We'll Just Say She's Dead (1)
Whether I'd dragged the fight with the assassins on too long, or simply lost the time being swept down the Yangtze, the sun was already rising by the time I reached the inn.
In the modern world, an hour like this was still a leisurely one—unless you were the sort who exercised at dawn, or had a job that demanded you clock in early. Here, in a world built on farming, it was precisely when a great many people were already up and beginning their day.
I mention it for a reason. A man and a woman, both soaked to the skin and dressed in black, could not move through that hour without eyes burning into their backs.
"Junior sister, could you step out onto the inn roof for a moment? If there's a spare set of clothes, bring it with you."
I'd managed, barely, to reach the inn by running the gaps between buildings, but I couldn't bring myself to walk in through the front. I had no choice but to ask my junior sister for help.
A light tap of feet, and she came up on her lightness art, keeping her balance with elegant steps even on the slanted roof. The moment she saw my clothes and the drenched state of me she started over in alarm—then her face hardened at the uninvited guest lying at my feet.
"Senior brother... could you explain what this is?"
"Clothes first. I'll explain after."
I drove inner energy through my body and burned the water off me in a rush of heat.
There'd been no point in doing it sooner. Jegal Yeonji's twin older sister was still soaked where she hung on my back; dry myself, and I'd only have gotten wet again. So I'd come all this way drenched to the bone. Now, if I dried my own clothes and changed hers, we could step into the room warm and dry.
I would have liked to dry her clothes the same way, but she was unconscious. Pour inner energy into her carelessly and I might burn her—or, if it failed to agree with the martial arts she'd cultivated, drive her into qi deviation. I had no choice but to change her out of them.
Men's clothes, but that should be fine... I'd feel worse putting her in my junior sister's.
"Mm..."
I stood there with the clothes in my hands, unable to bring myself to touch her. My junior sister seemed to grasp the situation well enough, and held out her hand.
"I'll do it."
"I'll help."
"It looks like we'll need to apply golden wound salve as well."
In other words, the clothes had to come off, and the medicine had to go on.
"Senior brother, please go in ahead and rest."
With her own sword she split the black stealth garb—already in tatters from hidden weapons—in a single stroke, and changed the woman into my clothes. They were far too large on her, and that, at least, seemed to make the changing no trouble at all.
I waited in the room. When my junior sister finished and called me by sound transmission, I went out, hoisted the newly dressed woman onto my shoulder, and—choosing a moment when no one was looking—slipped back in through the window.
My junior sister looked over my forearm and my left foot. The bloodstains were still there; she had noticed.
"What were you doing at dawn?"
I'd thought black clothes wouldn't show it. The smell of blood, though, is not so easily erased, and to my junior sister—particular even about the laundry—it might as well have been a sign hung out in the open: I went and killed a few people.
I couldn't tell her, not to her face, that this world was the novel I had known, or speak of the things still waiting in the future. I tried to turn the talk aside.
"Junior sister. Did you stay up all night? You look tired."
"How is a junior sister supposed to sleep easy, when the senior brother who's meant to be sleeping right beside her isn't even there?"
I'd held out until the Hour of the Dog, so I'd been certain she would have dropped off. Of course I couldn't fool her sense for qi.
"Changing the subject won't work, even if you try. Please answer me. What did you do at dawn?"
Even if I explained only what had happened at dawn, I couldn't say to her face that I'd beaten dozens of people to death.
"I can't say."
"It wasn't something bad, was it?"
"If that's the sort of person I look like to you, then I suppose there's nothing to be done."
"......"
My junior sister's brows—fine enough to deserve the old praise of moth-brows—drew tight. But I kept my mouth firmly shut, and she didn't press me any further.
"Don't worry. I have no intention of doing the kind of bad thing you're imagining."
"All right."
If Master found out, he would pry into every last detail of what I'd done. My junior sister, kind as she was, didn't push me any more than that.
"And, junior sister. Could you give us the room for a moment?"
"......All right."
This time she didn't ask even once. She stepped quietly out of the room and went down to the floor below.
I had known all along. She—Jegal Yeonji's twin older sister, holding her breath and listening to every word we'd exchanged—had already come to.
"I know you're already awake. Please get up."
"......"
At that, she gave up pretending to sleep and raised herself.
Hmm... so this is Jegal Yeonji's twin older sister.
Until a moment ago the black infiltration clothes had hidden her face, and even after she'd been changed I'd been talking with my junior sister and hadn't had time to look closely. Sure enough, twin to Jegal Yeonji of the Five Dragons and Seven Phoenixes, she was a considerable beauty in her own right.
Where Jegal Yeonji painted herself and dressed in elaborate splendor, this one had small scars scattered over her, cheeks gone hollow, a somewhat thin look about her. Even so, the foundation was so beautiful that those minor flaws seemed less like defects than a different kind of charm.
Just now, in men's clothes that didn't fit, she looked like some frail, pretty boy—and yet there was a strange sensuality to her all the same. A true beauty, I thought, didn't depend on figure or circumstance.
"I thank you for the grace of saving my life, young hero."
In a low voice she offered a cupped-fist salute and bowed her head. I returned the salute and accepted the courtesy.
"It was nothing. All within the four seas are kin. I only did what ought to be done."
"......May I ask your name?"
Is it all right to give my name here?
Yeon Cheongha was going to make a name for himself sooner or later, and become something of a celebrity in the martial world besides. Telling her who I was wasn't likely to spread word of my martial prowess to the outside. I decided to simply tell her.
"Yeon Cheongha. I've only just stepped into the martial world."
"Young Hero Yeon... I will remember it. This body of mine is expendable, so I cannot be of help to you. The Jegal Clan will not be able to repay this debt officially, but I promise that a sufficient reward will be delivered in secret, at least."
Saying so, she hesitated over something, then moved to hand me her bracelet.
It was an old thing, grimy and worn. For her—a spy, forbidden to carry anything that might leave a trace of who she was—it was an object she had kept on her even in violation of the rules.
Was this the bracelet Jegal Yeonji made herself and gave to her?
In the original history, she went missing, and Jegal Yeonji found a fragment of this bracelet by the river.
Then, to learn what had become of her sister, she used the protagonist's name to provoke the rats hiding in the harbor. The organization in the shadows, mistakenly convinced the protagonist knew something, came after him and fell; and when he heard that Jegal Yeonji was tangled up in all of it, a full-blown clash broke out...
Still in one piece.
Her original fate had been to blow herself up in the river with a thunderclap bomb, all to keep her secrets. For even a fragment of this bracelet to remain would have been heaven's own luck.
"That's all right. I didn't do it expecting repayment."
"But the way of the Central Plains is that where something comes, something must be given in return. I beg you to accept it. If not this, then this humble one will have no token to leave that Young Hero Yeon saved me—"
"No. The problem isn't you returning to the Jegal Clan to offer repayment..."
I had to say what I'd been turning over the whole way back to the inn with her.
"Young Lady Jegal."
"......I am not of the Jegal name."
Strictly speaking, she was a being the Jegal Clan had raised as something like Jegal Yeonji's other self. Her designation would come out as something along the lines of Jegal Yeonji, shadow version.
The light shown to the world belonged to Jegal Yeonji, the Resourceful Wise Woman. The work she could not do belonged to this Jegal Yeonji of the dark, trained as a spy.
Put like that, it sounds like a name straight out of a novel some middle schooler would write.
"I'll call you Young Lady Jegal, in the sense of a young lady who belongs to the Jegal Clan. Someone doing work like yours isn't about to give me her name, is she?"
A man only just emerged into the martial world, and yet unexpectedly steeped in things he had no business knowing—the shadow Jegal Yeonji's eyes lit as she tried to take my measure. It didn't matter what information she gathered. She wasn't going to be able to return to the Jegal Clan anyway.
"You must not return to the Jegal Clan now."
"......Why do you say that?"
"Young Lady Jegal, you know about the incident at the harbor, don't you?"
"This humble one was merely given a mission to watch the harbor, and was attacked by ruffians. That is all..."
So my junior sister waiting outside wouldn't hear, I used sound transmission and told Young Lady Jegal who they really were.
"......So you pursued them alone, believing they were those people?"
"......"
No change in her expression. Not even a flicker of How could you know that.
But she offered no clumsy excuse, and from that alone I could tell she had already guessed who they were.
Those people can't be exposed yet. This is still the stage of watching the bait in the trap. Start rooting them out now, and they'll only slip back into the dark.
Living a long, healthy life was my goal. Spending decades groaning over when those bastards might come crawling back was not what I wanted.
Cut the sacrifices down as far as they would go, round the lot of them up no matter what it took, and reach an ending where everyone lived happily ever after. That was what I wanted.
"It seems word has already reached them. I believe there is someone involved inside the Jegal Clan."
In the story, there was an incident in which Jegal Yeonji was put in danger—a crisis born when one of the Jegal Clan was recruited by the organization in the shadows and betrayed them.
That was where the protagonist saved her and racked up her favor.
"Most likely, along with the report that every assassin sent to capture you has died, they will conclude that you perished with them."
"How do you know that?"
Saying because that's how the original went wasn't going to fly, so I had to come up with an excuse that sounded plausible.
"Because I made it so. I set off a thunderclap bomb and erased your traces and theirs alike."
The truth was that the thunderclap bomb had looked dangerous, so I'd simply pulled the fuse and thrown it in the water. It had been stronger than I expected—a pillar of water shooting up, the corpses drifting on the river smashed without a trace. I couldn't very well say that.
Even if it meant taking a step backward, it didn't matter. Catching the rats any old way was enough.
"So for a while, it would be best if you hid who you are, until we can strike back at them. If they grow careless, believing you dead, an opening for a counterattack may come."
"......"
"If they learn you're alive, then knowing how they operate... they may attack someone precious to you, simply to determine whether you are truly alive or not."
"—!"
At those words, the eyes of Jegal Yeonji of the dark wavered. What was precious to her, more than her own life, was the Jegal Clan—and more precious still was her twin sister.
There was nothing wrong in what I'd said.
I knew what was going to happen, so there was nothing in it that could be wrong. Dress it up so it sounded plausible, and that was enough.
Like sitting an exam with the answer sheet the upperclassmen had handed down—except all I could remember were the answers, so I had to scrawl the problems in however I could.