Night Visitor - 4
Had he seen through her all along?
Despite the abruptness of her visit, Lim Hayeon sipped her tea with perfect composure, watching the man who was listening to her troubles, and thought.
"I was going to buy out my courtesan registry."
Lim Hayeon began to lay bare the reason for the escapade she had pulled off in Yichang.
"Your registry?"
"The Gi-mun was never going to lift a finger for me — that much was obvious. If I wanted to buy out my own registry, the only way was to act myself."
The Gi-mun of the Wuhan branch might command the courtesans of Haomen across all Hubei Province, but to Lim Hayeon they were strangers, every one of them.
In Haomen, where every cell fended for itself, no one was going to stick their neck out for a single runaway courtesan from Wushan.
That Lim Hayeon would be formally branded a runaway was as plain as day.
"And yet the tale I heard of your little escapade says otherwise."
He was asking why she hadn't stolen it, then. Gazing at Kang Yunho's puzzled face, Lim Hayeon found herself recalling the night she had first resolved to climb someone's wall in Yichang.
On a Daseogak wage, the registry could never be bought. And even if she lived as a courtesan, she would remain one until the day she died.
If the registry was beyond her reach both as a Daseogak employee and as a courtesan, then only one road remained.
That was how Lim Hayeon came to climb another person's wall.
But.
"The moment you commit the theft, you become a thief. Turning thief because I refused to become a courtesan — isn't that laughable?"
Lim Hayeon answered with bitter self-mockery.
The instant she lifted a jewel from that open safe, she would have become a thief. Was it truly right to trade one fate for the other — to become a thief just to avoid becoming a courtesan?
She had stood there tormented, until the moonlight breaking free of the clouds fell upon the night visitor who had stolen in under the cover of darkness — and then, at last, she had turned away.
Just because she refused to become a courtesan didn't mean she wanted to become like that man.
"So that worry is what had you pacing the night streets for days?"
Sensing Kang Yunho's consideration in the way he avoided any direct mention of stealing or thieves, Lim Hayeon went on.
"I came back empty-handed, and nothing had changed. Maybe this time my mind would be made up for me. So I walked the night streets again. And in those hours, sometimes, the worry that had been crushing me all day would simply... disappear."
Pouring yourself body and soul into something can, at times, make you forget the troubles of the real world. For some people that refuge is work; for others, drink or amusement. For her, it had been thievery.
Of course, the moment she finally stood before that open safe, yet another dilemma had been waiting for her.
"However deep I infiltrated, in the end I couldn't bring myself to steal, like an absolute fool. Even knowing that if they drag me back like this, I'll be doing a courtesan's work until the day I die."
Lim Hayeon let her head fall, smiling a tangled smile.
Sell laughter. Sell song and dance. And someday, when her value had faded, sell her body — such was the work that would be hers for the rest of her life. And even so, Lim Hayeon could not bring herself to accept that fate.
Kang Yunho spoke carefully to the woman with her head bowed.
"If being a courtesan is hateful, and being a thief is hateful, then how about running away?"
"All I've ever learned in this life is thieving and a courtesan's trade. If I run, what am I supposed to do?"
Lim Hayeon's voice rose before she could stop it. It was the sort of remark anyone could toss out. The kind of thought only someone who had never lived as a courtesan could afford to say so easily.
Unable to put to use the one trade she knew — what ruin might befall a woman out in the jianghu with nothing to recommend her but a beautiful face and no one in the world to turn to?
"But then."
There was no other way, was there. She could read the unspoken thought on Kang Yunho's grieving face.
"The moment I run. I become a runaway courtesan for the rest of my life."
If she were dragged back this time, then with luck she might yet clear herself of the runaway's stigma. Even if not, her circumstances would be weighed, and she would be spared the worst of it.
But if she fled now, she would be a runaway courtesan for all time. Haomen would hunt her to the bitter end, and she would never again be able to bear her mother's surname, or the name that man had given her.
What she wanted was to cast off the registry — not to become a fugitive for eternity.
Even a clean escape would change nothing. The brand of runaway courtesan, once burned into her heart, might be hidden — but never again erased.
...
Reading her intent from her words, Kang Yunho spared his own. He was, after all, a man who had lived like a beggar in the Central Plains without a single tie to his name.
And he knew, too, how many brutal ordeals awaited women like Lim Hayeon in this jianghu — beautiful, and belonging to no one.
So he absorbed her indignation with easy grace, and simply waited for her to keep talking.
"You asked me once, remember? Whether I had ever gone hungry."
"I remember."
"It wasn't as if I became a courtesan apprentice because I wanted to. I was only ten when my mother died. What can a starving child do? Becoming a courtesan was my choice — but it was also the only choice I had."
A common story. Even now, somewhere in the Central Plains, a child of a poor house is being sold off to the Gyobang, and a starving child is turning her feet toward its gates.
"I understand. There was a time I dug up and ate grass roots to fill my own gnawing belly, and back then it felt as though there was nothing I wouldn't do to survive."
The bond between those who had known hunger wrapped itself around the two of them, melting the chill that had briefly crept in.
Lim Hayeon nodded and went on.
"It isn't that I was unhappy at the Gyobang. The older sisters were kind to me, and I never went hungry. Only... only, I lived in dread of a day that was bound to come. A vague, shapeless fear."
...
"Then one day, I read Dangga Pungun. And after that, I had a dream."
"What dream?"
"The dream of writing a novel like the great author Hopil's Dangga Pungun, and buying out my own registry with it."
...
A woman who had found her dream by reading his very own novel. For an instant, the weight of it robbed Kang Yunho of words.
"I was confident in my way with words. A cheonggi isn't trained in song and dance alone, after all. I thought that if I could write like Hopil, I could buy my own registry. Reality, of course, was a manuscript that couldn't even manage an honorable mention."
Laughing a little at how foolish the dream seemed in hindsight, Lim Hayeon let her shoulders sag.
"It wasn't a bad piece of writing."
"But it wasn't writing that could change my life, either."
...
"I didn't want to live like my mother. I didn't want to live like that man. But those two roads are all I have left."
An inexpressible bitterness steeped the voice that spilled out of her as if retched up. Sell laughter to strangers — or be the one to bring tears to their eyes. Lim Hayeon stared at her own face trembling on the surface of the tea, like someone forced to confront a mirror they could not bear.
"If there's truly no other way, I could reach out to my sworn broth—"
"Don't you dare."
Firm certainty, and beneath it, outright anger — both rang in Lim Hayeon's voice.
"Even so—"
"My mother was a runaway courtesan too. And she was a courtesan until the day she died. Even after she bore the Shadowless Divine Thief's child."
He could have bought her out of the registry — and chose not to. Feeling the fury pressed into Lim Hayeon's clenched lips, Kang Yunho bowed his head without protest.
"If you need help, then let's put our heads together and find a way."
"This isn't something you can fix."
Lim Hayeon shook her head side to side, the very picture of resignation.
"You didn't come here to ask for my help."
Because you are the only person in this world I could say these things to. The words climbed all the way to her throat, and Lim Hayeon could not force them out.
"I didn't come looking for an answer. I came so that you would know, if one day I suddenly vanished. And so that — if they came to take me away before Volume 4 of Dangga Pungun was out — I could at least read it. That's the only reason I came."
Only that. She rose from her seat, feigning a composure she did not feel.
She had wanted someone — anyone — to hear her out. Because the heavy weight that refused to lift, no matter how many of other people's walls she climbed, seemed destined to torment her forever.
With an apologetic look, Lim Hayeon bowed her head to Kang Yunho.
"I'm sorry for coming in the dead of night. See you tomorrow. No... I hope I get to see you tomorrow."
The steps of Lim Hayeon as she darted for the window were lighter, certainly, than when she had come. And yet the burden pressing down on her still looked heavy enough to buckle her shoulders.
"Gugu-good!"
"Gugu. You rascal. The least you could do is wake up and see your master off before she's gone."
I rose the moment Lim Hayeon left, and levelled a mild scolding at Gugu, perched on my shoulder.
A cold draft drifted in through the window she had slipped out of, as desolate as the heart of the one who had departed. I really must be more thorough about securing Kang Yunho's doors at night.
I shut the window and sat down quietly on the bed.
"So it's Shadowless Divine Thief: Begins, is it."
A courtesan who sells laughter to others, and a thief who leaves tears in their eyes. The woman who wished to be neither would, in the end, win renown as both.
It was not hard to imagine how much she must have despaired and grieved and wrestled with herself along the way.
For her, a crushing ordeal had just descended. For me, ironically enough, a colossal riddle had just come solved.
I'd had my suspicions. And I was right.
Feeling the lightness of a long-stuck knot finally coming undone, I murmured up at the ceiling with an absurd grin.
"Im Hayeon's capture condition is money."
I had been half in doubt. Was Im Hayeon truly a heroine of this wuxia dating sim?
Her beauty was every bit the equal of the heroines I had met so far. But Im Hayeon carried no cursed destiny of her own — nothing like the Heavenly Killing Star or the Poison Human, did she?
If the Defier of Destiny's purpose was to save heroines from their fates, then wasn't Im Hayeon missing something essential?
But the moment she said the words courtesan registry, I understood everything.
The capture conditions of a wuxia dating sim heroine: fame points and money.
Im Hayeon was the same breed of heroine as Moyong Sang-ah. The kind who had to be saved with a sum of money that no one but a Defier of Destiny would even dream of paying.
"If there's a chance your master is the true heroine, then I have to help her. Right?"
"Gugu!"
Did the wretched bird actually understand me? Gugu answered with a great flapping of wings.
To save this heroine's fate, I would have to buy out her courtesan registry.
"The problem is where I'm going to find that much money."
Unlike fame points, money was a number you could see — clear and concrete, and for that very reason anything but simple.
Not for a bookstore manager who had sweated over the purchase of a single printing press and begged for installment plans on his own print shop.
Right now, it looked utterly impossible.
I would have to keep piling up fame and fortune while I searched for the true heroine. And Im Hayeon would go on living her double life in Wuhan.
So — was I simply to give up for now, consoling myself that I could always come for her once the money was saved?
No. Like with Sohee, like with Hwarin, there might be a time limit I knew nothing about.
Even if I chased money and fame to complete the capture conditions, if the clock ran out first, the true heroine's route might close forever.
And besides...
For a moment, I pictured Lim Hayeon as she had left just now, sorrow in her eyes.
She had denied it, but everything about her had been asking for help — plainly enough to see.
Closing my eyes on a heroine begging for aid? How shameless would that make a man who claimed to be searching for the true heroine?
If that was who I was, then only one thing remained.
"I'll find a way."
What a sorry spectacle I had made of myself.
Lim Hayeon thought as she made her way toward Haomen to catch the news from Wuhan.
Why on earth had I gone to that man's house, like an idiot?
That man could not solve her problems. He might run the most flourishing bookstore in town, but he could never lay out a fortune's ransom for her sake.
What changed just because he listened to her troubles? Then why, in the end, had she gone to him after all? She didn't understand her own heart.
Lim Hayeon stopped mid-stride and turned to look back at Daseogak, distant in the night.
— "Then one day, I read Dangga Pungun."
No. The truth was, she knew exactly why she had come to his room.
There was something she had not been able to tell him.
The reason she had fallen into Dangga Pungun. It was the story of Dang Jeong and Du Eung-hyang. The chivalrous hero and the finest courtesan in Hubei. The hero, fallen in love, pays out a king's fortune and frees her from her registry.
The one thing every courtesan alive dreams of.
Lim Hayeon had been utterly captivated by the tale of Dangga Pungun.
"But that's a story only a novel can tell."
She had little wish to admit it, but perhaps she had been projecting Dang Jeong onto him.
She had mistaken him for Dang Jeong from the very first meeting, after all.
Appearing in her most desperate hour to save her; turning up every single time she fell into trouble, helping as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Somewhere along the way, without ever realizing it, she might have found herself unable to let go of that illusion.
Because if anyone would save her, it would be Dang Jeong.
Lim Hayeon gave a small, dry snort. What a joke. He was not Dang Jeong.
He would sooner find her incomprehensible.
To a man who had once drifted from place to place begging for his supper, and who now, before anyone knew it, moved crowds with a single wave of his hand — she must look like a pitiful woman who could neither flee her fate nor stand against it.
Next to him, she was nothing but a small, petty, foolish woman.
He and she were alike, and yet not. He, too, had lived in Joseon once — as an ordinary Joseon man.
He could never understand what it felt like to be born into a lowly station.
Straining to shake Kang Yunho from her thoughts, Lim Hayeon pushed open the door of the Haomen Yichang branch.
"There you are. For now, I've already sent word to the Wuhan branch asking them for more time."
The branch chief greeted Lim Hayeon with eyes full of pity.
"Thank you."
"Keep your chin up. Nothing's been decided yet! Ah — as it happens, I've just gotten my hands on a rather interesting piece of news. Care to hear it?"
As if her spirits could lift. The branch chief knew it too — which was exactly why he tried, instead, to change her mood with what he'd learned.
"Interesting news?"
"It's about Kang Yunho."
"That man? What about him?"
If any news in the world could sweep away Lim Hayeon's gloom, if only for a moment, it was this.
The Yichang branch chief broke into a hearty smile, holding premium intelligence worth a small fortune, and delivered one astonishing piece of news to her.
"Kang Yunho, it turns out, is the illegitimate son the Tang Clan Head fathered on a Joseon courtesan."