The Twenty-Ninth Stanza - 관습도감 (Royal Stanza)
Read from the beginning.
NOTE: AN ENGLISH-KOREAN GLOSSARY HAS BEEN PROVIDED FOR REFERENCE AT THE END OF THE ENTRY, AS WELL AS ADDITIONAL READING.
-THE TWENTY-NINTH STANZA-
Five Years Ago
A young man in ratty clothing hides behind a tree, watching two teenagers - one girl and one boy - stroll down the street.
He quickly ducks behind the branches as they start walking slowly in his direction. He doesn’t know why he’s hiding; why he’s so ashamed of himself; why he feels the need to watch them secretly, furtively, like a Peeping Tom. He hates himself for it.
Chewing on his fingernails, he slowly peeks out over the top of the branch. The girl and the boy are deep in conversation. He notices they’ve locked their pinkies together. He looks down at his own fingers. They’re clean.
He hears voices, and ducks down again.
“ - Father thinks that I don’t know about it, but - ” The male voice says. He sounds agitated.
“Relax.” The female voice is soothing. As it always has been, every time he sees her. “He’s just…conflicted.”
“Conflicted? Is that why he never comes home anymore? I - ”
“She’s trying as hard as she can, she feels sorry for - “
The young man settles in to listen. As they gradually move farther and farther away from his position, he hears less and less, but he gets the general idea.
Putting on his smirk, he steps out from beneath the tree. “Hello.”
The two people immediately stop their discussion and turn around. Her face breaks out into a glad-to-see-you-but-why-are-you-here smile, the kind of smile that makes him giddy and guilty at the same time, while he crosses his arms and exhales through his nose, his lips tightly pursed. He isn’t happy to see him, he can tell. But he shoots him a smile anyway, only to see a small frown crease his face.
Very well. I don’t like you, either.
---
Dawn.
It hadn’t been an easy night.
The rain had stopped, yes, but that didn’t help Sooyoung much in her current situation. Her hands were starting to develop blisters from where they had continuously chafed against the roughly hewn rope that bound her wrists together.
Jonghyun hadn’t stopped pacing.
“Hey.” Her voice came out scratchy. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Hey!”
He barely glanced at her direction.
“I have a question for you.”
His pacing speed slowed for a tiny fraction of a second, then resumed its normal course, counterclockwise around the warehouse.
“Do you still play?”
---
Five years ago
Jonghyun put his haegeum down from his chin after drawing the last chord. He waited eagerly for her response.
Sooyoung clapped her hands together. “That was nice.”
Next to her, Yonghwa rolled his eyes. “Anyone can play the haegeum. It’s not that hard.”
“I was asking for Lizzy’s opinion, not - ”
“Please don’t call her that.”
His name was Yonghwa, he found out. And he was friends with her. Why didn’t she tell me? Did she need to?
“I’ve been calling her Lizzy since - ”
“I know.” Yonghwa says harshly. “It was a taunt. She hated it.”
“I’m sorry to be rude.” He says, in an effort to be polite, “But who the hell are you?”
---
Yonghwa had forgotten all about Sooyoung. About finding her. It didn’t matter now.
For he was here, standing in front of it, looking at it, soaking it in, despite every single cell in his brain calling out desperately to stop, turn away, don’t take one more step!
But he couldn’t help it. He stepped closer. Placing a hesitant hand on the weathered gate, he slowly creaked it open. The bottom of the wooden boards scraped against the ground.
Feeling a distinct sense of uncertainty bearing down on him, Yonghwa entered his former home, taking off his shoes like he used to and setting them down neatly on the patio before grinding open the door frame; the door itself had succumbed to fungus and natural weathering long ago.
And there it was, staring back at him.
---
Jonghyun opened a hitherto-unnoticed satchel that had been lying in a corner. “Yes, I still play.” He opened the bag with trembling fingers and drew out the haegeum. It had fractured slightly, and one of the strings was missing, but other than that, it seemed to be in acceptable condition.
Sooyoung watched as he sat down and raised it to his knee, the wooden instrument trembling slightly. She noticed he had trouble keeping his head still. With a grunt of dissatisfaction, Jonghyun rotated the tuning pegs.
“Play something.” She offered. Yonghwa needs more time.
Jonghyun seemed to calm down slightly as he grasped his bow, his fingers moving without a trace of their former spasms.
The moment he drew his bow across the first string, he stopped moving entirely and his eyes seemed to soften a little.
Sooyoung relaxed a little as he played a simple melody that she recognized as the one he had often played by the beach, years ago.
---
Five Years Ago
“It’s pretty.” She marveled.
Jonghyun, his hair tied up in a neat bun with a lock of hair draped stylishly across his forehead, smirked. “It’s something I wrote.”
“You wrote it?”
“I wrote it. How does it sound?”
“I think…” She spread her hands out in front of her, towards the gently pounding surf. “It fits the ocean well.”
Jonghyun cleaned the sand from underneath his fingernails. The last rays of the sun shone down on his happy face. “That’s what I wanted. To write it for…for the ocean.” He looked at her contented face. “You know, I - ”
“Lizzy!”
They turned around to see Yonghwa waving at them from one of the docks.
A huge smile spread across her face as she stood up, waving back. “Hi!”
Jonghyun watched as she hurriedly stood up and brushed the sand from her jeogori. “I have to go.” She said cheerfully. “Bye!”
---
The moment Jonghyun put the bow away, his fingers started trembling slightly. He stood up slightly drunkenly, as though his legs had gone numb and he didn’t have complete control over them. Holding the haegeum awkwardly under his arm and his bow haphazardly strung across the strings, he resumed pacing, this time in a figure-eight pattern.
“He’s not coming.” Jonghyun said, with a trace of disbelief and - could it be? - disappointment.
Sooyoung secretly breathed a sigh of relief. “So let me go.”
Jonghyun shook his head - it was more of a spastic twitch. “No. No. No. No.” He shook his head more violently. “We wait. Wait.”
She closed her eyes. Strangely enough, she only felt frustration and anxiety - not true fear. She hadn’t felt true fear since -
---
Five Years Ago
“Fire!”
“Fire! There’s a fire!”
“Someone get him out!”
The flames licked their way up the wooden weight-bearing beams.
Sooyoung ran inside the burning house, choking on the ashes. “Yonghwa! Yong - ”
There was a small explosion as part of the roof crumbled in on itself. The sparks from the initial flames jumped to the thatched roof, setting them ablaze and traveling faster than her eyes could’ve believed.
She found him hiding in his closet, tears running down his face and his cheeks grayed with soot.
“Yonghwa! Let’s go!”
“No!”
She paused. “What’s wrong with you??”
“I don’t care if I die!” He looked at her hopelessly. “She’s gone! Dead! And I - ”
She shook his shoulders. “You’re not leaving on me! Do you want me to be miserable for the rest of my life?”
With a pang, he found that she was crying, too. The wet tears left marks on her soot-stained face as they rolled down her cheeks.
She shrieked as a falling beam barely grazed them. She looked at him desperately. “Come on. Not now.” She extended his hand.
---
It was surprising how much of the house was still standing, he mused. He’d have thought that what the fire didn’t take, the looters would have. Apparently, the looters feared this place just as much as he did.
Perhaps her ghost still hung about the place.
If that was the case, perhaps he owed her a thank-you.
Thank you, Mother.
---
Glossary
관습도감: A government institution founded in the waning days of the Koryeo Dynasty and re-established by King Sejong, which focused on the musical arts. It supplied all music for royal use, including Royal Musicians, royal concerts, and parties, and trained its own in-house musicians, for which the competition was fierce.
Haegeum: a two-stringed instrument that was balanced on the knee and played sitting down with a bow. There also exists a five-stringed variant.
Jeogori: a traditional blouse worn by Korean women, as a part of hanbok.
---
Related Readings
See the haegeum in action
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I apologize if you’re a little confused. I originally had planned on combining this chapter with the one after it, but I thought the second part needed a little polishing up. It’ll be up by tomorrow. Hopefully your questions will be answered then.