Amid the guard’s rampage, Shin Yigyeom quickly slipped the screw inside his mouth. He positioned it from the back of his throat to just behind his front teeth. If it came to it, he intended to swallow it.
“Huh?! An escape attempt? Don’t even dream of it. What about the next cell!”
“Nothing here either!”
“Search everything. Tear up the floor! You — get into the latrine!”
The prisoner cell heads rushed back and forth, shoving the other prisoners who were in their way. One of the cell heads stopped dead in his tracks and looked at Shin Yigyeom.
“Were you doing overtime until just now?”
“…….”
Shin Yigyeom gave a calm, unremarkable nod — and a single bead of cold sweat slid slowly down the back of his neck. The cell head narrowed his eyes and moved on.
“Drag him out!”
Two cell heads grabbed the suspect by the legs and hauled him out — a figure so covered in blood he was barely recognizable. A long streak of blood trailed across the floor behind him.
The guard, wiping the sweat from his face, suddenly narrowed his eyes and walked toward Shin Yigyeom.
“Hey, you just came in, didn’t you?”
“…….”
Shin Yigyeom lowered his gaze and gave another short nod. If he was told to open his mouth, even once, it was over.
The guard, eyeing him with suspicion, abruptly seized his hand and pried it open. There was nothing but raw, stripped skin, the scorch marks of iron, and nail impressions stamped across the surface like the tracks of a small animal.
Not satisfied, the guard grabbed Shin Yigyeom by the collar and stripped off his shirt as though he intended to tear it to shreds.
Shin Yigyeom sent a sharp, unyielding look to Seventy-Nine, who was staring at him with the face of someone on the verge of confessing.
Just then, a loud bell rang out. It was the sound signaling the guard shift change.
When a new guard came in, a new order was formed. It was an unspoken rule that came with the bell.
“Damn it all.”
The Baekah guard shoved Shin Yigyeom’s labor uniform top back into his chest and disappeared to the end of the corridor.
Shortly after, the replacement guard entered with the sound of footsteps. He was imperial — and actually far more lenient than the other Baekah guards.
“What happened here?”
He had witnessed the prisoner being dragged out as he was entering the facility and asked.
“A screw went missing from the rail-laying site.”
Someone answered in a thoroughly cowed voice.
“He was beaten like that over a screw?”
The prisoners couldn’t bring themselves to say yes, only watching each other’s reactions.
“…Everyone, rest.”
He let out a sigh and waved his hand for everyone to go back into the cells.
He never enforced discipline or administered punishment beyond what was necessary. He always had a small book in his hand, and would read beneath the lamplight before quietly disappearing when his shift ended.
While he was on duty, they were permitted to sit comfortably without kneeling, and they didn’t have to take fitful half-sleep out of anxiety over missing a random roll call.
Shin Yigyeom put his arms through his rumpled labor top and thought. A humane imperial guard, and Baekah guards who were anything but.
Hyung Two… I’m sorry. Thank you.
Seventy-Nine, his face rigid, reached out and briefly gripped Shin Yigyeom’s wrist as he made his way to his own cell. He didn’t seem to know that the rims of his eyes had gone red.
Shin Yigyeom quietly patted the boy on the head.
It was a dawn so eerily still it was unsettling. The sun rose, casting a faint light across the mountain slope.
Before the bell announcing the morning roll call had even rung, rough footsteps stopped in front of the detention facility.
The prisoners, who rose from their spots and dropped to their knees the moment the footsteps were heard, didn’t make a sound — not even their breathing. Their gaunt throats moved frantically up and down as they swallowed dry.
“Open it, now!”
The moment the iron-barred door was opened, a Propaganda Corps officer who had entered went straight to where Shin Yigyeom lay curled up in the corner and seized him by the hair without hesitation.
He was on close terms with Gwak and already knew about Shin Yigyeom from what he’d been told.
“Hey, you piece of shit.”
Thud — Shin Yigyeom’s head was wrenched to the side without warning. He fell sideways and caught himself with both hands on the floor.
“Someone says they saw you hide that screw yesterday.”
It was true. One of the prisoners in the detention facility had been watching the Mumyeongdan members — who stood out more than the other prisoners — and had informed on them.
The reward given was a single potato.
“Where did you hide the screw? You dare steal imperial supplies without so much as a flicker of fear?”
Shin Yigyeom — his body broken by brutal labor and denied proper sleep — fought to bring his blurring vision into focus. He barely managed to swallow back the profanity rising to the surface.
“You’re going to die today.”
As the officer tightened his grip, Shin Yigyeom’s hair was yanked as though it would be torn out by the roots.
“…You might want to stop there.”
It was the imperial guard. Standing at the entrance to the cell, the thin book in his hand crumpled.
“Why the concern. He’s getting transferred to the Gamsimwon anyway. This much isn’t even worth calling an issue.”
The Baekah officer shot back with an air of dominance.
“All the more reason to stop there. The Gamsimwon will handle him.”
The imperial guard stepped into the cell and struck the Baekah officer’s wrist. The hand that had been clutching Shin Yigyeom’s hair fell away into the air.
A peculiar tension passed between the two of them.
“It only needs to be handled by the rules. There’s no need for this here, is there.”
“…….”
The Baekah officer glared at him. The imperial guard was small in build and rarely mixed with the other guards — but he was, ultimately, imperial. Their rank was the same, but this guard possessed an invisible power. The fact that he was imperial gave him that.
“Hey, get up.”
The officer, as though he had no choice, turned his gaze away and kicked Shin Yigyeom.
Shin Yigyeom wiped the blood from his split lip on his sleeve and rose to his feet with composure. His long hair and clothing were in disarray, but his expression did not change.
He could feel Seventy-Nine watching him — but he deliberately did not look in the boy’s direction. He was afraid the boy would be put in danger if he did.
“We’ll be binding all the Mumyeongdan members together. There’s been a testimony that these ones were seen whispering among themselves.”
The Baekah officer jabbed Shin Yigyeom in the back with his club as he spoke.
Even as he was dragged out into the corridor, Shin Yigyeom neither made excuses nor looked back.
Watching that composed, steady back retreating, Seventy-Nine — clinging to the bars — bit down on his lip.
“Head up!”
Gwak was drunk on permitted violence.
He had been drafted as a Propaganda Corps officer thanks to the strong recommendation of the Senior Inspector — the head of the Palace Guard Bureau and Wi Sagyun’s man — and had come to be transferred to the Gamsimwon under the pretext of having faithfully overseen the surveillance of Mumyeongdan members at the site.
Gwak had originally come from the lowest ranks of the Dark Bureau’s Gamsimwon. The lowest among the low — tasked with cleaning up and washing down the interrogation room before and after sessions, and transporting those who had been tortured.
Entrusting interrogation to someone who had been nothing more than a cleaner — not even a trained specialist — was also an expression of the imperial family’s intent: to make clear how they intended to handle traitors.
“You have spat in the face of the Empire’s mercy. You don’t even know who you owe your existence to.”
Shin Yigyeom had come to the Gamsimwon under the charges of theft, concealment, and conspiracy involving imperial supplies.
Gwak’s eyes gleamed with an overheated, fervent loyalty toward the Empire. He was sincere enough to want to tear out his heart and show it.
A scribe, sitting behind them as if barely there, quickly scratched down in fine strokes what Gwak was saying.
Gwak brought the whip down across the back of Shin Yigyeom’s neck — who sat in the chair with his arms bound behind him. He was intoxicated by his own excitement, like a man dissecting a living frog. Holding what felt like a dissecting blade, he felt himself invested with power as vast as the head of the Dark Bureau itself.
“You can’t answer? Are you mute?!”
An open palm flew out of nowhere and this time Shin Yigyeom’s cheek was sent sideways. A warm flow of blood from his nose trickled down over his upper lip.
If Shin Yigyeom had continued serving in the Palace Guard, he would never have had cause to cross paths with someone like Gwak even once. That fact fanned the flames of Gwak’s twisted inferiority endlessly.
“Can you not hear me?!”
“…Hah. What a nuisance.”
“Wha — what did you say?”
“How about you… shut your mouth while you’re at it.”
“Ha…”
Gwak stared at Shin Yigyeom, stunned stupid. This one has truly lost his mind.
Smack! Shin Yigyeom’s head whipped to the other side.
“Ngh.”
Even closing his eyes for just a moment would send Shin Yigyeom’s consciousness plummeting into a deep, dark sleep. Whenever that happened, his awareness would drift to another place.
To the day he first set foot on Bulatan soil — the day his father had accompanied him through coercion and silence.
At the far end of a street, there was a man lying flat on the ground, unable even to resist, only receiving blow after blow.
Beside him, his bundle of belongings had been torn apart and scattered, and the people surrounding him were watching not with any inclination to intervene — but with expressions that suggested he had it coming.
“This man stole a silver coin!”
A lie.
Shin Yigyeom had been watching the man from the start — a man conspicuously shabby in appearance, a traveler who had stood out among the dark-skinned Bulatans for being unusually pale. He had done nothing like stealing a silver coin.
The moment Shin Yigyeom moved to step forward, his father grabbed his shoulder. A gesture that said: watch for now.
“If so much as one silver coin turns up on you, you’ll have every bone in your body broken!”
Despite being accused of theft, the traveler offered no defense at all. In the deep creases between his features lay the resignation of someone who had understood that no amount of protest would get through.
