The Rival Who Killed Me Remembers Too novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Mine
The Hall of the Crimson Lotus stood in a cup of red maples, behind a gate that had no guard on it.
There was a courtyard, and a long roof, and a kitchen with twenty chimneys that Yoo-chan walked into.
By sunset he had a fire lit and three pots on.
The nineteen sat in a row with bowls, weeping into their rice.
Nobody told Woo-jin where to go.
Nobody had to.
Mu-yeol took his hand across the courtyard in front of the whole Hall, the wounded and the cooks and the old monks with shaved heads.
He led Woo-jin up a stair to a room at the end of a wooden gallery.
He slid the door closed.
It was a plain room.
There was a low bed with a red blanket, a lamp, a stone basin, and a shelf of small black pots.
On the wall hung a long curved bone needle.
"What is that?" Woo-jin said.
"It's how I did these." Mu-yeol turned his forearm in the lamplight.
The ink bands moved over the muscle. "Every monk at the temple inks his own, when he takes the vows."
"I want to give you something. If you want it."
"What?"
"The place," Mu-yeol said.
Woo-jin stood very still.
"I want to write over it. Where my blade went in. Three lines of the old prayer, in my hand. It won't wash off."
"It won't fade."
"It will hurt."
"Do it."
Woo-jin said it before Mu-yeol had finished.
Mu-yeol stared at him, and then, helplessly, he laughed.
"You're not even going to ask what it says?"
"I'll find out when it's done."
Mu-yeol had him lie on the bed, with his robe off and his head turned toward the lamp.
He knelt over him with the pots and the needle and a bowl of black ink that smelled of pine smoke.
He washed the skin over Woo-jin's heart with a cold wet cloth, and drew the first line on it with a brush.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Rival Who Killed Me Remembers Too are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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