Bugok (4)
I happened upon the corruption of an official who'd been fawning over me, and after a brief look through his records to weigh the circumstances, the moment I judged the man a corrupt official I led my bugok and stormed straight into his estate.
Caught off guard, he showed a flicker of panic yet still received me with a composed expression — and for some reason, that look struck me as awfully familiar.
Sure enough, he treated me to the most lavish hospitality, pressed a bribe into my hands, and begged for forgiveness. His hands had long since come clean of corruption, he claimed — so wouldn't I kindly take this and look the other way?
The instant I heard that, I understood exactly how this man had survived for so long.
"You washed your hands of corruption?"
"That is correct, General-in-Chief."
"Strange, then, that your recent ledgers looked so off."
...
When I struck an exaggerated pose of poring over the ledger, watching his face crumple like a crushed hat on the spot was a sight worth the price of admission.
I'd assumed the Luoyang housecleaning had swept every last one of this breed out — turns out a few had been hiding in the walls. The ledgers had been doctored so cunningly that noticing took time, and the only reason he'd been caught at all was that he'd recently committed fresh corruption and happened to get seized by the collar. His ability, I had to admit, deserved real credit. Had that collar never been grabbed, every one of the countless sins of his past would have stayed buried for good.
Now that I thought about it, that was downright infuriating. If luck had kept him hidden, was the plan simply to say his thanks, mend his heart, live honest forever — and then go stirring up trouble again? Then again, if he could actually control that at will, he'd never have started in the first place.
So, ever so kindly, I extended a helping hand so that he might become a new man.
"Do you know how the Han deals, these days, with the crime of embezzling state property and fleecing the people?"
The corrupt official, apparently hard at work devising countermeasures, held his silence even as I put the question to him.
I could hear the gears grinding from clear over here. Just how desperately was the man cranking his brain that he couldn't even register my words? Keep that up and smoke would be pouring out of his ears.
Meaning to snap him back to his senses, I rose from my seat and gave his shoulder a couple of brisk pats.
"Luck only stretches so far. Confiscation of your entire fortune is the bare minimum."
The corrupt official flinched and lifted his head; I pressed on, the picture of calm.
"And every last person involved becomes a slave."
...
"Getting a read on your situation yet?"
With that, I smiled at the corrupt official.
However brilliant he might be, he'd crossed the line far past the point where talent alone could buy him leniency. Corruption was the very reason the Han had rotted into its present state — cut him slack because he was capable? Not a chance. All that remained for him now was to pay for his sins.
Hearing me out, the corrupt official closed his eyes and spoke.
"...Only one road remains to me, then."
"Right. Come quietly, and your crimes won't grow by so much as one more—"
"—I shall simply have to flee far away and make a fresh start."
"...Huh?"
Having said his piece, the corrupt official flung a wide stretch of distance between us and shouted to the room.
"What are you all doing?! Out here, now — stop that man!"
"Yes, sir!"
No sooner had the words left his mouth than sinister-looking men revealed themselves. Fitting for a man whose back-pages were rotten: cornered, he'd loosed a vicious crowd from every corner of his enormous mansion.
I asked, looking supremely unbothered. "And who might these fellows be?"
"My servants!"
They didn't look the part, whatever angle I took. One glance said predatory loan sharks who'd relish finding a hundred nitpicks in your contract — and these were servants? Call the remark lookist if you like, but recalling the vicious scowls they'd flashed in that moment, they were clearly no ordinary household staff. Then again, this was a man who'd treated money as a plaything from the start, so I couldn't say it surprised me.
Keeping his distance from me, the corrupt official cried out.
"Even you, General-in-Chief, will understand why I must do this!"
Be taken quietly, lose every coin, and end up a slave — or shoulder the risk, grab what fortune he could, and vanish toward a fresh start? Picturing the man's position, I gave a slow nod at the course of action he'd chosen.
"Yes. I understand."
"Then—"
"But that's that, and this is this."
Did he imagine that understanding his reasons meant I'd wave through what he was doing right now? Coolly, I held my distance from the corrupt official.
"You've shown resistance to the execution of official duty on top of it all. There's no room left for mercy."
"Ggh—..."
I gave my order to Guan Yu at my side. "We'll need to make an example of him later. Keep him alive."
"As you command."
I watched her for a moment — Guan Yu's sapphire-blue eyes seemed to have frozen solid with cold. To a woman who prized an upright life above all else, a corruption-soaked official was doubtless beyond all forgiveness. How to put it — Guan Yu was, in a word, iron to the strong and silk to the weak. A boulder of pride that would sooner shatter than ever bow.
Having taken stock of the situation, Seo Yeo settled in tight at my side to guard me.
"Wh-what are you doing?! Stop him, quickly!"
The corrupt official slunk gingerly backward away from Guan Yu, putting distance between them, and in that interval the servants he'd summoned moved to bar her path. Everything had been exposed, he must have figured — so it was a straight plunge into an all-or-nothing gamble, and a resistance that meant absolutely nothing.
Guan Yu strode forward at an unhurried, businesslike pace, the Green Dragon Crescent Blade in her grip murderous at a mere glance —
"Whump!"
"Gyah!"
— and she felled the sinister-faced servants one after another, clubbing them with the thick of the haft or the flat of the blade, knocking them down in calm, methodical order.
I told her not to kill anyone, and truly, she wasn't killing them — she just wasn't doing anything else, either. Every servant who stood in her path lost consciousness to the crack of something snapping. So this was the fabled Batman school of nonlethal takedowns. Honestly, getting hit by a weapon that absurdly heavy and thick and coming away whole would be the stranger outcome.
By the time Guan Yu had flattened the last of them, the color had drained from the corrupt official's face, white as a ghost's — and with the most exquisite calibration of force, she knocked him out cold without breaking so much as a pinky.
Guan Yu was, as ever, Guan Yu.
"You're worried because things with Yunchang feel so distant?"
"That's right."
The road back to the court, the corrupt official bound and in tow. While Guan Yu and Zhang Fei were absorbed in their own conversation, I quietly sidled up to Liu Bei and poured out my worry.
"No matter what I bring up, all I get are short answers, and the air keeps turning awkward on me."
"Hmmm..."
"I ask only in case it's so — does Guan Yu not take to me?"
At my anxious question, Liu Bei answered, her tone melting back into that soft, honeyed warmth.
"There is no need to worry."
"Truly?"
"Yes."
With that, Liu Bei looked my way and smiled, easy and bright.
"Yunchang is doing her very best, in her own Yunchang fashion, to draw sweetly close to you, General-in-Chief."
...
"I, for one, have never once heard her call me 'big sister.'"
The problem, Liu Bei explained, was simply that Guan Yu was shy to an almost pathological degree. Honestly — just how clumsy with words does someone have to be?
"You would be quite astonished to learn the sorts of friction Yunchang ordinarily works up with the scholar-officials."
"...I see."
I nodded slowly.
As I'd just said, Guan Yu was the textbook case of iron to the strong and silk to the weak — generous with soldiers and commoners and all those beneath her, yet forever at daggers drawn with anyone of great name.
Zhang Fei, by contrast, split humanity into the honorable and the petty — showering the honorable with courtesy while grinding the petty under a merciless heel. So this one ran the exact opposite: soft on the strong, brutal to the weak. The more I turned it over, the more fascinating it became. How could conduct fork into such perfect extremes?
There is one anecdote that lays Guan Yu's character utterly bare.
When Guan Yu attacked the region around Fancheng, Wei dispatched Pang De and Yu Jin to march out and face her — and of all moments, the heavens opened. The Wei soldiers abruptly found themselves enjoying a water park, and Guan Yu scooped the lot of them up as prisoners.
Pang De was executed. Yu Jin surrendered. Tens of thousands of Wei troops became prisoners of war.
Even before the campaign, Mi Fang had squandered the army's grain and food was already running thin — and then the captured Wei soldiers ate their way through what remained, and Guan Yu's army began to writhe under shortage.
So Guan Yu hit upon a solution. And what, pray tell, was that solution?
Why, making free with the military grain of her own ally — Sun Quan.
From Sun Quan's chair, it was the sort of move that summons a good thirty question marks over one's head.
Cherish the lowly, scorn the gentry — the whole philosophy radiates off it, doesn't it?
Any ordinary commander would sooner dispose of enemy prisoners than lay hands on an ally's stores.
Unlike her sworn younger sister Zhang Fei, Guan Yu had always been extraordinarily indulgent toward the lowly.
The Guan Yu of the original history was a no-nonsense straight shooter, words and deeds in perfect lockstep — a certified "man among men" with zero take-backs.
Which is exactly why she'd fling a curse like that rat bastard right into Sun Quan's face.
And in the end, that very attitude is what ruptured things with Sun Quan and sent Guan Yu to her grave — proof that even being too honest is something worth a second thought.
Liu Bei studied me for a moment, then let a quiet smile settle on her lips.
"She may be a tongue-tied, easily flustered little sister, but I place her in your care."
"Of course."
I nodded.
Guan Yu's flaw was pride so outsized it shaded into arrogance; Zhang Fei's was her neglect of the small and lowly. Somehow or other, both needed mending.
Though I hadn't the faintest idea how. A person's nature is not the sort of thing that bends to a mere wish...
It was shaping up to be a day for very deep worries.