When night fell, he returned to the annex.
It was the hour to set down the day's words and movements, the gathered currents of other people's presence.
Living in the world and returning to oneself always faced different directions, and the nights that carried him between the two were truly precious.
First he poured oil into the lamp.
A low flame climbed the wick and drew a small circle in the dark.
The flame did not so much brighten as it settled.
When he looked at that light, his thoughts lowered with it.
Next, he walked the yard.
He did not take large steps.
The sound of feet on stone, the brush of grass tips, the day's lingering breaths—everything scattered into the night air.
As he walked, he did not try to solve anything.
He simply allowed the body to set the day down.
Meditation came after.
He spread his seat, sat, and straightened his back.
He did not count the breath.
He did not chase thoughts.
He only watched.
He watched the turning world and the turning self together.
Some nights he sank into deep absorption.
Time vanished.
The boundary between body and breath blurred.
Weight, name, even direction thinned into faintness.
In that place, the will to do something loosened.
He stayed as he was.
Other nights, awareness loosened lightly.
He passed distant mountains, crossed water, drifted into places where human footsteps were scarce.
He did not grasp what he saw or heard.
Only the sense of having gone and returned remained.
Rarely, he rose while still seated.
The body stayed on the veranda, the mind passed between stars and cloud.
When he returned, he always returned with the breath.
A great inhale.
The confirmation that he was seated here again.
Night took a different shape each time.
There were quiet nights, nights of long journeys, nights of lingering.
Only one thing stayed the same.
Those nights made him human again.
And, quietly, they raised the strength to step back into the world the next day.
For a man who had pacified Liaodong and the Central Plains, Jiangnan and Wa, his life was almost too spare.
He rarely went out.
Only when the martial trainees went to public labor—clearing roads, laying bridges, opening waterways—did he sometimes appear.
Even then, he did not lead.
He took up a pick, moved earth, carried stones, and shouldered his share without words.
He did not set foot toward Gaegyeong.
It was not avoidance first.
The reason to go had grown thin.
Humans ruin the human world through greed.
He knew that too well.
When one knows that greed is built upon another's suffering, the heart halts at once.
So he chose distance rather than stepping forward.
The king sent for him again and again.
He did not come out.
In the end he was summoned once or twice and sat facing him.
The words that returned were always the same.
"I will give you an office. Come out and serve."
He was firm.
"A martial man is not timber fit to govern a country. What he knows is narrow. His experience in statecraft is shallow."
He refused and returned.
He was summoned two more times after that.
The substance did not change.
Neither did his stance.
They cannot bring forth the strength to change, yet they say they hate things as they are.
They do not shave away a hair of their own profit, yet they imitate the correction of only another man's errors.
They hope the world will change by itself, and they want their hands clean.
He saw that as the most cowardly posture.
He also knew that if Goryeo continued as it was, the end would be reached.
But if power did not choose the road that could avoid that end, the roads would gather into one.
They were already standing on the path of ruin.
He knew that, and still did not step forward.
He knew, and still withdrew.
What he chose was not silence, but distance.
That distance made the sound of the world collapsing all the clearer.
At some point, ruin became visible.
It had not yet arrived, yet it was no longer far.
He thought that crushing the Red Turbans and driving out Wa would improve the world.
What improved was not the world, but them.
A world of those with vast estates and great lands, a peace meant only for them.
These days, Buddhist paintings were made with unusual precision.
The technique was high, the colors deep, gold thread and silver thread glimmering softly against a dark ground.
The heavenly robes flowed as lightly as wind brushing cloth.
The bodhisattva's eyes looked alive.
Yet the size was strange.
Too small for a temple ceremony.
Awkward for an altar wall.
In modern terms, it was the size of a large portrait.
It was a painting meant to be hung in a private house.
In the reception hall of the wealthy, in the great room that opened onto a garden, on the wall of a men's quarters looking out at a pond.
Even imagining the price made breath tighten.
Considering the gold, the silver, the pigments, the craftsmen's hands, a single painting might have held within it the value of tens of households' yearly taxes.
What they wanted was not only Amitabha's Pure Land.
Not only peace in the next life.
It looked as though their true wish was this.
If there is a next life, let this life continue.
He found it hard to imagine a life better than that of Goryeo's aristocrats.
They ate what was good for the body.
They bathed in clear water.
They wore silk and fur without distinction.
They drank fine tea.
They looked upon fine scenery.
They even spared themselves the effort of traveling to scenery, bringing scenery into the house instead.
They dug ponds and piled artificial hills.
Rare fish cut the water's surface.
Cross a bridge and a rock mountain rose, modeled after the Three Divine Isles.
The house was wide enough to float a boat upon the pond for play.
While one house rose, dozens of common houses vanished.
To earn well and spend well is common in the world.
This cost came from the blood and sweat of serfs bound to great lands.
Even so, they laughed.
They reveled.
There was no way it could look fair to his eyes.
He had walked Liaodong and the Central Plains, Jiangnan and Wa.
He had compared.
Only then did he see Goryeo with an objective eye.
And he called that sight by a single name.
Ruin.
After that, he had walls built around the house.
He reduced comings and goings, veiled traffic.
He put distance between himself and the world.
He fixed his place so the world's waves would not press inside.
It was a quiet, firm choice—
a choice to keep from stepping closer to an end he had already seen.
—A Problem Revealed as Things Deepen — Land Accumulation
Burly men with clubs came swarming in.
Not three or four.
A gang.
In front of them, farmers were fleeing.
"Legs, save me" had turned into motion itself.
Shoes came off.
Bundles fell.
There was no time to look back.
It was land right beside Park Seongjin's own.
When he asked what it was, the men answered without concern.
"They didn't pay the rent properly. We're driving them out."
When he asked how much was paid and how much was lacking, one man sneered.
"Seventy percent. Seven tenths of the yield. It's the same everywhere."
Park Seongjin lost his words for a moment.
After paying seven tenths, there was nothing left to survive the winter.
Barley would not head for some time yet.
If they could not endure the gap, they would starve.
And yet they had come to drive them out now.
Unable to bear it, Song Yijeong stepped forward.
He forced a few ruffians back with strength.
Not excessive.
Not cruel.
He only shoved them so they could not come closer.
Soon after, a man in neat clothing appeared.
He introduced himself as the steward who managed this land.
His speech was polite.
His explanation was calm.
"It is by regulation. The whole country is like this. Do not blame us alone."
"There are plenty of tenants willing to pay eighty percent."
When words stalled, Song Yijeong asked,
"Is this not excessive?"
"We are the same as others."
"Then let them at least harvest the barley. Why drive them out now?"
The steward shook his head.
"Asking to harvest is a favor, not a right. Leaving now without conditions is the way to help."
Then Park Seongjin, who had been practicing sword forms in the yard, walked over.
"Why did you do it?"
Song Yijeong answered low.
"It pained me to watch."
Park Seongjin's eyes sank cold.
"Then go and sweep it all away. Why stand here babbling."
"…Pardon?"
"Why close your eyes over what is wrong."
Song Yijeong fell silent for a moment.
"You told me not to meddle in worldly affairs."
"Even when your neighbor is in trouble?"
That single line struck Song Yijeong in the chest.
Neighbor.
Houses whose faces he knew by passing.
Chimneys whose smoke he saw every other day.
Song Yijeong turned to the steward and spoke with finality.
"By today, clarify the ownership. The best is to transfer the farmland to the tenant. Lowering the rate is also a method. Arrears from autumn must be remitted. Today."
Then he added,
"If it is not done, do not blame me for what happens."
A declaration.
The steward, recognizing who they were, recoiled in shock.
Song Yijeong pressed on.
"Go at once and report."
The steward fled in haste.
Park Seongjin asked,
"What will you do."
"Kill them first, then see."
"Violent."
"It is the misery of my neighbor. I can endure other things. I cannot endure what is right beside me."
"And the misery of distant neighbors?"
Song Yijeong hesitated.
"That too."
Park Seongjin asked again.
"Then who is this man."
"Baeksu."
The name meant "live a hundred years," they said.
He was a great landowner nearby.
Even inherited wealth was not enough for him, and hearing that others expanded land made him anxious.
He scraped together money and bought up neighboring land.
The problem lay in where the money came from.
He gutted the tenants.
He raised the rate and demanded more yield.
From a field said to produce twenty seok, he demanded fourteen.
In truth it did not even yield fifteen.
If they said it was not such land, he blamed the tenant's lack of diligence.
"You farmed lazily."
It was always the same line.
He used stewards to seize what tenants owned.
If words failed, he used violence.
If that still failed, he drove them out just before harvest.
Now barley was about to head.
Driven out now, they would starve.
Even if not driven out, they were poised to starve.
Such a society was being protected under the name of law.
Before long, Song Yijeong returned fully armed.
Song Yisul asked,
"What will you do?"
Song Yijeong answered hard.
"Do not expect to see me for a while."
"Where are you going?"
"I will kill them all, then disappear for a time."
"Endure a little."
"I cannot endure anymore."
"Behind Baeksu is Cheonsu."
"Cheonsu?"
"I have already threatened them. If you go, they will be there."
"Public authority?"
"Yes. Even so, will you do it?"
"I must. If I can save even one person."
Listening, Park Seongjin's chest did not sit easy.
This was what it meant to keep distance from the world.
If the patrol office came out, then Song Yijeong—
Park Seongjin bit his lip.
"Let us go together."
"But you said you would not step into the world—"
"The world is no longer like the world."
"Let us go."
They mounted their horses.
Toward Baeksu's house.
Quietly—
and yet without a path back.