Chapter 54: Page Eighteen

It was medicine.

That’s what she kept saying. The whole first quarter hour.

"Medicine," said Hwang Yu-seon, standing behind me with her palms full of pale green salve. "Lie still."

I was lying face down on her bed. Naked. Under the painted cranes. The salve was cold when it touched my shoulders. Then it was warm. Then it was hot, like peppermint and pine needles soaking into my skin.

Her hands were steady. Professional. Thumbs pressing in long slow lines from my neck down my spine. Every inch. She hadn’t been exaggerating.

"The arms first," she said. "That’s where he’ll aim. The Pine Root goes for the striking arm."

She did my right arm. Shoulder to fingertips. Then the left. Then back to the right, again, slower. Working it in. Every finger. Between every finger.

"Then the ribs. The neck. Anywhere a sword can reach."

She did my ribs. My sides. The back of my neck. The skin started tingling everywhere she’d been, like it was waking up.

It was medicine.

It was definitely medicine.

"The legs," said Hwang.

Her hands moved down. My calves. The backs of my knees. The backs of my thighs. Slow. Firm. Every inch.

Higher.

"...Medicine," she said again. A little quieter.

"I know."

"A thigh wound bleeds out in less than a quarter hour. It has to be covered."

"I know."

Her thumbs pressed in. Higher. Very slowly.

Then they stopped.

She was quiet for a long moment.

"Turn over," said Hwang Yu-seon.

I turned over.

She was kneeling on the bed beside me with her hands shining green, her thin white under-robe slipping off one shoulder, her hair falling around her face. She looked down at me.

At all of me.

The salve-covered, tingling, very-much-awake all of me.

She closed her eyes.

"Medicine," she said, through her teeth.

She did my chest. My stomach. Every inch. Slower now. Much slower. Her breathing wasn’t steady anymore. Neither was mine. The salve was burning everywhere, and every time her palms moved, the burn moved with them, and when she got to my hips, her hands were shaking.

She stopped.

Opened her eyes.

"Twenty years," she said, "I’ve been the most controlled woman in this academy."

"I know."

"I can drain five yins out of a dying boy without blinking. I can play go with a Vice Minister until dawn and never lose my temper." Her green-stained hands hovered over my stomach. "And I can’t get through one hour of rubbing salve on you without—"

She didn’t finish.

She didn’t have to.

She leaned down and kissed me.

And the salve on her lips burned like peppermint. And the salve on my skin burned under her hands. And when she climbed over me, her green hands pressed flat on my chest, her hair falling around both of us under the cranes, the whole bed smelled like pine and medicine and her.

"Tell Ji-yeon," Hwang gasped somewhere in the middle of it, "that the salve works best with body heat. She’ll want to know. She’ll want to write it down."

"I’m not telling Ji-yeon that."

"Then I will. At tea." She bit my shoulder. "She’ll be furious. It’ll be wonderful."

[Seal: fractured.]

[Seal: weakening.]

I felt the warmth behind her wall. Closer than ever. Like a door with light shining underneath it.

Not open.

But so close.

I sent the letter at dawn.

Ji-yeon’s courier was waiting at the academy gate. A thin young man with a fast horse and a Gwak family pass that would get him through every checkpoint between Hangju and the capital in five days.

I handed him the folded paper, tied with Seo-ah’s blue ribbon.

Four lines. That’s all. Eleven drafts, and it came down to four lines.

Gu Seung-hwan will cheat with Night Lotus.

The magistrate will let him.

Only the Ministry of Rites can stop it.

I’m not asking. I’m telling you. Your choice. — M.J.

And then, under that, smaller, because I couldn’t help it:

P.S. Number six. I’m getting stronger.

The courier tucked it inside his jacket. Saluted. Swung onto his horse.

And galloped away down the river road.

Five days there. Five days for her to read it. Decide. Find her father. Five days back, if anyone even came.

The duel was in twelve.

The math was terrible.

I didn’t care.

I’d told her. That’s all I could do. The rest was hers to decide.

The Gwak family compound was enormous.

I’d seen it from the bell tower. Black tile roofs. Six courtyards. A wall around the whole thing taller than the one between the Baek and Gu estates. Servants everywhere, even at the night bell.

A very proper servant in spectacles met me at a side gate. Didn’t look at me. Didn’t speak. Just led me through three courtyards, two gardens, and a covered walkway, to a door at the very end of the inner quarters.

Knocked twice.

Walked away.

The door slid open.

Ji-yeon was standing there in her navy robe. Buttoned to the throat. Spectacles. Bun.

And holding The Hundred Springtime Postures of the Jade Chamber against her chest like a shield.

"You’re late," she said.

"I was at the—"

"I know where you were. I could smell the pine from the courtyard." Her nose wrinkled. "Hwang’s salve. She told me at tea that it works best with body heat."

Of course she did.

"I was furious," said Ji-yeon.

"She said you’d be."

"I wrote it down." She stepped back. Let me in. "Come inside. Gi-chul’s at his grandmother’s until tomorrow."

Her room was huge. Polished floors. Silk screens painted with bamboo. Lamps everywhere. Bookshelves on every wall. A desk with ledgers piled neatly on one side and silk samples on the other.

And a bed.

A very large bed. Dark heavy wood. Thick carved posts. The kind of bed that had been built a hundred years ago by somebody who expected it to last another hundred.

"Sturdier," I said.

"Much sturdier."

On the wall beside the bed, there was a portrait.

A man. Middle-aged. Stiff. Official’s cap. Very neat beard. Very serious eyes.

And socks. You could see his socks. White. Neatly painted.

"My husband," said Ji-yeon, following my eyes. "Nam Jae-won. The painter said he wouldn’t sit for it without them."

I looked at the portrait.

The portrait looked at me.

"...Should we—"

"I already thought of it." She walked over, took the portrait off its hook, and turned it around to face the wall. Very carefully. Very neatly. Like she was filing it. "Eight years. He’s looked at that bed every night for eight years. He can look at the wall for one."

She turned around.

Held up the book.

Opened it to a page with a corner folded down. Showed it to me.

Page eighteen.

I looked at it.

I looked at her.

I looked at it again. Turned my head sideways.

"...That’s not physically possible."

"It is," said Ji-yeon. "I’ve checked the measurements. Three times." She pointed at the diagram with one finger. "The trick is the bed. It needs a high, solid frame. And one partner has to be very flexible. And the other has to be very strong." She looked me up and down. "You’re strong."

"And who’s flexible?"

Ji-yeon went pink.

"I’ve been practicing," she said. "Stretching. Every morning. For four days. I can touch my toes now." A pause. "With my palms."

I stared at her.

This woman. This strict, terrifying, perfectly buttoned widow who’d walked into my room a month ago and told me I’d last two minutes. Who’d sponsored me, saved me, sent a thousand silver with one word, and lied to her own son through a door.

Had been doing morning stretches for four days. For page eighteen.

I started laughing.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the hundred-year-old bed.

She stood there with the book, getting redder and redder.

"Stop laughing."

"I can’t—"

"Stop LAUGHING, Baek Mu-jin, or I’ll—"

"You’ll what?"

She slammed the book shut.

Then she put it down on the desk, took her spectacles off, folded them, set them on top of the book, and looked at me with her chin up and her eyes blazing.

"I’ll stop being nice," said Gwak Ji-yeon.

She was not nice.

She was strict.

She stood over me on that hundred-year-old bed and gave me instructions like she was teaching a class. Lie there. Not there. There. Hands here. No. HERE. Did you even read the diagram? She’d memorized the whole page. Every angle. Every position. She corrected my hands three times.

I let her.

It was the most fun I’d had in two lives.

And then, somewhere between the third correction and the fourth, her voice cracked, and her instructions turned into gasps, and the strict widow who knew every measurement on page eighteen forgot every single one of them.

The bed held.

She was right about the bed.

She was right about the flexibility, too. She could absolutely touch her toes.

And she was right about page eighteen.

It was physically possible.

Barely.

The portrait on the wall stayed facing the wall. Nam Jae-won and his socks never saw a thing.

Afterward, she lay sprawled across the hundred-year-old bed with her hair completely destroyed, breathing like she’d run up a mountain, a stick of charcoal in one hand and the book open on her stomach.

"Page eighteen," she muttered, writing in the margin. "Possible. Confirmed. Requires: very sturdy bed. Very flexible woman. Very patient man." She paused. Added one more line. "Very worth it."

She closed the book.

Then she rolled over and put her head on my chest and said, very quietly, without any of the strictness at all:

"I’m scared, Mu-jin."

"I know."

"Twelve days." Her fingers curled on my chest. "I’ve buried one man. I don’t want to bury another one. I’m not—" She stopped. Swallowed. "I’m not strong enough for that twice."

I put my arms around her.

"You won’t have to," I said.

"You don’t know that."

"I’ve got a headmistress’s salve. An uncle’s counter. A soldier’s footwork. A bookkeeper’s odds. A spy’s lie." I kissed the top of her head. "And a strict widow who did four days of morning stretches for me. How am I supposed to lose with all that?"

She laughed against my chest. Wet.

"Very easily," she said. "That’s how."

But she held on a little tighter.

I got back to the Blue Willow Inn at dawn.

Yeon-hee was sitting on the steps outside her clinic room.

Not in her physician’s robe. In a plain gray one. Her medicine bag in her lap. Her face so white she looked like she hadn’t slept at all.

She stood up when she saw me.

"Mu-jin," she said. "I need to tell you something. Before anyone else does."

Everything inside me went still.

"What happened?"

She held up a sheet of paper. Official. The magistrate’s red seal.

"Dong-min came home last night," she said. "With this. He’s been assigned. By the magistrate himself." Her voice was shaking. "As the official recorder for the duel. He’ll write down everything. Every move. Every ruling."

"That’s—"

"That’s not the problem." She swallowed. "The magistrate’s rules say both fighters have to be inspected before the duel. For hidden weapons. Poisons. Anything on the skin." Her hands were clenched white around the paper. "By a physician. In front of the recorder."

She looked at me.

"Dong-min told the magistrate his wife is the best physician in the dock district," said Yeon-hee. "He was so proud. He volunteered me."

I stared at her.

"I’m going to be the one inspecting your body, Mu-jin," she whispered. "In front of my husband. In front of the magistrate. With Hwang’s salve all over your skin."