Reopening - 6
"I don't need it."
Im Hayeon, the Shadowless Divine Thief, rejected my offer with the same resolute certainty as a fish that has already mapped out every angle of the angler's hook.
"Don't be shy about it. How could I turn my back on the daughter of my sworn brother in his hour of need?"
"No. Turn your back."
With stubbornness like that, she could slice through a pumpkin. You're going to regret this, you know. Did you think making a living in the Central Plains was easy?
An outsider scorned and kicked around, sleeping in some roofless ruin — when the rain pours down and soaks you to the bone, and your stomach growls on top of it all, the misery truly sets in. By then, regret will come far too late.
When you have nowhere to lean on, finding someone to lean on is everything. If she'd just happened to run into her father's sworn brother, she could have naturally asked him for a meal, pulled a pretty, teary face, and who on earth would refuse her?
"Have you no one else to rely on?" I asked her, wearing a look of genuine confusion. I had a rough idea of where this was going, but I wanted to hear her out anyway.
"I don't. And don't try to help me out of loyalty to that man. I don't want anything from him."
I was forced to swallow a groan at her words.
She'd supposedly learned her martial arts from her father, the previous Shadowless Divine Thief, according to the original story — I'd held out some hope, but it seems that was exactly the problem.
"Your father must have had his circumstances—"
"What kind of circumstances keep a man from looking for his daughter and her mother for ten whole years?"
Well, beats me.
As if glaring at someone standing just past my shoulder, she fixed me with a stare that could bore straight through my body.
At this point it wasn't strained relations between family friends — it was outright enmity. Maybe the devoted-sworn-brother angle was the wrong approach after all.
I'd pushed forward trying to build a bond deeper than a mere debt of gratitude, and instead I'd stepped straight on a landmine. I have no idea why Mr. Wang ran off and hid, but if he cared even a little about scouting out his heroine, he should have at least visited his daughter every holiday.
I glared at Mr. Wang, somewhere off in Chilgok County, wishing him a bland and joyless brunch tomorrow, then turned my gaze back to Im Hayeon.
Hayeon lives with the Haomun now. Her father's sworn brother will be at Daseogak — if I said that out loud, the day she truly needed help might never see her set foot in my bookstore. Better to keep playing the loyal brother angle.
"I don't know the details of your father's situation either. But whenever he spoke of you, Hayeon, his face was drowned in regret and longing. There must be something buried deep in his heart."
Honestly, I couldn't remember what his expression was when he told me he had a daughter born to a courtesan. But if I wanted to raise my favorability rating, I needed to polish up Mr. Wang's image.
"Your father found himself a truly admirable sworn brother, didn't he. A thief and a crooked merchant — ohhh, what a picture-perfect pair of brothers."
Im Hayeon said it with a faint edge of mockery, apparently displeased that I was defending Mr. Wang. She could hardly have warm feelings for a parent who abandoned her, so it was a natural reaction.
I let a bitter smile cross my face and spoke with the air of a man who understood her feelings perfectly.
"I understand how you feel. But if your father hadn't come to my aid all those years ago, I wouldn't have been at Wushan's docks that day, at that very hour."
Having defended Mr. Wang, I brought up the events at Wushan — the one thing guaranteed to soften even her prickly attitude.
"I suppose..."
Just as I'd hoped, mentioning Wushan took a little of the frost out of her voice.
The bad blood between them was beyond fixing either way. I had no obligation to mend their relationship. All I needed was a connection between her and me.
"If our connection bothers you, you can ignore it entirely. But I won't stand by while a woman I've saved twice falls into danger again — nor a woman who once helped me. So whenever you need it, knock on Daseogak's door."
Times like these called for playing the chivalrous hero. I really had saved her twice, so it would land pretty convincingly.
I offered her a grave expression, letting my concerned gaze rest on the prickly young lady before me.
Harsh winds make people clutch their clothes tighter, but a warm breeze is what undoes the buttons. Im Hayeon pouted sullenly under my worried gaze, then finally turned her head away as if she couldn't bear it any longer.
"...Fine. I'll go."
She didn't refuse. Thank goodness.
"Your father has no wish to involve himself in the affairs of the ganghu anymore. So I'd appreciate it if you didn't go stirring things up with the Haomun."
I didn't want to get caught in the fallout either. I saved my most important request for last, making sure it would be relayed straight up the Haomun chain.
"If he's retired and has nothing to do with the rebellion, the Haomun has no reason to come looking. I'll pass the word along."
"Good."
"I'll be leaving now."
"Hayeon."
I called out hastily to the retreating girl.
"What now?"
"The Haomun is that way."
Why on earth was she heading back the way she came? I pointed toward the direction she'd arrived from.
"Ah... th-there's a shortcut."
"..."
She couldn't even keep her head straight, could she.
"I-I'm going now."
Red-faced, she hurried off and vanished.
She seemed so sharp and capable, and yet somehow one or two screws were loose with this girl.
The moment Im Hayeon stepped back into the Haomun's Yichang branch, all hell had broken loose inside.
"Branch Chief! This bastard's hand won't stop bleeding!"
One Haomun member, clutching the arm of another who'd crossed swords with Kang Yunho, was shouting for the branch chief.
"Then why the hell was this idiot standing his ground out there!"
The branch chief stalked over to the injured man, irritation dripping from every step.
"If I'd pretended to be weak and slunk off, it would've shamed the whole Haomun!"
"The shame started the moment a nobody like you drew a blade and tried to ambush him."
"Brother! That's too far!"
"Who's your brother? Let me see that. Whoa... what in the—hey. Don't pull it out."
The branch chief stared at the man's hand with an expression of genuine admiration, then issued his warning in a voice cold as ice.
"Why can't I pull it out? Am I in serious trouble? I can't get any strength into my hand."
Sensing that something was gravely wrong, the injured man fidgeted in a panic.
"The bookstore owner jammed a blade precisely into your Yaoxue point. If you yank that out carelessly, you're a cripple for life. Get yourself to a physician. Now."
So the black-haired Joseon man learned the Tang Clan's martial arts after all? The branch chief marveled inwardly at the man's skill with a blade.
"WAAAAH! Brother! Save me! I lost everything gambling — I don't even have money for treatment!"
"It's Branch Chief, you idiot. What kind of Haomun member whines like a baby? Get the blade drawn properly at a physician's and you'll be fine. I'll front the treatment fee. Someone take this fool away!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Waaah! Thank you, Brother!"
The injured man shuffled out of the chief's office with the other Haomun members.
"Is that idiot gone? Yeah. Cut half a year's wages down to half pay."
"Understood."
The branch chief's accounting was ruthless.
"So. Did you give him a proper send-off?"
The chief turned and addressed Im Hayeon, who had been quietly observing the whole scene.
"I did."
"To think the Shadowless Divine Thief's girl was alive all this time. Ten years ago, I'd have sworn she was dead and buried."
The branch chief slumped into his chair and gazed at the bloodline and heir of the Shadowless Divine Thief with something close to a sigh.
"Alive or dead, it makes no difference to me."
"Well, yes, but he's still your father... ahem."
Under the fire in Im Hayeon's eyes, the branch chief cut himself off with an awkward cough. He knew the whole history between the two. Now that her father was known to be alive, prying carelessly could wound the feelings of the woman who might one day become the Shadowless Divine Thief herself.
"Kang Yunho. You don't have any information on that man, do you?"
The Shadowless Divine Thief's sworn brother had appeared out of nowhere. Im Hayeon figured that if anyone in Yichang could dig up details, it would be the Haomun branch, so she asked the chief directly.
"Everything you know is probably everything there is. Owner of the Daseogak bookstore. The manager who tracked down the author Hopil and set him to writing Wind and Cloud of the Tang Clan. The man whose ingenious merchant tricks have tongues wagging across the city. Oh, right — we were supposed to add to that! A man of loyalty who'd toss away his life like an old straw sandal for a friend. And a merchant who understands business ethics well enough to protect his author to the very end."
True to his Haomun roots, the branch chief could revise his intelligence files the moment new information arrived.
"That's all you have?"
"He's an outsider who showed up in Yichang less than a year ago. Of course the intelligence on him is thin."
"He's famous for business tactics no one's ever heard of."
"A fishmonger selling good fish doesn't mean you know everything about the man's life. He's no martial artist — he's just a bookstore owner. Information this detailed is already more than he deserves."
"Where did he come from? What did he do before? Didn't anyone investigate?"
"You think this is Jiangnan, where the Haomun's power runs thick? Hubei Province belongs to the Wudang Sect and the Zhuge Clan. Even the Sichuan Tang Clan is scrambling for a foothold here — with them all planted in Yichang, this much should have you counting your blessings."
Stung by Im Hayeon's scolding tone, the branch chief snapped back with a touch of annoyance — a reminder that no matter how friendly they were, there were lines that shouldn't be crossed.
"Sorry. Then what about the author Hopil?" She reeled in her attitude a little and asked again.
"Complete fog on that one too. Unlike Kang Yunho, we've had actual commissions to unmask Hopil, but he never shows his face."
"I see."
Im Hayeon let out a small, disappointed sigh.
"Daseogak is hard to gather intelligence on in the first place."
"Why?"
Im Hayeon tilted her head at the branch chief.
"Because Haomun members don't exactly get along with books."
"Ah..."
It was called the Haomun — the Gate of the Low and Filthy — because it gathered the dregs of society. Of all the factions in the world, none could be further removed from the habit of reading.
"No Haomun members work at Daseogak, and none of them visit regularly. If anything, it's a place we like even less than the government office. And on top of that, Manager Kang himself keeps a low public profile, so intelligence on him is devilishly hard to come by."
The Haomun's intelligence didn't come from professional agents. It came from what a teahouse server overheard, what a carriage driver picked up from the passengers behind him, what a courtesan caught drifting through a drinking party.
Haomun members sold whatever information seemed profitable to the organization, and the Haomun compiled it and resold it to others.
In regions where the Haomun's power ran strong, that might work well enough — but as a rule, it meant gossip and shallow scraps of information inevitably outweighed anything of real quality.
"I suppose that does explain the thin intelligence."
"We have theories about Hopil's identity, but nothing we can prove. It's like chasing a ghost. That's why, when Manager Kang walked in carrying a Black Coin, I wondered for a moment if the Shadowless Divine Thief's girl might be Hopil himself."
"Not a chance. That man is better friends with money than with ink."
This was the man who, even when teaching her martial arts, had told her to learn with her body rather than her head. Im Hayeon's tone could hardly have been more resolute.
"I know the boy hates the smell of ink. Still, he was always fond of good storytellers and clever, well-read people. That's why I wondered if maybe he'd changed as he got older."
"People don't change overnight. There's no way he's the author Hopil."
The very idea that this man could be the author she revered made her recoil in disgust.
"So it was a wild swing and a miss. Manager Kang, the sworn brother of the Shadowless Divine Thief — anyone who knew would do a double take. Who on earth came up with the Black Coin passphrase?"
"...Only that man and I know it."
"Giving a passphrase meant only for his daughter to someone else. He really is your father's sworn brother, no doubt about it."
"If he'd been part of the rebellion, he never would have been given the passphrase in the first place. So it's certain."
The only problem was that he'd handed it to Kang Yunho, of all people — the man with the notorious reputation. Im Hayeon swallowed the rest of the sentence.
"Fair enough. Here — catch!"
The branch chief fished a pouch from his robe and tossed it to her.
"Isn't this a bit stingy for the fee of verifying a Black Coin?"
Im Hayeon peered at the copper coins inside the pouch and grumbled her displeasure.
"You get money and still complain? Fine, give it back then."
"N-no, that's alright."
"So how's the writing career coming along? Going according to plan?"
The chief asked after her in a friendly tone, watching her hurriedly stash the pouch away.
"I bought a brush, inkstone, ink, and paper yesterday. ...They were incredibly expensive."
"I can't pay you more than the commission rate."
"Tch."
"But where do you think this writing thing is going? No matter how brilliant your prose is, someone has to read it. Writing one book isn't the end of it, you know."
"That's true."
"You've got no money, no intention of earning your keep with the skills you were raised on, and if you want to be an author, you need a bookstore willing to back you — and of course an outsider like you doesn't know a single bookstore in the region."
Becoming an author ended with writing a book; earning a living as one required a contract with a bookstore to print and sell it. But no bookstore on earth would take a chance on a total novice like Im Hayeon.
"That's right."
As the branch chief laid out her reality, Im Hayeon's face darkened slightly.
"Well, I have a proposal. Interested?"
"A proposal? What kind of proposal?"
Could he actually have a good solution? Im Hayeon leaned forward, her expression bright with hope as she looked at the branch chief.
"Daseogak."
It was a proposal that had never once crossed her mind.
"I'm sorry?"
"How about becoming an employee at Daseogak?"