We Need to Talk — 1
I had nothing to go on if I wanted to press Heukmyo about whether she had done something to me the day Tang Do-gyeong gained his enlightenment. More than that, there had been no reason for her to. There simply was not a shred of proof that Heukmyo had done anything to me at all.
But after what I had heard today about the Soul-Returning Powder and the Confession Elixir, it suddenly seemed possible. Put me to sleep, pull Tang Do-gyeong's enlightenment out of me, and hand it over to him. That would explain how he had broken through out of nowhere.
I had learned about the Soul-Returning Powder and the Confession Elixir today, yes. But what I could not figure out was the look on Heukmyo's face — that naked, undisguised panic.
Playing dumb, denying everything with a straight face, casually chewing puffed rice like nothing in the world was wrong — Heukmyo was, at her core, a brazen and shameless creature. Even when she acted strangely, she would soon sidle back up with that thick-skinned charm of hers.
Breaking out in a cold sweat. Stammering. None of that was like her at all.
"Hmm…"
I kept my eyes fixed on her, and before long she was sweating buckets all over again.
"Just be honest with me."
"No… I mean…"
So she had done something to me. The Tang Do-gyeong incident, then, just as I thought. But right after that whole mess blew up, while we were handling ordinary commissions, Heukmyo had closed the distance and shown me nothing but goodwill. Fine — say that had been her way of covering up what happened that day.
When is guilt at its heaviest? Right after you commit the crime, obviously. And yet she had breezed past it with that shameless act of hers back then — only to fall apart now over a single word, Confession Elixir. That was strange too.
"Did you use the Confession Elixir on me that day?"
I decided there was no point weighing every angle. Better to just drive it straight in.
"Ah— uh…"
Heukmyo made a strange little sound, and something ran down the line of her jaw. It did not feel like sweat. No — those were tears.
What was sliding down her slender jaw and dripping from her chin, drop by drop, were tears.
So… she was crying?
Just like that? In a situation like this?
Drip. Drip.
"Th-this…"
Heukmyo wiped at the corners of her eyes in a fluster. Tears. When was the last time she had cried? She could not quite remember, though a useless thought flickered through her mind — that it had probably been back when she was poisoned by some aphrodisiac or other and her whole metabolism had gone to pieces.
"Come on now. Why are you crying?"
Ho Cheon-an was just as thrown by the completely unexpected turn, but he kept his voice steady. He would have liked to pull out a handkerchief and offer it to her, but all his hands found were the wooden case that had held the Jade Wine Purple Spirit Elixir, the throwing knives he had received from the Tang family, and his coin purse.
Heukmyo kept sniffling and rubbing at her eyes, but the tears showed no sign of stopping.
"Heukmyo. Let's talk."
Ho Cheon-an looked at her with a complicated expression. He realized, with a start, that he knew nothing about her. One could say that was only natural, given that she hid her identity — but he did not see it that way.
I never really took an interest either, did I.
Heukmyo's circumstances were deeply complicated. Ho Cheon-an understood that well enough by now. Men who somehow recognized her even with her face covered and her figure concealed, who crowded in and made advances whether she dressed up or not — they never stopped coming.
Ho Cheon-an himself had felt that strange allure of hers. He could guess that a life shaped by that kind of charm would never have been smooth.
Even so, he had only ever adjusted himself to whatever version of her she presented. He had never thought to learn more about her than that.
Because he had considered their relationship a contractual one. After Bidong, a personal fondness had grown — he had sensed that much, at least, but…
She held me in this much regard…?
Heukmyo was still flustered, wiping at tears she did not understand, but Ho Cheon-an knew exactly what she was feeling.
Fear.
The terror that he would come to hate her, that the relationship would end right here — and the tears had simply spilled out first.
Is she a child?
In the middle of all this, Ho Cheon-an felt a dry laugh rising in his throat. It was exactly the kind of thing a child would do. Commit a wrong, get caught by accident, and start crying at the mere thought of being scolded…
And yet, somewhere in his chest, he understood this side of her too.
The Heukmyo he knew was, in some ways, more capable than anyone — and in others, strangely innocent, strangely inexperienced.
Without a word, Ho Cheon-an poured tea and held it out to her. Heukmyo stole glances at his face even as she sipped it, little by little. For a while, the only sound between them was the soft sniffling of her nose.
Watching her, he felt a faint stir of pity. That she would cry and panic this hard over something like this was proof she had never had a precious relationship fall apart on her before.
A reaction like this probably meant she had never had anyone she truly cherished at all.
The thought crossed his mind that pressing her too hard might be a cruel thing to do.
"You calm now?"
Heukmyo nodded without speaking. Ho Cheon-an threw the next line straight at her.
"Then tell me what happened that day."
Heukmyo flinched as if she had been struck with a whip, but Ho Cheon-an held her with an unwavering gaze. Feeling pity was one thing. If she had done wrong, she needed a sharp dressing-down. Whether she read that intent in his eyes or not, Heukmyo gripped the empty teacup tight and opened her mouth.
In a trembling voice, she told him about that day. How she had dropped him with a sleep needle as he reached for the doorknob to leave. How she had used voice transmission and a precious jade to lure Tang Do-gyeong in afterward. How she had silenced Tang Do-gyeong and delivered the enlightenment to him.
"Hmm."
Ho Cheon-an scratched the back of his neck. So that was how it had gone. The part about being stuck with a confession needle made even his nape go stiff.
But there were a few things that needed clearing up first.
"So from the start, you became a Sichuan Nangin just to confirm that I was carrying enlightenment?"
"Well… I got curious. The name Ho Cheon-an was suggestive enough on its own, and then there was Yeo Il-ye suddenly rising to the Super-Peak Realm. Honestly, I didn't even have solid grounds to infiltrate and check in person…"
"And so you ended up coming on a support dispatch?"
"I'm the leader, so you could say I walked in on my own two feet."
Caught in her own agitation, Heukmyo started pouring out things he had not even asked about.
"I buried the information that you'd given Yeo Il-ye her enlightenment as thoroughly as I could. I twisted the rumors through several layers, so most people who picked them up probably just wrote it off as one of those coincidences you hear about in the jianghu. Hwanggeumga put in a request for information on you too — I cut that off as well…"
"Mm… right."
There was still a great deal Ho Cheon-an did not understand.
"Then on the day you gave Tang Do-gyeong his enlightenment… you must have been certain I could hand the stuff out. Why leave me alone after that?"
"That was… because I just liked being with you, Senior."
The moment the words left her mouth, Heukmyo felt her face burn. Watching Ho Cheon-an's gaze waver, she spoke as if under a spell.
"Up until then. I mean. Uh… I just. I wanted to keep that relationship going. Solving cases together as Sichuan Nangin, staying by your side looking the same way I always did… You'd hidden from me the fact that you could give out enlightenment, so… so…"
She forced the words out through a voice that shook like a leaf.
"S-so… I thought if you realized I knew your secret, I wouldn't be able to stay with you anymore. That's what I thought, and…"
"You hid it that skillfully. So why show every crack today?"
"I don't really know either. Just… when the Poison Doctor mentioned the confession needle and the Soul-Returning Powder today, I got impatient and anxious, and… the cold sweat started."
"Haa…"
Ho Cheon-an slid his hips forward, let his back sag, and rested the nape of his neck against the chair, staring up at the ceiling.
What the hell is this. Fuck, what even is this right now.
He had just received what amounted to a confession. Completely blindsided, Ho Cheon-an found his mouth going dry. He swallowed once and asked the next question.
"And finding out I could give enlightenment?"
"Even if I assumed from the start that Senior Ho truly knew the enlightenment of all people… I never planned to profit off it. That was a realm far beyond my capacity. I only approached you to settle a personal curiosity."
No matter that Wolbokdang was the greatest information organization under heaven, it could never have handled the enlightenment Ho Cheon-an carried. Quietly handing someone a breakthrough in secret was one thing. The moment you turned the giving of enlightenment into a tool of power or a source of income, you needed publicity of some kind — and publicity, by its nature, meant exposure to an unknown number of people.
Something Wolbokdang alone could never contain was almost certain to follow.
That was the rational reason. Under her breath, in a voice no louder than a mosquito's, Heukmyo murmured the real one.
"Now it's not about any of that. Senior Ho himself is what matters…"
Ho Cheon-an pretended not to hear the murmur and pressed on.
"So. In the end, you manipulated me that day and gave Tang Do-gyeong his enlightenment. That it?"
"…Yes."
Heukmyo affirmed it without another word. The sight left Ho Cheon-an with a tangled feeling in his chest. He could not shake the sense that the threads were only getting more knotted.
I still don't get it.
Even after all of Heukmyo's explanations, he still could not understand why she had approached him, what she wanted from him, or how she had fallen for him this completely.
"Let's talk."
So there was only one thing left to say.
"Tell me about yourself."