What a Ruthless One
What a ruthless man.
Hwa Yeonseol was dumbfounded.
Have you been well?
Nothing could have felt more insulting.
Emotions swirled through her like a storm, and it must have shown on her face, because Seo Yugyeom hastily added, "Ahem, that's not what I meant."
He picked up the candy Hwa Yeonseol had dropped, popped it into his mouth, and paid the old woman for it. Even as he did, Hwa Yeonseol's voice came at him.
"Why did you come here? To kill me too?"
This time it was the old woman who dropped her coins.
Seo Yugyeom and Hwa Yeonseol turned to stare at her in unison. Only then did the Chief Manager, finally catching up, lower his voice and speak to Hwa Yeonseol.
"Guild Master, let's move somewhere else for now."
With those words, he shot a glare at Seo Yugyeom. Seo Yugyeom merely shrugged. Hoyeon Baek was a face he knew well enough.
Was he always this sort of presence?
Seo Yugyeom walked along, taking in the Chief Manager's changed air.
The three of them stepped into the alley right next door. With no shops along it, few people passed through.
At the mouth of the alley, Jin Seongun was pacing back and forth.
Seeing him, Hwa Yeonseol asked, "What is that supposed to be?"
"What do you mean, 'that'? He's my friend."
"Ha…"
Hwa Yeonseol let out a hollow laugh. Why else would he come back to Deokyang with a friend in tow?
Hwa Yeonseol was no fool either, and the recent events surfaced in her mind unbidden.
"The Saryonggangbang. That was your doing, wasn't it?"
"What's the Saryonggangbang?"
Seo Yugyeom brushed it off, feigning ignorance. He had no particular reason to tell her.
Hwa Yeonseol and Hoyeon Baek stared at him with suspicious eyes, and then Hwa Yeonseol pressed on.
"So tell me why you came. How do you even have the nerve?"
The dagger hidden in her voice stabbed into Seo Yugyeom. His expression stiffened, rare for him. Something welled up inside him.
Am I the only one at fault here? Is everything my fault?
The thoughts rose from somewhere deep in his heart, and naturally his eyes grew cold. Startled by the sudden shift, Hwa Yeonseol and Hoyeon Baek flinched.
He was not the Seo Yugyeom they remembered. For all those years, Seo Yugyeom had lived as Salmak's special-grade assassin.
"Guild Master, please step aside."
Hoyeon Baek took half a step forward, as if to shield Hwa Yeonseol. Seo Yugyeom's brow twitched.
"Why does the Chief Manager butt in on a brother and sister's conversation?"
"Brother and sister? So you feel not even the slightest pang of conscience!"
The Chief Manager exploded in rage, loud enough that passersby outside the alley glanced over. Seo Yugyeom let out a quiet sigh.
He faced the naked hostility radiating from Hwa Yeonseol and Hoyeon Baek for a moment with calm indifference, then said, "Hwa Yuntak killed my parents first. So why do you both talk as if I'm the only one who did something wrong?"
The injustice that had taken root deep in his heart over the years came pouring out of his mouth. It was a reenactment of the nightmare he always dreamed.
The scene where Hwa Yuntak and Hwa Yeonseol threw daggers with their words, while he cried out his innocence. But there was one difference from the dream.
"If any of you had a conscience, you never should have come for revenge. Hwa Yuntak was the one who—"
Mid-sentence, Seo Yugyeom's eyes flicked to Hwa Yeonseol's face, and his words trailed off.
Her face was filled with utter shock, like someone who had just heard something she was never meant to hear.
"You didn't know?"
Hwa Yeonseol looked bewildered. Naturally, Seo Yugyeom's gaze shifted to Hoyeon Baek.
"The Chief Manager knew, though. That Hwa Yuntak killed my parents because he wanted the Heavenly Martial Star, then took me in and raised me. And that once he learned I wasn't the Heavenly Martial Star but the Heavenly Killing Star, he tossed me aside."
Hwa Yeonseol turned her head to look at Hoyeon Baek. But no emotion could be read from the man's expression.
Before long, Hoyeon Baek put on a look of pure contempt and spoke. "Have you lost your mind? You expect us to believe that now? You think inventing such a shameless lie at this late hour will justify the patricide that severed your own blood ties?"
"…What did you say?"
"How badly do you think we look down on you?"
Hoyeon Baek roared again. This time, the passersby outside the alley did not so much as glance their way — Jin Seongun at the entrance had spread his qi to block the sound.
Hoyeon Baek used the word we far too often. Hwa Yeonseol watched him with a strange expression on her face.
Seo Yugyeom laughed, hollow and spent.
"Chief Manager. You've been covering my sister's eyes and ears all this time, haven't you? Fanning her fury at me to cloud her judgment. For what purpose?"
"…"
"Ahh—"
Seo Yugyeom's expression returned to its usual state. Every emotion that had welled up from the depths vanished, and a manufactured ease rose to float on his face. The corner of his mouth curled into a faint smirk.
"It was you. The one gnawing away at Hwaun Merchant Group from the inside like a worm. Yeah, that always struck me as odd — the Hwa Yeonseol I know is no fool, so why did she let the black-path bastards push her around so helplessly?"
Hwa Yeonseol's expression twisted in an ugly way. Seeing it, Hoyeon Baek grew even more furious, as if conscious of her gaze.
"Guild Master, there is no need to listen to this. That ingrate is spewing poison to shake your heart."
"Me — who avenged my parents and left cleanly. And you — who clung like a parasite at the Guild Master's side, covering her eyes and ears while quietly devouring the guild. Between the two of us, who's the poison here?"
"…"
Hwa Yeonseol was thrown into confusion. This was news to her.
And it was hard to believe — all the more so because it came from Seo Yugyeom, whom she had cursed for half her life. Worse, the words subtly justified his murder of her father.
But still…
Had Hwa Yuntak been an ordinary father, she would have cut Seo Yugyeom's words off at once. But she knew her father. He was not an honest man. No — what Seo Yugyeom had just said was precisely the kind of thing her dead father would have been capable of.
That was why she couldn't steady her heart. And on top of it, memories surfaced of the Chief Manager's recent behavior — how he had bent over backward to please the Vice Alliance Leader, insisting they hand over the Hwaun Merchant Group.
The faint unease that had settled in her heart over the past few days had, with Seo Yugyeom's appearance, transformed into a seed called doubt.
"Guild Master, surely you don't believe these words? Why else would he appear now, of all times? He's come when the guild is at its weakest and you are most vulnerable, hoping to worm his way in — that's all this is."
"Oh, sharp one."
"S-see that! He admits it himself! The man who murdered the former Guild Master now shamelessly sets his sights on the guild itself!"
"Hahaha — if Hwaun Merchant Group were what it used to be, you'd be right. But what exactly would I gain from taking it now?"
The Chief Manager fell silent.
Seo Yugyeom was right. Hwaun Merchant Group had already fallen halfway into the Thousand Poisons Alliance's grasp.
No one in their right mind would covet the guild in this state. Seizing it now would mean walking straight into the alliance's maw of their own accord.
"By the way, Chief Manager. Your air has changed, hasn't it?"
"Spare me the nonsense."
Then it happened.
Seo Yugyeom suddenly flung a hidden weapon. Tak. The Chief Manager caught it out of the air on pure instinct.
"Ch-Chief Manager?"
Hwa Yeonseol's eyes went wide. As far as she knew, the Chief Manager had never trained in martial arts.
Seo Yugyeom gave a thumbs-up. "Oho, quick, too."
So that was why his presence had shifted so strangely. He had learned martial arts at some point over the years.
Reading Hwa Yeonseol's face, Hoyeon Baek spoke as if offering an excuse. "Have you not seen how Deokyang has been in upheaval lately? To protect the Guild Master and myself even a little, I only recently began training."
"Then Chief Manager Hoyeon must be a genius. To reach that level after only just starting."
Seo Yugyeom snickered, needling him. The suspicion in Hwa Yeonseol's eyes refused to clear.
Then it happened again.
Seo Yugyeom suddenly pointed his index finger at something behind Hoyeon Baek. The man turned his head and reeled in shock.
A small pebble was hurtling toward them from the mouth of the alley, and its speed was genuinely terrifying.
"…!"
Hoyeon Baek flinched for an instant.
Thud-!
The pebble slammed brutally into his shoulder. Hoyeon Baek clutched it and staggered back several steps.
"What is the meaning of this!"
Hwa Yeonseol rounded on Seo Yugyeom at once. But he simply shrugged.
"He threw it. Why are you yelling at me?"
Every gaze turned to Jin Seongun. He studied their faces for a moment, then said in a flat tone, "What a ruthless one."
His meaning was obvious.
Jin Seongun had deliberately calibrated his force. He had thrown the stone at a speed only a master of half a Great Realm's worth of power could have blocked.
Hoyeon Baek had clearly reacted — yet to dodge suspicion, he had chosen to take the hit. His shoulder was now stained with blood.
Hwa Yeonseol looked at him with a worried face. The doubt had vanished entirely from her eyes.
Hoyeon Baek understood that this was far more dangerous. It meant she had made up her mind to some degree and was deliberately concealing her emotions.
"I'm all right, Guild Master. We must leave for now. Entangling ourselves further with these hooligans will only invite trouble. Besides, the Vice Alliance Leader of the Thousand Poisons Alliance will be seeking you out soon enough."
That was Hoyeon Baek's gambit — invoking the Thousand Poisons Alliance's name to shake the two men off. Of course, it had little effect on Seo Yugyeom and Jin Seongun.
Hoyeon Baek led Hwa Yeonseol toward the alley's exit. The distance to Jin Seongun shrank step by step, and tension crept over both their faces.
Jin Seongun, however, looked not at the pair but at Seo Yugyeom. When Seo Yugyeom shrugged, Jin Seongun stepped aside for them.
Before the two of them fully vanished from the alley, they glanced back at Seo Yugyeom one last time — and then they were gone.
Hwa Yeonseol and Hoyeon Baek walked side by side, on the road back to Hwaun Merchant Group.
After a long silence, Hoyeon Baek was the first to speak. "My mention of the Vice Alliance Leader earlier was simply to extricate us from that place."
"I know."
"…"
Hoyeon Baek shut his mouth. He wanted to read her expression, but he couldn't afford to — he knew that if he studied her face now, her suspicion would only deepen.
And so the two walked on, eyes fixed ahead. Looking in the same direction, walking in the same way — yet their hearts were worlds apart.
How long had they kept up that silence? Warriors of the Twilight Pavilion appeared ahead of them.
"Where have you two been?"
Neither of them answered. The Twilight Pavilion warriors, sent under Saryeonggeuk's orders to fetch them, spat out a curse.
"Damn it. When someone speaks to you, you answer."
The grumbling warrior fell in beside the two of them, and the others took up positions around them at a slight distance, every hand resting on a sword hilt, ready to draw at a moment's notice.
On the surface it looked like an escort, but the two of them knew better. The Twilight Pavilion warriors had come to watch them.
"…"
Hwa Yeonseol's face was coldly composed, betraying no emotion at all. Then, after walking some distance surrounded by the warriors, she suddenly jolted and looked up at a certain rooftop.
Her abrupt movement drew the Chief Manager and the Twilight Pavilion warriors to look there as well.
But there was nothing.
"Is something the matter, Guild Master?"
Hoyeon Baek asked. Hwa Yeonseol stared at the empty rooftop for a moment, then shook her head.
"It's nothing."
The party moved on. Hwa Yeonseol steadied her breath, forcing her alarm down — yet the transmitted voice she had heard moments before still rang vividly in her mind.