The Foreigner 외국인

Part 3: Beyond Death - Chapter 15 (continued)

Hung San smiled warmly as he watched Lee Ara rock her son. Seeing her acting so gentle and quiet with the child almost made him forget about the hellish last six months, when she had nearly turned into a wild tiger locked in a cage.

"What will you name him?" he asked.

"Small Yi Jin," she said while stroking the sleeping baby's cheek.

"That is not a name," he retorted, but she ignored him.

For several weeks, Lee Ara called her son "small Yi Jin," but no one dared to say anything as she returned to training, riding and drinking -until one day Doctor Han presented her with a list of names.

"Pick one," she ordered.

Lee Ara shook her head. "Yi Lee-Sun" she said, adding, "That was always his name."

Although she loved her son, Lee Ara struggled to be a mother, and she felt a deep sense of shame when confronted with her shortcomings. She sometimes wondered if her maternal instinct was stronger when it came to her horse than her child. In reality, as the days passed, the boy looked more and more like his father, which made it hard for her just to look at him without being reminded of her desperate longing for Yi Jin. She also felt deeply out of place and sometimes pushed the tip of her knife's blade onto her skin to make sure that she was still alive, and not a ghost. Hung San, who, along with Doctor Han, helped Lee Ara with the child on a daily basis, wasn't sure how to fix her failing heart. Maybe he had not noticed it before, or maybe he had refused to see it, but there had always been a darkness inside her, an incurable darkness.

"I do not know if me being your mother is a blessing or a curse," Lee Ara whispered as she put her baby down for the night. Yi Lee-Sun looked right through her with his piercing dark eyes. He seemed to accept her for who she was, no matter how chaotic, flawed and fleeting.

"Lee Ara, you cannot..." The woman's voice trailed off as she watched in disbelief as Lee Gong's daughter wrapped her son to her chest with a piece of cloth, and hopped on her horse.

"He might as well learn early," she said, dismissing the worried villagers with a wave. Hung San knew that arguing with her would be useless, so he followed as they rode away. He kept a close eye on the child, who was only a few months old, yet surprisingly composed. He almost never cried. Yi Lee-Sun observed the world around him with curiosity, strapped tightly against his mother's chest and gently rocked by Mun's walk. Hung San loved him as his own, and he often had to remind himself that he wasn't his. He was Yi Jin's, or worse yet, Joseon's. He did not feel resentful towards the king; rather, he pitied him for not being able to watch his son grow up.

"Hung San, are you paying attention?" Lee Ara asked while pointing an arrow at him. The man, startled out of his reverie, looked behind him at the deer that was peacefully chewing on a leaf. Lee Gong's daughter was about to let go of her arrow when suddenly Yi Lee-Sun started crying, scaring the animal away. Lee Ara sighed.

"Maybe bringing you on a hunting trip wasn't the best idea," she said while wiping tears from the baby's cheek. They followed the deer until they reached a peak. Through a thick row of pine trees, on the other side of the mountain, was the Liaodong Province. Lee Ara squinted as thousands of small figures gathered in the plain on the other side of the border.

"What is this?" she whispered.

"Soldiers from the Ming," Hung San responded in disbelief. They remained silent and immobile for a while, observing the sea of men in the distance.

"Send a spy," Lee Ara finally ordered the other men in her hunting party. "We need to find out why the empire is gathering soldiers here," she added before turning her horse around and hurrying back to the fortress.