745.
The road back was quiet.
Spring was ending.
The water in the paddies had turned pale, and the green along the mountain skirts had dropped a shade.
Each time the hooves struck dry earth, the sound bounced up lightly.
Song Yijeong spoke first.
"I keep thinking… whether we broke our principle.
Did we violate the mountain man's taboo.
The rule of non-interference."
Park Seongjin did not answer.
He loosened the reins a little, and the horse's pace slowed of its own accord.
Only after a long while did he speak.
"Not stepping into worldly affairs does not mean pretending not to see.
Non-interference means you do not use power recklessly when you have it.
It does not mean you watch a neighbor being trampled and look away."
Song Yijeong nodded once, then shook his head again.
"Even so, I worry.
Today will not be the end of it."
Park Seongjin glanced toward the paddies.
Wind passed and pressed down ripples on the water.
"Will it get worse."
"There could be retaliation."
"It is not different even now.
Could it become worse than this."
Song Yijeong gave a short laugh.
"True.
They were never landlords to begin with."
"They are bandits."
When the words ended, only wind remained.
The horses did not ask, and the road kept going.
"I will settle it cleanly."
At Park Seongjin's words, Song Yijeong's expression hardened.
"You might collide with public authority."
Park Seongjin did not turn his head.
"If public authority looks away even at this, then it has no use.
We should overturn the Patrol Bureau first.
They neglect what must be done.
What, exactly, are they protecting."
Anger sat on the end of his voice.
Not excitement.
The anger of something kept pressed down for a long time, finally showing its face.
When Park Seongjin returned home, he sat at his desk at once.
He took up the brush and wrote two letters.
One to Yi Injung.
One a memorial to the king.
In the king's memorial he concealed nothing about what had happened that day.
He reported that he had stopped those who tried to drive tenants out, and punished those who used violence.
He demanded that the responsibility of the Jeonminbyeonjeong Dogam be clearly held, for leaving such matters unattended.
He added that a reform bureau that exists only in name and does not function has no reason to exist.
He sent the same substance to the Jeonminbyeonjeong Dogam as well.
No more delaying.
Handle the injustice occurring next door with their own hands.
To the Patrol Bureau he sent a separate letter.
He stated that the first violence had not come from his side, and that he had only answered the violence wielded against those who came to protest.
He admitted that he had watched the situation without revealing his status.
Even so, he wrote that there was no pretext anywhere for swinging clubs at protesting commoners.
He demanded that several involved be summoned to the State Tribunal and punished severely.
At the end of the letter to the king, he left a short sentence.
I will not involve myself in affairs of the realm.
Yet I will not look away from injustice done to my neighbors.
After setting down the brush, Park Seongjin remained seated for a time.
He had said what needed saying.
There was nothing more to add.
What followed was no longer his portion.
After writing and sending the letters, Park Seongjin headed for Hagungchon.
He did not go empty-handed.
He divided noodles he had cut at the shop into several portions and wrapped them in cloth.
As he entered the village, doors opened one after another.
People rushed out in a wave.
The mood was still buoyant from the day's windfall.
They might not know the name, but they knew the face.
Whose father, whose mother.
Faces he had seen since childhood.
Those faces poured out all at once.
"Jungnangjang-nim! They came and went!"
"They left the land documents!"
"Is this… a dream, or waking life. Is it true."
"I cannot believe it."
"Was it you who did this for us."
They crowded around Park Seongjin.
It was the neighboring village.
A place he had run through as a child, yet every face had grown old.
Only his own house, with military allotment land, had managed to stay tolerable.
Everyone else had lived hard.
He had not known then.
Not how hard these people lived.
To fulfill their duty as soldiers, fathers and sons had studied with all they had.
A thought rose in him.
His own time felt as if it had stopped there in childhood.
Why were only these people so aged and sick.
"Was there anything else."
"They slunk around and left the papers."
"They said we do not have to pay rent-tithe anymore."
"They said we do not have to leave this land."
"What in the world is this…"
Park Seongjin said nothing and unwrapped the bundle.
Noodles appeared.
He placed portions into people's hands one by one and said,
"I opened a noodle shop not long ago."
"We know. How could we not."
Neighbors who knew his childhood still could not bring themselves to speak down to him.
"I did not want to come with nothing.
I only cut the noodles.
Boil them in water.
When they sink and then float, they are done.
When foam rises, lift them out, season with soy sauce, and scatter chopped scallion and pepper on top."
Song Yijeong, beside him, lost words for a moment.
After all of that, the thing he said was how to boil noodles.
"Eat well, and sleep deeply tonight.
Nothing will happen."
Then an old man who looked well past sixty stepped out from the crowd.
He was quick-witted.
He already knew whose hand had moved today.
He also knew this habit of Park Seongjin's,
speaking only of noodles.
"Thank you… Jungnangjang-nim."
"Come now. Are you not Deokbae's father. Speak freely."
Park Seongjin waved his hand.
"Be healthy, in any case.
Worry no more.
I will be going."
He turned quickly.
In that instant, Deokbae's father threw himself down and bowed to the ground.
Those who did not understand looked at one another, then one by one bent their backs and followed.
They did not know how it had been done.
They would not be driven out.
They would not have to pay again the portion they had failed to meet in the autumn.
They heard the original contract had been wrong from the start, set far too harshly.
It was the first time they had heard the word "contract."
Hagungchon's people stood there a long while,
holding new contracts and land documents, unable to leave.
--*
The next day, Park Seongjin went to the Jeonminbyeonjeong Dogam.
It was the office tasked with investigating aristocratic estates and private lands and returning them to the treasury.
The words were grand, yet the work was always slow.
He did not hide anything.
He said plainly that while they clung to other matters and failed to act, he had used force and intimidation to settle it himself.
He explained the entire sequence of the day before, from beginning to end, with calm detail.
Whom he met.
What he demanded.
How the conclusion was reached.
He left nothing out.
By chance, Yi Baekchung (李伯冲), formerly a Royal Secretariat Director of the Office of Royal Decrees, was present.
He already had the outline.
After listening to Park Seongjin to the end, he nodded and said reinvestigation had already begun.
They were slow in other matters,
yet strangely swift when the matter touched the center of power.
The letters sent to the king, to Yi Injung, and to the Patrol Bureau seemed to have taken effect.
Park Seongjin urged proper handling and left.
He went straight to Yi Injung.
The moment Yi Injung saw him, he scolded first.
"You made a spectacle of it."
When Park Seongjin explained the sequence again, Yi Injung let out a hollow laugh.
"You think only that one bastard does such things."
"That is Goryeo's problem."
At that, Yi Injung sighed deeply.
A brief silence passed, then he said,
"His Majesty says, in this matter, it will be handled firmly enough that you need not concern yourself further."
"So he intends to act."
"He intends to act."
They spoke for a while of old things.
Senior brother, yet comrade.
The battlefield.
Those already gone.
Time that would not return.
It was a conversation that needed no new words.
Park Seongjin left and returned.
By the time he reached the shop, the rumor had already made a full circle.
They said Hagungchon's people had come by.
They came without business, and left without a word.
Calling it a gift felt too plain.
Calling it repayment felt too exact.
Things that existed in the house but not in the shop.
Things he always made do without, patching by hand and letting pass.
Nothing large, yet in a noodle shop, peculiarly useful.
A ladle worn smooth by long use.
A new sieve to replace the old one with a thinned bottom.
A wooden stand that would not warp even near fire.
A wide bucket to draw up water in one go.
No one had said what was needed, yet they left only what was needed.
Across the yard, brother-in-law Jiho was making something again.
In this house, the most diligent person always had a tool in hand.
He could not rest unless his eyes confirmed how work was turning.
As Park Seongjin moved with a sword in hand, Jiho moved with saw and plane in hand.
He sat at the back of the shop, at the end of a porch where sunlight fell by half.
On the dirt floor he had laid a thick plank and used it as a workbench.
Neatly arranged on it were wooden parts already carved.
A fine layer of sawdust lay over everything.
Logs marked with ink-lines stood propped to the side, their guides still vivid.
A round frame could be seen—
at a glance, it looked like a small waterwheel.
Park Seongjin approached and asked,
"What is it.
What are you making."
Jiho answered without stopping his hands.
"When they mill flour, everyone does it by hand."
"Then not by hand… by foot, or what."
Jiho made a low hm-hm sound and laughed.
"Wait and see."
"It looks like a waterwheel."
"Yes.
A millstone turned by a waterwheel."
The words "pointless fuss" almost rose to Park Seongjin's mouth, then he swallowed them.
Other people's work can always look useless.
My small labor holds meaning.
Another's care looks like wasted time.
He knew that habit in himself.
"Want help."
Jiho glanced at him.
"Again."
This time it was precise work.
He had to carve gear teeth that would mesh with the axle of the wheel.
If even one tooth was off, it would spin empty even with water caught.
"Give me the knife."
Park Seongjin took a short carving blade and began shaving along the ink-lines.
He did not force it.
He pushed as if smoothing, pressing as if laying down.
With each tooth, a thin shaving fell.
By sensation alone rising into his fingertips, the angles aligned.
After carving several in a row, the parts looked as if stamped from one mold.
Jiho could not hide his admiration.
"You really work well."
"You have strong hands."
"True."
As the two sat side by side fitting wood to wood,
Okbun came out with something to drink.
It was sikhye, though it was not winter.
She had clearly come because she worried her husband was being bullied again for some foolish project.
"Drink this and work."
"Sikhye. Thanks."
Park Seongjin took the bowl and drank it in one go.
He even swept up the rice grains at the bottom with his tongue.
Okbun burst into laughter at the sight.
"Is it doable."
It sounded like a question to Jiho,
yet it was also a question to Park Seongjin.
He glanced at his brother-in-law, then looked back at his sister.
"Time.
I need time.
To get used to it."
"What is hard for you."
Park Seongjin thought for a moment.
It was not difficulty, exactly.
Something still held his mind.
The senses of the battlefield had not left him yet.
He did not want to whine.
So he chose a strange phrase.
"I feel like I am still on the battlefield.
Everything feels unfamiliar.
Whatever I do, it is awkward.
It feels like it is not me."
Okbun chuckled.
"You were like that even back then."
"Back then I did nothing properly.
I was clumsy, slow, only good at using strength."
"Even so, you should come into the house sometimes.
Sit and watch things turn."
"Why."
"Just because."
Okbun was always like this.
She would open words, then when asked the reason, seal them back up as if it were nothing.
Strangely, that sealing made his mind comfortable.
Most of the world's troubles folded once before her,
pressed down once, and grew quiet.
Jiho fitted wood again.
Park Seongjin gripped the knife.
In the yard, the scent of sawdust mixed with the sweet smell of sikhye.
The round frame of the waterwheel was slowly taking shape.