat, was standing beside the rail with eyes that were still vividly, sharply alive.
Wi Saheon’s gaze landed on him briefly. It was a meaningless pause — the kind of automatic sweep one makes simply because a person happens to be standing there. And then, without even registering that it had grazed him at all, that indifferent gaze moved away.
The motion with which he took up the reins again was contained and without excess. The precision of angle and pace made clear that he was a being of an entirely different dimension — one who did not belong to this place.
The Dark Bureau’s procession began moving again. Along with the movement of the black warhorses, the metallic clinking of iron fittings followed. The dust trodden under hooves drifted slowly upward on the wind.
As the black banners receded from view, so too did the oppressive weight pressing down on the labor grounds. But no one could bring themselves to speak easily.
“For the Grand Bureau Chief to come to a place like this in person…”
After a long pause, one of the officers muttered.
“It must mean our Propaganda Corps has an important role to fulfill.”
The expressions of the other officers were equally disbelieving.
The hastily assembled Imperial Propaganda Corps had not yet fully established its footing. The method itself — binding together traitors, prisoners of war, and political criminals, and running labor alongside public control — was an unprecedented undertaking.
In particular, within the imperial family, opinion regarding the Propaganda Corps was divided. There was no small amount of pushback against Wi Saheon’s approach — that creating sustained fear to cut rebellion at the root was far too radical a method.
And so today’s visit carried the significance of an inspection into the Imperial Propaganda Corps’ operational status and labor control. As it was a division supervised by the Dark Bureau, it was a natural matter for the Grand Bureau Chief to confirm the site himself.
“He’s gone…”
Gwak lifted his head a beat too late. He regarded it as something special — the fact that the Grand Bureau Chief had personally visited the site where he served as an officer — and felt himself stirred in a way he never had before.
As Gwak turned, Shin Yigyeom came into his line of sight. In those proud, cold eyes that stood in such contrast to his own, Gwak felt his earlier elation as though it were being laughed at.
Gwak bore down on him with wide, menacing strides and grabbed Shin Yigyeom’s shoulder — streaked with bloodstains — in a violent grip. The slender frame of his bones went rigid under that hand.
“Right. From here on out, you get overtime every single day. I’ll work you until you genuinely can’t see in front of you!”
The Imperial Propaganda Corps’ detention facility was a detention facility in name only — in reality, it was closer to a pen for storing labor until it was needed.
The barracks stretched long across the leveled ground carved from the mountain slope, with almost no windows. Wind came straight through the gaps between thin planks, and when night fell, the mountain’s chill rose up from the floor. Thin straw had been laid down, but it had absorbed moisture and reeked of rot.
The space was woefully inadequate for the number of inmates — prisoners had to sleep with their shoulders and legs overlapping each other. Turning over was impossible, and if even one person broke into a cough, it set off a chain that woke everyone.
Shin Yigyeom, who had spent all day longing for even that much rest, returned to the barracks late at night. Having stayed behind alone for weeks doing overtime, he was consumed by a fatigue that felt as though it would drag him to the floor, his vision hazy.
As he was escorted through the entrance, Shin Yigyeom caught the sound of something not like the usual dead silence, but a commotion. From inside the iron bars, curses and screams rang out in succession.
Prisoners crowded the corridor in overlapping layers, pale with fear. A Baekah guard was shoving his way through them, roughly yanking people out.
“Don’t move! Head down!”
The club came down indiscriminately on the prisoners’ shoulders and backs. However defenseless they were, hundreds of prisoners were being helplessly worked over by a single guard.
The reason none of them were able to offer any resistance was, ultimately, their families. Because if they caused even the slightest trouble, the family members outside the detention facility would be subjected to collective punishment.
“Cell inspection. Turn everything inside out until it shows up!”
At the guard’s order, the cell heads moved busily. Iron doors were wrenched open, planks were upended, and tin cans were hurled to the floor.
In the midst of it all, moans broke out intermittently. In front of the lined-up prisoners, a man was curled tightly on the floor, being stomped on by the guard.
What’s happening.
Shin Yigyeom slipped in among the prisoners and pressed up behind Seventy-Nine, whispering.
The boy’s expression was that of someone who had found a savior — and then it quickly darkened.
Hyung, I hid a screw.
At the rail-laying site, Seventy-Nine had hidden a long screw, about a hand’s length, in hopes of planning an escape. Of all things, earlier that day a count of the screws taken from prisoners had come up short, and the detention facility had been thrown into an uproar belatedly.
Watching the man dragged out as a suspect being beaten like a dog, Seventy-Nine clenched his fists.
Should I… confess, hyung Two.
Shin Yigyeom did not answer. No matter how many times he told the boy not to call him hyung, Seventy-Nine always attached it after his member number. That made him feel all the more like a younger brother he was particularly close to.
Give it here.
Shin Yigyeom reached his hand down beneath the hem of his top.
The thinly clothed boy quickly passed Shin Yigyeom the screw he had tucked into the waistband of his undergarments.
“Where did you hide it, huh?”
The guard’s eyes, still beating the prisoner, had rolled back, emptied of reason. The man singled out as the suspect was Baekah, just like the guard.
Most of the Propaganda Corps officers were that way. Seventy-Nine could not understand why — rather than showing any leniency to their own Baekah People, they treated them even more harshly.
Those who had mandated the use of imperial language at all times would shove dirt into a prisoner’s mouth if so much as a Baekah accent slipped out, and the moment Baekah prisoners made eye contact with each other, officers would declare it a conspiracy and carry out a group beating.
In that place, where temperatures swung between extremes like a desert between day and night, at night they would make prisoners wear wet clothing and tie them to stakes outdoors, and in the middle of the day, they would force prisoners to kneel on scorching iron plates.
In truth, had they not become guards, the majority of them would themselves have been serving as prisoners in the detention facility.
Perhaps that was why. Their inhumane acts bore a resemblance to the writhing of people who would do anything never to return to what they once were.
To deny and despise their own ethnic identity, to stand on the side of the powerful Empire — that was the only way not to suffer.
For those who clung only to their own personal safety, the most unbearable presence could only ever be the Baekah People they had turned their backs on.
“You think it’s just one screw? You think I don’t know what you’re really up to?”
“Urgh—!”
Each time the moans of the prisoner being assaulted broke off in jagged intervals, the nails of Shin Yigyeom’s hand — the one gripping the screw — dug deep into his palm.
