A Modest Investment (3)
On his way out, Geon-pyeong ran into Chief Merchant Jun-pyo, who was walking toward the room.
"Chief Merchant."
"I pay my respects to the First Young Master."
"Yes, yes. Your boy's growing well, I trust?"
"Hohoho. Of course, young master."
"We'll meet again soon. My little brother is terribly prickly, so see that he gets a proper cup of consolation wine."
"I am ever grateful for the young master's kindness."
Geon-pyeong smiled with a meaning he did not bother to hide, clapped Jun-pyo on the shoulder, and took his leave.
Only then did Jun-pyo wipe the cold sweat from his brow and step into Geon-aseong's room.
Whichever way he turned, he was walking on thin ice.
I stared straight at Jun-pyo where he sat before me.
The man was shrewd to the bone. A bat, if one wanted the plainer word — always poised to flit, the instant the moment came, toward whichever side the scales of power were tipping. The sort who probed and watched without cease, and who would carry out whatever he was told, and carry it out well, until that moment arrived.
"Setting aside the funds I already put to use last time — you've kept the rest gathered properly, haven't you?"
"Yes, of course. Thinking you might have a use for them, I held them as promissory notes, ready to be drawn at any time."
"Good. Bring them. This time I mean to spend the lot like a wastrel. I ought to show them, properly, what it means to be the second son of the Golden Manor."
"Understood."
It came to half the price of a plot of nearly an acre on the outskirts of Chengdu. Even for a house as swollen with money as the Golden Manor, it was no small sum to throw away on a whim.
Even so, Jun-pyo offered neither opinion nor worry. He only listened in silence and slipped out of the room.
The news would reach Geon-pyeong's ears soon enough, and split that mouth of his in a grin from ear to ear. Heard in passing, it would sound as though I meant to scatter the money for the sake of the Sichuan Dragon and Phoenix Gathering.
But that money had a use of its own.
The Sichuan Dragon and Phoenix Gathering was held each year so that invited rising talents might meet, and, should their tastes align, spin new dealings and fresh opportunities out of the night. But water that stands too long is bound to rot. With the years, those who attended had become mostly the sons and daughters of powers long rooted in Sichuan soil, and the gathering itself a stage on which they paraded their authority and listened to themselves talk.
Seol-ha, naturally, was worried for me.
"Why did you accept? Anyone can see the First Young Master didn't invite you with good intentions. There's the bad blood from before, as well."
"It's interesting, isn't it? If I'd lived on as Geon-gon, I'd never have been invited to a place like that. Rather intriguing, really. And more than anything, I'm not the sort to turn down a challenge that comes charging at me."
"I don't think I can guess what you're thinking anymore, young master. Not at all."
"But it's thrilling, isn't it?"
"That it is."
Watching her laugh, low and soft, I found myself staring at Seol-ha without meaning to. She didn't notice. Her eyes were on the carriage window.
She wasn't even dressed in splendid formal robes. Hair combed neatly up, nothing but martial robes — and still it was hard to look away. Within that bewitching, cool-toned beauty, the gentle smile meant only for me held me for a moment.
So this was why everyone went on about regression, regression.
Moonlight sifted faintly through the carriage window and mingled with her, and I had lost myself in the sight of it when the carriage stopped.
"Let's go."
The hand I offered was met by Seol-ha's slender fingers, jade-fine. And I was certain all over again. One of the reasons I had come back was surely this — to watch that brilliant future of hers unfold.
Astral Cloud Pavilion.
A villa of the great Sichuan Tang Clan, raised beside the lake south of Chengdu. Built out over the water, it stood like a village in miniature, red houses pouring brilliant light into the dark. Beneath the elegant gray bridges linking house to house, small pleasure boats came and went. Before the great ornate gate at the entrance, carriages that had arrived ahead of us already crowded the approach.
"It feels as if everyone is looking only at you, young master."
"Does it? Something on my face?"
"I think your human-skin mask may have come off."
Even a private little joke, slipped in like that. The recent turn of things seemed to be waking the temperament that had always been hers, and it pleased me.
Of course, that the gazes were for me was Seol-ha's mistake. Most of them were aimed not at me, but at her. And well they might be. In plain martial robes she outshone every splendid woman gathered here; they could not match so much as the tip of her toe. A beauty it would be no exaggeration to call peerless — a face to topple kingdoms.
It was then, just as we passed the carriages and crossed the great gate, that Geon-pyeong appeared in finery gaudier than a peacock, some woman on his arm.
"Have you lost your mind? How dare you make your older brother wait?"
I ignored the fight he was picking and spoke instead to the woman studying me outright with those sharp eyes. A beauty, of a sort — and one who carried an unpleasant sense of discord about her.
"Geon-aseong of the Golden Manor."
She answered with a soft, scoffing laugh.
"Ah. The one with neither martial talent nor a head for trade, who cares for nothing but gambling and women? I've heard a great deal about you from my future brother-in-law. I'm Ju Yeo-ran. Our first proper introduction, I believe."
All the while Geon-pyeong could not quite tear his eyes from Seol-ha, stealing glance after glance. Only when Ju Yeo-ran's voice reached him did he seem to catch hold of his wits, and he fussed pointlessly with the set of his clothes.
Ju Yeo-ran. Where had I heard that name? I turned it over for a moment, and then it came.
This woman was the prize at the heart of the marriage the original Geon-aseong had coveted. Second daughter of the Juseong Clan — a martial house that, on the strength of thick ties with the Tang Clan's direct bloodline, handled the troublesome, dirty work the Sichuan Tang Clan preferred not to dirty its own hands with, and had grown its influence in every direction by doing so. In this season of his life, Geon-aseong would have been thoroughly smitten with her, a woman he had once glimpsed only in passing. Over her, he had lunged at Geon-pyeong and been beaten for a day entire.
Ah. And Geon-pyeong and she did marry, in the end. Only to meet a ruin in which they gnawed each other down to nothing.
"Look at that face. What, you've got a complaint? Give a proper greeting to the woman who's going to be your sister-in-law. Unless you'd rather be planted in the ground."
So this was Geon-pyeong's first little surprise. He had stolen, in plain sight, the very woman at the center of the match Geon-aseong had been angling for. Had I been the Geon-aseong of old, Ju Yeo-ran's mockery and the situation before me would already have had my eyes rolling back. And she, having heard the whole of it through Geon-pyeong, was pretending ignorance and toying with him all the same.
That I was Geon-gon would prove, from their side of things, a miscalculation.
"Hardly. The two of you suit each other. A bit of a waste for Lady Ju, I'll grant — but you do suit."
I had achieved the Second Act. Now that I had decided to move in earnest, I had no intention of wasting myself on petty acting.
At that calm answer, Geon-pyeong's brow twitched. His face said something had gone wrong.
"What are you standing there for? Not even guiding a guest on his first visit? Got a complaint, have you?"
"This is really—"
As Geon-pyeong's face reddened toward bursting, Ju Yeo-ran broke into bright, tinkling laughter.
"Unlike the rumors, you're a man of solid composure. How impressive."
"My thanks for the compliment."
The more her favor showed, the more Geon-pyeong's expression drained to the color of dirt. A pleasant sight, that.
"I take it you have no companion of your own? I could stand in for one, you know."
Ju Yeo-ran linked her arm through mine without warning.
"Lady Ju! Didn't you come here with me?"
"Does the young master mean to show no consideration at all for a younger brother invited to the Sichuan Dragon and Phoenix Gathering for the first time?"
"That's—"
Geon-pyeong's words died in his throat. I eased Ju Yeo-ran's hand away.
"There seems to be a misunderstanding. I came with a companion."
"What? Who—"
As if she didn't know. A beauty it was impossible not to notice.
"My guard. And the companion I came with."
Seol-ha's eyes went round as I drew her forward by the hand.
"Now then. Shall we move on to the banquet?"
The cold sneer that settled over Ju Yeo-ran's face was well worth seeing.
"Enough noise. Just show us the way."
She snorted and took the lead, and Geon-pyeong looked from me to her and back again before hurrying after her in a fluster, wearing a strange expression.
"Young master, I'm your guard!"
"Not from now on. Besides, most of them seem to have come without guards. What does it matter?"
Color touched Seol-ha's cheeks for an instant.
Still — was that one here, in this season? It wasn't impossible.
The banquet hall was already loud. Rising talents who knew one another had gathered in familiar knots, tipping wine cups and talking in twos and threes, and Geon-pyeong and Ju Yeo-ran likewise made for the figures where the crowd pressed thickest, like birds contesting a feeding ground.
Seol-ha and I took a suitable place and sat.
"Is it all right for me to be here?"
Uneasy in a gathering like this, she kept glancing left and right, shifting where she sat.
"Where in this hall is there anyone better than you? Myself included, of course."
"......"
"If it bothers you that much, do me one favor in this crowd."
"What is it?"
Her eyes brightened.
"Move through the crowd and find the person dressed least fitting for this place. Leave out the maids, the attendants, the dancers, and the musicians working here."
"......That's too much."
"Hm?"
"You're talking about me in a roundabout way, aren't you? After you were the one who said we should come in."
"......"
I was dumbfounded for a moment, then let out an empty laugh. A misunderstanding she could well have made.
"Leave you out of it too, and look."
Only then did a peculiar look cross her face.
"From the very start, you came here to find the person you're looking for now. Didn't you, young master?"
"If not for that, why would I deliberately walk into a banquet hall this dazzling and this miserable to sit in? Let's finish what we came to do and go to that inn we always visit. Their meat noodles are solid."
"All right."
The moment Seol-ha took the order and left her seat, Geon-pyeong and Ju Yeo-ran came walking toward me with several others in tow. They looked ready, at last, to be a proper nuisance. Provocation and mockery by way of Ju Yeo-ran had failed, so they had clearly racked their brains for another approach.
With a head like that, he ought to have placed first in the examinations.
Before the regression, Geon-pyeong's life story was famous past the point of fame — five challenges at the provincial civil examinations, all in the name of becoming the pride of the house, and five failures. There was no one in the Golden Manor who didn't know it. Reckoning by my age now, this would be somewhere around his second.
His obsession was understandable. Nor was he alone in it. Among martial artists who lived by strength, the civil examinations, which demanded scholarship, were treated as something more special than the military exams; pass, and one could be gorgeously dressed up as a gentleman versed in learning. And he was a merchant's son besides, middling in strength, in authority, and in brains. How deep must that inferiority have run?
"This is my younger brother, Geon-aseong."
Geon-pyeong introduced me with a show of dignity, and Ju Yeo-ran let a bright laugh spill after it.
"Your first Sichuan Dragon and Phoenix Gathering, so of course you're terribly tense. Do relax. These are people who will take Young Master Geon in warmly."
"Ahaha. That they will, that they will. If he's Brother Geon's little brother, I ought to treat him well. Good to meet you. Yeon Gyu-baek, young family head of the Yubyeok Sword Clan."
Mild in the face, sturdy in the frame. Beside him, a man of a thickset impression looked me up and down and laughed as if at a joke.
"Jeong Hong-seon. Eldest son of Jeonggeom Gate."
A woman with her hair braided and pinned up in two loops added herself after them, her face full of mischief.
"I'm a secret. Hohoho."
Geon-pyeong was delighted.
"A secret — now that's good. Think you can guess? Hahahaha!"
Amid their laughter and chatter, I answered evenly.
"Geon-aseong. Formally, it's my first time meeting you."
As if they had expected me to open my mouth again, the five of them stared. The silence held.
Well? What do you want? I greeted you.
"I introduce you to people of standing, and this is how you behave? Do I have to dress you down in front of everyone before you come to your senses?"
Geon-pyeong seized his sleeve and made a show of stepping forward. Yeon Gyu-baek caught him.
"Enough, enough. Why scold your brother over a thing like this?"
"My apologies, elder brother. The boy still lacks sense."
Yeon Gyu-baek waved that off, then grinned at me.
"Word is the little brother is quite the lover of women. A stuffy, formal affair like this must sit poorly with you. You'd enjoy it better if everyone were half-naked and lewd, eh? Haha — a joke, a joke."
"......"
Not a joke. A slip he meant to land.
It wasn't worth an answer, so I gave him none. Seeing no reaction, Yeon Gyu-baek took one step closer.
"Have a drink with us. You're the younger brother of Geon-pyeong, who's as good as a sworn brother to me, so even if you look a little lacking, I ought to look after you. And besides..."
He dropped his voice to a whisper.
"I hear the woman you yearned for was taken by your older brother. How that must burn. And even the pretty guard you brought seems to have abandoned her master and left her seat. Who knows when she'll be back."
I looked quietly at Yeon Gyu-baek, whose face had gone strangely bright.
Look at them. Interesting.
I could see clearly now what Geon-pyeong's second scheme against me had been.