Part 16 - The Mask
No matter how excellent a system is, no matter how splendid the laws are, if they are not constantly examined and maintained, they will inevitably rust and become useless.
Before his father collapsed, the last thing they had worked on together had already long since become something that existed in name only.
"Do you know anything more about Geumjil or Geumju?"
At the chill that crept into Yeon Sang-hyeon's voice, the mask artisan bowed his head even lower.
"How much more could the likes of us possibly know? All we've done is pick up stray rumors. They would only trouble your honored ears."
"I understand."
Yeon Sang-hyeon nodded and rose from his seat.
At once, the mask artisan hurriedly stood and tried to stop him.
"You're leaving just like this? At least allow us to know your honored name, so that someday we may repay this debt—"
His wife joined in.
"We may be ignorant folk, but we are not so shameless as to send away our benefactor like this."
The children, not understanding much, chimed in as well.
"My lord!"
"My lord!"
Faced once more with the family's growing commotion, Yeon Sang-hyeon let out a sigh.
At that moment, his eyes caught sight of a white mask carelessly lodged in the corner of the cluttered room.
"Then I'll take this, at least."
When he reached out his hand, the mask was drawn toward him, as if sucked in, and landed neatly in his grasp.
At the strange sight, the mask artisan and his wife's eyes widened, while the children clapped their hands.
"Let us consider all debts and grievances settled with this."
The mask artisan's expression turned awkward.
"...Actually, that mask wasn't made by me."
Yeon Sang-hyeon nodded.
"I thought as much."
That mask was completely different from the others scattered throughout the space.
"It is a posthumous work left behind by my late father. That mask is—"
"If it is a family heirloom, I won't take it."
The mask artisan hurriedly waved his hands.
"No, no, that's not what I mean. I was simply curious as to why you desire that particular mask…"
It was a reasonable question.
The mask had no eyeholes, no nostrils.
Its surface was rough, poorly finished, and the paint looked half-applied.
By anyone's standards, it was nothing more than an unfinished or inferior piece.
"That mask was something my father worked on until the moment he drew his last breath, after he had fallen into senility. He was not in his right mind. That's why I left it lying around in such a state."
The mask artisan scratched his head.
"On top of that, not long ago I heard from a mendicant monk that the mask was an ominous object, so I was planning to destroy it soon."
Despite those words, Yeon Sang-hyeon slowly turned the mask over in his hand and smiled.
"What meaning do you think your father imbued in this mask?"
The sheen of the mask, reflecting the candlelight in Yeon Sang-hyeon's hand, looked all the more ominous.
The mask artisan shuddered and shook his head.
"It's an object made by a madman. What thoughts could he have had?"
"Is that really so?"
Yeon Sang-hyeon bared his white teeth.
"Pardon? What do you mean by—"
"Before your father succumbed to madness, was there not some calamity?"
At that question, the couple's eyes widened.
"How did you know that…? No, that isn't what matters."
The mask artisan spoke with a darkened expression.
"In truth, I had an older brother. He was far more talented than I was. But one day, he was falsely accused of something absurd and thrown into prison."
As his voice began to tremble, his wife tightly clasped his hand.
"My father—my father was a craftsman of some renown, and he had connections with a inspector in Luoyang at the time. So my father went to see that inspector."
Tears streamed down from his swollen, battered eyes.
"...He was the one who said he understood my brother's situation and promised an acquittal."
The children, pained by the sight of their father crying, came over and hugged him.
Holding them, he continued.
"But what returned to us was my brother's cold corpse. He had been beaten with clubs so badly that his lower body was reduced to a pulp."
His body began to tremble.
"I even heard that the inspector himself carried out the execution."
His wife handed him a cup of water.
He drained it in one gulp.
"...Later, when I learned the truth, it was utterly absurd."
He wiped the water that had spilled down with his sleeve.
"An imperial high official visiting Luoyang and another Luoyang official who was on bad terms with him made a wager."
Yeon Sang-hyeon's eyes narrowed.
"They bet by comparing the value of their prized possessions, and one of them put forward one of my father's masterpieces."
"...And?"
A sneer crept onto the mask artisan's lips.
"I don't know. But someone must have won. And the one who lost must have been furious."
Thus, his brother died, becoming the target of someone's displaced rage.
"From that day on, my father went to the government office every single day. My father—"
The mask artisan's voice gradually faded from Yeon Sang-hyeon's ears.
Instead, the mask in his hand whispered, showing him its story.
Or perhaps The Ruler Of Darkness was reading the tale contained within the mask.
In Yeon Sang-hyeon's vision, he saw the elderly artisan protesting at the main gate of the government office.
At first, the officials merely looked troubled.
But a day passed, then two, and the old artisan's visits did not cease.
Orders of fury came down from above.
Gradually, the officials guarding the gate grew cruel.
In time, rumors about the old man who shouted daily in front of the office spread through the streets of Luoyang, eventually reaching the inspector's ears.
'That wretched old man dares to block my path!'
The old artisan, who had lived his entire life upright before heaven, shouted at the inspector.
'Do you not fear the heavens! Heaven knows your crimes, and the earth knows them as well!'
The inspector seized the old artisan and subjected him to brutal punishment.
The charge was that he had fabricated falsehoods and dared to tarnish the honor of an official.
The old artisan barely survived and returned home, but thereafter he fell into madness, and soon died from the aftereffects of the punishment.
"...That is how my father passed away."
The father was crying. The mother was crying. The children were crying.
Sang-hyeon tilted his head.
"And yet you still do not know the meaning contained in this mask?"
After pondering for a long time, the mask artisan lowered his head and pleaded with Yeon Sang-hyeon.
"This is practically my father's relic. I am an unfilial son who cannot even understand that. Please, I beg you, teach me."
A low chuckle escaped Yeon Sang-hyeon's lips.
That laughter gradually grew louder, reverberating through the room.
It sounded like mockery, and yet also like sobbing.
The mask artisan felt that the laughter resembled that of his father, who had been driven mad.
That laughter which had burst out in fits, like screams, within the house!
Yeon Sang-hyeon saw it.
The inspector shattered both of the old artisan's hands.
So that the man who had made masks all his life would never be able to make another, he inflicted the cruelest punishment.
Carried home on the backs of village youths, the old artisan went mad.
His hair was disheveled, drool spilling from his mouth.
He babbled incoherently, smeared excrement on the workshop walls, stripped naked and crawled through the village.
Then one day, he shut himself away in his workshop.
Singing a mournful melody, he carved a mask.
Of course the mask could not help but be crude.
In place of his lost arms, he carved it with his toes.
With each clumsy cut, both feet became soaked in blood.
Yet he did not stop.
Catching rainwater that dripped through holes in the ceiling, he drank, having long since ceased taking any grain.
What bound his dying body to this world was rage filled with hatred and pain toward the world.
And the moment the mask was completed, he met his end.
Thus, a ghostly object was born.
The eyeholes were not something he could not carve.
They were something he chose not to carve.
After laughing for a long time, Sang-hyeon's laughter subsided.
He opened his eyes and slowly looked around the room.
The room, submerged in pitch-black darkness, was little different from ruins.
Every household item lay shattered, and the floor was drenched in fresh blood.
The mask artisan's family, who had been there moments before, was nowhere to be seen.
It could not have been otherwise.
Yeon Sang-hyeon opened the rattling door and slowly stepped out into the inner courtyard.
There lay the wife's corpse, cold and stiff, clutching the children tightly in her arms.
The blood spilled from the merciless assault reflected the faint moonlight on the ground.
Yeon Sang-hyeon approached and gently brushed aside the frost-whitened hair of the children.
All of the children's mouths were torn open, their tongues hanging long and draped over their mother's shoulders.
He laid down the mask artisan's corpse—whom he had been carrying with him—beside them.
From the start, the man had already died from the beating.
Yeon Sang-hyeon had come here following his soul, filled with resentment.
While the man was being assaulted, the wife was subjected to cruelty, and when even the children rushed in to resist, the assailants killed them in the heat of the moment.
The father died with twisted limbs, the mother died strangled, blood pooling beneath her, and the children died with their mouths torn apart.
Thus, the family died and was reunited in death.
Yeon Sang-hyeon slowly put on the mask.
Then he looked up at the empty air.
Why had the old artisan made a mask without even eyeholes?
Yeon Sang-hyeon answered.
"...I simply cannot bear to open my eyes and look upon this world."
Something glittering trickled down from beneath the mask.
***
"Have you ever heard the name Geumju, the one said to be Geumjil's daughter?"
At Yeon Sang-hyeon's words, Jeong-a searched her memory.
"...Now that you mention it, I believe I read that name in my sister's letter last time."
Yeon Sang-hyeon slowly nodded.
"Your sister is an information broker?"
"Yes, master."
Yeon Sang-hyeon closed the book he had been holding.
"It must have been a long time since you last saw her."
A lonely light appeared in Jeong-a's eyes.
"Yes, very much so…"
Yeon Sang-hyeon smiled gently at her.
"Then tomorrow, let us go meet your sister."
Jeong-a's eyes went wide.
"Really?!"
"Yes."
Jeong-a was so overjoyed she hardly knew what to do.
"Even if we cannot stay the night, we should be able to remain for about half a day, so take your time and unburden your heart."
"Thank you! Thank you!"
As she bowed repeatedly, Yeon Sang-hyeon waved her off and took out a small jar from his robes.
"What is that?"
Without answering, Yeon Sang-hyeon opened the seal on the jar.
Inside was revealed a truly modest amount of tea leaves.
Jeong-a examined them and spoke.
"...From the look of it, they're nameless, low-grade tea leaves. The storage condition is terrible as well."
Yeon Sang-hyeon shook his head at her words.
"No. These tea leaves are extremely precious."
"...Are they?"
The smile at his lips looked somehow forlorn.
"They are a precious gift, received as the price of a kindness that was never properly repaid…"
Using tea leaves not even enough for a single person, the two brewed and drank tea together.
For some reason, that tea felt exceptionally warm.