Witness
A young man with a gloomy face rose from his seat along with Geuk-hwan.
There were no weapons visible at his waist, on his back, or anywhere on the table or chairs.
A fist-fighter, maybe? No. His shoulders slanted slightly to one side and hunched forward; his stance was awkward, as though he had no sense of balance at all. This was the body of a man who had never once tried a kick.
His eyes were timid too. His energy was thin.
There was none of the sharp, dangerous feel that martial artists carried. He was just an ordinary working man, the sort you saw all over the marketplace.
I didn’t know his name, but his face looked familiar.
He was the man I’d seen on the mountain the first day I came back to my hometown, hoeing the soil while surrounded by Black Path thugs.
Back then I’d simply turned away and pretended not to see him.
He looked like someone I’d seen before, but he wasn’t from my hometown, and I hadn’t felt any urge to greet him. I had no reason to risk my life for him.
I ran into him again by chance when I went into the back alleys to kill Jang Ho-dal, the man who had beaten Gu-sam.
That man had hauled a cart through pouring rain and carried wine jars into the dice den.
Just then Jang Ho-dal came out, and I lost the chance to speak to him.
After that, I never saw him again.
"Who is this man?"
"Let’s sit and talk."
I unsheathed my dao, set it upright beside the table, and took a seat. Geuk-hwan sat too, and the man, stealing glances at my blade, cautiously lowered himself onto a chair.
Geuk-hwan filled his teacup and explained who he was.
"He works at the brewery. Among the people we interviewed while following up on the requested inquiry, he was the only one who recognized the face in the portrait."
"What’s your name?"
When the man hesitated and looked at him, Geuk-hwan gave a small, permissive wave.
"Tell us everything you were saying just now. This gentleman is the client."
The man nodded and opened his mouth.
"My name is Jin Seok-man."
"Are you from Seochon? I lived there when I was young, and for some reason I feel like I may have seen you a few times going in and out."
"No, sir. I’m from Yulgwang-ri."
"Yulgwang-ri?"
I frowned before I could stop myself, and it must have looked pretty intimidating. Jin Seok-man swallowed hard and hurried on.
"It’s two days on foot northeast from here. The closest village to Seochon. Whenever someone in Seochon fell ill, they’d all go to the doctor in Yulgwang-ri."
"Ah... that village?"
I remembered it. I’d never been there myself, but when someone got sick, the only person the people of Seochon could trust was the old doctor there.
"What was the doctor’s name again...?"
As if I were testing him, Jin Seok-man answered without hesitation.
"Old Master Hwang. The villagers called him the One-and-a-Half-Pouch Doctor rather than by his real name. He always used exactly one and a half pouches of herbs for every prescription."
I’d thought his surname was Han and his given name was Cheopban, but it was a nickname.
Still, it matched my memory.
"Where is the portrait?"
Geuk-hwan pulled a rolled sheet of paper from a wooden box and unwrapped it. I pointed at the faces of Soso’s family that Rouzhu had drawn and asked, "Do you really know these people?"
Jin Seok-man nodded.
"I had an older brother in Seochon, so I went there to play a few times when I was little. I saw them then. We weren’t close, but I know their faces. Weren’t they the people who lived in the tiled house at the southern foot of the mountain? The ones kind enough to take in a neighbor’s orphan after a flood took the child’s parents..."
The hair on my body stood on end, and my chest swelled at once.
This man was real. He wasn’t from my hometown, but he had definitely been to Seochon when he was young.
No one else could possibly know that I had lost my parents and ended up under Soso’s family’s care.
"Where are they now? If I can find them, I’ll pay you handsomely."
Jin Seok-man looked sheepish, clicking his tongue in disappointment.
"I don’t know where they are. I don’t know where they went, either. But I do know who took them."
"Took them?"
A chill swept through one side of my chest.
"Who? Where to?"
Jin Seok-man seemed to have a dry throat; he drank tea several times before continuing.
"It was about eight years ago. A terrible famine struck, and the villages were in complete chaos."
"Seochon too?"
"No. The next year was the problem for Seochon."
"Another famine?"
"They were ruined before they even got the chance to farm. Outsiders came swarming in and seized the reservoir up in the mountains, then shut off the water."
"Who would do something like that..."
Not a single tenant farmer in Seochon was employed by a landlord. However shabby their holdings were, they all farmed their own land.
"Martial artists with swords at their waists. They said they had bought the right to manage the reservoir from the government."
I thought I understood what had happened.
"Were there martial artists who approached them, saying they’d solve the reservoir problem?"
Controlling the water and crippling the crops was a classic way for gangsters to squeeze money out of farmers.
No matter how angry or desperate you were, you couldn’t stand up to martial artists with blades at their hips. And if they had already greased the right palms, appealing to the officials would do no good.
So, when the villagers were at their wit’s end, a self-proclaimed hero would show up and demand payment for settling the matter in their place.
After some sham fight dressed up to look convincing, everyone took their share and slipped away with a nice sum in hand.
That sort of thing happened all over the Central Plains, in rural districts far from the magistrate’s reach.
But Seochon hadn’t gone that way.
"There were a few who stepped forward to act as fixers. I heard they all lost their heads. Maybe they did it to make an example, but they killed every single one of them..."
That autumn, after enduring as long as they could, the villagers of Seochon were forced to sell their land for a pittance and abandon their hometown.
I couldn’t understand it. Why go to such lengths?
Seochon was barren land. It wasn’t even a transportation hub. What were they planning to do with such property...
Jin Seok-man answered in a calm voice and caught me off guard.
"They sold it, I suppose. All the buildings in Seochon stand on that land, don’t they?"
Yongcheon Escort Agency had left Sichuan in search of a new home. Then merchants and laborers followed them into Seochon...
If they had sold that land to those people, they must have made an enormous profit.
"Did the villagers leave their hometown willingly?"
There was no way they had.
Farmers’ attachment to land was beyond imagination. Martial artists’ obsession with weapons was almost laughable by comparison.
For farmers, land was as precious as their children, no, more precious than their children.
The reason farmers bowed and rarely resisted, even when the government extorted them and bandits preyed on them, was simple: they could not abandon the land and run.
Once they lost their fields, even the most mild-mannered farmer would see red and raise a sickle. Some would even march on the county offices and set them on fire.
Leaving because famine had stripped them of hope and reduced them to bloody tears was one thing.
Being unjustly robbed of their land like this was something else entirely. Rather than be driven off in humiliation, they would sooner die on their own fields and become field ghosts. That was the kind of people farmers were.
"They held out and held out, and then they all boarded carts."
"Carts?"
"A group of people came with carts and took all the villagers away."
At the thought of what might have happened to the villagers at the far end of those carts, a shiver ran down my spine.
"Don’t tell me the ones who blocked the reservoir and stole the land did it?"
"No. They were martial artists dressed in black with black hats and swords at their waists. They persuaded the villagers by saying they had somewhere to relocate to, then put them onto the carts."
"...Who were they?"
"I don’t know. Back then, I wouldn’t have dared ask."
"You saw all this yourself?"
Jin Seok-man answered carefully, without hesitation.
"Most of it I heard from the adults, but I saw the villagers leave with my own eyes. My older brother left Seochon then too, and I saw him off at the end."
"Are you sure these people left with them then too?"
"Yes. I still remember them vividly, sitting in the back of the cart and wiping away tears as their hometown grew smaller behind them."
"Is that all?"
Jin Seok-man thought about it for a while before speaking again.
"The black hat of the man leading the swordsmen slipped off once. I caught a glimpse of his face then."
"Do you still remember it?"
"I do."
"You said it was seven years ago."
"A person’s face, whether handsome or ugly, is hard to forget if it has strong character."
"Was it that hideous?"
"Quite the opposite. He was a strikingly handsome man, the sort you rarely see in the countryside. I’ve never seen a man as fine as he was."
I looked steadily at Jin Seok-man, then turned my gaze to Geuk-hwan.
"Can you draw a portrait?"
"Yes."
The painter who had been summoned was far better with a brush than Rouzhu was.
He kept showing the sketch to Jin Seok-man, drawing and erasing the eyes, nose, and mouth on a small mirror until at last he combined them all on a sheet of xuan paper.
Neat features. Thick brows with a faint twitch to them. Bright, alert eyes.
As Jin Seok-man had said, he was an exceptionally handsome man, to the point that he could easily pass for a talented young prodigy of the orthodox schools.
When Geuk-hwan saw the drawing, he asked Jin Seok-man, "Is this the face?"
"Yes. He looked exactly like that."
"No mistake?"
"None at all. This man led his subordinates and took the Seochon villagers away."
Jin Seok-man was certain of it, but Geuk-hwan still didn’t seem to trust him easily.
"Do you know this face?"
Geuk-hwan didn’t answer at once. Instead, he took me with him and moved to another room. Even after we crossed the corridor and entered the new room, he remained silent for a long while.
"Who is it?"
I had been uneasy about why he was holding back his words like that, but once I heard the answer, it made sense.
"Jeok Chu-yeong."
"...The Black Night Gang chief?"
Geuk-hwan slowly nodded.
"He looks the same as when I last saw him two years ago. The portrait is a little younger, and the edges are a bit sharper, but the features are identical."
My heart dropped.
So the Black Night Gang’s entry into Seochon hadn’t been a coincidence...
They had been involved far earlier. But why?
"How far do the Haomu Sect and the Black Night Gang communicate?"
"As much as necessary."
"Can you ask whether he really took the Seochon villagers away?"
"Jeok Chu-yeong has been in seclusion for the past two years. I’m told he sees no one except his closest aides. Even if we did meet him..."
Geuk-hwan looked at me steadily.
"Would you believe whatever answer he gave? He’s a gangster."
Would a notorious thug have taken landless farmers who had lost their homes to paradise? Nine times out of ten, he would have sold them off.
My teeth ground together under the pressure of the rage surging up in me. My chest felt as though it were being torn open, and my breathing heated into a rough panting.
Thick killing intent gathered from my clenched fists, which hurt from how tightly I was gripping them.
My head felt as if it would split from the urge to storm the Black Night Gang headquarters, shout for Jeok Chu-yeong to come out, and drag the truth from him then and there.
I couldn’t believe it.
This was wrong. It couldn’t have ended like that. It couldn’t have...
In the midst of that uncontrollable turmoil, my heart went cold all at once, as if a blade had just touched my back. Only then did I understand.
None of this was proven yet. It was only a one-sided claim.
Just because Jin Seok-man knew something about the people of Seochon didn’t mean everything else he said was also true.
It’s easy to sneer at fools caught by plots like borrowing another man’s knife or the old goad-and-provoke scheme, laughing at them for being manipulated by someone else’s hand.
But once you’re the one in the middle of it, everyone falls for the same trick.
People say love makes fools of us.
Burning resentment and emotions too fierce to contain can make fools of us too.
How much could I trust Jin Seok-man?
If he had actually seen Jeok Chu-yeong and was shaping his words for some purpose...
Even if that wasn’t the case, rushing straight to the Black Night Gang without thinking was madness.
First I had to separate lie from truth, intent from fact, in everything Jin Seok-man had said. Whether there was something he was hiding, or something he had simply misunderstood.
It would be soon enough to act after that. The Black Night Gang, which controlled the back alleys of Seochon, wasn’t going anywhere.
I drew a long breath, forced down the boiling emotions, and slowly unclenched my fists.
"All right. For now... let’s watch and wait."
*
After leaving Simhyangru, Jin Seok-man headed straight for the bustling district.
He didn’t return to the brewery where he worked or to his home. Instead, he went into a fairly large inn.
He looked around the interior, then sat down facing the man who had arrived before him and been waiting there.
He had been searching for an empty seat, but the moment that man’s face came into view, he ended the tailing there.
As I approached, Won Seo-gang, who had been listening to Jin Seok-man’s story, blinked and tilted his head.
"Well now, long time no see. I heard you’d been busy training your martial arts these days."
"No matter how busy I am, I still have work to do."
"And how did you know I was here?"
"I didn’t. I was following this fellow. Never thought he’d come to you, Brother Won. Seochon really is small. Do you know each other?"
Only then did Jin Seok-man turn his head and look back, his eyes going wide.
Won Seo-gang narrowed his eyes and scratched his chin.
"We were introduced through someone else. I came because I heard he had information about the Black Night Gang and wanted to listen."
"Is that so? Just a moment ago he was telling me that his hometown people had been taken by someone, and that it was connected to the Black Night Gang."
"Oh? Then he’s a more interesting fellow than I expected."
Won Seo-gang’s eyes glinted faintly as he looked at Jin Seok-man.
What I saw there was not suspicion, but rather a kind of relief that things had happened to line up.
It seemed Won Seo-gang had no reliable way to verify whether the information Jin Seok-man had brought was trustworthy either.
"Let’s move somewhere else. Somewhere quiet."
If it could be settled by words, that would be best. If not, it looked like I might have to become a gangster for tonight.
Perhaps Won Seo-gang had the same thought, because he rose while drumming the table with his fingers.
"That would be best."
He turned and called to the waiter.
"Any private rooms left on the second floor? A quiet one in the corner."
"Of course. I’ll show you the way."
We followed the waiter up the stairs. Won Seo-gang came after us with Jin Seok-man, who looked completely stiff with fear.
"Come along."
Two fierce martial artists were dragging him somewhere, and Jin Seok-man trembled as if he were about to break apart.
The customers around us only glanced over; none of them stepped forward. They had too much food and drink left in front of them to be sticking their necks out over someone else’s business and getting cut for it.
"Uh, where are we going?"
With the ease of an old childhood friend, Won Seo-gang draped one arm over Jin Seok-man’s shoulder and grinned.
"Where else? The room of truth."