Boy Monster Chapter 60

All Hwelju and Yeonri were also subjects who followed the Emperor of Great Japan, and Jae Eunho was given the name ‘Tetsuya.’ Following the Head’s orders, Jae Eunho performed Resonance and hallucination rituals while observing the Japanese officials in key positions at the Government-General. Several months passed as he adapted to the great changes.

“I’m back.”

Jang Hwonwoo appeared from behind the plum tree, took off his military cap, and bowed. The boy, who had left with the Head for somewhere and returned after several weeks, had grown remarkably taller.

Jae Eunho now had to wear a kimono instead of a traditional overcoat. Jae Eunho called over the thirteen-year-old Jang Hwonwoo and asked cautiously, to confirm if the boy’s trust and affection were still valid now that fate had taken a sharp turn.

“Hwonwoo, do you still trust me the most in this mansion?”

“Of course. More than anyone else.”

Jang Hwonwoo, dressed in his uniform, continued his answer in a bleak voice.

“I cannot acknowledge as my father the Head who turned his back on the dying Joseon people and offered himself to the Emperor.”

After being placed under Japanese control, Jang Hwonwoo’s animosity had grown even stronger. The unforgettable, ice-cold fierceness from the day he took the beating for Jae Eunho long ago was in the boy’s eyes. Jae Eunho could see the unextinguished embers in the grown boy’s eyes.

That he possessed a soul like his own. And also, that he would not bend his flame even if it took a long time. A premonition that their common ground would connect the two even more tightly in the future.

“What about you, Lord Sa Yeonri?”

“Of course, I cherish you the most.”

Time flew like an arrow.

Year by year, little by little, Jae Eunho made Jang Hwonwoo a part of himself. So that the great cause and ideology Jae Eunho held would transfer to Jang Hwonwoo’s mind as naturally as breathing.

At fourteen, Jang Hwonwoo had become a little more serious and hated Japan even more. He also showed a sharper and more cunning side than before.

“I will break free from those who see me, the Hwelju, and the Yeonri only as means, and build an independent Joseon. That is the way I offer my love to my dead parents. …Do you understand?”

“What you plan to do specifically… I don’t really understand, to be honest.”

“If I can just remove the talismans and the pill and use my Resonance ability at the right time, I can erase our existence from the minds of those who know us. Not even the Government-General, not even the king, not even the Head of the House will know that our divine power exists. I will aim for that moment. The moment I can gather the key figures of the Japanese cabinet in one place.”

The boy’s eyes sparkled, sharing in the joy of Jae Eunho’s dream.

Though he could now freely wield his powers of telekinesis and pyrokinesis, and was accustomed to swords and guns, the boy was still a coward in strange ways. In crowded places, he would always hold Jae Eunho’s hand and not let go.

“Because I’m scared.”

At fifteen, Jang Hwonwoo still often took Jae Eunho to the cinema and detested imperialism even more.

The future of Joseon and Sashimcheon that Jae Eunho dreamed of had now become Jang Hwonwoo’s ambition. The organizational chart of the Japanese cabinet was slowly being completed. Jae Eunho often let Jang Hwonwoo, who had returned from a mobilization order from the Japanese army, rest his heavy head on his lap to sleep.

“We will break the shackles of fate and cover the black moonlight.”

Kneeling before Jae Eunho, Jang Hwonwoo bowed his head to the floor.

“Sir, I… am worried about this time when everyone is submissive before the Japanese flag. Please tell me what I must do. To your comrade and disciple who schemes for Joseon’s independence.”

He said with a playful grin, never leaving out a joke.

“I will respectfully learn from your evil heart and patriotic loyalty, sir.”

At sixteen, Jang Hwonwoo could discuss secret plots with Jae Eunho. The boy still memorized the lunar cycle and pestered him to go on night excursions according to it.

On the new moon, a bicycle,

On the last quarter, let’s take a rickshaw.

The boy, heading toward his late teens, had long since surpassed Jae Eunho’s height, and his shoulders were two spans wider. A youthful reliability could be felt in his rapidly maturing face and deepening voice. Every time he secretly completed a spy mission on which the lives of the independence army hung, or returned from a distant place on an order from the Japanese Empire, the boy’s gaze gained a dark confidence that ordinary people did not possess.

“Hwonwoo, maybe because the time you’re away from the mansion has increased… now you feel like a soldier of the Great Japanese Empire.”

Jae Eunho grumbled to the boy, who for some reason felt increasingly distant, to reconfirm their connection. The boy, having taken off his military cap, replied. It was an answer without a hint of hesitation.

“I am your rebel army and your only comrade.”

On the first quarter and full moon, Jajangmyeon,#

On the crescent moon, how about Western food?

Let’s go and lift our spirits, sir. I’m still awkward and scared in crowded places.

After several assassination attempts and failures, another year passed.

Jang Hwonwoo, on behalf of the Head, led the Hwelju past Harbin and all the way to Europe. His mission was to investigate the situation surrounding the Trans-Siberian Railway and the identities of exiles, grasp the state of the Allied forces’ war material transport in Europe, and cut off supply routes.

In 1939, Germany began its slaughter on the European continent, and Japan was in the midst of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Having deeply infiltrated the Japanese army, Jae Eunho now knew. Joseon was Japan’s military supply. Joseon’s land, capital, and people. Everything in Joseon was absorbed by Japan’s ambition.

This time, the wait was incredibly long. After two, then three months, Jae Eunho became more fearful than ever.

After spending several lunar cycles alone, a towering shadow rose behind the plum tree in the mansion’s courtyard. Along with a deep voice that was now almost uncomfortable to hear, a pair of neat military boots stepped forward.

“I’m back, sir.”

The respectable young man who approached past the tree branches was the seventeen-year-old Jang Hwonwoo. Jae Eunho, finding it awkward to lift his head and face the boy, kept his eyes on the boy’s shoulder level and embraced him. A mature body scent he had never smelled before touched the tip of his nose.

“Come to think of it, there has been no talk of romance counseling for several years.”

The boy smiled faintly and replied.

“Aren’t I diligently taking other lessons?”

His patriotic loyalty, tamed by Jae Eunho, was still valid.

It was the year Jang Hwonwoo turned seventeen, and Jae Eunho thirty-one.
And it was a time when the forced labor mobilization of Koreans by the Japanese Empire reached its peak in 1941.

:･⚜️⊹.️

Jang Hwonwoo’s reverence for Jae Eunho was indeed of a peculiar form.

Jang Hwonwoo saw an unspeakable beauty in Jae Eunho when he performed the Resonance ritual, but felt an indescribable filthiness when he saw him bowing his head to the Head of the House.

He mocked and sneered inwardly at his cold attitude toward him, but when he was vicious toward the world and others, it was hard to control the soaring attraction.

When he saw the smoke from the cigarette he smoked after being dragged to sexual union, he couldn’t stand himself for hating him, and when he, draped in see-through clothes, laughed heartily, life felt light as if all responsibility and darkness had disappeared.

On the day he took the blame for Jae Eunho’s skipping the pill several years ago, Jang Hwonwoo had entrusted the notebook to Jae Eunho, fearing he would get into trouble if its contents were discovered. He had expected him to come to return it, but he had never imagined he would propose an alliance.

It was Jae Eunho’s malice, disguised as solidarity.

While inwardly denouncing the abhorrence of him extending his hand first, he could not refuse.

‘You want me to make you have no choice but to smile sweetly at me?’

When he was very young, he had wanted to forcibly make the arrogant Sa Yeonri bow beneath him. He wanted to see him struggle in agony. It was a desire to slowly tighten the noose around that man’s neck and give him the humiliation of having no choice but to be sweet and gentle to him.

However, he had not thought that this twisted desire would mix with admiration and reverence and captivate his heart for a long time. It seemed that the tangled skein had been jumbled in his chest throughout his growing body and had settled there in its messy form. It was irreversible.

―I need an ally in this mansion.

It was an autumn day in 1935. The boy remembered. On that day, when Sa Yeonri’s attention was solely focused on him, the boy felt for the first time the moment when the desire for dominance, the wish to have something at his feet, connected to the lust of the body. It was a different kind of lust from the ordinary sexual desire that reacts to naked bodies or others’ intercourse.

The time when he outwardly became Japanese, and as time passed, when Sa Yeonri’s small head finally came to be looked down upon from below him.

Jang Hwonwoo realized.

Inside his manhood, which had grown along with his mature body, was probably entirely filled with a peculiar reverence and lust for one man.

From some point on, Jang Hwonwoo had been desiring that man who was his father’s possession, the Sa Hwelju’s Yeonri, and who would one day be offered to the king of the country.

Jang Hwonwoo could not stop that desire at all.

The desire that had clung to his chest and grown like a vine since childhood was an uncontrollable indulgence. Jang Hwonwoo wished for his body to grow even more. If he could just grow to tower over him, he thought he might be able to dismiss his passion for him as a thing of the past and turn away from it.

However, even after gaining a robust, manly body as he had wished, the passion did not leave Jang Hwonwoo’s heart. Twenty-five, twenty-seven, thirty-one…. As the days went by, Jae Eunho became a being who combined a peak physical form with insight and will. A sharper spirit dwelled in his slender body day by day. His coldness was the same as ever, but Jae Eunho’s mind and body, from which the darkness of the past had largely disappeared, ripened beautifully with each passing day.

When he imagined biting into that fully ripened man, when he imagined the ripe juices flowing profusely from his body, Jang Hwonwoo’s mind would become endlessly and softly drenched.

Killing a pursuing policeman during an assassination or military fund delivery activity planned with him was not difficult. It was a fitting act for the nature that flowed in the boy’s blood. Outwardly pledging loyalty to the country that stole his homeland and learning Japanese, and sometimes using his divine power for them, was still bearable.

However, there was one thing that was particularly difficult for Jang Hwonwoo, who was of an age to be married to a Yeonri, and that was that his desire and heart for that Sa Yeonri were not under his own control.