Wi Saheon addressed Shin Yigyeom as though the people around them simply did not exist.
“There’s no way… that could be true.”
Leaving Shin Yigyeom to his cold smile, Wi Saheon immediately undid the cuff button of his uniform sleeve and rolled it up to his forearm.
He pulled his gloves snug until the leather stretched taut between each spread finger, then bent down and lifted Shin Yigyeom’s chin.
The look in Wi Saheon’s eyes as he stared hard into the clear pupils set within pale blue irises was unlike the way he regarded an ordinary interrogation subject.
That was how the Senior Inspector felt. Though it could have been the way it appeared to him, colored by what he had heard from Wi Sagyun.
“Doesn’t look like anything was properly done.”
Wi Saheon turned Shin Yigyeom’s face this way and that, examining it — smeared as it was in nosebleed.
“It seems the Dark Bureau’s discipline is something to laugh at.”
His eyes grew gradually colder.
“…Th-that is….”
Uncertain whether the question was directed at him or simply spoken aloud, Gwak trailed off mid-sentence. The Senior Inspector had also given a sharp shake of his head, and beyond that, answering the Grand Bureau Chief directly required a tremendous amount of nerve.
The mere fact that the Grand Bureau Chief had entered was already enough to completely transform the air of the interrogation room.
There wasn’t even a single person in this room who ranked below Gwak — and in that situation, being suddenly pulled into the center of attention carried an enormous psychological burden.
“Did you interrogate him? What did you find out?”
“The Grand Bureau Chief is asking you a question.”
The Deputy Commander pressed the frozen, hesitating Gwak. His eyes were every bit as cold and dry as the Grand Bureau Chief’s.
“That is….”
Gwak swallowed audibly.
Interrogation — was what he had done an interrogation? He didn’t know anything about that. He had simply mocked the man’s circumstances, berated him, and toyed with him.
At last unable to hold back, Wi Saheon turned around slowly, and the set of his eyes held a murderous edge. He had just pushed Shin Yigyeom’s chin aside and was about to rise to his feet.
“…—did.”
At Shin Yigyeom’s low, cracked voice, Wi Saheon raised one eyebrow.
The barely audible voice continued in halting, broken fragments.
“I questioned… him.”
Wi Saheon tilted his head slightly and let out a quiet scoff.
“Can you really call random questioning an interrogation.”
Before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, the sword slid free from its scabbard. There was not a sound to it.
Gliding from the hip as though through open air, the blade drew a short, clean line.
“…!”
Shin Yigyeom’s pupils expanded to their widest.
Gwak stood dazed, his face showing he hadn’t yet understood what had happened.
A beat later, his throat split horizontally. Blood burst forth and his knees buckled. Gwak’s body tilted without delay and crashed to the floor with a tremendous sound.
The Senior Inspector, seized with shock, staggered back as though about to fall.
When the droplet of blood beading at the sword’s tip fell to the floor, Wi Saheon shook his wrist without a care and flicked the blood clean.
Shin Yigyeom lost his breath. His eyes, which had jolted reflexively the instant the blood sprayed, barely steadied themselves. Deliberately keeping his gaze away from the body collapsed on the floor, he stared straight at Wi Saheon.
“…Was it worth going this far.”
Wi Saheon shifted his gaze from the sword to Shin Yigyeom, as if to ask what he meant.
“Precisely because he wasn’t worth it — that’s why I cut him.”
As though it were obvious, he indicated Gwak’s corpse with a tilt of his chin.
“Remove it.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
At the Deputy Commander’s sharp-eyed signal, the soldiers in the interrogation room dragged the body away without delay. Some pushed the spreading blood on the floor with hemp mops, gathering it in one place; someone else slotted the brand irons back into their stands. The Deputy Commander watching over all of it showed not even a flicker of disturbance.
The Senior Inspector pressed a hand over his mouth — to ward off the nauseating stench of blood.
He had been able to read that Wi Saheon was about to do something up until the sword cleared its scabbard, but what came after he had not foreseen at all.
Even though Gwak had been a personnel matter in which the Inner Guard Bureau had been involved, the Senior Inspector could not raise an objection, given that Gwak had violated the Dark Bureau’s discipline.
“Bring it.”
At Wi Saheon’s instruction, the Interrogator brought the brand iron. It was calibrated to a temperature that would burn flesh without severing consciousness. Normally it was pressed to the center of a criminal’s forehead or to their cheek.
Shin Yigyeom was dragged in front of the torture rack, his full weight borne by the soldiers on either side.
“Those are eyes that have a lot they want to say.”
“…….”
“I don’t have the time.”
Wi Saheon seized Shin Yigyeom by the hair and wrenched his head back.
His gaze traveled down the pale, exposed line of his throat.
His pupils dilated almost imperceptibly at the whip marks staining the skin red, but no one noticed.
Wi Saheon released Shin Yigyeom’s hair as if brushing it aside and readjusted his grip on the brand iron’s handle.
Forced down onto the torture rack by sheer physical compulsion, one of Shin Yigyeom’s cheeks was pressed against the surface.
Wi Saheon pushed the hair aside himself and raised the face of the brand iron — hot steam billowed out. Remaining just like that, he sank briefly into thought.
“The Baekah People are specialized in archery, aren’t they.”
Had he not added those words, he would have appeared to be deliberating over the sentence.
The Deputy Commander, quick to understand, immediately moved Shin Yigyeom’s hand up onto the torture rack. Wi Saheon shook his head in refusal.
“Left hand.”
“Pardon?”
“I said the left hand.”
The Grand Bureau Chief knew even that Shin Yigyeom favored his left hand. It was a fact that had not surfaced even when his pain responses were being assessed.
The Deputy Commander responded with swift precision. He seized Shin Yigyeom’s curling left hand and forced it flat — and the face of the brand iron billowed hot steam into the air.
“This is a brand being applied by the Grand Bureau Chief himself. You ought to consider it an honor.”
The Deputy Commander said quietly. In the small space thick with tangled hair and heated breath, Shin Yigyeom laughed.
“…An honor? You are nothing but expendable parts of the narcissistically deranged Daeryun Federal Empire.”
The Deputy Commander went still for a moment, and the Senior Inspector openly scrunched his face at the outrageous words — but Wi Saheon laughed. It was a laugh utterly without restraint.
The heat of the brand iron’s face drew steadily closer to Shin Yigyeom’s left hand.
The Grand Bureau Chief’s brand was not permitted to just anyone. All the more so for a member of the Mumyeongdan — an anti-state armed force — it was a lavish treatment.
The brand of “Yeok (逆)” — Traitor — was the mark of a rebel, burned into those of the Palace Guard who, though they should have been the imperial sword, had turned against the imperial household.
Shin Yigyeom drew in a measured breath. The sensation of drawing a bowstring, of gripping a dagger’s hilt, circled through his palm like an electric current.
Then, a brief moment of silence fell.
It was the instant Wi Saheon’s indifferent gaze settled upon Shin Yigyeom’s callus-hardened palm.
“…?!”
Shin Yigyeom clenched his teeth hard enough to shatter his jaw.
The taste of blood came from between crushed teeth. His wide-forced eyes reddened by degrees, and through dilated pupils the interior of the interrogation room appeared distant.
The hand pressing the brand iron did not move even slightly.
The Senior Inspector, who had resented Shin Yigyeom and been waiting only for the iron to be applied quickly, ultimately turned his head away.
The heat scorching the flesh and searing it into clotted ruin — Shin Yigyeom’s limbs twisted against it. Outside the area where the brand iron’s face met his palm, blood-saturated fluid from the melting flesh ran down.
Trembling violently as though convulsing, Shin Yigyeom did not produce a single groan, and held Wi Saheon’s gaze to the very end.
Thinking that this was the spirit of a Baekah person who had cast aside the Palace Guard and raised their hand against the empire, the Deputy Commander felt a chill run down his spine. At the same time, as an imperial citizen, his blood ran hot.
The brand iron only withdrew after it had inscribed the character “Yeok (逆)” in a circular pattern across Shin Yigyeom’s palm and down to the base of his fingers.
The violent convulsing of Shin Yigyeom’s back gradually stilled. The smell of blood mingled with charred flesh filled the interrogation room entirely.
“When he comes to, give him water first.”
Wi Saheon said briefly, looking down at the heaving, slight back.
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
The Deputy Commander answered a beat behind.
Wi Saheon removed his leather gloves as he stepped out of the interrogation room. The residual heat trapped inside the leather clung to his palm.
As he walked down the corridor, he did not look back even once. The sentence had already been carried out. Far from being excessive — he had even shown leniency.
Only the pale-colored eyes that had not once looked away from his, stubbornly holding his gaze at every moment, remained powerfully etched in his mind.
“The Palace Guard Commander’s eyes are black, I hear.”
The bowstring Wi Saheon had drawn taut held steady without a tremor. Sunlight streamed down along the back of the ebony bow.
“Bend your index finger a little more.”
Shin Yigyeom’s hand, standing behind him, made careful contact with Wi Saheon’s hand. He touched each of Wi Saheon’s finger joints one by one, correcting the angle.
