# Chapter 18: The Night the Sparrows Fell
Hello everyone, it's me again! How are you all doing? I hope you're ready, because today I will continue to walk with you through another unforgettable chapter of "Honey in The Wound free digital audiobook." Let me warn you now—this chapter is a storm. It begins quietly, almost tenderly, and then it tears everything apart. So settle in, take a breath, and let's walk through Chapter 18 together.
---
The chapter opens in a moment of intimacy that doesn't belong to the girl who is witnessing it. Meiyu, breathless and glowing, launches into the details of her encounter with her handsome Japanese merchant—sighing over his caresses, lost in the memory of his touch. Young-Ja listens, curious but detached. She recognizes beauty when she sees it. She can admire handsome men the way one admires a fine painting. But unlike Meiyu and her older sisters at Feng huang, whose hearts flutter and bodies tremble at the mere thought of love, Young-Ja herself feels none of that pull. She has watched Meiyu lose herself completely in the snare of romance, and rather than envy, what Young-Ja feels is relief—a quiet, private gratitude that she has never been caught in that disorienting tug.
But relief comes with its own shadow: worry. Young-Ja cannot bear to imagine what her life would become if Meiyu ran off to be some man's wife. She longs for the simpler days, the days when Meiyu dreamed only of marrying Bailong—the handsome man who could do no wrong. But those days are buried. They haven't spoken of Bailong in years. Meiyu's attention has long since wandered from that old flame to the merits of other men, men whose shine has not yet been dulled by misery.
And misery, as it happens, has claimed someone else entirely.
Baek Yong-Woo no longer commands the same presence in the teahouse. The new kitchen girls don't even know who he is. The older servers have stopped thinking of him altogether. His visits are rare now—once every several months—and when he does come, he arrives in the company of churlish, unshaven men who throw vulgar looks at the staff. He doesn't turn heads with his once-gleaming smile anymore. People look away from his sunken cheeks, his sallow skin, the fraying edges of his dirty suit sleeves. There are no gifts, no shipments of tea, no faint smell of pine needles. He has thinned away into an unkempt revenant, and even his voice has lost its strong tenor—now heard only as discordant shouts through the closed door to Feng-nüshi's office.
Young-Ja wonders if she can still catch glimpses of the self-assured man who once bought her yeot candies back in Cheonan, the passionate resistance fighter who infiltrated government arms factories. As she mourns the dimming light of Baek Yong-Woo's valor, she wishes she could calm whatever disquiet has rotted his being. Part of this is concern—she has, after all, grown to care for him—but part of it is frustration. He no longer seems up to the task of resistance. No matter how many coins Feng-nüshi awards Young-Ja, watching Yong-Woo's degeneration erodes her faith that any valuable observation will be put to effective use against the Japanese. But her growing vexation with the man is shunted aside, because a crisis is unfolding in Meiyu's world.
Meiyu's handsome Japanese merchant has not been seen at Feng huang for a week. Not since he finally tasted Meiyu's flesh and made her cry out under his touch. At first, Meiyu's luster barely dimmed. Convinced he was away on pressing business, she threw herself into her work. But with each day that passed without word, she fell further into despair. The down-turned eyes that were so pleasing when she smiled transformed in misery, drooping as if the slope of her eyelids had been pulled low by the weight of her tears.
Young-Ja cares for her grieving friend. She bathes her and brushes her hair in silence, listening to Meiyu's choked theories about where the merchant has gone: perhaps stuck somewhere with a major shipment, perhaps unable to cross the lines of war to make it back to Xinjing, perhaps dead in a ditch somewhere. When sisterly touch fails to ease Meiyu's distress, Young-Ja brews the calming root tea she learned to make from her father. After drinking the concern Young-Ja cannot help but infuse into the tea, Meiyu loses her words, weeping for the man to whom she gave her body, her heart, her mind.
Young-Ja doesn't know what to say to restore Meiyu's spirits. So she tries everything else. She paints her friend's nails and braids flowers into her hair. She gets the cook to make her an extra mung bean cake. She even cedes Tayiji's table to Meiyu, though even Tayiji's charm and generous tips have little effect. Young-Ja suspects the merchant has simply done what her older sisters at Feng huang told her men do—abscond after taking his prize. But battles rage on as Japan claws at control of China; few go untouched by its destruction. It isn't implausible that the merchant is an otherwise honorable victim of circumstance, trapped behind some wartime barrier longing for Meiyu as she does him.
The strains of war are beginning to show even among Feng huang's wealthier clients. With ongoing conflict suppressing commerce and drying up wages, few have the coin or the time to spare on lazy afternoons with teahouse women. Japanese ministers are occupied trying to manipulate the surrender of the Chinese from their desks in Manchukuo. Xinjing's leisure class has fled for calmer environs overseas. Tayiji has also been showing his face less frequently, though when he does turn up, it is typically to whisper into the ears of shifty-eyed men rather than to lounge with his beautiful yanhua.
Despite the troubles of their usual clientele, Feng huang is no less busy, no less famous for its promise of an elegant experience. The teahouse is instead beginning to attract a different class of men to fill its tables—ones who come in with unshaven faces covered with the dust of horseback raids, baijiu lingering on their clammy breath. The bluster of these more uncouth guests chases away what little remains of Feng huang's old crowd.
One such group of rough-looking men has been seated at a table for Young-Ja to tend to in the courtyard. She suspects she has seen some of these men before, accompanying Baek Yong-Woo during one of his late-night visits to Feng-nüshi. She feels her tension release somewhat at the thought that they are Bailong's associates; perhaps she can pick up hints on his whereabouts or latest ventures from this table. As she approaches, the red-faced man nearest her runs his eyes down her body and places his hand on the small of her back when she stops at the table.
"Fetch us your best tea. We're in a generous mood tonight," he says in Korean.
Young-Ja holds back a flinch at his touch. She bows and hurries away to retrieve their order. When she returns to set the cups down and places the teapot on the table, the man who touched her before grabs her wrist and jerks her toward him.
"Why don't you join us? Maybe we'll pour you some tea," says the man, smiling to reveal rot across his yellow teeth. She shakes her wrist free from his grip and pours the tea as intended, acting as if nothing is amiss.
"I like virtuous women. I have to work a little harder for my reward." He seizes her waist and pulls her toward his lap. The other men laugh.
"Let go!" Young-Ja cries out. The reek of alcohol exudes from the man's pores as she tries to push him away. He holds strong.
"Not thinking of saving yourself for a particular man, are you? Who is it? Baek Yong-Woo? We all know he wouldn't bed you... you're not his type. Not enough hair on the lip."
The others laugh. Young-Ja burns red and twists around to loosen his hold.
"Baek Yong-Woo wouldn't be able to get it up anyway now, from what I hear," the man continues. "Not with those needles in his veins—"
Young-Ja lifts her arm and elbows his jaw. The strike causes him to clench down on his tongue and cry out in pain, blood trickling out with his saliva down from the corners of his lips. Young-Ja wrenches herself free but stills when Feng-nüshi descends on the table, sparrows fluttering behind her. She will surely be punished for her defiance of protocol.
The old woman pushes Young-Ja out of the way and swings down her cane. Its beak handle cracks into the wood of the seat between the man's spread legs.
"This is not a brothel. Go satisfy your lust elsewhere," she says in Korean.
"You old bitch—"
Feng-nüshi yanks her cane free from the seat, then thrusts the flat top of its handle into his throat. The man chokes and falls out of his chair, gasping for breath. The other men jump up and draw their weapons. Feng-nüshi does not pay them mind as a sparrow lands on her shoulder.
"And you are Hwang, a gun for hire that few will hire because your aim is so piss poor. I would think twice before you start trouble here, or I'll make sure no one can hire you at all."
The man narrows his eyes at the sound of his name on her tongue.
"Wen. Im. Liu," Feng-nüshi says, looking every man in the eye as she lists their names. "Don't think I don't know every man who sets foot in my house. I know how much coin you have in your pockets, which whores you favor, whom you call master. Leave before I show everyone here what else I know of you."
The men exchange looks before deciding to leave, kicking down chairs as they exit. The other guests settle back into their own teas, but few eyes left the tall, gaunt mistress of the teahouse.
"Hurry up and clean this. Get back to serving your tables." Feng-nüshi clacks away with her cane as sparrows lift up into the sky. Meiyu rushes over to Young-Ja and helps her clear the mess.
But Feng-nüshi cannot always be present to quash the growing aggression of the new clientele. So the teahouse women teach one another how to free their wrists from an unwelcome grip and make sure to pair off so no one would be left in the tearoom alone to be devoured by the wolves that have found a new den.
"Ichikawa-sama!"
Young-Ja and the party she is serving turn their heads to Meiyu's squeals. The girl slams her tea tray down and runs toward a man in a dark-gray suit striding into the main tearoom. Her handsome Japanese lover, returned to her at last. Her red silk slippers patter to a halt when several police walk in behind him, fanning out to block the entrance.
"You're back—" Meiyu begins to speak when she is interrupted by the man's booming announcement.
"Manchukuo summons the mistress of Feng huang. She is to show herself now." The man ignores Meiyu and scans the room. It has been a quiet afternoon with only a few tables seated, but all chatter stops as guests turn to examine the disruption.
"Ichikawa-sama, what—" Meiyu ventures.
"Go tell your mistress that she has important guests to answer to. Now!" he commands, with no trace of his former tenderness.
Meiyu searches his eyes with a pleading look, but he simply barks at her to hurry. She flinches and runs upstairs. Some guests leave their money at their tables and hurry to the door, wanting to distance themselves from what looks to be ominous police business. A few curious onlookers remain seated. Young-Ja rushes to gather with the other servers near the hallway to the kitchen to observe the clamor.
The steady beat of the brass cane tip echoing on the floorboards announces Feng-nüshi's approach. She descends the staircase, Meiyu shrinking behind her, pausing on the last few stairs to maintain vantage over the men before her. She looks down at the crowd but does not say anything, her wordless gaze demanding they announce their intentions. The man in the suit meets her defiance with a stony expression.
"You are to answer to the government of Manchukuo for your many crimes. Step down and bow before the authorities," he commands.
Feng-nüshi does not budge. "This is the first I'm hearing of wrongdoing in our simple teahouse," says the old woman. "The gentleman will have to inform me of my alleged offenses."
The man continues in a harsh baritone. "Your first offense: assaulting an innocent citizen of the Empire of Japan."
The man gestures at the police behind him. Hwang struts in, the Joseon rogue with rotted teeth who had attacked Young-Ja a few days prior. He walks over and stands next to the man who is very likely not a merchant named Ichikawa. Hwang holds his sneering head high and glares at Feng-nüshi, who in turn looks only at the man in the dark-gray suit.
"To my knowledge, it is not a crime to discipline a dog for its feckless barking," she declares.
Hwang growls and reaches for a weapon tucked in his belt, but the man in the suit holds his arm up to keep him back. He continues listing off Feng-nüshi's transgressions.
"Your second offense: trading in flesh and operating a brothel without the proper license. Your third and most severe offense: countless thought crimes amounting to treason and conspiracy against the emperor."
Feng-nüshi is not fazed. "You have no proof," she says, her voice low and unwavering.
"We have several witnesses of these crimes," the man says. "The very man you assaulted reported on your extensive web of spies and their work to bring harm against the empire. He also disclosed that he was made to pay a steep price to bed one of your prostitutes."
"I did not think this government valued so highly the false word of a drunk buffoon." Feng-nüshi strokes her beak cane handle with her thumb. Hwang grits his teeth, seething, his breath heavy through his nostrils.
The man in the suit shifts his glare from Feng-nüshi to Meiyu, who has been staring wide-eyed at her lover's incomprehensible transformation.
"I also have direct testimony from the very women you have hired to carry out your whoring and conniving espionage," he says.
"Ichikawa-sama—" Meiyu starts shaking her head.
"Silence," the man barks. "You, whore, are also under arrest for abetting the traitor Feng, along with every other prostitute working in this nest of vipers," he says, looking around at the other servers gathered by the hallway to the kitchen. "Bow down before the authority of the emperor!"
Meiyu releases an anguished wail and flies up the stairs.
Feng-nüshi narrows her eyes. She glances at the five police posted by the door before stepping down from the last few stairs. She takes slow strides and draws closer to her accuser.
"I bow for no man."
Feng-nüshi swings her cane at Meiyu's duplicitous seducer. He jumps back in surprise, but the point of the beak pierced his throat with a dull thud. He gurgles out a command to kill and burn as blood spills from his neck and soaks into the expensive fabric of his suit.
What few guests had remained to watch now flee, screaming in fear. The police let them pass and converge toward Feng-nüshi. The mistress of the teahouse jerks her cane free from the man's neck and lands her second strike on the temple of the nearest policeman. He falls to the floor and does not rise again.
This agility stuns the men who had not assumed it would require much effort to detain an old woman and some teahouse girls. But one man reminds himself that Feng-nüshi is a mere woman with a lame leg, no fearsome warrior. He draws his pistol, aims, and shoots her in the chest.
The servers shriek as Feng-nüshi crumples to the ground. All is still except for the writhing of the man in the suit, choking as he clutches the fountain of blood at his throat.
"You know the orders," says the policeman who had fired the shot.
The police begin to pour kerosene over the tables and chairs in the tearoom. Young-Ja and the other servers run back into the kitchen to alert the women who were gripped by the rhythm of their tasks, unaware of the madness transpiring in the next room.
The servers shout into the kitchen. "Get up, all of you! We have to leave, now!"
Most of the kitchen staff jump up and follow the stream of women toward the back exit, while others who did not react so quickly are dragged away from their work. Satisfied that the women in the kitchen are finding egress, Young-Ja pivots back to the tearoom—she needs to run upstairs for Meiyu and any others.
As Young-Ja leaves, the women pour into the back storage room and tug at the door. It does not move. They do not realize that the police have already boarded up the back exit to trap the workers inside. The women bang at the door, hitting at it with whatever items were within reach, but it would not budge. Some keep chipping away at the exit, while others debate turning back toward the main entrance, facing whatever awaited them in the tearoom. By the time the women give up on the door and spill back into the kitchen, a curtain of flames blocks their path. They run to fill whatever vessels they can with water to throw on the fire, but it is not enough. The flames eat into the kitchen and push the women out onto the laundry patio, where they claw at the towering wall and shout at one another to grab anything to help them scale the smooth stone. But the wall is too high, their reach only so long.
When Young-Ja left her sisters in the kitchen, she ran back into the tearoom, where the police had set torches to the kerosene as they left the building. Flames spread on the tables, the delicate screens, and the beautiful woodwork of the windows. Panic shooting through her body, Young-Ja sprints upstairs in a frantic search for Meiyu and any other remaining women. She cries out her sister's name, looking for that puppy-eyed face in the rooms of the second floor. Her shouts directed the few women she saw to escape their burning house.
Young-Ja runs to her shared dorm and finds it empty. Upon seeing the clear blue sky through the window, she briefly wonders where Tayiji's sparrows were. Did he already know of this chaos? Young-Ja does not realize that the bodies of Tayiji's fallen sparrows litter the streets of Xinjing. She does not know that in the dark of the previous night, police had scattered poisoned grains across the city for the sparrows to consume. She does not know that one by one, the birds dropped from the sky, unable to warn Feng-nüshi or Tayiji of the approaching danger.
Young-Ja climbs farther up into the building's third floor, screaming for Meiyu to no response. There are no signs of other women either, but the smell of smoke is floating up from the stairs below. Young-Ja knows she does not have much time and so hastens to check each room. All empty.
Only Feng-nüshi's office remains. Her mistress's papers are scattered on the desk of the otherwise unoccupied room, fluttering in the breeze from an open window that was usually kept shut. When Young-Ja turned to the open window, she blanched.
There, beneath the windowsill, sat a single red silk slipper with pink flowers delicately embroidered across its side, its mate or owner nowhere to be seen.
Young-Ja wailed and ran out of the room, away from what she would have to confront if she looked down from the window. Possessed with the urgency of running outside to hold Meiyu once again, she could not, in that moment, allow herself to believe that she would be too late. That she had been too late.
Flames licked at Feng huang's columns, ornate ceilings, and walls. The loud crackles of burning wood rang like thunderous death knells. Young-Ja screamed at the tears pricking her vision as she sprinted downstairs, inhaling thick clouds of smoke. She doused herself with a pitcher of water that sat on a table before falling to her knees to crawl. She could barely see as the embers bit at the flesh around her eyes. Hovering cinders flew into her mouth. She crawled toward the daylight, convulsing in a fit of coughs as she felt around for a path to her fallen sister outside. But the smoke in her eyes blinded her to the soldier who dropped his rifle butt against her skull.
The soldier picked up Young-Ja's limp body. He carried her away from the flames behind them, away from her home. He carried her like yet another piece of cargo and tossed her into a truck headed out of the city limits, away from Xinjing.
Feng huang burned as a message to anyone who dared challenge the Japanese Empire. Observers surrounded the building in shock and stared at the dark columns of smoke surging into the clear sky. The screams of the women within faded as the crackling blaze devoured Feng huang's daughters, stealing their final breaths with its glittering veil of flying embers. Ash fell for miles around, leading villages far away to think that winter's first snow had come early.
Many years after Feng huang Teahouse burned to the ground, people still spoke of its legend. The grace and allure of its women were unmatched. The tea, the purest and smoothest anyone had ever tasted. Many believed that such a significant beacon of culture could never be established again to welcome guests. Among the fond memories were whispers of its final day. Those who claimed they were present to witness the fire swore they spotted a bleeding Feng-nüshi in the window of her third-story office, looking down at the people below with a terrifying serenity as the flames engulfed her.
---
Young-Ja's head pounded. Her vision blurred in darkness and she could not glean her whereabouts. Her finger brushed over the tangle of hair on her head to inspect a wet scab, the epicenter of a throbbing pain. Bodies jostled around her. They were moving in some sort of vehicle, the roar of its engine nearly drowning out the chorus of moans and sobs. A fog of confusion and pain slowed her thoughts, but her vision came into focus on the fading sunset seeping through the slots in the wall near the ceiling. Young-Ja discerned that she was packed in the vehicle with other people, some crying, some asleep, many staring off in silence. Panicking, she turned to the girl sitting to her right and asked where they were.
"I don't speak Chinese," said the girl in Korean. Even in the dim light, head throbbing in pain, Young-Ja noted that this girl was remarkably beautiful. Her skin was unblemished and her eyes hooded in sultry flair. Young-Ja repeated her question in her native tongue.
"Oh, you're from Joseon. I didn't think you were because of your clothes," the girl said, eyeing Young-Ja's soiled qipao. "I don't know where we're going. Someone told me I could get a job at a factory if I got in the truck, but some of these girls were forced on along the way. You were knocked out."
Young-Ja swiveled her head and took a closer look at the people around her. There were at least fifteen others, if not more. All girls. At nearly twenty years of age, Young-Ja appeared to be one of the oldest in the group. Many looked a few years younger. No one seemed to want to meet her eyes or answer her questions. These were not the girls Young-Ja was desperate to see. She needed to hold Meiyu, she needed to behold the smiles of her other Feng huang sisters, she needed to know that those sputtering flames had been a misplaced nightmare.
---
## Reader's Impressions & Star Rating
I am absolutely shaken by this chapter. In the span of a single afternoon, everything Young-Ja knew—everything she loved—was reduced to ash. The author masterfully built tension through small, intimate moments before unleashing catastrophic violence. Feng-nüshi's final stand, wielding her cane like a warrior even with a lame leg, was both heartbreaking and awe-inspiring. She died as she lived: defiant, unbroken, and terrifyingly serene. The detail about the poisoned sparrows—Tayiji's eyes on the city, silenced one by one—was a gut punch that I did not see coming. And that single red silk slipper beneath the window? Devastating. The imagery of ash falling "for miles around" like early snow will haunt me for a long time. This chapter is a masterclass in tragedy and the cruel, indiscriminate nature of war.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 5.0 / 5 Stars
## Next Chapter Prediction
Young-Ja is now a captive, packed into a truck with other young girls—likely destined for forced labor or worse under the Japanese occupation. The year is 1941, and the Pacific War is about to escalate. I predict the next chapter will follow Young-Ja's journey into captivity, exploring the brutal realities of what awaits these women. She will be grieving, broken, and physically wounded, but I believe the same fire that made her elbow a thug and climb a burning building will keep her alive. Will she find a way to resist? Will she encounter anyone from her past—perhaps Baek Yong-Woo, whose addiction may have been a cover for something deeper? And what of Meiyu—did she truly jump, or was she taken? The unanswered questions are agonizing, and I suspect the next chapter will begin Young-Ja's transformation from a teahouse servant into something far more dangerous: a survivor with nothing left to lose.
---
To listen free the next reviews chatpers, please access website novelsaudio.com and search keyword: Honey in The Wound free digital audiobook or click the link in the description of this video or if you want to listen or read full the Honey in The Wound free digital audiobook please access website novelsaudio.com