A Responsible Adult (1)
After exchanging greetings and finishing morning training, until the breakfast table was set, Baek-i remained silent. What was that about? Had it just been forgotten? That might be for the better. After all, no one had been stabbed, so why dwell on it? If he swung at me again tonight, it would be troublesome, but after seven or eight times, it might become familiar enough to talk about. If not, well, since we'd already done seven or eight, why not make it a routine? Like wrapping up daily training or something.
As I picked up my spoon with those thoughts, Baek-i suddenly spoke.
"Master."
Honestly, I was so startled I nearly dropped my spoon, but I couldn't show it. A good master must always appear composed. Slowly chewing the rice on my spoon, I forced my trembling voice under control.
"What is it?"
A few seconds of silence felt as heavy as gold. Was he finally going to say it? I hoped it was nothing serious. Maybe something like, "Yesterday I had a qi deviation and went mad. I think I have sleepwalking." Or whatever.
"The rice is all gone."
What? Is there a gu poison in your head and right now a robber at home is threatening to slit your mother's throat if you don't kill your master? "...Rice?"
"Yes. That was the last of it."
Come to think of it, it was about time. The amount two people eat is more than expected. I don't really need to eat, but since Baek-i cooks well, I make sure to have a full portion each time. Since this small house has no space to store much, I go out once every two months to buy two mal of rice and other necessities.
Why not be self-sufficient? Well, even without actually farming, just playing a farming game once would teach you the harsh reality of rice farming. Hunting or gathering is relatively easy, but since this isn't a game, prey and gatherables don't respawn automatically. Humans are social animals. That was the hard lesson learned after turning the surrounding mountains into green wastelands and killing several batches of expensive rice seeds by drying them out.
"I'll go right away. Nothing else you need?"
"No."
Today was Baek-i's turn for dishwashing. Leaving my disciple heading to the stream with the dishes, I entered the room and took out the neatly folded white robes and the bronze mirror.
First, I changed into clean clothes, then looked into the mirror. A girl with long, slender eyelashes and large eyes stared back. It had been two months since I'd last seen this face, but not a single eyebrow hair had changed. It was a side effect of training that had appeared at some point. This body no longer changed from how I knew it. After combing my hair a few times, I put the comb and mirror back in the drawer. Since I'd bathed at the waterfall in the morning, this was enough. When I strapped on the longsword that usually just hung on the wall as decoration, I looked quite presentable. With that, I packed my pouch and left the house. From afar, the sound of washing dishes could be faintly heard.
* * *
If I were to explain why I had to dress up and carry a sword just to buy rice, I'd have to talk about the greenwood bandits and black society types that inhabit the mountain passes and alleys of this martial arts world. Their vitality and penetration are truly remarkable—they're always in places you'd never expect, and sometimes pop up where you least imagine. So even for a short trip, if it's a proper road, it's best to assume they're there. If they're definitely there, the next question is whether they'll attack or not. Logically, between someone in shabby clothes carrying only a bundle and someone in neat clothes with a gleaming sword, who would they target?
Wouldn't non-martial artists disguise themselves with good clothes and weapons? In a world without sewing machines or synthetic fibers, good clothes are quite expensive. Weapons even more so. If someone goes to the trouble of spending a lot of money on a deception, they might as well let them go out of respect for the effort. From a passing expert's perspective, this is better too. No matter how skilled, who wants a life-or-death struggle? If unlucky, you might get hurt by some amateur's blind swing, and your journey gets delayed. Most of all, it's annoying.
There are real human scum who happily kill or kidnap people to sell as slaves, but there are also slash-and-burn farmers who lost their spring crops and came out for survival, and others who just want payment for chasing bears at bear-infested passes. To decide whether to kill them, beat them half to death, or just show off strength, you have to talk first. But when dealing with those demanding "hand it over," trying to hear their whole story instead of just complying makes the conversation drag on endlessly. Like now.
"What are you babbling about? Shut up and drop the sword!"
One of them shouted, pointing a club at me. It was a situation that made me sigh. I wasn't particularly good with words to begin with. After decades without talking to people, wasn't it natural? That's why I carried an unnecessary sword to avoid trouble, but these guys had no intention of respecting my efforts.
With practiced ease, I drew my sword in one motion, and the bandits flinched. I wished they'd just run away.
"Do you know which sect I belong to, that you dare to pick a fight?"
"Don't bluff! We don't know where you're from, but we know you're a kite with its string cut. Living with your master, the two of you?"
The smallest man stepped forward and shouted loudly. He seemed to be trying to calm his subordinates' anxiety.
"So you're the leader. Where did you hear that story?"
"That's none of your business. Anyway, miss, if you've drawn it, either swing it quickly or put it down. Why so talkative? Scared because you've never used a sword on someone?"
The man twirled his long-handled blade with one hand and sneered. But his technique, crude as it was, had some form to it. My suspicion was clear, but I needed to confirm.
I looked straight at the leader and asked, "You've learned martial arts. Yet you make a living by kidnapping?"
"Funny girl. It's because I've learned martial arts that I'm doing this. Without it, how could I kidnap martial artists...?"
The leader couldn't finish his sentence.
If there's someone who's learned martial arts, things become easier. Martial artists never starve wherever they go. Even just moving rice sacks, they'd get paid twice what ordinary people do. The fact that he's doing this here means he simply enjoys this kind of work. Moreover, not even collecting tolls but attempting human trafficking makes him an irredeemable villain.
"Leader...!"
"What? What happened?!"
"He's dead."
I could feel the bandits' gazes gathering. They all looked as if they'd encountered a tiger. That's why you shouldn't become a bandit.
"If you don't want to end up the same..."
I wanted to say "drop your weapons and get lost," but that would be truly irresponsible. It might look cool, but what would ex-bandits do? They could become raiders attacking neighboring villages. Taking on all the world's problems is a job for superheroes, but not avoiding problems right in front of you is what a responsible adult does. It's annoying, but what can you do?
"One at a time, come forward and answer only the questions I ask."
Still, the others might have their own circumstances.
* * *
In the end, none of them had particularly special circumstances. Being the fourth son with no land to inherit, or running away because they couldn't pay the grain tax. They were just local thugs from a nearby small city who got involved in this because the dead leader led them, for the usual reasons. I wanted to hand them over to the authorities, but the village I was going to didn't even have a township office, let alone a county one. Instead, I just scared them a bit and divided the leader's weapons and valuables among them. Even split five ways, it was enough for a security deposit on a rented room. If they had any intention of living properly, they'd find work somewhere.
The unexpected bandit incident delayed me a bit, but I hadn't forgotten my errand. Upon arriving at the village, I headed first to the fabric shop in the town center.
"Is Old Man Hwang here?"
"Is that the Yu girl? You're here earlier than usual. Come in."
When I opened the door and entered, a dark space filled with all sorts of odds and ends piled behind fabric boxes was revealed. This place I'd been visiting for years was too big to be called a village and too small to be a small city. The soil was good, so food was plentiful, but ambitious young people left for big cities as soon as they came of age, so the population stayed stagnant. Therefore, there weren't many merchants doing business on a proper scale, but Old Man Hwang was one of them. Though called a fabric shop, since there were no households that didn't weave linen as a side job, fabric was just the most common item. If you wanted to buy something, he'd get almost anything, and if you wanted to sell, he'd buy without refusal. His business acumen was so excellent that not only the locals but even traveling merchants from surrounding villages came to him first when they needed goods or money.
"You came at the right time. That Yang fellow has been waiting since yesterday to see your face. I thought he'd occupy the guest room for a few more days, but now I can kick him out after just one day."
"Yang is looking for me? What's his business?"
"I don't know. He seemed urgent."
At those words, I felt a slight chill. Yang So-chang was a traveling merchant with a goatee who pulled a cart between cities, selling what Old Man Hwang bought and procuring what he was asked to get. That alone brought in decent profits, but Yang So-chang, with his own business sense, wasn't satisfied and tried various side jobs. I benefited from that too, earning a comfortable living for the past few years, though some of them didn't seem entirely above board. Like stamping fake seals on my poetry and paintings and selling them as works left by some unknown Lin Xian. Or forging genealogies and ancestral tablets. Or creating licenses for long-defunct sects. I'd thought that if there'd been no word until now, it was fine, but maybe it had just taken time to catch up?
"Don't worry too much. If it were really serious, that guy would be in jail first, not looking for you here. More importantly, hurry up and finish this month's transcription work. Since you came early, there's not much."
"Ah, then I'll do that. Call them in."
If the work with Yang So-chang was a decent side job, my main job was this document transcription. When I first wanted to earn money, I was at a loss. Sure, with martial arts you wouldn't starve anywhere, but that was only if you could stay in one place and work every day. If I couldn't properly fulfill my role as a master because of work, that would be putting the cart before the horse, so I needed something I could do by stopping by occasionally. However, if I only worked one day a week, it was obvious no one would hire me as a guard, instructor, or even a laborer. But forgetting to bring my pouch that day turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Unable to pay for the rice, I left my sword as collateral and wrote a promissory note. Seeing me write it, Old Man Hwang suddenly asked, "Miss, have you studied writing?" After not meeting people for so long, I'd forgotten, but in a world without compulsory education, people who could fluently read and write Chinese characters were rare. My familiarity with writing was because my family in my previous life had been quite well-off. Until I was sent to the temple as if being driven out due to various circumstances, I too had learned various things from tutors, including writing and calligraphy. That day, instead of leaving my sword, I paid for the rice by transcribing several documents Old Man Hwang needed to submit to the authorities, and from the following week, Old Man Hwang started bringing work from villagers and calling me in. Originally, this kind of transcription was handled by the village's only scholar, Scholar Jang, but as my skills proved better, more people came to me over time. Thanks to that, he was apparently grinding his teeth at me these days.
"I've finished writing. Is there anything else left?"
"No. That's all."
They say practice makes perfect—now I was used to writing petitions and various reports. Just hearing the circumstances, plausible sentences would come to mind without difficulty. Writing a few petitions in exchange for several gak and earning two months' worth of rice money made me think that even in a changed world, few jobs were as good as being a legal professional.
Having roughly finished the work, I was about to go eat lunch when someone burst through the door in a hurry. Turning around, it was Yang So-chang.
"Miss! Perfect timing. It's a big deal, a huge deal!"
"What's the commotion? Did you get sued for selling counterfeits?"
"No, no. It's about the paeseol."
"Take a breath, Yang. Breathe and speak."
Paeseol—I had trouble understanding, but it meant novels. Lately, not just women and martial artists but even dignified gentlemen and officials were secretly reading paeseol at home. Tempted by Yang So-chang's words that it would make more money than fake poetry and calligraphy, I'd started writing, but the earnings were too little compared to the effort, so I'd quit a few months ago.
"Paeseol? Didn't we decide to stop that?"
"It didn't work out that way. Remember the last one you wrote? The one with martial artists!"
"Ah, that martial arts novel? What about it?"
What Yang So-chang and I had overlooked was that the paeseol market had long since become a red ocean. The people of this world weren't fools. I'd thought writing a Guunmong knockoff harem fantasy novel was my trump card, but when I realized there were already plenty of similar ones on the market, you can imagine how I felt. I hadn't had high expectations for the martial arts novel either. Since the martial world actually existed, I figured there would be quite a few martial arts novels, and indeed there were. The plot wasn't particularly special either—I'd just written it because it was the last one and, being in a martial arts world, I might as well write a martial arts novel.
"It was a huge hit! Right now, even in Namchang, they can't get enough and it's chaos. People from the Gold Tripod Merchant Alliance even came looking for me, saying if you write a sequel, they'll buy it for at least ten gwan of gold!"
"...Ten gwan of gold?"
Ten gwan of gold. Ten gwan would be about 30kg. I didn't know the exact gold prices in this world, but gold being cheap—how cheap could it be? I could guess it was enough money to live comfortably for a lifetime without working. No, why on earth...?