The God of Gambling Is Dragged to the Gambling Den -1
She had done it. Hyeok Gi-rin thought as much as she squeezed her eyes shut tight.
Yet in one corner of her heart there was also a sense of relief. She had been feeling the sting of conscience over the very situation she was in now—pretending that feeling did not exist while happily touring Luoyang with Heukmyo.
“Well, Senior is a good person, after all.”
Heukmyo still seemed not to have grasped Hyeok Gi-rin’s intent. She brought her teacup to her lips and answered lightly, as if the idea that Hyeok Gi-rin might like Ho Cheon-an had never even crossed her mind. That attitude only deepened Hyeok Gi-rin’s guilt.
She gathered her courage and opened her mouth.
“I mean… as a woman… that I have come to hold feelings for Master Ho.”
Watching Heukmyo’s eyes widen, Hyeok Gi-rin looked away.
Silence alone circled the private tea room meant for just the two of them.
Hyeok Gi-rin had always thought of Heukmyo as someone like a cat. She could be whimsical, and once curiosity took hold she would dig in with stubborn persistence; even when she did something foolish or showed a pure side, that haughty, beautiful exterior made her the very picture of a cat.
And now that same Heukmyo was gazing at her in utter stillness. The usual likable smile and the languid, carefree air were gone; the figure before her felt threatening.
A cat was still a small predator. Heukmyo’s transparent eyes watched her every move as if she had just spotted prey, stripped of all emotion. Hyeok Gi-rin swallowed dryly.
“Is it because of the enlightenment you received?”
“That… isn’t the only reason.”
Hyeok Gi-rin thought of Ho Cheon-an. She had realized she had feelings for him thanks to Yu Gyeong’s meddling, yet she could not pinpoint the exact moment she had fallen for him.
“It’s just… well. You already know how complicated my circumstances are, Lady Heukmyo. Imperial blood, a family with its share of problems, a woman who cross-dresses, and a martial artist of the Murim on top of it all.”
Speaking aloud a worry she had never put into words before, she felt her own heart take clearer shape.
“Even someone like me starts to hope that Master Ho might accept me. No matter how tangled my family affairs are, no matter what problems pile up, I find myself thinking that Master Ho would simply nod and stay by my side…”
“I see.”
Heukmyo let out a long, long sigh.
Her bond with Hyeok Gi-rin was not short, and its density was anything but ordinary. Ever since the escort commission had begun in Sichuan they had seen each other nearly every day and spent most of their time together. On the road to the Jeomchang Sect they had talked the whole day away inside the carriage; at the sect itself they had stuck close almost from dawn to dusk; and today in the capital had been no different.
She had never directly told Hyeok Gi-rin that she liked Ho Cheon-an, yet she had never hidden the feeling either.
So hearing that Hyeok Gi-rin herself held special feelings for him was bound to be a shock.
To Heukmyo, Hyeok Gi-rin was someone truly special.
The Taiyin Qi did not affect only men. When Heukmyo scattered it, it was a phenomenon that touched everyone equally. It simply produced more dramatic results in men. Just as men fell under its thrall, women often responded with hostility. The effect was never as extreme as with men, so she could usually maintain a tolerable distance with other women—yet there had never been anyone she could treat with true, unguarded closeness.
A friend…
Hyeok Gi-rin was the first same-sex friend Heukmyo could truly claim. The imperial family’s pure yang energy and the Super-Peak realm—those two factors had let her overcome the Taiyin Qi and see Heukmyo for who she was.
More than that, Heukmyo felt a strange kinship with her. Burdened by the Taiyin Qi herself, she sensed a kindred spirit in Hyeok Gi-rin, a woman who lived in the Murim disguised as a man. That was why someone who had never had a single close companion could feel intimacy toward her.
And now that very person was saying she liked Ho Cheon-an, of all people.
Heukmyo bit her lip hard against an emotion she could not name. Feelings she had never encountered before welled up inside her.
“Why tell me now? Even if you like Senior Ho, weren’t you going to pretend to enter closed-door training and leave to settle the imperial family’s affairs? Or was that a lie too?”
“No! I truly will pretend to enter closed-door training, return to my original identity, and handle those matters. In the process I will have to part from both Lady Heukmyo and Master Ho…”
“If that’s the case, it was something you could have said on the last day before we parted, wasn’t it?”
“At first I thought so. But it wasn’t easy. To laugh and chatter with Lady Heukmyo while pretending nothing was wrong, only to drop it on the final day…”
Hyeok Gi-rin gave a bitter smile.
“I suppose the saying that it’s better to take the beating first isn’t empty after all.”
A person without tact. That was what Heukmyo thought—then she shook her head. It was not a lack of tact. The Hyeok Gi-rin she had known all this time was someone who valued conscience and Heukmyo’s feelings more than her own gain or comfort.
That was why she had clumsily confessed her heart in this awkward place.
Thinking of that only made Heukmyo’s own feelings more tangled.
If only she could have exploded in clean anger, perhaps the emotions swirling inside her would have sorted themselves out.
What… am I supposed to do…?
Heukmyo was genuinely lost. After a lifetime of solitude she had only begun to open her heart a few months ago; the present situation was something she had never even imagined.
Heukmyo was simply confused, and Hyeok Gi-rin was simply guilty.
Hyeok Gi-rin stared at the floor; Heukmyo could only look at her in a daze.
“Pardon the interruption. It seems a certain martial artist is looking for the two of you.”
In that moment, Ho Cheon-an arrived.
Ho Cheon-an twisted his face into a scowl.
He could understand Admiral Song Chang-sik of the Embroidered Uniform Guard’s attitude. Driving out the unqualified at every examination was routine, and from the admiral’s experience the odds of Ho Cheon-an’s unit passing this time were practically zero. To him it was just another ordinary exam day.
“Ugh.”
Ho Cheon-an frowned. In the original history, unless the player interfered specially, those people simply went their own ways. Perhaps, just as Song Chang-sik expected, they had simply failed the Embroidered Uniform Guard exam.
Yet he could not shake the worry.
Thinking that dream team will just overturn everything on their own because the environment and situation are a little unfavorable is far too optimistic.
The anxiety fretted at him until, suddenly, irritation boiled up. Alone with a dread no one else could understand because of his knowledge of the future—what the hell was he even doing?
So he decided to drop the useless fretting and change his mood instead.
He had a few days of leeway anyway. He could worry about his unit later. For now he would just tour Luoyang with Hyeok Gi-rin and Heukmyo.
Tomorrow’s Ho Cheon-an could handle the worrying.
He neatly abandoned the problem to his future self and headed for the teahouse where they had agreed to meet once his work finished early, so he could enjoy the Luoyang sights with Hyeok Gi-rin and Heukmyo.
But the atmosphere was strange.
Hyeok Gi-rin sat with a gloomy face, staring at the floor.
“…”
And Heukmyo watched both Ho Cheon-an and Hyeok Gi-rin with chilly eyes. Ho Cheon-an reflexively swallowed dryly. He had seen Heukmyo angry many times, but those had always been closer to sulking. He had never seen her this subdued.
“What are you doing? Sit down.”
“Huh? Uh… sure? Haha.”
Heukmyo watched Ho Cheon-an pour tea while reading the room.
Honestly, the moment she took her eyes off him for even a second, trouble followed. In Sichuan they had run wild together… but when he got excited teaching the kids of the Tang Clan he had started showing off sleight of hand, and the masters had latched on; then while teaching those masters with equal fervor he had ended up blasting out enlightenment.
And now he can’t even keep it together and causes an incident in the imperial palace too?
Heukmyo’s gaze sharpened of its own accord, and Ho Cheon-an flinched. In truth she had been quite angry after hearing what he had done in the palace. Everything had worked out, yet there had been more than a few moments that made her heart drop just listening to them.
The only reason she had let it pass without comment was that the person involved had been Hyeok Gi-rin.
Watching Hyeok Gi-rin struggle to help Yeo Il-ye, Heukmyo had wanted to help as well. Hyeok Gi-rin was the kind of person who could make even a loner like Heukmyo feel that way. Inside the isolated space of the Imperial Palace, the only one who could aid Hyeok Gi-rin had been Ho Cheon-an, and he would have known that perfectly well—so of course he had pushed himself to step forward.
“Really…”
Heukmyo relaxed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. A long sigh escaped her lips unbidden.
Ho Cheon-an’s actions made her blood boil… yet it was precisely because he was this kind of person that she was staying with him.
It was because he was like this that he had become her companion, promised to strive together until she reached the Transformation Realm, and said he would show her the joy of walking the path side by side.
Trapped in a situation where she could neither advance nor retreat, Heukmyo flung the window wide open for a breath of outside air. A wind that already carried a proper chill brushed past her, and the noise of the street drifted in.
She gazed slowly at the scene outside—an impulse to escape the present moment.
Then her eyes stopped on one particular spot.
“Come on, come on! Put your money down and take it home! Guess right and double it! Bet on any cup you like! An opportunity like this doesn’t come every day!”
Outside the window, at the entrance to an alley, a man was running a shell-game table, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers.
“Gambling.”
“Hm?”
Ho Cheon-an flinched at Heukmyo’s murmur. She looked at him and thought. She had seen him use sleight of hand many times… but had she ever actually watched Ho Cheon-an sit down at a real gambling table?
This was a man who had spent more years learning gambling than martial arts.
“…Maybe that’s why.”
She had seen plenty of Ho Cheon-an the martial artist. But what about Ho Cheon-an the gambler? She had watched him employ bits of deceptive hand skill here and there, yet could she really claim she had seen the true face of the gambler after only that much?
She had heard the rumors of the huge game he had run at Yeongsang-ru while being chased by Yeo Il-ye. She had only seen the results when he cleaned out Yu Ji-gyeong’s fortune at Seongrak Pavilion. She had merely been told how he had smashed the imperial trap at Cheonsang-ru.
Heukmyo thought it over.
She could proudly say she knew the martial artist Ho Cheon-an well. But could she say the same of the gambler?
“Great Hero Hyeok Gi-rin. Have you ever seen Senior Ho actually gamble for real?”
Hyeok Gi-rin shook her head. Every gambling technique she had witnessed from him had been nothing more than applications for magic tricks.
“Hmph.”
So Hyeok Gi-rin had never seen it either.
Heukmyo found herself wanting to see Ho Cheon-an the gambler.
Somehow, watching that side of him felt like a way out.
Whether it was the instinct unique to those who dealt in information, or simply a desperate thrashing to escape her current state, her tangled heart could not decide—but there was nothing to lose. Touring Luoyang in this mood would hardly be enjoyable. Better than silently returning to the inn and locking herself away, at least.
“Let’s go.”
“Wh-where, exactly?”
Ho Cheon-an instinctively sensed danger and tried to pull back, but Heukmyo firmly seized the back of his neck.
“The gambling den.”
She smiled with a chill mixed into the expression.
“Why don’t you show us the real skills of Ho Cheon-an, God of Gambling.”