JOSEON CURFEW

An order came down to levy gunpo on a man we had buried three days ago, and my brush stopped.

Jang Man-bok. He had made bamboo sieves in a lane behind Unjongga. He carried a whole stack of the round grain-sifting frames on his back, and whenever he straightened up, his hand went first to his right shoulder. Three days ago, I had helped the neighbors carry his coffin.

“This man has passed away.”

The military officer in charge of the register, Bae Seong-tak, was counting the pages I had copied. He wet his finger and turned another sheet before answering.

“Then tell his wife to pay.”

“Did he leave unpaid gunpo?”

“No. This is a new levy.”

Gunpo was a tax paid in cloth in place of military service. I opened the register I had been copying and pointed to Jang Man-bok's name. Beside it, he was still listed as alive.

“You're going to leave a dead man listed as living and collect from him again? Shouldn't his name be removed first?”

“Correcting the register isn't your job. Copy what you've been given.”

Officer Bae turned another page without looking at the line beneath my finger.

Then he pushed three copper coins toward me. My pay for copying five sheets.

“Finish before you go. You only have to deliver the gunpo notice before your patrol.”

I took up my brush again. The ink flowed smoothly even as I copied the word living beside a dead man's name. I wished the tip would at least split when I wrote something wrong, but my brush made no such distinctions. After copying that line, I wrote the same name on the payment notice.

I took the coins and tucked them into my waistband.

* * *

Unsold sieves stood stacked beside the gate of Jang Man-bok's house.

The smaller ones had been nested inside the larger ones. From a distance, I thought there was only one round frame. Close up, I counted six more inside it. He used to carry that whole stack on his back. Every new sieve bent him a little further, he would say, laughing.

“Ajumeoni, it's Gyeom.”

His wife, O Deok-im, came out into the yard. In a voice roughened by crying, she asked whether I had eaten. Instead of answering, I looked down at the paper in my hand.

“They sent me from the office. There's a gunpo levy under Master Jang's name…”

She did not take the paper I held out.

“Even after I reported his death?”

I stood there, unable even to draw the notice back. She rubbed the large mole at her temple with the back of her hand, noticed the dust on her skin, and wiped it on her apron. Half-dried mourning clothes hung in one corner of the yard.

“I filed the report yesterday. The first time I went, they sent me away because I had the wrong paper. This time I even took the man who made his coffin.”

“I'll look into it.”

“With whom?”

The only face that came to mind was Officer Bae's. She watched me, waiting. I rubbed the ink on the corner of the notice with my thumb, but it had dried and would not come off.

“The register I copied today still had him down as alive. I knew it was wrong, and I copied it anyway. This notice, too.”

“Alive?”

“Yes. I did tell them it was wrong, but…”

She took the paper and unfolded it. For a while she said nothing. I could hear water dripping from the clothes in the yard.

“I saw your shoulder when you carried his coffin. The strap had rubbed it red.”

I could not raise my head.

“And with that same shoulder, you went off to write him down as living?”

They told me to. The words caught in my throat. Saying them would not make my handwriting disappear from the paper in her hands.

“I'll go with you tomorrow. I'll tell them there myself that I copied that register.”

“Won't you need to sleep after your patrol?”

“I'll sleep a little later.”

She folded the notice neatly and put it inside her clothes. She did not say she forgave me. She did not tell me never to come back. Instead, she pointed to the sieves.

“Then bring those inside. If it rains this evening, I won't be able to sell what's left.”

I picked up the largest one first. She nested the smaller ones inside and told me to mind the bottom of the gate. Rain had washed a groove into the earth before the threshold. Her husband had said he would fill it in. He never had.

As I turned after bringing in the last sieve, I noticed the tiger picture on the gate. Unlike the faded pictures on other houses, its ink was still dark. A red seal had been stamped below it.

“That's new.”

“Someone came and replaced it during the day. Said the office was looking after houses in mourning.”

After a death, a household would reinforce its munbae until the rites of farewell were done. These pictures on a gate were said to strengthen the boundary of a home and keep stray spirits out. Not because the dead person necessarily meant harm. Something else might come wearing their likeness.

I saw the paste, still damp along the edges, and drew my hand away. She had reported his death yesterday, so why was he still listed as alive? If the office had sent someone to replace this picture, as she said, it made even less sense. No one had touched the single line that needed correcting.

“Shut the gate before sunset.”

She counted the sieves and laid them beneath the eaves of the inner room.

“I know. You don't stay out late, either.”

I had heard those words countless times. That day, they followed me all the way out of the lane.

* * *

When the curfew bell sounded, the whole market hurried at once.

The soup stall was getting its last customers to their feet. The straw-sandal seller tossed his unsold pairs inside. A man running with a rice-cake board on his back slowed when he saw the patrol. I waved him on. If I stopped him, I would be late myself.

At our meeting post, Im Seok-ju hyeongnim was fixing the cord on a straw sandal. He had patrolled these streets ten years longer than I had, and repaired sandals for a living during the day. A loose cord on my own sandal caught a stone and made me stumble. He looked up.

“Yun-gyeom. Look at your feet first.”

He took an excessive interest in anything happening to someone else's feet.

“They're still wearable.”

“Your big toe's already outside.”

I curled it up. The hole became a little smaller. Hyeongnim sighed and took a repaired pair from his work basket.

“Put these on. I've fixed them.”

“How much?”

“Buy me soup tomorrow. With meat.”

I leaned against the wall and changed sandals. The tied cords felt stiff beneath my fingers. I thought of the three coins I had earned that afternoon, then stopped thinking about them. Hyeongnim waited until I had finished tying the knots.

We took our lanterns and started along the main street. A few drops of rain fell. Hyeongnim adjusted the brim of his jeollip, the black military hat made of felted fur. Our lantern light overlapped, and even the rat darting along the foot of the wall dragged a shadow larger than its body.

Since taking this job, I had carried drunks on my back seventeen times and been hit by thieves' stones twice. I had lost count of the people who came to us claiming to have seen a ghost. When we went to look, we usually found laundry or cats. Anyone who worked at night knew the stories of wandering spirits. We were even taught which way to run if one turned out to be true.

Whether my legs would remember that lesson before the rest of me did, I had yet to learn.

A child was crying outside a closed shop on the main street. A woman stood there holding a sack, with two children pressed close behind her. Hyeongnim raised his lantern and called to them.

“This way. We'll get you in before they close.”

The tavern on the main street took in late travelers brought by the sulla, the night patrol. I told Hyeongnim I would check the gate of the house at the end of the lane.

“I'll take care of them. Be quick.”

While he led the travelers inside, I headed toward Jang Man-bok's house. I had done nothing that afternoon but deliver a sheet of paper. I did not want to leave even the checking of their gate to someone else. One turn into the lane, then another twenty paces along the wall, and I would be there.

My feet stopped just as the new munbae came within the reach of my lantern.

Someone stood before the gate. The right shoulder of his gray outer robe sagged. Before knocking, he straightened his back once.

Looking at him from behind, I thought Master Jang must have finished trading late again. I opened my mouth to greet him. Then the weight of the bier I had carried with the neighbors three days ago came back to me. The shoulder strap had been soaked with sweat. Whenever the men before and behind me fell out of step, my body lurched to one side.

My shoulder drew in by itself.

Knock, knock, knock.

Even the habit of knocking three times and waiting was the same. If no one answered, he would knock a little harder. I had heard it outside that gate many times myself.

There were no feet beneath the hem of his robe.

I lowered the lantern a little. I could see the groove in the earth before the threshold. The gray hem floated above it. There was no wind, yet the cloth stirred slowly, as though submerged in water.

I stepped back. My new sandal crunched on gravel.

Master Jang turned.

He had no face.

From forehead to chin, it was smooth as wet paper stretched tight. That eyeless, noseless face tilted slowly after the lantern. I stared, my mouth still open. I knew I had to run back the way I had come, but my heel had already met the wall. I must have backed sideways without knowing it.

Footsteps approached from inside the gate, then stopped.

“…Is that you?”

His wife's voice.

Its head tilted a little toward the gate. It remained before the tiger picture. It could not cross the threshold. Remembering her hands counting the sieves that afternoon, I made my mouth move.

“Ajumeoni, it's Gyeom. Don't open the gate.”

My voice was too quiet. I tried again.

“No one come outside!”

I put the whistle hanging at my chest between my lips. My first breath made no sound. I gripped it with my teeth and blew again. A thin note tore down the lane. Beyond the corner, Hyeongnim called my name.

There was no time to feel relieved. The thing before the gate reached toward me. I let the whistle fall. It struck my chest on its cord. With my left hand, I drew the yukmo-bangmangi from my belt—a wooden truncheon cut with six flat sides. I thrust the lantern in my right hand toward it.

Its fingers blurred for a moment where the light touched them. So the lesson had been right. I pushed the lantern further out, but the black hand curved away from the light and into the shadow beneath it. I swung my right arm outward and lowered the lantern, raising the truncheon with my left. The solid wooden shaft passed straight through the gray arm.

There was no sound of a blow. The end swung through as lightly as empty air and struck the stone pavement. While my hand was still stinging, the black palm touched my chest.

The thought of cold came later. First the breath went out of me. When I tried to draw another, something hard lodged inside my chest. My back scraped down the stone wall until I was sitting on the ground, but the black hand did not come away.

The lantern fell from my fingers and rolled onto its side. The smell of burning oil spread close to the pavement. The flame trembled a few times inside its frame and died. The gray body before me suddenly seemed larger. Hyeongnim's lantern, swinging toward us from the corner, faintly outlined it.

“Yun-gyeom!”

His footsteps came running. I let go of the truncheon and seized the wrist with both hands. My fingers sank in as though through wet cloth. I could neither pull it off nor push it away. Only its palm kept sinking deeper into my chest.

The bar of the gate clattered once from inside.

“Don't open…”

“I'm not opening it! Don't worry about me. Get away!”

At her voice, the thing turned toward the gate. The pressure on my chest eased for a moment, but its palm stayed against me. My left hand groped along the wrist. Then my fingertips caught on one hard point, in the narrow part just below the palm.

I closed my thumb and forefinger. Only that one point held. Everything else flowed between my fingers. I pulled at it without knowing what it was, and the tips of those two fingers burned. But if I could get the arm off me, I did not want to let go.

Heavy footsteps approached from the empty storehouse by the bend.

A man raised his voice at the gray figure.

“Let the man go. Your opponent's over here.”

As I looked up, the hard point slipped free of my fingertips. The black palm started sinking deeper again. A man in a gat, a broad-brimmed hat, came in beside me from the open side of the lane. Behind him, Hyeongnim's lantern bobbed closer. The stranger was looking at the gray wrist, not at me. He brought a thick wooden club down from his shoulder and slid it beneath the arm.

Tak!

A short upward stroke caught the side of the wrist and knocked the black palm away. This time, there was a sound. The arm pinning me bent toward the gate. For the first time, there was space between its hand and my chest.

Hyeongnim came in from the open side and supported my shoulder and upper arm. His grip tightened when I began to slump sideways. I leaned on his arm and coughed before I could do anything else.

“Gyeom, lean this way. Breathe slowly.”

Not even half a breath would go in before coming back out. While the stranger stood between us and drove the gray body toward the gate, I tried to keep the shoulder in Hyeongnim's hands still.

The stranger's shadow stretched across the wet stones.

He had one leg.

A single shin descended from the center of his trousers and met the ground. He shifted that foot and held the club at an angle. The gray body could come no closer to me.

I did not know whether to thank him or blow the whistle again. Whatever he was, his club worked. Mine had not. At that moment, I was very grateful for the difference.

As he adjusted his grip, the hem of his robe lifted once. A ring like a line of ink appeared on his right wrist beneath the sleeve. It narrowed as though cutting into his flesh. The hand around the club stopped for an instant.

He looked down at his tightening wrist and raised one corner of his mouth.

“Hah. A body under punishment is a nuisance. Use a little real strength and it starts strangling my wrist.”

He shortened his grip on the club. As the ink-dark ring subsided, the end holding the gray figure back did not waver. Something pale twisted within the trapped gray arm.

“Break it recklessly and you'll harm his soul too. Bring the light over here.”

Hyeongnim raised the lantern in his left hand. Where the light fell, the gray outer layer thinned first, briefly exposing the pale thing inside. The stranger saw the opening and hooked the tip of his club onto one point of the wrist. I could not tell whether it was the place my fingers had caught.

He planted his one foot and gave his wrist a short turn. The taut gray body unraveled along the tip of the shaft. Thinking the robe was about to fly into my face, I ducked, then cautiously looked up again.

The gray folds thinned like smoke before they reached the ground. Not so much as a piece of clothing remained where it had stood. My fallen lantern and truncheon still lay by my feet.

“Gyeom? Answer me!”

Ajumeoni called from inside.

“He's here. Keep the gate shut.”

While Hyeongnim answered, the stranger turned to the munbae nearby.

“We'll have to find where it's bound. Leave the root and it'll come again.”

Keeping the club in his right hand, he used his free left to lift the lower corner where the paste had not yet dried. His back and the skirts of his dopo, his long outer robe, hid what he saw from me. Hyeongnim tried to help me up. My coughing suddenly grew worse.

“Wait. Don't lift him yet.”

The stranger let the paper fall. He shifted the club to his left hand, braced it against the ground, and came back to kneel beside me.

“Lay him down. I'll keep him breathing first.”

Hyeongnim set the lit lantern near my head and removed my jeollip. After putting it beside the lantern, he supported the back of my head and my back with both hands and lowered me onto level ground. The smell of earth rose close to my face. I remembered the groove before the threshold that I had noticed while carrying the sieves. Then I remembered my promise to go with her to the office tomorrow.

I caught Hyeongnim's sleeve.

“Hyeongnim, Ajumeoni…”

“The gate's still barred. You heard her voice, didn't you? Let's see to you first.”

The stranger laid down the club he held in his left hand. He placed that hand on my chest. The cold seemed to gather beneath it. Between the relentless coughs, one short breath came in. I opened my mouth, trying to draw it all the way down. I still had no strength to sit up.

Hyeongnim checked the hand on my chest, then blew his whistle while keeping one hand beneath the back of my head. It was a signal to the patrol on the main street: send men and help. Someone would need to guard this house while they moved me. A little later, an answering whistle came from beyond the bend.

Without moving the hand on my chest, the stranger supported my left wrist with his free hand. The tips of my thumb and forefinger, exposed beyond my sleeve, had turned black. He lifted my arm only a little to examine them, taking care not to twist it.

“You caught the dead man's wrist with that hand, didn't you? Who taught you?”

“No one. I was trying to get it off… Something caught on my fingertips.”

His gaze moved from my hand to my face.

“Not many people can catch hold of it. You must have surprised yourself.”

There was a small laugh in his voice. He asked no more. After setting my hand comfortably down, he turned toward the gate. His left hand remained on my chest.

“Madam, who put up that munbae today?”

“A man came during the day. He said he was from the office. Said they were looking after houses in mourning…”

Her answer came through the gate. The stranger looked at Hyeongnim.

“Leave the picture where it is. No reason to tear down the whole munbae that's protecting the house.”

“You mean this wasn't a stray spirit that wandered here on its own?”

“When I lifted the corner, I saw a little fragment tied behind it with red thread. That dead man's presence was coming from it. We can't just rip it out without knowing what the fragment is.”

“Then someone deliberately brought him to this gate…”

“So it seems. We don't know who yet.”

I remembered the picture I had seen that afternoon. The dark-inked tiger, the neatly stamped seal. I had thought it was newly pasted there to protect the house.

If the stranger was right, someone had hidden a trap behind that protection.

— End of Chapter 1 —

WORDS OF JOSEON

Sulla / sulla-gun: The night patrol and its soldiers. The narrator is Yun-gyeom.

Gunpo: Cloth paid in place of military service. In this story, the office fails to register a man's death, imposes a new levy in his name, and demands payment from his surviving family. This is not the collection of a debt incurred before his death.

Injeong / munbae: Injeong is the bell announcing the night curfew. Munbae are pictures or inscriptions placed on gates. The protective boundaries, spirits' forms, and extra safeguards for a household in mourning are fictional rules of this Joseon-inspired world.

Jeollip: A military hat made of felted fur; the night patrol wears a black version here.

Yukmo-bangmangi: A wooden truncheon with a six-sided shaft. Yun-gyeom carries one; it is distinct from the stranger's thick, banded club.

Ajumeoni / hyeongnim: Respectful, familiar forms of address. Ajumeoni addresses an older woman; hyeongnim means “older brother” and can also address an older man one is close to, without implying a blood relationship.