Chi-byung-nan-byung
It was a small room lit by only a few soft candles. Bibi—no, Yu Bi—and I knelt side by side facing No Sik.
“What is the meaning of this? If you were coming, you should have sought me out first. How did you get tangled up in something like that?”
“Ah... Actually, I tried to visit you during the break earlier. But the house was so vast that I lost my way...”
So the thing she had to do was meet No Sik. The reason she had slipped out alone earlier, bustling about on her own, had been to find him as well.
“I have heard the rough outline. You beat the inspector sent by the Grand Administrator of Zhongshan, then flung down your seal of office and fled?”
That explains why she kept watching the entrance the whole time, trembling alone in fear that someone might come to arrest her.
What surprised me more, though, was that Bibi—no, Yu Bi—who looked as if she could not even step on an ant, had actually “beaten” an inspector.
“Aigoo... I have nothing to say for myself. At first he demanded a bribe, but Anxi had no wealth to spare. Then he summoned me in the night and tried to force himself on me. In my panic I grabbed a sword to protect myself, and the inspector, fleeing, tumbled over the railing and rolled down...”
No wonder the way she held a blade felt familiar. After all, this was someone who had cut through the Yellow Turban slaughterhouse with only a handful of volunteers. She had lived a life on a completely different plane from a White-Haired Failure like me.
“Tsk tsk... Even so, coming alone to Luoyang and working in a tavern—have you lost your mind? And where are your younger siblings, what are they doing?”
“Aigoo... I do not know either. I felt I would only be a burden to everyone if I stayed with them, so I slipped away alone and crossed the Yellow River.”
The younger siblings she left behind in her hometown—were those Guan Yu and Zhang Fei? That explained why someone who claimed to be from the south had been so eager to go to Mengjin.
In the end, everything had been a lie. She had never once told me the truth. Her name, her peerless beauty, even her astonishing past—all of it.
“How did you come to know Yuan Shao?”
“Ah... That is truly a misunderstanding. I only saw him once while working at Chwiwharu. He took pity on me because I was wrapping my face in bandages to hide it. That was all.”
“Do you not think you failed to conduct yourself properly? Your ears are soft and your looks are needlessly outstanding—you are perfect prey for men to use. Have I not always told you to be careful?”
“Aigoo... I have no face to show my master.”
Well, with beauty that even surpassed Chosun’s, how many men must have thrown themselves at her? Most women like that carried themselves with pride, but the other party had been Yuan Shao, of all people. Her inability to hide her feelings had been the root of this entire mess.
“And what, exactly, is your relationship with this fellow?”
No Sik’s curiosity turned to me. But what more was there to explain here? Just a White-Haired Failure waiter with the stats of a Chi-byung-nan-byung.
“Lord Do Yeop here is more enlightened in the principles of the realm than anyone I have ever met! His mind turns so quickly that he has escaped Yuan Shu’s clutches several times already—a rare talent under heaven.”
Yu Bi, why are you so bad at reading the room? She had just been scolded until the tears nearly fell, and now she was smiling brightly again, heaping praise on me without restraint.
“Did you not hear what Xu Shao said? Chi-byung-nan-byung—what talent is that?”
“I believe Lord Xu must have made some error. He is clearly not a man who deserves such an evaluation... Above all, he is the only person who has treated me warmly since I came to Luoyang. Ah... of course, if we include Lord Yuan Shao, that makes two...”
“When have you ever seen Xu Shao make a mistake like that? Honestly, a person needs a bit of firmness, yet you are swayed so easily by private feelings... So why did you come looking for me?”
“...”
Yu Bi could not bring herself to answer that. She had clearly come to meet No Sik, yet now that he stood before her, she seemed unable to speak the words.
“You cannot answer. Do Yeop, was it? Do you happen to know?”
“What else would it be? She beat an inspector and lost her post, so she is asking her master—who still has influence at court—for a pardon.”
It was so obvious there was no need to think it over. When I spat the words out bluntly, No Sik’s eyes widened a little in surprise.
“Is that true, Bi?”
“Aigoo... I never wanted to make such a request of my master. But as things stand, I have no face to show my younger siblings...”
“Huu... Very well. I will do what I can. Stay in my house for the time being.”
“Truly!?”
Yu Bi beamed as if nothing had happened, her smile full of respect for her master. Even aged, No Sik was still a man; apparently he could not refuse a request from a disciple pretty enough to make one want to bite her cheek.
“Ah... Then Lord Do Yeop can come with me as well. Yuan Shu would not dare force his way in there...”
“Why would I go there?”
“...?”
I snapped the words out, my face gone completely cold. Yu Bi’s eyes bulged as if they might pop from their sockets; she had no idea why I was acting this way.
“W-why are you suddenly like this? Have I done something wrong to you, Lord Do Yeop?”
“Of course you have. You deceived me from the very beginning, Yu Bi. Claiming you had some plague, that you came from the south...”
“Hup... How did you know I was of the Liu clan?”
“...”
Good question. No Sik had only called her “Bi”; he had never once spoken her full name. I scrambled for an excuse.
“J-just now the general called you ‘Bi,’ did he not? A disciple of the great scholar No Sik, who once served as magistrate of Anxi, and whose name is ‘Bi’—who else could that be but Liu Xuande of Zhuo County in Youzhou?”
“...”
Yu Bi was left speechless by how much I knew. No Sik, too, gaped as if wondering what kind of madman this was.
“But earlier, did you not try to protect me, Lord Do Yeop?”
“There was no need, so it was wasted effort, was it not? You never needed my help from the start, Yu Bi. You could have revealed your identity at any time and asked the general for aid, yet you just sat there and watched me be humiliated from beginning to end.”
“That is not so! As a fugitive I could not easily show my face...”
“How amusing must I have looked all this time? A Chi-byung-nan-byung pretending to know everything under heaven, a worthless waiter putting on airs in front of a noble imperial clanswoman—you must have laughed at me inside every single time, right?”
“Hup... How did you know I was of the imperial clan as well?”
“Th-that is because you are a Liu, so of course you are imperial. That story you once mentioned in passing—about a collateral imperial relative who lived among the common people—that was all about you, was it not?”
“...”
I managed to fumble my way through that one too. But the truth was, I really did feel filthy.
Yu Bi had deceived me outright. She had pretended to be in the same boat as me, yet she was a monster whose Charm alone equaled the sum of all my stats.
How ridiculous must I have looked when I received the Yuedanping? A man who claimed his dream was to rise in the world—how cheap must I have seemed in the eyes of an imperial clanswoman?
I had spent days with her and laid myself bare. What I got in return was thorough deception and betrayal.
And when I became the object of mockery and ridicule, I had only been saved by her. That, more than anything, wounded my pride.
I had thought of her as a burden and dragged her this far, but I had been completely wrong. I was not even a burden—I was less than a pimple on her backside.
“Why... why do you say such cruel things to me?”
Sniffle, sniffle... Yu Bi burst into tears again without even lasting a moment. For an instant her Charm seemed to double, and I nearly blurted out “I’m sorry!” against my will.
But I ignored it. I had been thoroughly ignored by Cao Cao and countless others today, yet none of it compared to the way she had toyed with me these past few days.
“Whether this man truly has the ability to discuss the affairs of the realm, as you claim, I do not know.”
No Sik spoke as if settling the matter. He looked at me with eyes full of contempt and delivered his own evaluation.
“But of all the men I know, he is certainly the most contemptible. Bi may be an unworthy disciple, but she is not someone a fellow like you may casually look down upon. Get out of here at once!”
“Yes.”
Think I will not leave just because you tell me to? I sprang up at once and headed for the door.
“Lord Do Yeop! Lord Do Yeop!”
Yu Bi’s sickening voice called after me, but I ignored it to the end. With a bang I shut the door behind me and walked off with no destination in mind.
Clomp, clomp...
How many minutes had I walked? Suddenly sharp regret surged up.
Why did I say those things? All that talk about being deceived and lied to was just an excuse, was it not?
The truth was I had simply felt inferior. I had sworn that even as a White-Haired Failure I would never serve under the likes of Liu Bei—yet being saved by that very Liu Bei had made me so furious I poured out harsh words.
I was the worst. Not only my stats were the worst; as No Sik said, I myself was garbage as a human being.
Feeling jealousy toward a woman, not even a man, and spewing words that gouged the heart—I was worse than even Huang Hao or Zhan Hun...
“...?”
But wait a moment—why was Yu Bi a woman?
This was a world inside a game, and before starting I had installed the free Female DLC. Yet inside the game itself, many officers remained ungender-bent.
No Sik just now, of course, as well as Cao Cao, Yuan Shao, Yuan Shu, and even Sun Jian. But then Qi Ling, Yang Hong, Feng Ji, Xu You and the rest had all been fully gender-bent?
I had thought about it in my own way and discovered a kind of rule.
Those who remained male were all the warlords of the chaotic age. In contrast, their subordinates were all gender-bent.
Things had moved too quickly for me to check status windows, but Xiahou Yuan had been a woman as well. And since Yu Bi had spoken of her “younger sisters,” Guan Yu and Zhang Fei were certainly women too.
Then why had No Sik and Wang Yun stayed the same? Because they were neither warlords of the chaotic age nor their subordinates.
They were retainers of the Han. If I completed the theory that way, the formula held: every warlord who would later contend for the realm was male, and every subordinate was female.
And. Yet. Yu Bi alone was the exception. She was Cao Cao’s final rival who would survive to the end—yet she alone was a woman.
A simple production error? Or had the producer adopted the “Liu Bei is an elf” theory or something?
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
“...?”
Caught up in completely useless thoughts, I had failed to notice the person right in front of me. I lifted my head and—eh?
Chosun was standing there.
“Ch-Chosun? Why are you here again...”
“Stop the nonsense and answer. How did you know my name?”
Whoosh!
As if she were a master of the “draw blade first, ask questions later” school, Chosun immediately pressed a sword to me and began threatening again. But had I not already explained this earlier?
“I told you I overheard the conversation with the person you were serving at the time, did I not?”
“Do not lie. No matter how hard I search my memory, that person never spoke my name.”
“Then they must have said it before that. Even before you arrived, I was there with Bibi—no, Yu Bi—the three of us together, was I not?”
“...”
Chosun paused to steady her breath and checked my eyes. But if she goes and confirms it directly with that girl, I am finished—what then?
“The disciple General No spoke of—was her name Yu Bi? I hear she is a peerless beauty under heaven.”
“Peerless beauty? Compared to you, Chosun, she is nothing more than a lantern beneath the moonlight, a sparrow before a phoenix.”
“I am not in the mood for flattery. Why are you alone now? If she is General No’s disciple, she must surely have been invited to his house.”
“Ha! Would the disciple of the great No Sik want to keep company with an incompetent like me?”
“I heard as well. An incurable failure in peace, an incurable failure in chaos, was it?”
“...”
Did you really have to say that again with that pretty mouth of yours? Even Xu Shao had only written it as a phrase; Chosun was the first person to speak the words aloud with her own lips.
“Yes, I am incompetent. So cutting down someone like me would only add dishonor to your record, Chosun.”
“The opposite. Killing someone like you would not make a single person care, so if I send you to the northern hills right now, at least I can stretch my legs and sleep in peace, can I not?”
Apparently my knowing her name still grated on her. But killing a person just to sleep more comfortably—was that not going a bit far?
“C-could you spare me?”
“What will you do if you live? No one will employ you anywhere now.”
“I just want to survive somehow. That is the goal of my life.”
“...”
I had merely stated the clear condition of the game. As Chosun said, once I had been labeled Chi-byung-nan-byung, official appointment was a dream I could not even entertain.
But what choice did I have? I was not as barbaric as the rest of you; dying still terrified me.
So whether I shut myself away in some mountain valley or went off to farm somewhere, I would first make absolutely sure I survived.
“Do you truly wish to survive?”
“If you only let me live, I will repay that grace with my life.”
“Nonsense! You say survival is your goal, yet you offer your life—what kind of contradiction is that? Still, I will give you a chance. If you properly carry out the task I assign you, you will be able to leave Luoyang safely.”
“What... kind of task?”
I had no idea what it was, but to get the blade away from my throat I at least had to pretend to listen. Then whoosh... Chosun’s face came right up to mine.
That alone was enough to make my heart feel as if it might stop—yet now she pressed her cherry-like lips against my ear and whispered in a melting voice.
“Can you become a eunuch?”
“A-a eunuch? Look, Chosun? I would rather die than have my—”
“Foolish. Castrating a grown man like you makes survival even harder. You need only pretend to be a eunuch; we will not actually cut anything off.”
Whew... That, at least, was a tremendous relief. But it did not mean every problem was solved.
“Why suddenly order me to do something like that?”
“You have no right to ask. It is enough that you simply serve a certain person at their side.”
“In the end I have no choice but to do as I am told, do I?”
What Chosun demanded was a kind of performance. Pretend to be a eunuch, enter the palace, and protect “a certain person” exactly as she ordered—that was all.
Once I gave my consent, Chosun pulled her body away. I would not have minded if she had stayed pressed close a little longer...
“You really do want to live. Agreeing without even knowing what I want shows that much.”
“Is there a problem? Everyone wants to live, do they not?”
“Sometimes people choose to die with honor. But it does not matter. I like a man with grit.”
“...”
Chosun gave a light smile with her eyes and curled the corner of her mouth. She knew perfectly well how beautiful she was.
This was a blatant beauty scheme. If I carried out the task with grit, she might grow a little fond of me—that was the temptation she was dangling.
Suddenly enthusiasm welled up. My epithet was an incurable failure in peace, an incurable failure in chaos.
Perhaps a eunuch was the occupation that suited that Yuedanping best of all.