Chapter 13  The Revelation

The town was abuzz with the most exciting incident that had happened in a while.

A Japanese soldier had gone berserk while dining at the most exclusive Japanese restaurant in town, and had dragged a server out to the streets, and beaten her in front of a crowd, and then shot and killed a poor man who had tried to intervene, and another unfortunate woman who had happened to be passing by at that moment. Thankfully, a brave American soldier had intervened, and shot at the Japanese soldier, wounding his hand, and allowing the server to escape. The American soldier and the Japanese soldier were arrested; the King of Joseon pardoned the American, and let him go, but sentenced the Japanese soldier to death for so brutally snuffing out the lives of the two innocent citizens of Joseon.

Dong Mae stared at the American standing at the entrance of the Glory Hotel. Eugene looked tired, as if he had not slept in a while. Hee Sung walked out of the hotel, and stopped when he saw Eugene. 

"You look as if you have been through a long ordeal. Are you, by any chance, the brave American who saved that poor server from the Japanese soldier?" He peered at Eugene more closely. 

"My ordeal is just beginning after seeing you," Eugene said sourly. " But I note that you have your unsmiling nobleman's face on; it fits you to perfection."

"But are you that American soldier?" persisted Hee Sung.

"You should just stay as an American soldier, and be content with what you have," Dong Mae said darkly, scowling at Eugene, "though what you have is more than what I would ever have."

Eugene stared at Dong Mae.

Hee Sung stared at Dong Mae, then at Eugene.

"Gentlemen, I begin to see the light," he said, softly, menacingly. " Are you referring to the person - the same person - you hope to see by your side?"

He looked from one to the other, and his face was pale, set, unsmiling.

"And is that same person you hope to see by your side the same person by my side?" His voice rose. "The lady Ae Shin? My betrothed?"

The three men glowered at one another.

"Be assured, gentlemen, that if either of you dares to take a step in that direction, I will stop you, by any means possible," Hee Sung spoke through gritted teeth, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

"Do not test my good nature," he put on his hat and stalked off.

Dong Mae had never liked the Japanese consul, Minister Hayashi, and today, he liked him even less. The Japanese official had been indulging in a demented tirade, interjected with screams of rage in the foulest of language, for almost an hour now, and Dong Mae was getting increasingly annoyed. He privately thought that the server had been extremely fortunate to escape with her life, and could not care less about her secret life as a spy for the Righteous Army, or the suggestion that she had had a hand in Mr. Logan Taylor's demise, as the purple-faced Hayashi had disclosed, in the lucid intervals between his bouts of rage, but Dong Mae had been summoned by Hayashi for a special mission: to locate the missing woman, and bring her back, alive.

"That wench is responsible for the execution of a Japanese soldier," Hayashi spat out, venom in his eyes. "Find her, and I will extract everything from her, every piece of information about the Righteous Army, and after that, I will kill her and destroy the Righteous Army."

"Your task is to find her," he fixed his cold eyes on Dong Mae. "Do it as soon as possible, before she leaves Joseon."

"She will head for Shanghai."

Dong Mae and his men stood at the dock. The ship bound for Shanghai was sounding its last call. He scanned the crowds for a woman, the woman who had been branded a spy, and escaped through the intervention of an American soldier. There was no sign of her. He did not understand it; the ticket dealer who had been beaten to a pulp by his men had been adamant that he had sold a ticket to the woman, and that the ticket was for the voyage to Shanghai, which was due to leave very soon. 

Dong Mae felt a prickling of uneasiness; something was amiss. 

The ticket dealer had been very precise in his information.How could he have been wrong?

Suddenly, it hit him.

The ticket dealer had been too precise, too willing to divulge information. He had catapulated at the first few blows, and that was strange; what was even stranger was that he had provided a detailed description of the woman: her built, her height, her facial features, even down to the fact that she would be dressed as a woman, not a man. That was an oddity; most escapees would be dressed in different guises - men dressed as women, women dressed as men - to avoid detection, but the ship dealer had been adamant that the server had appeared as herself.

It was a lie. It was a deliberate lie to throw them off their course.

The woman was not here. She was somewhere else, getting away, while he and his men were standing watch at the dock.

She was at the railway station.

She was escaping to Shanghai by train, not this ship.

"Follow me!" Dong Mae shouted to his men. "The trains! She is at the trains!"

A shot rang out. He ducked for cover. More shots rang out, and they were coming from the roof tops.

They were aimed at him.

The crowd screamed in pandemonium. Everyone started running.

He scanned the roof tops, but could not see anything. 

His men were dispersed in the surging mass of panicked people.

Dong Mae got up, and ran, ducking the shots which followed his every move.

He ran toward the railway station.

From outside, he saw the telephone in the rail office, and ran in. He had to contact Hayashi, tell him that the woman was on the train. He picked it up, but before he could dial his number, a shot penetrated through the glass window, rendering the telephone dead, almost grazing his fingers.He dropped the telephone receiver, and ran out, cocking his rifle at the same time. He looked up, and there, on the rooftop, he saw a slight figure in black. He had a split second to register that the person was wearing a black hat, and was dressed entirely in black, from the black coat down to the black boots. 

The shooter appeared to be in a hurry to escape, and had stopped shooting at him. Dong Mae vaguely registered somewhere in his mind that the train had left, and he was filled with a rage so strong that all he wanted to do was to shoot the black-clad shooter dead.

The shooter was vaulting lightly across the intervening space between the rooftops. It was the perfect moment for Dong Mae; he had a clear view of the mysterious shooter.

Dong took careful aim at the shooter's head.

The shooter turned.

Dong Mae saw the eyes exposed beneath the hat, and above the black scarf wound tightly over, and concealing the entire face. 

Those eyes. He would know them anywhere.

They had looked at him with earnestness and sincerity in the carriage, twenty years ago. They had looked at him with contempt when he slayed those filthy Japanese men for her. They had looked at him with shock when he caught the edge of her skirt, when he would not let go in the calligraphy shop.

No other person had eyes like those, save her. No other person had eyes that ripped his heart apart, and tore down the walls that he had erected around his stony heart, save her.

He could not think.

A wave of dizziness overcame him, and he could not draw breath.

They looked at each other, and in her eyes, he saw recognition, and acknowledgement; that she knew that he knew.

She turned to leap, and in that instant, he lowered the rifle, and shot low.

She fell.

He heard her falling, down, down, down the other side of the rooftop.

He heard the clattering of tiles dislodged as she fell, and he ran, as fast as he could, his breath coming in short gasps, holding his rifle, his mind a jumble of frenzied thoughts: she was alive, she was dead, please let her be alive, please let me be mistaken, please let it be anyone but her, but her, but her...

He reached the other side after what seemed like an eternity.

There was no one there; all that remained were broken tiles, and drops of blood.

He squatted on his knees, and stared at the drops of blood that trailed off into a shadowy alley.

His men came running up, out of breath.

"The train has left," Yujo said.

"I know," Dong Mae said.

"All of you leave, and I will stay back until tomorrow," Dong Mae said, getting up."I need to check on something."

Dong Mae sat on the railway tracks all night, waiting, and when morning dawned, he was still there, sheathing and unsheathing his sword. 

Please do not come.

Please do not let me see you.

Please do not come.

Please do not let me see you..

Over and over, he repeated the words to himself in a whisper, sheathing and unsheathing his sword to each raw plea wrenched from his bleeding heart.

He saw her first before she saw him.

She was very pale, and was dressed in mourning clothes of grey and black. Beside her were her two servants: her faithful maid, and an old manservant.

She caught side of him from where she was, on the other side of the tracks.

She straightened, and set her chin, and walked with determined steps, step by step, to where he was.

How her leg must be hurting, how much pain she must be in, how foolishly proud she appeared to be, her head held high, walking with such firm, steady steps in his direction.

She walked to where he was standing, his hand on his sword, steeling himself to not betray a flicker of emotion, to not let her know how much his heart was breaking, to not let her know that he could not bear to see her suffering, to not let her know that he had had no choice but to shoot at her.

I did not want it to be you.

I shot you because I did not want it to be you.

I had to know.

I had to know that it is not you.

But it is you.

But it is you.

But it is you.

She stood at his side.

"Why?" he asked her.

"I went to the temple, to pray," she said, but in her eyes, he knew that she knew, she knew that he knew that she was lying.

"Do not stop me," she said, softly.

"What if, " he asked, and, surely, surely, she could hear his pain, feel his pain in his words, for he was lost, unable to think, to speak coherently, but he forced himself to speak, though what came out was a rasp, a hoarse rasp unfit for a hardened, unfeeling warrior, "what if I stopped you?"

She stepped close to him, so close that he could feel her warm breath in his ear, and whispered, "Then, I would have to kill you first," and she touched the slight bulge of the pistol beneath her skirt almost lovingly, "because, somehow, somehow, I do not think that you could kill me..."

He stood still, and unmoving as she picked up her skirts carefully, stepped over the rails, and boarded the train.

She knew. 

She had always known.

He had laid bare his foolish heart for her to see in the calligraphy shop.

And today, she had told him to his face that she knew what that foolish heart felt for her, a noblewoman, a skilled shooter and a member of the Righteous Army.