A Call to the Kitchen
On the eastern side of Xining stood a vast, peculiar inn known as Mugung Hyeoptak.
Important things there included the food, the people, and a few other odds and ends. But the most important of them all was the ledger. It was a marvelous device that automatically recorded the menu, the customer, the time, the profit, and more, all linked to the jade-plate system of Baedal-ui Hojok.
Yeonhwa sat there, flicking through the ledger with a quiet rustle as she read.
Cheongryu Sect, Red Cry Society, Black Dragon Blade Cheol-ya... The dishes listed beside the names were mostly similar: fruit wine and pressed rice cakes, iced fruit wine, mala cold noodles, herb lamb ribs... In the martial world, grudges were something one had to remember and repay, but in Mugung Hyeoptak’s ledger, what it remembered was their appetites.
"Yeonhwa! Do you think staring at the ledger will make the silver grow? Get to kneading, now! Today’s the day the flour comes in!"
From the back of the kitchen came her master’s thunderous bellow, and Jangro Suksu was already slamming his massive fists into a mountain of dough.
Beep-dee-dong~
Orders, more orders. These days the delivery messengers of Baedal-ui Hojok came and went with the whirring roar of scooters so busy they barely knew where they were headed anymore.
"Master, there are so many delivery orders lately the jade-plate server feels like it’s about to explode. Shouldn’t we put in something like a per-person order limit? And we’re starting to run low on some ingredients too."
Grumbling, Yeonhwa plunged straight into the flour and came away dusted white from head to toe.
If this had been modern times, they would’ve slapped up a sign that said ingredients sold out, closed early, and shut the app down at once. Then she’d have sat under a cool air conditioner and downed an iced chocolate. What kind of martial-world labor was this supposed to be?
Jangro Suksu, already used to Yeonhwa’s ahead-of-her-time twenty-first-century nonsense, brushed it off with a wave and pressed the dough with qi-infused hands.
"You little wretch, don’t you know what kind of place Mugung Hyeoptak was to begin with? It started as nothing more than an ordinary inn. Flour brought by Western merchants, spices from the Eastern Seas, fruit wine from the Southern Lands... The martial world doesn’t move on blood alone.
It moves on silver, on aroma, and on people’s hunger. We stand at the center of that, filling their bellies while we bake up information.
What’s written in the ledger isn’t just numbers. It’s proof of survival. We aren’t merely making money—we’re the bridge that confirms one and all of them are still alive."
As Jangro Suksu said, Mugung Hyeoptak was a strange gray zone that belonged to neither the Orthodox nor the Unorthodox, neither the Demonic Cult nor any single faction at all.
Anyone could come in, but there was one rule they upheld as strictly as possible: weapons were never to be drawn carelessly inside the inn.
At first, even the Clear Wind Swordsman Han Cheong-hyeok had grumbled that being told to eat without a weapon was like a Duelist without cards, or clapping with no hands. But now he knew how to set down his blade before his wine cup.
After noon passed, the jade plaque mounted on the kitchen wall began to glow blue again and ring out.
Beep-dee-dong~
[Order Received: North Gate Market Consortium Headquarters. Three pots seafood paella, two bottles of iced fruit wine. Note: For consortium leader tasting.]
Jangro Suksu set a giant paella pan over the fire. Rice grains crackled in the oil as mussels and shrimp reddened and steamed, filling the kitchen with the salty scent of the sea.
The people from the North Gate Market Consortium did not take on Hyeol-mun themselves, but they were the best information brokers in the martial world when it came to catching the earliest signs that one was about to open.
"Yeonhwa, don’t skimp on the saffron in the paella. The more a man handles and twists information for a living, the more he likes food with a strong aroma. That way he can hide the fishy stink of the information he’s been leaking. If you numb their noses with the scent of food, you can shave the price of their precious information down."
That had always been his philosophy: serve food suited to the situation, suited to the person. That was perhaps even more important than simply selling meals and pocketing the cash.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
By evening, the martial artists of the Cheongryu Sect, finished with their training, came to the inn. Yu Cheong-ran had become even quieter than before, while Han Cheong-hyeok forced a cheerful tone and tossed out jokes as though nothing was wrong.
"Tonight, I’d like something light. It’s not my brother’s memorial day or anything... It’s just that I keep seeing him in front of my eyes."
At Han Cheong-hyeok’s bitter words, Yeonhwa silently filled a cup to the brim with glacial ice and set it before him.
"Senior Cheong always loved spicy food. He used to say he only felt alive when his mouth was warm and burning."
Then Yeonhwa brought out a tomato stew far richer and spicier than usual, one that Jangro Suksu had personally stirred while chopping chili peppers into it and doubling the herbs. Yu Cheong-ran took a spoonful, and her eyes trembled ever so slightly.
"...It’s hot."
She didn’t know whether it was the food itself or the emotion rising within her heart, but it was the kind of heat that melted the cold grief pooled in her chest.
If I had... if I had reached Hwa-gyeong... no, if I hadn’t pushed myself thinking everything would end after the core... I have to become stronger...
Yu Cheong-ran quietly repeated the words to herself, blaming herself as she always had. Even so, she was not merely drowning in despair; she was carrying it, climbing with it, and moving forward.
Beep-dee-dong~
An order came through on the jade plaque. The server read it and then the contents—
"This order’s weird, isn’t it? Master, they asked for glacial ice, and nothing else. Who orders delivery from a restaurant and doesn’t even ask for food, the shameless bastards?"
[Order Received: Abandoned Temple Outside the South Gate. Menu: Three tubs of glacial ice. Note: No meal ordered.]
Listening to the order recited by the server, Baek-ssi, Jangro Suksu stopped what he was doing and glared at the jade plaque.
"No meal order?"
Yeonhwa nodded as well.
Mm. Shameless indeed. Wasn’t this basically placing an order at a restaurant and asking only for the side items, not even the main dish?
The delivery destination, the abandoned temple outside the South Gate, was a notorious place said to be showing recent signs of a Hyeol-mun.
Ring-ring-ring— from the guests’ tables, their jade plaques all rang in chorus.
[Summons from Jeong-sa Bon-sa-cheong. Abandoned temple outside the South Gate.]
By now the meaning was clear. It was a Hyeol-mun. And the delivery order was probably a trick—if they needed a courier to send something, some object or sign that required proper inspection, to Jeong-sa Bon-sa-cheong, they had used the delivery platform as a convenient excuse to summon one.
Still shameless.
Gang Jeok-u rose slowly from his seat. The other martial artists of the Red Cry Society all gripped the hilts of their weapons at once.
"Looks like it’s our turn. To summon us in the middle of a meal... what poor manners."
Yu Cheong-ran, too, adjusted the strap of her Cheongwol Sword and stood.
"The Cheongryu Sect will go as well."
In an instant, Mugung Hyeoptak had changed into a battlefield on the verge of deployment. Before everyone hurried out, Yeonhwa also quickly opened a jar and packed the remaining glacial ice.
"But Master, what about payment? If there’s nothing worth charging for and we even have to cover the courier fee, won’t we end up making nothing? Is this a free service?"
Jangro Suksu, writing fronted to Lee Do-cheong in the ledger, gave Yeonhwa’s shoulder a brisk tap.
"You little fool, this is on credit. Lee Do-cheong will pay with the share his friend left behind. If that bastard has any conscience, he’ll settle it even from the underworld!"
At his words, Yu Cheong-ran’s eyes wavered for a moment. As Gang Jeok-u accepted the tub of ice, he said,
"Yeonok may be closed for now, but one day it will open again and devour more people, and Hyeol-mun always returns wearing a new face. But if there is a place to come back to, then we can enter again."
Cheong No-yun also took a long drink of water and nodded.
"Whether it’s cold or hot, it’s because we can feel it that we find the strength to go back into those damned Yeonok and Hyeol-mun. We ate well, Suksu."
Without anyone needing to say it aloud, they all rose at once and headed outside.
Abandoned temple outside the South Gate.
After they left, the inn fell quiet again. Yeonhwa suddenly thought of Cheol-ya, who was not in his seat.
He was probably out somewhere alone, walking through the cracks of a Yeonok or a Hyeol-mun to fill in the gaps... a solo player... and yet a person’s limits feel so much larger when they’re felt alone.
Yeonhwa found herself sympathizing with his solitude, perhaps because it reminded her of her former self, and that made him feel even closer. Maybe that was why she kept being drawn to him.
For now, all she could do was hope that everyone would return safely and sit back down at the table again.
Mugung Hyeoptak was, in truth, not a business that made much money.
Whether it was glacial ice or dessert, they were always giving away what they could have sold, and Jangro Suksu was stubborn about refusing to charge the full price of drinks to those who returned stained in blood.
From the modern capitalist point of view, it was the kind of operation that should have gone under immediately.
And yet, strangely enough, the place never failed. So long as the martial world kept bleeding, people would keep searching for a place to return to.
Yeonhwa looked into the flames of the hearth.
Stories are not written only with swords. They are written too in the heat of the oven, in the fragrance of flour, and in the heart of a server waiting for someone to come back.
Someone dies, someone returns, someone leaves again. And between those fates, we eat. By eating, we prove we exist, gather the warmth needed to take the next step, and then walk on again.
"Yeonhwa! Stop spacing out! The people from the market consortium put in another order!"
Beep-dee-dong~
Along with Jangro Suksu’s roar, another order rang out.
The martial world was hungry today too. Not because there was no food, but because the closer death came, the harsher the situation grew, the more fiercely people felt hunger in order to endure it.
"Yes, Master! I’m stretching the margherita dough! Ready to drop in the geon-rak volcano!"
As Yeonhwa moved, she thought to herself.
A flame that never goes out, a place you can always return to, a place where you might not have to be alone—wasn’t that what Mugung Hyeoptak was?
Then I should become someone who can always welcome others back. Someone who can greet them with a bright face, no matter when they return.
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