Haomu Sect
Ruju was waiting for me in the reception room I had seen yesterday. She offered me a seat, then showed me the jade pendant she had been absently toying with.
"Do you know what this is?"
"I was told it's a maekok."
Ruju's eyes turned cold. She studied me for a long moment, then set the maekok down in front of me.
"This is not mine."
"Then please find its owner. I found it nearby."
"There have been more than one honored guest visiting Simhyangru. Finding the owner won't be easy, will it?"
"I've heard it was used in the Hubei region, so it must belong to one of the guests from Hubei."
"We do have many distinguished guests from Hubei."
Ruju shook her head firmly. Even so, she didn't tell me to leave or rise from her seat.
She only lifted her teacup to her lips and sipped in silence, savoring the fragrance of the tea. It was the sort of pressure that said, without words, that I should go on.
In the end, I couldn't avoid the subject.
I ran through my words a few times in my head, choosing them carefully so they wouldn't sound like a threat, then opened my mouth.
"I once heard someone humming a tune. Coincidentally, a woman was singing it, and the next day a young scholar was murmuring the same melody. I didn't know it then, but it turned out to be a lullaby that had become popular in Hubei Province. Looking back now with that in mind, the tune feels achingly familiar. It reminded me of the lullaby my mother used to sing when I was young. I lost my parents to a flood, so I understand what it means to long for one's family."
I picked up the maekok and set it in front of Ruju, then continued.
"I heard this maekok was given as a blessing for a child's long and healthy life. For someone to have treasured a broken one enough to repair it with gold and keep it so carefully, there must be a deeply personal story behind it."
Ruju, who had been looking at the maekok, shifted only her eyes and fixed me with them. Her glacial gaze sharpened as if it might pierce straight through me.
I had only been half certain, but I had hit the mark.
My throat was dry, so I lifted my teacup. The sound of me drinking seemed to echo loudly in the room, which had already fallen into a suffocating silence.
While I was sketching possible escape routes in my mind against that hair-trigger tension, Ruju let out a long sigh.
"...At that point, I think I understand. I will find the owner and return it. Is there something you want?"
"The murderer who killed Bang Jo-in the escort guard has not yet been caught."
"Yes."
"As you know, I was the first to run there after hearing the scream and examine the body. I mentioned it because I was afraid my position might become awkward if something went wrong."
"I don't think there's anything I can do to help with that."
When I frowned slightly, Ruju smiled faintly.
"Simhyangru has trusted Yongcheon Escort Agency then and now. Since Chief Escort Leader has identified the black-clad masked man as the killer, we will believe it. We will continue to do so."
"You know Inspector Cho is here, don't you?"
"Don't worry. Nothing will happen to Escort Jeong, no, to Master Jeong. I will meet with the county magistrate tomorrow evening and arrange for this matter to be settled at this point. The matter will only become more troublesome if it drags on, and that would not benefit this house either. Leave that aside and tell me what else you want."
The county magistrate was the head of the county. He was not the sort of official anyone could simply ask to see and then meet without trouble.
And yet Ruju had promised it as casually as if she were taking something from her own pocket.
It didn't sound like a lie. She seemed to have some sort of connection. Come to think of it, the county magistrate had also attended the banquet celebrating the imperial examination.
"Nothing else."
"It would be improper to receive a favor and not repay it."
Ruju opened a small wooden box and took out a red silk pouch.
"Please open it."
I loosened the pouch and found a bundle of paper inside.
Bank drafts.
Issued by the Golden Vault, the exchange house everyone preferred because they could be converted to silver anywhere in the Central Plains.
Ten notes, each worth ten taels of silver.
"This is too much."
Ruju shook her head.
"It isn't too much. This maekok is a treasure unique in all the world. Even if you piled silver up like a mountain, it would still be lighter than this. I would like to give you several hundred taels, but it would be rude to show gratitude with silver alone, so I will give you this instead."
Ruju reached into her robes and drew out a small, round object with a dark sheen.
When I took it, I found it was light and hard, probably made of agarwood, and carried a faint fragrance.
The character was engraved on the front.
I flipped it over without thinking, and when I saw the back, the hair on my body stood on end.
And the smaller inscription beneath it, , made perfect sense too.
"...This is Haomu Sect?"
Seeing my face go rigid in shock, Ruju smiled.
Haomu Sect is an organization formed by people living rough lives at the bottom of society: courtesans, innkeepers, grooms, boatmen, gamblers, thieves, pickpockets, and the like.
No one knows who founded it, or how large and powerful it really is.
Only those with the right connections know the locations of its main branch and sub-branches, and the methods for making contact.
The reason an operative from one of those underground organizations would reveal their identity to me was one of two things.
Either I was about to die, or they thought I was one of their own.
Judging by the mood, thankfully it seemed to be the latter.
"Let me introduce myself again. I am Hong-hui, branch leader of the Seochon branch of Haomu Sect."
I was stunned to the point of numbness.
I had already suspected the relationship between Ruju and Yi Yun-jae to some extent, but I never imagined I would hear something like this here.
I had thought Seochon was split between Black Night Gang and Yongcheon Escort Agency, with the two keeping the balance of power between them, but to think Haomu Sect was wedged in between them...
Had I fled from a wolf only to leap into a tiger's den?
A chill ran through me as if I had been surrounded on all sides by invisible blades. I tightened my grip on the black token, and only then did I realize what it was.
"Is this what they call a token of gratitude?"
"It's called that as well. You know of it?"
"I've heard of it. How do you use it?"
"Our branch network spans the entire Central Plains. Wherever you go, if you discreetly show it to an innkeeper or a servant at an inn, there will be someone who recognizes it. You may obtain the information you seek, or be given a hiding place or an escape route."
By Ruju's explanation, it was more useful to a martial artist who was often either chasing someone or being chased than even a hundred taels of silver.
"How can you hand me something like this so carelessly, when you don't even know how I'll use it?"
"The black token is not omnipotent. It can be used only once, and an unreasonable request may be refused."
"Even that one use could cause serious damage if handled badly."
Perhaps my extreme caution, with not a hint of greed, was impressive, because Ruju looked at me intently with fresh interest.
"In the pleasures quarter, I have risen and fallen, bloomed and withered, and all that has increased are wrinkles and the ability to read people. If I have misjudged you, Escort Jeong, that too is my burden to bear, so please don't concern yourself with it."
Silence settled for a moment.
Ruju watched me carefully as I turned the black token over in my hand, then lifted the jade teapot and refilled my cup.
"Would you like to hear something uninteresting?"
Without waiting for my answer, Ruju went on.
"I was never married, but I had a son."
I hurriedly lowered my cup and cut in.
"I'm not sure this is my place to hear."
"You already came here with some confidence in the matter, didn't you? It's fine to hear it. Finding this for me alone is enough to make you qualified."
As though she had seen straight through my thoughts, Ruju began her story, idly rolling the maekok between her fingers.
"I was sold into debt at fifteen and began life as a courtesan. The life of a courtesan must be a flower that speaks. No matter how miserable or painful it is, you must dress beautifully and smile at all times..."
That went without saying.
The guests came to drink and be entertained by music and dance in a lively atmosphere, not to comfort the courtesans.
Every so often there were men who tried to win a courtesan's favor by listening closely, but in most cases it ended with a furtive hand sliding into a sleeve.
"Then I met that man. He was the first person to notice the tears hidden behind my smile and wipe them away."
Ruju's eyes grew distant.
A young scholar who had repeatedly failed his exams and come to the pleasure house in despair, and a timid young courtesan.
As if they had fallen for each other at first sight, they softened each other's rough edges, and the bond between them deepened in an instant.
"...And then I gave birth to his child. It was a son."
It seemed the scholar's affection for Ruju had been genuine. He paid the pleasure house a great sum to take Ruju out and set up a separate household for them in a quiet place.
A soft smile bloomed across Ruju's face as she recalled that time.
Just remembering it seemed enough to make her chest swell with happiness. It must have been the happiest period of her life.
"When the child was five, the legal wife came looking for us. I thought she might try to harm us, but... in the way she looked at my son, there was such piercing envy and such aching longing."
The legal wife was barren and could not bear children.
All the scholar's concubines had borne daughters, so there was no son to carry on the family line. Even when relatives tried to adopt an heir because the bloodline was so thin, it didn't work out.
Of all the scholar's children, the only son was Yi Yun-jae, the one Ruju had given birth to.
"She said she would take my son and raise him as her own. At the time, he turned away, saying there was nothing to be done because he was already deeply indebted to his wife's family. As the feelings that had burned so fiercely cooled, it seemed he no longer had the nerve to stand up to them. He was a delicate, good man, but a terribly weak one. Perhaps that was what drew me to him even more. And so they took away my only child."
Ruju frowned and let out a shallow breath.
She had no power to take her son back.
Even after a chance opened her way into Haomu Sect and she became a courtesan again, clawing her way upward with all her strength until she had power, she still could not go after her son.
"Life really is a cruel joke, isn't it? Only then did the harsh words the legal wife had spat at me become knives that lodged in my heart."
Not all the guests who came to the pleasure house were debauched wastrels lost in wine and women.
Some had extraordinary talent, but their mothers' low status meant they could not realize their ambitions, and they drowned their resentment in drink.
"At some point, the faces of those men began to overlap with my son's face. I was terrified that if I reached out, his future would become just like theirs."
Ruju's son had been a born scholar who had memorized the Thousand Character Classic at five, just before they were torn apart.
He was said to have the full support and expectations of the clan behind him as a prodigy who could restore the family's fortunes.
"That made it all the harder to go to him. I couldn't bear to see my son's face if his aspirations were cut short before they even had a chance to blossom, all because of a worthless mother like me."
She soothed her longing by hearing news of him through Haomu Sect's Hubei branch, but not long ago, she could bear it no longer.
Her son had finally passed the prefectural exam.
"I put in a request through the branch leader and held a banquet at our pleasure house to celebrate. After twenty years apart, my son had grown into a truly remarkable man."
I thought back to Yi Yun-jae when I had seen him step down from the carriage. His face had been bright and proud, as though he possessed the whole world.
And the next day, it had been full of anguish and worry, as though he had lost all of it.
Yi Yun-jae had not recognized his birth mother, from whom he had been separated as a child. He had believed she died of illness.
"Perhaps that would have been better for my son. I kept repeating that to myself, trying to accept it, but the grief surging up inside me was impossible to contain. While I was withdrawing to the side chamber to calm myself, I found myself humming that lullaby without realizing it. I never thought he would come after hearing it. Never thought he would still remember the lullaby, or still treasure this maekok all these years later..."
Having finished the long confession, Ruju lifted her cup with a face washed clean of the clouds in her heart.
It seemed she had wanted, at least once, to pour everything out to someone without restraint.
Of course, she had left out the important part.
The murderer who killed Bang Jo-in. The truth of that day.
By now, I could be fairly certain.
Yi Yun-jae had stepped out for air during the banquet, then been drawn as if under a spell by the lullaby into a reunion with his birth mother. He could not have been simply happy.
He must have been shocked to learn that the mother he had thought dead was alive, confused by the revelation that she was a courtesan, and furious at the father and legal wife who had lied to him all these years since his separation from her in childhood.
He probably hadn't slept a wink all night.
It must have been a wretched night of torment, the kind that leaves a face haggard in a single evening.
When Yi Yun-jae returned to Simhyangru the next day, he did not head straight for the side chamber.
He drank in the main hall, then came outside and looked at the moon while singing the lullaby his mother had once sung to him as a child.
He must have been touching the maekok, just as he always did whenever he thought of his mother.
Perhaps he had hesitated because the stranger who was now his birth mother looked so different from the mother he remembered.
Just as my hometown was no longer the hometown I had known, Ruju too must have differed in many ways from the mother he had pined for all these years.
Once he steadied himself and went to the side chamber, intending to continue the conversation from the day before, Bang Jo-in happened to climb over the wall at that very moment.
Even after hearing what he should not have heard, Bang Jo-in lived on after being paid off.
And Yi Yun-jae had one more worry.
If Bang Jo-in started running his mouth about his birth mother, the career he had only just begun could end before it had even started.
Did Yi Yun-jae know that his birth mother was the branch leader of Haomu Sect? Probably not. Like most people who weren't martial artists, he probably had never even heard of Haomu Sect.
If he had known, he would have watched more patiently.
When Bang Jo-in came back to extort him again, Yi Yun-jae wouldn't have followed after him with a blade in hand and taken matters into his own hands.
Even though there was enough here to guess the culprit, Ruju remained serene.
Was it confidence that she could easily handle someone like me, a martial artist with no background, no connections, and no family?
Was that why she had chosen not to kill Bang Jo-in and simply paid him off and sent him away instead?
For the branch leader of Haomu Sect, that made sense.
There are always fools who look down on Haomu Sect, thinking it's nothing more than a gathering place for refuse from the bottom of society.
I've never seen one of those clueless amateurs survive long before being found in an alley as a grotesque corpse.
A martial artist who angers the Wudang Sect can at least breathe easy once they leave Hubei.
And someone who offends Shaolin has a much lower chance of being dragged to Repentance Cave if they can flee Henan, Shaolin's sphere of influence.
The same was true of the Five Great Clans, the scum-infested evil sects, and the demons of the Tianshan Mountains.
They were only kings in their own territories; once they left those regions, they could no longer fully exert their strength.
Haomu Sect was different. Its disciples were scattered all over the Central Plains.
At first glance, it seemed similar to the Beggars' Sect, but beggars are easy to identify as beggars at a glance. They even announce themselves as Beggars' Sect members with the knots tied at their waists, so if you want to avoid them, you can.
Haomu Sect's people don't have that.
From the street, you could never tell by looking who among the peddlers, pickpockets, touts, and hawkers you passed was a member of Haomu Sect and who wasn't.
So if you made an enemy of Haomu Sect, you couldn't feel safe anywhere.
Poison could be slipped into your food at an inn, or you could be stabbed in the back room of a gambling hall. A boatman crossing a river could capsize your boat where the water ran deepest.
The rumors of martial artists who met violent deaths after crossing Haomu Sect were as chilling as the ghost stories about those slaughtered horribly after tangling with the Tang Family.
There were even people who said Haomu Sect didn't count as a true martial sect at all because it only dealt in information and had no famous masters.
That wasn't because Haomu Sect lacked real experts, but because there was no reason to parade them.
In the martial world, you hear enough to go deaf from the advice that you should always hide thirty percent of your strength.
They weren't running a business under a signboard somewhere, so there was no reason to expose their full power.
Once I left here, I would definitely be watched too.
Whether I ended up as an unwelcome corpse like Bang Jo-in or lived a carefree life with a hundred taels of silver depended entirely on my own mouth.
If I let even Ruju's secret leak out while drunk, I'd be found as a corpse in an alley that very same day.
And I'd be branded as the assassin who raided Black Night Gang and the traitor who murdered a fellow escort guard.
As for the price of misjudging a man: expose his shame, then bury it beneath the corpses of everyone who heard it and the larger incident and rumor that follow. That would be enough.
Seochon was far from Hubei Province. For someone like the branch leader of Haomu Sect, who dealt in information, burying one rumor beneath another would be child’s play.
Still, there would be some risk and a great deal of trouble. Why had she gone so far as to reveal her secret to me anyway?
Was it gratitude for finding the maekok that held treasured memories?
Ruju casually enjoyed her tea after dropping what was practically a burden into my lap.
Though she seemed outwardly calm, there was a faint tension in the way she remained on edge. I could read an odd expectation there.
The people who had tested me in this way until now had usually wanted the same thing. Ruju was testing me too.
"I suppose I looked useful?"
Ruju set down her teacup and looked at me steadily. Her face wore a deeper look of satisfaction than before, as though she were pleased with what she had found.