Behind Botongwon, inside a small service quarters, the air was damp with moisture.

  Soot clung to every wall.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 raised a fine dust that clouded the air.

  I stopped 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.”

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  His voice was flat.It was impossible to tell whether he meant to frighten me, 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.

  I watched his hands in silence.

  His fingers were hardened into pitch-black calluses.The 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 set a small bowl on the table.

  Inside were charcoal powder, perilla oil, and hardened pine resin ground together.He scooped a little with chopsticks, mixed it with water, and the black liquid spread slowly.

  “We use this instead of ink,” he said.“Ink’s hard to come by these days.On the battlefield, this is what we use.”

  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, the characters darkened and came alive.

  After a moment, he lifted the tag and held it to the light.

  “That’ll do.”

  He wiped sweat from the back of his hand and held it out.

  I received the tag with both hands.

  The grain of the wood pressed into my palm.My name was clearly carved there—yet it already felt like a name that no longer belonged to me.

  That name would now enter the army’s records.

  If I returned alive, perhaps one day it might hang again beneath the rafters of my village home.But I did not easily believe such a day would come.

  The old man spoke again.

  “Where are you headed?”

  I hesitated.

  “I don’t know. I was told west.”

  “The west…”

  He nodded slowly.

  “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.

  I could not reply.

  I bowed once more and stepped out, gripping the wooden tag tightly in my palm.

  A single beam of sunlight slipped over it.

  For a brief moment, the letters glinted—as if they were something alive,yet wordless.