Yunnan Bound with the Escort Agency – 4
The escort guards had dragged Ha Seon-su out and dumped him in the carriage. Judging by the state of him, he wouldn't be coming around until well past noon at the earliest.
Not a bad arrangement, actually. Feed him a lavish dinner every evening, pour enough wine into him that he couldn't hold a thought straight during the day. Even a high-class carriage couldn't offer the kind of rest you got from a proper bed, so sobering up would take him a good long while.
But Ha Seon-su wasn't the real problem.
Black Cat had gone strange.
Ordinarily, whenever boredom struck, she would creep up out of nowhere and pull some prank or other. Starting this morning, though, she had turned distant and awkward, and once we were underway she sat as far from me as the space allowed, staring at the floor. The hat made it hard to be sure, but every so often I thought I caught her glancing my way.
"Ahem!"
I tried a cough to break the tension, but Black Cat flinched so hard the atmosphere only grew worse. Mortified, I fidgeted with my hands for a moment, then pulled a fresh martial arts novel from my pack and opened it: Descent of the Martial God, Volume One.
Before we left I'd stopped at a bookshop, and the cover—so riotously colorful it called stained glass to mind—had me buying the entire set before I knew what I was doing. I'd always wanted martial arts novels with well-designed covers and illustrations, and something about this one had simply reeled me in.
Whether the story was any good remained to be seen.
A cargo wagon was, to put it generously, no place for reading. Even in a car on the highway, trying to read something usually left you carsick—and a carriage had your whole upper body bouncing whether you liked it or not.
I read a little, got queasy, looked around, then went back to the novel, and so on for quite a while.
"Rest stop!"
Convoys like this generally took a break of about an hour or two around noon. People who'd been walking all day needed rest and something to eat. For passengers like us, it was also a chance to move our bodies—sitting in a carriage from dawn to dusk was its own kind of torment.
I climbed down from the cargo wagon and stretched until my spine cracked.
"Seoul, why don't you get some fresh air?"
Black Cat stared at me for a moment, then—whatever thought had crossed her mind—stepped out of the carriage and vanished somewhere.
Must have needed the bathroom badly.
Her odd behavior had been nagging at me since morning, but Black Cat disappearing alone into the woods wasn't anything to worry about. She was stronger than even the Senior Escort Leader. If anything, I was the one in more danger now that we'd split up.
"I trust the journey hasn't been too uncomfortable?"
"Well now, if it isn't Chief Escort Leader Ga Gil-yeom himself!"
Ga Gil-yeom's lip twitched. The Chief Escort Leader was, put simply, the highest authority on an escort mission—and the Senior Escort Leader sat just below that. Basic workplace survival, really. You call a team lead a manager and a manager a director. That was how society worked.
"Ahem. Hem. I'm the Senior Escort Leader."
Dying of pleasure on the inside and putting on airs about it.
"Oh my, my deepest apologies. Thanks to you, great hero, this has been a thoroughly comfortable road."
"Haha, I've hardly done a thing…"
"Isn't it precisely because the Senior Escort Leader is directing from the front that we've come this far without a hitch?"
He kept clearing his throat at my honeyed praise while offering nothing but empty deflection—clearly a man who loved flattery more than was healthy. If Yu Sa-yeon had any money invested in this Namhaeng Escort Agency, I was going to tell her to pull it out. The whole outfit was rotten from the root.
"In any case, I've come because I have a favor to ask of you."
"A favor, you say?"
"Our Third Young Master is a thoroughly good-natured fellow, but he was born with a constitution weak to drink relative to his martial realm."
A tearful bit of packaging for a man who looked ready to scrape by at the bare edge of Second-rate. Come to think of it—was Ha Seon-su still out cold? If he'd woken up, he'd have been on his feet already, trying to make some kind of impression on Black Cat. Still unconscious, then.
"So I was hoping we might avoid a repeat of last night's… situation."
"Ahh, I see how it is."
When the novel made me carsick, I looked outside. And what did a man think about while staring at the scenery? Schemes for picking Ha Seon-su's pockets, little by little.
To clean him out properly, I first had to peel away his protector from the Namhaeng Escort Agency—namely this man right here, Senior Escort Leader Ga Gil-yeom.
Ga Gil-yeom was effectively the person in charge of this entire escort run. On paper, Ha Seon-su—being the agency master's direct blood—held the top post of Chief Escort Leader, with Ga Gil-yeom beneath him. In practice, anyone with eyes could see who was actually running things.
Without this man's tacit approval—or better yet, his active cooperation—fleecing Ha Seon-su was impossible.
And Ga Gil-yeom, personal feelings aside, had every reason not to look kindly on the young master.
Put yourself in the escorts' shoes.
After a grinding day on the road, all you want is a bowl of cheap wine and a place to drop. Meanwhile Ha Seon-su—who'd spent the whole day lounging in a luxurious carriage—sits down with a beautiful passenger (or so she appeared), cheerfully pours wine into his stomach until he keels over with a gurgle, and is still sprawled out cold even now.
Of course tempers would fray. Of course resentment would pile up. And Ga Gil-yeom, who had to manage those escorts, could hardly look at Ha Seon-su with anything but a sour eye.
But Ga Gil-yeom was in no position to say a word to him.
You could deduce that much from how he'd simply watched Ha Seon-su drink himself senseless at the inn last night. I knew nothing about the power structure inside the Namhaeng Escort Agency, or Ha Seon-su's standing, or Ga Gil-yeom's own clout—but the results of such arrangements always showed themselves in behavior.
Ga Gil-yeom wasn't placed to rein Ha Seon-su in directly. So if he wanted the young master controlled, the only conclusion left was that he had to control me and Black Cat instead.
If you want Ha Seon-su handled, go grab him by the collar or beg him yourself. Why come lean on me?
If this was all he had to say, he shouldn't have soaked up the flattery in the first place. Watching a man chew, tear, savor, and swallow every last scrap of praise only to turn around and deliver his real demand—whatever scrap of conscience I'd still been carrying evaporated on the spot.
Truth was, if a wastrel like Ha Seon-su caused a real incident, his guardian Ga Gil-yeom would almost certainly go down with him. The logic would run something like: That one's a born disaster, fine—but what exactly were you doing? And then the chewing-out would begin.
I'd been thinking about how to coax him gently. Then I changed my mind.
"Come now, Senior Escort Leader. I may be a country bumpkin, but I know what's what!"
Puzzlement settled over Ga Gil-yeom's face.
"I can tell that our illustrious Third Young Master has arranged everything already! I've got at least that much sense."
"What…?"
I wet my lips and wound up the pitch.
"Young Master Ha is… how shall I put it. Conducting some kind of undercover inspection, isn't he?"
Ga Gil-yeom looked at me as if I'd started speaking in tongues. The way his eyes ran me up and down said, plain as day: Has this man lost his mind?
"I couldn't begin to guess the precise nature of the work—I'm an outsider, after all. But as things stand, who would look at Young Master Ha and think, 'Ah, the young master of an escort agency'? They'd simply take him for a person of high standing traveling under the agency's protection."
Ga Gil-yeom's pupils wavered. From his perspective, this was a line of thought he'd never even considered. To me and to the agency, Ha Seon-su was obviously the young master of the Namhaeng Escort Agency—but to an outsider, the picture was entirely different.
A luxurious carriage trailing an escort convoy. A silk-clad young gentleman stepping down from that carriage.
Who would look at that and think, Ah, the third son of the Namhaeng Escort Agency out playing the wastrel? Any normal person would assume some noble scion was traveling under the agency's guard. That was the natural reading.
People fit situations to their own common sense, after all.
"I've seen and heard a few things in my time. What escort agency sends its own direct blood out on a run in a gilded carriage and silk robes? Hahahaha! Any young master who did that would either be completely insane or a wastrel beyond all imagination!"
Ga Gil-yeom flinched. He'd been so absorbed in my nonsense that the sudden strike of plain fact left him reeling.
"H-hem…!"
"Ah! Now I understand! The Namhaeng Escort Agency is staging the whole thing—escorting a silk-clad nobleman in a splendid carriage—to elevate the agency's prestige, isn't that right? My word, what a brilliant move. A role perfectly suited to the noble Young Master Ha Seon-su! Wouldn't you agree?"
"No, that isn't—"
"Incredible—truly the great Namhaeng Escort Agency, renowned throughout Sichuan! To command a reputation like that in Sichuan, of course you'd need this level of commitment! A Senior Escort Leader of formidable martial skill, a rigorously disciplined escort corps, and on top of it all, this ingenious promotional strategy!"
I put on a look of sudden alarm and checked Ga Gil-yeom's expression.
"Oh dear. My apologies. I got carried away and started spouting off on my own. Perhaps… I've read too much into things?"
"Well, that is…"
Ga Gil-yeom let the words trail off and squeezed his eyes shut. I waited for his answer with keen interest. A shame Black Cat wasn't here—she really needed to see his face right now.
Truth or lie. Your choice?
"Your words are correct…!"
Of course. After I'd laid on the sugar this thick, was he really going to say, Actually there's no such strategy, this isn't the great Namhaeng Escort Agency, Ha Seon-su is a wastrel beyond your wildest imagination, and I came here to put you in your place for hanging around with him?
"Haha, I knew it! I was a little worried yesterday that Young Master Ha was spending rather too freely—but now I needn't worry at all!"
Ga Gil-yeom's face went blank with shock, but my mouth, once started, showed no sign of stopping.
"Of course—you have to be seen spending freely at inns and other public places, so that people's eyes are drawn and the fact that the Namhaeng Escort Agency is escorting a wealthy young gentleman is firmly impressed upon them! Since I'm in the fortunate position of eating his expensive food, I'll take care to moderate Young Master Ha's drinking myself—so set your mind at ease! Hahahahaha!"
Watching the earthquake hit Ga Gil-yeom's pupils, I threw my head back and laughed with pure delight.
Ha Seon-su. You're finished.