Return - 1
I had become the wind.
Where was I? I had certainly fallen asleep in a bedroom of the inn, and yet the moment I opened my eyes, I found myself in a room that stirred a strange sense of déjà vu.
Why am I here? Where is this place?
Whenever I reached for the answers, the thoughts dissolved like smoke before my fingers closed on them, and I could not follow the thread any further.
Before my eyes lay a table laden with every delicacy under heaven — dish upon dish I had never once tasted in my life.
But I was the wind. How could the wind eat? There was no time to dwell on even that small question, for quite without my consent the wind went dancing between the dishes and began to feast.
I was eating my fill, thoroughly content, when a voice drifted from somewhere behind me.
"I want to see you just once more."
"I will go on living."
"Young... Ma—……."
Who was it? And why were they crying? I wanted to turn my head and see, but the wind would not turn.
"Young... Ma—……."
The grieving voice was so brimming with sorrow that it wrung even the wind's heart. Anyone at all who heard it could not have kept themselves from drawing near.
Who was it?
Who were you, that your voice should sound so familiar? The wind moved to turn and look —
"Young Master K—……!"
The voice rang out.
You are—
"Young Master Kang!"
"Gah!"
What the—? A shout right at my ear, and I shot upright in bed.
"It is morning, my lord. Time to take your breakfast."
When I opened my eyes, what greeted me was not an unfamiliar ceiling but a familiar face. Purple hair, green eyes — the Tang Clan warrior who had been escorting me all this way toward Yichang.
It was Tang Pae, shaking me awake by the shoulders.
Couldn't he wake a man gently? It was morning. Morning, for heaven's sake. Unless you're a doting little sister from a brother-complex romcom squealing "Big brother!", nobody gets woken with physical contact before breakfast. House rules.
"Did you have a nightmare, my lord?"
When I failed to come back to my senses, Tang Pae asked again, worry plain on his face.
"A nightmare?"
"Your expression kept shifting the whole time you slept, sir, so I took you for a man beset by bad dreams."
Had I been having a nightmare?
I pushed my upper body up from the bed and pressed a hand to my brow, groping through the previous night's memories.
Night. Food. And something else, something more — the dream's memory kept flitting away like smoke. I barely managed to seize it as it scattered, but that was all that came back with me.
"I believe I dreamed I was dining at a splendidly set table."
Every delicacy in creation had covered that table. I couldn't remember a single dish by name, but it had borne the look of one of those Manchu–Han imperial banquets — the kind a documentary narrator solemnly introduces as dishes once served to the emperors of China.
There had been something more important than the food, I was almost sure of it, but I couldn't recall what. Unsettling.
"Haha. They say a dream of eating your fill portends wealth. The new year has turned and the weather is warming — surely that marks the business flourishing further still this year."
"So eating dreams come with auspicious readings too. Noted."
"Rise, wash up, and come take your morning meal."
"Maybe it's the dream, but I'm not the least bit hungry. Go eat with the others."
I had certainly eaten an early dinner yesterday, yet my stomach was silent. Could be because I'd already eaten in the dream — my very soul felt full. Or it might just have been the grogginess of having just woken.
"Young Master Kang. Even if we ourselves go hungry, your meals must be seen to."
Tang Pae looked genuinely pained as he said it. Was it simply a retainer's duty to watch over my health? Or was he afraid that having already earned the Medical Pavilion Master's displeasure once, there would be no recovering from a second offense?
"Very well. I'll wash up and come out."
I considered refusing one more time, and swallowed it.
Squabbling with Tang Pae — the man I'd been leaning on for over a month and a half now — first thing in the morning was tiresome, and if I insisted I wouldn't eat, I'd only find him standing helplessly at my door, and that would be worse.
"Ten days of travel, give or take, and we reach Yichang. The broken sleep and the dreams, the poor appetite — these are all symptoms of travel fatigue accumulated over a long journey. Bear with them a little longer."
"Understood."
"I'm told there is a restaurant in this town that serves the food of the eastern country. You hail from Joseon, my lord, so to revive your spirits we shall take today's meal not at the inn but there. Now then — I will wait for you outside."
And with a cheerful smile, Tang Pae left the room.
We could perfectly well have eaten at the inn. Tang Pae had every reason in the world to hold a grudge against me, yet he had been the one to volunteer for my escort. If he insisted on fussing over me, there was nothing to be done.
I stared up at the ceiling for a while.
What sort of dream had that been? It should have been nothing at all, yet it clung strangely to my chest. Perhaps because it was the first dream of the new year.
"I could swear I had a similar dream last year."
Dreams are said to feed heavily on experience. But when had this good-for-nothing Kang Yunho ever laid out a feast of imperial delicacies and dined upon it? Was it the travel fatigue, then, from so many weeks on the road?
No amount of pondering produced an answer, so I washed the unresolvable dream away along with my face and stepped out the door.
Kang Yunho, twenty-two years of age. The new year had come, and before I knew it, I was entering my second year in this world.
"Still brisk out."
Three years from now I would turn twenty-five — half of fifty. Would that finally earn me the right to trot out that terrible pun? So mused I, on nothing in particular, as I stepped out of the inn — and the chill bite of a winter river wind, loath to yield its place to the spring pressing in behind it, swept past my cheek.
Looking down the slope beneath the inn, I could see the Yangtze. Wrapped in morning river mist and low-hanging clouds, it was a scene straight out of an ink-wash landscape — anyone beholding it for the first time would have been hard put to hold back a gasp of wonder.
But I lived in Yichang, a city strung along the Yangtze. The sight was an old acquaintance.
Where I stood now was a small river town called Wushan. A fortnight's journey from here, and we would set foot in Yichang.
The end was finally in sight for a journey that had swallowed a month and a half.
"This way, my lord."
Spotting me as I emerged, Tang Pae led the way to the restaurant.
The food of the eastern country, was it? Joseon cuisine, then? The inn already sold pizza and gukbap and stir-fried pork — why would Joseon food need an establishment all its own?
I arrived brimming with anticipation, and was met with a sight I had not expected.
A cloth curtain printed with characters. Sliding doors. Round paper lanterns bearing brushwork. It was all a style of restaurant I knew intimately, and yet — this was...
"When they said a restaurant of the eastern country, I assumed they meant Joseon fare, but it appears this establishment serves the food of Wa."
Tang Pae pointed apologetically at the door.
"No matter at all. I'm quite fond of Wa cuisine."
Tasty is tasty, wherever it comes from. To demonstrate how little it bothered me, I strode ahead and flung the shop's door wide open.
The moment it swung back, I found myself face to face with a waitress in traditional Japanese dress.
"Irasshaimase! Gochuumon wa douzo!"
I'm sorry — what? The alien tongue froze the entire party solid for a heartbeat.
Ah. So it was that kind of establishment. I absorbed the truth in record time and recovered my composure, but evidently the others could not.
Tang Pae's pupils trembled as he shot me a look that plainly said, we have entered the wrong establishment — shall we withdraw?
No, we have not. This is precisely how such places operate. I let the waitress guide me to a table with all the ease of long habit, while the rest of them sank into their seats looking stiff as boards.
Wooden ninja figurines. Wooden pirate figurines. Decorations that stirred an odd, familiar ache in me. This was, in fact, a rather upscale Japanese restaurant.
"My lord... do you, by any chance, speak the tongue of Wa?"
As I looked around, warmed clear through by the time-honored customs of Japanese restaurant interiors, one of the warriors asked in an uneasy voice.
"Roughly, yes. Why do you ask?"
"Then — we shall name our dishes aloud. Could you translate them into the Wa tongue for us?"
Ah. So that was the trouble? Fair enough. Walk through a door to find everyone around you speaking a foreign language, and anyone's nerve would fail.
"Waitress, over here, whenever you're ready."
"Hai!"
"One tonkotsu ramen, one miso ramen, one special ramen, please."
I ordered the dishes some of our party had asked for.
In the Central Plains tongue. Not in Wa speech.
"Yes, yes — one tonkotsu, one miso, one special. And for the rest of the party?"
"Y-you could speak the Central Plains tongue all this time? You are not a Wa woman?"
"I am a Central Plains woman, so of course I speak the Central Plains tongue."
The waitress answered the flustered warriors as though they had said something utterly ridiculous.
"Then why — why did you greet us in the Wa tongue?"
"Beats me. The head chef says we must."
It's simply the unspoken law of the Japanese restaurant, my friends.
"I-Impossible. I was certain this was an establishment that served the Wa and the Wa alone."
"And how would any Wa folk ever find their way here? Go on, give her your orders."
"Shoyu ramen for me."
"The same for me."
Having given the waitress one hopelessly out-of-their-depth look apiece, the warriors passed their orders down the line.
"And what will Young Master Kang have?"
"Ramen this early in the morning is a bit..."
No appetite, and less than no craving for noodles at dawn.
"Oh! Now that I look properly, you are a gentleman of Joseon! We serve donburi as well, you see. In that case, how about our karubi-don — a short-rib rice bowl? Most fitting for a Joseon gentleman!"
The waitress studied me carefully for a moment, then recommended an alternative with practiced poise.
"Then I'll have the short-rib rice bowl."
"Hai! That completes your order! It will be two silver and fifty copper, please!"
A Japanese restaurant. Central Plains folk switching into Wa speech at the door, and a world that settled its bills in silver and copper. And I, the one and only black-haired barbarian at the center of it all.
It was a surreal feeling.
"Your food! You've ordered so generously that the pickled radish is on the house today!"
This place was better than I'd expected. Sweet-and-savory rib glaze over hot rice — appetite or no, the bowl went down easily.
"When do we depart from here?"
With my meal nearly finished, I put the question to Tang Pae.
"The Seocheon Escort Agency, which operates under the Tang Clan, is securing us a boat. That will take a day or two, so rest a little longer, let the road-weariness drain out of you, and then we shall set off."
"Traveling by boat — that is the first good news I've had in some time."
From Wushan, where I now stood, the Yangtze ran in one unbroken thread all the way to Yichang. If we could go the distance by water, nothing could suit me better.
"They are finding us a large vessel, so that the journey may be as comfortable as possible. Endure a little longer, and you will arrive in Yichang before you know it."
"I see."
Yichang. I had left it sitting empty far too long.
I had entrusted the aftermath to the head butler of Baek Manor, so surely nothing had gone catastrophically wrong — but the list of worries waiting for me on the other end was anything but short.
"Is something troubling you, my lord? Your expression has been dark of late."
Tang Pae asked with a worried face.
Worries? There were plenty. The problem was that there were too many.
"We set out as two and come home as one. That's all it is."
I offered the easy excuse with a bitter smile.
"Ah..."
No doubt a certain someone had just flashed through the whole company's minds; the mood at the table turned heavy.
"Haha. That came out wrong. I only meant that when I get back, I'll be doing all the cleaning by myself."
I laughed it off as though it were nothing, and let some air back into the room.
"Even once we arrive I shall not be leaving at once — should you have any tasks for me, you need only say the word."
"You truly don't have to do that."
I had no desire to bind myself any more tightly to the Tang Clan than I already was.
"I am under strict orders to bring back the third volume of Wind and Cloud of the Tang Clan, so whether you refuse me or not, I intend to stay a while yet."
"My sister and her friend have likewise charged me, on pain of death, to lay hands on a copy..."
"Author Hopil, sir — could you not show us the third volume a little in advance?"
So that was what this was about? Well, then — this conversation had just taken a very different turn.
"The day it goes to press, you'll be the first to read it. In exchange, you'll lend me a hand."
"Gladly."
Watching the warriors nod as if it were the most natural thing under heaven, I smiled to myself.
Free labor. Inventory checks, cleaning, printing runs — I would put them through every tedious chore there was before sending them home.
With a satisfying meal behind me, I returned to my room and lay down alone on the bed.
"My troubles are not exactly one or two in number."
In front of the others I had pinned it all on Hwarin, but the worries stacked far higher than that.
"First, operations."
We had left as two and were returning as one. Half of that remark had been for the loneliness, granted — but it was also, quite literally, a staffing problem.
Managing the Daseogak staff, taking inventory, reconciling the ledgers, overseeing the printing — I lent a hand where I could, but Hwarin had shouldered most of it.
Whatever credit Hopil might claim for reviving the Yichang Daseogak, it was Hwarin who had held the place up from beneath the waterline — of that I could speak with pride.
And now that Hwarin was staying behind in Sichuan with the Tang Clan, the workload was bound to buckle.
"Then there's the Fame I need to save the fates of the Heavenly Killing Star and the Poison Human."
Writing books would raise the stat, certainly — but I worried whether writing novels out of a single bookstore in Yichang could truly save the lives of the women I loved.
"Debt and money, too."
Hwarin had given me the Daseogak building, which was a blessing — but it had come with a loan attached as the price of running the bookstore. The debt remained alive and well.
And if the heroines I had met along the way were not to be my true heroines after all, then I would need to raise not only Fame — the courtship stat of this wuxia dating sim — but the money stat alongside it.
"The cleanest fix would be opening Daseogak branches. Easier said than done."
I could barely keep one shop manager's head above water; the life of a franchise owner was a distant dream. And the things demanding my attention would not merely double — they could multiply without end.
And then.
There was one worry graver than all the rest.
"Because of me, a truly serious problem has come into this world."
Setting aside the matter of true-heroine endings altogether, something genuinely critical remained.
A problem of overwhelming importance.
Something that had gnawed at me from the moment I met Moyong Sang-ah.
At Cheon Sohee's turn, I had deliberately looked the other way — but I had known it was there.
And ever since Tang Hwarin had clawed halfway out of her fate as the Poison Human, it had swelled into something enormous that I could no longer refuse to face.
How I wished someone else knew of this problem, and could handle it in my stead.
But it was a problem that, in all this world, no one but me knew existed.
And now I had to look it dead in the eye.
That problem was —
"The original protagonist. What on earth am I going to do about him?"