# Chapter 15: The Night the Sparrows Sang
Hello everyone, it’s me again! How are you all doing? Today I will continue to walk with you and review Chapter 15 of "Honey in The Wound free digital audiobook". This is one of those chapters that begins with ordinary chores and gossip, then suddenly drags you into a night of blood, secrets, and dangerous awakenings. So settle in, because the cold air of Xinjing is about to cut straight through the tea house.
The chapter opens in the back storage room of Fenghuang, where Young-Ja and Meiyu are still trainees, still trapped in their gray work tunics, still scrubbing away the dirt of winter. Feng-nüshi expects a deep seasonal cleaning, and that winter the girls have been given the back storeroom and its heavy earthenware jars. The other kitchen staff have retired for the night, so Young-Ja and Meiyu finally drop their service smiles and speak freely.
Meiyu complains that it is unfair they are not yet servers. She boasts about her Japanese, Korean, and even Russian, and insists the guests like her best. They tell her things, she says, even things Feng-nüshi would pay to hear. Young-Ja agrees silently that Meiyu is the most popular greeter. Some guests even address her by name and linger at the entrance just to flirt with her. But Young-Ja does not share that ambition. She likes the flow of guests without having to interact with them beyond a welcome. She dreads the day she must force a smile and pour tea for a soldier, obey their orders, and follow their conversations.
And yet, since Japan has begun another invasion of China, many soldiers in Xinjing have deployed south. Fewer tan uniforms patronize Fenghuang these days. At first Young-Ja feels relief, but it quickly mutates into something uglier: if the soldiers are not occupied with leisure, they are likely out killing men, destroying families just like hers.
The girls gossip about tea house romances, about which girls have been found in another’s embrace. Meiyu wonders aloud whether women really make better lovers than men, as the older girls say. Young-Ja looks away. She does not know how a woman’s touch would make her feel, but she knows at least one man’s touch has corroded a part of her. She shakes her head to bury the memory and tries to focus on Meiyu’s chatter. Meiyu declares it does not matter anyway, because she is going to marry Bailong. Two days ago, she even paid an older girl to teach her how to kiss with her tongue, wanting to be ready to catch him in a private corner the next time he visited. When Meiyu teasingly offers to show Young-Ja how, the two collapse into delirious giggles.
Then the night turns.
As their eyelids grow heavy, Baek Yong-Woo barges in through the tea house’s back entrance, tracking dirty gray snow across the wet floor of the storage room. He orders them to clear the large table in the kitchen. Now. Young-Ja and Meiyu jump up and obey. Four men lumber in carrying what looks like large crates of tea. The sour musk of unbathed workers fills the room, laced with the acrid note of spent gunpowder. The odor instantly transports Young-Ja back three years, to the moment bandits robbed all the passengers aboard her Xinjing-bound train. These men wear similar changshan and fur vests, though less menacingly armed.
Before Young-Ja can wonder why Yong-Woo keeps such company, the men open a large crate on the kitchen table. Inside is a grimacing, pale man bleeding from his chest. His torso has been wrapped roughly in cloth, but blood has saturated through in a dark-red stain on the crate’s wooden planks.
Yong-Woo sends Meiyu to get Feng-nüshi. He yells at Young-Ja to bring clean linens and boiled water. She has never seen the self-possessed Yong-Woo look so manic. His normally well-coiffed hair is caked with dust, falling in messy strands across his sweat-soaked forehead. He hooks his arms under the injured man as the others help place him on the table. Yong-Woo throws off his jacket, rolls up his shirtsleeves, folds several linens into a bundle, and lays the man’s head down gently. He stays at the edge of the table, holding his injured comrade’s head, whispering into his ear.
Waiting for the water to boil, Young-Ja holds back her questions. She notices one of the other men bleeding from his hand. She tugs at his sleeve and says in Chinese, “Let me clean this.” He tilts his head with uncertainty, as if he does not comprehend. She wipes the dirt from his upturned palm and wraps a thin cloth around the gash.
“Thank you,” he says in Japanese. A soft voice.
Young-Ja had not expected this gruff-looking man in a changshan to address her so meekly, let alone in Japanese. She releases his hand and steps back. In meeting his gaze, she notices his skin is unlined beneath the dirt. He is still quite young. Certainly not like the grizzled old men the bandits were in her memory of the train. There is still a softness in his hands, none of the calluses of laborers. She glances at the others standing behind Yong-Woo and concludes with surprise that none of their dust-covered faces have seen many years past twenty. Who are these men? Why have they brought their smells of gunpowder and pain into this tea house kitchen?
Feng-nüshi’s clacking cane approaches before the water boils, Meiyu trailing behind. The cane bangs to a halt at the door. All look up to a scorching glare darting between the bleeding man on the table, the dirty horde gathered around, and their blood-covered ringleader.
“You fool—anyone could have seen you come through in such large numbers!” Feng-nüshi’s admonition booms against the walls. All but Baek Yong-Woo startle at the power in her voice.
“We brought him in one of the crates,” Yong-Woo says. “If anyone happened to see us, it would’ve looked like a tea shipment, nothing suspicious.”
Feng-nüshi hits her cane against the dark bloodstain on the crate. “Tea deliveries are not made in the middle of the night by tactless little boys with guns!”
Yong-Woo ignores the retort. He begins removing the bloody clothes from the injured man when Young-Ja delivers the bowl of heated water. He dips a clean linen into it and starts washing away the sweat and dirt on his comrade’s strained face.
“Your men cannot be seen here like this. You must leave. Now.”
Yong-Woo does not look up. With a gentle hand, he cleans his comrade and replaces the soaked cloth on his chest with fresh bandages. The pale man groans as he is kneaded about on the table. Yong-Woo winces along as if in pain himself.
“We lost our safehouse and our doctor—we have nowhere else to hide but here,” he says.
“You should’ve gone to Mukden—”
“He would’ve died!” Yong-Woo’s eyes are wild, his teeth gritted into a snarl. “If we had to take him all the way to Mukden, he would’ve died.”
Young-Ja and Meiyu freeze. They have never heard anyone address Feng-nüshi in such a tone and are terrified of how she will respond. Even the other men stand still, shifting their eyes away from the conflict.
“Then let him die,” Feng-nüshi says, voice low and tense. “He’s just one man. He knew what he was getting into.”
The man screams as Yong-Woo increases pressure on the wound to stanch the bleeding. Yong-Woo puts his forehead against his comrade’s, apologizing for causing him further agony. Sweat gathers at Yong-Woo’s brow as he clutches the ailing man’s hand. His expression softens when their eyes meet, blind to everyone else in the room. Young-Ja blushes and averts her eyes.
“Do not test me, Bailong—”
“Call for your physician,” he says, half command, half plea.
Her eyes narrow. Thick silence hangs between them.
“Please,” he adds in a more subdued voice, though with the desperation of a caged animal in his eyes. The man writhes in Yong-Woo’s arms, sweat dripping down his pallid face.
Feng-nüshi opens the door into the back storage room.
“I’ll call for him if the rest of your men leave immediately and as discreetly as possible. I’ll not have you put us all at risk to save one boy.”
Yong-Woo snaps around at the men, who murmur to one another and nod. They cover their faces and leave through the back door one by one, melting away into the winter night. Satisfied with their departure, Feng-nüshi sends Meiyu to fetch the doctor. Young-Ja helps Yong-Woo coax the injured man to drink water and wipe the sweat from his clammy body.
“Well, which was it?” Feng-nüshi demands. “The encampment or the arms factory? Or did you go somewhere else?”
Yong-Woo strokes his comrade’s hair as he speaks. “The arms factory seemed like the better bet. The intel from your women said the factory would be thinned to a skeleton crew tonight since guards were being sent to the southern war front. We confirmed separately that it’d been a while since the last major shipment, meaning the warehouse would be relatively full.”
“Who went with you?” asks Feng-nüshi.
“The usual resistance fighters from Joseon and China, some of the communists from Tokyo—you’ve met most of them. We thought it’d be a good idea to make a dent in the Japanese arms supply chain.”
“That was it? No outsiders?”
Yong-Woo looks away, hand in his injured companion’s. “We were a little shorthanded, so I had some smugglers from the area join us. They wanted some new guns.”
Feng-nüshi narrows her eyes.
“I’d worked with every man before, that’s not the problem. It’s just that, when we got there, we were ambushed. There were dozens of soldiers waiting for us. We lost a lot of men, but some got away. I managed to convince a few to help me... to help us come back here.”
Young-Ja stands in shocked silence. She has always wondered where Baek Yong-Woo went on his frequent business trips. Tea house gossip leaned fanciful—“all that handsomeness, he’s probably in the movies!”—or dramatic—“he has ties to the Triad, it can’t be just tea in all those crates!” Young-Ja, too, suspected he was no mere tea merchant, but she never imagined he would be outright defying the Japanese Imperial Army. Her mind races through her memories, wondering what signs she missed. In the many nights she was haunted by her family’s final morning, she could not have fathomed anyone strong enough to confront the wielders of violence who had laid such waste to her life.
Feng-nüshi’s face darkens at the mention of an ambush. Either Bailong’s plans had been exposed, or they had deliberately been fed bad information. If the latter, these unwanted late-night visitors are not the only thing for Feng-nüshi to worry about. Fenghuang could now be under suspicion by powerful men whose very lack of misgivings she relied on for profit.
“Tonight’s recklessness aside, you’re not such a fool that you haven’t figured out what this means,” Feng-nüshi says. “You must lie unseen far from here while we figure out how those soldiers anticipated your plans.”
Yong-Woo continues stroking his comrade’s hair, refusing to meet Feng-nüshi’s eyes.
When Meiyu returns with the old doctor, he extracts whatever iron he can from the chest wound and sews up the torn skin. Agonized screaming is cut short when Feng-nüshi shoves a linen into the injured man’s mouth and hisses at him to be quiet.
“Give him some morphine, he’s in pain!” shouts a frantic Yong-Woo.
“Don’t have any,” says the doctor as he administers the final stitches. “I had to surrender most of my supplies to the military. For their invasion efforts.”
Yong-Woo throws a look at Feng-nüshi, who remains impassive.
“You know very well that I don’t keep tools for mindless vice under my roof,” she says.
“Then go to Tayiji and get some from him,” Yong-Woo says, voice breaking. “Please, he won’t be able to handle this.” He clutches the patient’s hand.
Feng-nüshi looks down at the entwined men. She flattens her lips and says nothing.
“I can go,” says Young-Ja. She has never stood so upright under the knife edge of Feng-nüshi’s scowl, but the revelation of Yong-Woo’s pursuits emboldens her. “Whatever it is you need, I can get it.”
This rush of nerve enables Young-Ja to lock eyes with her mistress, but it is not enough to keep her from shaking. The absence of speech crackles in the air as Feng-nüshi considers the scene before her.
“Tayiji does seem to favor you,” the old woman concedes. “You may go tell him Fenghuang requests a vial of morphine.”
Yong-Woo grabs Young-Ja’s arm and thanks her in Korean, asking her to run as fast as she can.
“No, do not run.” Feng-nüshi’s cane shoots out against Young-Ja’s chest. “You cannot behave like anything is wrong. You’ll walk calmly and not draw attention to yourself. And don’t tell Tayiji why we need the morphine.”
Yong-Woo scowls but does not contradict her. He instead offers his crumpled jacket to Young-Ja as she leaves.
The rush of cold winter air swirls around Young-Ja with the exhilaration of what the evening has revealed. The thought of being able to help Yong-Woo lightens her hurried steps. Since her first days at Fenghuang, she has focused on obeying every order, terrified of being deemed a burden and thrown away. And unlike Meiyu, she has wished to burrow within the underbelly of the tea house, avoiding any work within the orbit of Japanese soldiers. But this night has revealed that Fenghuang stands not merely for the amusement of powerful men. Young-Ja does not pretend to understand men’s reasons for war or violence, but she sees that there is a greater purpose to the servers’ duties, a reason Feng-nüshi rewards certain observations, a drive that makes men of all origins risk their lives. She is feverish with discovery. This is why Yong-Woo brought her here. This is why he taught her to read people. From the agitation of her mind rises an eagerness to don red and put her observation skills to the test. Even if it means having to stomach the company of uniformed men.
Young-Ja has walked past Tayiji’s before when running errands at the marketplace with the older girls. It is only a few streets down from the tea house, but in the late hour, the darkened windows along the street appear menacing. Men slide out from the shadows, some obviously drunk and stumbling about. Others eye her with alarming lucidity. Young-Ja keeps her gaze locked ahead in her hasty walk, wrapping Yong-Woo’s jacket tight around her body and trying not to appear as frightened as she feels. If she focuses on her newfound determination, she can block out the chilling shapes flickering at the edges of her sight.
Tayiji’s building is a large, three-story structure with blue roofing and ornate woodwork along the awning and windows. Young-Ja tugs on the creaking iron ring of the front gate, but the door will not budge. She knocks and calls out for Tayiji in a whisper. No response. She calls out again, her cry dissipating into the dark with the fog of her breath. Young-Ja refuses to return to Fenghuang empty-handed. She cannot bring herself to fail her first mission and disappoint Yong-Woo, not when he has been risking his life against the Japanese all this time. He is depending on her. She yells louder for Tayiji, pounding on the door.
Behind her comes a chirp. Young-Ja thinks she has misheard, for birds do not sing in the night. As if in riposte to her doubt, another chirp rings out. Another joins in, and another, until the street lights up with the cries of sparrows. Young-Ja whirls around trying to tell the sparrows to be quiet, but iron creaks as the large door hinges open to reveal Tayiji in a fur-lined nightgown. He holds up a small lantern to Young-Ja’s surprised face. The sparrows go silent when he begins to speak.
“The kkachi from Joseon. What brings you here at this strange hour?” he asks in Korean.
Young-Ja looks around to make sure no one is behind her and explains why she has come. Tayiji frowns but waves his free hand at her to enter in his wake.
Young-Ja follows Tayiji past the atrium into a large room thick with the smell of something ominously sweet. Dim lanterns hang high from the ceiling, though their light does little to illuminate the smoke-dusted space. The gentle swings of Tayiji’s handheld lantern cast swaying shadows on the opulent surfaces of the room. The stairs wind along the wall, periodically opening up to little landings as they snake around to the edges of higher floors blurred in the pungent haze. Plush mats and pillows are gathered in bunches, with what look like corpses strewn about. Young-Ja gasps as the passing lantern light flashes on the exposed skin of fallen arms. Men dressed in Western suits and changshan are passed out in the middle of the room, against the railings of the stairs, buried in pillows on the ground. Tayiji glances back at her.
“Don’t worry, it’s safe.”
Young-Ja does not know whether he speaks for the two of them or for the men at their feet.
“What are they doing?” she cannot help but ask.
“They’re resting.”
“Are they... hurt?” she whispers as they exit the main chamber into a long corridor.
Tayiji’s gaze holds steady ahead as he takes them through the hallway with his lantern held high.
“No one lives without hurt, little kkachi, and many seek to forget their pain. We provide assistance with that here, much like Fenghuang helps to distract people from their woes.”
Young-Ja keeps pace with Tayiji while looking around the sumptuous hallway. Every door they pass is ornately carved and flanked by large jade statues of mythical beasts. Dimly lit red lanterns hang all down the path. Young-Ja is often in awe of Fenghuang’s grandeur, but this is different. Fenghuang’s elegance is understated, something that blends into the background of a generally serene ambience. Here, the opulence feels overwhelming, as if designed to override the onlooker’s senses and plunge them into another world. Young-Ja gawks at the adornments in the corridor while Tayiji pauses to unlock a door with a key hung around his neck.
He flips the light switch within to reveal a room that looks as if it belongs in a different building. Plain wooden paneling lines the walls. No decorative flair is carved into the molding or furniture. A modest shelf stacked with various sized bottles stands in the corner next to a table with a scattering of iron tools. Tayiji grabs a small brown bottle and hands it to Young-Ja. She feels a jolt as his cold, smooth fingers touch her skin.
“I won’t ask why your mistress needs this, but I trust you’ll keep out of it.”
Young-Ja is shocked at the implication she might take medicine that is meant for someone else. Tayiji chuckles at the look on her face.
“I’m just teasing, of course. I’ve always known you to do the right thing.”
Tayiji leads her back outside. Young-Ja clutches the bottle to her chest, wondering whether the men sprawled about needed the medicine she holds, and if she is taking it away from them. She shudders at the thought and walks through the main chamber, staring at the ground so as not to step on an arm or foot.
“Be careful on the way back, kkachi,” Tayiji says at the entrance. “I’ll know if you stray.”
The door shuts, extinguishing the light of Tayiji’s lantern. Young-Ja turns toward Fenghuang. Within her first steps, a sparrow lands on her shoulder. It chirps softly in her ear as she begins her short journey back. Advancing in brisker strides, she hears a growing crest of other sparrows following above and behind, wings aflutter in their strange nighttime song. Young-Ja is glad for the company, for she fears the night less under the watch of her flying guardians. When she opens the back door to Fenghuang, the birds scatter back into the night sky, leaving no trace of their grand procession.
Young-Ja expects to walk into more screaming or groaning, but silence hangs in the storage room. Upon entering the kitchen, her ears search for Feng-nüshi’s furious hissing. But the only noise comes from Meiyu shuffling about, gathering bloody linens into a basket. Feng-nüshi and the doctor are no longer there. Meiyu looks up briefly as Young-Ja enters before casting her red, swollen eyes back down, hurrying to tidy up.
Yong-Woo’s face is buried in the shoulder of the injured man on the table. The man lies still, waxen and pale. Young-Ja is surprised to find that he is remarkably beautiful without the grimace of pain sullying his face. The skin on his high cheekbones is smooth, his lips a pleasing, full shape. As she steps closer, she notices that he, too, is quite young. Yong-Woo shakes beside the man, head buried, shirt covered in his comrade’s blood. Young-Ja feels as though she is intruding on a private moment and remains silent. She sets the brown bottle of medicine by Yong-Woo’s side. He does not stir.
Yong-Woo disappears after they bury the dead man behind a shrub in the courtyard where the disturbed earth will not be seen by guests the following morning. His prolonged absence does not go unnoticed—other tea house women wonder where Bailong has gone with all his gifts and easy smiles. Young-Ja and Meiyu do not need to be told the importance of keeping that night’s events a secret. The girls even refrain from discussing the night with each other, for it might force them to acknowledge that the dashing Baek Yong-Woo is just as human as they are. That his protection, too, has its bounds in their ever-treacherous world.
In Xinjing, Manchukuo, under the Empire of Japan, 1936, the Spring Festival is quickly approaching. Despite the onset of war in China, the tea house continues to attract high-paying guests seeking service and entertainment. The red-clad women of Fenghuang glide among the tables with their usual polish and smiles, crafting an atmosphere of leisurely interlude far from the rising fatalities of Japanese military campaigns. But Fenghuang behind the scenes does not boast a festive mood.
After learning about the ambush, the mistress of the tea house rampages. The server who first reported the factory’s change of guards is brought into Feng-nüshi’s office for questioning. She is made to recite the names and demeanors of every military officer from whom she overheard the account. Every element of her interactions with the men is broken down many times over under the looming menace of Feng-nüshi’s cane. The dancers who performed for the same officers are dragged into interrogations and squeezed for any divergence from the server’s account. When none stray from the emerging story, the server is permitted to walk out of Feng-nüshi’s office two days later with her life, though the light has left her eyes. Feng-nüshi seems satisfied that the ambush did not result from a traitor among her staff, but this is only the beginning. She would be a fool not to hunt for snakes elsewhere.
The terror of Feng-nüshi’s scrutiny creeps over every tea house woman, though no one but Young-Ja and Meiyu understands why. The old woman is quicker to bang her cane in reprimand for any deviation from perfection. Fingers are threatened to be chopped off at any slips of the hand. When women come to report their observations, the mistress of the tea house lays fiendish traps of lies. She declares to have heard contradictions to servers’ accounts, trying to catch women off guard or turn the weak-willed against their sisters. Feng-nüshi has become a shadow over every smile, and Young-Ja now understands that the tea house is no mere den of pleasure. It is a web, a weapon, and perhaps the only place where a girl like her might learn to strike back.
Reader’s Impressions & Star Rating: This chapter hit me like a sudden storm. It begins with such intimate, almost playful conversation between Young-Ja and Meiyu, then rips the floor out from under them with the arrival of Yong-Woo and the bleeding man. The contrast is masterful. I loved seeing Young-Ja’s quiet dissatisfaction with her role transform into a fierce, trembling resolve. The moment she says “I can go” is a major turning point, not just for the plot but for her identity. Feng-nüshi remains terrifying, Yong-Woo becomes painfully human, and Tayiji’s strange, opulent underworld adds a new layer of danger and mystery. The sparrows following Young-Ja home gave me chills. This chapter balances suspense, character development, and world-building beautifully. Rating: 4.8 / 5 Stars
Next Chapter Prediction: I predict that the next chapter will show Young-Ja stepping deeper into Fenghuang’s hidden war. With Yong-Woo absent and Feng-nüshi hunting for the source of the ambush, Young-Ja may finally be promoted to server, which would put her directly in the path of Japanese officers and their secrets. I also suspect Tayiji’s sparrows and his knowledge of her will return in a more dangerous way. The Spring Festival could become the perfect cover for another operation, or the perfect trap. Someone in the tea house may still be a informant, and Young-Ja may be the one to notice the first small inconsistency. I would not be surprised if Yong-Woo returns suddenly, wounded or changed, with news that makes the ambush look like only the first move in a much larger game.
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