Headquarters — 2
The Red Rakshasa, Dan Seowol.
When she first heard the report that her disciple was living with a man, she assumed the report had simply gotten something wrong.
This was the Heavenly Killing Star. The very one she had raised herself.
This was a girl who had never made so much as a friend, let alone a boyfriend. And she was supposedly living with a man?
She had thought it would take a man with the nerve to survive even the Female Mantis to dare speak a word to her disciple. What kind of man on earth could have stolen her disciple's heart?
Since her disciple would never have been the one to suggest living together, the man must have seduced her — yet Dan Seowol simply could not picture Sohee being swayed by anyone.
Thrown into confusion by a situation she could not begin to understand, Dan Seowol was drowning in doubt — but the successive reports from the Salmak branch chief in Chilgok County left her no room for disbelief.
Her disciple was in love.
At the news of her disciple's romance, she had quietly celebrated back at Salmak headquarters.
And now, after so much time had passed, she found herself regretting that she had never paid much attention to teaching her disciple about relations between men and women.
"Ha! Seriously! Wow...! I have never seen a greener novice in my life! Carrying around something that enviable and yet...! Ha! It's so absurd I nearly— Yukiko! My ninja arts of perfect clarity were almost broken! Truly, the overwhelming talent of the Heavenly Killing Star, shattering even ninjutsu itself!"
Assassin No. 6 made an incredulous face at Cheon Sohee's words, then realized her mistake and hastily composed her expression again.
"What are you talking about?"
Watching her disciple look baffled, Dan Seowol sighed deeply inside.
Her disciple surely didn't believe storks delivered babies to couples who kissed, held hands, and slept side by side. The girl was hardly ignorant about such matters.
She'd educated her, and the girl had surely seen things firsthand on her missions.
The problem was romance.
Knowing, as a matter of knowledge, what men and women did to marry and have children was one thing; romance was another matter entirely.
This was a girl who had never shown the slightest interest in love between men and women. A girl whose every waking hour was consumed by the question of whether her madness would take her today or tomorrow — had she ever had room in her heart for love?
Dan Seowol understood the Heavenly Killing Star's circumstances as well, which was why she had never seen the need to teach her anything beyond the martial arts.
In the end, a childhood spent in the closed world of Salmak, a routine of assassination missions, training, meditation, and more assassination missions — that had brought her disciple to this pitiable state.
Dan Seowol chose her words carefully as she looked at her disciple.
"If the man before you is a true love you must never let slip away, then one way is to give him, at your parting, the one thing a woman can only ever give once in her life."
Dan Seowol spoke calmly, as Cheon Sohee's master.
"I gave my first kiss."
Cheon Sohee declared her deed with unashamed pride at her master's words.
Something about the sight reminded Dan Seowol of a baby bird proudly showing off its very first flap of the wings — and it looked, unexpectedly, rather adorable.
Who would have thought a girl so impossible to call cute could have it in her?
"A kiss certainly has value. But if you promised a reunion with no set date, it may not have been enough."
Even that one kiss must have taken considerable courage. To kiss someone was, in itself, to declare that she thought of him not as a mere lover, but as her destined one, her betrothed.
But then, this was the man who had turned the world's most feared Heavenly Killing Star.
In Dan Seowol's eyes, her disciple's final act before parting had left something to be desired.
"Not enough?"
"A woman's first experience is a treasure beyond price that can be given only once. It's true that certain rakes treat precious things carelessly — but the man you spoke of would have felt the weight of responsibility."
If even an ordinary woman's first experience was beyond pricing, what of a girl whose beauty could not be compared to another's in all the world — and the one and only Heavenly Killing Star besides?
Childhood friends once, reunited by chance across the vast Central Plains, a bond one could call a fate ordained by heaven itself — the Reversal of Heaven and the Heavenly Killing Star.
She was her own disciple, but a man like that should have found any means necessary to bind her heart to him. Dan Seowol felt a pang of regret.
"Oppa made a promise with me. ...Isn't that enough?"
Cheon Sohee spoke of him in a voice brimming with absolute trust — yet her pupils trembled faintly, as if wondering whether she herself had fallen short.
"Hmph! Even with a promise, we learn that a man will bend any flower within reach! If he could fall for the great No. 5, he might already be kneading some other woman's ample body with kisses all over it!"
No. 6 pouted her lips playfully and made smacking sounds.
I want to smack those lips. Cheon Sohee scowled, suppressed her fury, and told No. 6 with utter conviction:
"Oppa would never do that."
To start dating another woman the moment they parted? Impossible. Not her Oppa.
He would be hard at work writing his letters, picturing her, waiting for the day they'd meet again.
"Eek! The thread of fate binding you two looks awfully strong! Yukiko is jealous! Nin-nin!"
No. 6 was a ninja who knew when to tease and when to concede.
"Heh heh. To fly into such a rage defending your beloved. I begin to doubt you're really my disciple. Yes — even to my eyes, it looks like a match made in heaven. If he's a man you trust that completely, then surely he will wait for you."
"Yeah. He definitely will."
It was already done. Fanning the flames of her disciple's unease any further would do nothing for her training.
Dan Seowol smiled faintly as she watched Cheon Sohee settle into ease.
———————
An assassin must never lose her composure, in any situation.
The Nine Palaces Soul-Confusing Formation.
It was the pride of Salmak's array-craft. Where ordinary trap formations sought to confuse intruders or strike them down with triggered snares, the Nine Palaces Soul-Confusing Formation had been built for one purpose: to train assassins.
It ferreted out the weakest, most buried corner of an assassin's heart, prodded it with illusions, and stripped away her cool.
It was a place where even an exceptional assassin could be gravely wounded if careless — a formation that, even for the Heavenly Killing Star, was by no means easy to break through.
Cheon Sohee stood lost in bewilderment inside the formation.
— Even with a promise, a man will bend any flower within reach! If he could fall for the great No. 5, he might already be kneading some other woman's ample body with kisses all over it!
Oppa would never do that.
Cheon Sohee believed it utterly — but within a formation that attacked the mind itself, even the firmest conviction began to breed doubt.
"The women around him won't leave him alone, will they?"
Yes. Oppa would not waver. But would the other women leave him be?
Cheon Sohee remembered the women who had pestered Yunho after the storyteller's performance.
Insufferable women. Women who, without ever stirring her killing intent despite standing beside the Reversal of Heaven, somehow made her irritation boil over anyway.
"Will you be his one and only Yunho-oppa forever?"
The anxiety the formation fanned poked its head out. If she were there to protect him, it would never happen. What should she do? She couldn't even knock out any suspicious-looking women for a while now, without Oppa knowing.
"If you can't have him, why not kill her?"
"Kill her?"
"Yes. Kill her. Kill her, and there's nothing left to trouble you."
She wants to kill. You want to kill. She'll want to kill. The clinging bloodlust, beaten back, comes circling back with obsession. Malice and hostility pierce Cheon Sohee from every side.
— Yes. Kill. Kill her.
The Cheon Sohee of the past would have been boiling over with that sticky bloodlust.
"No. I won't do that."
Today's Cheon Sohee was different from all the days before. The bloodlust that surged up from deep in her chest sank back into stillness as easily as a ripple.
"How?"
The voice within the illusion asked, startled.
"Because I'm with Yunho-oppa."
Where she had once barely clung to her sanity as the bloodlust boiled over, Cheon Sohee regained her composure with ease.
She could feel him inside her chest.
My Oppa. Kang Yunho was within her — pressing the bloodlust flat, as if to say: who dares lay a hand on my little sister?
She brushed her soft lips with her fingertips. The energy Oppa had given her still remained within her.
Apart, yet together.
Cheon Sohee passed serenely through the illusions, following behind her Oppa's back — nothing in the world gave her more comfort than following that back.
When Cheon Sohee emerged from the Nine Palaces Soul-Confusing Formation, she found her master and No. 6, who had entered alongside her.
"No. 5! You're slower than Yukiko! At this rate, I'll soon overtake the Heavenly Killing Star!"
No. 6 laughed in triumph, but the formation had evidently taken a toll after so long away — she could not hide the sweat pouring down her face.
"Go back to my quarters and let's eat. I'll have the kitchens bring food up. What would you like?"
"Yukiko will have kimchi donburi!"
The Red Rakshasa nodded to No. 6 and turned to her own disciple. The girl had never cared much for food, but this was a gesture of consideration.
"I'll have rose tteokbokki."
Dan Seowol's eyes went wide with surprise at the unexpected dish that sprang from her disciple's lips.
"Well, isn't that something — you, ordering a dish of your own. Was it something you ate with that man?"
A girl who had always eaten whatever she was given, now ordering specifically. If there was a change in her, it could only be one person's doing. Dan Seowol asked lightly:
"Yes. I remembered it was something I liked as a child."
Cheon Sohee spoke, the corners of her mouth lifting as if to show it off.
"Yukiko's chest is tingling with curiosity! I didn't get to hear that story yesterday!"
"Then it seems there are quite a few stories I haven't heard yet. Let's hear them, one by one."
Her disciple was never one for many words. Dug into carefully, there were surely plenty of sweet stories waiting to be pried loose.
Quietly concealing her anticipation, Dan Seowol answered with an easy face.
------
"Is something not to your liking?"
"It's delicious, but it doesn't taste good."
Cheon Sohee answered her worried master.
The food itself was fine. But somehow it tasted wrong. It was food that should have been delicious, yet it went down strangely hard.
A peculiar gloom clouded Cheon Sohee's expression.
"You're eating alone food you used to share with your beloved. Of course it will be."
"Ah..."
Cheon Sohee breathed a small sigh of understanding at her master's all-too-precise insight.
Right. There had always been Oppa.
Every meal had come with a gentle gaze — her childhood friend, her Oppa, watching over her.
The childhood friend who, when she magnanimously gave him her egg, would split it in half and hand half right back — he wasn't here now.
Without Oppa, even delicious food had no taste.
"Ha ha! Isn't it just that you're sick of eating all three servings by yourself?! Yukiko never knew No. 5 was such a hearty eater! It's like she's mastered the ninjutsu of gluttony!"
"Indeed... you did finish everything, for all that."
Dan Seowol's voice carried a note of mild surprise.
They had each ordered their own, but the rose tteokbokki had been ordered as three servings, meant to be shared. Yet somewhere in the eating, every trace of it had vanished except the broth.
"...You don't leave tteokbokki unfinished."
Cheon Sohee ate what remained without a word.
A moderate heat, a deep, chewy richness, a nutty finish — every note properly alive. The cream was generous, but the heat that refused to lose to it tormented her mouth in the best possible way.
A taste she wanted to try together with Oppa.
Cheon Sohee deliberately cut an egg in half, left it uneaten.
"Ah! If you're not eating it, Yukiko will!"
"Hey."
————
"Your husband. News has arrived."
Dan Seowol, watching the two bicker with an amused smile, held out the paper bearing the news her disciple had been waiting for.
"News of Yunho-oppa?"
Cheon Sohee was at her master's side in a single step, eyes wide.
"'Husband,' and you don't even bother to deny it."
"...".
Cheon Sohee only ducked her head, a slightly embarrassed look on her face — she had no intention of refuting even that.
"Watching you blush like this, I can't tell whether my disciple is the Heavenly Killing Star or some village maiden. This must be why raising a female disciple is a waste of effort."
Dan Seowol spoke in a lamenting tone with a wry smile.
"Just tell me the news."
"There are two pieces of good news and one piece of bad. Which do you wish to see first?"
Dan Seowol held out three papers before her disciple.
"The bad news."
"Then read this one first."
Bad news about Oppa?
Don't tell me he was hurt. In the space of a heartbeat, a hundred ominous thoughts flashed through her mind.
Cheon Sohee unfolded the paper, feeling a tension she had never known even inside the Nine Palaces Soul-Confusing Formation.
But the news was bad — for Cheon Sohee, not for Kang Yunho.
Kang Yunho. Bookstore manager. Currently operating a bookstore called Daseogak together with its owner, a woman named Dang Hwarin.
"Oppa... is living with a woman?"