Ghosts of the Past
The one who had spoken up was a beauty of the sort who drew every eye just by walking down the street.
When a woman like that asked if he really did not recognize her, sounding thoroughly exasperated, Ohchil’s eyes went round as saucers.
“Who… who exactly are you…?”
His face said he could not even begin to guess.
Ilhong, standing beside me, snorted a quiet laugh and leaned in to whisper her identity into the ear of her old comrade alone.
“It’s me. The brains of Dan Mujin’s crew.”
Back in their Haomu Gate days she had been the one who, armed with every scrap of information she could dig up, pointed the beggar kids at fat, safe targets they could clean out without risk. The moment Ohchil caught the word “brains,” recognition finally dawned, and Ilhong lifted her chin with open pride.
“Y-you… you’re that little brat who ran off back then…?”
Ohchil’s jaw dropped. He looked Ilhong up and down as if the sight simply would not compute.
During my stay at the Imperial Palace she had grown her black hair long; the air of a mature young woman was beginning to bloom around her. Ohchil let out a strangled shout of pure disbelief.
“You were a girl?!”
Even when she had been filthy she had looked somewhat pretty, but between the voice and the cotton padding that rounded out her figure, everyone had assumed she was a boy.
Ilhong gave a tiny nod. Ohchil had believed so firmly that she was male that the shock seemed to hit him hard.
“Don’t go telling anyone. It’s a secret.”
At her whispered warning Ohchil swallowed hard and nodded.
“Y-yeah…”
That kid could keep his mouth shut when it counted. The way he had fought the Eom Baek crew to the bitter end even when the odds turned against them proved his loyalty was solid too.
“Boss… no, Brother, you knew too?”
Ohchil whipped his head toward me with a look that said he could not believe it.
“I didn’t at first either. Only found out after I took a hole in the gut.”
There had been that case where a whole group of orphans who looked a lot like Ilhong got kidnapped. I had charged in to save them, taken a blade for my trouble, and only then learned the truth about her.
“She doesn’t trust people easily, you know.”
“Ahem. I was going through a bit of a misanthropic phase back then, so…”
Ilhong scratched her cheek, looking sheepish.
Childhood Ilhong had definitely carried a certain… venomous edge, for lack of a better word.
“Hold on—does that mean you two are, you know… like that?”
Even in the middle of everything, Ilhong still had her arm looped through mine with no intention of letting go. Ohchil, already reeling from multiple shocks, stared at us with fresh suspicion.
“No, it’s not—”
I started to shake my head, but Ilhong beat me to it by a full step.
“Yep. That’s exactly what happened.”
“Huuuuh…?”
He kept glancing back and forth between us with wide, disbelieving eyes.
I was about to set the record straight when Ilhong’s whisper slipped into my ear and stopped me cold.
“Today is the day you grant every wish of mine, remember?”
She grinned, clearly enjoying herself, and reminded me once more that she was currently cashing in her wish ticket.
Right. I had promised that for today, whatever she asked, I would play along.
“Yeah. That’s how it is.”
So I backed up her little act.
When even I confirmed it, Ohchil sucked in a sharp breath of pure astonishment.
Tsk tsk. She’s really going all out today.
Salsung, who had been watching Ilhong happily cashing in her wish ticket with a goofy smile, clicked her tongue and sniped at me.
Well, I could always clear up the misunderstanding later when I met him alone. For now…
“Anyway, Ohchil, where were you headed?”
I asked the kid who had been walking with Yang Jo and Yang Wi, weapons stuck at his waist, clearly on his way somewhere.
“Ah, I was just heading to the Jo family estate on a bodyguard job.”
He pointed toward a tall, expensive-looking mansion in the distance.
A bodyguard job—escorting a person rather than cargo.
“The Jo family, huh?”
“Yes. You know them?”
“I happened to work security for them once, a while back.”
It had been on the road to the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering, I think. I had been hired as a free-lance escort. Their daughter, Jo Yeongyeong… she had shown an alarming amount of interest in Ilhong while the girl was still disguised as a boy.
“So why there?”
“Well… a client’s private circumstances aren’t something I can just blab about.”
Something was going on at the Jo estate, then.
Look at him, taking his escort duties seriously. Nice to see.
“All right. Do a good job. And if anything messy or troublesome comes up later… you know who to call, right?”
I never treated old beggar-day connections lightly. When I told him that if he ever needed help he should come straight to the all-purpose troubleshooter—me—Ohchil’s face lit up with pure gratitude.
“That’s our Brother! You’re the best!”
He bent at the waist just like in the old days.
“Sss.”
“Ah—Brother…”
Brother, my foot.
He looked busy, so I let him go toward the Jo estate without holding him further.
The moment he left us, Yang Jo and Yang Wi crowded in asking what that had been about, but he kept his mouth firmly shut.
“Looks like everyone who ever got tied up with the Boss is doing well.”
Ilhong murmured the words while watching her old comrade disappear into the distance.
Everyone connected to me, the Heavenly Killing Star, was living well… the irony was hard to miss.
“Where to next?”
I finished off the last of the candied fruit with a crunch and asked for our next destination.
She rested a finger on her slender chin, thought for a moment, then pointed somewhere.
“The place we first met.”
I considered her suggestion.
“You were getting jumped in that alley back then.”
“I was not just getting jumped. I was fighting back, thank you very much.”
From where I stood she had been rolling around on the ground yelling that it was unfair, but whatever.
“Sure, sure.”
This was hardly a grand trip down memory lane, yet today Ilhong held the wish ticket, so I followed without complaint as she strode ahead, looking thoroughly pleased with herself.
We headed toward the chaotic back alley of our past, following the trail of memory.
But the route felt… odd. Ilhong, who almost never forgot a place she had seen once, started looping around as if she had lost her way.
I had never seen her get lost on Beijing’s streets. Watching her keep veering off onto side paths, I finally spoke up from behind.
“Ilhong, is this the right way?”
“Of course.”
It felt like she was deliberately taking a long, looping detour through the red-light district when a straight shot would have done the job.
Even in broad daylight the place was packed with customers hunting for wine and women.
Something about it felt off, yet she insisted this direction was correct and tugged me along by the arm.
As if she had somewhere she needed to be at a very specific time.
And then, all of a sudden, I ran into another familiar face on the streets of Beijing.
“Oh my… Dan Mujin the great hero…”
Very few people in Beijing called me “great hero” in such a delicate voice.
I stared, eyes wide, at the arrival of an exceptionally beautiful courtesan.
“Ju Wolay?”
I had heard that the top girls of the pleasure houses usually only moved after dark.
Maybe it was her diligent nature, but she seemed to be already on her way to work at Cheonhwaru at this hour.
Ironically enough, I was walking arm-in-arm with a beautifully dressed Ilhong like a pair of lovers when we ran straight into her.
“Oh, if it isn’t the famous Ju Wolay of Cheonhwaru! What a coincidence to meet you like this.”
The moment I saw Ilhong greeting her with the perfect demure-lady act, I understood.
She had deliberately timed our path to coincide with Ju Wolay’s commute.
What a cunning little vixen.
Salsung, who usually spent every spare second insulting me, actually chuckled and aimed a rare remark at Ilhong instead.
“You know me? And more importantly… what exactly is your relationship with our great hero Dan Mujin?”
Ju Wolay clearly did not recognize Ilhong.
Normally, whenever Ilhong got wary and clung to me, Ju Wolay would just smirk as if finding the whole thing amusingly strange.
Now that Ilhong had dressed up, Ju Wolay’s wariness spiked exactly the way it would toward a romantic rival.
It was the perfect mirror image of the attitude Ilhong herself used to take toward Ju Wolay.
“What kind of relationship? This kind.”
Ilhong hugged my arm even tighter and rested her head lightly against my shoulder.
She was putting on a flawless performance of the sort of sticky couple that makes people on the street want to look away.
Sparks practically flew from Ju Wolay’s eyes at the sight.
“Great hero, who is that brazen woman?!”
Refusing to lose, Ju Wolay latched onto my other arm and pulled with all her might. Ilhong immediately yanked me back the opposite way as if telling her not to interfere.
I suddenly found myself stuck between two women, bobbing back and forth like a buoy on rough water.
So this day actually came for me too.
Maybe the old saying that good things come to those who live virtuously was true after all.
I never expected to spend my living years being claimed by two dazzling beauties like this.
I looked up at the sky with a faintly moved expression.
Tsk tsk. You’ve completely lost your mind.
Salsung, apparently disgusted by my little moment of sentiment, clicked her tongue and started berating me in real time.
She even dragged out the familiar line about me being the enemy of all women and piled on the scolding.
So what?
On my left arm was Ju Wolay, counted among the famous Beijing Five Flowers. On my right was a beauty who, if she ever stopped hiding her identity, could easily make it the Beijing Six Flowers.
“Dan-gege, that woman is strange. Tell her to step back.”
Ilhong used the kind of intimate endearment only lovers would use, her voice full of sweet pathos, and begged me with a pitiful face to make Ju Wolay leave.
That tone, those gestures… she was deliberately imitating Ju Wolay, wasn’t she?
When she noticed I was enjoying the situation just a tiny bit, she leaned in and whispered against my ear:
“…I still have wish tickets left.”
Right. I was currently in the middle of granting Ilhong’s wishes.
“That’s how it is, so Wolay, we’ll talk later—”
“No! I won’t hand you over to some woman I’ve never even heard of…!”
Ju Wolay refused to give up and started pulling on my arm with everything she had.
Thanks to that, both my arms were stretched taut and I could move neither left nor right.
Was this what they called the chariot-dismemberment punishment from the old Joseon days?
I had to endure being the rope in a human tug-of-war between two women who simply would not listen for quite a while longer.
“Hmph. Ju Wolay, you’re as tenacious as ever!”
Ilhong, who normally had to just take it while dressed as a boy, now snorted with triumph, clearly savoring the fact that she had finally landed a solid hit.
She beamed beside me, declaring that she had at last driven off that fox-spirit of a woman.
From my perspective the two of them were pretty well matched—same level, really.
In the end Ju Wolay had lost the strength contest, lost my arm, and gone off wailing. I could always drop by later and smooth things over somehow. Claim it had all been part of a job, maybe.
That should clear up the misunderstanding and her mood… probably?
“Ah, Dan-gege, do you remember that dumpling shop?”
Apparently the word “gege” had stuck to her tongue; even after Ju Wolay was gone, Ilhong kept up the lover act without missing a beat.
She pointed at the dumpling place where, long ago, we had cleaned out a musk-smuggling ring and then stormed in as a group for meat dumplings.
The bearded owner was still there, steam rising as he boiled plump white dumplings bursting with meat juice, just like before.
“Gege, let’s go in, okay?”
Ilhong said the place brought back old memories and that she suddenly wanted meat dumplings.
Between the distance she was keeping—or rather not keeping—and the nickname, I was starting to feel awkward. As if she had been waiting for exactly that, the red lips of Salsung delivered another jab.
A woman is being that brave, and you still hesitate? You’re no man at all.
She was scolding me for my dithering.
When I looked more carefully, the tips of Ilhong’s ears—still clinging to my arm—had turned red.
She was a little embarrassed by all this too.
“All right. Let’s go, Hongmae.”
That courage of hers, pushing past the shyness, touched something in my chest. I began playing the ideal young nobleman she seemed to want.
A gentle smile, taking her hand and leading her along.
I may not look like much, but my face is actually pretty decent.
You really are the enemy of all women.
This time she scolded me for answering Ilhong’s wish.
Seriously, what did she want me to do then?
“…Okay.”
Her ears and even her cheeks were flushed as she let herself be led by the hand.
We continued our modest journey of rekindling old meetings—nothing luxurious, just small wishes that felt almost too humble for a ticket that promised to grant anything within my power.
“Ehehe.”
How could she even describe this feeling? Ilhong’s smile stretched so wide it nearly reached her ears.
Every light step felt as if she were walking on clouds.
Dan Mujin was not the usual office boss right now; he was guiding her exactly like the picture-perfect young nobleman from a painting.
Of course, the moment this wish ticket ran out he would put that invisible wall back up as if none of this had ever happened.
He would say he still could not let himself care for anyone, that he might hurt them, that it was impossible.
Even so, Ilhong—no, Honggeum—felt so happy she could almost fly.
In this moment all the complications and future troubles surrounding her seemed to fade away.
Even the thirst for revenge and the venom that always burned in her chest could be set down for a little while.
“Huh…?”
That was, until a familiar face appeared in the dim back alley where she had once worked as a beggar.
“H-Heuk Jin-jo…?”