Fish Sink, Geese Fall
Right now, the only outsiders allowed in and out of the Mangeum Money House were the courtesans drafted from the pleasure houses.
So we had drawn up a plan to disguise Jo Harang as a Cheonhwaru courtesan and slip her inside.
To that end we even dragged Ilhong into it, dressing up Mount Song’s tiger from head to toe—she who usually ran around looking like a wild tomboy. The finished product was so startling I couldn’t help the look of mild shock that crossed my face.
“Boss, how is it? My disguise work?”
The face that had been caked with sweat and dust from training passed through Ilhong’s hands and emerged with skin as pale and smooth as jade, revealing a beauty that was anything but ordinary. Hair that had once stuck out like a lion’s mane now spilled down in elegant curves; the fierce set of her eyes, softened by a special technique of makeup, took on a melancholy air. And when the cherry-red lips and a single beauty mark beneath the eye put the finishing touch on the whole effect, the Tiger of Mount Song vanished without a trace—leaving in her place a pure, delicate young woman.
“Whoa…”
The sound of pure admiration slipped out of me before I could stop it. To think that the girl who swung a greatsword at the slightest provocation and went around shouting about slaughtering villains had been hiding a side like this.
Swish. Rustle.
Jo Harang kept shifting her weight, clearly awkward in the fluttering silk robes and the tinkling ornaments.
At this rate she might be able to enchant anyone, no matter who, and lure them outside in a single go.
There was just one serious problem with the plan.
“A-a young lady who has long, ahem, admired the great hero would like to offer you a… a cup of wine…”
I had told her to treat me as the target and try to seduce me. Jo Harang immediately stuttered, short-circuited, and crashed.
“A cup of what? Keep going.”
“A cup of wine… would it be all right if I… Ugh, I can’t do this!”
Her embarrassment had apparently hit critical mass. Face flushed as red as heated iron, she declared she couldn’t take it anymore and started thrashing around. From her point of view she was just flailing in mortification, swatting at things; from ours it looked like a full-grown tiger going on a rampage.
Crash! Crack!
The sound of things being smashed and pulverized filled the air.
“Boss, do something! The office is getting wrecked!”
“Hey—stop!”
I stepped forward and tried the schoolyard anti-violence mantra, but it was useless. The desk we had barely glued back together last time simply exploded and collapsed. Chairs, furniture, every utensil that fell into her hands burst or shattered on contact.
“Hey! Quit wrecking the household goods!”
We were already pinching every coin to pay off debt; we needed to be careful with what we had left.
“Huff… huff…”
After I shouted at her a few more times to stop, Jo Harang finally halted her fit, breathing hard. She yanked off the ornaments that clinked and got in the way every time she moved and tossed them aside.
I hadn’t expected poetry, calligraphy, or singing from her—but even by my standards, her talent for the fox-like arts of luring men looked hopelessly nonexistent.
“Miss Jo Harang, please stop scratching your arms like that.”
“But this outfit itches.”
All the careful dressing-up had successfully upgraded the hardware into an elegant, pure beauty. The software running inside, however, was still pure mountain-girl wildness.
“Why do I even have to do this?”
“What are you talking about? You’re the one who volunteered first.”
“Well, that was… I didn’t know it would be this kind of job!”
She fidgeted with her fingers and snapped in a small voice.
“So you stuck your hand up and said you’d do it without even knowing what the job was?”
The words “wine and women” had come up, after all. The moment she heard Ju Wolay’s name she had charged right in, so I’d assumed she had some confidence.
“Hey, that’s because you…”
“Because I what?”
“Argh, I don’t know.”
Don’t know, huh. Was she, like Ilhong, carrying some complicated feelings about Ju Wolay?
Anyway, the success rate if we sent her in like this looked way too low.
“Boss, so in the end the looks work, but the second she opens her mouth it’s a problem, right?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Then can’t we just… solve it by not opening her mouth at all?”
That actually made a fair amount of sense.
I nodded slowly, looking at Jo Harang in her eye-catching beauty state.
“All right. We go with the mysterious-beauty strategy. You just don’t talk while you’re there.”
“Not talk at all…? Is that okay?”
She asked back whether it was really fine to cut her speech to the absolute minimum when she was supposed to be posing as a courtesan.
“With a face like yours, it’s fine.”
“……Heh-heh.”
It would probably work even better that way. When I said so, Jo Harang grinned to herself, quietly pleased.
One sentence and she was angry; the next and she was smiling. Honestly, the Purple Micro Star of this generation was a woman you could never quite figure out.
A place overflowing with the graceful melodies of courtesans and the laughter—high and low—of gamblers slamming down tiles.
In one of the Mangeum Money House’s private VIP rooms where a gambling table was in full swing, a man was savoring the long-missed feel of tiles in his hand.
“……This is it.”
Eun Yang-gon firmly believed that the last time he had failed to win and nearly ruined himself was purely because the war chest had run dry. This time, thanks to the Mangeum Money House opening its coffers, he had arrived with gambling funds that would practically never run out. On top of that, the wine and food were no longer the coarse millet brew he had been forced to choke down; everything was first-rate delicacies.
“Young master, you’ve won again? Allow this girl to pour you another celebratory cup.”
And on either side of him sat courtesans ready to recite elegant verses and stir up the mood.
“I… I don’t know if this is really all right.”
Luxury and extravagance far beyond his station. Born with a rather small liver for risk, Eun Yang-gon felt a faint unease rising.
“Of course it’s all right—you’ll be the head of the Eunseong Merchant Group soon, won’t you?”
The courtesan the Money House had assigned him cooed and fawned, asking him not to forget her when that day came.
Caught between joy and some unnameable emotion, he was just slamming another tile down with a sharp clack when—
Into his field of vision as he shuffled the tiles suddenly swam a beauty so stunning his eyes went round.
While everyone else was glued to the gamblers’ sides, scrambling for whatever scraps fell their way, one woman alone sat aloof, looking utterly uninterested.
“Hah… To think a woman of such fish-sinking, goose-falling beauty existed.”
It was the kind of face you couldn’t tear your eyes from. He found himself wondering if the Ju Wolay who had rocketed to fame while he was in exile could possibly be this beautiful.
He set down even the tiles that had always sent a thrill through him the moment he held them, and, as if entranced, began to follow her. From the surrounding chatter he gathered she was a new courtesan sent over from Cheonhwaru.
Those melancholy eyes gazing out the window, that face that seemed to carry a story—clearly she had some circumstance. A tragic beauty dragged to a place like this after some disaster befell her family, no doubt.
She never uttered a single word, yet Eun Yang-gon was already spinning elaborate fantasies based solely on her detached air.
“Miss, if I may be so bold—what is your name? I am Eun Yang-gon of the Eunseong family.”
He wanted to protect this delicate woman somehow. From this unwholesome place where filthy gamblers and greed echoed on every side. That feeling swelled and shook his chest.
“I am…”
“You are?”
She looked troubled, unable to get the words out easily.
“Danmuji… they call me.”
“A truly peculiar name.”
Surname Dan, was it? The given name that followed was odd as well. Probably a professional alias. Maybe a name chosen specifically to keep men from approaching.
“You don’t seem to care for a place like this. If there is a story, might I hear it?”
She hesitated a moment, then, instead of speaking, gave a small nod. The faintly shy look of it made Eun Yang-gon smile.
“Where would you like to go?”
“A hill… where you can see the moon.”
She wanted to escape this place where gamblers’ greed swirled like a storm. Of course she did; it was the answer he would expect from someone who looked so pure. He nodded.
“There is a scenic spot nearby. We would have to leave the Mangeum Money House, though…”
He suddenly recalled Geum Hwangdo’s strict warning never to set foot outside the Money House. But what kind of man couldn’t even look after a beauty in distress right in front of him?
Just as he was about to cross the threshold of the Money House—
“Young Master Eun Yang-gon, did the master not tell you not to leave the house?”
A mean-looking merchant with a goatee stepped in front of him and the woman. He looked puzzled for a second, then saw the beauty at the young master’s side and let out a knowing little snort.
“We are merely going to view the moon.”
“Young master, the moon is perfectly visible from here.”
The merchant pressed him to stay put, as if the idea of leaving were absurd.
“Do not stop me. I will only get a breath of air and return.”
“But, young master, the master clearly—”
“That damned master this, master that. Is there anywhere I cannot go on my own two feet? Do you mean to slight the next head of the Eunseong Merchant Group like this?”
Alcohol clouds a man’s reason. A man with a woman beside him loses even his fear.
When the woman simply kept her mouth shut, Eun Yang-gon stepped forward himself and ordered the man to stand aside.
“This will become a problem later.”
“Let it become a problem. I’m used to hearing that sort of thing.”
He had once been called the biggest troublemaker in the family. Threats from underlings like this barely made him flinch.
“Young master… over there would be nice.”
A soft murmur. Following the woman’s lead, the man headed for a secluded spot with few people.
Moonlight poured down over their heads; starlight shimmered. Just as Eun Yang-gon was about to ask why she had brought him to a place like this—
Footsteps crunched nearby.
“Who’s there?”
He flinched, wondering if the goateed merchant’s warning about danger might have been right after all—only to find several solidly built martial artists from the Mangeum Money House.
“We heard you had gone out. The master is concerned, so please come back inside.”
“……Honestly, fretting over nothing. There’s no one here but me and this frail woman. What’s supposed to be dangerous?”
It was a quiet place without even the sound of insects. Geum Hwangdo and the rest of them—what were they so scared of Eun Hwaran for, making this much fuss? Their father Eun Jincheong might have been terrifying, but his little sister had neither the guts nor the drive to do anything. Eun Yang-gon shook his head.
“And young master—that courtesan on your arm is suspicious. The other girls nearby all testified they’ve never seen her before—”
“Of course they haven’t; she’s newly arrived. Why are you all so suspicious?”
He cut the man off mid-sentence, as if to say one should not doubt such a delicate courtesan.
At that moment a figure moved swiftly behind him.
Thwack! Thwack!
Silk robes flared roughly as a hand-blade cut through the air with vicious precision.
“Mm, staying completely silent got me found out after all.”
Exact strikes to the necks dropped the Mangeum Money House martial artists before they could even mount a proper counterattack.
“……Huh?”
While Eun Yang-gon stood there gaping in shock, she tore off the ornaments she found cumbersome and ripped both sleeves clean off with a sharp yank. That bold, almost mannish display made his eyes go even rounder.
“What the hell are you, you bitch…! Don’t tell me you tricked m— Ghk!”
Thud!
The answer came instead from a young man who suddenly popped up beside him like a ghost.
“Dropkick!”
A bizarre flying kick that planted both feet square in the man’s chest.
“Kyaaaargh!”
Eun Yang-gon rolled across the ground, screaming in pain. But there was no time to rest. The youth who had appeared out of nowhere kept raining punches and kicks down on him.
Taking the beating without the faintest idea why, the man finally shouted in outrage.
“Ghk! Wh-who are you?! What grudge do you have against me that you’d—”
“Me? I’m Big Sis Eun Hwaran’s little brother.”
At those words Eun Yang-gon’s eyes flew wide in disbelief.
“D-don’t be ridiculous! She doesn’t have a little brother! The only family she has left is me!”
As if the one trying to stab that last remaining blood relative had any right to talk about family.
Dan Mujin snorted and declared:
“Wrong. Now it’s just me.”
One man who had thrown his family away for gambling and women; one youth who had never known a family’s shelter and therefore understood its preciousness better than anyone. Which of them was more qualified to be family was as clear as day.
“You need a beating.”
Daring to attach himself to the Mangeum Money House and try to sell off his sister… Today looked like a day the Hundred Knots Divine Fist would spit fire without mercy.
“W-wait! I can explain! I was only—”
“Too late!”
Thud!
And the next morning.
The head office of the Eunseong Merchant Group.
Eun Hwaran, who had only just risen from her bedchamber, found herself staring in blank disbelief at a man who had returned swollen from head to toe.
“So.”
She pointed her fan tip at the tightly bound, groaning man.
“This is Big Brother?”
“Yes. I packaged him up nice and quick.”
He was a little… well, a lot swollen, but yes, that was him.
Faced with a gift far beyond anything she had expected Dan Mujin to deliver, Eun Hwaran could only hang her mouth open in a daze.