The Price of Rumors
The old beggar standing at the doorway didn’t wait for an answer. He peered inside instead. Makdongi clutched a rag to his nose in exaggerated disgust. From behind the counter, Yeon Un waved him in.
“It works just fine. Please, have a seat. We happen to have an opening.”
“……Huh. You’re not kicking me out.”
“Why would I turn away a patient? Though I will admit you smell a bit.”
The old man cackled and dropped onto the wooden bench. When he rolled up his grimy sleeve, the motion was surprisingly brisk. Yeon Un took hold of his wrist. Instead of rain, this time the cries of street vendors beyond the market drifted in after a single breath.
“You haven’t missed a meal in quite some time.”
“……Since when do beggars get compliments like that?”
“It’s not a compliment. It’s your pulse. Not the pulse of a starving man. You have chronic dampness in the knees—must be over ten years now. I imagine they ache before every rainfall, yet you’ve endured it well. And the drinking has begun. Still in the early stages, so you can quit if you choose.”
“Quit? That’s asking the impossible.”
“And.”
Yeon Un turned the old man’s palm upward and pressed firmly on the thick callus between his thumb and index finger.
“This is the hand of someone who has gripped a staff his entire life.”
“…….”
“The afternoon naps are fake. That wasn’t the breath of true sleep. A man busy at night—what exactly have you been listening for, spending half a month under someone else’s eaves?”
The old man’s eyelids lifted slowly. The eyes that emerged from beneath the drowsiness were not those of an old man. They studied Yeon Un for a long moment, then flicked to the medicine cabinet, the ledger, and back to Yeon Un. Suddenly he slapped his knee.
“Hahaha! Yes, of course! I knew it!”
“Please stop slapping your knee. It only makes it worse.”
“You knew all along, didn’t you? Eh? You figured out what this old beggar really is from the very first day. That’s why you pretended not to notice for a whole half-month. Of course those eyes of yours would see right through me.”
Yeon Un released his wrist. Knew? He knew nothing beyond what the pulse had told him: the knees, the drinking, the calluses. A staff-worn hand that worked nights could belong to a night watchman or a threshing hand—at any rate, not the sort who would skip out on a medical bill. That was as far as his guess had gone.
“I’m not sure what you think I know.”
“Heh heh, good, good. So that’s how you want to play it.”
The old man nodded to himself with the expression of someone who understood everything. Yeon Un returned to writing the prescription.
“Moxibustion for the knees. Ten packets of decoction will handle the drinking issue. However—”
“However?”
“The medicine will only work if you cut back on the alcohol. One bottle per day.”
“……Proprietor. I’d rather just hand over the knee.”
“Then half a bottle twice a day.”
“Isn’t that still one bottle?”
“My patient is quick with numbers.”
Things went sideways when it came time to settle the bill. The old man shook out his begging sack. Out came a cracked bowl, two brass coins, and half a ring whose origin was anyone’s guess.
“Will this do?”
“It will not.”
“Then on credit……”
“Declined.”
The old man tied the sack again without any sign of disappointment. Then he changed the subject entirely.
“Proprietor. You placed a new order for two skeins of thread, yes?”
“……How did you—”
“You paid too much. At least two pennies extra. The cloth merchants probably whined that the southern waterway was blocked and prices were soaring, but that route was cleared five days ago. The price will drop again next market day. Don’t stock up in advance.”
Yeon Un’s abacus beads froze mid-motion.
“And that medicinal merchant who brought in a hundred catties of astragalus—the roots aren’t from the region listed on the tag. They’re from a lower-grade field. You’ll know the difference in efficacy better than anyone, but it gives you grounds to negotiate the price next time you deal with him.”
“…….”
“One more for free. That innkeeper Huang in the market square—he squeezed double the usual bench fee out of the local thugs. So if the topic of guarantees comes up again, Huang has very solid backing.”
Yeon Un set down the abacus and looked at the old man once more. Every word from the beggar’s mouth had been pure money: two pennies on thread, one grade on astragalus, one solid guarantor. A beggar who only spoke when it paid.
“……So you intend to sell rumors.”
“Not sell. Trade. For the medicine. This old man’s ears are rather wide.”
“Rumors don’t go on a scale.”
“The three I just gave you seemed to weigh quite nicely, didn’t they?”
Yeon Un closed his mouth. They had. Enough to easily cover ten packets of decoction. He opened the ledger, picked up his brush, thought for a moment, and drew a new column.
Beggars’ Sect. One month of local market intelligence = ten packets of decoction. Upper tier only.
“One month of market prices and medicinal herb rates in exchange for ten packets. I do not accept rumors from the martial world—they do not appear in a pharmacy ledger.”
“But martial world rumors are the most expensive commodity of all.”
“And the most useless. Hearing that one sect attacked another won’t buy you a single licorice root.”
Chwipalgae stared at him for a long time. A man who refused martial world gossip was usually one of two things: completely ignorant of the murim, or utterly sick of it. And someone who had spent half a month without blinking once in front of the Plum Blossom Sword Art of Huashan could hardly be ignorant.
“……Then allow me to ask one test question. This old man’s ears are worth at least one packet.”
Yeon Un thought briefly, then asked.
“Escort company processions have grown scarce on the official roads lately. Cut in half over the past half-month. The routes supplying medicinal herbs have dried up as well.”
“Southern business. I’ll need to look into the details myself—but the escort companies are taking detours. Two shipments vanished cleanly at the southern entrance to Cheongha’s official road. Too tidy for common bandits, and the authorities are keeping it quiet.”
“……Understood. I suppose I should stock two months’ worth of astragalus for now.”
“You’re worried about the herbs when shipments are disappearing?”
“The shipments are not my patients. The herbs are my livelihood.”
Chwipalgae laughed as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but the laughter stretched out in a strangely satisfied way.
“Hahaha! Good, very good!”
The old man moved to slap his knee, caught Yeon Un’s eye, and slapped his thigh instead.
“By the way, proprietor, you just wrote down my sect’s name, didn’t you?”
“Callused hands from a staff, wide-reaching ears, a begging sack. What else could it be but the Beggars’ Sect?”
“……Look at that. You really do know everything.”
The old man—Chwipalgae—nodded deeply to himself once more. He was the sort who couldn’t tell the difference between what he didn’t know and what was actually valuable.
Once the old man had taken his first packet of medicine and left, Makdongi approached with his nose pinched.
“Teacher. Is that grandpa going to use the back room too?”
“Outpatient.”
“Thank goodness…… I almost had double the laundry.”
“Makdongi.”
“Yes?”
“You were picked up under the eaves as well.”
Makdongi’s mouth snapped shut. It had been three years ago, in the dead of winter. The first year after opening. On a night when snow reached the knees, Yeon Un had gone out to close the doors and found something huddled beneath the eaves. At first he thought it was abandoned baggage. The baggage coughed. When he carried it inside and laid it down, he discovered a bag of bones no more than ten years old. After three days of porridge, the child opened his eyes. The first words out of his mouth were, “I don’t have any money for medicine.”
—Credit is not accepted.
Yeon Un had said that, then ladled out another bowl of porridge.
—Repay it with labor. Start by learning how to wash the medicine pots.
When asked his name, the boy said he had none. He must have had one once, but it seemed he had left that name—and everything that came with it—behind. Yeon Un never pressed. Unlike herbs, names sometimes lost their efficacy when you examined their origin too closely.
—Then I’ll call you Makdongi.
—……Why?
—Because you were the last one I picked up. I won’t be picking up any more.
That “last one” had been growing for three years now. Today he had picked up yet another under the eaves, so Makdongi’s protest did have some merit. The boy had been paying that debt for three years. In his own opinion he had long since repaid it, but he claimed his teacher kept adding interest.
“But I was just a kid. That grandpa is a grown-up, and he stinks……”
“Both of you are patients.”
“……Yes.”
Makdongi pouted and carried the medicine pot away. Yeon Un stared down at the new column in his ledger. Another thing picked up under the eaves. He could only hope this one would prove valuable.
The rumors came back after six days.
Makdongi came running into the pharmacy, panting, after going to collect herbs in the market.
“T-Teacher! In the market, people are—”
“Speak slowly.”
“They’re talking about Baekchodang! The lady at the noodle shop says our teacher saved the Huashan elder with a single needle! The butcher swears it wasn’t a needle but a single finger. And Blacksmith Kim says the Huashan elder knelt and bowed in our shop……”
“It was sixteen needles over half a month. And it was a clasped-hand bow, not kneeling.”
“That’s what I told them! And you know what Kim said? ‘You’re too young to understand these things!’”
Yeon Un pinched the bridge of his nose. Once rumors were let loose on the street, they had a life of their own. Only now did he understand why Chwipalgae had been cackling as he took his medicine. The old man hadn’t merely sold market intelligence. He had released everything he had seen—polished by the Beggars’ Sect’s mouth into exactly the shape the market loved.
“Business is going to boom!”
“It will.”
“That’s good, right?”
“……I suppose.”
A rumor that a pharmacy was miraculous would naturally draw patients. That much he could calculate. The problem was that rumors did not only summon patients.
Yeon Un pushed the thought out of his ledger and took out the cutting board. Worries that could not be calculated only wasted herbs. For a long while, the only sound was the steady rhythm of the knife against the board.
The price of the rumors began arriving the very next day. At the crack of dawn, a patient from a neighboring village knocked on the door. He said he had left at cockcrow from ten li away. By midday two more arrived from twenty li, one of them carried on a litter. On the third day a line formed. Makdongi gleefully made numbered tags while Yeon Un had to refill two drawers of the medicine cabinet every evening.
“Teacher, thirty-two people today! Thirty-two!”
“That means another skein of thread. The needles will be dull within five days.”
“But Teacher, why are you frowning when it’s good news?”
“I frown because it’s good.”
The numbers matched. Only sleep was sacrificed. And on the seventh day, something beyond calculation opened the door.
It was just before sunset. The line of patients had finally cleared and Makdongi was collecting the numbered tags when the sound at the end of the alley changed. Evening alleys were normally noisy—water being drawn, children crying, dinner being cooked. All those sounds died away one by one. There were footsteps that could silence mouths as they passed.
A customer wearing a deep bamboo hat stepped over the threshold. From her height she was a woman; from her stride she was no ordinary patient. There was no sound of footsteps at all. Makdongi, who had been counting tags, opened his mouth and then closed it again. The words telling her to wait in line refused to come out in front of this customer. The boy quietly retreated behind the medicine pot.
Only Yeon Un remained unchanged.
“We were about to close, but I can still take you.”
The customer stopped in front of the counter. Beneath the shadow of the bamboo hat, only the pale line of her jaw was visible. A hand in a silk glove placed five silver taels on the counter. An entire month’s revenue for Baekchodang landed without a sound.
“……If this is payment in advance, we can be quick. Where does it hurt?”
The bamboo hat tilted slightly. A low, dry voice fell.
“I heard you can cure even incurable diseases.”
“The rumors have grown somewhat exaggerated. Let me take your pulse first.”
The gloved hand slowly rose toward her sleeve—then stopped.
“……My wrist. You may not touch it.”