Reopening - 3
"Might as well get cleaning."
The day after arriving in Yichang, I told the Tang Clan warriors to rest off their travels at the Baek Family Manor, then made my way back to Daseogak.
"When am I ever going to clean all of this?"
I muttered, gazing out over a bookstore interior so vast and empty my voice seemed ready to echo.
Borrowing the muscle of the Tang Clan warriors who'd come as my escort was one thing, but leaning on them too hard would only breed resentment. For now I'd do a quick pass myself, and give some thought to how best to put them to work afterward.
The moment I smacked the top of a bookshelf with my feather duster, dust came billowing out like a bomb had gone off.
Worse than I'd imagined. Tang Pae had probably rested enough by now — perhaps I should simply call him over.
"The door's open?"
Or maybe I shouldn't be beating the shelves at all — better to pull out each book, one by one, and dust them individually...
Around the time I'd sunk into grave deliberation, a commotion broke out at the entrance of Daseogak.
"Is Manager Kang really here?"
"There's no 'Closed' sign hanging up, you dolt! They told us not to go in!"
"Can't we just lean our faces in for a moment!"
The Tea Book Club, was it. Duster in hand — a tool that seemed to create more work the more I used it — I headed for the entrance.
"It's been far too long, everyone."
Standing at the door were Tea Book Club members I hadn't seen yesterday.
"It really is Manager Kang!"
"Good heavens!"
"To see the faces of members I haven't laid eyes on in so long — truly, this is a pleasure."
I greeted them wearing the bright face of a soldier home on leave, delivering a survival report to game guildmates he'd finally gotten to meet in person.
"Ours as well!"
"You made it back unharmed?"
The Tea Book Club members beamed right back at me in answer.
"Thanks to your kind concern, I've come through safe and sound. Daseogak has stood empty for so long now that I'm preparing it for its reopening."
If these folks wandered in and turned the messy bookstore even messier, that would be a problem. Best to take this outside.
Wearing the expression of a man beset by headaches scattered at every turn, I cast a glance back into the depths of Daseogak, then turned to face the club members again.
"A few days of toil ahead of you, it seems."
"There's a sign out front I've never seen before. Are you hiring staff?"
Realizing my scheme to keep them out of Daseogak, one member stepped back and pointed at the large placard planted by the door.
Whoever had written it, the calligraphy was truly masterful.
This world had no job boards, no employment websites. When you needed people, the old-fashioned Staff Wanted sign was still the way to go.
"That's right. The shop stood empty for so long that the people who used to help me are no longer available, so I'm afraid I'll have to hire someone new."
Yesterday, on the off chance, I had gone around visiting the staff who'd once worked at Daseogak.
The conclusion: total failure.
Most of them were elderly folk who'd helped out as a way to pass the time, ever since the shop had been Hwarin's maternal grandfather's bookstore — and in the months it had sat vacant, every last one of them had retired.
I'd only ever held on to them by promising that Daseogak wouldn't get busier with each passing day, and with Hwarin now settled into the Tang Clan, it was true enough that I couldn't lean on her connections to strong-arm them back into service. So I'd given up on the idea.
"Even with you back, I'd wager the work piled before you would be a mountain."
One of the members said, squinting against the dust beyond the doorway.
"Merely making it home safe is blessing enough. Although — might the Tea Book Club happen to have someone you could introduce to me as staff?"
A beautifully written Help Wanted placard would do plenty of work on its own, but when it came to finding people, connections were still king.
"You want us to introduce staff to you?"
"Yes. Ideally someone diligent and honest, striking to look upon, and deeply learned in books."
Daseogak was a bookstore, but it was also a café.
My staff could hardly be illiterate, and they'd need the strength to haul heavy tomes around without breaking stride. On top of that, I wanted someone with a face suited to service work.
And since this was not a world with the internet, they'd need a decent store of general knowledge for whenever customers asked about books.
Even to my own ears, those hiring conditions sounded anything but easy to fill.
"Introduce staff, recommend staff, you say..."
"Ahem."
"You seem rather reluctant?"
The moment I asked them to recommend staff, the Tea Book Club members averted their eyes in perfect unison.
"Ahem. I'm the sort of man who keeps his relationships narrow and shallow, you see..."
"Y-you as well? What a coincidence. So do I."
Oh. So that's how it was?
"Narrow and shallow, he says! Everyone in the Tea Book Club is a friend — how can you call that narrow!"
"You and I are friends?"
"Aren't we?"
"..."
"Ah... I-I appear to be having a panic attack. Pardon me a moment while I take my medicine."
"Hahaha. You all take your jokes too far. I know the Tea Book Club counts many members burdened with affairs both public and private."
I did my best to haul the suddenly sagging mood back up with laughter.
"Of course! The Tea Book Club has plenty of distinguished names — highly regarded men of letters, famous figures like the master of a renowned escort agency."
"Yes. It does."
Then it's people like them who should be doing the introducing, shouldn't they?
"But we are not those people, are we — not us, who come to Daseogak at this hour of the day."
"..."
"If we had busy lives, would we be stamping our attendance at the Tea Book Club every single day!"
"Ahahaha."
I could do nothing but wear a wry smile at the members' self-roasting.
It was still morning — precisely the hour when the genuinely busy would be scrambling through their morning duties. I'd have to ask the members who showed up at other times instead.
"You're hiring because that purple-haired young miss hasn't come back, aren't you?"
"Yes. Hwarin has decided to live with the Tang Clan."
Dropping my bittersweet smile, I broke the news of Hwarin's absence to the Tea Book Club members.
"So Daseogak has lost its linchpin."
"Indeed. She was a young miss the Tea Book Club simply couldn't spare."
"Trouble-Broom. Rowdy-Eraser. A true shame, losing the young miss Tang Hwa-rin."
"I'm sorry — Trouble-Broom?"
"What, whenever the rowdies of Daseogak or the rabble-rousers of the Tea Book Club stirred up a ruckus, didn't the young miss come swooping in from who-knows-where to chase them off? So among ourselves we called her the Rowdy-Eraser, for erasing troublemakers, and the Mayhem-Sweeping Broom, for sweeping the rabble clean away."
"Those are hardly nicknames befitting a lady..."
Erasers and brooms. Glorious titles, perhaps, for some poor soul who policed toxic users at dawn without pay — not titles you hung on a young woman.
"Nicknames? That's mere slang among ourselves. How could anyone say such a thing to a lady's face?"
"Not easy, is it."
"True. Not easy at all."
The Tea Book Club members nodded along as if in deep sympathy.
"There was one more nickname we privately pushed for her, though. The Poison Butterfly."
"Poison Butterfly?"
That was Tang Hwa-rin's original nickname, after all.
"You know the old rumor at Daseogak, don't you? How whenever a guest misbehaved, they would suddenly foul themselves on the spot. And yet, strangely enough, the young miss Hwarin always happened to come gliding quietly past the scene, butterfly-like. So among ourselves, we took to calling her the Poison Butterfly."
"Ahahaha."
So this was about Seven Steps Dung — the poison Hwarin used to keep in circulation.
Whenever Hwarin judged a rowdy guest to have gone truly too far, she'd dust them with a poison that left them fouling themselves on the spot. Apparently a few of the Tea Book Club members had caught on.
"With the young miss gone, dealing with the rowdy customers will be a trial. It would be convenient indeed to have at least one person in the shop who knows a martial art or two, for handling that sort."
"Pile qualifications upon qualifications, and you'd end up needing a martial artist of prestigious orthodox pedigree — and where on earth would anyone find one of those so easily?"
"Fair enough. I'll circulate word through the Tea Book Club and see who we can turn up. Oh — and since we're on the subject of martial arts, that reminds me. How about having your staff introduced through Haomeun?"
One of the members had brought up something I had never once considered.
"Haomeun? Isn't that the sect that buys and sells information?"
Why was Haomeun's name coming up here of all places?
"Aren't people themselves information too? Servers, courtesans, stable hands — folk from every trade join up. When someone needs staff, some do go looking for Haomeun."
From the servers of neighborhood inns to the courtesans of the pleasure quarters. It was true that Haomeun was where everyone and anyone from society's lower rungs ended up.
Leaving aside its executives, it was a collective of people trading information back and forth to put food on the table — a group that moved for profit and nothing more.
Don't tell me this world ran a job placement service too?
"I've no complaint so long as they introduce a proper employee, but how would I even go about finding Haomeun?"
"What do you mean, how?"
The member looked back at me, genuinely puzzled.
"Isn't it rather difficult to track down a secret sect like Haomeun?"
In any ordinary wuxia tale, wasn't Haomeun's whole image that of a clandestine information organization?
To uncover a hidden Haomeun branch, you had to follow the wuxia playbook, step by step. First, you asserted dominance over some tough-looking inn server or a pickpocket, then began the interrogation: You're with Haomeun, aren't you?
And the Haomun member would say, How did you know I was one of them?
How did I know? Because I pummeled you until something shook loose, that's how. Once you'd confirmed they were a member, you'd recite the secret passphrase you'd "happened to learn somewhere."
And then they would guide you to the hidden Haomeun branch.
How was a bookstore owner like me supposed to pull all that off?
"Hm? What on earth are you talking about? You know the Hao Restaurant down by the wharf, don't you?"
"The place with the delicious dumplings?"
That was where Hwarin and I used to go for dumplings.
"The owner of that place is the Yichang branch manager of Haomeun."
"..."
Why wasn't this secret organization even remotely secret?!
"You dolt! Why didn't you mention that getting an introduction from Haomeun takes being a member or spending serious money?"
"It takes serious money?"
"Servers you could snap up in a day cost mere pennies. But given the conditions you're setting, Manager Kang — and you being no Haomun member, either — you'd have to put down a fair sum for the introduction fee."
This was precisely the problem with being a black-haired barbarian. Living far from your homeland, you never had many connections to lean on.
It would be lovely to be introduced through the Tea Book Club members, but it was still sound policy to keep several channels open when job hunting.
That remark about the hefty introduction fee, though, gave me pause.
Trimming expenses was generally the wise move, but if it came with a good employee attached, it didn't seem like a bad deal.
A way to get introduced by Haomeun on the cheap... Oh! Of course.
I turned to the member who'd spoken of the introduction fee and opened my mouth.
"You did say that Haomun members shave prices for one another, didn't you?"
"That may well be, but are you a Haomun member, Manager Kang?"
"No. But I have a way to get the introduction cheap."
"Hm?"
Because I did, in fact, have a way to be introduced at a very steep discount indeed.
Just as the Tea Book Club member had said, the moment I presented myself at the Hao Restaurant annex and announced I'd come on Haomeun business, I was shown straight inside.
"A black-hair? What's a barbarian doing here?"
Some manner of martial artist? A burly man whose build didn't suit a dumpling shop eyed me with a listless face.
"I've come because I have business with Haomeun."
"Here about work? This is no place for a barbarian like you to be hunting jobs."
Grumbling about what sort of lunatic would send a barbarian over to poke fun at him, the man carried on.
"That isn't why I've come."
Being rude from the very first meeting was practically a Central Plains racial passive, so I shook my head without taking much offense.
"Then what, then? Don't tell me a barbarian means to join Haomeun? If so, bring a Haomun member who can vouch for you. No — hold on a moment. I've seen that face somewhere..."
Did he know me? The man frowned and came closer.
"I have no guarantor. But I do have something that guarantees my standing."
It hardly mattered. I hadn't come here to sell my pretty face, after all.
From my breast pocket I drew the trump card for smashing that introduction fee flat, and held it out to the Haomun man.
"What coin is this you're shoving at me? Huh...? Wait. This is... the Black Money?!"
"Yes. The Black Money."
Oh, an excellent reaction. I'd been fretting over what to do if he didn't recognize it — but this one knew it at a glance.
What I held out was a black coin engraved with the character for "defiled." The Black Money.
The black coin I'd received from Wang-ssi, who'd run a fabric shop back in Chilgok County.
"H-how did that end up in a barbarian's hands?"
"Because it's mine. Is something more required?"
Wang-ssi had told me to use it whenever I had a favor worth asking of Haomeun, but I'd never quite managed to come up with one, so the coin had been sitting neglected in a corner of my room.
"My apologies! Forgive my rudeness!"
"Is this sufficient?"
"Yes! O-of course it is! Now, if you'll kindly wait just a moment."
Shock written all over his face, the man vacated his post and hurried off.
BANG!
"B-Branch Manager! We have a crisis!"
The Haomeun Yichang branch manager's office. A Haomun man who'd been working in the annex flung the door open, sucking in a ragged breath.
"Are you out of your damn mind? What is it this time?"
The branch manager shouted, scowling, as the branch of the bonsai he'd been so carefully tending nearly snapped in his grip.
"Mu... Mu... Mu—"
"Mu? What Mu? Spit it out properly!"