Familiar Faces
Deep blue silk fluttered in the spring breeze.
Once they left the fabric shop, Ilhong slipped her arm through his as naturally as any lover would.
"Boss, this way!"
She found his flustered reaction to the sudden contact so amusing that her lips twitched with suppressed laughter as she tugged him along.
"Hey, where are we going?"
"Street snacks! There's a place that does the best candied fruit around here!"
She led him straight into the heart of Beijing's market. Crowds thronged every direction, the air thick with the mingled scents of every kind of food, merchants' cries ringing out lively and loud.
A long time ago, when he had first set foot in Beijing, this very crush of people and vitality had overwhelmed him.
"Here, Boss. Say 'ah.'"
A sweet fragrance brushed his nose. She held out a piece of candied fruit—thin-glazed in sugar—and offered it to him.
She could have simply put it in his hand. Instead she smiled brightly and told him to open his mouth.
Crunch.
The sugar shell they called "candy" here cracked, and a bright, clean sweetness spread through his mouth.
"Sweet, right?"
"This place really knows how to do candied fruit."
No wonder she had recommended it. The fruit inside was clearly in peak season, the sugar content high, and every piece fresh.
"Give me a bite too, Boss."
He held out the stick of candied fruit at her request—only for her to shake her head as if that was not what she meant at all.
"Not like that."
"Then what?"
"You have to feed me the way I fed you."
Saying so, Ilhong closed her eyes and opened her mouth with a soft "ah."
Right there in the middle of a busy street, a beauty who turned every head stood waiting to be fed, and people all around began to murmur and stare.
"Come on… everyone's watching…"
"Hurry up, Boss."
It was embarrassing, but he had already decided to do everything she asked today.
Doing his best to ignore the burning stares, he popped one of the glazed fruits into her mouth.
Ilhong rolled the little jewel of fruit on her tongue, looking thoroughly delighted by the sweetness.
"Haha! Young couple like that—it's a fine sight, it is!"
The candied-fruit vendor, who had been melting expensive sugar, beamed at them with warm approval.
"Hehe, really? We look like lovers, then?"
"Of course you do. Everyone around here is staring with envy, aren't they?"
A well-dressed, handsome young pair looking so sweetly suited to each other was free advertising for the stall, and the owner seemed thoroughly pleased about it.
"Is that so? Then maybe you could knock a little off the—"
"Twenty iron coins, young master."
Even so, when it came to money, Beijing merchants turned ice-cold in an instant.
Dan Mujin dug a handful of iron coins from his purse, dropped them on the counter, and walked on.
"One stick of candied fruit, and it's this expensive?"
Beijing prices had been climbing lately, but that still felt like it crossed a line.
"It's the most popular candied-fruit stall, Boss."
"Still, twenty coins…"
"Aigoo, you make plenty of money. Why are you like this?"
The comment about looking like a young couple had put her in such a good mood that even after getting lightly fleeced, Ilhong was still grinning from ear to ear.
"That's exactly when you have to save. Don't you remember the days we boiled up rice-gruel water just to fill our stomachs?"
"Eeh, that was ages ago…"
Ages ago? It was the era when even a single meat dumpling was so precious they blew on it carefully before every bite.
Walking arm in arm with Ilhong down a street they had walked before, he found himself thinking how much they had changed.
Here they were in fine silk, strolling Beijing's marketplace and spending freely on expensive snacks without a second thought.
Back then, sweets glazed in honey or sugar had been pure fantasy—something they only glanced at longingly as they passed by.
"We've grown up, haven't we?"
Things that once seemed impossibly expensive and out of reach when you were a child always felt like nothing once you became an adult.
"We have. The age for the coming-of-age rite passed us by a long time ago."
The age when one was recognized as an adult—but for orphans with neither family nor kin, who would ever have held that ceremony for them?
They had simply lived as best they could. For a time as laborers for a merchant group, and later as wandering martial artists and troubleshooters, roaming the jianghu just to keep food in their mouths.
"We've been through a lot."
Ilhong, too, seemed to feel the nostalgia of walking these old streets at a leisurely pace.
Their very profession meant seeking out problems and solving them, so no one could honestly call their lives peaceful.
They had been through every trial by fire and water, from the Blood Cult all the way to affairs of the Imperial Palace, to reach this point.
"Mistress Eun Hwaran, Master… so many people we've come to know."
"Yeah, that's true."
He matched her stride and answered her soft murmur.
"We've nearly died so many times, and there were so many commissions we thought were impossible—yet we pulled them off."
"Tell me about it."
Near-death experiences had long since grown too numerous to count on his fingers, and though they had never quite struck it rich overnight, there had been more than a few times they whooped over a satisfying haul.
"And around then was when more and more women started hanging around you, Boss… Especially that fox Ju Wolay, always watching for her chance to snatch you."
"Ahem. Why'd the conversation take such a weird turn?"
That particular remark was harder to play along with.
When he reacted as if he had no idea what she meant, Ilhong huffed and whipped her head away.
Calling Ju Wolay a fox, when the girl was pure as pure could be once you knew her. Ilhong was clearly laboring under some serious misunderstanding.
"Ilhong, I think you're misunderstanding something—"
"Misunderstanding, nothing. Over here."
As if she would hear no excuses, she seized his arm again.
Before he could do anything about it, he was being dragged along by a young woman two heads shorter than him.
"This is…"
After they passed through a stretch of food stalls, a street of workshops appeared—metalwork and woodcraft, artisans' pieces displayed in dense rows.
Here the clientele looked different: better clothes, easier postures, people who clearly had money to spare.
Unlike the other streets, most of the couples here were flirting and murmuring to each other.
"Is this… a bone tile?"
He picked up a set of charming-looking bone tiles and wooden dice, feeling the old familiarity of them in his palm.
The weight and roll of these tools in his hand.
They looked like simple woodcraft, but depending on how the tiles fell, countless gamblers' lives rose and fell with them.
Memories of the time he had used them to break the bank at a gambling house belonging to the Mangeum Money House came flooding back, vivid and sharp.
While he was lost in those intense days as a cardsharp, Ilhong had stopped dead, her gaze locked on a necklace that clearly bore a master's touch.
It glittered like silver thread, set with tiny gems and engraved with an exquisite lotus pattern—a lovely piece.
She likes it? Then why is she just staring?
He tilted his head, unable to understand why she simply stood there gazing at the necklace sparkling in the sunlight.
If she wanted it, all she had to do was take out her purse. He paid her a generous wage for exactly this sort of thing.
…What a fool.
Watching from within, Salsung clicked her tongue in exasperation.
There she went again, seizing every chance to call him an idiot.
He turned a irritated look toward the crimson presence blooming into view.
Salsung pointed at the necklace with a red finger and spoke once more.
She wants you to buy it for her, you dull creature.
What meaning was there in buying a necklace with her own money and putting it on herself? Salsung had apparently been so frustrated watching that she could not stay silent any longer.
"Ahem. Shopkeeper, how much for this necklace?"
Browbeaten into it, he finally approached the silverwork merchant and asked the price.
What a ridiculous creature. A half-vengeful-spirit lecturing living people on relationships.
"Oh my, just ten silver coins will do, young master."
In this city, clothing was the first measure of a person's station and worth. His fine silk attire immediately earned him the title of young master from the merchant.
"Boss, why are you…?"
She had been staring at it openly this whole time, yet now she pretended not to know and asked why he was buying it.
He started to hold the purchased necklace out toward her. Right on cue, Salsung's exasperated voice dug into his ear again.
You hopeless thing. Fasten it on her yourself.
He was starting to get annoyed. This one used to sneer that a Heavenly Killing Star had no business playing at romance—so why was she the one acting all frustrated now?
Looking at Ilhong, he gestured that he meant to fasten the necklace with both hands.
She looked briefly startled, then nodded with a shy face and lifted her hair, baring the pale line of her neck.
He stepped close and brought both hands around behind her neck to clasp it. When his fingers brushed her collarbone in the process, the tips of Ilhong's ears seemed to flush faintly pink.
"S-so… how does it look?"
She asked him while wearing the necklace she had wanted.
The tiny gems and lotus pattern caught the light and shone against her bright features.
"It's pretty. It suits you."
"…Ehehe."
Ilhong's face bloomed open like a spring flower. It was the kind of smile that made anyone who saw it smile too, without meaning to.
Whether from sheer delight or not, she strode ahead with her arm still linked through his, the corners of her mouth twitching upward nonstop. Watching from the side, he found her both cute and beautiful at once.
"Hehe. I'm going to show this off everywhere."
"…To who?"
"To everyone!"
Ilhong declared it proudly. From Cheonhwaru on out, she intended to announce it in every corner of the city.
"Maybe hold off on that a little…"
He knew a lot of people in Beijing, after all. People he would keep seeing for a long time yet.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he found himself face-to-face with a set of thoroughly familiar faces in the street.
"Hey, Boss?!"
A voice other than Ilhong's calling him Boss. Out of the milling crowd burst Ohchil, his old back-alley comrade—now grown quite a bit broader.
Right behind him appeared Yang Jo and Yang Wi, who in those days had only been third-rank escorts.
From the badges at their waists, those same escorts he had once brawled with as a beggar had risen to second rank by now.
And Ohchil, who had always dreamed of becoming an escort, seemed to have made third rank just as he had wanted.
"Oh, Young Hero Dan Mujin."
"Word is you're doing incredibly well these days. Should we start calling you Great Hero instead?"
Yang Jo and Yang Wi, spotting him, greeted him with exaggerated formality.
"Ah, cut that out."
They had bad blood once, but that was all water under the bridge now.
He snorted a laugh and waved them off.
"Boss!"
And then the old comrade from his beggar days, looking thoroughly glad to see him after so long.
"Hey, what do you mean, Boss? How long has it been since I quit being king of the back alleys?"
"Oh—then, big brother…?"
"I told you not to call me that either."
He grinned and told him just to call him hyung.
One person using that outdated "Boss" title was more than enough.
"How are the others doing?"
Still smiling with genuine pleasure, he asked after the rest of the kids.
"Ah, everyone's finding their places! The sharp ones went under Steward Jin and are learning how to count numbers. Looks like they're planning to keep training them up."
Mistress Eun Hwaran was looking after all of them, just as she had promised long ago.
Truly, his sworn older sister had more heart than most blood relatives.
"One of them is even getting married soon!"
At the mention of a wedding, his eyes widened a little in surprise.
Come to think of it… it was not actually too early. In an age when average lifespans were short, that was the normal pace of things.
Then Ohchil's gaze shifted to Ilhong.
"But hyung Mujin—who's this lovely young lady next to you?"
After years of seeing only a skinny, grime-streaked figure, he clearly could not recognize Ilhong at all now that she had changed so completely.
Dressed in lustrous silk and carefully made up, she looked so refined that Ohchil was treating her with the careful deference due a young lady from a wealthy house.
A little disguise, a change of hair color, some makeup and dressing up—and after only a few years, he failed to know her completely.
"Hey. You don't know me??"
Seeing her old comrade, Ilhong grinned as if this were the best entertainment imaginable, and spoke in a teasing voice.
"Huh? Who are you, miss?"
Ohchil's head tilted in pure confusion.