Becoming a Father
The road back from Guizhou to Sichuan was anything but smooth.
As was usual after the rainy season passed, the roads were in a wretched state. Flooded rivers had turned stretches into quagmires where the water still refused to drain, and in other places the grass had grown so wild that even oxcarts could barely force a path through.
Sichuan itself no longer suffered such roads, which only made Guizhou’s unpaved tracks all the more punishing for the Dang Family party.
“Ha… I really want to get back to Sichuan already.”
“You’re telling me. One look at the roads and you can see Sichuan’s the best under heaven now.”
“Let’s keep talk that might invite misunderstandings to ourselves, shall we?”
Amid such chatter on the long journey home, Sama Yun’s condition had already deteriorated; she looked steadily more unwell.
“Ugh…!”
Watching her retch again and again, Hui-yeom spoke with genuine concern.
“The roads must be worse than I thought—Yun-mae’s motion sickness is really bad…”
“It is… awfully severe…”
She had always been prone to travel sickness and suffered on carriages or boats alike, so no one once suspected morning sickness.
Only after they finally reached Sichuan and the family physician took her pulse did the truth emerge.
“Congratulations. It is the breath of new life—she is with child.”
“…What?”
The physician’s words turned the household upside down.
“Kyaa~!!! Yun-ah! Congratulations!!!”
Dang Su-jeong flung her arms around Sama Yun and rubbed their cheeks together with wild abandon. Once they had maintained careful courtesy, but the long journey had forged a deep affection; Su-jeong cherished her almost like a niece of her own blood.
While Su-jeong’s cheeks grew hot from the vigorous rubbing, Eun Seol-ran arrived in a rush at the news and joined the embrace.
“My dear girl~!!!”
“Mother!”
“My precious one! Oh, you beautiful child—you really did it!!”
Eun Seol-ran’s eyes overflowed with honeyed delight as she gazed at the young woman who had kept her half-joking vow to return carrying a child who would resemble Hui-yeom.
Caught between her husband’s aunt and mother-in-law, both pressing their cheeks to hers, Sama Yun felt herself in danger of being squashed flat.
“M-Mother… it h-hurts…”
Dang Un-sang clapped Hui-yeom’s shoulder with a hearty laugh.
“Hahaha! At last you become a true man! Congratulations!”
“Ah—F-Father, thank you…”
Hui-yeom accepted the congratulations absently, wearing a dazed expression no one ever saw on him. A thousand unnameable thoughts whirled through his mind.
I’m… going to be a father?
In his previous life he had never even married; becoming someone’s father was a first across both lives. His head spun with strange, dizzying confusion.
Seeing him so stunned, Sama Yun—who had been smiling in pure happiness—began to watch him with quiet caution.
Hui-yeom shook his head, casting off the tangle of thoughts, and drew her into his arms.
“Yun-mae.”
“…My husband?”
“Right now I’m terribly complicated and confused… but I still have to say this.”
“….”
“I love you. Thank you so much. You’ve given me another reason to keep living.”
“…Yes!”
Only then did she smile radiantly, and Hui-yeom vowed to himself that he would make Sama Yun a happy mother and their child a happy baby—no matter what.
And yet…
The timing… is terrible.
Behind his happy smile, while others showered Sama Yun with congratulations, he bit his lip in secret.
The second State-run Ironworks joint-stock company construction, the stock exchange still only partially built at Caffe the One, the Beijing Railway joint-stock company, the political struggle against the Eight Great Families who would be operating in the shadows of Beijing, and the water-control works in Guizhou…
At least several years of nonstop work still waited. Work that could not be handled from Sichuan alone—work that demanded travel to Beijing, to Henan, to Guizhou.
A pregnant Sama Yun could not travel those hard roads with him; they would have to be apart. And with no modern transport, even coming and going would be grueling. In the worst case he might miss the birth of his own child.
…That cannot be allowed.
Business and family. The moment a soon-to-be father began the struggle to hold both.
I have no choice but to trust people more.
For a man of Hui-yeom’s nature—who insisted on handling everything himself—such a thought was almost unthinkable. Yet he was no legendary hero who could be in two places at once; responding in real time to events in Henan and Beijing while remaining at Sama Yun’s side in Sichuan was simply impossible.
In the end he would have to choose someone to take responsibility in his place and grant that person full authority.
And this is work that can only be entrusted to someone inside the Dang Family.
It had been only a few years since he had broken the power of the branch-family elders and forced them to kneel before the main line, restoring proper order. Even if he now handed external enterprises to those same elders, none would be foolish enough to raise a banner against him… yet there was no need to invite unnecessary risk.
If I set the precedent of entrusting other provinces to the elders, then should the Family Head’s authority ever weaken later, I would only be placing enormous power in their hands.
One might point to Elder Jin Cheong, who still held the Yunnan Agricultural Cooperative in his grip—but Yunnan, a mere hop away, was nothing like Beijing. Even elders who had merely managed a few trading houses within Sichuan itself had once become powerful enough to threaten the Family Head’s authority after turning against him.
Of course that had been the result of Dang Un-sang’s economic ignorance and of the elders—Hong Ilgon foremost among them—slowly wresting real economic power from the main line over thirty years, beginning with their own predecessors.
If the elders had already possessed enough influence to meddle in Beijing’s politics or Henan’s financial circles back then, the Dang Family would have been finished long ago.
Yet entrusting everything only to the main line also left him uneasy.
…Can I truly trust the main-line relatives one hundred percent?
Those of the main blood who had not become Family Head could, if they possessed both the will and the ability, turn traitor at any moment and seize the seat for themselves.
Why did royal houses remain so wary of rebellion by the imperial clan, yet still keep those relatives alive? Precisely because of this problem. They served as emergency substitutes should anything befall the king, and as a more trustworthy shield than powerful ministers… so they were kept and supported. At the same time they were regarded as the most dangerous potential rebels—a double standard.
The Dang Family—no, every great martial house of the jianghu—is nothing less than a miniature kingdom.
It possessed territory (Sichuan), an army (the three great combat corps and the martial artists of the main line), interests and subjects (all who lived by the Dang Family’s grace), and even external powers it could call upon (Emei, Qingcheng).
Even if Hui-yeom, with something of King Sejong’s overwhelming ability, legitimacy, and the charisma born of both, welded main line and branch line into rock-solid internal politics, there was still no guarantee his child would not end up like King Munjong or King Danjong.
I will never allow that.
This first blood of my blood.
Absolutely no one will ever dare covet your right as Family Head. And to ensure that…
Still holding the happily smiling Sama Yun in his arms, Hui-yeom began turning schemes in his mind with an expression cold enough to freeze the air.
And Ye-eun watched that face of his in silence.
“There is no need for that.”
After a day of noisy celebration and a delayed evening meal, Hui-yeom had sought an empty pavilion to think alone. Ye-eun found him there and spoke with cutting clarity.
“…Hm?”
She regarded him steadily and whispered with deep eyes.
“What you fear will never happen, Young Master.”
“…What do you think I’m thinking about?”
“You are fretting over a future in which your child is threatened by other main-line or branch-line relatives, and you are already devising ways to drive wedges between them and split them apart—are you not?”
“…You.”
For a moment Hui-yeom regarded her with cold eyes; then he gave a short laugh.
“True enough—you’ve been my foremost confidant the longest. So you can read even my thoughts?”
“Of course.”
“Then why do you play dumb when there’s work to do? Lately you’ve been quietly dumping everything on Secretary Lee—did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
“…Is bringing that up in this situation really fair?”
“Ah, right.”
Ye-eun looked away for a guilty second, then met his gaze again.
“The Dang Family’s unity is firmer now than at any time in its history. There is no need to plant seeds of future conflict.”
“You never know with people.”
“And in the first place, isn’t the answer simply for you to live a long life, Young Master?”
She spoke without hesitation.
“Whether you are forty or fifty—once you have become Family Head, you need only hold that seat firmly until your child has grown, passed through the position of Young Master, and inherited the Family Headship completely. Is that not enough?”
“…You never know with people. I could be assassinated at any moment. No matter how great the Dang Family is, the world is vast. For all we know the Emperor himself might send an assassin.”
It was, in its way, a trauma from his previous life. Still in the prime of his business years, he had been betrayed and murdered by his own close aides; he could never fully dismiss the possibility that he might die at any time.
But Ye-eun declared:
“I will never allow you to be assassinated.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I am sure.”
“That’s baseless—”
He had meant to laugh it off, yet seeing her utterly serious face he gave a small nod.
“…Thank you.”
“Try trusting those around you a little more. There is no possibility of you being assassinated, Young Master. And even in the absolute worst case, people will not turn their backs on you.”
“The goodwill you have sown these past ten years is exactly that kind of thing.”
“I only ever did business.”
“No.”
Ye-eun shook her head.
“What you have practiced for all the world to see is the Way of Mutual Prosperity—sangsaeng-ichi. You always claimed the family’s profit came first, yet you continually opened paths others could walk with you and fretted over how to care for their lives.”
“This Guizhou affair is the perfect example. Originally you intended to hand the wells and purification devices to the landlords and let them voluntarily share them with the people—thereby dissolving the long-standing grudges between landlords and commoners and the landlords’ sense of privilege, did you not? Greed ruined the plan, but that was the original design, yes?”
“….”
“You endlessly distrust human greed, yet you endlessly wish to believe in human goodness. Make the world better and profit will follow of its own accord.”
Ye-eun looked straight into his eyes, her own shining with earnest light.
“Dang Hui-yeom. That is the person I have watched all this time. That is the person who drew me to you.”
“….”
“Your knowledge from who-knows-where could become the most wicked knowledge under heaven if misused. Yet you employ it with the purest of intentions. Looking at you, I cannot help thinking of the phrase ‘hymn to humanity.’ You are the protagonist so thoroughly that not a single complaint can rise against you.”
“….”
Hui-yeom kept his head bowed and said nothing. After a moment he asked in a slightly hoarse voice:
“…A long time ago, there was a man.”
“….”
“He spent his whole life working for others. He made countless precious people and countless trusted friends.”
“….”
“And he died with their knives in his back.”
“….”
“How can you declare it so firmly? That if you live doing good for people with good intentions, only good will return—that is nothing but a fairy tale. Nothing more than a fantasy that it would be nice if it were true.”
Ye-eun answered:
“It’s simple.”
“?”
“That man didn’t have me.”
Hui-yeom’s face went blank; Ye-eun’s was proud and certain.
“I will promise you one thing. I will protect you—and your child. So stop worrying, and try believing in your people, in the hymn to humanity you have never stopped singing. People’s goodwill will not betray you.”
Still staring at her in a daze, Hui-yeom finally let out a weak laugh.
“You’re not planning to keep hiding things much longer, are you?”
“Oh my. If you think I’ve spilled everything just from this, you’re mistaken. Being a woman of many secrets is part of my charm.”
“Heh… true enough.”
“You already have a rough idea anyway, don’t you? Don’t pretend you didn’t notice after openly working me to the bone when officially I don’t even know martial arts. So I’ve decided to stop playing coy about it.”
“…All right. I’ll wait for the day you choose to tell me the rest yourself.”
The venom had left him; Hui-yeom looked at her with his usual gentle smile.
“Thank you. I’ll try trusting the people around me a little more.”
“Good.”
When Ye-eun grinned, the atmosphere turned thoroughly warm.
“Ah—speaking of which, would you mind taking a trip to Beijing for me? I’ll need to stay in Sichuan for a while, and there are matters that must be reported to Emperor Sungui—”
“You little bastard.”
“I’ll give you special-duty hazard pay.”
“You’re really doing this in this atmosphere?!”
“Exactly because of the atmosphere—riding the flow of conversation, ta-da~.”
“I don’t even need money, you know?! Even if I piled silver into a mountain I’d have nowhere decent to spend it!”
“Oh? You don’t need money? Then you’ll work for free?”
“You absolute villain!!”
Hui-yeom laughed; Ye-eun pounded his shoulder and finally dissolved into a laugh stripped of all venom.
It was late autumn, yet the rear garden of the Dang Family felt this warm.