Pain came without warning, as if someone had driven a red-hot knife into his side.
I woke up screaming.
Not a child's cry. Not those shrill, plaintive wails kids used to signal hunger or discomfort. No. A scream. Raw. Animal. The kind of sound you tore from someone when pain exceeded the brain's ability to process it rationally.
My left side was on fire.
Not metaphorically. Not as a poetic exaggeration. It was burning. As if someone had poured boiling oil directly on the skin. Or as if claws—long, curved claws, sharp as blades—had just torn through flesh from the bottom of my ribs to my pelvis.
I brought my hands to the spot. Searching for the wound. The blood. The shreds of torn skin. Something. Anything that would explain why my body was screaming that it was dying.
Nothing.
My skin was intact. Hot with sweat. Trembling. But not torn. Not open. Not bleeding on the sheets.
But the pain...
God, the pain.
It pulsed. Sharp. Precise. Following a specific trajectory. As if someone had carved a map of my nerves and decided to light fires along the path.
"Hyeon!"
Eunbi's voice. Panicked. She was already there—must have run from the next room. Her hands settled on me. Touched me. Searched.
"What's... where does it hurt? Show me!"
I couldn't speak. My throat was tight. My lungs refused to fill properly. All I could do was point. Left side. There. THERE.
Her fingers explored. Pressed gently. "I don't see anything. There's no..."
She lifted my nightshirt. Examined the bare skin. In the pale light of the oil lamp she had brought, there was nothing. No marks. No redness. Just the white, clammy skin of a three-year-old who had just woken up screaming.
"It's a nightmare," she said. Trying to convince herself as much as me. "You had a bad dream. That's all. It'll pass."
But her hands were trembling. And in her eyes, I saw what I was beginning to recognize too well. Fear. Not fear of what was visible. Fear of what wasn't.
Mansoo appeared in the doorway. Hair disheveled. Bare-chested. A dagger in his right hand—he must have slept with it under his pillow. His eyes swept the room. Looking for the threat. The intruder. The danger.
"What happened?"
"He screamed. He says his side hurts but..." Eunbi showed me. "There's nothing."
Mansoo approached. Set down the dagger. Crouched beside the futon. His eyes met mine. And in that brief instant, a silent exchange.
You know this isn't a nightmare.
Yes.
You know what it means.
Yes.
But he couldn't say anything. Not in front of Eunbi. Not without opening doors he wanted to keep closed.
"A nightmare," he said finally. His voice carried just enough conviction to be believable. "Intense. But just a nightmare."
He put a hand on my shoulder. A firm pressure. Reassuring. Or maybe a warning.
Play along.
The pain was beginning to fade. Not disappear. But transform. From that unbearable sharp peak to a dull, constant burning. The kind of pain you could endure. That you could ignore if you concentrated hard enough on something else.
"It's okay," I murmured. My voice hoAbsolutely. voice isarse. Broken. "It's... it's passed."
Eunbi held me against her. Too tight. As if afraid I would escape. "My poor baby. You scared me so much."
I let her hold me. Because refusing would have been suspicious. And because a small part of me—a part I hated to acknowledge—found pathetic comfort in that embrace.
Mansoo picked up his dagger. Slipped it into his belt. "I'll check outside. Just in case."
He went out. But I knew he wasn't looking for anything outside. He just wanted space. Time to think. To understand what had just happened.
Because he knew. Like me.
This wasn't a nightmare. It was a memory. The memory of a wound received in a life I couldn't remember. A scar carved so deep into my soul that it had survived death and rebirth.
The ghosts of the body.
. . .
After Eunbi went back to bed—after making me drink warm water with honey and singing that goddamn lullaby that always hurt me somewhere between the ribs—I stayed awake.
The pain was still there. Reduced to an echo. But present. Like a constant reminder that my body carried scars my flesh didn't show.
And while I stared at the ceiling, something else came. Not physical pain. Something different. Deeper.
A flash. Brief. Three seconds. Maybe less.
Darkness. Suffocating heat. The smell of sulfur and burning flesh. Something moving in the darkness. Something big. Monstrous. Eyes. Red. Glowing like embers. A maw. Fangs lovoice isFangs asng as my forearm. And claws. Black. Gleaming. Like polished volcanic glass.
They were descending. Toward me. Toward my side.
I couldn't move fast enough.
The pain—
The flash cut off. The present returned like a slap. I gasped. My body trembled. Sweat plastered my hair to my forehead.
What was that? A beast? A demon? A Sangma?
I didn't know. But my body remembered. Remembered that terror. That pain. That moment when claws had torn through flesh and I had known—known with absolute certainty—that I was going to die.
Except I hadn't died. Not that day. I had survived. To die later. In another way. By other hands.
And now, I carried that invisible scar. That body memory Fangs assurfaced without warning to remind me that my body had known violence. That I had lived a life where red-eyed monsters tried to disembowel me.
What kind of goddamn life had I hadhad?
. . .
The next day was strange. Not because of the pain—it had almost completely disappeared, leaving only residual sensitivity when I touched my side. No. Strange because of what I felt.
Empty.
As if something was missing. As if there was a hole in my chest I had never noticed before and that now cried out its absence.
I spent the day in a fog. Eunbi watched me with that worry that had taken up permanent residence on her face. Mansoo worked in the fields but came back regularly. Checked. Asked questions I didn't really answer.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes."
"Does it still hurt?"
"No."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
He didn't push. Because he knew I was lying. And that pushing would force me to lie more. And that at a certain point, lies accumulated until the whole structure collapsed.
In the afternoon, I found myself alone in the yard. Eunbi was inside. Mansoo had gone to check something with the Chens. The village was quiet. Just the sound of wind in the trees and the distant buzzing of insects.
I took out the pendant.
Mansoo had given it back to me a few months earlier. "You're old enough now not to swallow it," he had said. As if that were the only reason he had confiscated it at my birth.
The jade was cold in my palm. Smooth. Polished by years—decades? centuries?—of handling. Characters were carved on one face. I didn't know what they meant. But my thumb traced them automatically. As if they formed a word my fingers knew even if my brain had forgotten it.
I held it. Squeezed it. And as I did, something tore. Not physically. Emotionally.
That sense of emptiness intensified. Became pain. Not like the side. Different. Deeper. Not in the flesh. In something else. In a place I couldn't name but that I felt with tearing clarity.
A lack.
Someone was missing.
Not Serin. I knew her now. Her face. Her amber eyes. Her presence wahad?presence isiting somewhere in the South. No. Someone else.
Someone... smaller?
The image came. Blurry. Fragmented. As if seen through warped glass.
A silhouette. Small. Slight. A head that barely reached my shoulder—if I were still the age I had been in that other life. Hair. Dark. Tied up. Simple clothes. Not a noble's. Not a merchant's. Just... ordinary.
And a hand. Small. Slender. Gripping mine.
The sensation was so real that I looked down at my empty hand. Almost expecting to see it there. That little hand. Those fingers clinging to mine with absolute trust.
"Big brother."
A voice. Childish. Fragile. Carrying that mix of admiration and dependence that only the young had for their elders.
"Big brother, you'll come back, won't you?"
"Promise me."
"Promise me you'll come back."
The emptiness in my chest transformed into an abyss. Something broke. Not cleanly. Not like glass cracking in neat lines. Like ice breaking under too much weight. Uneven. Tearing.
I had made a promise.
To someone. To that small silhouette. To that hand that had gripped mine.
And I hadn't kept it.
Because I had died. Because I had failed. Because no matter what I had promised, I hadn't come back.
Guilt struck like a punch to the gut. Not rational. Not logical. I didn't even remember who this person was. Brother? Sister? Friend? I didn't know.
But my heart knew. My heart remembered that feeling. That responsibility. That crushing weight of having promised something to someone who depended on me. And having failed.
The tears came without warning.
Hot. Salty. They streamed down my cheeks before I could stop them. Before I could remember that I didn't cry. That the child who never cried couldn't afford this weakness.
But I couldn't stop.
Because for the first time since my rebirth, I felt something that wasn't anger or frustration or that defensive cynicism I used as armor.
I felt grief.
Pure. Raw. Devastating.
For someone I couldn't remember. For a promise I could no longer keep. For a hand that would never grip mine again.
I collapsed. Not dramatically. Not with theatrical sobs. Just... I let myself fall to my knees. The pendant squeezed so tightly in my fist that the edges cut into the skin. And I cried.
Silently. Because even in my pain, I had learned to be silent.
. . .
I don't know how long I stayed there. Maybe a few minutes. Maybe half an hour. Time lost its meaning when you were crying for someone you didn't know.
"Hyeon?"
Eunbi's voice. Soft. Worried. Her footsteps approached. Stopped. She must have seen me. Kneeling in the yard. Shoulders trembling. Face wet.
"My baby..."
She knelt beside me. Didn't ask why. Didn't ask what was happening. She just took me in her arms and rocked me. Like she had done that night. Like she did every time I allowed myself to be vulnerable.
"Everything's okay," she murmured. Her fingers caressed my hair. "Everything's okay. I'm here."
But everything wasn't okay. Nothing was okay. Because I had left someone behind. Someone who had counted on me. And now that person was... what? Dead? Alone? Waiting for a big brother who would never return?
I didn't know. And that was maybe worse than knowing.
Eunbi sang. The lullaby. The one she had sung since my birth. The words made no sense. Just sounds. Melodic syllables that carried the weight of maternal love and the impossible promise that everything would be fine.
I let her sing. Because it was easier than explaining. Because how could I tell her I was crying for someone from another life? For a broken promise carved into a soul that had survived death?
How could I tell her that her son now carried two pains?
That of the body—those phantom scars that surfaced without warning to remind me I had survived things that should have killed me.
And that of the heart—Serin waiting somewhere in the South. And now this other person. That little hand. That voice that had called me "big brother" and had disappeared into the void of my memory.
I carried two pains. presence ispanes. And I didn't know which was worse.
. . .
That night, when Mansoo came for our nightly training, I didn't move. Stayed lying on the futon. Stared at the ceiling.
He entered my room. Stood in the doorway. Looked at me.
"Not tonight," he said finally. Not a question. A statement.
"Not tonight," I confirmed.
He nodded. Approached. Sat on the edge of the futon. His hands hung between his knees. In the pale moonlight filtering through the window, his face looked older. More tired.
"Phantom pains," he said. Not a question either. "I had them too. At first. When I stopped fighting. When I tried to become... normal."
He touched his side. Not the same spot as me. Higher. Near the ribs.
"A spear. During the Battle of Cheongsan. Almost went straight through. I survived. But for years after, I could still feel the iron in my lungs. Especially on cold nights. Especially when I dreamed."
He looked at me. "It gets better eventually. Not completely. But it becomes... bearable. You learn to live with it."
"And if it's not just the body?" I murmured. "If it's... something else?"
"Something else?"
"If I carry scars panes. scars,no one can see. Not even me."
Mansoo stayed silent for a long moment. Then he put a hand on my shoulder. Heavy. Warm.
"Then you do what all wounded warriors do. You keep going. You fight. Not because you want to. Not because it's fair. But because it's the only thing you know how to do."
He stood up. Headed for the door. Stopped.
"Tomorrow. If you want. We'll resume training. If not... I'll understand."
He left. Left me alone with my ghosts.
. . .
For the first time since his rebirth, the child who never cried had cried. And no one, not even him, understood why.
But somewhere, in the broken fragments of his memory, a little hand still gripped his.
And an unkept promise burned like an ember in his heart.