Hang in There, Eun Seol-ran
Eun Seol-ran was ready to climb the walls from sheer frustration.
As the daughter of the Eun Family Wall, one of Sichuan’s local power clans, she had been married into the Sichuan Dang Family for more than twenty years, yet there were still moments when the temperament of a martial household felt utterly foreign to her.
So she had always conducted herself with careful restraint. A person who did not understand the ways of the house only made things worse by meddling—she knew that well enough, and it had always seemed the wiser course.
But the affairs of the inner court were, by rights, the mistress of the house’s responsibility, and she could not stay silent on a matter as momentous as a family marriage—especially when the marriage in question was her own son Hwi-yeom’s.
True, her future daughter-in-law Sama Yun had, at some point, quietly taken every last inner-court duty upon herself. Dumping the entire wedding as well onto the bride-to-be, however, was a question of a mother-in-law’s dignity. Didn’t it make her look like surplus manpower?
On top of that, Sama Yun apparently intended to remain at her natal home until the wedding day itself. Eun Seol-ran had therefore decided to stay quiet for a while, watch how things developed, and intervene at the proper moment.
Yet when she quietly observed, she discovered that no one was paying the slightest attention to the wedding at all.
“Um… Secretary Lee? The preparations for my son’s wedding are proceeding well, I trust…?”
“Hiiik?! Yes? Ah—yes! Everything is going splendidly! Of course it is!”
Lee Jinmyeong, who had been dozing for about three seconds with his soul halfway out of his body, startled so violently he nearly left his chair. He glared at the mountain of documents on his desk as if they were mortal enemies and began slashing with his brush like a martial artist unleashing a mutual-destruction technique.
Eun Seol-ran, who had not seen him so much as lie down on a Rakhu-Rakhu mattress for three days—let alone leave work—quietly withdrew without asking further.
For reference, the Rakhu-Rakhu mattress was a thick rubber mat that Hwi-yeom, after launching the rubber business, had at some point installed in every office of the Dang Family. Lying on one supposedly allowed deep, unstrained sleep, and nighttime satisfaction ratings were high enough that Eun Seol-ran herself used them regularly. Yet for some strange reason the family members’ reviews of the item remained extraordinarily harsh.
Can’t live without the Rakhu-Rakhu, but I resent the Young Master who made them.
That was the universal verdict.
Secretary Lee seems completely swamped…
Up to that point Eun Seol-ran still had not thought the situation was truly serious. But when she asked Bak Chang-eon as well—
“My apologies. At the moment I am simultaneously overseeing four construction projects in Sichuan and Beijing, not to mention the Agricultural Cooperative, the battlefield, scholarships, trading companies… is this even living?”
“W-Wonrowon Master?”
Bak Chang-eon, radiating something uncomfortably close to the demonic aura of an Ultimate Demonic Realm master, did not seem entirely in his right mind either.
“Ye-eun… wait. Weren’t you standing right here a second ago?”
Ye-eun was busy performing What are you looking at? That’s merely my residual image.
It was not as though she could march into completely unrelated departments—Innovation Hall, Architecture, Legal Affairs, the Blacksmiths, Poison Hall, Cheol-u-jeon, or the Medicinal Storehouse—and start asking about wedding arrangements. More than anything, everyone simply looked frantically busy.
In Architecture and the Blacksmiths, not even the section chiefs, let alone the department heads, had their feet on the ground (they were quite literally flying). Legal Affairs appeared to be reviewing every land-construction, Ministry of Revenue, and Ministry of Works document from every case since the founding of the Gyeong Dynasty. Poison Hall and Innovation Hall looked less like gatherings of people and more like ghostly hell-realms of the inhuman. Cheol-u-jeon had degenerated into a chorus of Hehe… making female screws… cutting male screws….
The Medicinal Storehouse? They were already on the brink of death from overwork merely manufacturing fatigue tonics and restorative elixirs.
As for her beloved husband, the Family Head of the Dang Family, he had left behind a single letter that made people grind their teeth:
A sudden thread of enlightenment has presented itself. In order not to let it slip away I enter closed-door cultivation. All affairs are entrusted to the Young Master. Do not seek me until after the wedding.
— Dang Un-sang, Family Head of the Sichuan Dang Family (seal)
And with that he was gone into secluded training.
“He ran away, didn’t he?”
“He ran away.”
“Ran away…”
“I’m jealous of a dog…”
Thinking, That son of mine has done it again, and fretting in her usual way—Oh dear, oh my, what shall we do…—Eun Seol-ran suddenly realized that no one was thinking about her son’s wedding. More precisely, no one had the leisure to. She went to find her proud son at once.
“Ah, Mother. Please come in.”
With one ear he was receiving a report from Ye-eun (so that was where she had vanished to after using her clone technique), issuing instructions with his mouth, reviewing Lee Jinmyeong’s proposal with his eyes, flicking an abacus with his left hand, and ruthlessly red-lining the report with a vermilion brush in his right—the red brush that had long since become an object of terror throughout the Dang Family. Hwi-yeom looked up at his mother and smiled.
Eun Seol-ran, who had almost flinched under her son’s aura without meaning to, managed a smile of her own and asked,
“W-well, my boy… Mother isn’t interrupting you when you’re so busy, is she?”
“Haha, how could that be? I was just about to take a short rest anyway. Please, sit.
Secretary Lee, look over these corrections and bring me a revised draft. I’ll rest for half a double-hour; have it ready by then. Ask Ye-eun to reinforce the reference materials.”
“Uwaaaaah…”
Leaving behind a groan that sounded like a corpse climbing out of a grave, Lee Jinmyeong staggered away. Hwi-yeom turned with a bright face and began brewing Caffa.
Accepting the fragrant cup her son offered, Eun Seol-ran felt her tension ease a little. She sipped and asked,
“Son… the wedding preparations are going well, aren’t they?”
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
Hwi-yeom’s face froze for a clear three-tenths of a second. Then a gentle, smiling expression smoothly took its place.
“Well… a wedding is just… standing before the elders of both families, bowing, and swearing before Heaven, Earth, and the ancestors—even if it’s only with a bowl of plain water—that we will live diligently. Please don’t worry.”
“……”
Eun Seol-ran was thrown into confusion.
Plain water?
Plain water?
And just one bow, then an oath to Heaven, Earth, and the ancestors, and that was that?
This cannot be. This simply cannot…!
For the first time since marrying into the Dang Family, Eun Seol-ran raised her voice.
“Try saying something that makes sense for once!!!”
Her roar carried the force of a high master’s Lion’s Roar and slammed straight into Hwi-yeom.
“M-Mother?”
“Honestly! How can the Young Master of the family be getting married and not a single person is paying attention?! Fine—this is my fault! I’ve neglected the inner court far too much! This mother of yours has been heartless! I should have checked and stepped in long ago!”
“M-Mother, please calm down first—”
“I’ll take care of your wedding myself, so just remember that!”
Faced with a mother burning with suspiciously intense resolve, Hwi-yeom could only blink, then slowly nod.
“As you wish…”
While her husband was away she had bullied her son into handing over the authority to oversee the inner court—well, not quite that, but the post of chair of Hwi-yeom’s wedding preparations committee. Eun Seol-ran swung into action at once.
(At that moment Lee Jinmyeong had begged her on his knees to please, as mistress of the Dang Family, take the full inner-court authority as well. She refused him flatly.)
“Wedding preparations begin with inviting the guests and end with entertaining them.”
The most important and delicate task was writing the invitations that would be sent out.
“Yeom-ie has businesses running here, there, and everywhere, so all those people must be remembered… and the many who help the Dang Family, and the martial connections as well… even that much is already a mountain of work.”
She went straight to Hwi-yeom’s office and held out a sheet of paper.
“I’m going to write the invitations. Compile a list of the important people who absolutely must not be left out, with a brief note on each. I don’t know the people involved in your businesses very well.”
“Ah, yes. For that… here it is. You can write from this register.”
When Eun Seol-ran looked, the number of names already exceeded five hundred.
“Th-this many?”
“Influential figures from the Beijing political scene, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, plus construction and business partners, or people with whom we will need relationships in the future. Leaving even one of them out would be awkward. Of course not all of them will come just because we invite them.”
In particular, the names of great and minor officials in Beijing whose ranks and titles she had never even heard of left her dizzy.
By way of experiment she read one aloud.
“Censorate, Rank Six, Records Officer Han Beom?”
“A kind soul who has transcribed every construction-related lawsuit record from the entire history of the Gyeong Dynasty and sent them all to Legal Affairs. Quite a few in the Censorate are not aligned with the Eight Great Imperial Families, so many others besides him have been helping us—Jin Jang-hun, Yi Gon, Han Seung-yun, Gye Chun-chu, O Jang-hyeok, Na Jin, and so on.”
“…Ministry of Revenue, Rank Six, Administrative Officer Gwak Ju-hyeon?”
“Ah, that one. Getting on speaking terms took a little effort. The Ministry of Revenue has strong influence from the Ho Jong-bang Family, after all. We still haven’t clearly settled our position with the Bang Family, yet we need a great deal of practical help from the Ministry on stock-trading concepts and patent rights, so the assistance of working-level officials like him is essential.
Jo Jun-sang and Jo Chi-hun the brothers, Jang Jin-myeong, Yi Su-ryeong, Bak Dae-jeon, Hong Sam-pum, Yun Yeol-cheon, Sama Hyun… ah, Sama Hyun is already covered—my in-laws will send a separate invitation.”
“…Have you memorized this entire register?”
“Of course?”
Hwi-yeom tilted his head as if to say, Why would that even be a question? Eun Seol-ran understood at once why the people under her son were dropping like flies.
“…So not a single person on this list is someone we can afford to slight?”
“Yes. The high officials need no explanation, and even the minor functionaries occupy practical or political positions that have helped our family in large ways and small. Foreign relations are decided by who tends the grassroots network best, aren’t they?
Ordinarily Yun-mae handles all of that, but she happens to be away at the moment… Knowing Mother will help is truly reassuring.”
If the network is so important, why weren’t you paying attention to the wedding preparations in the first place?
Suppressing the sigh that rose in her throat, Eun Seol-ran steeled herself as a mother to write invitations until the ligaments in her right hand snapped.
Even the business-and-politics names alone—people with no connection to the martial world—numbered five hundred. Once the martial connections were added, the total would easily pass a thousand.
At the very least the Sect Leaders of the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Family Heads of the Nine Great Noble Families had to receive formal invitations even if they never came, simply to avoid future trouble. Then there were the many martial artists, factions, and merchants of the Central Plains with deep ties to the Dang Family. In particular, those who had individually rendered kindness to the house could not be neglected.
Throughout the long years when the Dang Family had been declining, those who had never cut their ties and had helped the house endure even to this degree deserved to see, with their own eyes, that thanks to them the Dang Family had weathered the hard times and was now rising again in prosperity.
When Eun Seol-ran had married Dang Un-sang, the total number of invitation recipients had been fewer than a hundred and fifty all told…
Listen to me complaining about abundance.
“All right, Seol-ran. Let’s do this!”
She kindled her resolve in front of a mountain of fine stationery and envelopes.
And for three solid days she became a letter-writing machine.
Only when the ligaments in her wrist were on the verge of declaring, Sorry, but I’m quitting after today, did her epic bout of simple labor finally end.
Her road of hardship, however, was only beginning. Now that the mindless hand-work of writing invitations was finished, she had to begin the real preparations for receiving guests.
She would have to serve cuisine from every region of the land to guests coming from every region of the land. Seating would have to be arranged with careful consideration of rank and relationship so that no unpleasant encounters occurred. Protocol and seating charts must not escalate into questions of hierarchy or face, and must not violate the old rites—there were more than one or two things to keep in mind.
And every one of those problems grew several times more complicated as the number of guests increased.
“…Let’s drink some Caffa and get to work…”
Before she knew it, Eun Seol-ran herself had become just another of the Dang Family’s walking jiangshi.
And so, through a mother’s tearful determination to make her son’s wedding the finest it could be, the day at last arrived.