Poison Human - 4
So it seemed I really would have to face the Tang Clan Head at least once more.
I had anticipated seeing the Clan Head a second time. After twenty-odd years, your child appears before you—and to glimpse his face once at a public occasion and then never meet again would be stranger still. I couldn't guess what Tang Baek-ho meant to say now that he had summoned me, but there were things I wanted out of this meeting too.
I need his permission to publish the next volume of Dangga Pungun.
My first objective—securing the Human-Faced Spider's poison core—was already accomplished. With a little breathing room to spare, it was time to look after the work that had made my name.
Even if I returned to Yichang safe and sound, the moment I announced that Dangga Pungun's publication was over, not a single member of the Tea Book Club would just nod along and say, Huh? Really?
That very day Daseogak would burn to the ground, and I might have to cast the name Hopil into the fire with it and start signing myself Zhiyu.
No matter what it took, I had to win permission to keep publishing Dangga Pungun.
And if the Clan Head—the living model for Tang Jeong—gave his blessing to this book with all its tangled problems, the Sichuan Tang Clan would have no grounds left to raise a single objection.
"Let's go."
I left the room with the man the Clan Head had sent.
"You must be made presentable before you are received by the Clan Head. I will escort you to the bath. When you have finished, you will change into fresh garments."
So I wasn't to meet the Clan Head right away after all. The maids must have been briefed in advance, for they bowed their heads low as they delivered the instructions.
"Seeing my face is quite enough. I'm hardly on my way to meet my woman—what do I need with a bath and new clothes?"
"It is the Clan Head's command."
When I tried to push straight through toward the building where the Clan Head waited, the maids closed ranks around me and barred the way. So one had to look the part to be received by one's superior, was it? I briefly considered shoving past them, but every last one looked far too determined.
"Fine. Let's go, then."
"We will attend you during your bath."
"I beg your pardon?"
For a moment the words simply wouldn't register, and I heard myself objecting. Bath attendants? Weren't those for nobility and the obscenely rich? Ah—come to think of it, this was the richest house in all of Sichuan.
"Once you have settled into the water and soaked a while, we will be ready for you."
Evidently well accustomed to guests' dull-witted questions, the middle-aged maid didn't answer mine at all; she was already bustling about, issuing orders to the others. No matter where I looked, there wasn't a male scrub-down attendant in sight. Someday, perhaps, the full bathing service would be worth experiencing. Today, it was a problem.
Every woman who had filed in promising to assist my bath was exactly that—a woman. The only one past her first youth was a single middle-aged maid so ageless that calling her "madam" would have been an insult.
Worse still, the bathhouse steam made their clothing cling and cling, tracing out the figures beneath more boldly with every passing moment. As a feast for the eyes, delightful. For a man who had to watch his conduct in here, a hazard.
"That will be all. I can manage on my own."
Shaking off my fluster, I spoke in a firm voice.
"The Clan Head's command—"
"I came all the way from Joseon to bathe as commanded, haven't I? This sort of service discomforts me."
"You will feel no discomfort at all, my lord. We will see to your every comfort."
"I don't doubt your skill—it weighs on my conscience. I have never once bared my body even to my own woman. Letting other women see me naked is something I cannot allow. It would be a discourtesy to the woman who, even as we speak, hovers between life and death."
What I had said in the assembly hall must have spread by whisper through the Sichuan Tang Clan. And maids—creatures who live on information—would certainly have heard it.
A man who had come to the Tang Clan for love and would not bare his flesh to strange women. A fine excuse, if I said so myself.
"...Then we shall wait outside."
"My thanks."
Convinced or simply resigned, the maids withdrew from the bath. Only after the last of them had vanished from the bathhouse did I finally sink into the water. Now this was a hot bath. I'd kept up my washing well enough, but easing into a proper steaming bath was a pleasure of another order entirely. If not for the audience with the Clan Head hanging over me, I felt good enough to doze off right there.
"Did you hear that just now?"
My mind had gone pleasantly hazy in the heat as I pondered whether the herbs steeped in the bath were doing my body some good, when shrill giggling drifted in from beyond the door.
"A true romantic, just like the rumors say."
"Won't even bare himself for his woman's sake. My own darling could stand to take notes."
So it was a good excuse after all.
"But tell me—did you see the size of what was hidden under that towel a moment ago?"
"Th-that thing? Wasn't that his arm?"
"Silly girl, arms hang up top, not down below."
"That can't be! Then it was really—?"
"So it's true what they say: no woman who goes to a black-hair ever comes back."
"Miss Hwarin is one lucky lady."
"What on earth are you saying!"
"Hohoho."
I can hear every word, you know. To shake off the twin floods of embarrassment and pride, I rose from the bath and doused myself in cold water.
"This garment is cut from Shu Brocade. Once you are fully dressed, we will anoint you with fragrant oil."
Having scrubbed away old grime and fresh mortification in equal measure, I emerged to find new clothes laid out and waiting. They were silk so magnificent it wrung admiration out of me. Shu Brocade, the pride of Sichuan—living proof that its reputation for trading at equal weight with gold was no empty boast.
"I hardly know whether I'm worthy to wear such a thing."
"It is a gift from the Clan Head himself. Even if you return to your room, you need not give it back."
The luster of the silk, the Jim Bird stitched across it—a masterpiece among masterpieces.
"Why, it is as though I look upon the Clan Head in his youth."
The aged Chief Steward entered, looked me up and down now that I was fully dressed, and spoke in a tone tinged with admiration.
The compliment was welcome, but we were hardly father and son in any warm sense. With a prickly illegitimate son's image to maintain, I gave only the smallest nod, my face arranged into sulky displeasure.
Apparently my grudging acceptance pleased him, for the Chief Steward smiled with satisfaction and led me to the Clan Head.
"Young Master Yunho has arrived."
"Send him in."
"Sit."
The Clan Head studied my transformed appearance, betrayed the faintest flicker of surprise, and then returned his eyes to the book in his hands. What was that he was reading? Now that I looked closely—it seemed to be Dangga Pungun.
"Tea will be served. What will you have?"
"Coffee. Any kind will do."
"Sleep draws near; coffee is a poor choice. Chamomile for me—and ginseng tea for the boy."
"We have fine ginseng just arrived from the Moyong Clan. I will prepare it at once."
The thoughtfulness was appreciated, but why chamomile and ginseng? This was supposed to be a wuxia story, so couldn't the tea service behave like one—bring out something extravagantly expensive, a Dragon Well at the very least? Of course, in this world ginseng tea meant steeping medicinal elixirs as an evening drink, an extravagance past all reckoning—but at least I'd actually tasted ginseng tea back in my old life.
Until the tea arrived, the Clan Head went on reading Dangga Pungun in silence. Then he spoke.
"My betrothed was never called the greatest beauty in Sichuan, but a beauty she was. She was nothing beside your mother."
So he means to open with praise for my mother?
"Is that so?"
I deliberately let my answer die there, as though bored. He wanted to talk about Hyang-ah. Fine—but I had no intention of handing him what he wanted from the very first word.
My flat indifference bought a long moment of silence.
"Have you nothing to say to me?"
Could I trouble you for some honey, then? This ginseng tea is bitter.
"I give thanks, once more, for bestowing the treasure of the Tang Clan upon my woman."
I rose from my seat and bowed in courteous gratitude to the Clan Head. A prickly son I might be—but where my woman was concerned, a good one; the image had to hold.
"Is that the whole of what you have to say?"
Perhaps because that was not what he truly wanted to hear, the Clan Head asked again.
So the reason he had summoned me was no urgent matter at all, but the simple wish to speak with his son. And here I'd braced for some grand purpose.
"There is no telling when Hwarin will wake. I would return to her side as soon as I am able."
I don't belong here. She could open her eyes at any hour.
"Word of her will reach you the moment it reaches me. There is no need to gnaw your heart raw."
"Understood. Then—"
Once more, a long silence settled between us.
The truth was, ours was a relationship so strained that a mere brush of shoulders could land like a critical blow. For the Clan Head, summoning me with no pressing business, then straining to keep a conversation alive—surely both had cost him a measure of courage.
Judging by how readily he brought up Hyang-ah, those lingering regrets must still be pouring out of him.
Which meant I had to pry at Hyang-ah to win permission for Dangga Pungun.
Having once tasted success as an author, I had not the faintest desire to trade in my title as a round-the-clock writer who never missed an update—nor to throw away my pen name and start over fresh as Zhiyu.
I've already built the persona: the prickly bastard son who scorns his father. Now I'll use that persona to win the right to keep serializing Dangga Pungun.
A prickly bastard, and a father with no idea what to do with him. But there was one road by which such men might grow close. Between them stood a woman—Mother. No. Hyang-ah.
I had pushed him away once. Now it was my turn to pull.
Without looking at the Clan Head, I turned toward the window and began quietly, as though to myself.
"You see, I grew up on my mother's tales of the chivalrous heroes of the Central Plains."
I took a sip of ginseng tea and waited for his reaction. Bitter. You're meant to steep the root in honey—the raw bite is far too harsh like this.
"Chivalrous heroes?"
"Men who never yielded to injustice, who stood and fought against wicked foes, who sacrificed everything for the women they loved. My mother told me stories of the Central Plains' heroes as though she had watched such a man with her own two eyes."
I mean you. You. Anyone with a shred of sense knows exactly what I'm saying.
Just as predicted, the Clan Head's complexion darkened the moment the words left my mouth. Cheering inwardly at the reaction, I put on the face of a man wandering through fond memory and pressed on.
"I admired the heroes of the Central Plains from the time I was small, you see, raised on my mother's stories. As a boy I pestered her at every spare hour to tell me of them again. And every time, she would oblige—looking just a little pleased. Just a little sorrowful. Back then I only wondered why she wore such a face while telling tales so splendid. It puzzled me."
I steeped my words in a bitterness much like the tea itself.
"......"
The woman he had cast out had spent years telling his story to his son. How about that? However firmly he gripped his composure, it would not hold. For the space of a heartbeat, the Clan Head's cheek trembled.
"Only when I grew older and came to know love did I finally understand. That face had been the face of a woman longing for someone. And the hero of the Central Plains from my boyhood was, in truth, the story of a certain man living in Sichuan."
Like a branding iron pressed to an open wound, I made it final.
"Hyang-ah spoke of me...?"
Sorrow and longing swam in the Clan Head's eyes.
"I am told you learned from the Head of the Medical Pavilion why I wrote Dangga Pungun."
"I heard it was to beg for aid."
"That is true. But there was another reason as well."
"Another reason?"
I looked at the Clan Head and said nothing.
The characters of Dangga Pungun were fiction. But the hidden history of the Tang Clan woven through it was fact. That secret was what had drawn the Clan Head's own confidants to seek me out; what had set them to guarding Hwarin from Tang Geohu's designs. That was the purpose behind Dangga Pungun I had confessed to the Head of the Medical Pavilion. But if the story ended there, so did my serialization—with its purpose fulfilled, no reason would remain to print another chapter. Worse, with the Tang Clan's secrets filling its pages, the clan would have every excuse to shut it down for good.
So what, then, was to be done?
Now came the packaging.
"What I wished to capture in Dangga Pungun was the hero my mother told me of."
The weakness of the Lord of the Sichuan Tang Clan.
I would weave into Dangga Pungun the will of Hyang-ah—the woman he had loved.