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"I can't move," Kang says—tries to say. Thinks of saying, get off, Cheon, I'm trying to sleep. But he can't.
His voice is thick, tongue swollen in his mouth. His arms are—in his lap, he realizes, and hooked together at the wrists. He blinks the crust from his eyes, and his throat jumps when he snarls, "What the hell?"
It comes out muffled. His jaw works, his teeth are cold. The room is dark. There's a lamplight drifting in the corner, held low by a gnarled hand.
"Oh," a voice says. "One of the kids woke up."
As Kang's eyes clear, he catalogues three things. One—Yeomin and Yasu Hyeok are by his side, similarly bound. Two—Yeomin is awake, one eye slitted, watching him, and Kang...shouldn't have spoken. Three—the table has been overturned. There's a spill somewhere, gently dripping onto the ground. The rhythm is tender over his rasped breathing.
"Kid," a man mutters. He gets a prod to the shoulder that feels more like a shove, the impact disproportionate to his fresh-woken body. "I have a few questions for you. Answer properly, yeah?"
"Fuck," Kang says. Tries to close his hand into a fist. The circulation in his wrist feels cluttered. A knot in his thumb arches against the bone there. There's a warm liquid pooling behind his teeth, and his next attempt at speaking is just as miserable.
A huff. "He can't talk. No. Put that away. Don't bother with the antidote, we're not keeping them around for long. Just wait until he can move his mouth again."
Antidote, Kang echoes. He thinks of Wiji Cheon first. What they had come here for, and for whom.
It's still night. They couldn't have been unconscious for long. Though the soup had been so good....He glances, again, to Yeomin, whose fingers are moving in the corner of his eye—steadily, steadily—and on his other side, there's a—there's someone else.
There's someone slumped over in the chair a few steps away. Kang can make out the silhouette, the long hair spilled out onto the floor. Head on the ground, knees caught over the chair.
Like a corpse. It's a dull, throbbing weight in his temple; the dread of having forgotten something important. He should remember. A corpse. No smell. No rot. But a body. Who had he been sitting next to.
"Business later, then," someone snorts, and the lantern swings with a metal shriek.
An arm shoots through the dark, and Teacher Baek is dragged off his chair entirely. The man drops him against the upended table and huffs when his head lolls onto his shoulder.
The sight strikes Kang like a blow.
Kang stares. Searches for movement, for the slow rise and fall of a breathing chest.
Teacher Baek's face looks warm in the light. They hold the lantern close enough for his lashes to cast shadows over his cheeks, and Kang is just close enough to see his brow tighten when the man standing over him tugs at his hair.
"When you're done," Kang hears, and it's that damn Bloody Elder or whatever his name is, voice fading off—"Give him back to me."
"Sir," the first two men say, and bow. Teacher Baek's body swings with one of them. The man lets him crumple to the floor. This time, Kang is clear-headed enough to spit out a slurred curse.
It earns him a look. "What are you so mad about? I'm interested, is all. You don't hear nicknames like that often."
Like what. Like— "Jade-Faced Pervert!" the other one taunts. "The fucking ego on this guy! Kid, he ever show you what he's got?"
"Whuh," Kang hears from his own mouth—he spits, and a glob of something fleshy dribbles down his chin. He winces, then says, "What?"
"A fool like this blows all his gold on the nearest whorehouse and calls himself a ladykiller."
The man lowers himself. Yellow teeth set in a scarred face. Kang had seen him earlier, bowed over the table with a pitcher in hand. His head bows now, features strange and distorted in the dark. "No man worth his salt brags like that. But I get it. This is what your troupe keeps him around for."
Keeps Teacher Baek around for what?
Kang won't even try to consider that this is because of that stupid nickname. He'd thrown it out to see the look on his teacher's face. He hadn't meant to disgrace him. Hadn't meant to imply something like that, and it makes his head spin.
"Mad Sura Demon, an Iron-Fist, a Dagger Demon...and what's left? A lecher? What use is someone like that?"
"Shut up," Kang snaps. It's an unimpressive sound, and throat tight, he can tell that they think so too.
The man not holding Teacher Baek steps closer to him. "Seems like you can talk now," he mutters, and knocks him once on the temple. "Ready to answer a few questions?"
Kang opens his mouth but the other man speaks first.
"We'll wait for the Elder to return. If it's you, he'll die too fast."
Kang glances to Yeomin again, whose eyes have shut. There's a tightness to her lips. Her thumb crooks as if in signal, but Kang can't read her.
There's no one for him to turn to, and Teacher Baek won't get up.
The first man kneels over his teacher and hooks a finger into his robes, dark gaze shining in the low light.
"Hey," Kang says. The revelation comes slow. "Wait. You're kidding, right?"
The man hums. "About what?"
He's seized with a feverish disgust, but he speaks. "It wasn't—an official title. It's just a nickname. We call him that, he doesn't—he's not like that."
"Not like what?"
That yellow grin. They're trying to force him to say it.
"Don't do that," he says, uselessly, when a hand skirts over his teacher's jaw. He grasps for words but there's nothing on his tongue. "He'll kill you when he's awake. He's strong."
"He's strong," the man mocks. His thumb pulls at the corner of Teacher Baek's mouth. The lantern lights up the red gleam of his gums. "You're a fun bunch. If I had a face like this, I wouldn't need to bother with a whorehouse at all."
Kang curls his fingers. The force at which he does it should carve divots into his palm but as he is now, there's only the blunt scratch of his nail. Wake up, he's thinking. Wake up. And whether it's to Yasu Hyeok or Baek Suryong or himself he can't be sure.
What is wrong with you, he thinks, because he's watching Teacher Baek for signs of life instead of shutting his eyes and howling for him to get the fuck up or doing whatever he should be doing. Yeomin's better and faster and she's getting herself free and what can he do when he's sweating just trying to breathe.
Pressed in any normal situation he'll react as he's expected to—until his knuckles have split. But he's frozen, and even when Teacher Baek finally opens his eyes he can't find it in himself to yell—what use is warning him when the only thing he can muster up is shame. He's done nothing to help. He's given away the chance of surprise.
Teacher Baek wakes up to a fist in his hair and a thumb scraping along his teeth and Kang's eyes on him and all Kang can think of saying, teeth cold, is, "Sorry. Sorry, shit. I didn't mean it like that."
"Aw," the scarred man says. "It's okay."
"You fucking," Kang says, chest as tight as a drum. His teacher isn't even looking at him.
"Sorry," he says again, before he can really help himself.
"Calm down, Mad Sura Demon," says the man by his chair, and Kang can't help the sickly heat in his cheeks, the fucking cold pit in his stomach when he hears that stupid name snickered back at him. It's stupid. It's all stupid, and Jade-Faced Perv had just been a joke, and his teacher's being tossed around like a ragdoll. And that nasty-tempered, unyielding Teacher Baek—he only slurs out something like, "What're you doing?"
"Extending your usefulness to us," the man hums. "Take it as a gift, Muryong. You'll live longer than your companions."
Teacher Baek blinks. Tired and slow.
"Get off me," he says.
"I haven't done anything yet."
The lanternlight flickers. Kang tries to catch his teacher's attention with a wild cock of the chin, but the bastard standing next to him clouts him once and his head spins again. It's hard to tell if Teacher Baek catches sight of him, especially when the only light in the room sits by his knee: it's a random, awful, thought, but Kang wonders if Teacher Baek sees only a room full of hostiles—if his students across the room are just three more pairs of rotten, shining eyes.
There's a rustle of clothing, and Teacher Baek jolts like he recognizes what the hand pawing at the sash on his chest is trying to do.
He doesn't move. He just chokes out, "Don't."
"So much for Jade-Faced," the man says. "Do you not hold your wine well? I thought I was going to get a show."
Kang kicks out. His chair topples and his shoulder hits the ground. His pulse skitters but he hears himself shout once, and he just needs Teacher Baek to look at him because there's obviously something wrong, but a heel crashes into his chin and he grits his teeth, tastes blood.
Ears ringing, he's sure that he hears Yasu Hyeok's voice too, and that should be reassuring but it isn't, because the four of them are sunken deep in this room and his teacher's eyes are blown wide, and what does that mean? What is that supposed to mean?
He hears it again, the shuffling of cloth. Teacher Baek's hair smears into the table face behind him, a dark froth. There's a hand pressed into his chest, past his robes. He stares down at it and Kang hates that look on his face. He looks like a muted version of himself, softened by the dark.
"You're a jumpy thing," the man says, like he's curious. "I thought you got around."
"Maybe you'll have to get him drunker," the other one says.
"Grab a pitcher, then. I'll keep his mouth open."
The man standing guard over Kang steps away, and Teacher Baek's eyes move as if tracking his distance. In the same glance, his lids lower halfway, as if resigned. His gaze settles on Kang's face.
Oh, Kang thinks. He can't tell if he's overcome or furious with relief. It's a wave of the same exhaustion. He sees us, then. He knows that we're here.
"Here we go."
The sound of a full pitcher.
Teacher Baek sways as liquid dribbles off his chin.
"Fuckoff," he mumbles.
"Ah, you're wasting it. Need help, Muryong?"
Once again, the shuffle of clothing. The first man stands, hip rocking against the table. He undoes the sash at his waist and stands too close to Teacher Baek. When he touches him, Kang makes a sound and expects it, this time—that warning kick.
Teacher Baek's dulled eyes pass over Kang again. Over what must be Yeomin and Yasu Hyeok, too. Over the painted folding screen up against the wall, then back down to the hand rolling under his jaw.
His lips part. The nausea Kang's kept swallowed back closes in on him.
"No thanks," Teacher Baek says, a lilt to his voice that wasn't there a moment ago, and a hand split to the white bone hits the ground with a squelch.
The folding screen behind Kang tears open before the screaming can even begin.
Teacher Baek claps his hands and smiles. "Tell me what you're going to tell the director or else none of you are going back."
After a stretch of silence, Yasu Hyeok bravely volunteers. "After we left to go find Wiji Cheon, you faced the old man alone."
"Good. Your teacher participated in elder abuse. What else?"
"We were saved by one of the Ten...the Witch?"
"Good. And then she tried to eat you. Go on."
"And then you saved us?"
"You sound unsure," Teacher Baek says. "Fix that before we return, thanks."
He turns on his heel, a long, lithe motion: clothes sweeping behind him. He's humming, even, as he folds his sleeves behind his back and nods at the physician tending to Kang's thigh.
Kang watches him go in disbelief. Teacher Baek is very obviously...running away.
Geo Sang-Ung and Wiji Cheon had burst into the room, and through the commotion Yeomin, freshly freed, had staggered her way to the antidote tucked into the pouch of a fresh corpse. The Bloody-Handed Elder had blown through the doors and Teacher Baek had hissed for them to all start running, but Kang's eyes had been caught on the clean crook of his teacher's fingertips. The bright smell of blood.
And later, reunited, there was Yeomin's urgent, bitter, "He touched you!", her hands clasped around Teacher Baek's wrist. Kang had watched, unsure of where else to look, as Teacher Baek slipped out of her grasp with a wry drawl: "Yes, yes, and so are you right now." But Kang hadn't missed the minute jerk of his brow.
Tough, he thought. You feeling awkward, now?
They had questions that were harder to ask in front of Geo Sang-Ung—worse, in front of Wiji Cheon. Even Yasu Hyeok, who had only woken towards the end, pressed his way to the front and asked, "Why?"
"I tricked them," Teacher Baek said, in answer to Wiji Cheon's questioning look. Like that was all there was to it. "It was a lesson, for you guys—Yasu Hyeok. Surprised you, didn't I? Thought I was incapacitated? Well, it surprised them, too."
Yasu Hyeok didn't smile. "That's not what I'm asking about," he said.
But Teacher Baek did. His teeth were still stained red. "It's just another way of fighting dirty."
Which part, Kang didn't ask.
So he'll ask now. He grapples with the physician's anxious hands and drops right out of the wagon—on his feet, he doesn't stop even as the noises kick up.
Teacher Baek doesn't turn around. His hands are still behind his back. He sounds like he's smiling when he says, "I thought you were strangely calm earlier. Something to say?"
Kang breathes. Takes in another breath. Prepares himself for a scolding blow.
"Um," says Teacher Baek, turning around. "Spit it out."
Kang says, "I'm going to tell them what happened."
Teacher Baek blinks before his mouth twitches. "Oh? Who's them?"
"Them," Kang blurts out. "Those guys! They're all here. Instructor Ak. The director. Namgoo—"
A flick to the forehead. He rears back, snarling, and clutches at his temple.
"Since when were you a snitch?" Teacher Baek asks. "Give me a good reason not to pull out my stick."
Kang doesn't pull away. "I'll only do it if you don't tell them first."
"Heonwon Kang," Teacher Baek groans, and Kang's skin prickles because Teacher Baek still doesn't get it . "You had to feel bad for me, yeah, I get it. So sad. Chipped a few years off your life stressing out and it was all just a stunt. Go back, get your wounds dressed. We can talk later."
"A stunt?" Kang spits—but Teacher Baek interrupts him sharply. "That was the wrong word. I deceived you. I was hoping it could teach you something about laying low when you're disadvantaged—which you clearly couldn't do, by the way—"
Kang stomps his foot. He feels like a child. The tight coil in his stomach that had started twisting from the first swing of that lone lantern: he can't shake it because he doesn't know what it is . It's not resentment, it's nothing vengeful. It's nothing like that familiar, inspired hurt.
"Don't turn this on me," he says. "This has nothing to do with what I'm saying!"
Teacher Baek crosses his arms. "Feel free to explain," he says, in that lilting, light voice. "Afterwards. Go back."
He's still dressed in simple black. It makes his shoulders look thinner, even up close. He's close.
That's something Kang's never liked about him: the way he sidles up to the people he's talking down to, head cocked, smile dark.
But Kang is taller than his teacher. He's the one looking down on him. There's a tear in Teacher Baek's clothing at the collar. Kang looks at the exposed column of his neck and realizes that he feels sick again.
"Kang?"
"If Sang-Ung hadn't come in when he did," Kang starts.
"Did you not hear the pause? I said you can explain afterwards. You have to go back now."
"Would you have gotten free?"
Teacher Baek's hesitance to talk vanishes immediately. "Don't mock me, brat. Of course I would have."
"You can say that now, fine! But you had so many chances to get up and you just—you didn't."
"Are you ignoring everything I'm saying?"
" You're ignoring what I'm saying! I'm just trying to understand, okay? Can't you—what was the point? You played us for fools. For what!"
Teacher Baek leans closer with a glower. "Yelling at your teacher, are you?"
Kang lashes out.
It's nothing bad, nothing even close to the times Kang's tried to get the jump on his teacher before. His hands clamp down on the man's shoulders, and he realizes late that he doesn't know if he's trying to shove him back or still him.
He's too aware that this won't accomplish anything. That if Teacher Baek doesn't care, then that's that.
Sometimes people look at his teacher like he's supposed to be fragile, and Kang doesn't get it. Teacher Baek is fiendish and odd and beat-for-beat as dirty-mouthed as Kang gets accused of being, and those slick whispers of rural origins and childhood sickness are nothing against what Kang has seen with his own eyes.
But there was Teacher Baek at the table, cold: I was nine, and Teacher Baek in the dark, shivering: Don't, and Kang tries but he can't split them apart, those two people with a shared face. The uncertainty scares him but not more than the possibility of this truth: that they were both real.
His fingers loosen.
Teacher Baek's expression adopts a strange blankness. He peels Kang's hand off him, and Kang falls back into place without protest.
"What are you so worried about?"
Kang glares.
Teacher Baek doesn't glare back. "You think you have the time to be worried over other people when you're walking around with open wounds?"
"I already got them wrapped."
"Huh," says Teacher Baek. He holds up his thumb. Presses, unkindly, at a dark stain on Kang's arm. He doesn't laugh even when Kang swears. "Those bandages aren't your skin, you know."
"I know that!"
"Do you."
Kang doesn't reply. Behind him, the steady rumble of departing wagons.
None of his classmates have followed him—he takes some comfort in that, no matter how vindictive. He doesn't envy Yeomin or Yasu Hyeok. Kang doesn't want to be the person to tell Wiji Cheon that the man who held Teacher Baek down has already begun to rot.
Back when Teacher Baek had swept into the cave to fend off the Witch of Nine Shadows, the relief that Kang thought he would feel hadn't come. There was only: you're finally here, and never a you're alive! despite what he had known about the Valley's cutthroat darkness, the shapeless hostilities just beyond the cave entrance.
There was a pinched exhaustion in Teacher Baek's face, and his clothes had been worn dark—this, Kang remembers. He had smelled brightly of blood even then.
But Kang hadn't been worried. From his first breath of the night air, he'd known who would win. That was a matter of trust, he realizes now. Plain faith. It's an awful, unnatural feeling, to believe so sincerely in the invincibility of another man. But it's been this way for as long as Baek Suryong has been Teacher Baek. So why, knowing all of that, in that dark room, had Kang been so—
"Let's get this over with," Teacher Baek says, and Kang's train of thought crumples like wet paper. "Because I think you're confused."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Teacher Baek has his arms crossed again. He wears an easy smile. He says, "What did you think was happening after we were poisoned?"
Kang bites his cheek. "What do you—they were trying to get information. So they were going to beat us up a bit. Pull out our toenails. Hell if I know."
"Well, that's a given. What did you think was happening to me?"
Frustration flares up in his chest like a split rib. "Why are you going to make me say it? You know what they were doing. What they were going to do!"
Teacher Baek rolls his eyes. "And I'm asking you right now because I don't think you do."
"I've just—" The problem, he thinks, is, "I've never seen you like that before."
"Mm," his teacher says. "You'll need to be more specific."
Kang swallows. "You looked—stuck. And you keep saying that you tricked us and tricked those assholes—but you didn't need to stay down for so long, alright?"
"For one thing, I wasn't pretending to be poisoned. At the start, at least. It's not like I woke up before they started throwing me around."
"Oh," says Kang.
"For another, don't dog on my methods, you'll regret it. I'm teaching you to fight against a dirty school, after all. What's dirtier than pretending to be weak?"
A lot of things, Kang doesn't say.
"And," Teacher Baek continues, "It wasn't serious. They were really just mocking us, if you couldn't tell."
Kang thinks about the rip at his collar. He doesn't look at it.
"That old fucker was pissed that I killed his student. Never mind that that ugly fool kidnapped my student first."
"Yeah," Kang says.
"Hey," Teacher Baek says, suddenly too close. He's talking right into his ear. "Are you even listening?"
Kang bats him off and his teacher sways back with a laugh.
"You're going back now. No more questions, alright?"
"You're not coming back with us?"
"I have somewhere to be." Teacher Baek glances back in the direction of the Valley gates. "I left something behind."
"Okay," Kang says. "Okay—just one more thing."
"I said no more questions," his teacher drawls, but Kang steamrolls ahead with the skinned, fleshy thing that's sat under his tongue for as long as he's allowed it to: he has to tell himself to just say it. Say it. Teacher Baek watches him, a laugh still fresh at his lips. Kang still feels sick.
"I named you the Jade-Faced Perv," he says, into the indulgent silence.
Teacher Baek frowns. "Do you want me to hit you?"
Kang scowls. "I named you that, and. Fuck, it's so stupid. Were they going to hurt you like that because of that nickname? Why did—"
"Whoa," Teacher Baek interrupts. His palms are up. His fingers bump into Kang's nose, and Kang blinks, perplexed. "Wait. You can't be that dumb, can you? I know you're no academic, but..."
Kang's face feels hot. "Look—"
"Don't keep hunting the hurt like that, Kang. You're not going to outlast it."
Kang finds that he can't quite speak. His teeth feel scraped clean. Cold. It takes a while. Strangely, Teacher Baek waits.
"But why did they do that to you?"
"Honest answer?"
Kang nods. Resists the urge to bring his fist up to the tender skin of his throat and feign a cough.
Teacher Baek meets his eyes plainly. "It's because of my face."
Kang isn't sure what expression he makes, but he knows it's a dark one.
Teacher Baek sways in place, stifling a laugh. "Kidding! Kidding. Some people are just disgusting. Quit thinking about it already. He couldn't even make it past my undershirt."
Kang has a retort on his tongue but crushes it between his teeth when a hand shoots out, straight for his face.
He readies himself to duck, or to take the blow when it comes—but Teacher Baek has always been faster. His hand just settles around his shoulder, light as a walnut shell.
"Listen," he says, almost warmly, and it's so unlike him that Kang has to.
"You're not..."
He chooses his words slowly. The nakedness of that earnesty kind of hurts.
"...Wrong. I shouldn't have done that. It was a shit lesson, all things considered. But even though nothing went far enough to piss me off, if it were any one of y—my students in that position, nothing even close to what happened would've had the chance to start."
He ends on a brisk note and watches the rolling wheels of the wagons. Instructor Ak perks up and waves; Teacher Baek nods back. The horses have begun to slow.
"I mean it," Teacher Baek says, finally, turning to face him. His hair sways and hits his jaw, and for a moment, Kang thinks he smells blood.
The hand on Kang's shoulder becomes heavier. It feels kinder.
"For as long as I'm your teacher, the only thing you'll ever have to worry about is being scolded. By me, in case that wasn't clear."
"Yeah, yeah. Tyrant," Kang mutters, but his scowl unravels before he can yank it back into place.
Teacher Baek seems to catch this. As he ushers him toward the wagons, he wears a shameless close-eyed grin that promises future teasing for daring to be a little appreciative, apparently, then waves like he's sending off a toddler. He's waving even as the horses begin to move again. The last Kang sees of him before rejoining his peers is the absentminded tug of his robes over his chest, a cloth-filled fist.