An Invitation Declined
Eun Seollyeong lifted a bowl and poured Erguotou into it in a generous, gurgling stream.
The fierce reek of the strong liquor carried all the way across the table to me.
“As more graduates of Cheonsubaekryeonsa have entered the jianghu, the social prestige of each hall has risen. What one actually learned has come to matter less than which hall one graduated from—almost like a rank of promotion in itself.”
She began her meal in quiet composure. She swiftly gathered the thin noodles and brought them to her mouth; after five strokes of her chopsticks she lifted the bowl beside her and drained the liquor.
“Ha-mu-gwan is one thing, but from the halls above it the weight is something the orthodox world can never ignore. They are no fools. Watching you climb so fiercely, they must have sensed something.”
Eun Seollyeong set the empty noodle bowl aside and drew the next one forward. She laid slices of duck meat into the third bowl of stir-fried noodles.
“No matter how freely they have twisted things until now with money and power, even that has its limits. Of course, I too have taken note of it—and that is why I am aiding you through this trial.”
She pushed the third empty bowl aside and pulled the next one close.
“…The talk is all well and good, but what exactly am I looking at right now?”
“Food loses its flavor once it cools. You may eat this.”
She picked up three bunches of bright green bok choy and set them in front of me.
I narrowed my eyes at her.
“A Guardian is a picky eater? What are you, a child?”
“I simply do not eat that. And picky? If it is finely chopped, I will eat it.”
“…Fine.”
I hurriedly took up my chopsticks and began to eat.
Her eating habits and mine shared one common trait and one clear difference.
The difference was that she ate quietly and with perfect composure, while I ate with noisy abandon.
The common point was that, unless we were camping on the road, both of us ate truly enormous amounts whenever the chance presented itself.
Empty dishes began to pile between us like a mountain.
“Hmm.”
A faint flush colored Eun Seollyeong’s cheeks.
She opened a second bottle of Erguotou and poured it into her bowl.
Her silver hair swayed. Looking faintly pleased, she smiled a little and resumed eating.
“What kind of gluttons are these…?”
The waiter, tray still in hand, edged backward in alarm.
The other patrons at the inn began murmuring among themselves.
“Good heavens. Is that a person or a pig? Ah—I mean only the man in the back. The young lady in front is a fairy. She can eat as much as she likes.”
“The young lady up front is truly beautiful, and she eats so heartily too!”
One man even flushed red, pointed his chopsticks at me, and clicked his tongue.
“That—that—that man-child over there! Instead of yielding even a single bite to a fairy like her, he’s stuffing his cheeks fit to burst for fear of losing a scrap…!”
“What did you just say?!”
“Ah, I meant I’d yield some to you as well. Open wide, my fairy wife.”
…What a filthy world, I thought once again.
She truly ate with elegance.
Unlike me—hunched over the noodle bowl with my mouth buried in it, chopsticks thrashing like a storm—she tucked her silver hair behind one ear, lifted one neat bite at a time, and chewed with quiet grace.
The terrifying mountain of empty bowls only made the sight more mysterious.
Clink.
As she lowered her head to take another mouthful of noodles, my gaze caught on the earring swaying at her ear.
Its tip was faintly stained black, yet most of it was pure silver.
“Why are you staring blankly? Is the food not to your taste?”
She asked around a mouthful that puffed her cheeks.
Words stuck in my throat. I had no idea what to say.
Watching me, she tilted her head and reached sideways. She lifted the third bottle of Erguotou and poured it into her bowl.
Drip…
The last drop fell from the bottle, announcing it was empty.
A flicker of disappointment crossed Eun Seollyeong’s silver eyes.
Ah. Right. The liquor!
Still gripping my chopsticks, I urgently started to call the waiter for more wine.
That was when it happened.
Thud.
A liquor bottle wrapped in unmistakably luxurious red cloth was set upon the table.
“Hm…?”
Eun Seollyeong looked at the bottle in puzzlement, then spoke in a startled voice.
“Is this not Xifengjiu of Shaanxi? How did something so precious end up here…?”
“Ah, as expected, you recognize it. This is—”
A man who appeared to be a servant smiled brightly, clasped his hands, and spoke with modest courtesy.
“Our young master over there has specially presented it as a gift to the young lady.”
At one side of the inn, a refined, tall man wrapped in a blue dragon-patterned robe smiled with his eyes and gave a little wave.
“….”
Eun Seollyeong regarded the bottle with a face already faintly flushed from drink. She looked at the smiling servant. Then she looked past his shoulder at the man who grinned and offered a casual greeting.
Ssshk.
Eun Seollyeong stretched out her hand toward the bottle and said,
“This lady does not partake of gifts from unfamiliar men.”
Her pale fingers shoved the red bottle cleanly aside.
The servant’s face stiffened.
The man’s expression turned the color of dirt and crumpled at the same time.
Eun Seollyeong’s clear silver eyes turned to me.
“May I have one more bottle?”
“What an interesting young lady.”
The man in the blue dragon robe pushed back his chair, rose, and approached. At his gesture the servant flinched, bowed deeply, and withdrew.
“If I have offended you in any way, I apologize. Are you perhaps a traveler from elsewhere? In all of Shaanxi Province I have never once seen a woman like you.”
His eyes flicked swiftly up and down Eun Seollyeong’s form.
“Not once.”
“….”
Eun Seollyeong accepted the new bottle I handed her and poured into her cup.
The man could not hide his admiration.
“A heroine indeed. Outwardly as refined as a painting of cherry blossoms, yet you enjoy strong drink. If it is not too much trouble, would you care to share a meal with me—”
“I am already dining.”
Eun Seollyeong regarded the man with emotionless eyes.
“I have neither reason nor desire to sit at leisure and converse over a meal with a man whose name and station I know nothing of. Ah—do not touch that pork leg. Can you not see the marks where I have already speared it with my chopsticks?”
I felt a little awkward simply handing over the leg I had been holding, but her mood did not look particularly good, so I passed it over without protest.
In her own way, Eun Seollyeong was exercising patience.
From what I had observed, she placed enormous importance on a martial artist’s pride.
This man had approached in the classic manner of a man pestering a woman—something that ran directly counter to that pride—and to her it was little short of a provocation.
She had lived a long time. She was neither reckless nor hasty; she remained calm.
This was her doing her utmost to avoid creating trouble while still turning him away.
The problem was that the man interpreted it differently.
“Ah, so the young lady was curious about who I am. You should have said so sooner. No wonder your nose was so high in the air—you simply had no idea who I was. Well, of course.”
The man suddenly turned his gaze on me, who was still holding a bowl of fried rice.
“That is why you keep company with a man like this. Is he a bodyguard? Or a servant?”
“…!”
Eun Seollyeong’s head snapped up like lightning and she looked at me.
[….]
I felt Mumyeong holding his breath and focusing intently—exactly the posture of someone ready to restrain me at a moment’s notice.
“Hm? What’s with this atmosphere?”
Only the man in the blue dragon robe failed to grasp the subtle tension that had settled over the table; he tilted his head in confusion.
Crunch.
I wiped the seasoning from my lips and relaxed my jaw.
Looking straight at the man, I said,
“A companion.”
My eyes were black. Confirming my calm expression, Eun Seollyeong released a faint breath and resumed her meal.
[…Hmph. As expected, the importance of a master.]
Mumyeong left that single remark and sank once more into the abyss.
The man laughed as though he could not believe it.
“Ah, so he is a companion? In my understanding the word ‘companion’ is used only among those of equal standing. My apologies. The young lady’s beauty is so otherworldly that I could not even think of you as her companion.”
I stared at him.
The servant at his side glared and barked,
“How dare you! Do you even know who our young master is, you outsider—!”
“I,”
the man in the blue dragon robe said,
“have you heard the saying ‘Above there is Heaven; below there are Suzhou and Hangzhou’? Though we cannot quite match Suzhou and Hangzhou, when it comes to pleasure in the Shaanxi region, one cannot leave out our Unwol Jiju.”
He offered a polite martial salute and smiled brightly at Eun Seollyeong.
“I am So Cheon-ak, general manager of Unwol Jiju. May I ask the young lady’s esteemed name?”
His expression said, Even knowing this, will you still treat me coldly?
“My name?”
“Indeed. If it is not too much to ask, I would like to invite the young lady to Unwol Jiju as an honored guest. Our street of pleasures is open to all.”
In truth, the people in the inn had already recognized who the man in the blue dragon robe was long before he spoke his name. The men dropped their gazes to the floor for fear of even brief eye contact. The women stiffened and left their seats.
Unwol Jiju…
Even I had heard of that famous district of pleasure. It controlled nearly the entire underground economy of Shaanxi Province, and every black-path faction fought bloody battles there daily over interests.
So Cheon-ak smiled and folded back the edge of his collar to show the inside.
“The young lady may or may not know this, but this is called Dragon Scale Armor—something even a lump of gold cannot buy. The man across from you could work himself to death his entire life and never afford it. Of course,”
he lifted his collar further,
“it is genuine.”
Inside the opened collar gleamed golden armor that looked like dragon scales.
“And that is not all. If you will simply share a single meal with me, I will shower you with ornaments that would make your beauty shine even more brilliantly—things you would never encounter in a lifetime…”
Pouring liquor into her cup, Eun Seollyeong spoke with perfect calm.
“So you are still making filthy money there selling human trafficking, prostitutes, bootleg liquor, and drugs.”
“….”
Silence fell over the inn for a moment.
It was common knowledge, yet it was also Unwol Jiju’s open sore.
The man’s face continued to smile, but it was rapidly turning ice-cold.
So Cheon-ak’s smiling mouth twitched as he spoke.
“Haha, young lady. You seem to have heard some baseless rumor and misunderstood. We pay our taxes properly, and though it is a street of pleasures, we operate legally around the entertainment houses…”
“Leave.”
Eun Seollyeong fixed So Cheon-ak with a frigid gaze.
“Had this lady not one she must protect, you would have died long ago.”
So Cheon-ak’s face hardened. The smile was gone.
He ground his teeth and snarled.
“This outsider bitch—I tried to treat her with courtesy to the end because her face was half-decent—”
“That’s enough.”
So Cheon-ak turned his head.
I set down the chopsticks I had been using to eat. I placed the forked iron skewer that had been stuck in the pig’s head on the table beside me and said,
“Keep that up and you’ll die.”