Pieces for the Future
A picture-drawer who never became a true painter.
That pitiful young man's name was Neung Jinsam.
As a boy he had seized a brush and sworn he would become the most famous painter in all of Beijing. Now he was reduced to churning out unsellable pictures. Writhing in torment, he hired a wandering swordsman and climbed into the mountains, hoping that seeing the animals themselves might spark some inspiration.
Yet even when a mountain hare grazed right under his nose and a wolf pounced upon it, no brilliant flash arrived. After all that thrashing about produced nothing, he was on the verge of sinking into the conviction that he was nothing more than a mediocre scribbler—when a boyish voice cut in.
"Client, hand me the brush and the inkpot for a second."
The young wandering swordsman, exhausted by the endless, pointless mountain trek, suddenly demanded brush and paper. Dipping the brush in ink, he offered to supply the spark the painter had failed to find—if only they would stop climbing.
Neung Jinsam first thought, What would a brawler of a swordsman know about brushwork? But with nothing left to lose, he decided to watch in silence.
Swish. Swish. Swooosh.
To his surprise the boy painted without hesitation. The strokes themselves were clumsy, yet the result was surprisingly convincing; Neung Jinsam's expression shifted to mild astonishment.
"This is, uh, the linear perspective thing they teach you in middle-school art class."
Completely absorbed, the young swordsman muttered incomprehensible things. As the painting on the rice paper neared completion, Neung Jinsam's face changed in earnest.
"Heavens… the curves of a beast, the individual hairs… expressed like this?"
A fresh shock of an utterly unknown technique struck the young picture-drawer. The brushwork was crude, but the living style was truly astonishing—as if the creatures on the paper might leap out at any moment. And there was one more bizarre element…
"What—the beasts are wearing clothes and walking on two legs? How shameless…"
A rabbit dressed in the uniform of a government runner, followed by an orange fox wearing a sly grin. At a glance they looked like animals, yet their expressions and gait crossed into the human realm, leaving Neung Jinsam with an uncanny feeling. When even the eyes and mouths were drawn as human features so that emotion could be read at a glance, he let out a hollow laugh.
"How can one place beasts on the same plane as people…? Hwaaagh!"
He had always loved and cherished animals, yet he had never treated them as equals. But what reason was there that he must not?
The moment he shattered the frame of his thinking, the wall that had blocked him collapsed. The long-desired flash of inspiration struck inside his skull.
"Th-the brush! Give me back the brush and paper!"
At last his creative fire blazed to life. He felt he would go mad if he did not set the tip of the brush dancing that very instant.
Swooosh, swish-swish—!
Now he could finally paint what he had longed for. Unimpeded strokes followed one after another in a single continuous flourish. The work that would one day make him Beijing's foremost beast-painter was revealing itself to the world.
The Eastern painting of this era possessed a distinctive atmosphere and flavor. If forced to describe it, it was the deep, lingering mood one might feel looking at the cupboard pictures in a grandmother's house on a holiday. Rather than realistic depiction of what the eye saw, the usual approach emphasized the painter's spiritual vitality—the living resonance of qi. Consequently most paintings looked as if they had been pressed flat by a hand.
Swish. Swish.
Yet the picture taking shape before my eyes was something entirely different. Like a martial artist who had attained sudden enlightenment, Neung Jinsam had become one with brush and paper for two full shichen, painting without cease. Deep in the mountains where not even the mountain birds sang, only the quiet sound of a brush moving through silence echoed.
"Something… something weird is being finished, Boss."
Ilhong, who had been watching quietly, spoke up the moment the brush tip began outlining the lower body. Sharp kid, as always. Her eye for reading things was excellent.
"How can a beast have such a shameless lower half… It feels strange. Is he drawing a monster?"
"No, that's a beast all right."
Perhaps the most sacred technique for painting beasts. A hybrid style blending East and West, completed with brush and ink—the ancient Central Plains version of furry art.
"Mmm, mmmph!"
Swish-swish, swooosh.
Using my clumsy beast sketch as reference, the client was sublimating it into his own art.
"But Boss, you know how to paint too?"
Ilhong asked. Last time she had been caught red-handed dismantling a Tang-clan hidden weapon and drafting it on paper; now she looked at me with genuine surprise. Calligraphy and painting were accomplishments of children from good families, after all.
"Well, I learned this and that when I was little."
As I had mentioned before, I never received pocket money at the orphanage—thanks to a few incidents. So I had to earn my own from my light and salt, Carrot Country. What caught my elementary-school eyes was a post offering "I'll draw for you" as a side hustle. People were drawing crude dogs and cats for five hundred or a thousand won, so I jumped right in. Strangely, the worse you drew, the more people liked it. Later an otaku older brother at the orphanage taught me properly, and I made a tidy ten thousand won a piece.
"I figured as much. The random bursts of knowledge, the subtle air of good breeding—you reeked of a kid raised gently in a fine household."
Ilhong claimed she had noticed the faint noble quality in my face long ago.
"Huh… was I really raised gently…?"
A flood of bitter memories rushed through my mind. Treated as a disaster by my own clan, abandoned twice by blood kin, even stabbed in the gut. Just thinking of it made the resentment well up again. Why did my life still remain a path of thorns even after the second act opened? I glared resentfully up at the stars hidden in the brilliant sunlight.
"…It's finished! The greatest masterpiece of my life!"
In the meantime the picture-drawer youth had completed the work and was hopping up and down in excitement. He spread what he had drawn proudly before us.
A tiger of dignified bearing was exchanging thoroughly improper glances with a doe of gentle eyes.
"Boss? Th-this is… what kind of painting is…?"
It was a Beast-People Painting that went beyond shamelessness into outright blasphemy. Ilhong, who knew only landscape and genre paintings, was of course too stunned to finish her sentence.
"Oh, you can get that kind of result with a brush too?"
I, on the other hand, having once made money from exactly this sort of thing, let out a soft murmur of admiration. Look at those curved lines and the seductive charm of the beasts. I had merely shown one rough sketch as an example, yet he had not only rendered the three-dimensionality almost never seen in the Central Plains but had faithfully recreated the style that paid the highest fees back in Carrot Country.
"W-well? I poured my whole soul into it."
"Truly the brush of one who hears one and knows ten. You have talent."
Teach one thing and he grasps ten. It was like watching myself absorb Hwang Geolgae's martial training at lightning speed. As a former beast-meme craftsman of the previous generation, I sincerely praised his skill.
"Ahem, it's not quite that much."
"Come on, it is that much. Really."
"I-is it? Ahem-hem!"
A young man and a boy bonding over beasts. Meanwhile the girl beside us had been staring at both of us with an utterly incredulous look for some time.
"Boss, this… makes money?"
She delivered a line that could have come from a game-company employee.
"Of course it does."
She wouldn't understand. Once you find the right customers, the market potential is enormous. People will show up with wads of cash begging for more. The world is wide and tastes are many. The wealthy are no exception; if we unveiled the pieces through Eun Hwaran's guanxi network or an auction, the odds of profit were high. Even if not, those who appreciate novel techniques would at least take notice of the style itself.
I explained these thoughts and plans to Neung Jinsam.
"Y-you'd go that far for me? The request was only to climb a mountain with me!"
He flinched when a mere wandering swordsman casually mentioned a merchant-group leader. Having discovered a jewel of talent right before my eyes, how could I leave it to rot?
"When you become a famous painter later, just spread plenty of stories about this romantic troubleshooter, all right?"
"…Oh, of course I will! I'll paint dozens of pictures of you and make sure the whole world knows!"
Neung Jinsam, face drenched in emotion, kept repeating his thanks. Lately I had been doing a lot of things that weren't like me—betting on the future for work that paid nothing right now. Perhaps that was why the familiar ticklish sensation began rising from my dantian.
"Today I truly feel reborn… Would it be all right if I called you Master?"
No one had ever guided him before, he said, and so the young man—far older than I—volunteered to become my disciple.
"Of course."
"…Thank you! Master Dan!"
With a joyful face Neung Jinsam cupped his fist like a martial artist.
"Then, Disciple, I have nothing more to teach you, so let's head down the mountain."
I had borrowed the brush and paper in the first place because climbing was a bother.
"Sh-should we?"
"Yes, of course."
Impure affection for beasts is not something one finds on a mountain; it is found within one's own heart.
"Just wait, Master Dan! I will spread your teachings across the entire world!"
The client who had walked the single path of beasts confidently declared he would disseminate the style he had learned today throughout the Central Plains. Already I could picture ordinary people suffering under this trend thick with worldly desires. Perhaps, out of greed for good karma and sheer laziness, I had created some monstrous hybrid of Eastern and Western painting.
But hey, not my problem. I had been unceremoniously dumped into the Central Plains myself and had only suffered ever since.
Well done, Neung Jinsam. Go dye the entire painting world with beast fur.
Customer satisfaction five hundred percent. Kindness and emotion that keep them coming back. Another job flawlessly resolved. Wearing a satisfied face, I descended the mountain with Ilhong.
After reporting the successful request at the wandering-swordsmen association in the bustling district, we were on our way back. I felt Ilhong's gaze fixed steadily on my face.
"A tiger and a deer—predator and prey—sharing affection… That could never happen in nature."
As the successor of the Haomu Gate who had been exposed to every scrap of information under heaven, even Ilhong seemed thoroughly shocked by a genre she had never encountered in her life.
"But in the world of brush and rice paper, it is possible. Is it not so?"
"…"
Pulling the impossible into the possible—that is the power of creation. Building a world of one's own inside the mind and then realizing it.
"…When you said you learned this and that, was it all… that sort of feeling?"
Hey, what exactly do you take me for? Only half of what I learned was that sort of feeling.
"As if."
I slipped the remaining money into my purse after deducting the brokerage fee and answered shortly. From this request I had earned roughly two silver coins and three iron coins. Originally it had been a ten-iron-coin job, but Disciple Neung Jinsam, claiming the grace he had received was beyond repayment, emptied his entire purse before leaving.
"In my later years I have obtained such an excellent disciple."
A line Hwang Geolgae had never once uttered. I spoke it for him and tucked the purse deep into my robes.
Incidentally, I had lied to Guildmaster Gam Un—who only ever arranged shitty jobs—and handed over only two iron coins, the original twenty-percent cut. This industry runs on people fleecing each other just enough to get by, doesn't it?
Humming a little tune over the unexpected income, I was strolling through Beijing's busy streets when—
"…Huh?"
Ilhong stopped dead with a startled sound.
"What? Find a dumpling shop? Since money came in I can buy you a few."
But her expression was far beyond discovering a dumpling shop. Her eyes went round, then narrowed. Her gaze was locked on an utterly ordinary-looking coachman. They seemed to have no connection at all, yet that reaction suggested she had spotted someone related to the Haomu Gate.
"…Boss."
"Yeah?"
"I know this is shameless of me… but could you possibly lend me some money?"
How did she know that "lend me money" is the phrase I hate most?
"Hmm."
Yet this was a girl who had lived as a beggar where every single coin was precious, who understood the value of money properly, and who never once spoke nonsense. If she was asking to borrow, I decided to trust my eye for people and her sharp mind once. There had to be a reason.
"How much do you need?"
"…You're really going to lend it? Without even asking why?"
Having often watched me obsess violently over money, Ilhong asked back with eyes that could not believe it.
"You said you needed a loan, kid."
I pulled out a single gold coin I had received from Eun Hwaran. Ilhong's eyes went wide with shock.
"Th-this much money…"
"My arm's getting tired. Take it."
She had surely seen plenty of gold during her Haomu Gate days, but after falling to the bottom and becoming poor she had never laid eyes on one again. With trembling hands she carefully accepted the gold coin I held out.
"I will repay this kindness no matter what."
Yes, you will. That's why I bought the dip. Once you start investing you have to see it through to the end, so let's just think of this as averaging down the cost.
"So who is that coachman? I gave you the money, so you can tell me now, right?"
"Yes. He's a member of the Black Market. A force deeply connected to the Haomu Gate… a group that can buy or sell anything."
Smugglers, fences, thieves, slave traders—every kind of person and every kind of goods gathered there; nothing was unobtainable. That, Ilhong explained, was the Black Market. Even while speaking she was adjusting her human-skin mask and stuffing cotton between her clothes to change her build.
"You've got something to buy, then?"
"Yes. There's something I need."
"All right. Go on."
Once you decide to trust someone, you show them you trust them all the way. Even though I had entrusted her with a large sum and asked almost nothing, she looked briefly dazed, then bowed and turned away. The moment her back disappeared I took out my purse and counted the remaining coins.
"Purse feels a bit light."
Between the orphanage years and the beggar days here, my attachment to money had only grown stronger. I had acted nonchalant, yet the missing money left a hollow spot in my chest as well.
"…Hmm?"
As if to compensate, a strange ticklish sensation rose from my dantian. Or was it ticklishness? An indescribable feeling, as though some unknown energy and a hard knot had settled inside my body. It felt almost as if money had been converted directly into internal energy.
Come to think of it, in a world where the strong could rob you of money and you couldn't even report it to the authorities, which mattered more—money or internal energy?
"Lucky me."
Good deeds followed by reward—how pleasant a world this was. I reached that conclusion and patted myself on the back for my earlier action.
"I'm such a good person."
Winter passed and spring arrived, bringing life and new sprouts. And the still more mature merchant leader Eun Hwaran rose from her seat and declared:
"The time has come. The merchant group is back on its feet, so now it is the Eunseong Escort Agency's turn to stretch its limbs."
The freak of Langya Peak who had twice trampled the escort agency's honor. Because of him they had been forced to scrape together every last scrap of remaining credit for this procession. The life-or-death escort run that would decide the fate of both Eun Hwaran and the agency was about to begin in Beijing.