Night Visitor - 6
"Anyone who hasn't shown up for work yet, raise your hand! ...Not a single one? Excellent!"
It had been several days since Lim Hayeon had gone looking for Kang Yunho in the dead of night. Now she stood off in a corner, watching him intently as he breezed through his morning check of the staff, for all the world as if nothing had ever happened.
"Hahaha!"
"Let's all give it our best again today."
His Central Plains speech was so fluent you would never guess he'd been born in Joseon. How enormous an effort must he have made, to take on an entirely new life like this? Now that Lim Hayeon knew where he'd come from, she found herself marveling anew at a manner of speaking she had never once thought twice about.
"Boss! I can carry this load up to the second floor!"
"Then get up there and get to work."
Perhaps even the martial arts he'd learned were a relic of plans to enter the world of the black path. Once she knew his origins, Lim Hayeon began reading hidden meaning into his every smallest gesture.
"Miss Hayeon?"
Had he caught her staring? The instant her eyes met Kang Yunho's, Lim Hayeon whipped her head away.
What was she supposed to say to him? That she'd jumped to conclusions entirely on her own? That now the night had passed, she was mortified to have come to him in the middle of it?
In the days since, she hadn't managed a single word of conversation with Kang Yunho.
"Big Sis Hayeon? Did you and the boss have another fight?"
Unable to watch any longer, Ha Soso had come over to her.
"It's nothing like that."
"Then is the boss being cold to you again?"
"It's not that either."
"Honestly, the boss... But you're part of the problem too, you know! Go to him and pretend you can't win. Act all weak and helpless, throw a cute little tantrum or two. Do that, and I promise the boss will go soft on you in no time."
Lim Hayeon couldn't manage any answer at all for Ha Soso, who was gazing at her with such naked worry.
Kang Yunho liked her. That much she had been utterly certain of, right up until a few days ago. Yet now that she knew it was fact, she felt more tangled up than ever.
What if he only looked after me because our circumstances were so alike?
Just as she couldn't help comparing herself to him, perhaps he had measured her against his own past self and helped her for that reason and no other. Perhaps it was her mother having been a courtesan that made him regard her with an extra touch of tenderness.
Perhaps she had taken help born of a shared upbringing and, entirely on her own, dressed it up as a man's affection.
Perhaps, just as she had misread his past, she had misread his heart too.
Maybe it was never love at all. Maybe it was pity.
The moment the thought took shape, her shoulders sank of their own accord.
"I'm fine. I'll be heading out."
In the end, Lim Hayeon fled Daseogak as if escaping a crime scene.
The sun had gone down at some point. She tipped her head back into the sour sky and found raindrops falling onto her hair, one by one. And of course she hadn't brought an umbrella.
Light on her feet, Lim Hayeon hurried toward the inn where she was staying.
"That bastard! Where'd he run off to!"
"I'm telling you he's long gone! Let's grab anything in there worth coin before somebody else does!"
"What's going on here?"
By the time Lim Hayeon reached the shabby inn she always stayed at, a furious crowd had surrounded the place.
"You a guest of this inn? Then pack your things and get out, and be quick about it!"
"I— what on earth do you mean?"
"The owner of this inn has run off in the night without paying back a single coin of his debts!"
Dawn, the sun still far below the horizon. Rain hammering down all night or not — from the Tang Clan's lodgings all the way to Yichang, I had been grappling through the final stretch of one very long undertaking.
"Congratulations on reaching Small Completion. Five years' worth of internal energy now resides in your dantian."
Tang Pae offered his congratulations in a delighted voice as he drew the needles out of the meridians and vessels lacing my entire body.
"All thanks to you. I feel as if I've become a proper master of the arts."
I waited until my back — a full-grown hedgehog of needles — had finished its molt, then cautiously flexed my fist.
From the dantian all the way down to that wiggling fist, I could feel a solid, unmistakable current of internal energy. Five years' worth of it. The energy I could actually wield had finally doubled.
Until now, my repertoire had amounted to a few bursts of so-called Spiral Booster acceleration and a Rocket Punch I could never call back — shout "Barbarian Punch!" and that was the beginning and end of the show.
Even if the raw total had merely doubled, it felt like the ways I could put this energy to use had opened up far wider.
"Haha! That takes me back. I know exactly how it feels. We have gathered in every last wisp of the elixir's energy that lived within you, Young Master Kang — so as far as internal energy goes, you now stand at the second-rate level."
"Me... second-rate..."
Two years after first learning martial arts, and I had five years of internal energy to show for it. By all rights this was where the story would turn — the black-haired nobody revealed as an SSS-rank genius of combat. Reality, however, had other ideas.
All we'd truly done was harvest the ginseng energy that had been lingering inside Kang Yunho's body.
Joseon ginseng was an elixir the people of the Central Plains swore couldn't be obtained at any price — and that idiot Kang Yunho had snacked on it whenever boredom struck, simmered into ginseng chicken soup one day, baked into honeyed medicinal pastries the next.
Half drawn out through the Soyun Mind Image Art, half with the aid of Tang Clan medicine — we had succeeded in gathering the ginseng energy dissolved through every meridian of that fool's body.
At this level, I could probably walk into any small neighborhood escort agency and land a guard's position, free pass.
"In truth, to be precise, you are not second-rate."
"I'm not second-rate?"
"A martial artist's realm is not decided by internal energy alone."
Fair enough — aside from my mental cultivation art, I had nothing I could confidently put on display. If I were a computer, I'd have decent hardware and an operating system installed, and all I could do was run web searches and play Minesweeper.
Alas, the escort-guard dream would have to be folded up and shelved once more.
"What does it matter whether the writer is first-rate or second-rate? For keeping this body in one piece and living out my years free of illness, this is more than enough."
There was no more risk of street punks and third-rate black-path thugs shaking me down like in the old days — if anything, I could overpower them outright now. And I had no intention of walking into any life-or-death struggle of my own free will; for a long, healthy life, this much would do splendidly.
Of course, if you asked whether some part of me didn't ache to fling a sword-qi or two about in a wuxia world, I couldn't honestly say no. But that would mean living by the blade in a world of mountains of steel and forests of swords.
I kept the old maxim carved into my heart at all times — the pen is mightier than the sword — for what I wanted was not to eat by the sword, but to live on a bowl of ink.
"Quite right. That is precisely why I lent you my aid."
Apparently that answer satisfied him, for Tang Pae gave a small nod.
"Vice Hall Master Tang Pae! Everything is ready!"
"Then it is time for us to depart."
Today was the day the Tang Clan's warriors returned to Sichuan. When Tang Pae opened the door, the carriages stood outside, packed and ready for the road home.
Happily, the night's rain seemed to have let up at some point. The Tang Clan's journey home would go smoothly — and Daseogak could open its doors today without a hitch.
"You truly must go?!"
"We too would gladly remain in Yichang and speak longer of Wind and Cloud of the Tang Clan. But return we must."
"There are Tea Book Club members counting the days for a chance to simply speak with the Tang Clan's warriors — if they formed a queue, it would wind around Daseogak dozens of times over. It is such a terrible shame!"
Outside stood not only the Tang Clan warriors preparing for the road home, but the Tea Book Club members who had grown close to them, ready to see them off.
"There is still so much I want to say! Khff! When volume four comes out, I shall return without fail!"
"Waaaahhh!"
"As for who I believe is the true rightful wife — it's her, without a doubt. Keep it between the two of us."
"I knew it! Truth be told, I had already suspected as much!"
"I shall found a Tea Book Club in Sichuan as well!"
"Please take care and stay well!"
"Everything you asked for at the printing workshop's inner residence has been prepared."
Tang Pae watched the scene a moment, then spoke softly, careful that only I could hear.
"Thank you."
"Should you ever have need of anything else, send word at any time."
"Thank you, truly, for all the help you've given me. But from here on out, shouldn't Sichuan and Hubei keep the relationship befitting Sichuan and Hubei?"
I gave Tang Pae the smile of a grandson on the holiday trek home, graciously declining a grandmother's overwhelming affection.
"Sichuan and Hubei?"
"Near enough to feel close, far enough to keep apart. I think that is best for us both."
I had wrung from them everything that could be wrung. To wish for more now would be simple greed.
"...I see."
Across Tang Pae's face flickered a pang of pity — pity for a man who had given up everything for love.
I wasn't the least bit pitiable.
"Oh! Please see that this letter reaches Hwarin."
That mysterious night visitor had put me through quite a crisis, but thankfully this was a letter I had written openly and in good conscience, and I handed it over with care.
I'd written to Sohee the moment I arrived in Yichang, so it was only right to do the same for Hwarin.
"Of course. Everyone, mount up!"
"Yes, sir!"
The moment Tang Pae and I finished speaking, the Tang Clan warriors were in their saddles in the blink of an eye.
"Safe travels, all of you. Give Hwarin my regards. And you have my blessing to tell the Clan Head he's worked hard."
"Hahahaha! Of course. And everyone has been briefed, so we shall keep our work uniforms locked down tight."
"...See that you do."
The qipao affair was better off kept from Hwarin as much as possible, after all. With a wry smile, I saw the Tang Clan's warriors off and made my way back toward Daseogak.
Unlike the streets still slick from the night's rain, the pre-dawn sky promised a clear day ahead.
"Hm?"
Someone in front of Daseogak? Opening hours were still a long way off.
Whoever it was stood drenched to the bone, hunched utterly in on herself. Sheltering from the rain in front of Daseogak? Or a customer come to buy Wind and Cloud of the Tang Clan?
I edged closer, carefully — and a deeply familiar woman came into view.
"Miss Hayeon?"
The woman soaked clean through by the rain was Lim Hayeon.
"Why are you here...?"
Why was this man standing in front of her? Lim Hayeon wearily lifted her head, heavy and dripping from the night's rain.
"Look behind you."
"Ah..."
With a listless expression, Lim Hayeon turned — and there was the door she walked through for work every single morning.
Why was she here? She had walked all night without destination, and the place her feet had carried her without her noticing was Daseogak.
"Come in."
Why was she here? Why had she stood out in the rain? Not asking a single one of those questions, Kang Yunho simply opened Daseogak's door for her.
Wordlessly, Lim Hayeon followed at his back, up to the loft where he slept, and sank down onto a chair.
With practiced hands, Kang Yunho boiled water, set a small brazier before her to chase the chill from her body, and placed a cup of steaming tea in her hands.
As Lim Hayeon took her first sip of the tea he'd made, she felt warmth seep slowly into a body gone stiff with the night's rain.
Kang Yunho, pretending not to fuss over her, kept a respectful distance, gazed out the window, and took a sip of tea of his own.
"You're not going to ask why I was out standing in the rain?"
Perhaps he had noticed her regaining the strength to speak. Kang Yunho turned to her with the look of a man prepared to hear whatever she had to say.
"I was waiting for whenever you felt like telling me."
How did this man smile so naturally? How did he act as though any trouble she spilled would be no trouble to him at all?
After a moment's hesitation, Lim Hayeon opened her mouth — just as she had that night, days ago.
"...The successor of the Shadowless Divine Thief just had her money stolen."
Head bowed in the depths of embarrassment, she murmured the words.
"Your money?"
"The innkeeper ran off in the middle of the night. He said if I paid a full year's room fee up front, he'd throw in breakfast and supper as well — so I handed over an entire month's wages."
It had seemed like a fine bargain. Paying out of pocket for two meals a day cost far more than even a cheap spread thrown in by an inn.
When in truth it had all been the innkeeper's scheme — a way to flee town with every coin he could scrape together.
The night streets, and not a single coin to her name. Stunned by the unbroken chain of misfortune, Lim Hayeon had drifted through the dark with nowhere to go.
Having replayed every miserable detail of the night, Lim Hayeon — wearing the look of a woman whose soul had left her body — untied the rain-soaked bundle she'd carried out of the inn.
"The paper's soaked clean through."
"It's the manuscript I submitted to the Yichang Writers' Society..."
Paper, brush, inkstone — all ruined into a sodden mess. Worst of all, thanks to her long, aimless wandering, the first novel she had ever written was smudged past the point of legibility.
It was the single thing she had accomplished in fleeing to Yichang. And in one instant, it had dissolved into foam and vanished.
"Nothing ever goes right for me."
Sorrow crashed in on her all at once, and the words came out soaked through, like everything else she owned.
Why was her life like this?
Even the few precious things she'd managed to keep, she had lost in a heartbeat.
Left as she was, she would be branded a runaway courtesan and hauled away in chains. She'd been raised on thievery, and she couldn't even manage to steal. Every coin she possessed, she had been swindled out of.
And her novel — the one true achievement of her flight to Yichang — had become a lump of wet paper.
"I can't even manage one person's share. I'm a half-penny of a human being."
Was she being punished for running from the Gyobang? Punished for trying to slip the bonds of her fate? In her misery, Lim Hayeon could not lift her head.
"Who says you can't manage one person's share? Miss Hayeon, you are the finest clerk on Daseogak's second floor — no, in all of Daseogak. You are the manager I trust with everything I have, a person this place could not stand without."
"Anyone could do that job."
"No. I gave it to you because you are Hayeon."
Why did this man speak with such utter conviction?
That one sentence held up Lim Hayeon's heart — soaked, clumped, and warped into something as unsightly as her ruined manuscript — and barely kept it from collapsing.
"...Nothing works out for me."
"When nothing works out, reaching out your hand to someone else is a fine remedy as well."
Reach out to whom? Who did she even have?
There was no one left to help her. The people of the Gyobang's Haomen were dead, and the Haomen itself had scattered, every branch to its own survival. Her mother had passed on, and that man — she could not bear even the thought of crossing paths with him.
Where in the world was anyone who would reach out a hand to her?
Hot with resentment, Lim Hayeon looked up at Kang Yunho through rain-damp eyes.
There was. One person.
Someone whose circumstances so closely mirrored her own.
Someone who could understand her better than anyone else alive.
Someone who was waiting, without a word, for her to reach out first.
"...Help me. Please."
With what strength she had left, Lim Hayeon held out her hand to him.
"That is what I have been waiting to hear."
Why would this man help her even if she turned him away? Why did he offer his hand as though he would be waiting, any hour, any day, forever?
Why do you keep helping me?
Because she resembled his mother, a courtesan? Because her circumstances were like his? Because she was that man's daughter? Was what he felt for her truly nothing more than pity?
Or...
"Well, for starters..."
Lim Hayeon waited for the words to come out of Kang Yunho's mouth. What would he say?
"Starting today, come live with me."
That one sentence was more than enough to rattle loose the mind of a woman whose heart had been stuffed to bursting with grievance and despair.