Behind Botongwon, inside a small service quarters, the air was damp with moisture.
Soot clung to every wall, and wood shavings lay scattered across the floor. Anyone could tell at a glance that this was a workshop.
At its center, an old man was carving a wooden tag.
His fingertips never rested. Each scrape of the blade against wood raised a fine dust that clouded the air.
The boy stood at the threshold and bowed.
"I've come to have an identity tag made."
The old man did not look up.
"Name."
"Park Seongjin."
"Clan origin?"
"Millyang."
"Age."
"Fifteen."
The old man nodded and picked up a small wooden plate.
"Many who pass through here never come back."
His voice was flat. It was hard to tell whether he meant to frighten the boy, or whether the words had simply been repeated too many times. Those young enough to need an identity tag before marching to war usually met the same end. For those fighting their first war, most did not return.
The boy watched the old man's hands in silence.
Fingers hardened into pitch-black calluses. The carving knife slid across them with surprising ease. From the freshly cut grooves rose a faint scent—the smell of pine's inner flesh burning. Mixed with the long-set stench of old blood, it became something difficult to name.
The old man stopped carving and took out a small bowl.
Inside were charcoal powder, perilla oil, and hardened pine resin ground together. He scooped a little with chopsticks and mixed it with water. The black liquid spread slowly.
"We use this instead of ink. Ink's hard to come by these days. On the battlefield, this is what we use."
As he spoke, he brushed the mixture over the carved letters.
Park Seongjin 朴成鎭Age Fifteen 十五歲Millyang 密陽Haeju 海州Sungui Unit 崇義軍
As the brush passed over the wood, the characters darkened and came alive.
After a moment, the old man lifted the tag and held it to the light.
"That'll do."
He wiped sweat from the back of his hand and held the tag out.
The boy received it with both hands. The grain of the wood pressed into his palm. His name was clearly carved there—yet it already felt like a name that no longer belonged to him.
That name would now enter the army's records.
If he returned alive, perhaps one day it might hang again beneath the rafters of his village home. But he did not easily believe that such a day would come.
The old man asked,
"Where are you headed?"
The boy hesitated.
"I don't know. I was told west."
"The west…"
The old man nodded.
"There's a lot of red earth along that road. Watch your step. That soil is soaked with people's blood."
It might have been better if it were a curse.
The boy could not reply. He only bowed and stepped down from the floor, gripping the wooden tag tightly in his palm.
A single beam of sunlight slipped over it.
For a brief moment, the letters glinted—as if they were something alive, yet wordless.