Like Family
Il-hye-hyang, Master of the Secret Pavilion, gathered the reports streaming in from the Haomu Gate operatives, refined them, and forged them into something truly useful.
And Ju Osan, Master of the Shadowless Pavilion, hunted men, carried out assassinations, and served as the organization’s blade.
Given the secretive, cellular nature of the Gate, close personal ties between pavilion masters were never supposed to be allowed—yet the two of them had been seeing each other in secret.
Exactly as the rumors had once claimed: that the new Gate Lord was carrying on a clandestine affair.
What can I do? I fell for him at first sight.
And so the two pillars of the Haomu Gate—information and force—became one side. In the shifting power balance of the Gate, events were now flowing precisely in the direction that Gate Lord Heuk Jin-jo had feared most.
“Switching ships, is it… Xiang-mei, I’m going to need a little more explanation.”
Il-hye-hyang looked at Ju Osan—still young, yet already sporting a thick beard—and continued.
“What more explanation do you need? You know better than anyone.”
They had already toppled one Gate Lord once before. Schemes like this were all too familiar to them.
“…I know. But you hate gambling. Hearing a proposal like that from you is strange. Who exactly are we supposed to switch to?”
Unless she had something solid to believe in, she would never make such an offer. Knowing her habits all too well, Ju Osan pressed her again and again to spill whatever she was hiding.
“The current Gate Lord, Heuk Jin-jo, doesn’t even seem to have the Gate’s official seal. His legitimacy is thin, and he has no trustworthiness either—right?”
“Ah, true. Not a single wrong word there.”
Ju Osan nodded vigorously in agreement.
All Heuk Jin-jo possessed was his personal martial skill, a talent for stabbing people in the back, and the ability to rule through fear. It was no wonder that, only a few years after the coup, so many of the Gate’s people were already wavering.
“But what if someone with real legitimacy, someone who actually holds the seal that commands both the Upper and Lower Orders, and who is capable besides, took the seat of Gate Lord? What then?”
“…That would be ideal, of course. But does such a person even exist?”
Talent that perfect didn’t just fall out of the sky one day. Seeing Ju Osan’s bewilderment, Il-hye-hyang glanced carefully around them before opening her mouth again.
“The sole blood of the previous Gate Lord, Hong Gak-jan, vanished with the seal years ago. And yet not even a trace of her has been found… until now.”
Something clicked. Ju Osan’s expression darkened.
“Xiang-mei… you can’t mean—”
“Yes. Young Gate Lord Honggeum. I’ve made contact with her. She’s alive and well.”
“……!”
The confession that she had met the very person the entire Haomu Gate was hunting with bloodshot eyes made Ju Osan’s eyes fly wide. If Heuk Jin-jo learned of this, a pursuit-and-kill squad would be formed at once. It was a secret so dangerous it could cost them their heads on the spot.
“She said she would reclaim the Haomu Gate one day. She’s burning with the will to return.”
A young mistress of outstanding martial talent and learning, with a brilliant mind that never forgot anything she saw once. The massacre of that day and the deaths of her family would still be etched in her memory, sharp and unfaded.
Ju Osan cast his mind back to her childhood—back when she had been under his protection.
“But… she’s still alone, isn’t she? She can’t overturn the current order, Xiang-mei.”
Heuk Jin-jo had bought plenty of followers by carving up the profits. Their loyalty was not true loyalty; they could turn their faces away at any moment—there was plenty of room for them to waver—but for now, they were many.
“She’s no longer alone. She’s built a force of her own.”
“Oh…? What kind of force?”
A flicker of surprise passed through the eyes of the Shadowless Pavilion Master.
“A small one, but made up of young experts.”
“Hm. Young experts… They’ll have spirit to spare, but their realms will still be lacking.”
Seeing Ju Osan’s concern, Il-hye-hyang—who knew their true strength down to the last detail—wore a meaningful smile.
“They have spirit, and their realms are already Transcendental Peak. Their growth rate is the same as the Blue Cloud Sword, the one they call the next Number One Under Heaven.”
“What—someone who reached Transcendental Peak while still in their teens…?”
Even with the full support and teaching of a great clan, reaching Peak before thirty was hard enough. Truly, the Central Plains were vast and full of talent. Ju Osan, a Peak-level martial artist himself, could not hide his shock.
“Yes. And that Transcendental Peak master seems to keep another Transcendental Peak vagabond under his command.”
A master who could command respect anywhere, serving as a subordinate for some reason.
“…Ha. I can hardly believe it.”
News that two rare Transcendental Peak masters had already sided with the young mistress made Ju Osan suck in a breath. Even if the Shadowless Pavilion was darker on intelligence than other branches, to have missed something this major…
“It’s no wonder you didn’t know. These experts only reached this realm—and only started making names for themselves—very recently.”
Which meant they possessed monstrous talent and growth potential. If that pace continued, they might even aim for the Transcendent Realm within a decade or two. In that case, it would be as good as having found both the Upper and Lower Orders already.
At that point Ju Osan could no longer suppress his puzzlement. He knew the pride and arrogance of high-level masters better than anyone.
“Why would someone that outstanding help a deputy lord who is, for all practical purposes, penniless right now? All she has is legitimacy. Restoring her will mean a blood-soaked fight.”
In short: why would a man who already commanded a Transcendental Peak subordinate go through hell for a woman whose chances of restoration looked so slim—especially when a whirlpool of blood was clearly waiting ahead?
“That’s because that master…”
“That master?”
“Is completely smitten with Deputy Lord Honggeum. He’ll do anything she asks.”
“Ah… so that’s the reason.”
Remembering the young mistress’s already striking beauty as a child, Ju Osan understood at once. By now that beauty would have bloomed like a spring flower. Any man would lose his heart.
“Love, is it? With that, even a master will move for nothing. That makes perfect sense.”
Ju Osan kept nodding. She would make a solid ally, and he could see why Il-hye-hyang was placing so much hope in this.
“Yes. Love. As deep and binding as ours.”
“…Indeed.”
The moment a man falls in love, he is already in that woman’s palm. And if the woman was Young Gate Lord Honggeum—who had been called sharp since childhood—she would have that man thoroughly in her grasp by now.
“I will give your proposal serious consideration.”
“Please do. Heuk Jin-jo’s eyes when he looks at us are not kind… It’s best to prepare for the worst.”
“…Understood.”
Some time earlier, a secret conversation had taken place in the basement of Honghwaru between Ilhong and the two women of the Secret Pavilion. A certain misunderstanding born that day had snowballed, and now a small but ominous wind of change had begun to blow through the Haomu Gate.
Even deep into the night the humidity and heat refused to leave; midsummer steamed and boiled.
“Ilhong, I love you.”
I guzzled water straight from the jar I’d just pulled out of the cool storeroom and tossed the thanks over my shoulder without even looking.
“Could you please put a little soul into those words?”
Ilhong’s snort came from beside me; she clearly didn’t buy the exaggerated line for a second.
But the thing is, words can’t hold a soul in the first place.
“If I put one in, that’d be a crime.”
I kept chugging and answered like that.
“Why would that be a crime?”
“Just is.”
Still, the cold water made me feel alive again. After sprinting around the training grounds under this tropical-night heat, my whole body had been glowing red-hot like metal left in a forge.
“Anyway, Ilhong. If you came to the training grounds, that means you feel like training— huff.”
I handed the water jar back, turned to talk to her properly—and the sight that met me stopped the breath in my throat.
My face went blank for a second.
“Hey, why are you suddenly…”
“Why what?”
“From head to toe, the whole feminine… wait, why did you drop the male disguise?”
Right in front of me she let her usual ponytail tumble free. The long black hair that had been tightly bound up spilled loose, revealing the delicate features that had been half-hidden until now.
She’d pulled the cotton padding from her clothes too; the fabric clung softly. She’d even thrown off the human-skin mask, so her slender jawline showed clear. Not the androgynous pretty boy of daytime—this was a mysterious beauty under the moon, pure and simple, met in the dead of night.
“It just felt stuffy… and it’s midnight, and no one usually comes to the training grounds at this hour, so…”
I didn’t know what wind had blown through her, but something in her heart must have shifted. Back at the office her mood had already felt a little off.
“S-so… how do I look?”
Dressed in the soft, fluttering silk clothes girls her age loved, she turned in a rustle of fabric and asked shyly.
“How do you look at what?”
“At me… looking like a proper young lady.”
A proper young lady, she said, yet the tips of her ears were bright red and her words kept stumbling. I couldn’t help a short laugh.
“No matter how I look at it, ‘young lady’ is a bit…”
That was a word for people like Ju Wolay or Princess Dohwa. Yeah.
“You jerk…!”
She’d been trying to act all mature, and one line from me made her flare up at once. Just like always she rushed over and started thumping my shoulder with her fists.
“Still, you clean up pretty well. Boys your age would go crazy for it.”
“…You’re a boy my age too, Boss. What kind of nonsense are you talking?”
She scowled, pretty brow furrowed, and complained. My habit of acting like the only adult in the room clearly grated on her.
“No, I’m a little… you know…”
It had always been like that. The kids I’d grown up with in the orphanage, living on top of each other like family—the ones who had always treated me like a real older brother—I just couldn’t look at them any other way even after we grew up. I didn’t know why. It was just how it was.
“…Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Huh?”
But the woman who had carefully dressed herself up in the middle of the night and come out here was now clenching both fists so hard they trembled, looking utterly incredulous at my answer.
“Hey, what’s with you all of a sudden?”
My subordinate and comrade who had shared life-and-death scrapes with me in the back alleys since we were kids—someone I even felt a kind of battlefield bond with—was staring at me with the face of someone betrayed.
“Don’t joke around, Boss. I… I’m never going to become ‘that.’”
Something had clearly shaken her hard. Her lips kept moving as if she had more to say, but in the end she fled the training grounds without another word.
I just stood there like an idiot until the sound of her footsteps faded completely.
“Uhh…”
It felt like I’d stepped on a landmine. I knew girls that age could have wild mood swings, but being the one caught in the blast was still pretty confusing.
Fool…
Even Salsung, who’d been weirdly quiet lately, tossed out a single word.
I stood there blankly and scratched my cheek.
Then a voice spoke up out of the dark.
“Mujin, you’re popular, huh.”
Standing on the training ground with her greatsword across her back, the Tiger of Mount Song, Jo Harang, was smirking.
“I told you not to come to the Eunseong Merchant Group.”
Normally she stayed cooped up in the office, and once Hwang Geolgae started showing up there I’d deliberately sent her far away—yet the Purple Micro Star had still crawled all the way to the merchant group to find me.
“Hey, I had a good reason.”