The Fairies of Nakseongguan (1)
Nakseongguan.
That was the name of the place where I had been reborn.
A place where even the stars themselves stumble and fall.
Could there be a name more fitting for a pleasure house than that?
Nakseongguan rose five stories high. Of those, ordinary men could come and go freely only as far as the second floor. The third floor admitted commoners who had struck it rich at the gambling tables by chance, or who had come to burn through years of backbreaking wages in a single night. From the fourth floor upward, no one without noble blood or the wealth of a great merchant house was so much as glanced at.
And the fifth floor? Who could enter there?
In truth, almost no one.
That was where the Hui lived.
In a house where dozens of women thronged every day seeking employment, only those who could scarcely be called human — women so exquisite you would believe they had descended from heaven itself — were permitted to ascend to the fifth floor.
Wolbaek.
Gyeonghwa.
Cheonsua.
Mokhwa.
Geumryang.
Stars that had once dwelt in paradise, cast down to earth for reasons beyond comprehension: the Five Hui.
And only a man of such means that he could purchase the treasures of heaven itself was permitted to reach them.
Reach them — in theory. In the years since my rebirth, I could still count every man who had ever climbed to the fifth floor. On my fingers, no less.
Paying enough money was a given; it was merely the first condition. Their learning, their character, even their bearing — all of it was weighed.
They screen their guests the way a clan screens candidates for a son-in-law.
On the fourth floor, money alone could open the doors to a host of high-ranking courtesans. The fifth floor was different.
Take, for example, a certain regular who had visited the fourth floor more than a hundred times. He always paid in full — and always smashed every wine bottle, every doorframe, and every courtesan in his path. A legendary brute of a man. And now, a man with terrifying amounts of money.
Not a single high-ranking courtesan wanted to serve at his side. Each time they refused, he simply named a higher price. Whenever some courtesan, dazzled by the gold, boldly took up the challenge, the next day there was simply one more woman who could no longer work as a courtesan.
His offers eventually surpassed even the fee required to summon the Hui — and still that man never set foot on the fifth floor. Who would hand the jewels of heaven over to a thug?
Ah, of course, his rampage did not last long. One day, the story went, he drowned himself in a wine vat overnight and died. That was the rumor, at least. What the truth was, who could say?
From the very top of this building, all one ever heard were countless rumors. Word had it that Nakseongguan had paid the Hao Clan a fortune to put out a kill order on him. But the truth? No one truly knew.
From time to time I would go down to the fourth floor, or even the third, and listen to the stories of the pleasure house — tales as chaotic as any marketplace gossip. Listening long enough, even the rumors that goblins emerged from the rear mountain of Nakseongguan, or that martial artists plundered commoners in the front courtyard, began to sound like fact.
Perhaps they were true after all.
Mother had told me never to go below the second floor. And so, from the day of my birth until now, I had never truly set foot on solid ground.
That my new name in this life was Jin Yu — Gold and Jade — was proof enough of how deeply my mother, Cheonghwa, cherished me.
The Hui were the jewels of Nakseongguan. I was the treasure of its mistress.
And I was the only man who lived within that forbidden fifth floor — as a son, a nephew, a younger brother, a childhood friend…
“Heh heh…”
Being doted on as the son of the “Imperial Princess” Cheonghwa, living as the only man in Nakseongguan who was not a “guest” — I had no complaints about those days.
But whenever I watched them prepare for a banquet, dressing themselves to receive their guests… I could not help but imagine it. Myself waiting in a bedchamber for the Hui. Their cheeks flushed pink, their bodies’ silhouettes faintly visible through those sheer garments as they approached and bowed before me. Claiming their lips, peeling away layer after layer of clothing, sharing the pleasures of cloud and rain…
“…What good is fantasizing?”
To lay hands on my mother, my aunts, my elder sisters, my closest friends in real life? Such an un-Confucian act was unthinkable.
…Though perhaps that was precisely why it was such a staple of erotic stories and dirty books.
Nakseongguan, fifth floor.
“Got you, Jin Yu!!”
A crushing squeeze—
“Ugh…”
“Geumryang, honestly. Haven’t you already been scolded once for putting your hands on Young Master so freely?”
“But if I don’t throw my arms around him like this, even when I see Jin Yu it doesn’t feel like I’ve seen him at all!”
Well, she had been greeting me this way every single day for the past five years…
Back then, the breasts pressing against my body had been modest enough to be merely thrilling. Now the only word for it was pressure, not stimulation.
Wolbaek read the complicated look on my face in an instant and, with a few sharp gestures, peeled Geumryang off me before she could glue herself any tighter.
“No matter how much a courtesan is supposed to bewitch every man she meets, doing it to Young Master is just a nuisance.”
“Bewitch? Jin Yu, don’t tell me something like this actually bewitches you?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
Geumryang checked the mood again, then this time wrapped her arms around me from behind. Geumryang at my back, Wolbaek in front. From a certain angle, it almost looked as if I were a human shield she was hiding behind.
Wolbaek propped up her chest with her left arm, rested her right arm atop the back of her left hand, and cupped her cheek in her palm — the habit she fell into whenever something displeased her.
“As expected, a rose raised too preciously never even realizes it has thorns.”
“Unnie, are you talking about me?”
“I was talking about Cheonsua.”
“Ahh.”
“If you’re going to chatter, untangle this first, both of you…”
I was still held in Geumryang’s embrace. That soft touch, the faint fragrance drifting from her — part of me wanted to savor them for a long while. But if I started reacting to every little thing like this, I would never survive living in Nakseongguan. React to every one of these, and I would have to spend my entire life on the fifth floor walking around with my hips shoved back and my waist bent double.
“There’s a banquet this evening, isn’t there?”
“Yes, Young Master.”
“Ugh… The second you see me, it’s all work talk? How boring.”
“Mother has high expectations of you, Geumryang.”
In that instant, their expressions split in opposite directions. Geumryang’s eyes sparkled; Wolbaek’s narrowed in a scowl.
“Cheonghwa-nim? Of me?”
“You’re dancing a paired dance together in the center tonight, aren’t you? That stage used to be Wolbaek’s alone.”
On the very first day she would appear before high-ranking guests at a banquet, she had been given the chance to dance on that stage. And not just any guests — personages so exalted that all Five Hui had been summoned, guests from the Imperial Palace itself!
Borrowing a little from my previous life’s memories, it was roughly equivalent to making your debut performance at a massive year-end awards ceremony.
“O-ooh…”
Geumryang shot a quick glance at Wolbaek’s face, then hunched her shoulders and pressed herself even tighter against my back. Hardly surprising — Wolbaek’s expression had turned noticeably sour.
Hmm… For now, some damage control seemed in order.
“So, uh… it’s about trying something new! Not so much an improvement as… well, the old way was good too, but wouldn’t this also be nice? Something like that… is what Mother meant, don’t you think?”
“Why go to such lengths to explain? As if I would have any complaint about performing alongside Geumryang.”
“R-really?”
“Of course. I merely find it regrettable that Cheonghwa’s eye for these things can only tell improvement from ruin after putting them into practice.”
…Yeah, she was definitely angry!
She was seething with discontent!!
“Well… thanks to that, I get to match my breathing with Wolbaek unnie, so I’m happy about it.”
“Oh?”
Geumryang tapped my shoulder playfully with a fingertip as she said it. What a commendable thing to say.
“…I don’t recall ever saying anything kind to you, Geumryang.”
“That’s right!! I really hated that! We stretched our arms out at the exact same moment, at the exact same angle, and you’d still say it was wrong and make me do it again!”
“…So matching your breathing with me was something you hated?”
“Come on. Even while you were saying all that, watching you look at me with those intense eyes while I danced made me feel like you must love me so, so much. That part I liked.”
“Those were probably the eyes of someone cataloguing every last one of your mistakes.”
“That’s what I’m saying, unnie! Without love, you couldn’t put in that kind of effort, right?”
“No — if you make a mistake during a paired dance, then I also—”
Sigh…
Wolbaek cut herself off and let out a small breath.
“What would be the point of explaining anything to you. Just… tonight of all nights, do not make a single mistake. Understood?”
“Heehee, leave it to me, unnie!”
“You’d better do well. That’s how Mother will give you even more to do.”
Geumryang was the same age as me. I had known her since I was thirteen, but she had only completed the special training — the finishing education required to become a Hui — a mere three months ago.
The line that best captured her was this:
“It must all be because I’m just too lovable ♡”
When she was happy, when she was sad, when she was being unfairly picked on — always. You’re only doing this because you love me!
Say it like that, and say it with that pretty face smiling brightly, and there was not a person alive who could talk back.
Geumryang sniffed along my nape, then rested her chin on my shoulder.
“Jin Yu, you put on scented oil? Are you going somewhere?”
“…Going out?”
“Ah… r-right. Jin Yu doesn’t…”
“Young Master cannot leave Nakseongguan, can he? And yet you’re dressed up like this…”
“Yeah. Still, I wanted to feel the part.”
I walked out from between the two of them, who were tilting their heads in confusion. Leaving my room, turning left, and going straight ahead brought me to the tea room — a space for drinking tea, but ultimately a space for refined leisure, and so a great horizontal window ran along one wall.
Rattle—
“Oh my, Young Master?”
“We have an early guest.”
“Huh? Didn’t everyone go flower-viewing??”
“Listen to this one. The preparations to receive the guests aren’t even finished, and she’s still talking about flower-viewing.”
“Hiiing… So it’s infinite waiting, then?”
“Something like that.”
Wolbaek and Geumryang had come in with me. Already seated across from each other, sharing tea, were Gyeonghwa and Mokhwa. Looking around, there was one Hui conspicuously absent.
“Where’s Cheonsua?”
“The one currently in Cheonghwa-nim’s chambers is Cheonsua.”
Gyeonghwa set down her teacup last and continued.
“It appears she intends to make her take a client this time, no matter what.”
“Hoo…”
Cheonsua had already been a Hui for over three years. And yet, the story went, she had never once shared a bed with anyone. The truth of it, I couldn’t know. But Gyeonghwa, who had been with her since their apprentice days, said so, and Cheonsua herself never denied it — so that was how the matter stood.
“Cheonghwa-nim has fretted over that for some time.”
“What, what? Cheonsua unnie refused overnight service too?”
“Whether one can call it refusal… That girl is extraordinarily skilled at avoiding revealing her true feelings.”
“This Mokhwa thinks perhaps she simply hasn’t reached the age to understand that kind of pleasure yet.”
“Mokhwa unnie, you’re two years younger than Cheonsua unnie. Who are you to talk?”
“…Geumryang, your head is working surprisingly well today.”
“Heehee, I’m just like that.”
“That wasn’t a compliment…”
“If I take it as a compliment, it becomes one!”
Amid the lively chatter, I sat by the window and quietly ordered my thoughts.
Cheonsua is a virgin.
Would Mother truly consider this a “problem”?
Of course, a courtesan already twenty-two with little experience of men was something to regret. But Nakseongguan was not a red-lantern house — it was a blue-lantern house. A place that sold poetry and song and dance and beauty more than it sold bodies.
Just climb on top of a man once, anything will do? Why bother?
“…Has Cheonsua ever been called in for a talk about this before?”
In that moment, the voices chatting around me dropped sharply. The sudden quiet was such that my sensitive hearing could catch even the echo of my own voice bouncing off the walls.
For a brief stretch, the laughter of children in the street drifted up. Carried on that sound, I went on.
“Not that I can remember.”
“That’s correct. Even so, every time Cheonghwa-nim sees Cheonsua, she does give her a warning.”
“‘Obsessive’ is the right word. These days she asks whether it’s been breached before she even asks how she’s doing.”
“…But I’ve never heard her say, ‘Go serve so-and-so overnight.’”
“Is that so…”
A chilling thought flashed through my mind.
Perhaps, to Mother, the news that “Cheonsua is a virgin” was…
“…Then that ‘virginity’ must be quite expensive, no?”
…an asset?