Dang Yeohye's Friend
Ipha—the Start of Summer. Warm sunlight poured down as the season began.
"Well then, I'll be going, Master."
It had been a training session that let me gather a small insight and find a foothold toward the Transcendental Peak Realm.
Ilhong, too, seemed to have made great progress; her aura had grown even deeper.
At the busy main gate of the Eunseong Merchant Group, where cargo came and went without rest, I rubbed the bruised, panda-like swell under my eyes and bid farewell to Hwang Geolgae.
"Come often, you little bastard. You expect this old man to sit around waiting for you?"
He sounded exactly like a grandfather sulking after a grandchild who had come down for the holidays finally packed up to leave.
"Yeah, but you beat me every time I show up."
I poked at the lump still rising on the crown of my head as I said it.
Even if it was training, who would want to come back after getting thrashed that hard?
"You brat, just dodge with everything you've got."
How was someone only at the Peak Realm supposed to dodge the fists of a Transcendent Realm master? Especially when those fists belonged to the very man who had taught me the martial arts I used.
He knew perfectly well I couldn't, and still threw out that kind of taunt.
Revenge.
For once, the Heavenly Killing Star and I were in perfect agreement.
"This unworthy disciple will one day surpass the Transcendent Realm right before your eyes."
A person needed a goal. That was simply how humans worked.
Hwang Geolgae snickered at the vow of a disciple who had thrown his eyes wide open and sworn to grow stronger no matter what.
"Heh heh. So you're that desperate to thrash this old man?"
Even a petty, personal goal was more than enough as fuel for growth.
"Damn right I am."
And this body of mine—honest to a fault. Strip away the honesty and you'd be left with a corpse.
Hwang Geolgae looked thoroughly pleased with that answer and smiled.
Honestly, this old man wasn't normal either.
"Heh heh. Then I'd better pile up even more good karma."
"Good karma? Why? Didn't you say what I needed now was enlightenment?"
Wasn't that exactly why I had sought him out in the first place—to polish the fundamentals?
Of course, it hadn't seemed to do much for reaching the Transcendental Peak Realm.
"I've already stuffed all of that into your body."
"…What?"
Stuffed it into my body? What was that supposed to mean?
"Do good deeds and build virtue. Walk the path of a chivalrous hero long enough, and someday this old man's teachings will ring out from inside your chest."
He had shown me everything he meant to show. The flesh of the Heavenly Killing Star would have remembered it all. Just wait in silence, he told me.
It almost sounded as if he had arranged something in advance. I tilted my head.
"Don't give me that nonsense. You just beat the hell out of me."
It was the Divine Wind Daoist's chronic disease—every now and then he drifted off into that kind of cloudy, ungraspable talk.
"Heh heh. There's a little of that too."
See? There he went again, muttering that thrashing me was fun because I flopped around like a live fish.
"Please… wait patiently for your disciple's growth, Master."
I gritted my teeth as I said it.
Where else in the world would you find a master-disciple relationship like this?
If only out of pure spite, I would surpass that man's realm.
On the road after a long-awaited reunion and parting, I let that kind of fire burn hot inside me.
After months away, we finished our business and returned at last to the detective agency.
My own place—expensive land, taxes owed to the imperial capital, and a mountain of loans still hanging over it.
And after a few days of just sitting there, rubbing my backside into the silent office chair, the reality of our situation hit me all over again.
"Ilhong, what do we do? We have no clients."
In the last job I had shown enough prowess to put down 2.9 Imperial Guards masters, not counting the final-hit stealer—and still, no one came.
"Well, of course. That case was never going to generate word of mouth."
Ilhong stirred her teacup and muttered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
An adultery request layered with a massive misunderstanding—the clients themselves would never talk about it anywhere. And the Eastern Depot and the Imperial Guards were secret police who excelled at keeping their mouths shut from the start.
There was no way to broadcast my dazzling back-alley performance across the Central Plains and all of Beijing.
So the office was in exactly the same state it had been before that last job.
"Haah. All we got out of it was the commission fee and the spirit medicine, I guess."
Of course, the spirit medicine was a very big deal in its own right.
Judging by the look of things, that Cheon Su-gong fellow had handed it over with the air of an investment, so sooner or later I might have to earn its price.
Bzzzz.
Then the silence broke—an irritating buzz of wings, and a few dung flies circling above the honey jar.
"Ilhong! Catch those!"
I shot to my feet and shouted. Ilhong made a weird face.
"Don't tell me you're going to eat those too?"
"What? What kind of garbage is that!"
I'd done a couple of insect mukbangs when I was starving, and now she thought I ate everything that moved.
"You can't have flies buzzing around a newly opened shop! Catch them!"
"What kind of superstition is that…?"
"Hey!"
When I pressed her, she grumbled but still used her newly reached three-star Breaking Jade Fist to shoot the flies down one by one.
Jingle-jingle.
And the moment she dropped the last one, whether by coincidence or fate, the little bells at the entrance announced a visitor.
"Welcome, welc—oh. It's you again, kid?"
A round, baby-faced little brat.
The same kid from last time who had come begging for scary-uncle service because the kids at the academy were bullying him as a group.
"You. Just go home."
I waved him off at once, figuring there was no money in it.
Good karma was all well and good, but how much tax did I still owe the court, and how much debt did I still have to pay off?
"Boss, wait a second."
But our office's walking encyclopedia, Ilhong, stopped me.
"That child—last time I thought his surname was odd, so I looked into it a little."
She whispered something I couldn't simply brush aside into my ear.
"A child of the Jang Clan…?"
"Yes. Exactly. To begin with, if someone can attend an academy inside the imperial capital, their family is usually well-off."
Thinking about it, she was right. This place was the equivalent of Gangnam on modern Earth—prime real estate.
Anyone attending a school or academy in a school district this expensive obviously had some money at home.
"Ah, valued customer! What brings you here today?"
I rubbed my hands together briskly and approached the little client.
Fortunately he was still young enough that our shameless greed didn't faze him; he spilled his troubles without a second thought.
"Hyung, the kids at the academy started bullying me again."
I frowned at that.
Last time a murim fighter had stepped in and scared them that badly, and the bullying was already back? That wasn't easy under normal circumstances.
What kind of confidence had they grown?
"They brought a scary uncle of their own. Word is he's a troubleshooter."
"What kind of business-ethics-free bastards…"
When one side hired protection, the other side was supposed to back off just to avoid unnecessary friction.
And they were going to blow a case this big between troubleshooters just to scrape up a few coins?
They were the lowest kind of scum who broke the unwritten rules of the detective trade.
"Don't worry, kid. That bullying? That scary uncle? This hyung will take care of every last bit of it."
I rose in a fury. The kid muttered with a face that said he didn't quite trust me yet.
"But I heard their uncle is a really scary person. Can you actually do it?"
Apparently he had reached the Second-class Realm, or something like that.
They were already slapping the title of "master" on someone of that level.
"Watch this."
This time I pulled out ten iron coins and crushed them all at once inside my fist—crunch.
The flattened coins scattered across the floor, and the little brat's eyes went round as saucers.
"Well?"
"That trick of yours is still pretty vicious…"
The way he nodded, it seemed to have won him over.
"Let's go. This uncle will follow right behind you."
The kid, Ilhong, and I strode out of the office with our heads held high.
"Waaah!"
"I won't bully him anymore!"
"Hic…"
A bizarre scene: one rough-faced adult man lay sprawled in an ugly heap like a gangster who'd been worked over, while the surrounding little kids burst into tears.
"Boss, you beat him way too hard."
Two scary uncles had clashed, and the uncle on the side that had been bullying our client was now beaten senseless and unconscious.
"What was I supposed to do? He told me to stop showing off, whether I was the Dog-Beating Dragon or the Dick-Beating Dragon, and to get lost."
At first I had tried to talk it out. Our territories overlapped, so I figured we could keep things friendly.
But this unorthodox bastard had no idea who I was and ran his mouth filthily.
"You don't mock a man's title to his face…"
What was a martial artist? In this age where savagery and romance coexisted, they were the ones with the power of a hundred men.
Their pride was correspondingly filthy, and if you scratched it out in the open, you had better be ready for the consequences.
On top of that, I had been teased about my title so often that my berserk button had finally been pressed.
"Hic…"
"Hey, you're the employer. Why are you crying?"
Our little client from the Jang Clan was sniffling and snuffling beside me.
"Hyung, you were kinda scary."
With a heart this soft, how was he going to survive the rough world ahead?
Anyway, the job seemed to have been completed successfully, so that was a relief.
"Hey, Troubleshooter Hyung."
"Yeah, what is it?"
"They won't hire an even scarier troubleshooter over this, right?"
The Jang Clan kid pointed at the Beijing academy bullies who were still blubbering and scurrying away with their tails between their legs.
"Nah, no way… And even if they do, they can just call me again."
The office was already empty except for the flies and short on work as it was.
If they wanted to summon another scary uncle, I would only be grateful.
"How far up can you handle?"
"As far as the money goes."
A Second-class martial artist like that? He wouldn't even get past the pretty boy Ilhong standing next to me.
I knew the level of the troubleshooters in this neighborhood. Whoever they dragged in, I was confident.
"Thanks, Hyung. They probably won't mess with me for a while now."
My bold claim seemed to put the client at ease.
Apparently he had been beaten and publicly tormented for a long time—it had been rough.
Kids that age never knew when to stop; they only got crueler.
"Ah, here. The fee I mentioned."
He said he had scraped together every last bit of his allowance.
If he'd kept it, those kids would have shaken him down for it anyway, he said, and cheerfully handed over the pouch.
"Oh."
I opened it and found twenty gleaming silver coins stacked inside.
Wow. What kind of kid got twenty silver coins as pocket money?
So this was the wealth of the Jang Clan that Ilhong had told me about.
"If anything happens, call your hyung again."
"We won't have to worry about meal money for a while, Boss."
Ilhong latched onto my arm, delighted.
"For dinner, let's have Dongpo pork for the first time in ages."
And so, after thrashing one man with zero professional courtesy, we headed back to the office in a warm, satisfied mood—when
Thud.
I collided with a massive silhouette right at the doorway.
I looked up and found a mountain of a martial artist standing there. She had to be well over six cheok tall; her head nearly brushed the doorframe.
A bulk that completely blocked out the sunlight, and a long, slender greatsword.
"Ilhong, I suddenly can't see the sun."
"Take a few steps back…"
Judging by the fact that she had been waiting outside the office door, she clearly had business with us.
The mountain-like martial artist spoke to me.
"Are you the Dog-Beating Dragon?"
Unexpectedly, the voice was a woman's.
"Yes…? Do you know me?"
And for some reason, she seemed to know me very well.
"Ah, I have heard much about you. From a dear friend of mine."
A towering greatsword-wielding woman who had come on a friend's introduction.
I asked her who she was.
"A pleasure, young hero. I am Pang Hwayeop of the Hebei Pang Clan. I have come at the introduction of my friend, Dang Yeohye."
"…"
I lost my words for a moment. That the tiny Dang Yeohye and this elongated woman were friends of all things.
For them to hold a conversation, one would have to crane her neck toward the sky while the other stared down at the ground.
A strange pairing that only emphasized each other's height.
I imagined the sight and mumbled blankly,
"Whoa. That noona… she actually had a real friend…"
No wonder she went berserk every time I teased her about not having any.